To Seduce an Angel (33 page)

Dav could not ask the question burning on his tongue. He reminded himself that she did love him. The situation was not hopeless, and he could not let her go back to Wenlocke. Even with his victory there, Dav would not trust Emma near the duke or Aubrey. But a gentleman would command two rooms at the inn, not the one bed he had immediately imagined them sharing.

Emma reached to pull the older woman up. “Oh no. Just Emma, Your Grace. You must not think otherwise.” Emma swallowed. “Malfada is past.”

Malfada
. Dav caught the name of her kingdom. It had to be tiny and insignificant in the tangle of European politics, but he could guess its history, swallowed up by France under Napoleon.

“My dear girl,” the duchess held Emma's hands, “I would not have had you suffer like this for the world. I had no idea how to find you.”

“You are not to blame. You have been our one friend in the world, Tatty's and mine. Have you had any word from her?” Emma's love for the duchess was clear.

“No word yet, my dear, but when word comes to Wenlocke, I'll send it on to you at once.”

The duchess turned to Dav with quiet dignity. He spoke first. “I must thank you, too, Your Grace, for giving me Emma back when I thought I had lost her.”

“Ah, you've won her completely, have you?” The duchess smiled at him.

“If I haven't, I will. I am not a man to give up on the thing I want.” He took one of Emma's hands in his.

“That, I think, you have inherited. I must go back to Wenlocke, but I am your grandmother, if you will have me.”

He had not thought to have a kindly grandparent. “I will, Your Grace.”

“I have no right to ask you to keep his name, but I hope you will. I hope you will keep my dear boy alive in you and never give up your birthright. Wenlocke will be a different place someday because of you.”

He was surprised at the impulse to embrace the duchess. He so rarely touched another person, but without the duchess there would be no Emma standing with her hand in his.

“I would like to tell you about your father someday, if I may.”

Dav nodded.

He and Emma saw the duchess off in her carriage and turned to the inn, where the landlord outdid himself in civility. Nothing like a crested ducal carriage to draw the notice of ostlers, postboys, chambermaids, and waiters. When Dav made his wishes known, the whole household sprang into motion from the lowliest chambermaid to the hostess herself. Fires were lighted, beds aired and warmed, baths drawn.

Dav led Emma to one of a pair of adjoining rooms, gave her a quick kiss, and left her to the care of the inn's people.

DOWNSTAIRS he found the landlord again willing to take orders. His host ushered him to a pleasant enough room where he sat at a dark oak table under an old mullioned window sending messengers and messages across the town and across England. His mother and his brothers must be told. The boys would need to hear from him. He and Emma must have fresh garments to wear. As he put his mind to simple, necessary tasks, the other part of his brain, his imagination, was free to hurry Emma through all the attentions showered on her.

He delayed as long as he could in the landlord's private room, certain that he had given her time to bathe and change and eat and above all to think. He could not ask questions about her future while any trace of the horror of the morning still lingered in her eyes. To see her in the dock, a manacled thing, the blue of her eyes extinguished, had daunted him as facing his grandfather had not.

He thought of the accusation made against her. He had known it was false from the moment he first heard it, but he had also known the chilling likelihood that the truth, whatever it was, would not save her from the law. Betrayed and wounded by her, he had done nothing to save her in her time of peril.

By the logic of stories, he did not deserve to have her. No tale ended with a bystander, a do-nothing, winning the princess. Since Dav had failed to act to save her when she was in terrible danger, he could not claim her now. But deserving and wanting were such very different characters. Deserving was a mild, polite boy, waiting to receive his due. While wanting, the way Dav wanted Emma Portland, was a ragged, restless boy of the London streets whose eyes and hands were quick to spot and steal a treasure, whose heart would keep the stolen treasure forever.

The law was harsh on such boys. He had pored over the tomes in his library for months, reading the cases of beggars and thieves, whipped and transported and hanged for wanting what chance denied. He wondered what kind of life sentence he might be handed for the act of stealing a princess.

He set himself to fill another hour with his own acts of self-restoration. At least he could meet her looking like a marquess. A bath, a shave, and fresh linen would help. Nothing would disguise the scrapes and bruises, the signs of his true nature, but that could not be helped.

He escaped the landlord's solicitous attentions and climbed the stairs to the room set aside for him. When he opened the door, Emma stood there unchanged. The blue of her eyes was as uncertain as the sea under shifting clouds.

“What is it?” He was across the room in two strides.

“Why did you order two rooms?”

“Not from any wish to lie apart from you.”

“Then why?”

“I think you know, Your Highness. Should I kneel?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Just Emma.”

He lifted a brow. “I doubt the Duchess of Wenlocke bows to a mere Emma.”

“Stop. You must have the truth. You deserve it.”

“About Malfada or about the dead man, Emma? Your cousin killed the spy, didn't she?”

“How do you know?”

“All we wanted was to be free. We didn't want to kill anyone, but he was going to kill the babe. He was going to kill little Leo.”

“Tell me.” He stepped forward and led her to a bench under the window where she could sit in his embrace to tell her story. He had wanted the end of Emma's story from the first hour he had known her. He wanted to say the words that would free her from the ogres of the past.

“Tell me.”

She sighed and twisted in his hold to sit upright, facing him. “We were in prison off and on for seven years, Tatty and Leo and I, after the French came. When we were of no more value, they hanged Leo, and Tatty and I escaped.

“Escape was easy at first. We disguised ourselves as boys. But when the babe came, there were delays. We expected to be followed, of course. Tatty took a knife. But when we crossed the Channel, when we left the Continent behind, we thought we'd outrun our pursuers. We had only to get to Bristol to meet a boat that would take us to America.

“We stopped at that inn in Reading. We'd come so far we felt we must be safe. It was a bitter cold evening, and we feared for the babe, little Leo. There was no time to sell another jewel to raise some funds, so we only had enough for our room and Tatty needed to eat to keep up her strength to feed the babe.

“A soldier was drinking in the taproom, and he invited Tatty to join him for a drink and a meal. We hadn't eaten that day, and there seemed no harm in letting him pay for a meal. I put the babe to bed in our room and went to see if I could assist the landlady in return for a meal.

“Tatty's sergeant went on drinking. He was a great hulk of a man. In time he wanted to take Tatty upstairs. She signaled me for help. I rushed ahead to the room. When I opened our door, a stranger was standing over the babe. I knew at once he was Malfada, our countryman, a spy. He wore the same boots as all our guards.

“My throat closed up. I couldn't scream or cry out. I signed to Tatty. She told the sergeant to wait downstairs for her. I moved around the bed to make the spy look at me. Tatty got behind him with her knife. I pleaded for the babe's life, and the Malfada laughed. It was a terrible laugh. Tatty heard it and used her knife, stabbing up and turning her fist, the way Leo taught her.

“The spy crumpled. I saw in his face the shock of his death. But I made myself grab little Leo. When Tatty saw what she'd done, she shook and shook, but I gave her the babe to hold, and she quieted. I knew what we must do.

“We shoved the dead man under the bed, and I sent Tatty back to her sergeant to bring him up to our room. He was quick to strip off his clothes, and he fell asleep as soon as he hit the mattress. We put his clothes on the dead spy, and put the spy in the sergeant's chair in the taproom with his head on the table. We could not let news of the spy's death get back to others who might be on our trail.

“We were gone before first light. We weighed the spy's clothes down with rocks and sank them in a pond and hid in a wood for most of the day. We were so afraid. We argued. I said we must send to the duchess, our grandmother's friend. We could trust her. But Tatty didn't want to wait for the duchess, so we put walnut dye in our hair, and she took the road for Bristol to meet the agent who had arranged our passage to America. I went north to find the duchess, hoping any pursuers would follow me, not Tatty.

“At Wenlocke I thought I was safe. The duchess was so sure that no one would come there to take me away.”

She sagged against him. He knew the weight of her burden had worn her out. But she pulled herself up and met his gaze.

“So do not call me princess. I am a woman who does what she must to survive in this world. They took everything from us, from Leo and Tatty and me. The French ate our ponies. They cut off their heads and left them on the road, and the crows came. We ate fish soup even when the guards spat in it and tore our dresses to shreds and sold our jewels. And when they hanged Leo and the crows . . .”

Dav took her in his arms in a tight hold. “I have your brother's pin. The boys did take it. Swallow gave it back to me after you left.”

“Oh.” He heard one sob. Then she pressed her face to his shoulder. He held her and stroked her back and let the storm of tears spend itself against him. When her grief subsided at last, he recognized what was different in their embrace. She sat up, wiping her eyes and hiccuping. He handed her a napkin from the table with a kiss. Their lips held and clung. His honorable intentions dissolved.

“I love you,” he told her. “Are you wearing stuffing?”

She laughed, her tear-washed eyes sparkling blue. “Three gowns. I was to take one off each day, so that I would be hard to trace, but after I left you, I could not get warm.”

“Turn around.” His hands searched her back for fastenings. “Let's get you out of them.”

The first dress was black and stiff and fitted tightly over the layers underneath. He peeled the sleeves off of her and undid the buttons at her wrists and the ties at her waist. At last the black shell fell away, and she stepped out of it.

“Are you going to marry me?” she asked.

“How can I when you're a princess, and I'm a street rat masquerading as a peer?” He started on the second gown, a fawn wool, plain and worn. He was gaining skill in undoing her clothing.

“I think if you're going to undress me in a private chamber at an inn, you should have honorable intentions.”

“I love you. You know that now.”

“Not what I asked.”

He went to work on the third gown. He recognized it, the shapeless gray muslin of the day he met her. He was impatient now with scraps of linen and scruples, but he would give her one last chance. “You think you can marry a man whose rank in life is decidedly beneath your own?”

“It's you. You don't want to marry a woman who told you two lies to every truth.”

The last gown fell away. He took a deep breath as she stood revealed in her linen shift, no corset, no stays. He knelt to remove her shoes, letting her dwell in doubt while he admired her sweet limbs.

“How many lies did you tell? Could you even keep track?”

“It was a challenge—lying to you and to Wallop.”

“A thousand lies don't matter. As long as your love is a true thing, the rest doesn't matter.”

He kept her turned from him with a hand on her shoulder while he took a minute to free himself from some of his own trappings. Then he turned her round to face him. He pulled her close, hoisting her off her feet and letting her body slide against his. She gave a sweet laugh that ended in a teary hiccup, her arms around his neck. He lowered her to his bed.

Emma leaned back on her hands, and her legs fell apart. She had no will to press them closed. Standing with his hands working at her clothes for what had seemed hours had made her impatient for this. Her chemise rode up so that it lay across the juncture of thigh and hip, leaving her body open to his gaze. He stood and watched her for a moment in her sudden boldness. He bent down and untied her plain garter ribbons, breathing in the scent of her, kissing the silky sweet flesh of her inner thighs. He circled each leg above the knee and peeled her muddied stockings off one by one. When he tossed aside her second stocking, he stepped forward and pulled her to him so that his sex met hers. He cocked his hips and rocked against her, sliding slickly. His arms enclosed her in tight possession. He would never let her go. Emma's body wept and ached and opened to his. Her heart rose as if powerful wings beat the air, lifting her into the pure ether. For a moment she clung to sense, fighting her soaring release to tell him one more thing.