Chapter 13
Heath pulled her away from the table, probably noticing how she couldn’t stop shaking. “Are you certain it was him?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes,” Giselle said, although she’d scarcely been able to believe the evidence of her eyes. Worse still, Maman had not seen him, and by the time Giselle could point him out, he was gone.
“Why would he be here, of all places?” Heath asked.
“I do not know. Perhaps he is following us.”
“That would be difficult to do without being seen.”
“Would your coachmen even pay attention to a carriage behind them on the road?” she asked. “Or, for that matter, a man on a horse?”
“Possibly. I’ll ask them if they noticed anyone. But the road to Bath is busy. Then again, if he’s here in this out-of-the-way inn, then he would have been behind us on the short road to it. They might have noticed him then.” Heath touched her arm. “Show me where you saw him.”
She glanced back at the boys.
Heath clearly took her meaning. “Lads, Giselle and I have to go talk to the coachmen. Evan, you’re in charge. You speak French, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Heath smiled faintly. “I’m your brother. You needn’t call me ‘sir.’ I just need you to be able to deal with Madame Bernard’s needs.” He told her mother in French that Evan could help her with anything she required.
Then Giselle moved ahead of him to show him where she saw Mr. Jones. When she got to the window facing the innyard, he scanned the area, but of course the villain was gone.
“You did not happen to keep my sketch, did you?” she asked.
“It’s in my baggage. Frankly, I didn’t expect to see him on the road. He knows that you often stay in Bath. He probably knows my estate is outside of Bath. So, I can’t imagine why he’d follow us.”
“He may not know exactly where you live outside Bath. Or he might just be following me and Maman to determine where our lodgings will be.”
He stared at her. “For what purpose?”
She mused a moment. “Because he has not yet found Mr. Beasley? After all, he does not know for certain that Mr. Beasley is in London. And even if Mr. Jones is aware of that, Mr. Beasley is from Bath originally, so perhaps Mr. Jones was in Bath in the first place hoping to come across Mr. Beasley visiting his relations there.”
“I didn’t know Beasley was from Bath.”
She shrugged. “That’s because you never spent much time with the man in Verdun. I knew him and his family well. Indeed, that’s how I learned about the hot springs in Bath and why it would be wise to take Mother there.”
“Ah.” He looked at her as if seeing her more deeply.
It embarrassed her. “So, if Mr. Jones is looking for Sarah—”
“You do realize he could simply be interested in you.”
“Me! Why would he be interested in me?”
He eyed her askance. “Come now, ma chérie, you know you’re ten times more beautiful than Sarah. A man who becomes obsessed with one woman can easily become obsessed with another when the object of his affections rejects him.”
She did not know what to say. Sarah was quite pretty, after all. “I do not think Mr. Jones is ‘obsessed’ with me. He did not behave that way when he spoke to me about the passports.”
“And how exactly do you think a man would behave in such a situation?” Heath drawled.
“Flirtatious. Aggressive. He was more—how do you say it?— calculating.”
Heath stiffened. “Like me, you mean?”
“Of course not. You may flirt with me now, but your interest in me will wane, just as it did after you kissed me years ago.”
He blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?”
She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “You kissed me, and then you never came near me again.”
“Because Morris threatened to call me out if I ever did.” He snorted. “I was not going to duel with your father, no matter how much I desired you.”
She stilled, the shock of that resonating through her. “He threatened to call you out?” She could not believe her father would go so far.
Heath arched an eyebrow. “He saw us kissing and said you were an innocent. That if I even attempted to seduce you, he would fight me. I knew he was unaccustomed to using weapons, and that he’d lose.
Since I had no intention of killing Morris—I respected your father, after all—I refrained from acting on my desire for you. ”
Glancing away, she gazed out at the innyard, her thoughts all ajumble and her heart racing. “So, all these years, you were . . .”
“Trying to be a gentleman. I am many things, Giselle, but not a liar. When I told you I wanted you, I was speaking the truth. I desire you. I have always desired you. I just refused to act on it.” He searched her face. “Surely you knew that.”
She shook her head. “My father never said a word about it. I-I thought you simply did not like our kiss.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, I liked it, trust me. But I knew you were forbidden to me, so that was the end of it.” He shrugged. “I found others to enjoy.”
“And now?”
“Nothing has changed.” He sighed. “I cannot be the man you want, sweeting. Once you know me better—” He swore under his breath. “In any case, there’s no point to this.”
He was right about there being no point to this.
Worse yet, she feared he was right about not being the man she wanted.
If they married, he would always find “others to enjoy” once he tired of her.
He was a man like her French papa, incapable of fidelity, and having seen Maman suffer through that, she refused to go through it with any man.
“We should go speak to the coachmen,” he said coolly. “Jones might even now be on the property.”
“Yes,” she said, trying to hide the tumult that his revelation had startled in her chest. Her father had intervened to protect her? That was so sweet it hurt.
Yet it also made her angry. What right had her father to decide who she did or did not kiss? “What if my father had not said anything to you? What would you have done?”
He sighed. “Does it matter? He did. And we cannot change that now.”
“I suppose.” Of course he was right. The truth of it was he had not wanted to fight for her, to defy her father on her behalf. And that had not changed, to be sure—he did not even care enough about her to make this betrothal a real courtship.
They headed off to question the coachmen, but neither man had noticed anyone on the main road behind them. One of them said he thought he saw a young gentleman follow them down the small road to Freeman’s Inn, but when he looked again, the man had vanished.
Just as he had done after she had spotted him.
Heath insisted on having one of the footmen get down his bag that contained her sketch. He dragged out the sketch and showed it to the coachmen.
“That’s the fellow I saw behind us coming up to Freeman’s Inn,” said the driver of the park drag she and her mother had ridden in. “What does he want?”
Giselle sucked in a harsh breath. She did not know whether to be glad to be proven right about what she had seen or terrified that Mr. Jones was following them. And to what purpose?
“Who is he?” the coachman for Heath’s landau asked.
“He’s a détenu. We’re not sure what he wants, but he’s someone we’d like to avoid,” Heath said grimly.
“So, here’s what we’re going to do.” He turned to the coachman who had carried Giselle and her mother.
“When we are all done eating, James, you’ll head to the road to Bath.
I’ll make sure the ostler is paid well to say, to anyone who asks, that the ladies are inside your coach.
You’ll keep the curtains drawn, and if anyone asks, you’ll say they’re resting. ”
Before she could protest that madness, he turned to the other coachman. “Meanwhile, Tom, all of us lads and the Bernard ladies will go in my landau and turn off on the road to Longmead as soon as possible. We’ll let James get ahead of us by a good bit, enough to lead this fellow astray.”
Giselle relaxed. Heath’s plan was rather clever, actually.
“It will be uncomfortable, my lord,” Tom said, “with six of you in the one carriage.”
“A little, perhaps,” he said. “But at least the lads and I can look after the ladies better. It’s the ladies this chap wants to follow, I think. So, we’ll give him the ladies by sending the park drag to their usual lodgings in Bath.”
“What about after I arrive in Bath?” James asked.
“Jones is not so stupid as to follow too closely,” Heath said, “so by the time he reaches the house where the ladies usually stay, he’ll assume Giselle and her mother have disembarked already.
That he has them where he wants them—in certain lodgings in Bath.
And if you pull the drag away with the curtains open to show it’s entirely empty, he will believe the illusion.
For a while, anyway. At least long enough for us to get home. ”
“And the luggage, my lord?” James asked.
“It’s already loaded on the drag. We should leave it there until you reach Bath.
The footman riding with you can hastily take it down and put it inside the coach before you pull away.
That will support the illusion that the Bernard ladies have reached their destination.
By the time our villain discovers that they are not inside, you will be long gone. ”
The coachmen exchanged glances, probably a bit bewildered by Heath’s elaborate machinations. But she noticed that they did not question the necessity of them. Clearly, his servants trusted him, which told her something about his character in general.
“Giselle,” he went on, “if you’ll give James directions to your usual lodgings in Bath . . .”
“Certainly.” She explained them in great detail, and since James was clearly already familiar with Bath, he knew the place she was talking about.
“One more thing, James,” Heath said. “You should let the footman out once you think you have lost Jones. I want him to see if he can learn where Jones is staying.”