Chapter 18 #2
“Come now, Zack,” Giselle said, trying not to let her impatience color her voice. “Have you not seen enough of the Hermit’s Cot? We are almost to the end, and I wish to beat Heath.”
“I’m waiting for the hermit to come out,” Zack said. “We have to see the hermit.”
“There is no hermit,” Giselle said. “It’s just a building. There used to be a life-sized puppet that served as the hermit, but a bad storm blew him away, and they have not replaced him yet.”
“A puppet?” Kit said. “That’s a disappointment.”
“P’raps they decided to replace the puppet with a real hermit,” Zack put in, “and he’s inside or something.”
“Plenty of people hire real hermits to enhance their landscaping,” Kit told her. “I know the Uppingtons do.”
“What?” Giselle said. “You are joking, surely.”
Both boys shook their heads no and continued to watch the cottage.
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” She was about to give them an earful about the idiocies of their fellow noblemen when she felt, rather than saw, someone come up behind her.
She did not even get the chance to turn around before she was grabbed about the waist and a hand was clamped over her mouth.
“Let the boys look,” a familiar voice hissed in her ear. “But you are coming with me, Mademoiselle Bernard, so we can have a conversation.”
She froze. Vaughan Jones. And he was already trying to drag her back into the bushes.
Terror gripped her before she realized that since he seemed to be trying to take her by brute strength, he probably had no weapon. Thank God she had worn her sturdy walking boots today.
She kicked backward at his shin, a maneuver she’d had to use a time or two in Verdun with drunken officers. Though he did not release her, he howled loud enough to draw the boys’ attention.
Kit whirled around to see her struggling with Jones. “You leave her be, you villain!” Then he gave Zack a little shove. “Go find Heath! Now!”
Zack needed no more encouragement to go running back the way they’d come, yelling at the top of his lungs for his brothers.
Meanwhile, Kit threw himself at Jones, dragging on the man’s arm while Giselle bit down on the devil’s hand as hard as she could.
Jones released her to back away from the two of them, holding his now-bleeding hand. “I just want to know where Sarah is!” Jones cried. “If you tell me where she lives, I swear I’ll leave you be!”
“She does not want you!” Giselle snapped. “I will never tell you where she lives, you bloody cur!” Then she let loose with a storm of French invective that even seemed to give Jones pause.
Suddenly, he looked off beyond her, released a curse, and went racing down the path toward where the Merlin Swing was. Evan and Heath came running up to them at that very moment.
“Are you all right?” Heath paused long enough to ask, alarm in his eyes. “You have blood on your chin.”
“Because I bit the scoundrel,” she said, then pointed forward on the path. “Jones went that way.”
“Stay with her!” Heath ordered Evan, and broke into a run once more.
She drew out her handkerchief to wipe her chin, and almost at once began to fret. What if Heath got into a fight with Jones? What if Jones hurt him? What if . . .
“We have to follow him,” she told Evan.
Zack came running up just then, all out of breath. “Wh-where . . . did . . . H-Heath go?” he managed to choke out as he bent over to rest his hands on his knees.
Kit patted his brother’s back. “After the villain. You were so brave, Zack. I’m very proud of you.”
“We all are,” Evan said.
“Yes, yes, every one of you is brave,” she cried, “but what if Jones does something to Heath? We have to go after them!”
“Heath said to stay with you, and staying with you is what I’m doing,” Evan told her, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Besides,” Kit added, just as she was about to head off by herself, “Heath practices fighting nearly every morning with one of the servants.”
She gaped at him.
“Renham told us,” Zack added. “When we stayed the night in London.”
“Apparently, Heath . . . er . . . spent his time in Bitche prison learning to fight,” Evan said.
Belatedly, she remembered Heath’s assertion that there had been nothing to do in Bitche but “learn French and fisticuffs.” She had never dreamed he actually meant the part about the fisticuffs.
All the same, she was on the verge of marching off after him, anyway, when she spotted Heath walking back down the path toward them.
“What happened?” She hurried up to him. “Are you hurt? Is he hurt?”
Heath ran his fingers through his hair. “I lost him,” he said bitterly. “I found the Merlin Swing, though, for all the good that does any of us.”
She sighed. “That means he escaped through the Grotto. He is long gone now.”
“I didn’t see any grotto,” Heath said.
“You would not have. It is on the other end of an underground passage. There is a staircase you can only see from atop the Merlin Swing. Going down the stairs leads you into the underground passage where you come out through a grotto and back into the pleasure gardens.”
“Wait,” Evan said to Giselle, “how did you know about . . .”
“She’s been here before,” Heath said as he fixed her with a wry look. “How else?”
“You cheated?” Evan said to her.
“No more than you and Heath did,” Kit said, thrusting out his chest. “We would have beaten you, too, if not for me and Zack wanting to see the hermit.”
“At least we now know for certain what Jones wants,” Giselle told Heath. “He really is after Sarah.”
“I heard him demand that Giselle tell him where this Sarah is,” Kit said. “And he was holding Giselle around the waist and had his hand over her mouth, too, the scoundrel.”
“Oh, God,” Heath said, and took her in his arms, heedless of his brothers being there. “How did you get away?”
“Kicked him in the shin with my boot,” she murmured into his coat. “And Kit pulled on his arm.”
“That’s when she bit his hand,” Kit said. “He was bleeding something fierce when he left.”
“Good work, both of you,” Heath said, the look of distress on his face making her want to burrow deeper into his arms. “But we should probably all stick together from now on when in Bath. I think I lost half a lifetime when Zack said that devil had you.”
Swallowing hard, she nodded. “We should probably also warn Mr. Beasley again. Jones will keep trying to get to Sarah.”
“It’s possible Jones mentioned Sarah merely as a way to hide the truth,” Heath pointed out, “which is that he’s really after Beasley. I don’t trust him.”
“Neither do I,” Giselle said. “But short of scouring the town for him, which would not be easy, what do you propose we do about it?”
Heath took her aside. “With your permission, I mean to go to the constable and demand that he put his men to looking for him. Now that Jones has assaulted you—and we know it really has nothing to do with your papers—we can have him searched for through the town until he’s discovered.”
She gazed up at him. “But what if once they find him, he tells them he suspects my papers are not genuine?”
“Then we’ll marry sooner rather than later, and the whole thing will become moot.” When she hesitated, he added, “You know that’s the wisest course of action, ma chérie.”
She nodded. It was. And the way Heath had come to her rescue told her more certainly than anything that he would never let anyone, even his government, harm her and Maman.
Oh, Lord, Maman! She gripped Heath’s arm. “We must fetch Maman, in case Jones decides to use her to get my compliance!”
“Of course.” Heath turned to where the boys were waiting, whispering among themselves.
“Come, lads. We’ll return another day. But we must go pick up Madame Bernard.
I have to stop at the constable’s office after that, so Giselle and I may report her assault, but then, we’ll go to get pork pies if you would all prefer. ”
Evan shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “We were just talking, and we think perhaps we should just go home after we get Madame Bernard. Giselle is still very shaken up. She shouldn’t have to wait around for pork pies.”
Giselle glanced at the other two boys, who would not meet her eyes. Clearly, they were not as keen to skip the pork pies as Evan made it sound. “How about this?” she said softly. “We stop on our way out of town to buy them, and then we eat them in the carriage. Yes?”
Zack bobbed his head, and Kit said, “Whatever you prefer.”
She smiled at Kit. “I prefer not to let some scoundrel keep me and Maman from our pork pies.”
“Then it’s settled,” Heath said. “Madame Bernard first, constable’s office second, and pork pies last.”
As they left the Sydney Gardens, she told the boys, “We really must come back sometime to explore the tunnels.”
“After the wedding,” Heath said, with a quick glance at her.
“Of course.” It was getting harder and harder to resist him, and he knew it. But she couldn’t chide him for it just now.
Much later, when they were on their way back to Longmead with their pork pies, she wondered how it had gone in the constable’s office. But they could not discuss it with the boys around.
Once they reached the manor house, she got her mother settled in her room for a nap—since Maman was always exhausted after a day in the baths—and then went to her own room to decide what she would wear for dinner. A knock came at the door and she hurried to open it, hoping it was Heath.
But it was only a servant. “Begging your pardon, Miss Bernard,” she said with a curtsy, “but there’s a lady named Pritchard here to call on you.”
Lily Pritchard? Had Heath not said she was barred from the estate?
Oh, but he had also said he had promised to speak to Lily this evening. Very well, if the woman wanted to confront Heath’s fiancée instead, Giselle would be more than happy to oblige. “Ask the lady to wait, if you do not mind. It will take me a few moments to dress. Oh, and please send my maid up.”
Because if Giselle was to meet her nemesis in close combat, she wanted to be dressed for the part.
She took her time choosing her most flattering dinner gown, a jade-green silk sheath with a lovely sheer muslin overlay that had embroidered scallops lining the bodice and emphasizing her breasts. It was lower-cut than Maman liked, but under the circumstances, Giselle thought it appropriate.
For luck she added a locket that her half sister had given her.
It contained a copy of a miniature Tory had once painted of their father.
Opening it up, Giselle kissed the miniature.
“Wish me luck, Father. I am going into battle with a witch, and I mean to win. Just do not look at the bodice.” Closing the locket, she went down to meet Lily Faircloth Pritchard.
She found the woman waiting for her in the drawing room, staring at a painting of Heath when he was young. Gritting her teeth, she entered and closed the door rather forcefully behind her.
Lily whirled to face her. The two of them assessed each other a moment.
Lily’s gown was a sumptuous confection of pink satin and white lace, unsurprising since her husband was a wealthy merchant, but it would have flattered her better if her pretty face had not been set in such a haughty expression.
“So,” she said coldly, “you are Ingram’s French fiancée. ”
“I am Lord Heathbrook’s fiancée, yes. And you are the woman who threw him over for another man, leaving the field wide open for me.”
That seemed to make Lily uncomfortable. Taking a seat on one of the gilded chairs with its damask upholstery, she smoothed her skirts. “Still, you haven’t known him nearly as long as I have.”
“True.” Giselle sat down on the settee. “I have only known him ten years, although I might point out that I spent seven of those years seeing him daily. As opposed to you, who spent seven months, if that, in his presence?”
Lily blinked, clearly unaware of Giselle’s long connection with Heath.
“But that is of no matter,” Giselle went on with what she hoped was an elegant flip of her hand. “Perhaps before we continue much further in this conversation, you should tell me why you wished to speak to me rather than to your former acquaintance?”
“Former fiancé,” Lily snapped.
“His parents were unaware of any formal arrangement. So, I gather, were your parents. Thus, I hardly think you could consider yourself betrothed.”
To Giselle’s surprise, Lily’s face fell. “Lord Heathbrook told you everything that happened, then.”
“Yes. My fiancé tells me everything.”
Shame altered the woman’s features. “Then I need to know if you will keep our secret.”
Giselle blinked. “Which secret?”
“That Zachary is our son, of course.”
Her heart dropped into her stomach. Heath had definitely not told her that.