Chapter 17 #3
She glanced out the window, still amazed at how wide and well paved the streets of London were, and studied the mass of expensive coaches moving smoothly, two across on Oxford Street.
Perhaps she would stop this endless searching among the crowds for him, and her heart would stop lurching about every time she saw a man with a similar walk or color hair.
She shook herself so firmly that Madeleine, who’d been describing a particular style of gown she admired, stopped abruptly and inquired if she was cold.
“Not at all mother,” Alix replied, patting her hand. “It’s been a perfectly lovely day, and I agree, a black redingote would be striking.”
After all, she continued musing, he’d made no effort to contact her; he’d probably been relieved when she’d left him.
Scandal had been averted. Her stomach tightened.
For all she knew he’d hurried back to the woman he’d been courting before he’d met her and was even now planning how to arrange a new marriage.
She straightened against the cushions of the coach.
One thing was for certain, when and if she encountered Rafe Harcrest, or Moreham, or whatever it was he called himself, he would not find her mooning in the darkness over him.
“Mother,” she said, “tell me more about what you think we should wear to the Kensington’s assembly next month.”
Exercising Rafe’s gelding in St. James Park several days later, Jervis Jones was startled to see a familiar figure clad in a smart gray riding habit and seated on a spirited bay, chatting animatedly to a dark-haired woman all in black.
Pulling his tricorne down over his eyes, he reined Rafe’s gelding in to get a better look.
It was Alix all right He watched as the two women disappeared down the path, frowning his displeasure as two young bucks who’d been watching the women’s progress spurred their horses to follow.
According to the groom who’d brought his lordship’s horses to town in anticipation of the opening of Moreham House, Rafe was more out of sorts than a bear who’d been disturbed before the spring thaw.
Alix didn’t look like she was pining a bit.
Jervis pushed his hat back up thinking that while he had great respect for the captain as a gentleman, a leader, and a businessman, the man had no sense about how to treat women.
If you sweet-talked them, said the right things, they didn’t go tearing off to their mothers.
He shook his head. He’d never seen Rafe as happy as he’d been in Calais.
But if he knew the lad, and after fifteen years, he had a pretty good notion that he did, he’d probably tumbled the girl and then never said a word to her about how he felt.
They were married, Jervis reflected, and even if the ceremony had been most peculiar, they ought to stay that way. Alix was a damn sight better for his boy than any stick-up-her-arse Lady Dinsmore.
“You know,” he said companionably to the black, who was tossing his head, urging Jervis to pick up the pace, “I do believe things are going to get very interesting when his lordship returns to London this week.”
Jervis noticed several grooms wearing the livery of the Duke of Melbourne trotting across the park and urged the black to join them.
When Rafe had left for the country, he had chosen to remain in London.
Not only because he enjoyed the alehouses and the women, but because he thought it might be handy if he became familiar with the Melbourne servants, perhaps discover if any fancy French ladies had taken up residence in the house.
His timing in exercising the gelding this afternoon was no accident.
Nor was his cultivation of a certain freckle-faced maid.
Jervis smiled as he thought of Ginny Potter, a sturdy woman with breasts like two freshly risen loaves of bread and a rump like a packhorse.
That, he thought as he clicked his tongue to the black, was how a proper woman should be built.
Once he’d discovered Ginny was Alix’s personal maid, he’d wangled an introduction from Jake, a downstairs footman.
Now he sometimes joined her on her errands.
She was a good-natured, talkative sort, a bit like his first wife.
Last Sunday he’d even accompanied Ginny to church.
He had to admit it made him feel a bit guilty.
He wasn’t a praying man, but he had enough faith to believe the creator knew exactly what Jervis Jones was up to.
But then, it couldn’t be too much of a sin if a man’s intentions were good, could it?
And he intended to make sure that Alix and Rafe stayed together.
He liked Alix, even if she did have the bad habit of stealing a man’s clothes without asking.
She had heart, gumption; she was a survivor.
Coming from the New World as he did, he respected that.
And Rafe, well, Rafe was too burdened down with his responsibilities, always thinking he had to look out for everyone else.
He was becoming an old man before his time.
He needed a woman to shake him up, to keep him guessing, get the juices flowing.
The new Lady Moreham was just that woman.
All he needed to do was make certain the two kept crossing paths.