Chapter 19 #2
The more he drank, the less troubled he was by the voice in his head defending both Anne and Elizabeth.
Anne, the voice argued, had been injured.
She’d struck out the only way she had known how and turned to the only person she believed could defend her.
Elizabeth was headstrong and young; she couldn’t begin to understand the temptation she posed.
“Gentlemen,” he said, loudly enough to drown out his inner voice and carry through the thin layers of plaster and horsehair that made up the walls of the Hart and Hounds, “I was raised to believe that women are weaker vessels in need of man’s protection.
Vessels… The first time I heard that expression, I didn’t think of glassware or porcelain.
Oh no, I thought of ships. And then someone, a woman most like, corrected me.
” He took a swallow from the glass he held in his hand.
“But now that I think on it, I believe my first impression was correct. Women are like those sleek little barks that coastal smugglers use, slipping about men, gone before you know it. And we poor sods are like warships lumbering after ’em, but weighted down with all those masts, and cannons, and whatnot. ”
Marcus looked up from his work. “The analogy’s a bit muddled, Dinsmore, but I believe I follow you.”
“Nothing weaker-vesseled about women at all.” James snorted.
“It’s a ruse, that’s what it is, to make us believe they need protecting.
” He waved his glass, warming to the topic.
“It’s all for show, like hoops, and wigs, and bum rolls.
Man never really knows what he’s in for when he’s with a woman. Not really.”
A shadow passed over Marcus’s face. “I quite agree.”
“You know, I used to find all that amusing, a bit like unwrapping a present, peeling back all that linen and lace…” He thought of Elizabeth, lying back on the chaise, her gown slipping from her shoulders, and poured more wine into his glass.
Marcus put down his quill. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll join you in a glass.”
“Don’t mind at all.” James picked up the bottle, glancing about the table with a bemused expression. “Sorry, old man, but it appears I’ve only the one glass.”
“Not to worry. I’ll take the bottle.”
“Nearly empty,” he apologized as he passed it.
“It’s enough. To women,” Marcus said, raising his bottle and clinking it lightly against James’s glass. “May they forever remain another man’s problem.”
Standing near the window later that evening, a line of bottles at his feet, James considered whether it might be amusing to drop them out the window: the first fallen soldiers in their mission for the king.
He picked one up and held it out the window, swinging it gently by the neck.
But as he was about to release it, a coach drew up in the darkened courtyard.
He was sober enough to realize it would be unwise, as well as most impolite, to strike an unsuspecting guest on the head.
He glanced down, curious to see what manner of person was arriving so late.
A caped figure alighted from the carriage with the aid of a liveried coachman; it was too dark to make out the colors of the livery.
But as the figure passed briefly through the circle of light cast by a torch near the door to the inn, James drew back.
Perhaps he wasn’t as sober as he thought, because his eyes most definitely were playing tricks on him.
He could have sworn he’d seen the face of Elizabeth Harcrest.
It was, of course, impossible. There was no plausible reason why she would be traveling alone, at night, much less making a stop at the Hart and Hounds.
He set the bottle in his hand back down upon the floor; it rattled against its companions.
All his ranting for the common rooms must have gone to his head.
He’d spent too much time thinking and talking about her today, that was all.
Elizabeth—he reminded himself of Marcus’s toast earlier that evening—is another man’s problem. “Moreham’s problem,” he muttered.
“Did you say something?” David looked up from the table. He’d completed the work of papering the interior of the trunk and was repacking James’s clothes, though not nearly as tidily as his valet had done.
James shook his head. “Simply wondering when we might be off.”
“I’m ready,” Marcus said, tucking the last of his quills into his writing desk.
“Is all the other luggage stowed on the coach?”
“This is the last bit,” David said, closing the trunk.
“At last.” James swept his cloak over his shoulders and picked up his hat. Striding across the room to the door, he swung it with a gesture as grand as if he were liberating a cell full of prisoners. “Gentlemen, let us be off.”
“What,” said a voice from the hall, “without me?”
Now his ears were playing tricks with him.
Otherwise, he might have sworn the teasing tones belonged to Elizabeth Harcrest. But she was safely stowed at Moreham Hall with her blessedly overprotective brother.
James stood with his hand on the door, steadfastly fixing his eyes on his travel companions.
He saw Marcus pause, hat in hand, and bow his head.
David, he noticed, was doing the same. It was with a deep sense of foreboding that he turned.
The caped figure from the courtyard stood on the threshold.
“You are, of course, going to invite me in,” she said.
“Would it make a difference if I did not?”
“Not a bit.”
He took off his hat and gestured with it toward the room. “That’s a far more fetching mantle than you were wearing upon your last visit,” he remarked as she swept into the room. “Though your fashion sense appears to be improving, lamentably, your common sense does not.”
“Coming from a man who is about to set off on a foolhardy mission to France, I’m not entirely certain how worthy a judge you are of common sense.” She slid her hood back with a blue-gloved hand. “Though you are correct about the mantle.”
How the hell did she know where he was headed? He bit back the question and said, “There is nothing foolhardy about a man, having seen the error of his ways, seeking to begin life anew in the free air of democratic France.”
“Seeking to free someone from France, more like.”
James heard, rather than saw, David and Marcus drop into their chairs. He swung the door shut quickly. “Elizabeth, what is it that you want?”
She sat down at the table, arranging her skirts neatly about her ankles. Then glancing up with a smile bright as a schoolgirl’s on her first day of class, she said, “To go with you, of course.”
“No,” he replied without hesitation.
“I’m all packed,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard. “And I’ve instructed my coachman to load my things onto your coach.”
“You are not going with us to France.” Trying hard not to shout, he put as much emphasis as he could on the word not.
“Why not?”
A million reasons sprang to mind. He voiced the first to reach his lips. “You don’t speak French.”