Chapter 19 #2
Jem was waiting for her. She went as if he were the siren and she the doomed ship. There was no earthly way she could resist his call.
The row of carriages outside the Bellwether town home was long, and a clammy cold had descended with the dusk.
It was a spring that didn’t feel like a spring, dry and full of chill breezes.
Lucasta pulled her elegant mink pelisse up to her chin—another gift from Jem via Mlle. Beaudoin—and looked for Jem’s calash.
A thump came from a closed chaise some way down the line, a plain conveyance with no identifying arms on the door, and the driver called gruffly to her. “’Ere, miss.”
She didn’t recognize him as one of Jem’s servants, but then, Jem had always driven himself.
The pavement was cold against her silk slippers as Lucasta moved in that direction, making her way by the light of the carriage lamps on the various vehicles.
The chaise didn’t hold Jem’s horses, either; she’d recognize the mighty pair he called Atlas and Hercules.
“M-milord?” she called, uncertain how he wanted to be addressed now. He was the new Earl Payne, by right of succession, but she wanted to call him Jem. He had kissed her, twice, throwing her world off its axis each time. Surely that allowed her some intimacy?
The door of the chaise opened, and a masculine arm clothed in dark wool reached for her. Lucasta took the hand and climbed in, but she knew before the door closed behind her that the arm did not belong to Jem.
“You!”
The Viscount Frotheringale sat in the dark confines, grinning. He rapped on the roof and the chaise jolted into motion. Lucasta tumbled into the seat, throwing herself to one side to avoid landing in her cousin’s lap.
“At last, Lucasta! It is very hard to find you alone.”
“What are you doing here? I did not give you leave to use my name.”
The least of her worries, but the first indignation to rise to her lips.
She’d decided she was not at home each time he called, and the footman who answered the door, loyal to Lucasta after all the time she spent in the servant’s quarters signing to them, stood behind this message.
Furthermore, whatever his wife might feel about her nephew, the Baron was not obliged to give Frotheringale access to Lucasta.
“Oh, but we are cousins! And soon, I hope, more than that. Indeed I plan for us to become very close.” His grin broadened, and the threat in that smile made Lucasta shrink into her seat.
“Very well, then, Roland,” she said crisply, “what do you want of me?”
“Gale,” he said. “All my friends call me Gale.”
He reached for her hand, but Lucasta drew away.
The chaise tilted as the coachman swung around a corner.
He was driving too fast for a city street, so often clogged with traffic.
Lucasta braced her hands against the seat and wall, glad she was wearing gloves.
The carriage had the musty smell of a hired vehicle.
This couldn’t be her cousin’s own conveyance—and if it was, he was a desperate man.
Desperate enough to kidnap her?
She considered the possibility for escape.
Overpowering him was a remote chance; he was much larger and heavier.
The coachman was not likely to obey her commands to stop.
She could open the door and throw herself from a moving carriage, and risk getting herself killed by the fall or trampled by traffic.
Even if she landed somewhere soft, she would be in the cold, wet night alone and without company—a sure invitation for disaster.
“Where are we going?”
“Did your aunt not write that she was sending me?”
“She said she was sending…” Lucasta tried to recall the letter.
It was brief and vague, much unlike her garrulous aunt, who wrote pages of letters crossed so many times that one needed a quizzing glass to read them.
And this letter had been sent by penny post, when her aunt would have searched high and low to find someone to frank her letters, even when she knew the recipient could afford the postage.
“She said she would send someone for me,” Lucasta allowed.
“And I am taking you to her.”
“To Bath?” Lucasta said in alarm. “I am not equipped for travel.”
The London-Bath route took three days, and Aunt Cornelia had taught her never to stop at a coaching inn without her own linens. “My benefit concert for the Foundling Hospital is next week.” They could never post to Bath and be back in time.
“We’re not going as far as all that.” Her cousin lifted a threadbare drape from the window, then dropped it before Lucasta could make out the scenery beyond.
She dared not remove her hands to shift the curtain herself, for the rocking motion of the coach had become rapid and treacherous. They were on a broader thoroughfare now, and the coachman was applying the leather, as Jem would say.
Jem. Oh, why couldn’t it have been he who summoned her? Why did it have to be her infernal cousin? She’d never liked him, on the rare occasions the Lithwicks had been invited to family events.
The Dowager Viscountess Frotheringale, their grandmother, had never got on with Aunt Cornelia. The break was confirmed when Aunt Cornelia stayed in contact with Felicity, Lucasta’s mother, after she’d thrown herself away on a man of foreign birth.
Lucasta’s uncle, upon succeeding to the viscountcy and marrying a delicate woman who shared the dowager’s scruples about class and breeding, had never acknowledged Lucasta even when Aunt Cornelia insisted she be included at family gatherings.
Gale, older and male and the obvious heir, had never taken any notice of her either, a state of invisibility to which she profoundly wished she could return.
“How far are we going?” Lucasta asked, hearing the cry of “Hyde Park Gate!”
Her cousin must realize her consent was required, even to marry over the anvil. He could not force her, and he could not hold her captive. She reached for the door as the driver paused to pay the toll, but her cousin’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“We are going to my house outside of town. Aunt Cornelia wanted me to bring you to her in Bath, but with the Season at its peak, I told her you could scarce be expected to take that much time away from your entertainments.”
“I do not care about entertainments,” Lucasta said. “I do, however, care very much about the benefit concert for the Foundling Hospital, which I am in charge of bringing off. And Aunt Cornelia would never come this far. She dislikes travel.”
“She felt it was time to settle one or two things with you,” her cousin answered. “And she thought that with the Season and all its eligible bachelors, you might be besieged with offers for your hand. Which in fact I find is the case, is it not?”
“Hardly,” Lucasta scoffed. Jem’s offer—nay, that was a needle to the heart. A salve for his aunt’s ire. He’d told her he meant to make no declaration.
“Trevor Pevensey is interested,” Gale said, an edge entering his tone.
“Not in me,” Lucasta replied. “He, or rather his father, seems to think that Aunt Cornelia means to settle some of her property on me. I have tried to persuade him he is misinformed.”
“Have you succeeded?” Gale demanded. “Or has he exacted a promise from you?”
Lucasta lifted her chin. “I have made no promise. If I marry, it shall be where and when I will. I shall not be any man’s means to extract himself from debt.”
A gleam of light from a passing carriage caught in her cousin’s eyes as he turned toward her. “How fortunate I am not in debt,” he said softly. “Would you be persuaded to marry me, Lucasta?”
“I do not see the prospect very likely.” Lucasta chose a strategic reply rather the firm rebuttal that rose to her lips.
After all, it was dark within the carriage that still swayed dangerously, though at a steadier pace, and she was beginning to feel the chill.
Gale was a near stranger, and he was spiriting her someplace unknown without her consent.
She did not trust him, but it was not wise to anger him, either.
“My friends will be frantic when I do not return,” she realized with a pang of worry. “And the Pevenseys—I cannot image how distraught Cici will be.”
“Clara will tell them,” Gale said.
“Tell them what?”
He turned from her, pulling the curtain away from the window. “Ah—here we are.”
“Where?”
“Why, the house we are to be married from, Lucasta, dear.” Gale’s grin was wide and not at all benevolent. He took her arm as the coach clipped up the gravel drive and swayed to a stop before a tall set of doors. “My home, and yours as well, once you consent to become my wife.”
“I will not consent.” She started for the door as it opened, but the large form of the coachman filled it, holding the lantern as he unfolded the steps. Gale spoke as if he didn’t care who heard his declaration.
“You will consent, my dear,” he said confidently. “You have not heard yet all I can offer you. And all that you stand to lose, dear cousin? How sad it would be to never see your family, or your friends, ever again.”