Chapter Eight
“Where are you going?” Rafe caught Zeph at the front door as she was pulling on her gloves.
His butler, Simpson, had notified him just minutes ago that Zeph and James were leaving the house.
Rafe had missed her at breakfast, her unusual absence implying she was still miffed about the meeting with Silas Carter yesterday.
Concerned now she was leaving the house, Rafe had no idea what she was doing and why she had not told him her plans.
The day was bright, but the weather chilly and windy, and clouds threatened later rain. Zeph did not care for cold rain, but she stood there in her coat with determination firming her pretty lips.
“Shopping.” She cast him a quick glance.
“Where?”
“Anywhere,” she barked, and whirled so that Simpson could drape her winter cape over her shoulders. “Why? Do you need the carriage?”
Rafe gave Simpson and James a shift of his eyes. They knew the look and disappeared to the back servants’ stairs. “No. I do not need it. But you must not leave the house without informing me.”
“Why?” She jutted out her chin. “Are you now my jailor?”
He narrowed his gaze upon her. “That is unfair.”
She considered the marble floor. “You are right.”
He approached her. “Where are you going today?”
“Inès invited me to tea.”
“Oh, that is a good thing.” He blessed the idea with a genuine smile. “Anyplace else?”
“Fortnum’s.”
He arched both brows. “You like their tea?”
“I like their jams and biscuits that Cook has served here. More than that, I like walking along the street and feeling free.”
“Also a good idea.”
“Nothing wrong with any of it, then?” She was peeved.
“Why are you angry with me?”
She lowered her brows and sulked. “Not with you. I am sorry. Not you.”
He wanted to reach out and touch her, bring her into his embrace, but he knew the problems he would have with that.
He would want to pet her and kiss her, stroke away whatever hurt her.
Keep her close, too close, and she would feel that his paternal actions were not avuncular, but something stronger.
All of that was just as dangerous to his sanity as to her serenity.
“I read the morning’s Mayfair Register.”
A terrible gossip rag—and he knew her particular problem with it today. “In its entirety, then?”
“I did.” Her golden gaze shone with her misery. “They write about me.”
“They do. You are the new morsel for the ton to chew on.”
“They speculate why I am in London. They hint I am your mistress.”
“We knew…I knew that would come. That’s why you need a companion. You must hire one, mon petit chou.”
“I don’t like any of those whom I’ve seen.”
Right. He swallowed his retort. “Ask Inès for a recommendation.”
“Gus and Amber will be there. They have invited a few I do not know. Vivienne, Lord Appleby’s wife. Another lady too. A German who is married to an Englishman.”
“Baroness Fournier. It must be. Good. She is also the Crown Princess of Rittenburg. So then, this is wonderful. You will have the benefit of all those ladies’ advice.
” He took both her hands. The vitality in her seduced him as it always did.
He could not help himself, and put both her hands to his lips.
When he lifted his gaze, she watched him with a look of longing.
He let go of her hands slowly when all he wished to do was embrace her. Take her into the alcove or, better yet, the small nightwatchman’s closet and kiss her until she sighed, lift her skirts, and…
Impossible.
“You will feel more like yourself once you visit with all your old friends.” He smiled with compassion. “Go. Enjoy yourself. Take their recommendations for a companion, and when you go to Fortnum’s…?”
“Yes?”
“Buy me a present.”
“What shall it be?” She was at once her sweet self again. “A cozy for your teapot. Or shall I go to a barber’s and buy a jar of good shaving cream?” She glanced at his hair, and her shoulders flexed.
He had the insane impression she wanted to put her fingertips through his waves. Also impossible.
“Surprise me.” He had to touch her. So he fixed the collar of her cape, avoiding her jibes that sounded like she accused him of being an old man with ancient ways. “Go. And please come home with this attitude.”
“I am burdensome to you,” she crooned, but laughter stood in her gaze.
He chucked her under her chin. “Never. You know it. Now leave me. I have work to do.”
“Today marks one day since we visited Carter. What is the man doing?”
Rafe grumbled. “If he does not hurry, he will need his own will done when you and I appear before him and threaten his imminent demise!”
*
16 S Audley Street
Mayfair, London
Zeph’s journey to the home of Inès Bechard, now the Countess of Halsey, was only a few minutes. She climbed down from the coach and told herself that the next time she came here, she would walk. She would enjoy the crisp wind on her cheeks, the sun on her nose—and the freedom.
“Enjoy yourself,” she murmured to James, then watched him depart for the servants’ parlor downstairs.
“This way, Miss Butler.” A painfully thin man with warm but royal forbearance and glasses perched on the tip of his nose had introduced himself as Davis, the Halseys’ butler. He led her up the stairs to the first-floor salon, past one pastoral landscape and a medieval tapestry.
The white-plastered walls shone in the sunlight that streamed through three glass cupolas in the ceiling.
“All the ladies have already arrived,” he told her as he opened the double doors to a room filled with feathers and pearls and laughter.
Zeph paused, dizzy. Grabbing at the railing, she fought a swoon, the sounds of women and children crying, afraid and in pain, rising with a surge of bile. But no, no, this was the opposite.
Zeph forced her nauseating memories back. She entered the salon and at once was amidst such happy women here, she allowed a grin to grace her lips.
Inès, whose oval face was flushed with delight, pushed herself up from her wing chair to greet her. She was very great with child, and Zeph rushed toward her, arms open.
“You must sit down, Inès.” Zeph hugged her and kissed both cheeks, then laughed that she could not get her arms around the woman whose help in rescuing her from the Conciergerie she would never forget.
Inès kept hold of her hand and led her toward others. “I am so happy to see you. And looking so very well, too.”
Standing to greet her were three ladies whom Zeph had not seen in many years. Each one—lovelier than years ago, when youthful girls—was a vision of perfection. Zeph embraced them each in turn.
“Oh my,” she managed, tears clogging her throat. “You each are so beautiful. How can I tell you how very happy I am to see you well?”
The one nearest was Augustine Bolton, now a countess.
Zeph had known her as Gus, and Zeph knew from Countess Nugent, who had raised her, that her friend was still using that endearing name.
But so much had changed about the girl who was two years older than she.
Gus had the maturity of years on her; motherhood, too.
Rafe had told her that her friend had three children gracing the nursery of her and her husband, Kane, the Earl of Ashley.
Once a pudgy girl, Gus stood slim and tall, inches taller than Zeph and more than she remembered.
Gus had sharper eyes, hollowed cheeks, fuller lips, her black hair swept up in a fashionable coif.
She was aware, assessing all before her.
And she admired Zeph with a knowing and broad smile. “Hello, sweet girl. I am so pleased to see you well and here in London with us. We worried.”
“Did you know I was in prison?”
Gus lost her smile, her expression serious. “My husband hears much from Paris.”
Zeph did not know the details of how or why that was, but she would ask Rafe. “Did you know Vaillancourt had ordered me there?”
“We did. We had many letters smuggled over to us from Countess Nugent that he had taken you. We did not know how or why, but we were mad to figure out how to save you. No sooner did we have the first letter from the countess about your incarceration, Lord Halsey and Sir Raphael sent word privately that they were off to do that service. Of course, we had no idea our Inès would go as well.” She sent a playful look of reprimand to their hostess.
To which Inès laughed and said, “But look here, more of your old friends wish to greet you.”
At her side stood a voluptuous redhead, she, too, taller than Zeph, but as overjoyed to put her arms around her and hold her close.
“Amber, oh, Amber!” To Zeph’s astonishment, tears fell freely down her cheeks.
This was the woman five years older than she who, as a girl, had once saved Zeph from a rushing river.
Zeph had tripped along the banks, fallen into a river wild from a recent storm, and Amber had jumped in, grabbed Zeph by the neck of her gown, and hauled her back to shore.
“Bonjour, ma petite. How wonderful to have you with us.”
They stood in each other’s arms for a long minute.
Then Amber pulled back to consider Zeph’s face and hair.
“Sir Raphael has done a superb job of bringing you back to yourself. You look”—she waved a hand—“refreshed! I will compliment the man. The gown, too. I like the forest green and jade trim. To whom did he take you in Brighton?”
“Madame Clermont. She was very pleasant to work with. Do you know her?”
“No, but I will.” She let her brows dance. “One always needs new ways to enjoy corsets and stays.”
Zeph moaned. “Nothing can do that.”
Amber turned to pull another lady forward. “Here is our friend whom you have not met. Vivienne, whose husband is a dear friend of my Godfrey and Gus’s Kane. Viv was an émigré to Britain during the Terror. She came here with her family, and we are happy to see her safe with us.”
Zeph shook hands with the lady who had platinum-blonde hair and a ready smile. “We are so eager to help you become acclimated to London. We have each had that challenge.”