Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
The chill in the air and the chillier woman in his bed had made it impossible for James to sleep.
When would he get it through his thick skull Elizabeth Harcrest was not for him?
Her brother had made it clear she was beyond his reach, and now so had she.
Why, why, had he ever insisted they share a bed? Was it simply because she was—
“There, Dinsmore. See how neatly it comes through,” David whispered, pointing at the list of names and addresses appearing on the interior of the trunk with each swipe of the solution from the cologne bottle.
“Very good.” With an effort, James forced himself to focus on the business at hand and not Elizabeth, who was sitting on the other side of the paneled dressing screen.
“These two here.” He pointed at several darkening lines.
“Tell Marcus and Andre to ride ahead again today and arrange for me to meet with them tomorrow in the merchant’s quarter in Amiens.
Make sure you take the appropriate letters of introduction from Moreham and conceal them in Marcus’s writing desk.
Tell them to deliver the letters, but to say nothing.
If they’re caught, they should say they are merely servants; they have no knowledge of what’s in the letters or why I want to meet with these men.
All negotiations are to be left to me.” That’s what Grenville sent me to do.
That and only that. No point wondering if what I feel for Elizabeth might be…
“…stronger. I thought about making the solution stronger, but this seems to work just fine. What about her?” David shot a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the screen.
Elizabeth was supposedly making ready to leave, though James heard precious few sounds of movement from that quarter.
Good God, what had he been thinking? Of how warm she is, and just how good she smells…
“Stinks, this mess does.” David recorked the bottle, then handed it and the rag he’d used to swipe the trunk’s interior to James. “Better slap a bit of this on your face, Dinsmore, just as a precaution in case anybody asks about the smell.”
James pressed the rag to his cheeks and neck, hoping the odiferous solution would be better at keeping Elizabeth at arm’s length than he was managing.
If you tell a man never to touch you again, Elizabeth reflected sourly, first make certain all the laces on your gown have been fastened.
James made it clear at the outset that he would not hire a lady’s maid for her; he couldn’t afford a maid’s gossip any more than he could afford the additional expense.
And furthermore, the lack of a maid would lend credence to the parts they were to play—aristocrats intent on setting aside their traditional privileges.
When she’d pointed out he had three servants, he said that was a different thing altogether.
She’d set about dressing this morning as if she had always done so.
She arranged her hair simply in a twist at the neck.
She tied her stays and petticoats as best she could.
But when she’d stepped into her gown, she knew she was in trouble.
There were two buttons in the middle of her back that, however much she twisted and turned, she simply couldn’t reach.
So she sat behind a screen, dress drooping off her shoulders, waiting for James to finish his toilette.
The notion that she’d have to ask him for help was galling.
He had David helping him to dress. The more she thought about it, the more annoyed she felt.
Clearly, James’s decision not to allow her a maid was a form of torture.
He and David were probably whispering about her, laughing about her predicament, plotting new ways to humiliate her.
She quietly inched her chair closer to the screen and peeked between the panels.
Surprisingly, James was fully dressed. He even had his jacket on.
If he was finished with his toilette, what was the delay?
James and David seemed to be discussing something about the small trunk.
What was so special about that trunk?
There must be something hidden in it. Not weapons.
She would have seen them when she searched for a nightshirt.
Some kind of secret papers, perhaps? Or counterfeit currency?
She recalled overhearing her brother discussing a plan he’d heard from French émigrés, a plan to flood the new republic with false assignats and undermine the economy…
She pushed Rafe from her mind with some effort and focused on the situation at hand.
What was James hiding from the French? And what, she wondered, her mouth tightening, was he hiding from her?
She lifted her chair to move it back so they wouldn’t know she’d been spying.
The hem of her gown snagged, and her unfastened bodice was pulled to her waist. She grabbed for it, clutched it to her chest, and looked up to James and David standing beside the screen. Elizabeth squeaked.
James inhaled sharply.
David flushed and dropped his eyes. “Sorry, my lord, must check the team we’ve hired for the coach. I’ll be back for your and the lady’s things as soon as everything’s set.”
Not until the door closed behind the big man did James speak. “Do you intend to ask for help?” His blue eyes drifted coolly over her exposed breasts and shoulders. “Or would you rather wrestle with your gown for the remainder of the morning?”
She shifted the chair, tugged the gown back up, and stood. She’d ride to Amiens stark naked before asking him for help. Elizabeth twisted around once more in a desperate attempt to reach the elusive buttons.
“You are a stubborn one, Elizabeth Harcrest,” he said as his fingers met hers over the mother-of-pearl discs. She looked over her shoulder at him; his face was close enough to kiss. Her breath caught as she felt him fasten up the remaining buttons.
“You can breathe now,” he said.
She wasn’t sure she could. But, determined to appear as unaffected as he was by the contact, she exhaled. “I had every intention of doing so. It’s something I do quite naturally.”
His gaze swept over her hair, lingering on her face, her neck, and the décolletage of her traveling gown.
The gown’s rose color normally brought out the color in her cheeks and in her lips.
Although, at this moment, Elizabeth suspected scarlet would be a better match.
“You, however, seem to have forgotten the trick,” she said, smiling as she’d learned to do in the early, happier days of her season and brushing past him.
“Shall we make Amiens today, do you think?”
“Weather and roadblocks permitting.”
“And you will show me the maps with our route, just as you promised?”
“I shall,” he said, adding a muttered, “should be a relatively safe topic of conversation.”
“And will you finally tell me the name of the man whom we seek?”
James crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve told you I have no intention of discussing that particular matter with you. It’s safer if you don’t know. We’ve been through this before.”
“I thought you might have had a change of heart.” She shrugged, then added, “But of course, first you’d have to have one.”
“Quite true,” he agreed, echoing her tone.
“I suppose that means you won’t tell me what you’ve got hidden in your trunk?”
His eyes narrowed and there was a different expression on his face as he studied hers, a cautious reappraisal. “Nothing,” he said sharply. “Nothing you haven’t seen and worn.” James held out his hand. “And now, Lady Dinsmore, I believe it’s time to go down to breakfast.”
Anne Dinsmore wasn’t sure which was the worst part of returning to the country after the season, traveling for hours on end with her father and Agatha, or having to oversee the reopening of the house.
Striding through the rooms as the maids flipped back the dust covers from the furniture, she was acutely aware that each year there was less furniture and fewer maids.
Passing through the portrait gallery, she made a mental note to have the paintings rearranged so that the spaces left by those that had been sold would not be so obvious.
She gracefully arranged her muslin skirts in the chair behind the delicate pearwood desk, picked up an ivory-handled letter opener, and began slicing open the envelopes that had been arranged in neat piles on her blotter.
Calling cards, invitations—country entertaining was a bore compared with London.
She flipped over Sir Edmund’s invitation to visit his sister, Mrs. Frederick Norcroft, at Hartsdale.
How tedious. Not a decent family for miles, unless one counted the Harcrests.
Not likely there’d be an invitation from them.
If James had been here with her, he’d have kept her amused.
She smiled. He’d have contrived some clever reason for her to call upon Moreham Hall and see how Elizabeth was faring in social exile.
A neighborly concern for Alix’s welfare, perhaps.
The French cow was breeding, and despite their differences, it was the polite thing to do.
Anne knew just the outfit she’d have chosen for the visit, a lovely vertical stripe that showed her long, narrow waist to its best advantage.
But James wasn’t here. She’d heard some rumor he was in France.
The despair and bitterness had driven him there.
Absurd. She didn’t know where her brother was, but she knew he had better sense than that.
She jabbed the sharp blade of her letter opener into the soft surface of the blotter and twisted.
A jagged tear appeared, just like the tear Moreham had made on her handsome brother’s face, like the rip he’d made in their lives.
He oughtn’t to get off so lightly, Moreham.
Enjoying his summer in the country with his French wife and his child on the way—a boy, no doubt.
He ought to suffer, as she did. Trapped in an empty house, surrounded by babbling idiots, like Agatha, and her father, and Bogglesworth.
Thinking of Sir Edmund reminded her of the story he told about seeing Moreham in Lyon.
Most likely, he invented it to impress her.
A man of Moreham’s standing would never soil his hands with trade.
Nevertheless, it might be amusing to repeat.
Prefaced with the appropriate expressions of disbelief, of course.
Anne smoothed the tear on the blotter with the tip of her blade until it was nothing more than a jagged line. Perhaps she would pay a call on Hartsdale. Amusing stories, like soup, were always the better for a few juicy morsels to flavor them up.