Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Curse those fainting females!
Georg muttered under his breath the entire way up the stairs, carrying the woman who had fallen into a dead swoon barely a minute after they had met.
If there was something he abhorred, it was swooning, simpering, helpless women.
His ample experience had informed him that this kind of behaviour was usually calculated in his presence; it flummoxed him every time, for he could not understand what, exactly, they hoped to accomplish with it.
Was it a form of flirtation? Did they believe men found it attractive?
If that was the case, then they had significantly underestimated him.
His mother had perfected the art of flirtation.
She had taken countless lovers, claiming to be passionately in love with each and every one of them, betraying his father with all of them in turn.
It had bred in him a deeply rooted dislike for such behaviour, and he never understood why men allowed themselves to be ensnared so.
He had vowed, when he was but a schoolboy, that he would never be one of them.
But even he could see that this particular woman had keeled over not out of some machination to ensnare him, but from sheer exhaustion. She appeared to be seriously ill.
He placed her carefully on the clean but simple bed of the room he’d obtained. An officer had been turned out of it by the ever-resourceful Schneider, who had contrived the thing without revealing his identity.
He stared down at the pale, still face.
Evangeline Stafford-Hill.
His bride.
How was it possible that their first encounter had happened like this?
He’d been sitting at a table tucked behind one of the wooden partitions in the dining room with Schneider, when the daft poppet from earlier stepped into the room and approached the innkeeper, who was wiping the counter with a cloth.
She was now draped in a woollen military coat that she must have wheedled from an unwary officer.
Truly, the Austrian Imperial Army was in worse shape than he had feared, if its hardened soldiers were as pliable as clay in that poppet’s scheming hands.
He made a mental note to address this issue in the Imperial War Council after he returned to Vienna.
Schneider had eagerly jumped to his feet to assist her, but Georg had pushed him down forcefully with one hand on his shoulder. “Sit.”
He’d followed their conversation as he drank from his beer mug.
English. Most definitely. Her German was good, better than average, but there was that slight rising English intonation at the end of sentences that gave her away.
She was no ordinary traveller, that was clear.
She also seemed distressed at the lack of a room.
Clearly, the woman had expected a room to be ready for her at the snap of her fingers, with the bath drawn, and the sheets aired, preferably with rose petals strewn over the cover.
It never once occurred to her to consider that in times like this, the inns were commonly overfilled, with troops and travellers alike on the road.
And outside, a thunderstorm was breaking loose.
Now she was wringing her hands like a tragedienne. Ah, it seemed the truth of the situation was finally sinking in. What would she do now?
He was taking a deep draught of his beer when she said, “She is none other than the sister of the Duke of Aldingbourne.”
He nearly spat the beer across the table. He held the liquid back at the last moment and choked, coughed and gasped for air.
Schneider jumped up once more and thumped him on his back.
“Are you all right, sir?”
He lifted a hand. “Shh.”
“You don’t have a single bed for Lady Evangeline Stafford-Hill?” she was saying now, gesturing at the woman beside her.
He hadn’t misheard.
Georg set his mug down so forcefully that the foam slopped onto the tabletop, and he pushed himself up.
Now she was arguing with the innkeeper. Truly, where was he to conjure a room from when there weren’t any available?
He stepped up to them. “She can have my room,” he cut in.
Both the innkeeper’s and the poppet’s heads whipped towards him.
“Lady Evangeline Stafford-Hill?” His gaze swept the taller, quieter woman, who looked up with glassy eyes. “A private word.”
He saw no other recourse than revealing himself to her, but only after he had verified her identity.
Julius had, more than once, written to him with considerable frustration that Evie had developed the habit of escaping the governess by climbing out of the window and down the rose trellis, and the woman simply would not learn to take precautionary measures.
Like changing the room to one that did not have a rose trellis fixed outside the wall.
Georg had read those letters with no little amusement, and come to the conclusion that his betrothed was a girl with spirit.
He’d liked that.
But the woman who claimed to be Lady Evangeline had hesitated and given him an uncomprehending look, at first, and he’d concluded that she was a fraud, not without some inexplicable feeling of relief.
Until she’d taken him aback by unexpectedly coming forth with the correct response, after all.
Then her eyes had rolled back and she crumpled right in front of him. The news of who he was seemed to have, quite literally, pulled the rug out from under her.
If he hadn’t caught her when he did, she would have crashed on the floor.
Disregarding everyone, he’d swept her up and brought her to his room.
“Thus we finally meet, Lady Evie,” he muttered, flicking away a pale strand of hair that had fallen over her eyes. This was the woman with whom he was to spend the rest of his life. The future mother of his children.
Heaven help him.
She had a fine, straight nose, and her pale, cracked lips were slightly parted. She was clearly a well-bred lady, a typical English rose.
Certainly rather pretty, no doubt about that. But he hadn’t been thinking about her appearance when he’d agreed to take her as his bride.
“As long as she has some spirit,” had been his brash response to Aldingbourne, when he’d offered his sister as his betrothed, to seal the blood bond of brotherhood, half a lifetime ago. He’d treated it more as a jest, but Aldingbourne had been rather serious about it.
Georg had thought it over and concluded, why not?
Surely there were worse things in life than to be tied in a familial bond to a man like Aldingbourne.
If his sister had the same staunch sense of duty, loyalty and outlook in life, all virtues that he admired in him, then he could count himself lucky to be betrothed to her, indeed.
So he’d agreed.
And promptly forgotten all about her.
Quite unforgivable of him, he knew.
Until, of course, Aldingbourne had reminded him of their impending union, asking when he finally intended to marry his sister.
“For heaven’s sake, let the girl grow up first,” he replied, half-amused, half-irritated.
He was in no hurry to enter the parson’s mousetrap, and was far too busy fighting Napoleon and climbing the ranks in the military.
He had no time to think about a girl who was waiting for him patiently in England.
Besides, being in two different countries had made the matter of their marriage somewhat of a challenge.
Until Aldingbourne had announced that he would come to Vienna to attend the congress, and suggested that it was as good a time as ever for them to tie the knot.
Georg had agreed, since he felt it was about time that he at least knew what his bride looked like.
Julius had, of course, sent him a miniature, but aside from the fact that it was a pretty little portrait like any other (Georg thought they all looked alike), the image of the sixteen-year-old girl in the miniature seemed to have little in common with the comely, placid young woman who lay in front of him now.
His brows knit together. He’d expected to meet his bride officially at a lavish social event at the British Embassy. Aldingbourne had sternly ordered him to be there, more than once.
But to meet his betrothed like this, in a tawdry inn on the road in the middle of lower Austria?
He could not, for the life of him, determine the mix of emotions that coursed through him. That odd sinking feeling as he studied her. It must be concern, certainly? Or maybe it was surprise? Disappointment? All three?
Or was it because…there was no sensation at all to begin with?
He looked down at her slim form with polite indifference. Truly, she was just like any pretty, placid society damsel that he’d met. She wasn’t the Evie he’d imagined all those years.
How could he have been so wrong?
Collect yourself, man. He’d hardly talked to her for longer than a few minutes, and here he was already, judging her rather harshly. It was not fair to him, or to her, to draw conclusions from such a short interaction.
Ah, she was waking.
She muttered and tossed her head on the pillow.
The maid, on the other side of the bed, said in a fretting voice, “She’s been ill since Vienna. It doesn’t appear to be an ordinary cold.”
He placed a hand on her forehead. It was dry and hot. She was burning up.
This was not good.
With two steps, he reached the door, tore it open, and nearly ran over the girl in the ballroom dress who, one hand reaching out to open it, was about to enter the room.
She took a startled step back and tilted her head to look up at him.
Ah. The daft poppet.
He looked down at her with a displeased frown. “And who are you again?”