Part 5 (1/2)
Justin turned slowly to face the irate man. ”Allow? You cannot allow? Worse, you're putting a crease in my jacket.”
The major loosed his grip. ”The devil with your jacket. Last night you looked like a man who was going to tell her about the threat to her life. Did you?”
”I allowed my mind to be changed on that head,” Justin told him, taking the gloves and hat and riding crop Wigglesworth, who had materialized seemingly from out of nowhere, pressed into his hands. ”Thank you, Wigglesworth. You remain, as always, a treasure.”
”You're welcome, my lord. I would have been here sooner, had you but told me you were about to depart. You will be careful, won't you, sir?”
”Am I not always careful, Wigglesworth?” Justin asked, putting on his curly brimmed beaver and lightly tapping it into place.
”No, sir, you're not.” The servant turned to address the major. ”He's not, you know. But he always triumphs. If his lords.h.i.+p says that everything will be fine, then it will be fine, because he wouldn't have it any other way. But perhaps not always immediately.”
”I'm touched, Wigglesworth. Such d.a.m.ning praise.” The ostler brought out the saddled horse. ”And now, adieu. Major, please deliver my felicitations to the lady, and my promise to join her at Ashurst Hall within the week with, I most sincerely hope, news that will please her.”
Along with information that will devastate her, Justin added silently as he put his booted foot in the stirrup and gracefully mounted the bay.
Once again Luka was proving meddlesome. He grabbed onto the bay's bridle and stepped close. ”If any harm comes to her, there will be no place safe for you to hide. Leaving her like this, knowing the danger? You're nothing but an overdressed, pompous coward.”
”And now I am desolated. Are you telling me you are not up to protecting the lady by yourself for two more days, after getting her safely halfway across Europe and onto these sh.o.r.es? Have I so badly misjudged my man?” Justin asked him quietly.
”No harm will come to her,” Luka said firmly.
”Good.” Justin smiled, even as his eyes remained hard, cold chips of green ice. ”Because, my new friend, if any does, you'll have left me no choice but to kill you.”
The two men stared at each other for long moments until, as Justin had expected, the major released his grip on the bridle. Poor fellow; men who lived by the rules had so many problems to beset them. That's why he'd given up on being bound by such pesky things a long time ago.
He was almost safely gone. But just as he was about to turn his mount and exit the yard, out of the corner of his eye he spied the Lady Alina in the doorway of the inn.
She had been an enchanting, provocative vision in her ermine-tipped cloak. She presented a heartbreakingly beautiful picture now, framed in the doorway, her midnight-blue traveling ensemble turning her exotic and yet still so very English-a mix of blood that had mingled to create a masterpiece.
Either he left right now, or he'd never find the strength to go.
He lifted his hat to her, bowed his head slightly, and without a word put his heels into his mount's flanks, causing the obedient horse to break into an immediate gallop.
All the way to London, the vision that haunted the corners of his mind was not of Alina in her ermine-tipped cloak, nor of Alina in her das.h.i.+ng traveling ensemble and that silly shako hat tipped down over one eye.
No, the picture he could not get out of his head was of Alina in that disastrous and wildly appealing nightwear, her golden eyes wide and innocent as she proudly told him the name of her mother...and sent his soul cras.h.i.+ng straight to h.e.l.l.
ALINA HAD NEVER SEEN Luka so angry as he'd been today and all of yesterday. Not that he'd paid her much attention, concentrating most of his time and effort on positioning the baron's outriders ahead of and behind the coach, and then, when the Duke of Ashurst's men joined them last night at the inn, giving each of them instructions on how he wished them to fit in with the existing ranks.
As if he expected the French to attack at any moment, or some such nonsense. He'd even donned his uniform once more, and he'd told her he wouldn't be wearing it while he was in England, so as to not insult the English government in any way.
When she'd attempted to question him about why the baron had left them, and why they were being sent to this Ashurst Hall and this good friend, Luka had only muttered and said something about having to supervise tying down the luggage so that neither of the two coaches might overturn if there was a need for speed at any time during their journey.
As to his impressions of the baron himself, Luka said even less. But when he left her at the inn doorway and promptly spit into the dirt, she'd gotten a fairly good idea of what her friend thought of her intended husband.
Why, anyone would think it had been his betrothed who had gone racing out of the inn yard as if the hounds of h.e.l.l were after him.
”Her,” she corrected herself. ”As if the hounds of h.e.l.l were after her.” She didn't know much about marriage, a fact that had been brought home to her with disturbing clarity by Tatiana, but she did know that women married men, and men married women.
Otherwise, her terrible, base, unable-to-beat-down but logical mind told her, the pieces wouldn't fit.
”So good to see you smile, my lady, even if you're only talking to yourself,” Tatiana said from the facing seat in the coach. ”So good to know somebody can bear these terrible English roads without wondering if she's soon to see her luncheon for a second time.”
”I told you, Tatiana. It's silly for you to ride backward when there is certainly ample room next to me. Riding backward is sure to make you ill.”
”We're not at home anymore, my lady, where we can do what we want because it is what we want. Danica told me as much. We can only be happy that she knows her place is with the second coach and the luggage. G.o.d never takes but what He gives, I suppose.”
”I suppose,” Alina said, her mind already off the subject of traveling arrangements and back on to the subject of, well, traveling arrangements.
Why wasn't his lords.h.i.+p-Justin; he'd asked her to address him as Justin, so she may as well begin thinking of him as Justin-why wasn't he riding with them? Where had he gone, why had he gone, and would he really come back, or had he just said as much in order to get away without Luka shooting him or some such thing?
Had her night rail and dressing gown been that off-putting? And that kiss? Did innocence taste so terrible?
Or did he love someone, some sweet, biddable English miss with huge blue eyes and soft blond hair? Had he thought he could sacrifice himself for king and country, but one sight of Alina had been enough to make him feel the sacrifice was too much, even for a loyal subject?
Or it could have been something she'd said to him. What had she said? She'd told him the truth, she'd told him about Aunt Mimi and Count Eberharter's yellow teeth. Had that been too honest? How had he answered her? Oh, yes. He'd never before been considered the lesser of two evils.
Had he been laughing at her? Of course he had. Count Eberharter's teeth? Who said such things to one's betrothed?
Oh, she was such a child! Clearly Justin Wilde was a man of the world, and just as clearly she was an ignorant infant who possessed the understanding of a gnat.
And it was all Aunt Mimi's fault. Mama had gone to heaven while her daughter was still a child-more a child than she was now, at least-and Aunt Mimi had abdicated her responsibilities to her niece. There was more to education than learning the globe and her sums. There was also...those other things. The least, the very least the woman could have done was to instruct her niece to expand her selection of nightwear.
But Alina should have asked questions. Especially the one about being kissed and getting babies, because that had always seemed an incomplete answer to her. Not that she'd known what questions to ask in the first place, but also because no one could possibly ask questions that personal of a woman who always loved to look down her nose at you and snicker as if there were some Huge Secret she knew but wasn't about to share with her annoying little niece.
Still, much as she wanted to lay any and all blame at her aunt's feet, Alina knew she had only thought of this marriage from her own perspective. But now that she'd met the baron, and most especially since Tatiana's lesson in the Way Of The World, it was impossible not to consider his part in the equation.
How selfish of her! To consider only herself, and not the man who would make up the other half of this arranged marriage. Men had feelings. She'd watched her father cry as her mother's body had been carried off to the cemetery. Men loved.
As did women. Women loved.
But what was love? She understood the love of a child for her parents, but did she understand the love of parents for each other?
No.
She understood love of country. She'd loved the many pets she'd had over the years. She loved her ermine-tipped cloak, which was doubtless horribly shallow of her, but she did love it.
Alina winced, s.h.i.+vered. How many meanings to that single word: love.
She and Justin had not come together through love, but that hadn't seemed important. According to Aunt Mimi, rarely did anyone of her station, her cla.s.s, marry for love. They married to meld fortunes, to join lands, to improve trade relations, to beget heirs.
But her parents had married for love. Alina was certain of that. Her mother had left her home country for her father. She'd told her only child several times that she had never regretted that decision. Never for a single moment. She'd spoken fondly of memories of her childhood at Birling, but that was all.
Oh, how much easier to marry for love!
And how humiliating to be kissed, however briefly, by her prospective husband, only to have the man then bolt and run at the first chance he got, leaving her without so much as bidding her farewell.
That had been rude of him. Exceedingly rude. Possibly bordering on boorish.
Why should she be feeling ashamed? She hadn't taken one look at him and called for a horse and raced off into the countryside.