Betina Krahn (38 page)

With each word between them, a bit more of the emotion roiling deep inside her escaped, and she found herself beginning to tremble. Alarmed, she backed another step. His
presence was rousing memories and feelings in her that she was not prepared to handle.

“Forgive me, angel, but I’ve suffered enough of your little homilies on the nobility of giving to be more than a little skeptical. I believe you and I should have a talk.”

“We have nothing to say to each other,” she said irritably. “I have decided to heed your suggestion that I face the grim realities of humankind and reform my hopelessly gullible life.” She couldn’t help the trace of bitterness that crept into her tone. “Congratulations, you’ve succeeded in reforming the reformer.”

When she started past him, he didn’t prevent her from leaving. In fact, he took her elbow and propelled her along, out of the conservatory and straight down the side hallway, where he opened door after door, looking for an unoccupied room.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed as they passed other guests.

Without answering, he pushed her through a doorway into a dimly lighted room. When he turned to close the door, she jerked free and backed away.

“Insist on your pound of flesh, do you?” She folded her arms around her waist and stuck out her chin, trying to combat the feel of those burnished autumn eyes tugging at her. “Very well, you won. You were right. It was just as you said. Now let me go.”

“You don’t really believe that,” he insisted.

“Oh, but I do,” she said tightly, desperate as she felt her barely contained emotions slipping bit by bit out of her control. “You were right about everything. Reform garments
are
absurd, impractical, and utterly unsalable. Heavens, why should women wish to breathe when they can be excused from so much unpleasantness if they don’t? And you were dead right about my precious workers—they were nothing but a bunch of whiners, shirkers, and opportunists.” Every
word seemed to carry a bit more heat than the last as she paced away, then back.

“And as for reformers … our exalted visitors bore out your predictions entirely. They stirred up nothing but trouble and discontent. They offered no solutions, no attempt to resolve or improve things—just judgments, accusations, and a lot of patronizing moralisms. Rather fitting, was it not? That I, who believed so wholeheartedly in reform, was undone by a pack of rabid and overzealous reformers.” The hostility raging in her was her only defense against the tears threatening at the backs of her eyes. “I’m sure the irony of it hasn’t escaped you.”

The way his eyes slid over her and the troubled look on his face said that very little escaped him. Her hands curled into fists as she contained the urge to throttle him. How dare he stand there looking so cool and in control, so perfectly wise and impartial. The wretch!

“What hasn’t escaped me is the amount you were able to accomplish—against great odds.”

“Accomplish?” She gave a humorless laugh. “All I
accomplished
was the squandering of nearly a quarter of my aunt’s legacy to me. Not on luxury and fast living, true. Instead, I wasted it on feeding four or five dozen greedy, shiftless, malingering ingrates, giving them places to live and clothes to wear, caring and providing for their children. And through it all I managed to keep them quite entertained with the absurdity of my notions about clothing reform. They
took
with both hands. And why shouldn’t they if I was gullible enough to offer?”

“You
are
hurting, aren’t you, angel?”

“I am not an angel. Nor am I a saint or a madwoman or a willful, troublesome child. I am just a person who tried to make a difference … in a world that doesn’t like differences.” She had to swallow the tears collecting in her throat to continue. “I don’t intend to let that ruin what is left of my life.”

He stared at her for a moment, invading her gaze, laying
bare the hurt and disillusionment she tried to hide. She could feel him examining the conflict of her ideals and experiences. Then his piercing gaze softened, his eyes darkened.

“I don’t intend to let it ruin your life either.”

He grabbed her by the wrist and headed for the door.

“How dare—Cole Mandeville, I will not be manhandled!” She took a swing at him with her free hand, only to have him catch it and use it to drag her along as well. Without making any more of a spectacle than necessary, she tried balking, twisting, and finally kicking, all to no avail. He pulled her through the drawing room, along the colonnade that ringed the main hall, then straight out the front doors—under the stunned scrutiny of their lordly host, Reardon, and at least a score of London’s elite.

When they reached the street, a huge black coach came hurtling up and Cole hoisted her up the steps and shoved her inside, where her feet tangled in her skirts and she fell back against the seat. Between the lurching of the carriage and the binding of her rigid corset and cumbersome bustle frame, she had difficulty righting herself Scorning his offer of assistance, she finally struggled up on her own and fled to the other side of the carriage. There she braced against the rocking rear-facing seat, and tried to recover both her breath and her dignity.

“Take me straight back to Cousin Gilbert’s—this minute!”

“Changed your mind about marrying him?” he said with a taunting smile. She came within a hairbreadth of launching herself at him with nails bared.

“I mean it. I consider this an abduction—I’ll have you brought up on charges and given the fullest measure the law allows!”

“You know, I’m really rather surprised at you.” He sprawled back against the tufted velvet seat, looking every bit as calm and in control as she was furious and frantic. “I wouldn’t have expected you to just give up and walk away.”

“I did not just give up. If you’ll remember—I was
blown
up!”

“When things got a little rough”—he shrugged—“you cut and ran without putting up a fight. It amounts to the same thing.”

“Without a fight?” She looked around for something to throw at him, seized a pillow from the seat beside her, and heaved it at him. It surprised him, but he managed to catch it. “And what was I supposed to fight? Indifference? stupidity? laziness? Wasn’t that what I was doing all along? I worked my fingers to the bone for Ideal. I gave those stupid workers everything I had—my money, time, energy, faith. They took what they could and then destroyed the rest!” Desperate for another missile, she resorted to jerking off one of her shoes and flinging it at him. He dodged, then seized the shoe, opened the window, and tossed it out.

“Ohhh!” She yanked off the other one and hurled it at him. He was prepared this time, caught it, and sent it to join its mate on the London streets.

“Pray do continue. But I should warn you, if you continue to throw clothes at me, you may start to feel a bit chilly before we reach St. Crispin.”

“St. Crispin?” Panic invaded her anger, chilling some of its heat. “I am not going back to St. Crispin.”

“Oh, but you are,” he said.

“The factory is a pile of rubble, no one wants the stupid clothing, and the village is a pathetic mud hole populated by bum-bags who have to be kicked again and again to get them moving!” She was trembling, having to force every word past a constriction in her throat. “There is nothing in St. Crispin worth fighting for.”

“Nothing … but your heart.”

The pained understanding in his eyes unleashed a smothering wave of grief in her. She didn’t need reminding that she had left her heart behind her in pieces on the steps of the factory. That was why for the last week she hadn’t been able
to feel, to think, even to mourn. Suddenly the enormity of that loss came crashing down on her.

“Stop—” she choked out. “Stop this carriage and let me out—here—now!”

“You can’t run from it, Madeline.” His voice came low and earnest, like the whispering of conscience. “The failure, the pain, the disillusionment … you’ll carry them with you wherever you go. They will always be just a turn of thought away. And no matter how you try to drown your sorrows or fill your days, they will always find a way to remind you. You have to go back and face it down … deal with it.”

“Like you dealt with it? Like you faced it down?”

Her angry words lay burning on the air.

“Like I’m facing it this very minute,” he said tightly. “I’ve made mistakes, Madeline. Disastrous ones, monstrous ones. But none worse than the one I made with you.”

The words were like a punch in the gut. Mistakes. Instantly, the memories of his kisses, his caresses, his tenderness, rose inside her. Those were all mistakes too? Now she had not even
that
to hold on to?

She gasped and suddenly found it impossible to exhale. Reduced to shallow, panicky breaths, she knew she had to get away and dove headlong for the door.

Cole lunged after her, caught her by the waist, and pulled her back against him. As she thrashed, he managed to maneuver her between his legs, bracing his feet against the opposite seat. He was panting by the time she was secured.

“Are you mad, trying to jump from a moving carriage? What in heaven’s name’s gotten into—” His eyes widened as he felt the severe boning beneath her gown and connected it to her troubled breathing. “What the hell is this?” Wrapping his legs around her to hold her, he began to work the buttons and hooks at her back.

“Stop—” She struggled on two fronts, trying both to breathe and to escape him. Tears were welling in her eyes and she put her hands to her face to keep him from seeing
them. She didn’t want to be near him, didn’t want him to see her out of control.

“It’s this damnable corset. Lord, no wonder you’re acting like a lunatic—you can scarcely breathe!”

Threads popped and buttons and hooks flew as he seized the fabric with both hands and pulled open the back of her dress. Muttering, he fought his way through the buttons, tapes, and ties of petticoats, past the fastenings of her bustle frame, then through a corset cover.

Her vision was blurring, her head reeling. Why was he doing this? Why did he have to invade her life again, drag her back to St. Crispin, make her relive all the pain and humiliation of the last month? What did he want from her? Her struggles weakened. Again and again she felt him grabbing the laces and pulling. As each round of lacing slid, she felt her resistance to him sliding as well.

The pressure on her ribs suddenly eased and she drew a starved breath, expelled it, then breathed deeply again. But more air meant better thinking and a clearer understanding of her situation. Anguish settled over her once more, weighing on her heart, and she went perfectly still.

“I can’t go back,” she said in a whisper raw with pain “There’s nothing to go back
to.”

He felt her trembling and her attempts to control it, heard the desperation in her voice, and saw the strain on her face and the fluttering of her pulse in her throat. Yet he sensed that this was just the tip of the iceberg. She truly was terrified. For a moment he stopped to think what it would be like for her to be back in St. Crispin. A harrowing image of her in a deserted factory, sifting aimlessly through rubble, mired in defeat and anguish, flashed into his mind. He recoiled. It would be nothing short of cruel to take her back to all that, to force her so soon to confront something so devastating.

“Please … let me go. Just stop the coach and let me out.”

“I can’t let you go,” he said gently, tightening his arms
around her waist and pulling her up onto the seat beside him. “But I won’t take you back to St. Crispin.”

What she needed was a neutral place, somewhere without memories and worries attached. Someplace safe and comfortable. Someplace he could have some time with her, talk to her, stuff some heart back into her. When it came to him, he rapped on the carriage, then opened the sliding panel to give his driver a change of destination.

“Home, Caldwell.”

Minutes after Cole and Madeline disappeared in the coach, a storm broke among the guests in Lord Reardon’s entry hall.

“An outrage!”

“Simply criminal!”

“Stolen right out of the earl’s home!”

Gilbert was summoned instantly and he negotiated the tempest with a blend of styled outrage and genuine fury. The scene Mandeville had caused—it could have been only Mandeville, though it had happened so quickly, no one present could positively identify the wretch—was potentially disastrous to his hopes for a marriage with Madeline. But in a masterstroke Gilbert quickly assumed the dual role of anguished family member and aggrieved suitor, putting his own interpretation on events and redirecting reaction into usable channels of opportunity.

When Lord Reardon declared in a flurry, “We must call the police. Scotland Yard will track the fiend down soon enough!” Gilbert quickly drew him aside.

“No, no, your lordship, please. This is my
beloved
cousin, a lady of some standing, to whom I am devoted. She must not be subjected to any more notoriety than necessary. It must be some sort of misunderstanding, and I feel beholden to sort it out in as private a manner as possible. You see, her trustees have asked me to interest myself in her affairs and see to her welfare. I fear I may have disappointed their confidence in
me. I will not know a moment’s peace until I have found her and returned her to the bosom of her family.”

Flush with good wishes and godspeed, Gilbert accepted the use of his host’s carriage and hurried out to rescue his beloved lady cousin.

But once away from Belgrave Square, he told the driver to head for St. James’s and settled back in the plush carriage to plot his strategy. Two names came to mind. He decided he had two stops to make.

If anyone could find the little witch for him, it was that useful piece of slime, Rupert Fitch. It was said there wasn’t a fart let in London that the scribbler didn’t know about. But his second stop of the evening was even more important. He had spoken the truth when declaring he had been in contact with Madeline’s trustees in recent days. He had quite an illuminating visit with Sir Edward Dunwoody three days before … in which he revealed the collapse of Madeline’s enterprise and her status as a guest in his home.