Authors: Laura Kinsale
She took a deep, shaky breath. "I'd thought of walking to Upwell and asking Fish Stovall to take me on the river in his punt to King's Lynn."
"An excellent notion. But can this Fish Stovall be trusted not to talk?"
"Fish is a very, very good friend of mine," she said seriously. "I would trust him with my life."
Sheridan made no comment on the wisdom of trusting one's life to a man named Fish. "And—uh—forgive me; I don't wish to pry. But have you considered the"—he cleared his throat, looking pointedly away—"ah, finances?"
"Oh, of course!" She put down the teacup and fumbled at the diamond, searching for the clasp. "You must take this. I hadn't wanted to seem forward and press it upon you without knowing you truly wished to help me. Can you sell it? And I'll bring the rest of my personal jewelry along to provide for us on the way. This is only one of the smaller pieces."
The gold chain and setting flowed into Sheridan's palm. He glanced down at it, turned it over once and managed not to break into ecstatic smiles. He closed his fingers over the stone. "Princess," he said softly, taking her hand and pressing it against his fist, as if he could not bring himself to let her part with the jewel. "Are you quite sure?"
She bit her lip, hesitating, and for one awful moment he thought he had gone too far. Then she looked up and nodded.
He lifted her hand to his lips. "You are a brave and gallant lady."
He expected to melt her to a puddle with that. But instead of going pliable and moony, she straightened her back and set her jaw, staring into his eyes with a little shake of her head. "No," she said in a small, gruff voice. "Not yet. Don't say so yet."
He held her hand a second longer. Her fingers, enveloped in his, had a faint, rhythmic tremble. It might have been merely the cold. But her skin had gone dead white, her eyes were wide and her lower lip was not quite steady. It was a look that Sheridan knew. He'd seen it on the fixed faces of untried midshipmen watching their ship closing in to a first encounter, and on the dead-pale countenance of a man seized up for flogging. He'd recognized it in his own mirror and felt it freeze his own face times without number.
He let go of her. She sat still for a moment, gazing into space, seeing God-knew-what nightmares in store for her. Then at last her face came alive again and she looked up at him…and now there was adoration in her eyes, worship for the hero he was not and never had been.
He'd seen that before, too—as often as not on the faces of those same poor, fatuous midshipmen who thought he was going to carry them to glory, when all it would be was guns and noise and mangled limbs and hot-cold terror. It made him faintly sick, meeting that look here, on a female face—on her face, round and solemn—as if a sparrow expected to be a hawk and thought he could make her one.
He could not. And he would not have if he could.
With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the diamond into her lap. "Take it back," he said quietly.
Olympia looked down at it and up, bewildered. Sir Sheridan's expression had gone flat and uninterpretable, his mouth a straight line and his gray eyes shifting away from hers. He stood, leaving the blankets in a tumble on the couch.
"Take it back," he repeated. "Go home. I'm a bad egg, you know. Liar and a knave. I'll cheat you when I'm able, and leave you hanging when I'm not."
"Pardon me?" she said.
"You think I'm an honorable man. It so happens you're wrong." He slanted a strange smile in her direction, a tight upward curve of one comer of his mouth. "But you'd best keep the secret to yourself. I'd rather it wasn't spread about, and no one would believe you anyway."
She tilted her head. For a shocked moment, she'd thought he meant what he said, but that peculiar smile enlightened her. "I understand," she said, with a nervous curve of her own lips. "You're joking again."
The odd touch of humor faded from his face. He watched her without speaking. His hair was very black against the golden light, curling a little below his ear and at his neck. She felt a queer regret that she would never again see him like this. She wanted to memorize him, to put him in a book to take out and treasure in secret midnight moments—to survey at her leisure the shape of shoulder and chest, to imagine the texture of his skin, sun-touched and shadowed.
But those were thoughts for hidden places, thoughts to ponder in the safety of her own bed in the night. She lowered her lashes to hide them from him. When still he did not speak, she gathered the gold chain and pendant and laid it next to his teacup. Collecting her redingote, she stood up from the couch.
"I should go now."
He made no move to help her with her coat. She struggled into it by herself and looked up from buttoning.
"When you wish to contact me," she said, "leave a message with Fish at Upwell. I see him every day."
His brush of black lashes lowered. He stared at the teacup and the diamond that lay next to it. She could make nothing of his expression, and yet she was disturbed by it. She wet her lips and picked up her hat, rolling the brim in her fists. "I cannot—Sir Sheridan…you must know there are no words to thank you."
He looked up at her, a quick flash of gray, intensely cool in the warm light of window and coal fire. "Not yet," he said, with a lift of his brows and a ghost of that disturbing smile. "Take a page from your own book, Princess. Don't thank me yet."
The imperturbable Mrs. Plumb spread out a bolt of silver satin on the bed in Olympia's room and stood looking down at it with one of those sideways tilts of her chin which emphasized her elegant cheekbones.
"What do you think?" she asked. She was an extraordinarily handsome governess, with a statuesque figure, a tiny waist and an unerring fashion sense where Olympia's wardrobe was concerned, although Mrs. Julia Plumb herself was never seen in anything but the most modest of widow's weeds. "I believe it would make up into a lovely walking dress."
Mr. Stubbins wrote poetry about her. Mrs. Plumb laughed at it, and asked why a fellow barely out of leading strings should waste his time playing the flirt with an old woman—although Olympia thought secretly that Julia seemed to like it well enough. It had made Olympia wildly jealous years ago, when Mr. Stubbins' soft golden curls and brown eyes, aflame with revolutionary fervor, had been the focus of her sixteen-year-old dreams.
By now, at twenty-four, she'd long outgrown that infatuation. It was nothing but childish aristocratic vanity to care for such things. She poked unenthusiastically at the silver satin. "It seems overly pretentious to me," she said. "I prefer muslin."
Mrs. Plumb ignored that, except for a little sniff. It gave her a certain status, Olympia supposed, to have a position in the household of a princess, no matter how unexalted. Olympia and Mr. Stubbins deplored such conservative and ignorant sentiments, but neither of them had the nerve to face down that chill and beautiful gaze by stating their opinions out loud.
"The seamstress has the fashion illustrations I thought would suit you best," Julia said. "There are several that will compliment an excessively full figure very well, I think." She looked up from the bolt of satin, her fine blue eyes regarding Olympia with an opaque expression. "You took a lengthy walk this morning, for such a cold day."
After the smallest of hesitations, Olympia turned toward the window and said, "I left a card on Captain Drake."
She was annoyed to hear the words come out with a trace of defiance.
"Indeed," Julia said mildly. "That was very forward of you."
Knowing it was true only made Olympia more defensive. "He wasn't at home to me," she lied. "And it was not in the way of a social call at all. I think everyone in the neighborhood should pay him their respects, and I don't see anything 'forward' about being the first to do so. He is a very great hero."
Julia stroked the satin with her forefinger. "Yes, so they say. But it was most unbecoming of you to go alone to visit a bachelor, no matter how heroic. I hope you will avoid that mistake in the future."
Olympia felt herself turning crimson. "I only left my card."
"People will gossip about such things," Julia said. "You have the dignity of your position to consider."
"A pox on my position," Olympia cried. "It's good for nothing, to me or to anyone else."
A faint dry smile played at the comers of Julia's shapely mouth. "Nevertheless—" Her tone grew heavier. "You're not to call on Captain Drake alone again. I'll have your word on it."
Olympia raised her chin and inclined her head. "Very well," she said, choosing her words carefully. "I promise not to call on him at Hatherleigh Hall."
She didn't promise anything else.
"Thank you." Julia glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantel. "Now, I must go out this evening for an hour, if you have no need of me or the carriage."
Olympia nodded, folding the fabric. After Julia had left, she remained staring out the window at the ice-crusted banks of the river, with the silver satin folded over her arm.
It was a familiar view. She had stared at it for twenty-four years.
Sometimes she wished she could offer her royal diadem to Julia, who would have made a much better princess anyway.
Sheridan lay propped up on his elbow in the shadowy depths of his father's bed, watching the woman who had been his father's mistress for as long as he could remember. She tilted her chin, rebuttoning the last button at her throat and adjusting the tiny bows on her demure bodice in an elegant whore's gesture.
"Julia," he said lazily. "Charming as ever." He lay back, locking his hands behind his head. The chill air cooled him, playing over the perspiration on his chest and arms. He eyed the modest dress and virtuously simple hairstyle. "A true credit to Christian womanhood."
The single candle caught purple highlights in her black satin dress. She leaned near, tracing her forefinger around his mouth. Sheridan allowed his lips to part, tasting the salty tang of arousal and satisfaction that lingered on her hand. He stirred, turning toward her to catch her wrist, kissing the cup of her palm.
She pulled her hand away.
He dropped his head back with a sigh. "So," he said flatly. "Now we come to the point, do we?"
She drew her finger down the side of his face and jaw, ending in a light circling tease on his chest. He pushed her hand off and locked it in his fist.
"My dear," he murmured. "Let's omit the second round of compliments for the moment. Just what is it you want from me?"
"Sheridan," she said huskily, raising their entwined arms and caressing his hand with her lips as if his hard grip on her were only a fondling hold.
"Looking to take up residence again?" He let her kiss the back of his hand. When she met his eyes, he deliberately ran an assessing look up and down her splendid figure. "I can't say you haven't got talent and experience, and you appear to have aged remarkably well. How old are you?"
Heat flashed in her eyes. She lowered her lashes and bit him lightly on the side of his palm.
Sheridan set, led back and looked up at the canopy with a faint derisive smile. "I couldn't have been much under six years old when my father set you up for his doxy. You were no infant then, and that was nigh on three decades ago. How many years do you have on me? Eighteen? Twenty?" He pulled his hand away easily. "Sorry, m'love, the position's open, but I'm only considering applicants with a reasonable number of working years left in 'em."
"You're a bastard," she whispered. "You always were."
He stretched and sat up, kicking the blankets aside. "Runs in the family."
"Your father was good enough to me."
"Was he?" Sheridan reached for his clothes. "You're clearly a leg up on me, then." He pulled his shin over his head. "Did he leave you any money?"
Her shoulders went still for an instant. Sheridan took note of that, and silently carried on with his dressing.
She ran slender fingers over the carved back of a chair. "Haven't you read the will?"
"Not that it's any of your business," he said mildly, buttoning his waistcoat and disdaining the crumpled neckcloth. "I've an appointment with the solicitor tomorrow. I can't say my hopes are very high. Pardon me, but I'd suggest you don't sit in that particular chair, unless you'd like a fountain of ice water applied to your magnificent derriere."
She straightened hastily and cast him a glance.
"Yes," he said, "yet another sample of my dear father's delightful sense of humor. The place is mined with 'em. All the beds except this one are stuffed with horseshoe nails. The doorbell is rigged to dump snow on arriving guests. The wardrobe doors slam closed on your hand the moment you touch anything inside, and if you step on the wrong spot on the staircase, it collapses, and you plummet down to God-knows-where like a shot cuckoo." He kicked his foot down into his bootheel and stood up. "Bloody hilarious. I damned near lost a leg."
When he lifted his head, Julia was gazing at him with a peculiar expression. "I didn't know," she said. "I…left before he built this house."
"Ah. Turned you out, did he? What a shame. It must be lonely for you these days, Julia. Trying to think up ingenious viciousness all on your own. What a jolly pair of hellhounds the two of you made."
She smiled, an odd, twisted little curl of her lips, and came across the floor to stand in front of him. She rested her hands on his shoulders, her blue eyes roaming over his open collar and up to his jaw and face.
"When last I saw you," she murmured, "you were sixteen and had pimples."
"And you were a beautiful whoring bitch, just as you are now," he said politely. "I was madly jealous of the old man."
She acted as if he had not spoken, leaning away and measuring the breadth of his shoulders with her glance. "You've certainly grown out well."
"Thank you."
"And a hero. A Knight of the Bath."
He inclined his head modestly.
She slid her fingers up into his hair. "I wouldn't have thought it."
"Oh, I imagine I can be quite a knight in the bath." He flicked her cheek. "Would you like to go another tilt?"