Chapter Fourteen
Everything, to her regret, went as smoothly as Lord Arden had claimed it would, so that now—while the others were miles away, dancing at Lady Dessing's gala—Alexandra and the marquess were dining together in the Blue Swan coaching inn's only private parlour.
More strictly speaking, Alexandra was listlessly pushing her food around in circles on her plate. Interpreting her silence as prenuptial nerves, her considerate companion kept up an ongoing monologue between mouthfuls. The mail coach was due to arrive in an hour, he told her, and they had best fortify themselves. Given the eccentricities of public conveyance, the next few hours would be uncomfortable, but after that they'd travel in their own carriage. Though only a rented vehicle, it was, he assured her, comfortably sprung.
There was a light tap on the door, followed by the waiter. He was a surly fellow, with a great scarf wrapped about his head—for the toothache, he sulkily claimed—so that one could see little of his face but his nose. That was smudged with soot. He walked with a limp and with his head sunk to one side, as though he were in the habit of ducking, Alexandra thought with pity, the slings and arrows Life hurled at him. Will, having never been a victim of Life's cruel artillery, felt no such compassion. Majestically he gestured to the fellow to put the bottle down: " Mr. Fairstairs," as the marquess had chosen to style himself, would pour his own. Not that she could blame him. The waiter's hands were none too clean or too steady. Too bad, she reflected idly. Well-shaped and long-fingered, they might have been graceful hands, had providence seen fit to give him the marquess's advantages.
Because Alexandra was greatly tempted to drink herself into insensibility, she confined herself to water. She took a sip, noted it was as bad as everything else, and forgot all about the waiter's existence.
Will hadn't forgotten, however. The door had hardly shut behind the fellow when Lord Arden wondered aloud what the landlord was thinking of to hire such a filthy, disgusting creature. He became very apologetic then about subjecting his beloved to this shabby place. He said he hadn't expected it to be quite so bad, and he seemed to take it as a personal affront.
Well, of course. He was a Farrington, and the best of God's creatures—with the possible exception of the Royal Family— were put on this earth for his comfort. Including herself, she’d come to suspect that the real reason he'd insisted on eloping was nothing more than the impatience of a spoiled, overgrown boy. What he wanted he wanted now, and without a lot of bother.
Not that he minded a little costume drama. The clerk's garb, for instance, that clashed ridiculously with his aristocratic mien. As she stopped glowering at her plate a moment to glance at him, Alexandra much doubted whether the landlord had been taken in. He'd "Yes, sir'd" and "If you please, sir'd" the marquess to death from the moment they'd stepped through the door. The whole business was absurd. They might have travelled in comfort in their own clothes. A few coins dropped here and there would have stilled eager tongues. But Will must make a whole production of it. It was obvious he thought it all most dashing and romantic.
Actually, it would have been romantic if he were someone else. If that were only another face across the table, and if those eyes had been amber instead of grey. If that voice droning on and on were a teasing mixture of ingenuousness and irony. But it was stupid to think of that, to think of him, when that only made her heart ache. She was wretched enough as it was. From the moment Will had proposed his scheme, it had never occurred to him to consult her wishes in anything.
Not that she had any wishes any more—except that the coach would overturn along the way, and she be crushed to death beneath it.
Which was mere histrionic self-indulgence. After all, she wasn't running off with an ogre. He was handsome, wasn't he? And immensely rich and important. So what if he was spoiled and selfish. Weren't most of his peers? She was dutifully removing the scowl from her face and struggling to replace it with an affectionate smile when the marquess voice mumbled off into silence. Looking up, she discovered to her amazement that Lord Arden's head had slumped to his shoulder and he was sinking in his chair.
Good grief! Was the man drunk? Yet he'd consumed only two glasses of wine with his meal, and he'd seemed cold sober when he'd come for her. Bewildered, she sat staring helplessly at her unconscious husband-to-be and frantically wracked her sluggish brains. What on earth should she do?
"What a stimulating dinner companion you've got to be Alexandra. You've talked the poor man unconscious."
She sprang from her chair to turn towards the door, whence the voice had come, then only stood there, frozen. It was nightmare. She'd been dreaming all this time.
"Or have you poisoned him at last, my love?" Basil asked as he sauntered over to have a look at the comatose marquess
"What—what are you doing here?" she gasped.
"Rescuing you, my darling. As I always do. Dear me.” His face assumed a theatrical expression of horror as he lift Lord Arden's limp wrist then let it drop back onto the table. "I hope you haven't killed him. It'll be a job to keep you from swinging for it, lovely as you are, and sympathetic as the judge is sure to be when you tell him how Will had bore you past all endurance. But a peer of the realm, my dear. A peer-to-be, actually. Shocking."
His wit, in this case, was entirely wasted. The young lady scarcely heard a word of it, being in the process, for the first time in her twenty-four years, of fainting dead away.
Though she was inexperienced in the business, Basil, fortunately, was not. He caught her up in his arms before she sank to the floor and carried her out of the shabby parlour.
"Just as I suspected," he told the innkeeper, who was hovering anxiously a little distance from the door. "It is my sister. There'll be a reward for you, my good sir. Your sharp eye has helped preserve an innocent female from disgrace. Now you keep that eye on that villain there while I restore this poor, foolish child to her senses."
She felt something damp at her forehead, opened her eyes, then closed them again. Surely she was dreaming, had dreamt everything, and must be still lying in her comfortable bed at Hartleigh Hall. She could not be in this dingy room, and that could not be Basil sitting on the edge of the lumpy mattress, bending over her.
"Come now, Alexandra. Time to rejoin the living."
It was something damp—a towel—and it was Basil and not a dream. She opened her eyes again.
"That's better. What a turn you gave me. I never took you to be the swooning type. But then, I never knew you were another Lucrezia Borgia either."
"Good heavens!" She pulled herself up to a sitting position. "Surely he isn't dead—"
"No, he isn't, unfortunately. I gave him only enough medicine for a long sleep—not an eternal one. Though the temptation was strong enough," he added with a twisted little smile.
"You drugged him?"
"It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. Really, dear, I was never so shocked in my life—to see you enter this shabby place, dressed as—well, I could hardly tell what. The vicar's daughter, perhaps? Running off with her Papa's clerk? Was that it? Yet I'd never before heard a humble clerk order an innkeeper about in that imperious way. How fortunate for you I was here, my love. The story would have been all over the county in a matter of hours and sure to take all the shine out of Lady Dessing's birthday fete."
Shock was rapidly giving way to vexation. How could he chatter on so calmly—and Lord Arden lying somewhere unconscious? "What," she very nearly shrieked, "are you doing here?"
"Rescuing you, as I said."
"I didn’t ask to be rescued."
"Didn't you? Yet I could have sworn when I saw you enter that you looked precisely as Marie Antoinette must have done when they led her to the guillotine."
"Never mind how I looked. Why are you here? You're supposed to be in London."
"Yes, I am. I'm such an unreliable fellow, you know. Never where I should be, doing what I should be." He still had the towel and was absently wrapping it around one hand, then d
isarranging it, then arranging it again as he spoke.
Dazedly she stared at the towel and at the hands playing with it. Light dawned. "It was you. You were the waiter," she cried accusingly.
"Yes, I was." His smile this time was so sweet and tender that her heart skipped a beat. "I couldn't, after all, trust Mine Host to so delicate a business, could I? Though he's most observant—calling my attention to the rum pair deigning to honour him with their patronage. I suspect what he wants: the subtle touch."
"But why? Why?" Even as she asked, she knew, or she thought she knew, for one dizzying instant. But he looked away quickly, and she told herself she was overwrought and imagining things.
"Because the pair of you were about to spoil everything after I've been running myself ragged the past five days to make everything perfect." He tossed the towel onto a chair "Now, though it complicates everything dreadfully, I'll have to take you both back. Did anyone see you on the road?"
"I don't know—but what are you saying? I can't go back now. Lord Arden and I—"
"Yes, my love. You were eloping, which is perfectly absurd."
"It isn’t," she protested. "You don't know—"
"I know you're not going to Scotland with Will, as he can't go anywhere under his own power for the next several hours, I'm taking the two of you back. Now," he went on consulting his pocket watch, "there are bound to be dilator stragglers headed for Netherstone, so we'll have to keep off the main road. Fortunately, I know a shortcut—but then, so does half the world. Still, we can risk that if..." He nodded to himself. "Yes. That should do."
He got up from the bed and walked to a corner of the room, where he began rummaging in some bundles.
While he was thus engaged, she found her tongue again and set up a steady stream of objection, though, as he hadn't yet confided his plan, she wasn't sure what exactly she was objecting to. Nonetheless, she explained, albeit incoherently, about the increase in Papa's debt and how she'd had to confide in Will and how, if she didn't elope with the marquess, that left Randolph and his insufferable family. She might as well have saved her breath.
"Yes, dear," he patiently agreed. "I daresay it may be as you claim. If you'd only listened to me in the first place, you wouldn't be in such a predicament."
"L-listened to y-you?" she sputtered indignantly.
"Didn't I say I'd help you?"
"And then turned round and left for London," was the scornful rejoinder.
"Did you think I'd abandoned you, darling?" He approached the bed. In his hands was a pile of clothing which she barely looked at, being mesmerised by the sweet, fond look he bent upon her. Good grief—a few minutes alone with him and her mind turned completely to mush.
"I am not your darling," she snapped, rather savagely.
"As you like. Here." He dropped the garments into her lap. "Get into those."
She glared down at the little heap, and then blinked as she recognised what it was: his clothes. What on earth was he about? "Why?" she demanded. "Why must I go back?"
"Because I said so. Because you haven't any choice. Because anything you like, only do hurry up. We've got some hard riding ahead if you're to be back before the family is."
"I am not," she announced, folding her arms across her bosom in a very determined way, though, actually, it was to conceal its heaving, "going anywhere until I hear an explanation. It was bad enough having Will order me about all this time, when at least I knew why. But you appear out of nowhere and start dictating—"
"Darling, I'm only trying to help you," he said, soothingly, sitting down upon the bed again. "There isn't time to explain everything. Can't you just trust me this once?"
"Trust you?" Her voice dripped sarcasm. "You've only just drugged the future Duke of Thome. Not to mention the fact that you've never behaved properly in all the time I've known you. Or done anything but tease and mock and lie. Trust you, indeed. I don't know why," she went on, angrily, "I ask you to explain, when you're bound to lie about that as well."
"I have, I agree, lied to everyone else on the whole blessed planet. But, Alexandra, to you I’ve hardly lied at all. Why do you scold so?"
He looked so genuinely baffled that she began to wonder why herself. Oh, what was the use, anyhow? She dropped her gaze to her hands. "I'm tired," she said. "I'm tired and my head is spinning, and nothing makes sense. Now you tell me I must go back. Oh, Basil, how could you?"
"How could I what?"
"You left me," she blurted out. "You left me and let me think you were gone for good—" She stopped short, realising that she was on the brink of betraying herself.
"I'm sorry, my love. I shouldn't have." He took her hand in his. "But does it matter to you what I do?"
"No," she lied, snatching her hand away.
"No, of course it doesn't. It's too much to hope. No reason on earth you should trust me, is there?"
She shook her head.
"Not even when I'm only hours away from solving the Burnham problem once and for all?"
She looked up at him, suspicious still, though hope fluttered faintly within her.
"Not even," he continued softly, "if I say I do it all for you because it matters to me what becomes of you?"
She shook her head again automatically.
He went on more lightly, "No, I suppose there's no helping that—not now, at least. Well, then, here is the situation. We must get you and Will back for a hundred reasons I can't go into now. Except that I will have laboured in vain if you run off with him. I did understand—correct me if I'm wrong— you weren't really keen on doing so."
It was useless to pretend otherwise. "I wasn't," she admitted. "I'm not."
"Then won't you please do as I ask? I can give you about half an hour to change while I deal with the innkeeper and see about horses. I promise you, it means the end of the Burnham business—without alternative fiancés and husbands. I give you my word, my love."
Well, she hadn't any choice, had she, whatever his word was worth? Will was useless at present. And she could hardly go off by herself, even if she had anywhere to go. She acquiesced.
"Oh, you are wonderful." He dropped a light kiss on the top of her head, then left the room.
She stared at the door for a moment, her hand creeping up to touch the spot where his lips had been. Of everything that baffled her—how he came to be here, why he'd drugged Will, what this mysterious plan was to solve the Burnham problem—it was this that puzzled her most. All the usual endearments, the usual mix of melodrama and farce...then one small, affectionate gesture to upset all her conclusions.
It recalled that afternoon they'd ridden together, when he'd put aside his practised arts for a while and treated her like a friend. He'd promised to help her then. But if he'd meant it, why in heaven's name had he gone off without a word of explanation, letting her think he'd gone out of her life for good?
"Oh, Basil," she murmured to the empty room, "it's always 'why' with you."
The room making no suitable reply, she shook her head and turned to the business at hand.
It was a disconcerting and troublesome business. For one, there seemed to be at least nine thousand fastenings to unfasten before she could get out of her dress. For another, his clothes didn't fit. The shirt was too big, and his trousers, which were indecently snug about her hips, gaped even more indecently at the waist. Frenziedly, she unbuttoned the trouser flap and stuffed her shawl inside, as padding. It felt stupid, and looked stupider, but at least it helped disguise her unmasculine curves. Having no idea how to deal with the neckcloth and afraid to crumple it, she ignored it, and jerked on waistcoat and coat. Apparently, since he'd not supplied her with his footwear, her own half-boots would do.
It was the oddest feeling to be wearing his clothes. Though they were fresh and clean, something of him pervaded them—something that made her feel uncomfortably warm and flustered. Nervously she pulled and tucked and pushed at the garments. Then, when she was certain nothing more could be done to improve her appea
rance, she sat down on the edge of the bed and waited.
In a few minutes there was a light tap on the door and Basil's voice asking if she was decent.
"If you can call it that," she answered, turning pink. She turned pinker still when he entered the room and, after studying her for a moment, broke into a smile.
"You needn't laugh," she snapped. "You could hardly expect a perfect fit—and I hadn't a valet to help me."
"I would have been thrilled to death to valet you, my dear, if you'd only asked. Now, if you'll pin your hair up, I shall tie your cravat. In that at least you shall not be faulted."
She did as he asked. But when he stood so close to wrap the linen about her neck, her knees grew shaky and weak, and her heart promptly commenced knocking in concert.
He was, she thought, an unconscionably long time about it. When, finally, she began to express impatience, he retorted that it was no simple business when the cloth was about his own neck; to have to work backwards was a feat of inexpressible difficulty.
"And it doesn't help—" But he thought better of it and held his tongue.
No, it didn't help at all that Alexandra in trousers—in his trousers—was provocation beyond all endurance. His hands were unsteady. They wanted to be everywhere else but at this dratted piece of linen. Her padding only invited removal, and the ill-fitting coat...oh, that was even worse. To look at it was to imagine her wearing nothing but. Being cursed with a fertile imagination, he was plagued with more disconcerting visions still, with the result that he didn't dare move a muscle beyond those required to tie the cravat, for fear he'd lose all control, drag her to the bed, and ravish her.
Finally, the job he'd been a fool to undertake was done, and he could step away from her. "There," he said, turning away. "You'll do. Just put on your—my—hat, and let's get out of here."
With the innkeeper's assistance, Will was carried out and flung unceremoniously over Basil's mount. After a brief, whispered conversation and the clinking of coins, Basil leapt up behind the marquess's prostrate form.