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She thought she must have dozed, for a sudden draft awakened her and subsequent covert sounds of liquid being poured indicated that whoever had come through that oddly placed side door was no burglar but was quite at home. The hall door opened and she heard confident steps.
“Gaspard, what news?” Bennet demanded in perfect French.
Rose gaped in the privacy of her chair as Gaspard revealed plans to free Napoleon from his island prison. He mentioned half a dozen ships, L’Inconstant by name, and a thousand men.
“They managed to evade the British cruisers then,” Bennet said. “Amazing.” Bennet’s contributions to the conversation, though in fluent French, were noncommittal. None of the news, though he demanded details, seemed to be much of a surprise to him. Rose listened to his inflection to see if she could tell if he were a part of this heinous plot, but she could not.
The door was flung open again and Rose thought the room was getting a trifle crowded. Her danger of being discovered was great, even if she made no sound.
“Leighton, come in,” Bennet said. “You are very late.”
“I just got Walters’s message,” the new voice said excitedly. “I had to dispatch a flurry of reports just in case.”
“Gaspard seems to have little doubt his news from the fishermen on Elba is true.”
The door to the library thumped open again and Rose moaned inwardly, drawing tighter into the cover of the wing chair.
“Bennet, I want to speak to you now,” Axel demanded drunkenly.
“Not now, Foy, can you not see I am engaged?”
“This cannot wait.”
“Oh, very well. Leighton, take Gaspard, go to your office and await me there.”
This last was spoken in English, Rose supposed, for Axel’s benefit. To her relief at least two of the men left by the exterior door.
“I am not asking permission this time. I am telling you. I mean to have Harriet.”
“Yes, of course,” Bennet replied. “Brandy?”
“What do you mean? She told you?”
Rose heard glasses being filled and wondered what Bennet was playing at.
“We discussed all this when I turned her inheritance over to her,” Bennet said calmly. “She is responsible for her own fortune now. It was nice of you to come to ask formally for her hand, but there was really no need.”
“But I didn’t,” Axel replied.
“But surely you intend to,” Bennet countered.
“You cannot stop me.”
“I do not mean to. I only stood in your way four years ago because of her young age. Since her attention has remained fastened on you all these years, I see now that I was wrong.”
“You admit you were wrong?” Axel asked incredulously.
“Yes, her love for you, compared to the length of most affairs in London, amounts to a grand passion. Without a doubt, you and Harriet belong together.”
Rose heard their glasses click together, but she did not imagine Axel was participating in the toast.
“We do? Yes, of course we do. So there are no settlements to work out?”
“Not between the two of us. You have only to deal with Harriet. Do you plan a large wedding?”
“I—we haven’t decided yet.”
“Allow me to put one of my traveling carriages at your disposal for your honeymoon. Also Harriet has taken a notion to have a London house. I can be no end of help to you there.”
“I prefer to make my own arrangements, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Just let me know if I can be of service.”
“I—I will.”
The door opened and closed with less assurance this time and Rose breathed a sigh of relief. If only Bennet would leave now. She heard him chuckling to himself. So, he was not really foisting his sister on such a villain as Foy, but was making a May game of the man. She heard footsteps coming toward the fireplace and closed her eyes as if in sleep. She detected a slight gasp when Bennet discovered her, but maintained her pose. He said nothing, but she could feel his weight on the arms of the chair, his breath on her forehead, then his lips on hers. Her eyes flew open.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she stammered as she shrank into the chair.
“Waking a very appealing sleeping beauty.”
“I do not think you really believed me to be asleep.”
“Of course, you were asleep. Otherwise I might suspect you of eavesdropping.”
“No one could have slept though Axel’s incoherent ranting.”
“Aha, that should have been my line, not yours.”
“Very well, I was pretending to be asleep to avoid embarrassment.” She stood and closed the volume.
“For you or me?”
“For both of us. And as long as I have been accused of spying—” she laid an accusing emphasis on the word but Bennet only grinned at her “—what do you mean by handing your sister over to such a rake?”
“But if I make it easy for him, he may decide he does not want her. Believe me, I know Axel.”
“I know him too.”
“I have been trying to forget that,” Bennet said with the first edge to his voice that she had ever heard. He put down his glass and deliberately kissed her. And she let him, only coming to her senses when she realized this was just the sort of thing she would have killed Axel for. But Bennet was nothing like Axel. Still, this was not a kiss of friendship, and she had to put him in his place.
When he finally released her she sniffed and said, “In your own way you are just as ruthless and manipulative as Axel.”
“Something tells me I should take offense at that,” he replied, trying to get close to her lips again and finding a volume of Diderot thrust in his face instead.
“Something tells me you won’t. I must go and find Stanley and Alice. It is time we were taking our leave.”
He did not try to detain her but chuckled again as he replaced the volume on the shelf. It was in French and if he knew anything about Miss Gwen Rose Wall, he could make a guess that she was not just looking at the pictures. He went over his conversation with Gaspard in his mind. Even if she spoke of it, and he did not think she would, she was scarcely likely to spook their quarry, not before the trap had been sprung. He really must remember never to underestimate her again.
Chapter Four
The next day Rose and Martin had ridden alone again and Rose decided to go with Martin to return the horses to Varner House. They rode around the corner past that larger side portico to the stable block off the alley. Rose was not surprised at the opulence of this part of the house. She was just complimenting Stilton on the facilities when Bennet drove in with a high-stepping team that required all the efforts of his tiger to subdue while Bennet jumped down in order to be the one who lifted Rose from the saddle and set her gently down on the paved brick courtyard. “I’m sorry I missed our ride today. Surely you were not going to walk back to the hotel.”
“I had some thought of getting a hack and going shopping down Oxford Street on the way back,” she replied, stepping out of his embrace.
“Did you enjoy your ride?”
“Immensely, since I did not have to fend off either Axel or you.”
“I must apologize for my behavior last night I was...drunk.”
“I know when a man is drunk and you were no such thing.”
Bennet, looking boyish in his somber attire, blinked at being contradicted. “Excited then. I lost my head.”
“That’s not much of an excuse for your behavior in the library last night,” Rose said, turning her back.
“Stealing a kiss?” Bennet walked around in front of her, blocking her retreat from the stable block. “Is it my fault you are utterly irresistible...friend?”
Rose noticed that both grooms and the tiger were pointedly ignoring them, meaning they could hear every word. “That was not a kiss of friendship,” she whispered urgently. “Martin,” she called. “Please go find us a hack.”
“Don’t bother, Martin,” Bennet countered. “I will take you back to your hotel or shopping if that’s what you wish.” Saying that he lifted Rose into the curricle, which seesawed slightly behind the agitated team. He had swung her about so effortlessly it almost made her giddy. She should resent that, but somehow she found that she liked to be a bit dizzy when in Bennet’s company. It let her say things she would never think to say to another man.
Bennet hopped in, grabbed the reins and spared no more than a backward glance to make sure Martin and the tiger had swung up behind. “Now where were we?” he asked Rose as he feathered the turn into the street.
“In too public a place to discuss anything private,” Rose reminded him.
“I’m sure I can rely on the discretion of my tiger just as you trust Martin.”
Rose stared at him, wondering how much of her connection with Martin he divined. “It was not your loss of control that worried me the most.”
“What then?” Bennet glanced at her in such apparent innocent good humor she felt unable to upbraid him about the presence of the Frenchman in his library. If he were guilty of clandestine activity against the government would he be likely to have the effrontery to invite her condemnation? The answer was yes. From her brief experience of Bennet Varner, there was little he would not dare and nothing he could not carry off. She must not let herself be as swayed by his charm as everyone else was. Beginning to feel her long silence had grown awkward, Rose scrambled in her mind to find some other flaw with which to upbraid him, but she could not.
Bennet grinned at her speechlessness. “Do you go to the party at Lady Catherine’s house tonight?” he asked absently.
“No, why should they invite us?”
“Because it would be the gracious thing to do for the relatives of a close friend, which is precisely why they have not.”
“You sound as though you resent them as much as...”
“As much as I dislike my own mother and sister? That was what you were about to say, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but then I remembered my manners.”
“You won’t have much use for them in London,” Bennet said, passing a string of carts and running the danger of locking wheels with a mail coach before he nipped back to his side of the street. “You will meet a great many people here who will be gracious to your face, but who will talk about you unmercifully behind your back.”
“And how are they different from people anywhere else?” she asked, clutching the side of the curricle as he feathered another corner. It suddenly occurred to her that they were not going to Greeves Hotel, that they were not, in fact, even going in the right direction.
She was about to point this out to Bennet when he turned a look of genuine surprise upon her. “You have been the subject of gossip before?”
“Yes,” she said guardedly. “The breaking of an engagement, even when done by mutual agreement, is bound to be a cause for gossip.”
“Was that the only reason for the gossip?” He asked it casually, as though it were a matter of little interest to him. But Rose read it as an invitation to confide in him. Had there not been the tiger pointedly ignoring them, she might have been tempted, but there were Martin’s feelings to consider as well.
“You know what Axel is. I offended his pride by crying off. Even though he took the ring back with relief, he gave it about that he was the one who jilted me and hinted at some dark reason for his decision.”
“Yes, putting all the blame on you without saying anything actionable.”
“As though I would take him to court when all I wanted to do was forget...” Rose ran out of breath, and Bennet looked at her with concern.
“Forget Axel? Impossible. He is like a boil on one’s neck. It is impossible to forget him even when he is a thousand miles away.”
Rose laughed nervously. “Does Lady Catherine entertain often?”
“Nearly every week. She needs material and that is the easiest way to get it.”
“Material? Whatever do you mean?” Rose stared about at the shops they were now passing, mapmakers, chandlers and an excise office.
“For her rumor mill. When I said Harriet had fallen under some bad influence it was the Gravelys I was referring to. They have taught her to be spiteful with a smile, playing people against each other for amusement—the sort of social torture I would like to warn you of.”
“In order to be hurt by them I should have to care what they thought, what anyone thought of me, and I do not.”
“Does Alice?” Bennet asked, drawing a conscience-stricken look from Rose.
“Yes, but she is an innocent. What has she to worry about?”
“Last season they took Miss Robin Coates on as their protégée, led her into excesses that became too dangerous. Now they have dropped her. She will never receive another invitation from either family, and no word of explanation.”
“But what has that to do with—”
“Ah, here we are,” Bennet said with satisfaction, and he pulled the team to a halt on the dock.
“But where are we?” Rose demanded, letting him swing her down from the curricle all the same.
“The Celestine. I was sure you would want to inspect her.”
“And if I feel that the staterooms are too small?” Rose looked critically at the three-masted schooner with its green and gilt trim.
“Why, we can have them enlarged. Of course, we shall have to throw part of the cargo overboard, but it’s only money. Actually I knew they were to remove the old mast today, so I thought you might like to watch.” Bennet looked up at the intricate block and tackle arrangements and nodded.
“You are impossible!” Rose said as she let him take her arm to help her along the crowded quay.
“Just when I was congratulating myself on how agreeable I was being.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Shall I carry you? I would not want you to trip on your riding habit and fall into the Thames.”
