A Fine Gentleman Page 9

  You feel guilty. He dropped into the chair near the window. You feel responsible for bringing her pain.

  But why should he care? She was infuriating and aggravating.

  She was also suffering.

  “Seeing one’s own flaws is painful,” Father’s voice echoed in his mind. “But it is vital if one is to smooth the rough edges of one’s character.”

  Right on the heels of that reassuring declaration came the reminder of Father’s annual threat to box their ears should any of his sons mistreat a female.

  “Oh, Father.” Jason sighed, slouching in his chair. “Where are you now when I have so many questions?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jason spent two days at Lampton House. Though he still felt the weight of memories walking its empty halls, he found a degree of comfort he hadn’t felt in years.

  He mulled over the contradictory picture he had of Miss Thornton. Try as he might, he couldn’t reconcile the contradiction she presented. Yet Mater’s words returned every time he attempted to make sense of Miss Thornton. “You all keep yourselves tucked safely behind various masks and walls.” She might just as well have been speaking of the confusing young lady. Miss Thornton was hiding, but from what and why?

  He sat at his desk, accomplishing nothing despite having been at his office for more than two hours. The door opened, and Hansen stepped inside, that look on his face that always indicated he was about to announce a client.

  “Mrs. Aritza to see you.”

  Mrs. Aritza? “Show her in.” Why would Miss Thornton’s grandmother come to see him? How were they supposed to communicate? Jason quickly ran through his mind those barristers whose offices were near his, searching his memory for any who spoke Spanish.

  “I do not interrupt?” Mrs. Aritza asked, her accent heavy but her words distinguishable.

  “You speak English.” He should have known Miss Thornton hadn’t been forthright about that either. How could one person be so thoroughly dishonest?

  “Un poco,” was the reply, accompanied by a gesture indicating a minuscule amount. “Enough,” she added with a shrug.

  “Please, be seated.” Jason motioned to a chair, wondering just how much “un poco” was and whether or not they would be forced to communicate entirely in gestures.

  Mrs. Aritza seemed to understand his offer and shuffled to the chair he had indicated. Only when she was seated and had turned her deeply wrinkled face up to him did Jason notice the panic hovering in her expression. The intuition that had led him through more than one difficult case pricked at him again.

  “What has happened, Mrs. Aritza?” Jason sat in the chair beside her.

  “Mi nieta,” she said, tears suddenly swimming in her eyes.

  “I do not speak Spanish,” Jason said, feeling the lack acutely.

  “I am needing your help,” she pleaded. “She, mi nieta, found el nombre de su familia in a book and is to see if que son sus parientes.”

  Jason was having difficulty following the perplexing sentence. “Parientes? Parents?”

  “Family,” Mrs. Aritza clarified, her hands gesturing rather more wildly than before. Jason could see she was becoming ever more distressed.

  “Señora”—Jason remembered that word, at least—“please help me understand.”

  A flicker of hope appeared in the poor woman’s eyes. Jason felt all the more anxious to help her. When was the last time he’d truly been useful to someone on a personal level—for this didn’t seem like a legal matter.

  “Mariposa is searching for her familia—”

  “Her family?”

  Mrs. Aritza nodded.

  “She is not looking for her family solicitor?” he pressed.

  Her brow creased a moment in thought. “No. For her familia. Not un solicitor.”

  Why, then, had Miss Thornton sent him looking for one? She had been very specific about that. Why lie about such a commonplace thing as wanting to claim an inheritance? Why not simply tell him she was in actuality looking for her family?

  “She is gone,” Mrs. Aritza said.

  “Mariposa is gone?”

  Suddenly the woman crumbled, weeping into her hands. “She is gone. ¡No está aquí! She is gone.”

  “Where has Mariposa gone?” Jason’s heart pounded, despite himself.

  “A Escocia.”

  Where in the world was that?

  “Al norte,” Mrs. Aritza added through her sobs.

  “North?”

  She nodded.

  North. Escocia. “Scotland?”

  Another nod.

  “Please tell me she had the sense to bring that enormous footman with her.”

  Mrs. Aritza clearly didn’t understand him.

  “Is she alone?” Perhaps a more direct sentence would be better understood.

  “Sí.”

  Yes. Mariposa had gone alone, then.

  “She says she must not burden others anymore,” Mrs. Aritza said.

  I will solve my problems on my own. Mariposa had said just that with a look of utter defeat in her eyes. Lud, had he pushed her to this?

  “Her money, it is very little. She must not pay for un carruaje.”

  “When did she leave?” Jason asked. The poor woman could do naught but cry. “Please try to speak to me. I cannot help her if I do not know where she is.” He laid a comforting hand on her own tear-dampened one.

  “I no sabía if you would help me,” Mrs. Aritza said. “Stanley, he spoke mucho of you. He made us think to trust you.”

  “Of course you can trust me, señora. Only tell me by what route Mariposa has traveled and when she departed. I will try to catch her carriage.”

  Mrs. Aritza turned her deep-brown eyes, so very much like her granddaughter’s, to him. “We have no carriage.”

  “Then how is she traveling?”

  “El correo.”

  “I don’t know that word.”

  “Las cartas,” she tried. “The letters.”

  His heart stopped altogether. “She’s traveling by post?”

  “Sí.”

  He leapt to his feet on the instant, muttering further curses under his breath. A young, beautiful, unprotected woman alone on a mail coach? Had the aggravating creature taken complete leave of her senses?

  “I searched her clothes,” Mrs. Aritza said through her tears. “She has taken those she wore when we were crossing España. She will look to you to be poor.”

  She was traveling in disguise, then.

  Mrs. Aritza continued. “Her post wagon”—that wasn’t quite the right word, but Jason knew precisely what the woman meant—“left this morning at six hours.”

  “The Great North Road,” Jason said to himself. That was the way the post would travel. He had made the trip north from Town many times and knew a faster way. He turned to Mrs. Aritza, belatedly offering a handkerchief. “You must allow me to place you and a small number of the Lampton staff on the road to Nottinghamshire,” he said, holding her trembling hand in his. “My mother lives there, and I would feel easier knowing you had someone with you to offer comfort and company.”

  “Mater?” Mrs. Aritza asked, the light returning to her eyes.

  “Stanley mentioned her too, did he?” Jason smiled a little.

  Mrs. Aritza nodded. “He spoke much of all of you.”

  “Then you will be comfortable with Mater?”

  After a moment to sort out the words, she nodded once more, putting Jason’s mind at ease.

  “Let us not delay,” he said.

  They did not waste a single moment. Within the hour, Mrs. Aritza was comfortably ensconced in one of the Lampton traveling carriages headed for Lampton Park adequately provided with a maid and footman. Jason rode northward on one of Corbin’s prize mounts from Philip’s stables.

  He sincere
ly hoped Miss Thornton hadn’t embraced her vow of honesty too entirely. Her very safety depended on creating an inconspicuous façade. Should any of her fellow travelers suspect she was a well-born lady, alone and unprotected, more than her reputation might suffer.

  o

  How had she come to be in such a coil? Mere days had passed since Mariposa had sworn to no longer be a teller of half-truths and outright lies. She glanced at her wear-worn brown dress, thrice-repaired boots, and heavily mended cloak and winced. Her very appearance was a deception.

  Only by refusing to talk had she avoided telling an entire string of plumpers during this most uncomfortable of journeys. The other travelers in the mail coach had learned only that her name was Mary and that she expected to be joined on her journey at a future stop by a male member of her family. She’d simply referred to the nonexistent relative as He.

  In a few short hours, she’d amassed three more lies to her name. Mariposa refused to add to the list. She had other troubles.

  A man sat directly across from her, not a gentleman by his appearance but not lower class either. Mariposa supposed him to be a clerk or a shopkeeper. Two things about him were obvious: he was rather large compared to her, and he was showing an inordinate amount of interest in her.

  She avoided making eye contact and refused to speak with him. Still, he smiled at her with alarming regularity.

  “So your brother is meeting you down the road a bit?” the man asked, the question an obviously leading one. He was trying to determine if she was unprotected.

  Blast! She was unprotected but didn’t want him to know that.

  You are a liar. Mr. Jonquil’s scathing voice echoed in her mind. She wanted so badly to not deserve that criticism.

  She assumed her most bashful look and turned her eyes more determinedly to the window and the passing landscape, avoiding the lie by simply not answering. An unnerving though quiet chuckle met that gesture. A chill radiated through Mariposa’s entire body. She’d heard laughs like that, sounds that instantly set one on the alert. The soldiers occupying Orthez or stalking the roads of Spain and France had laughed in precisely that way. Staying hidden had saved her in the past. Hiding was not a possibility in a closed mail coach.

  “So will he be at the next stop, do you suppose?”

  Mariposa gave a tiny smile. Let him make of that what he would.

  He apparently saw it as a sign of encouragement. Before too many more miles passed, he orchestrated a change of seats, much to the displeasure of his fellow passengers. Positioned like he was, his knees brushed Mariposa’s with every jolt of the carriage.

  She pulled her legs in as much as possible, tucking herself into the corner. The man slouched more, his legs jutting farther from his side of the carriage. She took a quick covert glance only to find a predatory smile on the man’s lips.

  She swallowed down the thick lump that materialized in her throat. Dozens of incidents flashed mercilessly through her memory. Vulgar laughter at a tiny inn in eastern Spain. Coarse comments echoing from a not-distant-enough French army encampment. Huddling with her family as quietly as possible amongst the hay in the back corner of a barn, hoping the discontented mob out scouring the countryside didn’t find them and exact ill-aimed revenge for years of warfare. She’d feared for her life again and again. She’d trembled with terror more than once.

  But England was supposed to be safe—Papá had told her so countless times. All the fear and danger would be left behind. War would be a distant memory. She would be safe.

  England was supposed to be different.

  A chuckle reverberated through the carriage. Mariposa muscled down a sob.

  Please, she silently prayed, please send someone to help me.

  But the heavens, she feared, didn’t answer the pleas of a liar.

  The mail coach pulled into the yard of an inn some three hours after that desperate prayer. Mariposa was a breath away from panicked tears but knew from instinct and experience that such vulnerability would, to the cad who was tormenting her, be an open invitation to further his campaign.

  She would be afforded a scant ten-minute break while the horses were changed and the coachman given a fortifying tankard of ale. Mariposa sprung from the coach, hoping to find a hiding place to huddle in until the time came to board once more. With any luck, she could secure a seat as far from her tormentor as possible.

  Not five steps from the coach, someone grabbed her wrist. Mariposa did not have to look to know who held her so painfully firm.

  “You cannot tease for so many miles and then simply slip away.” The grip on her wrist tightened further. “We have a few minutes, sweetheart.”

  Despite knowing it would only add to his view of her as a challenge, Mariposa instinctively pulled on his grip, trying to free herself.

  He laughed.

  She cast her eyes around the inn yard, looking for anyone who might come to her aid. Only the kind-eyed but obviously intimidated older woman who had given her numerous commiserating glances even noticed her predicament. There would be no help, no rescue.

  She had saved her family, kept them safe and protected. For years she’d borne their burdens without complaint. Why, in her hour of most desperate need, was there no one to help her?

  Her assailant tugged at her wrist with such force that she had no choice but to stumble after him. He was moving away from the inn and into the more secluded yard around back. Her fierce attempts to free herself proved futile.

  “Stop,” she insisted. “Let me go.”

  He didn’t appear to hear or care. She fought him still, the struggle becoming more pronounced and more conspicuous.

  “So you have a little fire.” The man chuckled ominously. “I like that.”

  “Release me!”

  He tightened his grip and gave a sudden jerk. Mariposa very nearly lost her footing, barely managing to keep from stumbling to the ground.

  He spun her around, and she found herself nose to chest with the man accosting her.

  “None of that, missy. I’ve been wanting to see that hair of yours. Drives a man mad, it does. But you probably know that.”

  She flinched when he reached for her. Her continued struggle did no good. She was no closer to freedom than she’d been moments earlier.

  “I’ll be seeing it down, I will.”

  “I rather think not,” a second voice replied, unmistakable authority in its tone.

  “Scuttle off,” her captor snarled. “This is none of your concern.”

  “It absolutely is.”

  Mariposa felt a pair of hands rest lightly on her shoulders. Her wrist was immediately released, even as she felt herself gently set aside. She barely registered a tall, lean figure step past her before a well-placed fist leveled her would-be attacker, who slumped rather pathetically and slid to the ground.

  Mariposa raised her eyes to her rescuer and could not, upon looking into his face, keep back a sob. His clothes were not those which befitted his station. His accent, obviously assumed, lacked the refinement she knew was naturally there—indeed, she had not even recognized his voice. But there was no mistaking him once she looked.

  Without a second thought, she threw her arms around him, burying her face in his jacket front. Her voice came out as little more than a whisper. “Oh, Jason!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Are you all about in the head?” Jason demanded, probably more harshly than necessary. Mariposa’s unexpected and almost desperate embrace had caught him off guard, nearly as much as his heart-thumping reaction. “Do you have any concept of the fate that might have befallen you, traveling unprotected?”

  She lifted her face at his words of criticism, and Jason could see by the starkness in her eyes that she knew precisely what could happen to a lone woman. His stomach clenched. Had the cad done more to her than he’d thought?

  The look in
her eyes, though, was too deep-rooted to have been planted there only in the past few minutes. She had learned to be wary long ago. The idea was not reassuring. Had there been others who had eyed her like a starved dog would eye a cut of beef? Jason had to restrain himself lest he kick the still-prostrate reprobate. He chose, instead, to guide Mariposa across the inn yard and move away from the scoundrel.

  More than a little unnerved at the surge of protectiveness he felt, he put some distance between himself and Mariposa and gave her his most reprimanding look. “Have you any idea how worried your grandmother is?” he demanded. “She was beyond distraught when she came to my office.”

  Mariposa’s entire countenance softened. “I thought perhaps your arrival was coincidence. You truly came for me?”

  “To save you from yourself,” Jason muttered the correction, for the first time questioning why he’d hied to the rescue so quickly. “And to ease your grandmother’s concerns.” Which brought another grievance to mind. Jason crossed his arms over his chest and gave her an evaluating look. “She, by the way, speaks surprisingly good English, and I detected not a single hint of her previously frequent twitching.”

  Mariposa looked appropriately ashamed, but Jason felt no triumph in seeing it. Rather, he felt a strange urge to embrace her again. Aggravating woman! To mask his confusion, he paced away a few steps.

  “I should have included that in my confession, Mr. Jonquil.” she said.

  He inexplicably found himself disappointed that she hadn’t used his Christian name as she had in the moment of palpable relief that had followed his flattening of her attacker.

  “She does speak English, though not as well as I do,” Mariposa admitted. “She also speaks French. And Portuguese.” She sighed. “And Abuela—she does not twitch.”

  When he’d first realized she was prevaricating, he’d wanted nothing more than to force her to admit it. Finally getting what he’d hoped for did not prove nearly as satisfying as he had anticipated.