How to Wed a Baron Part 15

She needed to stop lying to everyone-and to herself. Alina looked down at her hands, unsurprised to see that she'd entwined her fingers together and that her knuckles had turned quite white. "It doesn't matter. He's leaving England in a few days, for America. Because, you understand, he has burned too many bridges and his life is over and there's no place for me in what's left of it."

And then she cried...and told these two warm and wonderful women who could have been her sisters everything that was in her heart.

THERE WAS NOTHING IN the world to compare with the English countryside. Justin had traveled through Europe, its towns, its cities. He'd seen grape vineyards and snow-topped mountains and lush plains planted with wheat and fed by wide blue rivers. He'd sipped tsipouro at a small cafe in Athens while looking out over the Aegean Sea, walked the same streets once trod by Julius Caesar and his legions, ridden in a dogsled toward the colorful spires of St. Basil's in Moscow, and visited the royal mounds of Gamla Uppsala in Sweden.

But nothing he had seen or experienced could take the place of the sight of his most neat and orderly England. The carefully manicured fields, the hedgerows and stone walls that divided them and yet at the same time bound them all together. The church spires always visible in the distance. The ruins, the manor houses, the quaint villages, the thatch-roofed farmhouses, the fat cows in the meadows, the rosy-cheeked children laughing on the village green. Even the rain; the rain was different in England.

It was time he was truthful, if only to himself.

This was his country. His home. It wasn't always right, its leaders not always wise, its fights not always fair or justified. There was poverty, there was greed. But there was also good. So very much good. England. Always to endure.

Justin reined in his mount at the crest of a hill overlooking Basingstoke, where Alina waited for him. He wondered what she'd thought when she'd caught her first glimpse of this, one of the premier estates in Hampshire, larger even than Ashurst Hall. She'd probably been impressed; G.o.d knows he'd been when he'd caught his first sight of it through the trees.

His own Hampshire estate was only half the size, but Justin believed its setting was equally fine, and that if anyone thought they required more than twenty bedrooms, then that person lived a life much different from his own.

Alina would never see his Hampshire estate, the one he'd carried a picture of in his heart for the past eight years. He couldn't allow himself to see her there, or even to imagine her there, especially if the Prince Regent found some way to confiscate the property that had been in the Wilde family since the fifteen hundreds. But she'd be fine with his town house, and with the much smaller estate near Malvern, in Worcestershire.

He'd never see her reaction to either of those places, either. He'd never watch, his pride in her absolute, as she charmed the ton with her wit and beauty, her wonderfully wise innocence. He'd never waltz with her in the candlelight, playfully hand her the reins as they drove through Hyde Park. Because he'd be a world away from her.

And it was all his fault.

Why, for only the second time in his life, had he acted without a single thought to the consequences?

His first thoughtless action had been to respond in anger when the surgeon in attendance had shouted out he turns early the day Robbie Farber's insane action had robbed him of his life and Justin of his country.

Why, having had eight long years to reflect on the danger of choosing his battles poorly, had he done what he'd done? What maggot had got into his brain so that he'd confronted the Prince Regent-for the love of G.o.d, threatened to strangle the miserable excuse for royalty where he stood?

But he already knew the answer. Alina. He'd acted in some misguided idea he was safeguarding her, and with no thought to himself.

No, that wasn't completely true. He'd also been angry-incensed!-that the Prince Regent had inadvertently shown him a future, and then taken it away by pairing him with the niece of the man he'd killed.

He could only hope that he'd put enough fear into the Prince Regent that he now regretted his insane plot that could include Alina's death at the hands of Inhaber Novak. Justin had seen the confusion in the man's eyes when he'd pushed at him; clearly he hadn't thought all the way through the thing, past the part where he would no longer be bothered with one Baron Justin Wilde. It was always those who had never killed, never seen a battlefield, never felt their own life in danger, who plotted most with the lives of others, blithely believing in that most terrible of axioms: the end justifies the means.

And yet. And yet.

And yet there was no way to erase what had been done. No way to change the past. No way to deal with this d.a.m.n Inhaber. No way to a.s.suage the Prince Regent. No way to remain in England.

No way to ever see Alina smiling up at him as he gently laid her down on the ancestral bed of the Wildes and, together, they set the course for their future. Love. Children. A lifetime together...

"Are you planning on spending the day here? I admit this aspect is one of my favorites, but I believe there's someone down there, waiting for you. G.o.d only knows why-you look like h.e.l.l. Tanner, I barely remember Justin from our salad days in London, so you be the judge. He looks like h.e.l.l, yes?"

Justin turned about in his saddle to see Lucas Paine walking his mount toward him, followed closely by- "Tanner? What in b.l.o.o.d.y blazes are you doing here?"

"Hear that, Lucas? I told you that's what he'd say," the Duke of Malvern said as the three men shook hands. "Not so much as a single h.e.l.lo, just what in h.e.l.l am I doing here. You're becoming d.a.m.ned predictable, Justin. Although threatening the life of our future king? I wouldn't have won any wagers betting against that one as being too mad even for you."

Justin looked at his smiling friend in complete amazement. "How...?"

"How could I have known?" Tanner Blake removed his curly brimmed beaver to run a gloved hand through his dark blond hair. "How could I not? It's all over Mayfair. That, and the fact that Prinny coerced fifty thousand pounds from you to secure that pardon you wanted so badly and labored so diligently to deserve-I seem to have been indiscreet there, telling all who would listen how well you'd served the Crown. Difficult as it is to fathom, as you're no longer the easiest fellow to get along with, it would seem that the sympathies of the ton are firmly with you, and our Prince Regent has taken to his bed, to be bled by his leeches and fretted over by his latest aged cherie amour."

Justin's hands tightened so on the reins that the bay began to dance sideways in protest. Because, even though it was his life they were talking about, all he really wanted to know was how Alina was, was she all right, happy. Had she asked about him, cursed him; was she waiting for him. "That...that doesn't seem possible."

"It's London, Justin," Lucas Paine said as the three headed their horses toward the estate house. "Anything is possible, and the more absurd that anything is, the more possible it becomes. h.e.l.l, man, the populace tosses eggs at Prinny's coach when he dares to go abroad. You were only a little more...direct in your protest. But he's not yet forgiven, isn't that right, Tanner?"

"Far from it. Not since the Austrian government has lodged a formal protest with our government over the unprovoked murder of three of its citizens at the hands of one Baron Wilde. Oh, and there is supposedly a witness, although he keeps babbling about a giant more than he does about you. Would you happen to know anything about that, Justin?"

"They were sent to kill Alina," Justin protested, and then shook his head. "But you're right. I didn't have to dispatch them. I could just as easily have disabled them. I was...making a statement." Mine. Do what you want to me, but this is what happens when you touch what is mine.

"You were making a mess more of mess," Lucas Paine said with the certainty that his most recent guest wouldn't kill him on his own property, with his brother-in-law as witness. "Although I don't blame you. They'd already made one failed attempt on her life while you were busier in London than Puss in Boots, frightening the p.i.s.s out of Prinny. Somebody had to pay for that."

"I suppose so, Lucas," Tanner agreed as they rode three abreast along the wide gravel drive toward the front doors. "Then again, diplomacy has never been Justin's strong point. And we'd have to consider his cloak-and-dagger years for the Crown. War changes a man, G.o.d knows I know that. Perhaps he saw the elimination of those men as nothing more than expediency, reducing the number of the enemy, and nothing out of the ordinary for him. It's understandable."

"All right, we'll give him the three men. But what about the colonel-in-chief, this Novak fellow who seems involved somehow?"

Justin sat forward in the saddle and looked across at the two men. He really needed to begin paying attention. "Yes, what does he do about the Inhaber Novak? Pray do continue your discussion, and don't consider me in the slightest. Why, I might not even be here."

Tanner grinned at him. "Yes, I'd already noticed that your mind seems elsewhere. But good G.o.d, Justin, you should have heard us before you got here. I felt like an old biddy full of gossip and in a fever to tell somebody what I knew as I raced here from London, thanks to a letter from Charlotte telling me you'd been to Ashurst Hall, and another from Lucas here, telling me where you were heading. It's a good thing Lydia was already in residence, visiting her sister, or she would have missed all the fun, and we all know she's fond of you, Lord only knows why. By the way, the ladies are, however, all out of charity with you at the moment. As your friend, I thought I should warn you."

They dismounted as three footmen hastened to take the reins of their horses. "The ladies? If I were to count noses on these ladies," Justin inquired carefully, thinking of Alina, "how many noses would I be counting?" Other than Alina's. G.o.d, what a mess he'd made!

"Three. Oh, wait. Four?" Tanner laughed. "Do we include your man Wigglesworth in that? It seems that some jokester in the Romany camp decided it would be great good fun to hide his usual clothing, so that he arrived here in his incognito-ness, as he kept indignantly informing anyone who was listening rather than simply being doubled over in laughter. The skirts, and most especially the bows in his wig, didn't help his case, let me tell you."

Justin wanted to be where he wasn't, and he wasn't inside Basingstoke, hunting down Alina. But the game must be played. "He has to be devastated, and a devastated Wigglesworth, gentlemen, can be worse than a toothache. I'm tempted to call back my horse and ride on. Where is he, Lucas?"

"One of the Gyp-pardon me. One of the Romany brought the clothing early this morning, all brushed and pressed and ghastly. It seems your man Brutus paid a small visit to the camp last night. I believe his powers of persuasion saved the day. At any rate, I imagine he's in your a.s.signed rooms, once more properly overdressed and breathlessly awaiting your arrival. Shall we get back to counting noses?"

Justin's head was spinning. He was in no shape to confront Alina. He looked as if he'd been dragged through one of the hedgerows backward. More importantly, he wasn't in control of himself. For the first time in too many years, he was worried that he had something to lose...and even more worried that he might already have lost it.

And Tanner knew it. Not Lucas, who couldn't know that he was on the very edge of tossing aside whatever sangfroid he'd always prided himself on possessing. But Tanner knew. He had to get away from them, regroup. Only then could he see Alina again.

It also wasn't lost on him that this singular woman he hadn't known existed until a few short days ago had the power to reduce him to a quivering ma.s.s of nerves and apprehension....

He looked at the open doors to the house and very deliberately shrugged his shoulders. "I imagine I'll be able to work that out for myself when we meet for dinner. For now, I've barely slept in days. Would it be cowardly of me to postpone meeting the ladies until I've slept, had a bath and perhaps some food that doesn't move around on the plate of its own accord?"

"What do you say, Tanner?" the marquess asked in mock seriousness. "Shall I agree to harbor this dastardly fugitive?"

"He did make a cake out of Prinny. There's that in his favor," Tanner pointed out. "Although I'd still like to hear more about this Novak fellow and why Justin's been racing about the countryside, gleefully dispatching his attendants. We can't seem to figure that one out, can we?"

"Oh, the devil with the both of you merry imbeciles," Justin declared, climbing the front steps two at a time and striding into the entrance hall. "I think I'd rather face your wives. But not until I've had some d.a.m.ned sleep. Wigglesworth! Show yourself, man, I'm in need of a bed!"

Justin Wilde had relied on himself for so many years. He'd operated in the shadows of life, shunning his friends, protecting them from the man he'd become. He'd turned to Rafe and Tanner and Lucas only because he had no choice; he'd needed a safe place for Alina. Not for himself, for her.

But somehow Alina had opened that door he'd so firmly shut the day he'd fled England and the hangman. Now the door seemed easier to open to others. Because of her. Because she took him on faith, took him on trust, and believed she saw something still good inside him long after he'd thought he'd traveled beyond caring what anyone thought of him.

The laughter of his old friend and his new friend followed Justin up the curving staircase and, strangely, his step felt lighter than it had done in days. Was there hope? Was there really a way out of this d.a.m.nable mess he'd help create?

And where the devil was Alina?

LET HIM COME TO YOU. That's what they'd told her. You were very brave, Lydia had said as she'd handed Alina a handkerchief when tears threatened yet again. You went to him. You bared your heart to him. He has his demons, yes. We all have demons of some sort. I know this won't be easy for you, as you're more like Nicole than could possibly be comfortable for you, but it's up to Justin now to realize that your love is greater than his fears for you. He's a much better man than he believes himself to be. I know, because he was enormously helpful to Tanner and me during a...a difficult time.

Nicole's advice had been equally as heartfelt, but more direct. No, no, we don't let him come to you. We make him come to you. And I'm less kind than my sister. Demons or no, he has behaved abominably. Of course he'll marry you. He compromised you. Even the Bad Baron is aware that there are rules a gentleman can break, and those he cannot.

And that, Alina had decided during a mostly sleepless night, was now the problem. She and Justin had been formally betrothed, albeit by proxy, an agreement between her king and his Prince Regent. The banns had been read in her home church. A substantial dowry had been agreed upon and sent off to London (and probably had gone straight to the Prince Regent, but that didn't make it any less official, did it?). That was all troublesome, but there had to be ways and ways to wriggle out of the betrothal, as Justin had so clearly stated he wished to do.

The easiest, of course, was for him to take himself and his demons off to America. Nicole had said something very interesting about that, as well. If he didn't care for you, he'd marry you. It's because he cares that he's being so ridiculous, you know. Men and their honor can be extremely annoying at times, and when their hearts are involved, annoying can turn even the best of them into blockheads. Even Lydia had nodded her agreement.

But then, Alina knew, there was still the worst of it: she'd seduced him. She hadn't known there was a term for what she'd done that night at the stream, but Nicole did, and the word was seduced. How that compared to being compromised, Alina wasn't too clear about, but it seemed to her that she was as guilty, or even more guilty, than Justin. All that business about gentlemen succ.u.mbing to uncontrollable l.u.s.t at the drop of a hat. If truth be told, and she might as well be truthful, if only to herself, she'd rather counted on that....

Poor Justin. He'd been under constant duress ever since she'd first stepped onto the dock at Portsmouth, and all because of her. Well, mostly because of her. He shouldn't have to marry her just because she was in love with him.

The kindest thing she could do would be to relieve him of any sense of obligation to her. Then, if Nicole and Lydia could be believed, there might still exist a way for him to remain in England, which he could not do if he did something terrible to the Inhaber because of her. Clearly she was a complication he didn't need.

Alina looked around the conservatory, where she had been sitting for half the afternoon on the twins' orders, waiting for Justin to come to her. She would soon grow whiskers, waiting for him to come to her. But both Nicole and Lydia had agreed on that one single point: the next move had to come from him.

Perhaps someone would be kind enough to gather her dry and withered remains after she'd expired here among all the pretty flowers, waiting for him- "Alina?"

She nearly cried out as Justin walked toward her, looking as wonderfully exquisite as he had that day on the docks. He'd made a handsome, roguish Romany, but when rigged out in his marvelous London finery, there could be no other man on earth who looked so fine. He stopped on his way, plucked an orchid from its curving stem and carried it with him, depositing it in her outstretched palm before sitting down beside her.

"Beautiful, but not perfect. They have no scent, you know," he said just as if the last words he'd said to her before these hadn't been I can never forgive myself for what I've done to you....

She lifted the bloom to her face and inhaled deeply. It was a pretty flower, a lovely gesture, but she'd rather he'd kissed her. "I can imagine that this one does. Nothing is ever perfect, except in our imaginations. The rest of the time, we simply have to learn to muddle through, taking the good with the bad."

"And what are we muddling through today?" he asked, lifting her hand and pressing his lips against her suddenly heated skin.

He wasn't going to be serious, which meant that, inside, he was very serious indeed. She longed to slap him.

Why didn't he kiss her somewhere other than her hand?

"I'm not sure. I would imagine you'd know that better than I. Are the duke and d.u.c.h.ess about to take me off to Malvern so that you can go kill somebody else?"

"Would you go with them if I asked it of you?"

Still they hadn't looked at each other. Not really. Physical intimacy beneath the moonlight, it would seem, resulted in nervous avoidance in the mundane, everyday world. Did we really do that? It had all seemed so natural, so wonderful, at the time. So why are we so loath to be reminded of it now?

"I don't think so, no. I believe I am done being shunted off somewhere else each time you decide what you think is best for me. I've already lost my beautiful new wardrobe to Ashurst and my caravan to Basingstoke. I imagine the only thing I have left to lose to Malvern would be...you."

He avoided a direct answer, a fact she didn't miss. She was learning him, she really was. He should be careful about that, not that she was going to warn him.

If she looked at him, would he kiss her?

"You enjoyed the caravan?"

"I enjoyed the...adventure. The Romany have a freedom we can never have, even as they are at times persecuted and even shunned for who they are. But at least they have each other, and the streams, and the moonlight. People who don't understand such things say they have no home, but Loiza told me their hearts and homes travel with them, and that it's only the heart that needs a home."

"And what of the land? The Inhaber seems to want it very much, and I say that with my tongue so firmly in my cheek I'm surprised you can understand what I'm asking."

Alina sighed. No, he wasn't going to kiss her. He was going to talk. Did he have any idea how fatigued she was with talking? "You were right. Loiza says it would bring them only sorrow. But, Justin," she said, turning to look at him for the first time since he sat down beside her, "the land is not mine to give, not really. It's not his to take, either. It's disputed. Correct?"

"You've been thinking, haven't you?" He smiled, stroked the back of one finger down her cheek, so that she was caught between sighing and leaning against him and wanting to shake him for not really listening to her.

Very nice, the way he touched her. Almost as if he could not sit so close to her and not touch her.

But she'd rather he kissed her.

She slapped his hand away (thinking this a good compromise between the two) and got to her feet. If he wanted to talk, then he should be prepared to listen, as well!

"I refuse to discuss this with you anymore, Justin. All you can think of doing is going around killing everyone. Shooting the Inhaber because he tried to have me shot, which he did, and it was horrible of him and he probably deserves to die for any number of good reasons, but that doesn't make it right that you be the one to kill him. Just when your friends think they can find a way to rescue you from all your follies-yes, I heard about the Prince Regent, yet again-you will ruin everything by thinking there is no solution except to hunt down the Inhaber and...and execute him. That's what you were doing while you were gone, wasn't it. Finding some way to kill the man? Or is he already dead?"

He stood up as well and took hold of her by the shoulders, obviously knowing what she knew-that she was ready to run from the conservatory.

Don't touch me. Don't touch me unless you mean it. Don't talk to me. Hold me. Don't you want to hold me?

"I was attempting to contact the man, Alina. There's a difference. Contrary to what you think, an impression I imagine you gained from me, I do not go around killing everyone." And then he smiled. "Sometimes I only threaten to kill them."

Alina rolled her eyes in frustration. "Now you're making a joke, which only tells me that you're thinking again what a bad man you are, and all of that drivel you keep mouthing every time I try to tell you that I-"

She clamped her mouth tightly shut on the words love you. She wasn't going to say those words. They'd only make him feel more obligated to her.

"Every time you try to tell me what, Alina?" he asked her, stepping closer, so that her heart began to pound almost hurtfully in her chest.

"Nothing," she said, looking down at her shoe tops, her borrowed shoe tops, and felt herself slowly begin to shatter into very small pieces. She couldn't help herself. She was only one woman, and only very newly a woman at that, and she had been bartered by her king like so much produce, betrothed to a man she didn't know, dropped into a foreign country only to learn her only living relative really was her odious aunt Mimi and there would be no cousins or uncles and aunts to welcome her. She'd been submerged in a mud puddle, nearly shot, been hidden away with the Romany, had kissed a fool, had been introduced to parts of her body and feelings, both physical and emotional, she hadn't until that moment known existed, and...and... "You keep trying to make things better for me, and you only keep making them worse for both of us!"

He stepped back, shock evident in his expression. "Well, so much for Justin Wilde, the better man. I wondered how long it might take you to realize the gravity of my sin against you. No matter the provocation, the circ.u.mstances, I should be shot for touching you."

"Shot! Do you hear yourself? Everything is life and death to you," she accused, waving her arms (in what she would later think the way of a demented windmill). "The Inhaber wants me dead, so he must die. Your Prince Regent connives with my king, so you puff yourself up and run off to threaten his life. I don't know why the man you killed while we were with the Romany had to die, because you didn't tell me, but I'm certain he did something worthy of dying for."

"I suppose," Justin said tightly, "that your conclusion would depend on where you were standing when the man produced a pair of wicked-looking knives and announced that he was going to kill me."

Some of the wind went out of her sails. "Oh. Well, then I guess that was all right." And don't you laugh at me now. Don't you dare laugh at me!

Justin took her hands and pulled her back down on the bench. "Contrary to what you may think, kitten, I do not rise from my bed every morning and think to myself, ah, and who might I kill today? I thought I was done with that when the war ended. I prayed I was done with it long before the war ended. I bought my way back to England, intent only on living out my life in my homeland. I didn't ask for anything I had to do in these past few days. But I won't apologize for it. I did what I was trained to do. I'm talking about something entirely different here, and you know that as well as I. Knowing I couldn't marry you, knowing I couldn't ask you to give up everything and follow me as I escape to America, knowing that of all the men in the world I am the one man least worthy of you, I took your virginity."

"That...that doesn't matter," she said, her head down, watching as he took her hands in his, lightly squeezed her fingers. "I mean, that last part. I made you do it."

He'd probably forgotten that part. You can't steal what is freely given.

"Oh, kitten," he said, chuckling softly, "you mustn't believe everything your companion told you. I knew exactly what I was doing, including what a b.a.s.t.a.r.d I was for not putting a stop to it. I simply couldn't find it in myself to give a d.a.m.n. At the time. Now, however, we have to deal with the consequences, which means we must marry. Then they can hang me."

"Hang you? But you said you didn't kill the Inhaber."

"No, but it does seem that three of his men, all military attaches and completely innocent of any wrongdoing, I'm told, although they looked very much like hired thugs to me, seem to have been killed, and I have been named as their murderer."

Her heart sank to the toes of her borrowed slippers. If the man had to be so excessively good at something, couldn't it have been something less lethal?

"The Inhaber is telling everyone this because he wants you arrested so he is free to come after me," Alina said, marveling at the words as they came out of her mouth. She was beginning to think like a devious person. And Justin had been forced to think this way for all those long years he refused to talk about with her other than to say that those years had killed something important inside him. She was beginning to understand how that could happen. "But he could not chance killing Lady Wilde, could he, especially if she were to make herself very visible in London? That would be too suspicious, and make for strain between our two countries."

"Very good, kitten. Your mother was English, the daughter of an earl. Your country is England. Your death would cause a strain between two new and still tenuous allies who seem to have less in common now that their common enemy is gone. You'd be safe."

"Then I refuse to marry you," she said firmly.