The Very Daring Duchess Part 12

Edward leaned forward on his chair, concentrating on the details of the escape. The admiral often made last-minute adjustments and refinements to his orders, and in an action as complicated as this one with so many lives at stake, any small misstep or error could be disastrous.

"Any questions, then?" asked the admiral curtly, though he didn't pause for any to be asked, let alone answered. "Thank you, gentlemen. I have every confidence in our success this night, and may G.o.d smile upon England, and us."

With a deep-voiced growl of agreement, Edward and the others rose, eager to be off. After the long autumn of inactivity, Edward relished the excitement and challenge of the night ahead. His crew was fair bristling with antic.i.p.ation, and even the Centaur herself seemed to be tugging impatiently at her moorings. He was glad to be going off to sea again, albeit for such a short voyage and with so many demanding pa.s.sengers on board, and he was doubly glad to be leaving Naples behind.

He glanced out the windows of the music room, out across the bay. The wind had been rising since daybreak, scattering the haze that always hung over the broken peak of Vesuvius and ruffling the water with whitecaps. They'd be in for a rough night of it, even in the bay. Strange to realize that he'd never see this now-familiar view again, and stranger still to know how little he'd miss it.

But then he'd never see Francesca Robin again, either, and that-that was a loss he'd regret a great deal more than he'd confess even to himself. He frowned, trying one more time to put the girl with the rich, evocative laugh and dancing dark eyes from his thoughts.

He tried, and he failed, just as he'd failed every other time since he'd seen her four days before. If she'd been merely beautiful, he could have done it. But instead there'd been something more to her, something less rational, that he couldn't begin to explain. Each time he'd seen her he'd felt an odd kind of connection that pulled at him as surely as the moon and the tide. The harder she'd tried to convince him that she was able to look after herself, the more some d.a.m.ned fool part of him wanted to rush in and do it for her. Over and over again he'd reminded himself that she wasn't his responsibility, yet over and over again he'd remembered how she'd tried to be so bl.u.s.tery and brave speaking of the French, and instead had only looked small and forlorn and very, very frightened. Muddled into the same mess were those pictures she'd made of mothers and children, he knew it, turning him maudlin and sentimental in a way he hadn't been since he'd been a boy himself.

Pictures: What in blazes had come over him, anyway? He tapped his fingers on the hilt of his dress sword for luck, and as a reminder, too. The navy was what mattered, his honor and his duty toward his country. The sooner he put out to sea again and left Naples and Francesca Robin and her pictures behind, the better.

"h.e.l.l of a fuss to rescue a lot of blithering dagos, even if they do wear crowns," the officer beside him was saying. "But if her ladyship wants it, we obey, hey-ho, don't we?"

Her ladyship was standing beside the admiral as she turned to say a word or two to a footman. The footman left, then returned, and with him, to Edward's shock, was Francesca Robin.

In obvious haste, she hadn't bothered to leave off her yellow gloves or her cloak, bright green and lined with fur. Her cheeks were rosy, her hair beneath her cap and hood a bit disheveled from the wind, and in her arms she carried a flat, square package, obviously a framed picture wrapped in rough cloth. At once conversation stopped, not only for security's sake, but also, as Edward knew all too well, because Francesca Robin was beautiful enough to have that effect upon men when she entered any room, blast her.

"My dear Lord Admiral," said Lady Hamilton warmly, even now the gracious amba.s.sador's wife. "May I present Miss Francesca Robin, one of my most favorite friends here in Naples?"

"Honored, miss," said the admiral curtly. Even when he wasn't as preoccupied as he was now, he'd never been one for the ladies-except, of course, for Lady Hamilton.

Francesca smiled anyway, enough to melt more ordinary hearts outright. " 'Tis I who am honored, My Lord Admiral, and grateful, too, for all you have done for Naples."

"Oh, little Robin, you've brought my picture after all, haven't you?" said her ladyship with obvious regret. "You needn't have, you know. That's why I sent your fee to you yesterday."

"Which is exactly why I've brought you the picture, my lady," said Francesca proudly, beginning to peel back the covering. "It's only fair you receive what you've paid for."

"But you see, my dear, I won't be needing it now," said her ladyship gently. "If you feel you can sell it elsewhere, why, then, please-"

"You're leaving, aren't you?" asked Francesca suddenly, the windswept color draining from her cheeks as she set the picture on the floor against the wall. She glanced rapidly around the room, now understanding the reason for so many British officers gathered here together at the emba.s.sy. "All of you, yes? Tonight?"

Edward had never seen a room go so quiet, or so still, with Francesca fluttering miserably in her bright green cloak the only spot of real color or life. All the bravery, all the fear that he'd remembered seeing in her before now reappeared, though this time magnified to an intensity that nearly made Edward look away to avoid seeing her pain. To the men in this room, their orders were simply orders. To her they were the same as a sentence of death.

"Pray don't ask me such a question, little Robin," said her ladyship unhappily. "You know I cannot answer it, not the way you wish."

"Then I shall ask another question, my lady," said Francesca with a catch in her voice, "and of the admiral instead."

With her skirts crushing gracefully around her, she dropped to her knees before the admiral, her head bowed and her hands pressed tightly together before her in a way that made Edward long to rush forward and raise her up. No Englishwoman would ever do anything so patently dramatic, and it only served to accentuate her foreignness, differences that the admiral would never understand.

"I am a proud woman, my lord admiral," she began, "but I will bow my head and do whatever you command if I could but have a place on one of your-"

"Come, come, and stand, miss," said the admiral sharply. "There's no reason for you to grovel before me, especially for something that's not in my power to give."

Still on her knees, Francesca gazed up at him, bewildered, beseeching. "But surely as admiral, you of all others have the power to choose who will sail in your ships!" she cried, the panic and fear rising in her voice. "My father was an Englishman, born in London itself, and-"

"You are Neapolitan, miss," said the admiral, unconvinced. "I regret your misfortune, miss, but I cannot change it. I have my orders. If you had an English husband, then that would be another story, but otherwise you must-"

"I'll marry her, my lord," said Edward. "I'll marry her now."

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Francesca must have misheard. There could, quite simply, be no other explanation for it. Edward Ramsden was a gentleman, no, an English gentleman and a lord and a captain in their navy, and unless he'd lost his wits entirely, he'd never, ever make such an offer to such a woman as herself.

But if she'd misheard, then Lady Hamilton had misheard in precisely the same way.

"Oh, Captain Ramsden!" she cried, clapping her hands together. "That is the most gloriously gallant offer I have ever, ever heard in my life!"

"It is the most preposterous wickedness and nothing better," declared the admiral, who was widely known to have not one whit of gallantry in his entire body. "What's come over you, Ramsden? Think of your family-think of your country! Why in blazes would you want to bind yourself in the eyes of G.o.d to a dark foreign chit like this?"

"Forgive me, sir," said Edward more forcefully, though his expression stayed so fixed that Francesca couldn't tell what he thought, "but my reasons are, ah, must be my own, and I stand by my offer to the lady. That is, if Miss Robin will have me."

Still on her knees, Francesca saw the startled faces around her begin to melt into a blur as she felt herself sway, almost as if she were literally being blown about by fate. She'd hoped and prayed for a means to escape, a miracle to rescue her when every other way seemed closed, but she'd never imagined the miracle to take quite this form.

The admiral snorted with disgust. " 'If she'll have you!' Of course the little baggage will! You're offering her the world, Ramsden-the world!"

"I am not a baggage, my lord," said Francesca hotly. It was one thing to be, well, startled by such an unexpected proposal, but she was not about to stay here meekly on her knees and be insulted, and swiftly she scrambled back to her feet. If Edward was so determined to propose marriage to her, then he should be the one on his knees, not her.

"I am not a baggage," she said again for more emphasis. "I am an artist and an honest dealer of antiquities and art of this city, and there is not one person in all of the Two Sicilies who can truthfully bear witness against me otherwise."

Contemptuously the little admiral studied her, squinting with his good eye. "Next you'll be saying that Ramsden here should be honored to have you accept him."

"He should," she answered promptly, holding her head high as a queen's. "Especially since I've no intention of accepting him."

"The devil you won't!" Edward seized her arm and turned her to face him. He was a large man, and while his grip on her arm wasn't hard enough to hurt her, it was certainly sufficient to demonstrate his unhappiness with her. Yet what surprised her, and what held her more surely than his hand was the desperation she saw in his blue eyes, desperation that seemed to mirror her own.

But what could a man like Edward Ramsden possibly know of desperation? With all his power and privilege-with all his self-righteous Englishness-what could he know of the choices facing her?

"I won't," she answered rebelliously, shaking free of his hand. "I can't, and neither the devil in h.e.l.l nor the angels in heaven will make me say otherwise."

The admiral snorted, and glanced pointedly at the tall porcelain clock behind him. "You have five minutes to sort this out between you, Ramsden, before we must be under way. If you convince her to be your wife, then she may come with us, but not otherwise. Though for my part, the chit is showing far more sense than you."

"Five minutes, sir." Edward took her arm again, leading Francesca away from the others to the window where they'd have at least some small semblance of privacy. The last time they'd met in this room, the setting sun had made everything warm and rosy, but now, in this harsh gray light of winter, his handsome face was grim and sorrowful and etched with lines she'd never noticed before. Was he already regretting his rash offer to her? Was that what was making his expression the very ant.i.thesis of an optimistic bridegroom?

Which, of course, he'd absolutely no right to be.

"I won't deny that this is very gallant of you, my lord," she began, "but it's entirely preposterous, as you know perfectly well."

"I don't know it," he countered sharply. "Else I never would have asked you in the first place."

She hadn't expected that, and against all logic she felt her heart flutter. Deep down she knew she'd have to accept him, for the alternative was far, far worse than even an end to her treasured independence. But she wanted to make him understand how difficult such an arrangement was going to be for them both. He might be fancying himself as a story-book hero, but there was absolutely no way she could afford to tumble into that same romantic delusion, and sternly she ordered her heart to stop that insipid fluttering.

"But this is preposterous," she insisted. "You are who you are, and I am who I am. Naturalmente, yes? And while you might find me pa.s.sably attractive, you also consider me fast and frivolous and not entirely honest. Even that wretched admiral of yours called me a 'dark little chit.' I am too bold and far, far too Neapolitan to ever be the good English lady-wife to a duke's son like you, and-"

"Do you know what will happen to you if you remain here?" he interrupted, his voice rough with urgency. "Do you know how Napoleon's army treats the women of their enemies?"

She stiffened, her fear and panic returning. "I have heard the stories, yes. That is why I spoke to the admiral as I did. I can guess all too well what would become of me."