Amelia was speechless for a moment. She had not expected anyone to champion her desire to pursue Montoya, and she could not have selected a better person to help her than Maria, who was afraid of nothing and well versed in finding things that did not wish to be found. “Ware searches for him, too.”
“Poor Count Montoya,” Maria said, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her and collecting her hands. “I pity him. He espies a pretty woman and because of it, becomes hunted from all sides. St. John will seek him in a criminal’s fashion. Ware will seek him in a peer’s fashion. So you and I must seek Montoya in a woman’s fashion.”
“And how would that be?” Amelia asked, frowning.
“By shopping, of course.” Maria smiled, and the entire room brightened. “We will visit all the purveyors of masks that we can find and see if any recall the count. If he always covers his face, he must procure a great many of the things. If not, perhaps it was a recent purchase and he left an indelible impression. It is not much, but it’s a start. We will have to take care, of course. If he is in danger, finding him will bring that danger to us. You must trust me and listen to me implicitly. Agreed?”
“Yes.” Amelia’s lower lip quivered, and she bit it to hide the betraying movement. Her hands tightened on her sister’s. “Thank you, Maria. Thank you so much.”
Maria caught her close and kissed her forehead. “I will always be here to help you, poppet. Always.”
The quiet declaration gave Amelia strength, and she clung to it as she slipped from the bed and began to prepare for the day ahead.
Chapter 8
There was a leisurely pace to the pedestrians, carts, and carriages that traveled down the street. The day was sunny and comfortably warm, the air cleansed from a brief spate of early morning rain. Colin, however, was far from relaxed. Something about the day did not sit well with him.
“You should not worry so much,” Jacques said. “She will be fine. No one has connected you to your past or to Miss Benbridge.”
Colin smiled ruefully. “Am I so transparent?”
“Oui. In your unguarded moments.”
Staring out the carriage window, Colin noted the many people going about their daily business. For his part, his business this afternoon was leaving Town. His carriage was presently wending its way toward the road that would lead them to Bristol. Their trunks were loaded and their account with the rental property was settled.
He remained unsettled.
The feeling that he was leaving his heart behind was worse than before. His mortality was something he began to feel more keenly each day. Life was finite, and the thought that the entirety of his would be spent without Amelia in it was too painful to bear.
“I have never shared a carriage with her,” he said, his gloved fingers wrapping around the window ledge. “I have never sat at a table with her and shared a meal. Everything I have done these last years was in pursuit of a higher station, one that would afford me the privilege to enjoy all the facets of her life.”
Jacques’s dark eyes watched him from beneath the rim of his hat. He sat on the opposite squab, his compact body as relaxed as Colin had ever seen it, but still thrumming with energy.
“Soon after my parents died,” Colin murmured, staring out at the view of the street, “my uncle accepted the position of coachman to Lord Welton. The wages were dismal and we were forced to leave the Romany camp, but my uncle felt it was more stable than the Gypsy life. He had been a dedicated bachelor prior to my arrival, but he took the burden of my care very seriously.”
“So that is where your honor comes from,” the Frenchman said.
Colin smiled slightly. “I was wretched at the change. At ten years of age, I felt the loss of my friends keenly, especially following so soon after the loss of my father and mother. I was certain my life was over and I would be miserable forever. And then, I saw her.”
In his mind’s eye, he remembered the day as if it were yesterday. “She was only seven years old, but I was awed. With her dark curls, porcelain skin, and green eyes, she looked like a beautiful doll. Then she held out a dirty hand to me, smiled a smile that was missing teeth, and asked me to play.”
“Enchanté,” Jacques murmured.
“Yes, she was. Amelia was a dozen playmates in one-adventurous, challenging, and resourceful. I rushed through my chores just so I could be with her.” Sighing, Colin leaned his head back against the squab and closed his eyes. “I remember the day I first rode as rear footman on the carriage. I felt so mature and proud of my accomplishment. She was happy for me, too, her eyes bright and filled with joy. Then, I realized that while she sat inside, I stood outside, and I would never be allowed to sit with her.”
“You have changed a great deal since then, mon ami. There is no such divide between you now.”
“Oh, there is a divide,” Colin argued. “It just is not a monetary one any longer.”
“When did you know that you loved her?”
“I loved her from the first.” His hand fisted where it rested atop his thigh. “The feeling just grew and changed, as we both did.”
He would never forget the afternoon when they had played in the stream, as they often did. He in his breeches, she stripped to her chemise. She had just reached fifteen years, he ten and eight. He had stumbled across the pebbled shore, attempting to catch a fleeing frog, when he’d fallen. Her delighted laughter turned his head, and the sight of her had changed his life forever. Bathed in sunlight, drenched in water, her beautiful features transformed by merriment, she had seemed a water nymph to him. Alluring. Innocently seductive.
His breath had caught in his throat; his body had hardened. Heated cravings burned in his blood and dried his mouth. His cock-which had become an aching, demanding torment as he’d matured-throbbed with painful pressure. He was no innocent, but the physical urgings he’d appeased before were merely annoying when compared to the need wrought by the sight of Amelia’s seminude body.
Somehow…sometime, when he hadn’t been looking, Amelia had grown into a young woman. And he wanted her. Wanted her as he’d never wanted anything before. His heart clenched with his sudden longing; his arms ached to hold her. Deep inside him, he felt an emptiness and knew she would fill it. Make him whole. Complete him. She’d been everything to him as a child. He knew she would be everything to him as a man.
“Colin?” Her smile had faded as tension filled the air between them.
Later that evening, Pietro noted his somberness and questioned him. When he’d spilled out his discovery, his uncle reacted with novel ferocity.
“Stay away from her,” Pietro growled, his dark eyes burning in their intensity. “I should have ended your friendship long ago.”
“No!” Colin had been horrified at the thought. He couldn’t imagine his life without her.
Pietro slammed his fist on the table and loomed over him. “She is far above you. Beyond your reach. You will cost us our livelihood!”
“I love her!” As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew they were true.
Grim-faced, his uncle had dragged him out of their quarters in the stables and taken him into the village. There, he’d thrusted Colin into the arms of a pretty whore who delighted in exhausting him and wringing him dry. A mature woman, she was unlike the marginally experienced girls he’d dallied with before. She made certain he was spent. He left her bed with muscles turned to jelly and a need for a long nap.
When he’d staggered into the nearby tavern hours later, his uncle had met him with a jovial smile and fatherly pride. “Now you have another woman to love,” he’d pronounced, slapping him affectionately on the back.
To which Colin had corrected, “I’m grateful to her, yes. But I love only Amelia.”