“I’ll make certain, one way or the other. I agree with you. Given what happened then, Georges’s involvement doesn’t make any sense to me either.”
She stopped in her tracks, halfway down the vast corridor, and grabbed his arm. “You were on a mission in France before Waterloo. I remember that since you tried to keep it from me.”
“It was not a particularly dangerous mission, just the extraction of one of our highly placed spies.”
“You told me that much, but nothing more. Now, was Georges involved in that?”
“I never saw him. Perhaps he was close by.” He didn’t say another word. He wasn’t about to tell her the rest of it for the simple reason that it had nothing to do with this.
“Spill it now, Douglas, or I will do something you won’t like.”
He hesitated, and she said, “I even learned to speak French to help protect you. Not that it did me much good.”
“The informant said something about revenge against me would be lovely.”
Alexandra shuddered. “I knew it. It is what I expected.”
He’d managed to sidetrack her, but not for long. She would remember that he hadn’t told her about that mission to France before Waterloo, and what had happened. Well, it didn’t matter. He’d survived.
JAMES WALKED TO Great Little Street, at the request of his father, to see exactly how bad Corrie looked in her maid-sewn gowns whose fabric and pattern his mother had, unfortunately, selected.
He arrived at Number 27 Great Little Street and rapped the bronze lion’s-head knocker.
A red-faced butler took one look at him and quickly stepped back. “Please hurry, my lord, before it is too late! I don’t know what to do.”
James ran past the butler’s flapping hand up the stairs and through the wide double doors into the Ambrose drawing room. He came to a halt in the doorway, scared to his toes, to find Corrie standing in the middle of the room, garbed in the most hideous gown he’d ever seen. It was pale blue, lace sewn nearly to her ears, row upon row of flounces sewn on the bottom portion, and sleeves the size of cannons. The only thing that looked good was her nearly invisible waist-she had to be wearing an iron corset beneath that belt because she looked ready to faint. She was crying.
James shut the door in the butler’s face. He was at her side in a moment, grabbing up her hand that fell out of that huge sleeve. “Corrie, what the devil is the matter?”
She swiped the back of her right hand over her eyes and gave him the most pathetic look he’d ever seen from her. Another tear trickled over her cheek to drip off her chin.
“Corrie, for God’s sake, what’s happened?”
She drew a deep breath, focused on his face, and sneered. “Why nothing, you fool.”
He shook her. “What is wrong, damn you? The butler was really scared.”
“All right, all right, stop shaking me. If you would know the truth, I’m practicing.”
He dropped his hands. “Practicing what?”
“You’ll just keep digging and prodding, won’t you? Very well. Aunt Maybella said I must know how to turn down the scores of young gentlemen who will be proposing to me right and left. She said to think of something sad and it would make me cry. She said that gentlemen are most profoundly affected by a lady’s tears. They would believe that I am desolate to refuse to marry them. There, are you satisfied?”
He was staring down at her, dumbfounded. The tears had certainly worked on him, and the butler. He said, “You will not gain a single proposal wearing a gown like that.”
Her tears dried up in a flash. Her mouth seamed shut. “Aunt Maybella said it is very fine. Your mother selected the pattern and the fabric and my maid sewed it.”
“In that case, you have to know that it is very bad indeed.”
She stood there, trying to close the huge mouths of the sleeves, but they’d been stiffened and didn’t move.
James wanted to laugh, but he wasn’t a total clod. “Listen, Corrie, my father is going to take you tomorrow to Madame Jourdan. She will fix you up.”
“Do I really look that bad?”
Sometimes the truth was good. On the other hand, sometimes the truth needlessly devastated. “No. But listen to me. London is a vastly different place. Look at me. I’m not wearing breeches, a shirt open at my throat. Not here.”
“I like you better in breeches and an open shirt.”