The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [116]
“Don’t try your bloody guile on me, madam. Go change into your riding habit. You have fifteen minutes. If you are late, I shall lose you in the maze.”
It was a start, Alexandra thought, as she climbed the stairs. It was a very promising start.
However, not half an hour later, she wanted to kick him. Her promising start had fallen into ashes.
CHAPTER
20
“DOUGLAS, WHO CALLED you away so early this morning?” Her question was one of random curiosity. However, Douglas stiffened alarmingly in the saddle. The stallion he kept in London, Prince by name, a huge roan gelding, didn’t like the stiffening and danced sideways. Alexandra’s mare, a foul-tempered chestnut, decided it was her rider’s fault that the stallion was upset, whipped her head around, and bit her boot. She yelped in surprise.
Douglas said sharply, “I told you she wasn’t like your mare at home. Pay attention, Alexandra.”
She frowned at the back of his head. They were cantering sedately in Rotten Row. Douglas had decided they didn’t have time to go to Richmond maze. It was too early by far for all the fashionable to be in attendance, which pleased Alexandra. It was a pleasant early afternoon, a light breeze ruffling the loose curls around her face. She said again, this time more than random interest in her voice, “Who wanted you so badly this morning? No one in your family is ill? Everyone is all right?”
“My family is now your family. Contrive to remember that, please. Also, it is none of your business where I go or what I do. A wife shouldn’t meddle in her husband’s affairs. Pay attention to your mount and—”
“Douglas,” she said in what she believed a most reasonable tone of voice, “you are sulking because I didn’t take that wretched doctor up to my bedchamber. I will continue not to take him anywhere, and unless you want to create a god-awful scene, you won’t force me to. Now, what was all the urgency? I am your wife. Please tell me what is happening.”
He remained mulish and silent and her imagination flowed into dramatic channels. “It isn’t anything to do with an invasion, is it? Oh dear, the ministry doesn’t want you back in the army, do they? You won’t go, will you? Please consider well, Douglas. There is so much at Northcliffe Hall that requires your constant attention. So I don’t think—”
“Be quiet! It has nothing to do with that, dammit! It has to do with a brilliant madman named Georges Cadoudal.”
“Who is he?”
How had she managed to get him to spit out the name, he wondered, staring between his horse’s ears. “It is none of your affair. Be quiet. Leave me alone. I won’t tell you anything more.”
“All right,” she said. Georges Cadoudal. He was French and Douglas spoke French as if he’d been nursed on it at his mother’s breast. She remembered the intensity of that French woman—that hussy he’d rescued, Janine—the previous night at the Ranleaghs’ ball and said, “Is he involved somehow with that bawd who was trying to seduce you last night?”
Douglas simply stared at her. She couldn’t know. It was just a guess and he was a fool. The last thing he wanted to do was worry her, to scare her. The absolute last thing he wanted was for her to pry into the absurd business. He dug his heels into Prince’s sides and the stallion shot forward.
Alexandra wished she had a rock; she would surely throw it at the back of his head. But more than that, she was worried. How to find out who this Georges Cadoudal was and how it affected Douglas? She remembered the note brought to him by his valet, Finkle, who had come to London with them. Perhaps the note was still about somewhere. She resolved to find it. He’d said that his was now her family as well. Very well. She was his wife; it was time he realized that having a wife meant an end to his own counsels. She could be of help to him; he had to learn that.
She found the note. Finkle had deposited it carefully with His Lordship’s other missives on his massive desk in the library. Alexandra frowned as she read it. It was from a Lord Avery. The scrawl, which