Page 86 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
Ram was not happy about that until Jean Pierre returned with news that the man he’d hired to take them to England was a known smuggler. “He’ll be taking you to Plymouth or Weymouth.”
“He does not know which port?” Amber asked.
“It’s all how the wind blows, madame. And how the British fleet and the revenuers work that day.”
“You mean,” Ram asked, “we could be attacked?”
Jean Pierre nodded. “None of this is guaranteed. But he is a good sailor. Best I know.”
For ten days, that last was little compensation for the rough seas that finally took them to a small fishing town near Weymouth.
When the two put feet to dry land, Ram wanted to kiss the ground. He had sickened the first day. Amazingly, Amber did better than he. In fact, she tended to bloom in the sea air.
When they landed, it was Amber who had voice to ask for a local inn where she and Ram could spend a day recovering.
“One aspect of this journey works for us,” Ram told her as they planned to leave the next day. “My estate is not far. A few hours’ journey north.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
DuClare House
Near Salisbury, England
Mid-June, 1803
June in Londonwas the season for gaiety. Amber’s new maid Jane told her so. But going into that Society was not Amber’s desire. Nor, thank heavens, was it Ram’s. He wanted her to recover her health. She needed it too, scared as she had been that her days were numbered. But now that the second physician whom Ram had invited to the house yesterday had consulted with her, Amber was delighted at the man’s diagnosis and thrilled to know she had so much to look forward to in her life.
Her new residence at Ram’s gracious country house was the first of many recent pleasures. His home was two centuries old, filled with every imaginable delight, from portraits of his ancestors to books in every language imaginable and rooms filled with tapestries and furnishings fit for a king. She teased Ram that he had not told her of his wealth and position. He replied he had not thought it important.
And he was right. What he was to her was never any of this magnificence. More to the point of his uniqueness was that this magnificence was nothing to the purity of his character. All that he was and ever would be was his ethical nature, dedicated to her and all in which he believed. She marveled daily at her newlife with the humorous, gallant man who had carried her from Vaillancourt and into a world filled with sunshine, soft breezes, fresh air…and the most endearing affection beaming from his blue eyes.
They had arrived to his country home near Salisbury four days ago. His mother and grandmother welcomed her with open arms. Cheerful and kind, the two ladies were polite yet so careful of Amber’s health and alarmed by her recent illness. They insisted on immediately summoning the local apothecary and physician. The apothecary who came three days ago had found no evidence of poisoning. His friend the physician arrived the next day. He had declared poisoning impossible. But she wanted another physician’s opinion, and Ram had called for another man to come from Salisbury to examine her. It was that man’s visit yesterday who had set Amber’s heart aflame with hope and new ideas for her future. How to divulge them to Ram was what Amber had pondered since the physician left her, alternately frowning or smiling to herself.
Apart from those three men’s visits, Amber’s days were filled with calls from the local modiste and cobbler. All were a respite from the difficult journey and her illness. She did indeed feel recovered. Still tired in the mornings and a bit queasy, she was careful what she ate and drank. But she had gained back some of her weight, and when she looked in her dressing table mirror, she looked pink and healthy.
She was kept that way by Ram’s attentions on her—and by those of his mother and grandmother. Both ladies were sweet, kind, and asked few questions. What she shared of her background was minimal. Perhaps soon she would tell them more, but at the moment, she was frankly too tired to speak of her past. In truth, she was still assessing what had happened to her and how Ram had saved her. That the two ladies were without foibles, open and accepting, was helpful, even if theymade eyes at her, gleefully expecting she would soon be the lady of the house.
As she sat in the sun on the breakfast veranda the fourth day, she eyed the morning delivery of yesterday’s London newspapers. She had refused to read them prior but told herself she should start soon. Ram gave her the news that many British still fled France. Ram worried about many, including his friend Lord Appleby. Amber remembered meeting him the night they had attended the Théâtre de la Gaîté, and he had disappeared afterward to seek out Charmaine Massey. Appleby, to Ram’s knowledge, had not returned home to England. Neither had his other friend Dirk, Lord Fournier, about whom he had often spoken. Fournier had gone to Baden last year and not returned to Paris.
Ram worried about the missing. News, he said, of those who had been trapped when the declaration of war occurred was that they were marched off to prison. Many were forced into many days’ march from Paris to Verdun.
Amber quivered at the thought of being waylaid in such a place. Huge, forbidding, the Verdun prison looked like so many others. Damp and cold. The food terrible. The comforts nonexistent. She remembered what it was like to live in the squalor and degradation of Carmes. Never would she wish such an existence on anyone.
“Good morning, sweetheart.” Ram appeared in the open doors and came to drop a kiss to her cheek.
“You are up late this morning,” she said with a smile of welcome.
“You are early,” he said. “While I have been catching up on my rest.” Poor man—he had worked so diligently to bring her here at risk to his life and limb.
“And I have had my fill of rest.” She raised her face to the sun. “I do love it here.”
“I’m glad,” he told her as he pulled out a chair and sat beside her. On the table, he placed a brown leather portfolio.
He did not usually bring work to the dining table.
“The modiste comes again today.” The local woman was sewing an entire wardrobe for her. Much needed, the clothes would thrill Amber. She’d been living in whatever Ram could buy in the town markets of French villages. She needed the day gowns and evening dinner attire. His mother and grandmother kept to formal dressing for their luncheon and evening meals. And Amber needed pelisses and nightgowns, a robe, shoes, stockings. So much. So much. She worried that Ram would be buying it, because she had no money to pay for any of it. The idea did not sit well. She was not his responsibility. Not in that way. And she hated to be a burden or to appear presumptuous, allowing him to think she approved of such dependence.
“Before she comes this morning, I urge you to look at this,” he said in a solemn voice. “It is yours.”
