Five
Thursday morning found Greer sitting opposite Mercedes in an elegant black travelling coach complete with all the modern conveniences: squabs of Italian leather, under-the-seat storage for hampers and valises, a pistol compartment, large glass-paned windows with curtains for privacy when passengers tired of the scenery outside. Even his proud father would feel some envy at the sparkling new coach.
That didn’t mean his father would approve. Coveting did not equate with approval where his father was concerned. A gentleman might quietly desire his neighbour’s fine coach, but a gentleman would never lower himself to acquire it by working for it. A gentleman had standards, after all. Standards, Greer was acutely aware, he had violated to the extreme on several occasions in the last week.
‘Your father certainly knows how to travel in style,’ Greer commented appreciatively, trying to make conversation, anything to push speculations of his father’s reaction to his latest undertaking out of mind.
Mercedes shrugged, unconcerned with the wealth and luxury surrounding her, or perhaps just less impressed. ‘He likes the best.’ That was all she said for a long while. Mercedes proceeded to pull out a book and bury herself in it, leaving him to the very thoughts he was trying to avoid.
It was just the two of them at the moment. Lockhart had chosen to ride outside along with the groom overseeing Greer’s own mount, another circumstance with which his father would take umbrage—an unmarried woman alone in a carriage with a man. Or, in this case, an eligible bachelor alone in a carriage with entirely the wrong sort of woman, the sort who might take advantage of said bachelor in the hopes of marrying up.
Very dangerous indeed! Greer fought back a wry smile. It was laughable, really. He was an officer in his Majesty’s army. He could handle one enticing female. If Lockhart had intended anything to happen, such a ploy was obvious in the extreme.
Greer gave in to the smile, imagining all nature of wild scenarios. If Mercedes was to compromise him, how would she do it? Would she leap across the seat, provoked by the slightest rut in the road, and tear his shirt off? Would she be more subtle? Maybe she’d stretch, raise those arms over her head in a way that thrust those breasts forwards and exclaim over how hot she was.
His thoughts went on this way for a good two miles. It was a stimulating exercise to say the least. He had her halfway undressed and fanning herself before he had to stop. A gentleman had to draw the line somewhere. If Mercedes knew what he was envisioning, she might have chosen to engage him in conversation instead.
But since she didn’t and since he’d taken his thoughts as far as he ought in one direction, Greer spent the better part of the morning taking them in the other, most of which involved contemplating how it was that he’d packed up his trunk and his horse, the only two items of any worldly worth in his possession, and left town all for the sake of a beautiful woman.
It was definitely one of the more rash things he’d done in a long while. The military was not a place where unwarranted gambles were rewarded. An officer must always balance risk against caution and he was no stranger to the charms of beautiful women: the lovely señora in Spain, the mysterious widow in Crete. But looking at Mercedes Lockhart engrossed in her book, their loveliness paled for the simple reason that Mercedes’s beauty was not found in the sum of her features: her exotic eyes with their slight uptilt, the high cheekbones and the full sensuous lips that seduced every time she smiled. Nor was it that she knew how to enhance those physical qualities with the styling of her hair and expensive gowns.
No, the core of Mercedes’s beauty lay in something more—in her very being, the way she carried herself, all confidence and seduction. She wasn’t afraid of her power or her ability to wield it. Mercedes Lockhart was no blushing, tonnish virgin or even a woman who affected false modesty in the hopes of appearing virtuous. His father would not approve of Mercedes Lockhart any more than he’d approve of the reasons Greer was in the coach. Both were scandalous adventures for a man of Greer’s birth and station.
However, his father would be wrong, Greer thought, if all he saw in Mercedes was a woman of loose scruples. Woe to the man who mistook her for no more than that. What she was was potent and alluring and quite possibly deadly to the man who fell for her. The French had a term for women like Mercedes. Femme fatale.
Well, he’d faced worse in battle than one beautiful woman. Greer settled deep into his seat and smiled, deciding to play another secret little game with himself, one that left her better clothed than the previous. How long could he stare at her before she looked up at him? Thirty seconds? One minute? Longer?
At thirty seconds she started to fidget ever so slightly, trying desperately to ignore him.
At forty-five seconds, she was taking an inordinately long time to finish reading the page.
At one minute she gave up and fixed him with a stare. Greer grinned. His femme fatale was human, after all.
‘What are you looking at?’ Mercedes set aside her book.
‘You,’ Greer replied. ‘We’re to be together for an indefinite period of time and it has occurred to me as I sit here in silence, watching the morning speed by …’
‘Watching me,’ Mercedes corrected.
‘All right, watching you,’ Greer conceded. ‘As I was saying, it has occurred to me that I’ve set out on a journey with two strangers I hardly know even though my immediate future is now tied to theirs.’
Mercedes favoured him with one of her knowing smiles. ‘Perhaps you’re more of a gambler than you thought, Captain.’
Greer considered this for a moment. ‘I suppose I am. Although we don’t have to remain strangers.’
‘What do you propose?’
‘A little Q and A, as we call it in the military.’ Greer stretched his legs, settling in to enjoy himself. ‘Question and answer.’
‘Or a consequence,’ Mercedes supplied with a smug little smile. ‘I know this game, Captain. You’re not so terribly original.’
‘No. No consequence,’ he explained, watching Mercedes’s smug smile fade. ‘There is no choice to not answer. Question asked, answer given. There is no option to refuse.’ Greer folded his hands behind his head. ‘Ladies first. Ask me anything you’d like.’
‘All right then.’ Mercedes thought for a moment. ‘Have you always wanted to be a soldier?’
‘I was raised to it, ever since I can remember,’ Greer replied honestly, although he was cognisant of the omissions that answer contained. ‘How about you? Were you always good at billiards? Born with a cue in your hand?’
The beauty of the game was that it allowed the participants to ask directly what they’d never dare give voice to in polite conversation over dinners and tea trays. They traded questions and answers over the dwindling hours of the morning, his knowledge growing with each answer.
Greer learned she’d travelled with her father until she was eleven and he’d sent her off to boarding school. After that she’d come home on holidays and wandered the subscription room, watching and studying the game around which their lives were centred.
He learned her mother had died from birthing complications, that her name was Spanish for mercies—although in Latin it meant pity—quite apropos for
