as low as she could make it, Elodie replied, ‘Tolerable, my boy.’
‘Good. Herr Schultz,’ he addressed the innkeeper, ‘bring some refreshment to our room, please. Josephine, let’s help our uncle up.’
With Clara at one arm and Will Ransleigh at the other, Elodie slowly shuffled up the stairs.
Not until she’d entered the sitting room Ransleigh had hired and heard the door shut behind her did she breathe a sigh of relief. The first step of her escape had proceeded without a hitch. Exultation and a rising excitement sent her spirits soaring.
As she sank into a chair and pulled off the distorting spectacles, she looked up to see Will Ransleigh’s expression warm with a smile of genuine approval that gratified her even as her stomach fluttered in response. His expression serious, he was arresting, but with that smile—oh, my! How did any woman resist him?
‘Bravo, madame. I had grave doubts, but I have to admit, you made a wonderfully credible old man.’
‘You made a rather fine old gentleman yourself,’ she said, smiling back at him. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you if you’d not arrived with Clara. You were a wizard with the blacking as well, going from white-powdered hair to brunette faster than I could don the clothing you provided. Now I see you’ve transformed yourself yet again.’
Though he’d kept his hair darkened with blacking, he’d changed from the modest working-man’s attire he’d worn the day he climbed up her balcony into gentleman’s garb, well cut and of quality material, but not so elegant or fashionable as to attract undue notice.
Still, the close-fitting jacket emphasised the breadth of shoulders and the snug pantaloons displayed muscled thighs. If he’d appeared powerfully, dangerously masculine in his drab clerk’s disguise, the effect was magnified several times over in dress that better revealed his strength and physique.
His potent masculine allure ambushed Elodie anew, intensifying the flutter in her stomach and igniting a heated tremor below. She found herself wondering how it would feel to run her fingers along those muscled arms and thighs, over the taut abdomen … and lower. While her lips explored his jaw and cheekbones, the line of brow over those vivid turquoise eyes …
Realising she was staring, she hastily turned her gaze away.
Not fast enough that he didn’t notice her preoccupation, though. A satisfied gleam in his eye, he said, ‘I hope you approve of the latest transformation.’
‘You’re looking very fine, sir, and don’t you know it,’ Clara interposed tartly. ‘Ah, mistress, didn’t you make a marvellous old gent! I believe we could have met Frau Gruener herself on the stairs without her being the wiser.’
‘It’s just as well we didn’t. I’m no Mrs Siddons,’ Elodie said, arching to stretch out a back cramped from bending over a cane during their long, dawdling transit.
‘What do you know of Mrs Siddons?’ Will asked, giving her a suspicious look.
Cursing her slip, Elodie said, ‘Only that she was much praised by the English during theatrical entertainments at the Congress, who claimed no Viennese actress could compare. With your expertise in disguises, I begin to believe you’ve trod the boards yourself. Is that how you found this moustache?’ Stripping off the length of fuzzy wool, she rubbed her lip. ‘It itched terribly, making me sneeze so hard, I feared it would fall off.’
‘My apologies for the deficiencies in your costume,’ he replied sardonically. ‘I shall try to do better next time.’
‘See that you do,’ she flashed back, relieved to have detoured him from any further probing about her familiarity with the English stage.
‘I don’t wonder your back is tired,’ Clara said. ‘I don’t know this quarter of Vienna and you could hardly see behind those spectacles. The transit seemed to take so long, once or twice I feared we might be lost.’
‘No danger of that; I shadowed you all the way and would have set you straight if you’d strayed,’ Ransleigh said. ‘I also wanted to make sure you were not followed.’
Reassured by his thoroughness, Elodie said, ‘We weren’t, were we?’
‘No. It was a good plan you came up with.’
Elodie felt a flush of warmth at his avowal and chastised herself. She wasn’t a giddy girl, to be gratified by a handsome man’s approval. She needed to remember the purpose for which he’d arranged this escape—that hadn’t been done for her benefit.
Despite that acknowledgment, some of the warmth remained.
A knock sounded at the door and Elodie turned away, averting her now moustache-less face until the servant bringing in the refreshments had deposited the tray and bowed himself back out.
‘Shall we dine?’ Ransleigh invited. ‘The inn is said to set a good table.’
Elodie shook her head wonderingly. ‘Just how do you manage to discover such things?’
He gave her an enigmatic smile. ‘I’m a man of many talents.’
‘So I am discovering.’ She wished she could resist being impressed by his mastery of detail, but fairness wouldn’t allow it.
‘Fraulein, will you join us before you leave?’
At the maid’s nod, they seated themselves around the table. Since their previous exchanges had been limited to threats on her life and plans for escaping Vienna, Elodie wondered whether—and about what—Ransleigh would talk during the meal.
Somewhat to her surprise, he kept up a flow of conversation, discussing the sights of Vienna and asking Clara about her experiences with the notables she’d encountered during the Congress.
Will Ransleigh truly was a man of many talents. He seemed as comfortable drawing out a lady’s maid as he might be entertaining a titled lady in his uncle the earl’s drawing room. If he did, in fact, frequent the earl’s drawing room.
He claimed he’d been born on the wrong side of the blanket, but his speech and manners were those of the aristocracy. Where was he in his true element? she wondered. Skulking around the modest neighbourhoods of a great city, chatting up maids and innkeepers, or dancing at balls among the wealthy and powerful?
Or in both?
He was still an enigma. And since she was forced to place her safety in his hands, at least until Paris, that troubled her.
Their meal concluded, Clara rose. ‘I’d best be getting home. It will be dark soon and I don’t know these streets.’
‘I’ll escort you,’ Ransleigh said.
‘I’d not put you to the trouble,’ Clara protested.
‘Of course he will,’ Elodie interrupted, relieved by the offer and determined to have him honour it. ‘I’d like him to accompany you all the way home … and make sure there’s no unexpected company to welcome you,’ she added, voicing the uneasiness that had grown since she’d successfully escaped her lodgings.
‘Your mistress is right. Though I don’t think her flight has yet been discovered,
