Compromised Miss
Compromised Miss
Anne O'Brien
He remembers luminous grey eyes… and a mysterious gentle touch… Despite being unconscious for most of the night, Lucius has been accused of compromising a lady. She may not be an obvious beauty, dressed as she is in seaman’s garb, but his rescuer is all woman – and now he must marry Miss Harriette Lydyard.The Earl of Venmore is lethally attractive, and Harriette knows she should refuse him. Only with her reputation in tatters she must face the consequences of her actions – by making a pact with this disreputable, dangerous devil of a man!
Exasperated, Harriette pulled a knife from her belt and began to use it against the seams—it was ruined anyway.
The shirt of the finest linen, as she had suspected despite the muck and blood that soiled it, gave her no trouble. She had already used his once impeccably starched cravat as an impromptu padding. Her lips curved in contempt. Payment for state secrets must be high.
‘Miss Harriette, I think you should leave.’
‘Just do it, George.’
With a click of tongue against teeth George stripped off the man’s breeches, undergarments and hose. Well, now! Harriette was not ignorant of a degree of male nakedness. On board the cutter, when sailors stripped off their shirts to haul and pull on rope and sails, without embarrassment she had watched the play of smooth, well-defined muscle as arms and backs took the strain. As a member of the crew, she found it an occurrence that no longer disturbed her. A man was a creature of blood and bone and muscle, much like a horse, superbly crafted to carry out a task against the elements.
She had seen a half-naked man before. But nothing like this man, fully naked. Harriette found herself locked in a moment of splendid appreciation.
Anne O’Brien was born and has lived for most of her life in Yorkshire. There she taught history, before deciding to fulfil a lifetime ambition to write romantic historical fiction. She won a number of short story competitions until published for the first time by Mills & Boon. As well as writing, she finds time to enjoy gardening, cooking and watercolour painting. She now lives with her husband in an eighteenth-century cottage in the depths of the Welsh Marches.
You can find out about Anne’s books and more at her website: www.anneobrien.co.uk
Compromised Miss
Anne O’Brien
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
To George, again, who knows all about romance
Author Note
Since writing two medieval romances, I have returned to my first love: a Regency. It was in my mind to create a vital, strong-willed heroine whose lifestyle was not governed by the strict rules of Polite Society for a well-born lady. Most adventurous possibilities in this period were undoubtedly a male preserve. But some women clad themselves in boots and breeches, taking to the High Seas as pirates and smugglers, and this presented an exciting occupation for my heroine. And so Harriette Lydyard was created, playing the part of Captain Harry, with her French connections, her sleek little cutter and her lucrative smuggling run. A blood-stirring, eventful life for a heroine, if potentially scandalous, and with more dangers for her to face than she was aware of.
Such a vital heroine demanded a unique hero to take her on. This is Lucius Hallaston. If he is driven to pursue a life full of deceit and blackmail that smacks of the worst kind of treachery, so much the better. And if he has to struggle with his own dark secrets—then he is the perfect hero. Lucius is forced by circumstance to come to terms with a woman who proves to be as bold and as resourceful as he. A woman who has the courage to risk her life for him…
I know you will enjoy this passionate romance of scandal, betrayal and heart-stirring love. Lucius and Harriette have remained imprinted in my mind ever since I completed the last word to bring them together despite all odds.
Chapter One
The English Channel—July 1813.
‘Hurry! Sky’s clearing. Time we were gone.’
A sleek little English cutter lay off the French coast, hardly more than a shadow on the swell of a sullen sea and aptly named Lydyard’s Ghost, dark sails furled. The Captain who had issued the warning stood at the helm, one hand steady on the tiller, eyes ever alert, from shore to sky to the stowing of the bales and casks. A compact young man from what could be seen, clad as the rest of his crew in heavy boots, smock and wide trousers, a thick coat pulled over all and a stocking cap well down on his brow, he watched with innate authority. A half-dozen rowing boats headed smartly back to the French shore, to Port St Martin, only one remaining to complete the unloading—a fine brandy—of its illicit cargo.
The Captain acknowledged a sense of satisfaction. It had all gone according to plan so far.
‘That’s it, Cap’n Harry. All stowed aboard.’ An elderly, stout individual named George Gadie pushed himself away from the gunwale with a raised salute.
‘Excellent! Get the sails up, George.’ The Captain strode the length of the cutter with a leather purse in his hand, leaning to address the French smugglers in the rowing boat. ‘Au revoir, Monsieur Marcel. A lucrative cargo for us and a purse of guineas for you, as agreed. A bientôt, mon ami.’
‘A minute, Captain Harry, if you will.’ To the Captain’s surprise, Monsieur Marcel swung up into the cutter. ‘Another piece of cargo for you. Will you take it?’
The Captain frowned. ‘Is it worth my while?’
‘No.’ Marcel guffawed. ‘But we don’t want it, do we, lads? Hoist it up, Pierre.’ He gestured down to the sailors in the rowing boat who stood around a dark shape. Next moment it was lifted and pushed and finally tumbled over the side to fall aboard the cutter.
The Captain crouched to inspect. ‘What’s this?’
‘Pierre found him on the quay. A brawl—and he came off worst.’ Monsieur Marcel lifted his shoulders in deliberate contempt. ‘English, and not dead yet, that’s all I know. Pockets empty—robbed, I expect.’ Marcel was already climbing back over the cutter’s side. ‘All I know is he’s in with a disreputable crowd led by a slimy ruffian named Jean-Jacques Noir whose got his fingers in all sorts of foul pies. Noir’d sell his sister—damn! He’d sell his mother if it lined his pockets. And he’d use a knife against any man who stood in his way.’
The Captain stared down at the inert body at his feet. ‘What do I do with him?’
‘Take him back to England. Or drop him overboard if you wish.’ Still seated astride, Marcel grunted with fierce amusement. ‘He’s up to no good here. Most like a English spy, passing on information or guineas, if he’s in league with Jean-Jacques Noir. He obviously failed to meet Noir’s demands. A falling out of rogues, I expect…’ Marcel dropped back down into the rowing boat.
‘Tide’s turning, Cap’n Harry,’ George Gadie at the cutter’s bow warned.
‘Right.’ Looking across at the run of the waves, the Captain decided. ‘We must go, so he must come with us.’ A quick shake of hands, leaning down to Monsieur Marcel, and the heavy leather bag was tossed down to the French smuggler. ‘Here’s the gold as agreed.’
‘Enjoy the contraband. The brandy’s the best. And the silk.’
The Captain’s smile glinted in a shaft of moonlight as the clouds shifted to bathe the dark-painted cutter in silver. Sails, fore and aft, were set with impressive speed and the cutter put out to sea with its unexpected cargo.
Safely underway, the Captain beckoned to George Gadie, who promptly turned the body over with rough hands and a careless shove of his boot.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got here, George. Less value to us than a bolt of silk cloth…’
The words dried at the sight. Blood and sea water disfigured the shoulder, breast and sleeve of a well-cut coat. A man of means then, Captain Harry recognised, although the garment was now ruined beyond repair. The Captain pulled open the lapels to show where the white shirt beneath, of finest linen beneath his fingers, was also dark with blood. Spying, then, was a lucrative business, if a dangerous one, he decided without compassion, for the dark hair was slick and matted from a ragged cut above the hairline. He was soaked to the skin, the wound still bleeding, his face and lips starkly colourless, pale as death. Deep lines of pain were engraved between well-marked brows, also bracketing his mouth. A knife wound, not dangerous but sluggishly oozing blood, angled down his cheek. He was deeply unconscious but, crouching, the Captain could feel the steady heartbeat beneath the heel of his hand.
George grunted. ‘A spy, d’you think, Cap’n? Don’t look too dangerous now, does ‘ee? The knife scar’ll mar his pretty looks. Let’s get him out of the way. Gabriel…!’ Summoning his son, taking hold of shoulders and booted feet between them, they began to heave the dead weight against the boat’s side planking.
‘Wait.’ The Captain put out a hand, grasping Gabriel’s arm and crouched again. A weak groan came from the ashen lips. The man’s eyes, heavy with pain and confusion, opened.
‘Where am I?’ A hoarse croak of a whisper.
‘On your way back to England,’ Captain Harry informed.
‘No…I can’t. I can’t leave yet….’
‘No choice. You’ll do as I say.’ The Captain’s clipped reply was brutal.
A hand was lifted to curl weakly into the cloth of the Captain’s sleeve. The pain-racked eyes tried to focus. ‘Take me back. I’ll pay you…’
‘What with? You’ve no money in your pockets, my friend.’
‘I don’t remember…’ The eyes blurred with incomprehension, closed and then snapped open as if searching for a memory. ‘Jean-Jacques Noir…he broke his word….’
‘I expect he did. You were robbed, it seems.’ The Captain’s lips curled in derision, a thorough distaste for what this man represented. Smuggling was one thing. Was he himself not a skilled proponent of the trade, the name of Captain Harry well known along the coast of Suffolk? Nor was he ashamed of it. But spying for the enemy was quite another matter. The Gentlemen of the Free Trade had a code of honour to live by, whereas spying, handing over delicate information to England’s enemies, was despicable by anyone’s standards. ‘You were in a common brawl—perhaps you fell out with your French contacts.’
‘What?’ The eyes struggled again, without success, to focus. The line between the brows dug deeper. ‘I don’t remember…’
‘What motivates a spy to harm his own country?’ There was hard cynicism in the Captain’s reply, at odds with his youthful features. ‘I suppose you pass information to the enemy for the money. And sometimes it all goes wrong and greed wins. Whatever information you gave to Monsieur Noir, you were not paid for it. A wasted trip all in all.’
‘Not a spy…’ The voice slurred. ‘Not a traitor…’ As the cutter lurched against a freshening wind, the man’s head came into contact with the side of the little vessel and he slid into unconsciousness again.
The Captain gave a short laugh and pushed himself to his feet. ‘They all say that when the truth’s out. And how would you know if you’re a spy or not—if you can’t remember?’
‘Do we deliver him to the authorities, Cap’n?’ George Gadie asked.
‘Not sure.’ The Captain’s stern contemplation of the body was transformed into a grin of pure mischief. ‘A prize for the Preventive men to compensate for their failure to capture our fine brandy and silks? Serve him right if we did. But I don’t know…We’ll see what he has to say for himself when we get back.’
‘We could just tip him overboard, Cap’n Harry, as Monsieur Marcel suggested. Save us a deal of trouble.’ The old fisherman, sometime smuggler, pursed his lips as if savouring the fast remedy.
‘No. I’ll not have his blood, distasteful as it is, on my hands. Enough of him, George. Let’s get this cargo home and safely delivered.’
And as Captain Harry straightened to his full height against the gunwale, he tugged at the stocking cap and pulled it off as the little vessel kicked and picked up speed. To release a luxuriant ripple of dark hair into the lively wind. Wild and untamed, it curled and drifted around a classically oval face, drawing attention to sparkling grey eyes, as sultry as the sea in the heat of mid-summer, or as coolly silver as the flash of pale sun on water at daybreak. It left no doubt in the mind of any who might have been mistaken of what they were seeing.
Despite the seaman’s garb, Captain Harry—Miss Harriette Lydyard—was a very attractive, very feminine woman.
Before she turned her mind and hands to the ropes and sails, she took the time to looked down at the still figure at her feet. He was pretty as George had so mockingly observed. Hair? Impossible to tell with the blood and the water, but not fair. Eyes—well, too dark from shock and pain to tell. She crouched again to lift one of his hands from where it lay lax and inert. Filthy as it was, yet it was elegant and fine-boned with well-pared nails. She ran her own fingers over his palm, the smooth fingers. No calluses here, so not the hands of a working man. Clearly a man of wealth, as confirmed by his ruined clothes. They were made by a London tailor if she knew anything about it. Which she didn’t—but enough to recognise the skill was beyond anything produced in Brighton or Lewes. Gently enough she replaced the hand on the man’s chest, although her sense of loyalty and justice damned him for his treacherous calling. Many would call smuggling a disgraceful operation, putting gold into the hands of the French enemy, but compared with spying—well, it did not compare, did it?
It was a striking face, a haunting face, without doubt. Unable to resist, Harriette Lydyard ran her knuckles down the unblemished cheek, along the firm jawline, and felt her heart thud in her chest. No where was a face that would take any woman’s eye. A faint ripple of awareness of this man who was in her power shivered over her skin. If things were different…
Harriette hitched a shoulder as a fitful cloud covered the moon and hid the traitor from her gaze. There was nothing she could do for him. For now he would have to take his chances, but with practical roughness she unwound his crumpled cravat—once impeccably starched and superbly folded—then wadded and stuffed the pad of cloth within the shoulder of his coat to staunch any further bleeding. If fate intended him to survive, then he would.
Head tilted, her appraisal moved back, of its own volition, to his face, the straight nose, the well-sculpted cheekbones, to be thwarted once again when the moon slid behind a bank of clouds.
Harriette Lydyard rose to her feet with a huff of breath. A shame that a man so attractive should be so reprehensible as to be a trader in English secrets. Still, she found the time and inclination to throw a heavy rug over the prone body and push a small packet of priceless lace beneath his head.
Some hours later Harriette breathed out steadily, a long sigh of relief. The excitement of a run was heady, the success of it heated her blood, but the dangerous tension of the landing was always acute. There was always the chance that it would end in disaster, their cargo taken into custody by triumphant Excise men and the crew of Lydyard’s Ghost hauled before the magistrate. As all Gentlemen of the Free Trade knew, the penalty for smuggling could be the noose.
Tonight, as smooth as the bolts of silk they carried, all went without a hitch. A silent cove. No sneaky Revenue lugger lying in wait for them, no squad of Excise men with a lookout on the cliffs. Would that all landings were as sweet. Captain Rodmell, the keen-eyed Preventive Riding Officer, and his company of dragoons were no doubt all asleep in their beds in the Guard House at Lewes, dreaming of apprehending a priceless consignment of liquor and tea, lace and silk, unaware of what was unfolding on the shingle beach at Old Wincomlee.
Standing on the beach at last, Harriette rubbed her hands down the sides of her breeches in satisfaction at a job well done. It was the perfect location for such an enterprise where a natural dip in the land and the cliffs created an inlet with a gently sloping beach, a smugglers’ paradise. Harriette’s own, much-loved, house, Lydyard’s Pride, stood high above them on the cliffs that enclosed and protected. From there, an unshuttered lantern lit in the Tower Room above the east wing had sent its beams out to sea, assuring them that all was well for a landing. Now it was done. Barrels and bales had been speedily dispatched to the welcoming hands of lords and labourers alike, by pony or brawny shoulders. The cutter, her own pride and joy, the Lydyard’s Ghost, was beached and drawn up on the shingle within the bay as any fishing smack might be.
The beach emptied apart from George Gadie and his son, Gabriel, fishermen whose family had lived in Old Wincomlee for generations, smuggling in their blood. And in Harriette’s, too, as a Lydyard through and through. All Lydyards had sailed between England and France for at least two centuries to bring back illicit luxuries that were taxed beyond belief. All except for Harriette’s brother, Sir Wallace Lydyard, knight, Justice of the Peace and proud owner of Whitescar Hall. Her half-brother, not a true Lydyard, which probably explained the man’s mealymouthed disapproval of the Free Trade. So it was on Harriette’s shoulders to carry on the tradition and the responsibility of the runs, for the benefit of the whole fishing community of Old Wincomlee.
But now Harriette must deal with her unexpected cargo. He lay on the shingle where he had been dropped by two burly landsmen, more interested in disposing of barrels of liquor than in the comfort of the unknown and bloody traveller.
‘Well, Cap’n Harry? What’s it to be?’ George asked.
Well, what was it to be? Harriette looked down at the broken figure at her feet. Leave him to die on the beach, and good riddance to a traitor? Hand him over to Captain Rodmell and the Preventive men? Or…or what? He might even be dead for all she knew. His face was turned away from her, but one hand was flung out on the ground, fingers curled, as if beseeching mercy.
Against all her better judgement, that helpless gesture wrung her heart.
She looked up, tensing, eyes wide and instantly alert as she caught the scrunch of pebbles beneath booted feet. A figure strode across the beach towards them. Harriette promptly relaxed and raised a hand in greeting.
‘It went well, Harry.’ Her cousin, Alexander Ellerdine, his face full of wild energy, joined them. ‘A good run, in a quick time.’
‘Zan! Excellent.’ A brief clasp of hands. ‘And an equally good landing, all due to you. Monsieur Marcel is willing for another run within the month.’
‘We can do that.’ Alexander’s confidence was as bright as the lantern in the Tower Room window. ‘I’ll pass the word.’ He turned to go. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked, appraising the body.
Harriette’s lips parted to tell him. Then, uncertain as to why, she changed her mind. She wasn’t used to keeping secrets from Alexander, but she would keep her knowledge of this man with the haunting face and wicked crime tucked away. Just until she know more of him—and had made up her mind what to do with him.
‘An Englishman who fell on bad times,’ she announced. ‘We don’t know anything more, other than that his clothes suggest he’s got deep pockets. Marcel delivered him with the barrels and we brought him home.’ She ignored George Gadie’s angled glance, even as she felt quick colour rise in her face. Lies did not come easily to her.
‘Shall I take him?’ Zan offered with barely a glance and less interest. ‘I’ll hand him over to Sam Babbercombe at the Silver Boat.’
‘No.’ It came out sharper than she had intended. ‘I’ll take him.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘No reason.’ She tightened her lips as she considered the helpless figure. Hand him over to the rough care of the innkeeper in Old Wincomlee, who would kill him with neglect before he put himself out for a penniless, injured man? Never. And besides…Harriette felt an uncomfortable response touch her spine as the man groaned, little more than a sigh, and turned his head. The wound was stark and ugly on his cheek. For some inexplicable reason she did not want to abandon him into Alexander’s care. ‘He’s halfdead already. It’s closer to take him to Lydyard’s Pride than the inn.’ When she saw Zan’s brows rise, she hurried on. ‘He might have information of use to us.’ Harriette cast about for logical reasons. ‘It might be in our interests to restore him to health.’ She chuckled to hide her discomfort. ‘We can always extort money from him for saving his life! Sam at the Silver Boat won’t care whether he lives or dies.’
‘I don’t see how he can know anything to our advantage…’ Harriette watched, all the tension returning to her tired muscles as Alexander knelt to turn the man’s face, to make what he could of the features. Harriette thought his frown deepened and caught his sharp, rather sly, glance. ‘Going to save his life, Harriette? Play the guardian angel to soothe his brow?’
‘Nothing of the sort. How foolish you are!’ She did not like the smooth teasing, nor the hint of malice, but summoned a smile. ‘We can’t stand here arguing the case, Zan,’ she responded lightly enough. ‘Have all the goods gone?’
Alexander stood, his face alight. ‘Yes. I kept some particularly fine lace for the fashionable ladies of Brighton. They’ll pay handsomely.’ To her inexplicable relief his interest in the man had died. ‘Do you need help?’ He wound a warm arm around her waist and pressed a quick kiss to her temple.
Momentarily Harriette leaned her head against her cousin’s shoulder in gratitude, then straightened. ‘No. George and Gabriel will take care of him. You can do one thing for me, Zan. Best if my brother doesn’t get wind of this, or my whereabouts tonight. You can head Wallace off if he wants to know where I am. Tell him I’ll stay the night at the Pride and return to Whitescar Hall tomorrow. It might save my skin from a rare tongue lashing. And then send Meggie to me, would you? She’ll know what to bring. And tell her—bring some linen and one of Wallace’s dressing gowns. I think we’ll need it.’
‘I’ll do that.’ Alexander again searched her face with a quizzical gleam and ran his hand down Harriette’s arm, an intimate little gesture that surprised her and impelled her to take a step away. Alexander had never treated her with anything but cousinly affection, not even a casual flirtation, certainly no attempt to engage her interest. Then the moment was gone, so fast that she thought she must have been mistaken. ‘Don’t waste too much energy on your bloody catch,’ he now added, nudging the man’s foot with the toe of his boot. ‘Probably not worth anything. I’d throw it back in the sea and have done with it.’
A salute to her cheek, and Alexander strode off to where his horse waited on the shingle. The bloody catch, as he had put it with singular lack of compassion, was pushed ignominiously by Gabriel Gadie across the back of a pony, before George set off to lead the animal up the steep but well-worn track between the beach and Lydyard’s Pride, the house on the cliff where the lantern still beamed its welcome. And Harriette, walking at the side of the inert figure, resisted a temptation to smooth her fingers over the dark hair.
Chapter Two
At Lydyard’s Pride, the Gadies manhandled the man, with some rich cursing to accompany their efforts, into one of the many uninhabited bedchambers. Dusty, cold as a room in an unused house must be, at least it was furnished with a bed, chair and nightstand. Kindling was laid ready in the grate.
Harriette followed in their wake, wrapped around as she always was by a sense of belonging when she set foot in this house. Empty, shut up for the most part it might be, but Lydyard’s Pride was hers and the walls closed around her like the embrace of a lover. She felt her breathing slow, her pulse level. She was safe in this vast mausoleum, left to her by her Aunt Dorcas, because Lydyard’s Pride had always been passed from generation to generation of Lydyards through the female line. Harriette would have lived here if Wallace would only permit it, but Wallace thundered about her lack of years, her unmarried state, her need for a chaperone, whenever she raised the subject, insisting that she live under his authority at Whitescar Hall. How could she consider living alone and unprotected in this vast pile of a house that had had no money spent on its upkeep at any time in the past century. It would fall down around her ears and then where would she be? And since Harriette lacked the financial independence to defy her brother, Lydyard’s Pride was shut up and gathered dust under the eye of an elderly Lydyard retainer and two girls from the village. Its only use was to signal to the Free Traders from the lofty vantage point of the Tower Room.
But this was no time for wallowing in self-pity. Harriette turned her mind to the uninvited guest as the two men deposited their burden on the bed.
‘Gabriel—light the fire, then go below and send Wiggins up with hot water and cloths. Linen for bandages. And a bottle of brandy. Not a word of this, mind, outside this house.’ She rubbed her palms down her sides and approached the bed. ‘Let’s get him out of these sodden clothes, George.’ She turned back the collar of the ruined coat and began to ease it from the injured shoulder.
‘I’ll do it, Cap’n. It’s not seemly, Miss Harriette,’ George reprimanded.
Harriette smiled through her impatience. Despite her smuggler’s garb, she had suddenly in George Gadie’s mind been transformed from Captain to lady of the house. ‘Not seemly? He’s probably dying, and will surely do so if we leave him as he is.’
‘It’s not seemly for you to strip a man to his skin, Miss Harriette!’
‘I know the form of a man.’ Harriette continued to struggle to pull off the garment, noting in passing the fine cloth, its superb cut. ‘I’ve seen your spindle shanks often enough when you’ve been soaked to the skin and stripped off on the beach.’
Which raised a guffaw from Gabriel as he left the room.
‘Dare say. Not the same. This’n’s young and comely!’ Nevertheless George began to pull off the man’s boots. ‘Don’t blame me, Miss, when your brother hears and kicks up a fuss.’
‘I won’t. And with luck, Sir Wallace won’t hear.’
Whilst George attended to the boots, Harriette struggled to ease the tight-fitting coat from her guest’s shoulders. Best to do it as fast as possible whilst he was still unconscious. Exasperated, she pulled a knife from her belt and began to use it against the seams—it was ruined anyway. The shirt, of the finest linen as she had suspected despite the muck and blood that soiled it, gave her no trouble. She had already used his once-elegant cravat as an impromptu padding. Her lips curved in contempt as they had on board Lydyard’s Ghost. Payment for state secrets must be high.
‘Miss Harriette, I think you should leave.’
‘Just do it, George.’
With a click of tongue against teeth, George stripped off the man’s breeches, undergarments and hose.
Well, now! Harriette was not ignorant of a degree of male nakedness. On board the cutter, when sailors stripped off their shirts to haul and pull on rope and sails, she had watched without embarrassment the play of smooth, welldefined muscle as arms and backs took the strain, when thighs had braced, sinews taut, against the drag of wind and wave. As a member of the crew, it was an occurrence that no longer disturbed her. A man was a creature of blood and bone and muscle, much like a horse, superbly crafted to carry out a task against the elements.
She had seen a half-naked man before. But nothing like this man, fully naked. Harriette found herself locked in a moment of splendid appreciation.
His fine skin was smooth, unweathered, his physique magnificent, lean and rangy. Broad shoulders, superbly muscled under the skin, informed her unequivocally that the condition of his body mattered to him. Perhaps he fenced, she thought. Or sparred at Gentleman Jackson’s saloon. Arms sleekly powerful, from using the reins if he was wealthy enough to own his own curricle or phaeton. She could imagine him looping the leathers, controlling and steadying the power of a pair of blood horses. He might be rich, but he was not idle, sinking beneath rolls of fat as did some of her brother’s associates, who spent their lives doing little but eating, drinking and hunting.
Harriette’s eyes lingered, moved on to the flat planes of hard flesh as his chest narrowed to a slim waist, a light smattering of silky dark hair arrowing towards a firm belly. Narrow hips, strong thighs, his powerful masculinity obvious, strong and impressively formed even though unaroused. She felt heat rise in her cheeks and her mouth dry, shocked by her very physical reaction to this man, whom she ought to despise—until George flung a sheet over the man’s lower limbs with a frown, a curse and a muttered comment on what was right and not right for well-brought-up young women to see.
Still Harriette stood and simply looked, drawn by a force beyond her control. If she ever visualised the sort of man she would wish to marry, this man would take centre stage in her dreams. And here he was under her hands, within her power. Unfortunately unconscious. Perhaps just as well, she decided, blinking and ordering her wayward thoughts back into line as Wiggins delivered the requested items. She was hardly at her society best in fisherman’s smock, boots and breeches, to capture a wealthy and handsome man as a husband. To capture any husband. So far in her twenty-three years she had proved a dismal failure.
Not that she would want this one, of course, with dubious morals and treacherous intent.
Consigning George to wash the mud and sand from his abused body, Harriette applied herself to his injuries. Any remaining bleeding was sluggish, and on cursory examination, the wounds looked far worse then they actually were. A hard blow to the head had broken the skin, hard enough to cause the confusion and the lack of consciousness, but she did not think there would be permanent damage. A crust of dried blood had already formed. Bruising spread over one shoulder, dark and ugly, as if he had been beaten with a club. A thin blade had split his cheek, not deep, not dangerous, and would heal well enough—although it might leave a scar. Most worrying was a bullet wound in his upper left arm—thank God, not his shoulder or chest—but the bullet had passed through the flesh, so no need to cause more damage by digging it out, which George would have had to do with more enthusiasm than skill since there was no doctor in Old Wincomlee. With luck, it too would heal well if cleaned and bound up.
Harriette set to work with water and cloth and gentle hands to cleanse and bind, wrapping his arm tight, applying a compress to his shoulder. Only when she was satisfied that she had done all she could did she allow herself to perch on the side of the bed and investigate his face.
He was handsome, a face that could lodge in a woman’s mind, in her private longings. A striking male beauty. Blessed with a fine straight nose, straight brows, a lean face to match his body with fine planes and sharply elegant cheekbones. His lips, now soft and relaxed, were masterfully carved. Harriette could imagine them curving in a smile, or firm with temper. Softly she drew her fingertip across and along, a mere breath of touch. They were cold and unresponsive.
What would it be like to press her own lips to his? To warm them into life, to feel them heat and respond…? She had no idea.
Harriette Lydyard had never been kissed.
As if aware of her regard, and causing Harriette to snatch her hand away, his eyelids fluttered, then slitted open, a shine of green, yet blurred as they had been in the cutter. A murmur, a slur of words.
‘Where is she? You promised…Had an agreement…’
Harriette leaned forwards to listen, smoothing her palm over his forehead, down his uninjured cheek.
‘…you must let her go…let her come with me…’
So he had lost someone, a woman it seemed. Harriette allowed herself another soft caress as a keen regret settled in her heart. Searching for her was important enough to cause him anxiety. What would it be like to have this man search for her, raging at her loss? Her cheeks flushed, her heart fluttered a little. What would it be like to be prized enough by so desirable a man that he must seek you out, even to the point of wounding, even near death. What would it be like to feel those arms close around her and hold her body against his…?
How foolish! How shocking! What would Wallace say if he could read her entirely unseemly thoughts? Harriette snatched her hands away and pushed herself to her feet. A silly girl’s dreaming. She would end up wed to one of Wallace’s drinking, hunting, entirely unattractive cronies if he had his way. No future in wishing and sighing over a handsome man as if she were a child barely out of the schoolroom. And where would she possibly meet such a one as he? She was hardly likely to persuade Wallace to give her a Season in London. Or even Brighton.
‘Where is she? You promised…I can’t leave her!’
Against her will, lured by the undoubted anguish, Harriette was drawn back again to push the tangled hair from his face.
‘Hush now. I’ll care for you.’ So racked and troubled. But who wouldn’t be with a dent in his skull and a bullet through his arm? Yet a strange tenderness was stirred.
‘I’m afraid for her….’
‘There’s no need to fear.’ Empty words, but she must reassure him.
‘Help me…’With a deep sigh, almost a groan, he lapsed into silence again, dark lashes heavy against his pale skin.
‘I will. Sleep now…’ She closed her hand around his and felt an instant response, weak, in truth, but a curl of his fingers around her own as if in ownership, as if an unbreakable bond existed between them.
Harriette’s heart bounded heavily within her chest. Her breathing shuddered. In that one moment all she could desire was to stay beside him and comfort him, soothe his pain.
You love him! The words whispered in her ears, lodging in her mind. You have fallen in love with him!
‘No, I have not! Of course I have not!’ she remarked aloud, thrusting her hands behind her back like a small child caught out in some misdemeanour. As if she might reach out to touch him again because every instinct insisted that she do so, flesh against flesh. ‘How could I possibly have done anything so ridiculous!’ But her breath was short, as if she had just climbed the path to Lydyard’s Pride, her skin heated, the blood singing through her veins to make her aware of every inch of her body.
‘What’s that, Miss Harriette? Regret bringing him back here already?’ George Gadie came to stand at her side. ‘He’ll live, I reckon.’
‘And that’s the best we can do for now,’ Harriette remarked, furious with herself, but working hard to keep her voice calm, unconcerned. She drew her tongue over dry lips and prayed for a cold dose of common sense to cool her blood. ‘We’ll leave him to see if he recovers. One of the maids—Jenny—can sit by him.’
‘Then I’ll be back tomorrow, Cap’n, if you don’t want me now.’
‘You’ve done more than enough for me today.’ She touched his arm in thanks. ‘Go and let your wife know you’re safe. It was a good night’s run.’
‘Aye, it was. Hope he doesn’t cause you more trouble than he’s worth. Should’ve passed him over to the Silver Boat, as Mr Alexander said.’
Harriette angled a glance. ‘Would you have left Gabriel there under Sam Babbercombe’s care, if he was wounded?’ A grunt was all the reply she got as George opened the door for the maid, but she sensed his agreement. ‘Come for me if he wakes, or takes a turn for the worse,’ Harriette instructed Jenny, who settled herself on the only chair with a basket of stitching to keep watch. ‘I expect he’ll sleep through the rest of the night and much of the day.’
As Harriette walked slowly down the staircase, her thoughts remaining fixed on the man who astonishingly had the power to light a flame in her blood, she came upon Meggie climbing ponderously towards her, a deep wicker basket on each arm.
‘Well, Miss Harriette. Now what?’ She puffed out a breath, cheeks red with exertion.
Harriette beckoned. ‘Come with me and I’ll tell you.’ Retracing her steps to the first floor, she opened the door of the bedchamber she used when she could escape from Wallace and his overbearing wife, Augusta, and spend a night there. For furnishings and cleanliness it was little better than the one she had just left, but familiar with its lack of comfort she paid that no heed, walking immediately across the room to one of the windows, for the windows of the chamber looked out across the bay, offering a spectacular sweep of coastline.
Meggie, broad and stout, no nonsense snapping in her bright eyes, ignored the view as she deposited her burdens on the bed. Companion and servant to Miss Harriette Lydyard for more years than she cared to add up, and well used to her mistress’s eccentric lifestyle if not totally accepting of it, she did not mince her words. ‘What’re you doing this time, miss? Mr Alexander did not say.’
Harriette’s lips twitched wryly, knowing that her trust in Meggie could be absolute. ‘I think I’m bringing a spy back from the dead.’
‘A spy, is it? Do you think you should?’ Meggie did not appear altogether shocked.
‘No, but I can’t leave him to die, can I?’ The gleam of rich colour catching her eye, Harriette left the window and the view to dig into one of the baskets. ‘His clothes are ruined. He’ll need this until we can make other arrangements.’ She unfolded a dressing gown in stunning red-and-gold satin, dragons chasing their tails, with heavy gold frogging on breast and cuffs.
‘And he’ll have to be at death’s door to agree to wear it!’
Harriette chuckled. ‘Sir Wallace sees himself as the epitome of high fashion.’ She swirled the gown around her own shoulders and struck a stance remarkably similar to that of her pompous brother. ‘As for the occupant of my one furnished bedchamber, he’ll have no choice, however tasteless it might be.’ She looked up, eyes pinning her maid. ‘What did my brother say? Or did you manage to leave without his knowledge?’
‘More like what her ladyship said. Sir Wallace was gone on business to Lewes.’ Meggie stood, frowning, with her hands on her broad hips. ‘Lady Augusta had a fist-full of dissatisfaction, as you can imagine.’
Harriette grimaced, a little pain in her heart as she imagined the downward turn of Gussie’s mouth. Harriette had learned, almost, to live with the constant displeasure. ‘I’d hoped Zan would be more discreet. Does Lady Augusta know I was on a run?’
‘Of course she does. Can’t keep it a secret, can you, when every man in the Old Wincomlee knows the identity of Captain Harry? At least they all have the good sense and loyalty to keep their mouths shut so the Preventives’ll never hear the truth from them. And Sir Wallace’ll never help the Preventives, even if he is a JP. He knows where his next barrel of fine brandy comes from! But as soon as he returns, he’ll be up here before you know it, demanding to know what you’re about. And why you’ve not returned to Whitescar Hall, to don a pretty dress and play the genteel young lady of taste and refinement.’
‘Because I would die of the tedium of it all if I did! If Wallace’s taken himself off to Lewes, let’s pray God he stays there overnight, and I’ll be undisturbed here for a while longer.’ Harriette’s eyes lit with mischief as she refused to let her spirits sink into her boots. ‘Even better, I’ll send a message that I’ve caught a chill—or a fever from France. That’ll keep them away. Wallace fears ill health like the plague, and Augusta won’t come here without him.’ She stretched her arms above her head, loosening tight muscles, then ran her fingers through her windblown and knotted hair. ‘I might even manage a week’s freedom. Wallace won’t come to see how I am if he thinks I’ll spread some noxious disease in his path—and foreign at that! An enemy disease!’
Meggie snorted a laugh, then quickly became serious. ‘But Lady Augusta’s not far from the truth, Miss Harriette. You should be wed. Not that I can think of any of your acquaintance worthy of you.’ She rapidly changed the subject with skill born of long practice as Harriette rounded on her, the light of battle in her eyes, in her face. ‘I’ve brought you some clothes, so that when Sir Wallace does arrive to blister your ears, he won’t be able to take exception to your appearance.’ She scowled at the salt-and-sand-encrusted smugglers’ garb, the scuffed boots. ‘What he would say at this moment, the Devil only knows….’
A tap came at the door. Jenny entered, curtsied and ignored her mistress’s unconventional attire. ‘The gentleman’s awake, Miss Harriette. I thought you would wish to know.’
‘Is he now? A stronger constitution than I thought. Then I’ll come.’
‘Not like that you won’t, Miss Harriette.’ Meggie grasped her wrist without ceremony as she would have followed the maid. ‘What would he think?’
‘I don’t care what he thinks.’ Or perhaps she did. She might have little care for her appearance in general, and none when engaged on a run, but would she really want this unknown gentleman to see and judge her in her present dishevelled and scruffy state? Would she want him to look at her, eyes widening in disgust of her unseemly attire? Sir Wallace’s disapproval meant nothing to her. But her captive spy…Shame tinted her cheeks a glorious pink at the thought that he would see and condemn her as being unredeemably outré. Still, if she were clad as a smuggler…‘Besides,’ she spoke her thoughts aloud, testing the idea, ‘our guest might speak more openly if…’
‘If what?’
‘Well, he won’t confess his devious crimes to a woman, will he? On the other hand, to a man…’Twisting it up with a careless hand, she stuffed her hair back under her cap, pulled it well down. ‘He might speak to a smuggler, mightn’t he? Two reprobates together. The smuggler and the spy, Meggie. Now there’s an unholy alliance, wouldn’t you say? Not much to choose between us, many would think. Behold, Harry Lydyard.’ She struck a pose again, the lawless smuggler in boots and breeches.
‘One day, all that will get you into trouble, my girl!’
‘But think how exciting it makes life, Meggie!’ Perhaps she was unaware of it, but a shadow crossed her face. A little melancholy, a little regretful. ‘Why would I want to be wife to one of Sir Wallace’s sad associates when I can sail Lydyard’s Ghost on a lively sea?’
Lucius Hallaston became aware first of a grinding headache, as if a band of iron were being tightened around his skull. And if that were not bad enough, his shoulder throbbed, as when he had once taken a heavy fall from his horse sufficient to crack his collarbone. At the same time his left arm screamed with a fierce burning pain. Was there any place in his body that did not hurt?
He struggled, trying to sit up, abandoning the attempt as his wits scattered. It was almost too much trouble to chase after them and reassemble them into some sort of order as the pain beat with the insistency of a military drum behind his eyes. Memory came back in patches, with disconcertingly looming gaps. Lucius shook his head as if to shake them into a recognisable pattern and wished he had not.
He opened his eyes cautiously. A gloomy room, dusty bed hangings, few meagre furnishings. The linen sheets that covered him were worn and smelt of must and mildew, although were clean enough. Where in heaven’s name was he? It was no inn that he recognised. A young girl, a servant from her clothing, sat beside the bed, head bent over a needle. Mending more sheets, he thought inconsequentially.
‘Where am I?’ he managed to croak through a throat as dry as a desert.
‘You’re awake, sir.’ The girl looked up, rose to her feet.
‘Yes.’ His voice sounded rusty to his ears. ‘Will you tell me…?’
But then she left him, so that he almost wondered if he had imagined her, and the darkness claimed him once more. When awareness returned, it was to a different voice. Feminine yet cool and calm, instructing him to open his mouth and drink. An arm was behind his head, lifting him, and the rim of a cup pressed against his lips. It was cold and refreshing, a sharp tang of lemons, balm to his dry throat. And from somewhere came the soothing drift of lavender. He tried to thank the girl, the maid, for surely it was she—or was it? The voice was different—but it was all too difficult to work out truth from imagination.
He gave up and slept again.
Gradually, when consciousness returned, so did his memories. He remembered being in a boat. Remembered being set upon in the little French port. Port St Martin, that was it. Remembered failing in his task, outwitted and outmanoeuvred by that villain Jean-Jacques Noir. He felt anger rise within him, and shame that he should have been so tricked, but he had not expected such underhand treachery. Obviously he had been too naïve. He thought he might have been shot. Certainly he remembered pain, then blackness….
He did not know who had rescued him. One moment, he was being attacked and beaten on the quay, the next he was in the bottom of a small boat with water lapping against his cheek and a queasy swell. He remembered demanding to be taken back to France, and then nothing.
So where was he now?
A movement by the door as it opened. He risked moving his head and could barely repress a groan at the leaping pain. A young man approached in the sea-faring gear of boots and wide breeches, a heavy tunic, all worn and saltstained. He took the seat vacated by the maid and leaned forward, arms on thighs.
Lucius found himself being appraised by a pair of cool eyes, as pale grey as to be almost silver.
‘You are awake.’
‘Yes. Where am I?’ He would try again.
‘Old Wincomlee, a fishing village in Sussex. You’ll not know it but it’s a mere handful of miles from Brighton. This is my home. Lydyard’s Pride.’ Stern, unsmiling but with a surprisingly educated accent and turn of phrase, the young man had at least given him some information, if his pounding brain could retain it.
‘Who are you?’ he managed, frowning furiously.
‘My name is Harry Lydyard.’
‘You brought me back. From France.’
‘Yes. You were hurt.’
‘So I owe you my life.’
‘Perhaps you do. You bled all over my boat.’ A tight smile curled the lips but then he grew solemn again, his voice taking on a hard edge. ‘What were you doing in Port St Martin? Why were you set on?’
‘I…’ He sought for words in explanation—did he not owe his rescuer some sort of reasonable explanation?—but realising that he could not find the right words to say. Those that rushed into his mind, he must not say! Something deep and unpleasant in his gut prompted him towards fear and suspicion. Who to trust? It was becoming more and more difficult to know who to trust as time passed.
‘You were delirious when we brought you back here. From what you said you were looking for someone. A woman, I think…’
He shook his head, winced, groaned.
‘I see you’re reluctant to tell me the truth, so I must draw my own conclusions.’ Even sterner, the pale eyes piercing, pinning him to the bed in icy contempt. The tone of voice was a condemnation in itself.
‘A matter of business, let us say.’ The best he could do.
‘A business that left you half-dead with a bullet in your arm, a crack on the head and your pockets empty?’ Heavy cynicism lay strangely on the young face that swam before him.
‘So it seems.’ From the mists, he suddenly recalled the barrels and casks in the boat, the bales. ‘Were you engaged in the Free Trade? Are you a smuggler?’
The tone remained biting. ‘Yes. I am.’
‘You’re very young to be a smuggler,’ he commented, though why that should seem important to him he could not say.
‘But not too young to do it well. I am an excellent smuggler.’ The young man stood and advanced to the bed, leaned over to examine the wounds, fingers firm and searching, yet gentle enough, against his hair, his arm, but Lucius got the distinct impression that there was not much compassion in the solicitude, rather a hard practicality. ‘You’ll live.’ The blunt statement confirmed it. ‘The bullet went through your arm. A bang on the head—hence the headache. You were lucky. You’ve lost blood, but you’re strong enough. Another day and you’ll be on your feet again.’
Except that Lucius felt as weak as a kitten, and found himself sliding into sleep, unable to pull back, unable to keep his eyelids from closing. Not that he wouldn’t be sorry to block out the disparaging stare of the self-confessed smuggler. ‘I’m sorry. My mind seems to disobey my demands. Sorry to be a trouble to you…’ He fretted at his unaccustomed weakness, sensing some urgency that he could not grasp, his fingers pulling at the sheet. ‘I must get up now. I’ll be missed if I don’t…’
‘You can’t.’
‘I can’t stay here…’
‘You must for a little while. Sleep now. You’ll be stronger when you wake.’
And because he really had no choice, Lucius Hallaston did as the smuggler ordered.
Harriette continued to sit beside him. Her reactions to this man confused her. He wouldn’t answer her questions and she did not think it was because he could not recall anything of the previous night. Some mystery surrounded him. No doubt he was a spy after all and she should condemn him for it, yet she had seen fear in his face—but perhaps that was just the fear of any man who was set upon, his life threatened by a pistol shot. And there had definitely been that deep anxiety, for a woman. He had not denied it, had he? She leaned back, arms crossed, scowling at the sleeping figure, unable to disentangle her emotions. Was he not hurt and in trouble, his wits still scattered? Did he not demand her compassion, her understanding?
On the other hand, what did it matter that she knew not whether to damn him or care for him? What did it matter that he might sell his soul, or at least England’s security, for thirty pieces of silver? His treachery was entirely irrelevant because once he was recovered he would be on his way to whatever nefarious practice demanded his attention, and she would never see him again.
Yet still, accepting that, Harriette allowed herself a little time of sheer self-indulgence, of self-deception, for that was surely what it was, and allowed her deepest instincts to surface again. His voice, deep and smooth as honey, was as pleasant on the ear as his features were to her eye. For a little while at least she could pretend that he was hers and this was their home where the world could not encroach. Where she could live as she chose. She would walk on the cliffs, this man holding her hand, telling her how beautiful she was, how his heart beat for her, whilst she could tell him that her heart had fallen into his hands, as softly as a ripe plum. At night he would hold her in his arms, unfolding for her all the delights that could exist between a man and a woman. Rousing her with hands and mouth, with the slide of his naked flesh against hers…No harm in imagining the possessive touch of his fingers as they linked with hers, as they curled into her hair, holding her captive so that his mouth could take hers. No harm in considering the breathless, heated pleasure of that body, stripped and powerful, pinning her to the sheets, taking her, making her his.
Enough! Harriette’s smile became contemptuous. It was all an illusion, a figment of her sad imagination. He would approve of her being a smuggler quite as little as she would accept that he was a spy! Yet for a moment, still clutching at her ridiculous dreams, Harriette leaned over him and touched the sculpted sinews and tendons of his unbound arm, encircling his wrist where his pulse beat against her fingers, turning his hand, shivering when once again his fingers instinctively curled around hers and held on. Whatever he was, whoever he was, she was glad he was safe.
‘Sleep now,’ she whispered. ‘I will care for you. No need to fear.’
She still did not even know his name.
It was a long night. The man slept but restlessly. When his breathing became ragged, Harriette dosed him with some nameless and evil-tasting concoction of Meggie’s, thinking it at least as good as anything Sam Babbercombe would do. Then, since she hadn’t the heart to summon Jenny back, she took it upon herself to sit and watch over him through the dark hours. So she sat and let the hours pass. Stood, stretched, looked out of the window at the changing shape of clouds over the waxing moon. Tried to read by the flickering light of the two candles and gave it up. Simply sat and watched the pain and confusion shift over his face, praying more fervently than she had for years that this was simply a fever that would pass.
At some point after midnight, his restlessness became more intense, hands clawing to grip the sheet as he fell under the control of some dream, head thrashing from side to side. Perspiration beaded his brow, the expanse of his chest. Although his eyes opened, the bright gaze was blurred and unseeing.
‘Softly.’ She stood to make use of a damp cloth soaked in lavender, afraid his restlessness would start the bleeding again. ‘You’re safe. You’re in no danger.’
As if responding to her voice, he grasped her wrist urgently. Surprising her with its power. His voice was harsh, his question stark with fear.
‘Marie-Claude. Are you Marie-Claude?’
‘No. I am not.’
‘Marie-Claude…Where is she?’
‘She’s safe.’ It was an obvious answer in the face of his despair.
‘I can’t find her…’ His grip tightened.
‘You will. Rest now. She’ll come to you….’
He lay quietly. Harriette thought for a moment that he had accepted her assurance, but then his movements became edgy as if still caught up in a web of anxieties.
‘But she’s lost,’ he whispered, eyes opening blindly. ‘I don’t know where she is and I can’t find her.’
Harriette was moved by a desire to give him some respite from whatever tracked and haunted him in his dark mind as she enclosed his hand between both of hers. If she could anchor him to the present, it might stave off the monsters in his dreams. ‘Hush. You need to sleep. I’ll keep the nightmares at bay.’
It seemed that he focused on her in the end. But to no great satisfaction.
‘No one can do that for me. No one can stop them.’Then he slid down the slope into unconsciousness again. His hand fell away.
Disturbed, Harriette bathed his face in cool water, his chest where sweat had pooled in the dip of his collarbones. Who was Marie-Claude? His wife? She did not think so since he did not seem to know her. Not, therefore, his lover, either? French, from her name. Had she some connection with his presence in France at Port St Martin?
There were no answers, only questions.
He seemed calmer, his sleep deeper. Harriette contemplated leaving him, but dared not, so she was committed to spending the night. The upright chair proving far too uncomfortable for sleep, she leaned her arms and head on the folded quilts at the foot of the bed and dozed, confident she would wake if he did. No one need know that she stayed the night with him. Her lips twisted wryly. Certainly not her imaginary lover who knew nothing of her dreams and who now was dead to the world.
When Lucius awoke it was daybreak, when she had doused the candles and was watching the sun, the faintest sliver of red-gold on the horizon. Harriette found herself held by a direct stare, keen and searching, and of a striking grey-green. The earlier confusion was gone and now the eyes that held hers were awake, aware. In their supreme confidence Harriette detected the recovery of a formidable will. Here was a man used to authority, to having no one question his wishes, wearing the habit of command like a glove, despite his unorthodox lack of clothing. She could not look away from his regard, but forced herself to keep her expression carefully controlled in defiance of the unfortunate tremor in her heart. At least she had had the presence of mind to stuff her long-suffering hair back under her stocking-cap with the coming of the day. She really could not face an explanation of her sex and unchaperoned presence in his bedchamber.
‘Good morning.’ She broke the little tension.
‘I feel better,’ he replied.
‘Does your head ache still?’
‘Not so much. My shoulder hurts like the Devil.’
‘It’s badly bruised. Are you hungry?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded surprised.
‘I’ll send Jenny with some soup.’
He rubbed a hand slowly over his chin, grimacing at the roughness, casting a glance down at his torso that the sheet did not cover. ‘Will you arrange for some clothes for me?’
‘Yes. You won’t like them. Not much haut ton to be found in Old Wincomlee, and your own garments were too badly damaged, I think, to be of further use to you.’
‘I’m relieved to be alive to wear them at all.’
A surprising note of dry humour. Harriette steadied her gaze. So far their exchange had been ridiculously innocuous, as if meeting in a polite withdrawing room. If she did not take the matter in hand, if she succumbed to cowardice, she would bid him good day and wave him from her door, as if he were not in possession of a bullet wound and an unsavoury reputation. She took a breath and stirred the mud in the bottom of the pool. ‘Are you a spy?’
The humour was quickly gone. ‘No. I am not a spy.’ There was no hesitation, but then he would be unlikely to tell the truth, even if he was. ‘Why did you think I was?’
‘Marcel—the French smuggler who brought you to my cutter—said you were associated with an individual called Jean-Jacques Noir.’
A quick frown between his brows, a thinning of lips. She saw immediately that he recognised the name. ‘I know him. But I am no spy.’
‘Marcel says he is a man of vicious character.’
‘Yes. I believe he is.’
She was getting nowhere. ‘Who is Marie-Claude?’ He certainly recognised that name. His eyes snapped to hers. ‘I don’t know.’
A lie. He had looked dangerously uneasy, but nothing to be gained in pressing him if he would not say. It was, after all, none of her concern. ‘Very well. I don’t believe you, but can’t force you to tell, except by torture!’ She walked to the door, then paused, looking back. ‘Will you tell me this, then—what is your name?’
‘Lucius Hallaston.’
It meant nothing to her. She gave a brief nod and would have left him, aware of nothing but a deep disappointment that the man who seemed for some inexplicable reason to have such a claim on her was entirely disreputable. This man who had awoken her inexperienced heart and her emotions, who had reminded her painfully of what was lacking in her loveless life, had feet of clay. The disillusion settled like a heavy stone below her heart.
On her way to the door she stopped beside him, to press her fingers against the hard flesh of his shoulder. Yes, it was cool, the fever gone. But not in her own blood. Even so slight a touch sent heat racing through her blood. This is simply physical desire! Harriette felt her face flush with shame.
‘Do you have family who will miss you?’ she demanded, curtly, to cover her embarrassment.
‘A brother in London. I won’t be missed for a little time. You, I think I remember, are Harry Lydyard.’
‘Yes.’ She repressed a little laugh of wry mirth. ‘I am Harry Lydyard.’
He still thought of her as a man. It didn’t matter. He was devious, deceitful and well on the road to recovery. She would send George to deal with his needs and there was no need for her to see him again. Within twenty-four hours he would be gone from her life.
And good riddance! But her heart trembled as if at a great loss.
Chapter Three
Lucius Hallaston spent the slow passage of time whilst his strength returned alone, considering his situation. It was not an operation that encouraged optimism, although he tried. His body was sore as if trampled by a team of his blood horses, his head hammered, a sharp pulse of pain just behind his eyes, but he was not incapacitated. It could have been much worse, he supposed. He could be dead. True, lifting his left arm and shoulder was an excruciating movement, but if someone could find him some clothes, he could take control of his life once more. Or could he? The desperate failure of the enterprise in France was hardly evidence of his controlling the events of his life!
He pushed aside that bitter memory because to worry at it would achieve nothing but make his head pound more. All that would be required of him in the near future was to wait for further communication from Jean-Jacques Noir—and there would be one for sure—and explain away to his brother a bullet in his arm and a hole in his head with as much plausibility as he could dredge from the debacle.
His brows settled into a solid bar. It shouldn’t be too difficult to smooth over the immediate problems. But as for Monsieur Noir…It was a damnable situation! Lucius bared his teeth in what was not a smile and fell to contemplating the array of cobwebs that festooned the curtains and the scurrying antics of a spider, trying not to allow the disdain he had read in the eyes of Captain Harry Lydyard to disturb him.
But it did. The young man’s stare had been contemptuous, scornful of his obvious sliding round the truth. By what right did a common smuggler pass judgement on him, Lucius Hallaston?
By the same right you pass judgement on yourself. You deserve it for allowing yourself to get into this mess! his conscience sneered in his ear.
He must have dozed. When the door to his bedchamber opened again later in the morning, disturbing a quantity of dust, a sturdy individual, more appropriately clad for a day’s work in a fishing smack than a period of duty as a gentleman’s valet, entered. A bundle of clothes in his arms, he was followed by an equally robust woman with a determined air and lines of profound censure on her broad features. She carried a tray with a bowl, a ewer of hot water and a dish of something steaming that smelled—well, good.
‘Morning, y’r honour.’ The fisherman lost no time, depositing the bundle on the bed. ‘I’ve been sent by Cap’n Harry to take care o’ you.’
‘My thanks.’ Lucius pushed himself up on the pillows.
‘Some rare bruises, I’d imagine.’ Without hesitation, the fisherman thrust an arm around Lucius’s shoulders and heaved. ‘You’ve a tighter hold on life this morning, y’r honour, I’ll say that. Thought you was a gonner—all the blood an’ all. George Gadie, y’r honour. Fisherman.’
‘And smuggler?’ Lucius’s memory was vague at best, but some aspects of his rescue were clear enough.
‘Aye, sir…’ Wariness flitted across the man’s face but there was a glint in his eye. ‘And you, y’r honour?’
‘Lucius Hallaston.’
‘Well, Mr Hallaston, the Cap’n says you’re to drink this.’ A mug of ale changed hands.
The woman who had been bustling round the room nudged George aside with bowl, spoon and napkin. ‘I’ll say one thing, though some would say it’s none of my business. The sooner you leave here, the better for all our sakes, sir. Especially for—’
‘Take yourself off, Meggie,’ George broke in. ‘Let the man drink and get his breath.’
‘All I was saying was…’
‘Least said, soonest mended,’ George growled.
With a smile of thanks to Meggie that was ignored as she stomped to the door, Lucius gripped the bowl as best he could with his injured left arm, dipped the spoon and drank. It was good, deliciously aromatic to enhance the flavour of chicken. He realised how long it was since he had had anything to eat.
Meanwhile George sat down beside the bed, leaning forwards with arms on stalwart thighs as if anticipating a conversation. Much as Harry Lydyard had done. Lucius cocked his head, continued to spoon up the broth and waited.
‘Are you a spy, then, y’r honour?’
Lucius abandoned the spoon and wiped his mouth with the napkin as he struggled against impatience. ‘Why does everyone presume that I am? No, I am not a spy.’ He read the patent disbelief in the smuggler’s seamed face, but said no more. What proof had he but mere denial—but no point in dwelling on what could not be changed. ‘Can I get to Brighton?’ he asked, the uppermost thought in his mind.
‘Expect so. When you can get to your feet.’
‘I can do that. I don’t want to impose on you more than I have already. The maid—Jenny, was it?—I must thank her. I think she sat with me during the night, when I was restless.’
‘No. Not Jenny. It would be the Cap’n.’
Was there the slightest hesitation. Did he detect some disfavour in the gruff announcement? Impossible to tell. And why would the fisherman have any opinion on it? The beat of pain in his head made it not worth considering. ‘Then I must thank the Captain. Lydyard, I think he said. A local family?’
‘Aye, sir. The Capn’s brother—he’s the local landowner. Sir Wallace.’
‘Then I must thank Captain Harry for his hospitality before I go.’ Lucius carefully placed the bowl on the nightstand.
‘Don’t think he’s around.’ There was that scowl again, the brusque reply. ‘Shall I shave you, y’r honour?’
‘No need. You hold the bowl and towel, but hand me the razor. I can use my right arm well enough, although the left’s pretty useless. Have you a mirror?’
‘Aye, sir.’ George wiped the square on his thigh and held the smeared glass. He chuckled. ‘You mightn’t like what you see, though.’
It was a shock.
‘By God! That’s a mess.’ Lucius looked at the reflection in the mirror. Ran his fingers over the growth of beard and then, gently, down the livid scar on his cheek, flinching at the soreness. If vanity was an issue, if his looks mattered as much to him as it did to his younger brother who was in the throes of incipient dandyism, he would be cast into despair. Together with the purple bruising on his temple and jaw, and the matted hair stuck to his head with God knew what, he looked a criminal fit for Newgate. ‘It’ll heal, I expect.’ He winced as he once again pressed his fingers against the knife wound.
‘So Capn Harry said. He cleaned it up as well as he could.’
‘Hmm. Then let’s see if we can put the rest to rights.’
Within the next half-hour Lucius had to admit to looking relatively more respectable. Shaving complete, he struggled into boots and breeches—fortunately his own, if hopelessly stained—and a linen shirt that was not his, but of good quality.
‘Best we could do.’ George gave him a helping hand to pull on the boots. ‘Meggie’s trying to find you a coat. Yours isn’t in a fit state. Until we do—what do you think of this, y’r honour?’ He held up the dressing gown with a rough flourish, unable to repress a guffaw.
‘Hell and the Devil! Now that’s an eyeful.’ Lucius grinned as he shrugged his right arm carefully into the vibrant glory of rampant dragons. The other he couldn’t manage so allowed the magnificent beasts on the left to simply hang.
‘Sir Wallace’s.’ George smirked. ‘We borrowed it. Like the shirt. He’s an eye to fashion.’
‘Has he now?’ Looping the belt, Lucius was willing to tolerate it for the sake of respectability. ‘My thanks. Now, if you can find me a coat and a horse, I’ll be out of your hair. If I can get to Brighton…’
George shook his head. ‘Don’t think you should ride, y’r honour. Not with the blood you lost. I can arrange a pony and trap easy enough from the Silver Boat to get you to Brighton. If you had money,’ he added slyly.
‘And there’s the rub. But we’ll work something out.’ Lucius rubbed his hand over his newly shaven cheek. ‘I had a gold hunter with me when I went to France.’
‘Not any longer, sir. Gone the way o’ the rest o’ y’r possessions.’
A peremptory knock on the door.
It heralded the entrance of a man driven by righteous anger and blunt discourtesy. His accusation followed without introduction.
‘So the tales in the village were right enough.’ The visitor slammed the door behind him, eyes narrowed into a glare. ‘What’s this? A nameless ruffian dragged from the high seas, and wearing my dressing gown?’
Lucius resisted the inclination to raise his brows at the intrusion, struggling to keep a civil tongue in his head. Nothing to be gained by taking the offensive. The man—a gentleman despite his lack of good manners—was perhaps thirty-four or -five, around Lucius’s age, clad in a fashionable greatcoat of indeterminate drabness reaching to his ankles, with innumerable shoulder capes, the whole magnifying his rotund appearance and short stature. His face was broad, his complexion florid, telling of a close association with Free Trade liquor. Lucius heard George clear his throat uncomfortably. So this was Sir Wallace Lydyard, owner of the dubious taste in garments. But Lucius did not appreciate the overt hostility, the sheer lack of good manners or breeding.
‘My apologies, sir,’ Lucius replied as he rose slowly to his feet. A cool chill, the curtest inclination of the head, a deliberate lack of recognition. He would not be reduced to such discourtesy but, by God, he would not ignore such rank ill manners. ‘The rumours you were so quick to take at face value are incorrect. I was an innocent traveller in France, injured and robbed through no fault of my own. Fortunately I was rescued by some gentlemen of the Free Trade.’ Now, deliberately, he allowed his brows to lift infinitesimally. ‘I was not aware that that entitled me to be painted as a ruffian of the high seas.’
‘No?’ Sir Wallace was not to be discouraged. ‘What is any law-abiding Englishman doing in a French port if not to England’s danger, when the French are our sworn enemies, even at this moment engaged in battle with our brave forces in the Peninsula?’
‘Urgent business of a family nature that can be of no possible interest to you, sir.’ The raised brows were superb in their arrogance. Lucius had had enough of slurs on his character. ‘If I am making use of your splendid garment, then I must offer you my thanks. My own coat is ruined or I should not have taken such a liberty. Perhaps you would be so good as to advise me of your name, sir?’
‘Lydyard. Sir Wallace Lydyard.’
Again Lucius managed the slightest inclination of his head, icily polite, a barbed and poisonous weapon to depress pretension and boorishness. ‘Lydyard. Let me make myself known, to clear any misunderstanding between us. I am Lucius Hallaston. Earl of Venmore.’
‘Venmore!’
‘That is so.’
Sir Wallace was flustered. ‘My lord…’ For once Lucius enjoyed the effect of his consequence with not a little malice. ‘Perhaps I was hasty.’ An unattractive flush mantled Lydyard’s features. ‘You’ll understand—the circumstances, your presence here at the Pride…’
‘I was unconscious when I was brought ashore. A bullet wound.’
Lydyard’s eyes suddenly acquired an unpleasant reptilian gleam, and his glance snapped to George Gadie. ‘Did you spend the night here, Gadie, to care for his lordship?’
George shuffled. ‘No, Sir Wallace. I did not.’
‘You were not here at the Pride?’
‘No, Sir Wallace. The Cap’n sent me home.’
‘So I heard correctly.’ Sir Wallace’s voice was soft, a slyness sliding across his features. ‘My sister stayed here last night, then.’
‘Aye, Sir Wallace.’
Lucius remained silent, unable to follow this line of exchange, even more when Lydyard’s speculative appraisal was turned on him.
‘You look much restored this morning, my lord.’
‘Well enough to take my leave,’ he replied curtly, yet with restraint. There were suddenly undercurrents in the room that made no sense to him, but his patience was at an end. No man addressed a Hallaston of Venmore in such an impertinent manner!
‘Knowing my sister, I suppose she spent the night at your side, in this room.’
A warning flitted across his skin, like a draught from an ill-fitting window. ‘Your sister, sir? I have no knowledge of your sister.’
With a grunt, Sir Wallace promptly turned on his heel and marched to the door. Opened it. ‘Jenny?’ he bellowed, followed by a distant reply of assent. ‘Tell my sister I wish to see her here immediately.’
Then he continued to stand beside the door, arms folded.
Lucius rummaged unsuccessfully through his incomplete recollections. He recalled Jenny, the dark-haired maid. But Lydyard’s sister? ‘As I said, as far as I have any memory of last night, I am not acquainted with your sister, sir.’
But Sir Wallace’s lips curled in marvellous disbelief. ‘Do you presume that your birth and title will allow you to compromise my sister? She spends a night here with you, in this very bedchamber, and her honour is besmirched.’ He lingered on the word. ‘However well bred she might be, however excellent her connections, she is unwed and, apart from myself, defenceless. What will her reputation be now? I had a marriage in line for her, but the bridegroom will surely cry off when he gets wind of this, my lord.’
‘As far as I am aware, my care was undertaken by the Captain of the smug—the sailing vessel that rescued me. Harry Lydyard, your brother.’
‘Ha! Such pretence does not become you, my lord!’
Light footsteps echoed on the stairs. Sir Wallace flung the door back.
‘Come in. Come in. There’s scandal in the air, with you at the centre of it, my dear sister. I should have known!’ His tone, Lucius noted, despite his expressed concern, was not that of a compassionate brother, but rather that of a hanging judge. ‘Once again you have put the Lydyard reputation in jeopardy, leaving me to smooth over the unpleasantness.’
A young woman stepped into the room.
So this was the Lydyard sister. Lucius cast a briefly appraising eye over her. Nothing like her brother in looks, thank God, but nothing more than a country girl with no hint of town bronze. Tall for a girl, her hair was dark, unfashionably long, tied carelessly with a ribbon to cascade in a thick mass of curls to her shoulders and beyond. A neat figure, fine boned and well proportioned. Pleasing enough features in an oval face with well-marked dark brows and a straight uncompromising nose. Her lips as this moment were tense and unsmiling. He would never have guessed at the relationship between the two, except that she did not refute her brother’s harsh welcome. Her dress was unfashionably full-skirted and high-collared, drab and plain in an unflattering shade of green. As Lucius was forced to admit, he would not have given the young woman, who looked nothing more than a lowly governess, a second look in a crowded salon in Mayfair. Yet she bore herself with a confidence and an elegant simplicity at odds with her garments. Perhaps because she was no schoolroom miss, but a lady of more than twenty years. She stood just inside the door, calmly waiting for whatever would happen next, her eyes firmly on her brother.
‘Miss Lydyard. It is an honour to meet you.’ Lucius bowed as gracefully as he could manage despite the torn muscles. He smiled bleakly. ‘As I have informed Sir Wallace, we have no prior acquaintance. Any accusations on his part are misinformed. Your honour is without blemish.’
Sir Wallace waved the apology away, his attention on his sister. ‘Your guest at the Pride is Lucius Hallaston, Earl of Venmore,’ he announced with relish. ‘Were you aware of that?’
Entirely composed, Miss Lydyard ignored her brother and curtsied, eyes now lowered. ‘My lord. I see you are much recovered.’
It was the voice that did it for Lucius. Cool, low tones, carefully controlled, calmly confident. Astonishing in the circumstances. And then the eyes confirmed it as they rose to meet his across the room. Oh, yes, he could not mistake those eyes. As cool as her voice, grey, almost silver in the morning light, like the flash of sunlight on water at daybreak. And her hands, now clasped firmly before her, her knuckles white, if he were not mistaken. So perhaps she was not as composed as he had thought. Longfingered, capable hands, able to pull on a rope or manoeuvre a barrel on a moving deck. Or bathe a man’s forehead with cool water and bind a wound…
The suspicion transformed itself into a certainty. This was Captain Harry. The knowledge, the memory of the Captain’s intimate ministrations, lurched uncomfortably in Lucius’s belly.
‘So Harry Lydyard tended to you, did he, my lord? I fail to see how you could be unaware.’ The words burst from Sir Wallace. ‘A foolish notion that no man of sense would believe. This is my sister, Miss Harriette Lydyard. Whom you, my lord, have dishonoured!’
Seeing a chasm opening up before his feet, Lucius viewed the occupants of his borrowed bedchamber with distaste. Miss Lydyard continued to make no response to her brother’s recriminations, a matter that earned his reluctant respect, except for the little line that had dug itself between her brows and a tinge of colour to her cheeks. She was not afraid of her brother, nor of the situation, even though her brother was accusing her of immodesty and him of some form of lascivious seduction, remarkable given the condition he had been in! As for the brother…Had he imagined it or had Lydyard’s interest grown as soon as he knew his title? Lucius’s head might ache, but there was nothing wrong with his wits. Here was a situation that had the makings of a trap set to catch a man of wealth and consequence and some degree of honour. How to snap up a prize for a spinster sister who was not in the first flush of youth or blessed with obvious beauty. And he, the Earl of Venmore, was to be the prize. Lydyard had said he already had a marriage arranged for his sister. Like Hell, he had! Lydyard had an eye to the main chance and had leapt to secure it.
Well, he would not be caught in that trap. Lucius’s nostrils flared at the audacity of the man. And at the same time caught the eyes of the lady. Grave and solemn, they touched his and held there, and if he were not mistaken there was a plea in their silver intensity. But for what? Perhaps that he should not make it worse for her than it already was. He set himself to do his best. He owed her that much.
‘As I recall, Lydyard, not that I recall much of it, I was unconscious for most of the night. I could have spent the night with an entire gang of smugglers in the room, together with their contraband and an invading force of Preventive officers, and been unaware of it.’
But Lydyard’s smile widened to show an array of unpleasantly discoloured teeth. ‘And would the gossipmongers of London society believe that? That Earl Venmore spent the entire night with my sister in his room, in an empty house, with her honour still intact at daybreak? Hardly, my lord. My sister will be disgraced. Nor, I hazard, will it do much for your own reputation, robbing an innocent girl of her good name. We may be distant from London, but news and gossip travels. One of the biggest catches in the marriage market as you are, if I am not mistaken, reduced to seducing and abandoning innocent girls. Will the gossips believe the innocence of all concerned? And your presumed unconsciousness throughout?’
The chasm not of Lucius’s making yawned wider. ‘No, probably not.’
‘For certain they will not! You have rendered my sister unmarriageable, sir!’
And Lucius saw Harriette Lydyard grow pale, as she had never done when she had his blood on her hands. He saw horror dawn and spread over her face in a tightening of the skin along her cheekbones. Still she made no reply. On her behalf as much as his own, anger bubbled up, enough to make him light-headed in his weakened state. He had been neatly trapped, had he not, one disaster following upon the next, but if he read the girl’s reaction right, she was as much a victim as he.
So he would take control of this situation. He had had quite enough in recent weeks—more than any man could tolerate—of being outmanoeuvred and manipulated, outwitted and outgunned. Jean-Jacques Noir might have got the better of him in France, but he was damned if he would allow Sir Wallace Lydyard to do so in—where was this God-forsaken place?—Old Wincomlee! Nor would he allow the man to take such a bullying tone of voice with his innocent sister. A vulnerable, gently reared girl did not deserve that.
Hell and the devil! Did he not have enough to plague him without this? But those grey eyes were suddenly dark like a winter sea, wide and anxious.
Harriette continued to stand where she had stood since the beginning of this appalling scene, a mere step into the room, wishing with all her heart that she could remain Captain Harry for just a little while longer. Or that the rotten floorboards of the chamber would collapse beneath her feet and swallow her down into a black hole. Her heart sank to the depth of her scuffed satin shoes. She had hoped to make her escape back to Whitescar Hall with no one being the wiser, certainly without any further conversation between herself and her wounded spy. And here she was, summoned by her brother as if she were a servant. She had managed, if nothing else, to dispose of her breeches, which would have added kindling to the flames, but Wallace, damn him, had come hotfoot. Wallace was furious. She slanted a look towards his unappealing features and her attention was caught. Perhaps Wallace was not so furious as he might wish to appear. Manipulative was more the order of the day. Her half-brother had seen an opportunity and was intent on making the most of it. Harriette did not know whether to descend into hysterical laughter or weep from the sheer incongruity of the whole situation
An earl! Her spy was an earl! Ridiculous. And was, furthermore, accused of dishonouring her. As if her private dreams had blossomed into reality. What arrant nonsense was that?
No point in her arguing the case with Wallace. When he was in this mood, he would listen to neither excuse nor reason, so she might as well keep her silence until he ran out of foolish accusations and the exquisite Earl had made his inevitable rapid escape from Lydyard’s Pride.
She risked another glance at the Earl.
The ripple of laughter almost won despite the horrors. Because the Earl of Venmore was a Corinthian. All that Wallace wanted to be, tried so ineffectually to ape, here was his heart’s desire in the flesh. Wallace had the ambition to be a sportsman, proficient and lauded for his abilities in the saddle, with pistol and rapier. To be admired for his splendid physique, his handsome looks. To be recognised as a leader of fashion. He never could. And here standing before him was the epitome of all his dreams.
And hers.
Washed, shaved, his hair settling into shining, elegant dishevelment, the Earl cut a splendid figure. He was taller than she had thought, more than six feet, his shoulders impressively broad beneath the lurid monstrosity, and did she not know at first hand how the muscles ran sleek and smooth, as water over a rock, beneath his skin, the athletic moulding of his strong thighs and firm belly? Did she not know the smooth satin of his skin beneath her palms when she had washed and bound his wounds? And Harriette felt her face and her blood heat at the memory.
How degrading that he should look at her with such arrogance printed on his features, as if she were of no consequence to him. But then why should she be? If he were a man of intellect, the Earl of Venmore would have quickly detected Wallace’s disgraceful plotting to catch a husband for her.
Her concentration was dragged back as her brother’s anger filled the room.
‘You have dishonoured my sister, Venmore. I demand retribution.’
‘No…! There was no dishonour,’ Harriette gasped, a knot of ice forming in her belly.
‘Be silent!’ Wallace rounded on her. ‘This is not for you. Although many would say you brought it on yourself, cavorting as you do with the Free Traders. I will settle this. What hopes for a suitable match if this gets out—as it surely will?’
‘Then there is only one remedy, is there not?’ A cold interjection in the heat.
The Earl walked across the room towards her, slowly but steadily enough. His eyes were on her face, and Harriette saw banked fire there and recognised a lethal fury at her brother’s wily methods. Even so, he bowed before her with inestimable grace.
‘Miss Lydyard. There is one solution to restore your good name in the eyes of the world. Would you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?’
Marriage! To become the wife of this man? The knot of ice melted in a rush of heat. If she could choose her heart’s desire, would it not be this gift that was being offered to her, as in a childhood fairytale? A precious jewel on a silk cushion? She might have damned him as a traitor, but now she must acknowledge the depth of honour that he should come to her rescue, much as a knight of old would ride to slay the dragon—Wallace—and carry off the damsel in distress.
Would not this miraculous offer make her heady dreams come true?
But Harriette heard herself reply, her voice as distressingly matter of fact as his. ‘No, my lord. There is no need. As we both know, my brother was ill informed. I am grateful and will never forget your kindness in making so great a sacrifice, but I must refuse your generous offer.’
She saw him react. That was not what he had expected. The muscles along his jaw tightened. ‘Perhaps you do not quite understand the situation, Miss Lydyard.’
‘I am not a fool, my lord.’ A flash of impatience, which she strove to temper, but without much success. ‘I understand the situation perfectly. As I see it, there is no situation between us.’ And gasped as her brother grasped her wrist with painfully hot fingers.
‘Show some sense, girl—’
‘Sir Wallace,’ the Earl interrupted icily, raising a peremptory hand as Harriette tugged ineffectually for her release, ‘I need a moment’s private conversation with your sister. Alone, if you will. Is there a library or drawing room in this establishment that we can use?’
Sir Wallace drew himself up to his most pompous. ‘I’ll not allow it. It’s not appropriate that you—’
‘Sir,’ the Earl interrupted bitingly, without finesse, ‘if I spent the night with Miss Lydyard behind locked doors as you imply, luring her into my bed and proceeding to destroy her reputation by the physical demands of my body on hers, five minutes in a library in the full light of morning will not make matters any the worse.’
Harriette froze at the brutal description of what had not occurred. And for the length of a heartbeat wished that it had.
‘Five minutes, then.’ Sir Wallace allowed Harriette to pull her wrist away. ‘Take his lordship to the library, miss, and try to keep some sense in your stubborn head.’
They descended the stairs, Harriette leading the way into a library as dusty and disused as the rest of the house, what furniture there was shrouded in Holland covers. The leather spines of the few books on the shelves were dull, clearly unread. Immediately the door was closed behind them, a swathed form of a sofa strategically positioned between them, Harriette swung round to face the Earl. Her eyes were clear and bright and very determined. She might have been proud of her earlier reticence, but she could remain silent no longer, even if it meant rejecting the heartstopping image painted in her mind by the Earl’s savage words.
‘There’s no need for this, my lord. I know what my brother is about. I’ll lay odds he didn’t suggest marriage until he heard you were an earl!’ She saw her sharp cynicism cause a slash of high colour along the Earl’s magnificent cheekbones—whether from anger at her brother’s presumption or disapproval of her lack of discretion she could not tell—but she would not simper and prevaricate.
‘I wouldn’t take your odds, Miss Lydyard. Sir Wallace certainly saw the opportunity.’
‘I’ll wager the Lydyard’s Ghost he did! To get me off his hands, and to gain a connection with a man of wealth and consequence.’ Harriette made no attempt to bury the bitterness. ‘My brother is nothing if not ambitious. And I should tell you, I won’t do it, just to further Wallace’s ambitions. Not even if you were the Prince Regent himself!’
‘Fortunately for both of us, I am not!’ the Earl responded, taken aback. What was the impression he had gained not ten minutes ago? Here was no innocent, vulnerable, gently reared girl, bullied by her brother. Here was a highly opinionated young woman actually refusing his offer of marriage. And with a forthrightness that, quite frankly, he resented. His lips thinned. ‘Would marriage to me be such an anathema, Miss Lydyard?’
‘That’s not the issue here. What possible advantage could there be for you in such a mésalliance? I think you must be all about in your head to even consider it, my lord!’
‘The blow from a club might have rattled my senses as a temporary measure,’ he snapped back, ‘but I think I am sane enough.’ What possible advantage…? The kernel of an idea began to form in his mind. That such a marriage might just bring him a glimmer of light, an unforeseen advantage….
‘We know nothing about each other. How would I fit into your elevated social circle in London? I have no notion how to go on there. I have never been to London, not even further than Brighton. Why would you possibly wish to marry me? A beautiful debutante? No. A wife skilled in the social mores of London? Not that. A rich wife with powerful connections? Not that, either. So why? I am no fit wife for you.’ Harriette kept her voice unemotional, ignoring the weight of regret that lay on her heart. He would never know how difficult it was to reject him. ‘I am twenty-three years old, my lord!’
‘And I am thirty-four, if that is of any interest to anyone but myself.’
She saw the flash of proud temper as she resisted him, but would not retreat. ‘I agree your age is irrelevant. Mine is not. I did not think you obtuse, my lord.’
‘Obtuse?’ His eyes hardened, unused to being challenged.
‘I am firmly on the shelf, with nothing to recommend me as a wife, fit for nothing but to be governess to my brother’s children.’ She stated the uncompromising truth without a quiver, her chin raised.
His face remained stern. ‘I commend your shining honesty, Miss Lydyard, but marriage can be the answer—if you are not determined to be so stubborn.’
‘What will your family say with a plain nobody like me for a bride, trailing behind you on your expensive doorstep, somewhere I expect, in Mayfair?’
‘I have no idea, nor do I care,’ he replied, struck by the sad little image. ‘It seems to me, Miss Lydyard, that you sell yourself short. You are hardly a nobody. Your family is perfectly respectable.’
But Miss Lydyard did not retreat. ‘Respectable! How damning a word is that? Compared with the Hallaston family, the Earls of Venmore, we are parvenus indeed. It takes no intelligence to guess the on dit of the Season. A common smuggler as the Countess of Venmore! As bad as Lady Lade. I can’t wed you, my lord.’
At which he smiled, for the first time with some level of genuine humour. It lit his face, softening his mouth, rendering her instantly breathless. ‘Not as bad as Letty Lade. She, as I recall, before she was elevated to society, was a servant in a brothel and mistress of Sixteen-String Jack, who ended on the gallows. I doubt you, Miss Lydyard, have any such claim to fame.’
His face was alight with laughter, atrociously handsome despite the disfiguring bruises and the vicious path of the knife on his cheek. Harriette was forced to look away, forced to take a steadying breath as her dreams shattered before her eyes. He was not for her. To know that he had offered for her under duress, driven into an honourable gesture by her despicable brother, was entirely shaming for her. Without Wallace’s spiked accusations, the Earl of Venmore would never have noticed her, much less invited her to share his life and his bed. She took another breath against the sharp dejection and wished with all her heart it could be otherwise, but she could not, would not, let him be a sacrifice for her brother’s greed. It would humiliate her—and him. Marriage on such terms, when all he had shown her was kindness, would be beyond tolerance for both of them.
‘Why did you do it?’ His soft question surprised her.
‘What?’
‘Take on the appearance and identity of Captain Harry?’
‘A family obligation.’ She walked away to look out towards the cliffs where seabirds wheeled and dived in a joyous freedom, finding it easier not to face him.
‘It’s a hard burden for a family to ask of a young girl.’ To her dismay he followed her to stand at her shoulder, a solid physical presence so that she was immediately aware of the heat of his skin against hers, the sheer dominance of his tall figure. But she would not allow herself to feel vulnerable.
‘It’s not just an obligation.’ She felt an inexplicable need to defend herself to him. ‘It’s the excitement, too. Lydyard’s Ghost is my own. So is Lydyard’s Pride, this house that I love but can’t afford to keep and where my brother refuses to let me live.’ Unaware, animation coloured her words and her face. ‘The smuggling runs have become part of my life. Without them, what do I have before me? I am unwed and unlikely to be so, whatever my brother might say. So I must die of boredom—a neverending round of embroidery, painting, sedate walks under my sister-in-law’s caustic eye. When Zan first took me on a run…’ She flushed, regretting having laid herself open to his interest. ‘It’s in my blood, I suppose.’
‘Zan?’ he asked.
‘Alexander Ellerdine. My cousin. My friend. He showed me the…the satisfaction of it. And since Wallace would not, I took on the family connection. The sea is in my blood, too. Lydyards have always had an interest in the Free Traders.’
The idea that had crept into Luke’s mind blossomed into a fully fledged possibility. To rescue Miss Lydyard from dishonour—a matter of duty in itself—and at the same time…the cutter, Lydyard’s Ghost! He turned to lean, careful of his shoulder, against the window shutter so that he might look directly at her, obliging her to raise her eyes to his.
‘Since you don’t appear to value my offer of marriage overmuch…’his mouth curled in a touch of self-contempt ‘…allow me to suggest a contract that might appeal to you Miss Lydyard. A business deal, if you will.’
‘A business deal?’ That she had not expected.
His eyes narrowed as if he contemplated some distant plotting. ‘I find I might have the need for a fast cutter to give me easy access to the French coast. You own such a cutter.’
‘Well—yes. But if you need one, would it not be simpler to just buy one?’ Harriette’s brows rose in blatant disbelief. ‘Why saddle yourself with a wife?’
He thought fast of the advantages that he might just make use of. ‘I need a trustworthy crew and an experienced captain with knowledge of tides. A captain with knowledge of the French coast and a connection there. And speed would be important—might be crucial in my planning. You could offer me all of that.’
Harriette folded her arms. ‘I could. Why?’
‘A matter of family business. It need not concern you.’ And Harriette watched as a grimness settled about the Earl’s mouth. It was like a shutter closing, she thought, masking any emotion.
‘So you get use of the Ghost.’ She pursed her lips. ‘What do I get?’
‘Simple enough.’ He lifted a hand, palm spread. ‘My title and consequence. My purse strings. I can give you comfort, luxury if that is what you would enjoy, social standing, independence. There will be no compulsion on you to paint or embroider from me! You will no longer be under the eye of either your sister-in-law or your brother. Is that not at least tempting? I own a number of houses that you might like. You might find that you enjoy a London Season.’
‘Ha! With nothing to think of but what I wear and what I say, and if I can manage the steps of a country dance at Almack’s without tripping over my feet? You should know that I have never been taught to dance, either!’ She let the ideal filter through her mind. ‘You think that money would matter to me?’
‘As a smuggler, I imagine profit is an important consideration for you.’
‘You would think that,’ she replied enigmatically. If that is what he thought of her…But how should he not since he did not know her? ‘Why would I choose to escape from my brother into your controlling, my lord?’
‘You would not find me too rigorous a husband. Will you do it?’
Harriette studied the unsmiling, masterful features and was not sure, not sure at all. The Earl of Venmore did not seem to have the makings of an easy, tolerant husband. There was suddenly no similarity between this man and the helpless figure who had been tumbled broken and bleeding at her feet. This man who insisted on her striking this remarkable bargain with him.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.
‘Why not? Consider what a profitable catch I turned out to be.’
There was no mistaking the edge of a sneer in his voice. What a low opinion he appeared to have of her. Well, she would reply in similar vein. ‘So there’s something in this for both of us. Youw ould be as self-interested as I in finding an advantage in this match.’
‘Yes. Why not?’
Harriette dragged in a breath. Here was honesty between them at least. And it was tempting; she felt herself weakening. The Earl of Venmore was clearly a devious man, knowing that independence would be a priceless gift to her. What would it be like to share his life, to share his bed? She shivered at the thought of the Earl’s physical ownership of her. It was an image that would destroy her resolution, she admitted in her heart, if she allowed it.
‘You said you could not afford the upkeep of this house.’ His words brought her back to the present. ‘It obviously means much to you. If you wish to spend money to put this place back in order…’
Harriette stared at him.
‘…then I could enable you to do it.’
Was he actually offering to pay to resurrect Lydyard’s Pride from dilapidation to its former glory? Why would he put himself out to be so persuasive? There was no debt for him to pay. Harriette could find no words to reply between what her heart desired and what her mind informed her was only right and proper. Her mind, of course, had the victory.
‘You don’t have to, my lord. We both know my honour was not compromised.’
‘I know it, as do you. But unfortunately the polite world is not kind to even the veriest whisper of scandal. It can be cruel and malicious. If you have any ambition to attract a husband, you must be aware of the dangers for you if gossip wags its spiteful tongue.’
He watched her as she thought over his words with utmost seriousness. She frowned a little as she replied, as if her words were painful to her, as they were. ‘It seems to me, my lord, that there are far more advantages for me in this arrangement. All you get is an unsuitable wife and the Ghost.’
‘And it’s important to me.’ Surprising her, and perhaps himself, the Earl took her hand in his good right one and Harriette felt an arresting sparkle of light ripple through her blood. His clasp was firm around her fingers, strong with more than a hint of possession. Never in her life had she felt so dominated by a man. She was intensely aware of his forceful presence and their seclusion, of the strength of his will when he had set his mind to a course of action. His words confirmed it. ‘Let us have plain speaking between us, Miss Lydyard. Is there someone whom you love, to whom you are promised?’
Harriette shook her head.
‘Then we are both without entanglements and of an age to enter into this agreement of our own free will.’
‘But that isn’t so. I think there is a lady close to your heart.’
His brows twitched together. ‘I don’t…’
‘A lady named Marie-Claude.’
His eyes flashed a warning. ‘No. Whatever I said in delirium, you misunderstood, Miss Lydyard. She is nothing to me.’ His response held a hard bite. ‘I promise to be an attentive and tolerant husband. I will defend your name and your honour with all the power I have. I will not make more demands on you than you are willing to give—and in return you will allow me use of the Ghost. Miss Harriette Lydyard, will you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?’ His proposal held none of the warm emotion that might be expected in a bridegroom towards the woman who would put her future into his hands, but he kissed Harriette’s fingers, lips cool on her skin, that stirred a hot little flame in her heart. ‘It would please me, restore us both to the good graces of polite society and solve all manner of problems for you.’
A proposal of marriage. Harriette floundered in a morass of indecision. How remote, how austere he was, as if it meant nothing to him. And perhaps it didn’t. She could not do it. It would bring her more sorrow than happiness.
Then the Earl smiled at her. What an impossibly charming smile he had, making him too dangerously attractive. And suddenly Harriette found herself tottering on the edge of forgetting all her clear reasoning as to why she should not take this step. It was so very appealing. Her gaze was caught by his so that she felt as if she were pulled along as by waves in a strong tide. If she were not careful, she would be dragged inexorably below the surface and then she would be lost…
‘Miss Lydyard? My future hangs on your reply.’
‘Really?’ She looked askance.
‘Really, Miss Lydyard!’ His mouth firmed into an impatient line.
She must give him an answer of course. And did so with dry appreciation. ‘Your tongue is as smooth as French silk, my lord. The only thing I regret is that, if I do agree, it will please my brother.’
‘He is no longer of any concern to you. For you, Miss Lydyard, if you will accept my offer, you now belong to me.’
It was outrageously proprietary. Intensely possessive. Very male and very confident. Harriette’s heart leaped within the confines of her outmoded bodice. And again, a harder beat, when his clasp tightened and he pulled her slowly towards him. Was he intending to kiss her? Fear struck.
‘I should tell you, my lord, that not only can I not dance, but I have never been kissed, either.’
‘Then it will be my pleasure to show you how it is done, to consolidate our agreement.’
As a kiss it surprised her. It was very gentle, the softest of meetings of lips, hardly more than a sharing of breath between them. Harriette felt he had made an effort not to frighten her, but now fear was not in her mind. She sighed, taking a step closer, and, sensing it, the Earl slid his good arm around her waist and drew her closer still, firm against his chest, his thighs, whilst his lips warmed and teased. Enveloped by his arms, it was as if all her senses became startlingly alive so that his scent, his touch stroked her, to fill her with a delight that she could never have imagined. Gentle as it was, it reduced her to a shimmer of liquid pleasure. Until he released her, tilted his head as if struck by a thought, before placing a final caress between her brows.
‘So we are agreed? It would not be appropriate for me to kiss a lady who was other than my betrothed.’
And Harriette, hopelessly entranced, gasped at his slide into light humour. How could she possibly tell him that he had stolen both her breath and her heart in that one simple undemanding gesture? ‘Then I must accept, mustn’t I, for I am not in the habit of allowing any gentleman to kiss me. But one thing I would ask.’ She lowered her eyes so he would not see the anxiety that began to build in her chest again.
‘Since you saved my life, I think I am duty bound to grant whatever you request, Miss Lydyard.’
‘I don’t want a society wedding. Not at some fashionable church in London under the eyes of the ton. Not in the midst of your Corinthian set.’
‘Very well. Then where?’
‘Here. With a special licence.’
‘Then it shall be so.’
Relief swept through her, and astonishment that he would agree so readily. He had not even asked her to explain, something she did not wish to do. ‘If I am to escape, then let it be quick. Do you know a bishop, my lord?’
‘I think I can lay claim to it.’ Then, ‘My name is Lucius,’ he prompted.
‘Lucius.’ She tried it on her tongue. Heavy. Classical. Aristocratic. She must have frowned.
His mouth was a touch sardonic. ‘If you don’t care for it, try Luke.’
‘Is that what your family call you?’
‘My brother, Adam, does.’
Harriette tried it in her mind. Luke! She liked it. It suited his dark good looks. ‘Then I will.’
‘So we are decided. As long as I don’t have to wed you in this garment.’
‘I doubt your own coat will be redeemable—although I’m sure you have any number of such fashionable garments. I should tell you I took a knife to the seams. I thought you were bleeding to death.’
‘Then I must thank God you did. Although Weston might not be too happy at the destruction of his masterpiece.’
‘Whoever Weston might be, he did not have to deal with an emergency! I promise I won’t wed you in boots and breeches.’
‘I can ask for nothing more, Captain Harry.’
‘I am very grateful.’
Reaching out, he startled Harriette by running a finger along the edge of her jaw, lifting her chin so that she must look up at him. Then with a swift movement belying his bruising, Luke swooped and kissed her again, hard and sure.
His demeanour might be cool, but his mouth held the heat of a searing flame. His previous kiss had warmed her with pleasure. This was a brand that scorched her, fire consuming every inch of her body. It stirred a hunger in her of which she had no experience. It turned her limbs to water. Harriette pressed her hands against his chest, not to make a distance between them but simply to savour the warmth of his body, the solid beat of his heart under her palm.
Then, as quickly as he had taken her, he released her.
‘I don’t need your gratitude, only your acceptance, Miss Lydyard.’
He took her hand to lead her back to break the news to Sir Wallace, the only sensible thought in Harriette’s mind—What have I done, offering to wed a man whose way of life might be totally immoral? followed quickly by—Why would the Earl of Venmore need the use of a fast cutter to get him to France? A question that lodged, hard and heavy as a stone, in Harriette’s chest. For if the Earl intended to use the Ghost in some nefarious practice with the enemy—and did all the evidence not point to that?—how could she be attracted to a man who might very well be a spy?
A smuggler. A smuggler as Countess of Venmore? By God! What had he done?
Whilst George Gadie set to work to negotiate the hire of a horse and gig from the tight-fisted landlord of the Silver Boat, Luke was left to juggle a range of unpalatable thoughts, all centring on Harriette Lydyard. For most of them he had no answer. Such as, why had he fought so hard to get her? And what had happened to his legendary charm, his ability to conduct an elegant flirtation, that he had made so ham-fisted an attempt, stricken into damning silence when she had listed her faults and accused him of not wanting a bride such as she? He had simply stood there like an ill-educated and mannerless boor, all his presence of mind buried beneath a cold dose of honesty, skewered by the lady’s forthright stare. The fact that all her observations were a fairly accurate reading of the situation was by the by. What had she said? Unfashionable, no fortune, no looks to speak of, past the age of a débutante with no inclination to come out into society.
Dispassionately, the Earl reconsidered his bride. Miss Lydyard had sold herself short. Blinding honesty was certainly one of her attributes. That’s what he would get. An honest, outspoken wife, a capable woman who did not faint at the sight of blood with the courage not to retreat before her brother’s bullying and intimidation. His wealth, his title, his entrée into society held no apparent attraction for her. He smiled sardonically at her reaction to his prestigious tailor. Unfortunate Weston! She did not even know who he was.
And, no, she was not unattractive. There was an elusive charm about her, of which he thought even she was unaware. When she had explained about this ruin of a house, full of vital energy, her features had lit, her eyes—and what remarkably beautiful eyes they were—had glowed. No, she was not unattractive at all. When she had smiled, she had been transformed. He thought that he had not seen her laugh, and wished he had. Instead there had been that sudden shadow of fear when she had asked for a discreet wedding. What had that been about? What woman of his acquaintance would resist the chance of a society wedding, to be the envy of the haut ton when she became the Countess of Venmore? He was not so naïve that he did not appreciate his own worth as a bridegroom. But there had been a lingering sadness there.
Who would have thought any woman would have tried so hard not to marry him? A harsh laugh escaped him. A wise man, he decided, would make a fast escape and thank the gods for it—but an honorourable man would not. Luke had no intention of allowing Harriette to suffer through the strange workings of fate that had tumbled him into her boat. Nor of his name being coupled with her dishonour. His family name deserved better than that, as did her own.
Would he regret this further complication in his life? He shrugged the thought away abruptly, until his bruised shoulder caused him to hiss through his teeth at the pain. Probably he would. Did he not have enough troubles at the moment with discovering the present whereabouts of Mademoiselle Marie-Claude? He frowned, not seeing a way forward there, and contact with Jean-Jacques Noir was becoming hazardous. Should he tell Harriette about that? No. Not yet, at least. Better to keep his mouth tightly shut and his fears to himself—as he had been warned that he must.
For now he had the prospect of a wife, the last thing he wanted at this point in his life when he was living a lie and burdened with guilt, but in all honour, he could not abandon her. A strange alliance. A smuggler and a…what? Spy? Traitor? Some would undoubtedly say the latter. An unscrupulous pairing, but Miss Lydyard had the Ghost, too good a chance to miss it if it allowed him to save an innocent young woman from harm.
And whatever happened, he would make sure Miss Harriette Lydyard did not suffer for her compliance.
Would Harriette Lydyard enjoy being a countess? Somehow he doubted it. He would wager she would rather face a gale-force wind in the Lydyard’s Ghost than a dress ball. But she wanted freedom from family restrictions; he saw the value of a fast ship to France. Both had an eye to a main chance, as she had observed in those cool tones of disdain, pure self-interest for both of them.
And what did he think of a girl who wore breeches and boots, evaded the law and ran the gauntlet of the Revenue men without any hint of fear? He ought to be outraged. Luke smiled wryly. Somehow he could not summon that emotion in his dealings with Miss Harriette Lydyard. He ought to be thoroughly outraged, condemning her morals and her sense of propriety. Even now, their final exchange in the library remained to echo uncomfortably in his mind.
As he was about to open the door, Harriette had stopped him. ‘If I am to wed you, does this mean that you would prefer me to give up smuggling?’
‘Yes,’ he had replied in some surprise, without hesitation. ‘How could I wish my wife to be involved in criminal activities? Ah!—that’s to say…’
‘I suppose you think it’s a vicious, damnable trade.’ She must have seen him searching for a tactful response. ‘Most people do, you know, even though it puts food into the mouths of poor women and children in fishing villages, who might otherwise starve.’ She raised her hand when he might have replied. ‘I understand—you don’t have to hide your condemnation of it, or me. I will just say this, my lord. I will consider retiring from the Trade, because it is your preference.’
And that was as much as she would promise. Now he must live with the consequences. Was it possible to build a future on a fleeting and wholly inexplicable admiration for Miss Lydyard, simply because she had rescued him and saved his life? An admiration because she had faced him and flung his offer of wealth and consequence at his feet as so much dross?
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Anne O'Brien
He remembers luminous grey eyes… and a mysterious gentle touch… Despite being unconscious for most of the night, Lucius has been accused of compromising a lady. She may not be an obvious beauty, dressed as she is in seaman’s garb, but his rescuer is all woman – and now he must marry Miss Harriette Lydyard.The Earl of Venmore is lethally attractive, and Harriette knows she should refuse him. Only with her reputation in tatters she must face the consequences of her actions – by making a pact with this disreputable, dangerous devil of a man!
Exasperated, Harriette pulled a knife from her belt and began to use it against the seams—it was ruined anyway.
The shirt of the finest linen, as she had suspected despite the muck and blood that soiled it, gave her no trouble. She had already used his once impeccably starched cravat as an impromptu padding. Her lips curved in contempt. Payment for state secrets must be high.
‘Miss Harriette, I think you should leave.’
‘Just do it, George.’
With a click of tongue against teeth George stripped off the man’s breeches, undergarments and hose. Well, now! Harriette was not ignorant of a degree of male nakedness. On board the cutter, when sailors stripped off their shirts to haul and pull on rope and sails, without embarrassment she had watched the play of smooth, well-defined muscle as arms and backs took the strain. As a member of the crew, she found it an occurrence that no longer disturbed her. A man was a creature of blood and bone and muscle, much like a horse, superbly crafted to carry out a task against the elements.
She had seen a half-naked man before. But nothing like this man, fully naked. Harriette found herself locked in a moment of splendid appreciation.
Anne O’Brien was born and has lived for most of her life in Yorkshire. There she taught history, before deciding to fulfil a lifetime ambition to write romantic historical fiction. She won a number of short story competitions until published for the first time by Mills & Boon. As well as writing, she finds time to enjoy gardening, cooking and watercolour painting. She now lives with her husband in an eighteenth-century cottage in the depths of the Welsh Marches.
You can find out about Anne’s books and more at her website: www.anneobrien.co.uk
Compromised Miss
Anne O’Brien
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
To George, again, who knows all about romance
Author Note
Since writing two medieval romances, I have returned to my first love: a Regency. It was in my mind to create a vital, strong-willed heroine whose lifestyle was not governed by the strict rules of Polite Society for a well-born lady. Most adventurous possibilities in this period were undoubtedly a male preserve. But some women clad themselves in boots and breeches, taking to the High Seas as pirates and smugglers, and this presented an exciting occupation for my heroine. And so Harriette Lydyard was created, playing the part of Captain Harry, with her French connections, her sleek little cutter and her lucrative smuggling run. A blood-stirring, eventful life for a heroine, if potentially scandalous, and with more dangers for her to face than she was aware of.
Such a vital heroine demanded a unique hero to take her on. This is Lucius Hallaston. If he is driven to pursue a life full of deceit and blackmail that smacks of the worst kind of treachery, so much the better. And if he has to struggle with his own dark secrets—then he is the perfect hero. Lucius is forced by circumstance to come to terms with a woman who proves to be as bold and as resourceful as he. A woman who has the courage to risk her life for him…
I know you will enjoy this passionate romance of scandal, betrayal and heart-stirring love. Lucius and Harriette have remained imprinted in my mind ever since I completed the last word to bring them together despite all odds.
Chapter One
The English Channel—July 1813.
‘Hurry! Sky’s clearing. Time we were gone.’
A sleek little English cutter lay off the French coast, hardly more than a shadow on the swell of a sullen sea and aptly named Lydyard’s Ghost, dark sails furled. The Captain who had issued the warning stood at the helm, one hand steady on the tiller, eyes ever alert, from shore to sky to the stowing of the bales and casks. A compact young man from what could be seen, clad as the rest of his crew in heavy boots, smock and wide trousers, a thick coat pulled over all and a stocking cap well down on his brow, he watched with innate authority. A half-dozen rowing boats headed smartly back to the French shore, to Port St Martin, only one remaining to complete the unloading—a fine brandy—of its illicit cargo.
The Captain acknowledged a sense of satisfaction. It had all gone according to plan so far.
‘That’s it, Cap’n Harry. All stowed aboard.’ An elderly, stout individual named George Gadie pushed himself away from the gunwale with a raised salute.
‘Excellent! Get the sails up, George.’ The Captain strode the length of the cutter with a leather purse in his hand, leaning to address the French smugglers in the rowing boat. ‘Au revoir, Monsieur Marcel. A lucrative cargo for us and a purse of guineas for you, as agreed. A bientôt, mon ami.’
‘A minute, Captain Harry, if you will.’ To the Captain’s surprise, Monsieur Marcel swung up into the cutter. ‘Another piece of cargo for you. Will you take it?’
The Captain frowned. ‘Is it worth my while?’
‘No.’ Marcel guffawed. ‘But we don’t want it, do we, lads? Hoist it up, Pierre.’ He gestured down to the sailors in the rowing boat who stood around a dark shape. Next moment it was lifted and pushed and finally tumbled over the side to fall aboard the cutter.
The Captain crouched to inspect. ‘What’s this?’
‘Pierre found him on the quay. A brawl—and he came off worst.’ Monsieur Marcel lifted his shoulders in deliberate contempt. ‘English, and not dead yet, that’s all I know. Pockets empty—robbed, I expect.’ Marcel was already climbing back over the cutter’s side. ‘All I know is he’s in with a disreputable crowd led by a slimy ruffian named Jean-Jacques Noir whose got his fingers in all sorts of foul pies. Noir’d sell his sister—damn! He’d sell his mother if it lined his pockets. And he’d use a knife against any man who stood in his way.’
The Captain stared down at the inert body at his feet. ‘What do I do with him?’
‘Take him back to England. Or drop him overboard if you wish.’ Still seated astride, Marcel grunted with fierce amusement. ‘He’s up to no good here. Most like a English spy, passing on information or guineas, if he’s in league with Jean-Jacques Noir. He obviously failed to meet Noir’s demands. A falling out of rogues, I expect…’ Marcel dropped back down into the rowing boat.
‘Tide’s turning, Cap’n Harry,’ George Gadie at the cutter’s bow warned.
‘Right.’ Looking across at the run of the waves, the Captain decided. ‘We must go, so he must come with us.’ A quick shake of hands, leaning down to Monsieur Marcel, and the heavy leather bag was tossed down to the French smuggler. ‘Here’s the gold as agreed.’
‘Enjoy the contraband. The brandy’s the best. And the silk.’
The Captain’s smile glinted in a shaft of moonlight as the clouds shifted to bathe the dark-painted cutter in silver. Sails, fore and aft, were set with impressive speed and the cutter put out to sea with its unexpected cargo.
Safely underway, the Captain beckoned to George Gadie, who promptly turned the body over with rough hands and a careless shove of his boot.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got here, George. Less value to us than a bolt of silk cloth…’
The words dried at the sight. Blood and sea water disfigured the shoulder, breast and sleeve of a well-cut coat. A man of means then, Captain Harry recognised, although the garment was now ruined beyond repair. The Captain pulled open the lapels to show where the white shirt beneath, of finest linen beneath his fingers, was also dark with blood. Spying, then, was a lucrative business, if a dangerous one, he decided without compassion, for the dark hair was slick and matted from a ragged cut above the hairline. He was soaked to the skin, the wound still bleeding, his face and lips starkly colourless, pale as death. Deep lines of pain were engraved between well-marked brows, also bracketing his mouth. A knife wound, not dangerous but sluggishly oozing blood, angled down his cheek. He was deeply unconscious but, crouching, the Captain could feel the steady heartbeat beneath the heel of his hand.
George grunted. ‘A spy, d’you think, Cap’n? Don’t look too dangerous now, does ‘ee? The knife scar’ll mar his pretty looks. Let’s get him out of the way. Gabriel…!’ Summoning his son, taking hold of shoulders and booted feet between them, they began to heave the dead weight against the boat’s side planking.
‘Wait.’ The Captain put out a hand, grasping Gabriel’s arm and crouched again. A weak groan came from the ashen lips. The man’s eyes, heavy with pain and confusion, opened.
‘Where am I?’ A hoarse croak of a whisper.
‘On your way back to England,’ Captain Harry informed.
‘No…I can’t. I can’t leave yet….’
‘No choice. You’ll do as I say.’ The Captain’s clipped reply was brutal.
A hand was lifted to curl weakly into the cloth of the Captain’s sleeve. The pain-racked eyes tried to focus. ‘Take me back. I’ll pay you…’
‘What with? You’ve no money in your pockets, my friend.’
‘I don’t remember…’ The eyes blurred with incomprehension, closed and then snapped open as if searching for a memory. ‘Jean-Jacques Noir…he broke his word….’
‘I expect he did. You were robbed, it seems.’ The Captain’s lips curled in derision, a thorough distaste for what this man represented. Smuggling was one thing. Was he himself not a skilled proponent of the trade, the name of Captain Harry well known along the coast of Suffolk? Nor was he ashamed of it. But spying for the enemy was quite another matter. The Gentlemen of the Free Trade had a code of honour to live by, whereas spying, handing over delicate information to England’s enemies, was despicable by anyone’s standards. ‘You were in a common brawl—perhaps you fell out with your French contacts.’
‘What?’ The eyes struggled again, without success, to focus. The line between the brows dug deeper. ‘I don’t remember…’
‘What motivates a spy to harm his own country?’ There was hard cynicism in the Captain’s reply, at odds with his youthful features. ‘I suppose you pass information to the enemy for the money. And sometimes it all goes wrong and greed wins. Whatever information you gave to Monsieur Noir, you were not paid for it. A wasted trip all in all.’
‘Not a spy…’ The voice slurred. ‘Not a traitor…’ As the cutter lurched against a freshening wind, the man’s head came into contact with the side of the little vessel and he slid into unconsciousness again.
The Captain gave a short laugh and pushed himself to his feet. ‘They all say that when the truth’s out. And how would you know if you’re a spy or not—if you can’t remember?’
‘Do we deliver him to the authorities, Cap’n?’ George Gadie asked.
‘Not sure.’ The Captain’s stern contemplation of the body was transformed into a grin of pure mischief. ‘A prize for the Preventive men to compensate for their failure to capture our fine brandy and silks? Serve him right if we did. But I don’t know…We’ll see what he has to say for himself when we get back.’
‘We could just tip him overboard, Cap’n Harry, as Monsieur Marcel suggested. Save us a deal of trouble.’ The old fisherman, sometime smuggler, pursed his lips as if savouring the fast remedy.
‘No. I’ll not have his blood, distasteful as it is, on my hands. Enough of him, George. Let’s get this cargo home and safely delivered.’
And as Captain Harry straightened to his full height against the gunwale, he tugged at the stocking cap and pulled it off as the little vessel kicked and picked up speed. To release a luxuriant ripple of dark hair into the lively wind. Wild and untamed, it curled and drifted around a classically oval face, drawing attention to sparkling grey eyes, as sultry as the sea in the heat of mid-summer, or as coolly silver as the flash of pale sun on water at daybreak. It left no doubt in the mind of any who might have been mistaken of what they were seeing.
Despite the seaman’s garb, Captain Harry—Miss Harriette Lydyard—was a very attractive, very feminine woman.
Before she turned her mind and hands to the ropes and sails, she took the time to looked down at the still figure at her feet. He was pretty as George had so mockingly observed. Hair? Impossible to tell with the blood and the water, but not fair. Eyes—well, too dark from shock and pain to tell. She crouched again to lift one of his hands from where it lay lax and inert. Filthy as it was, yet it was elegant and fine-boned with well-pared nails. She ran her own fingers over his palm, the smooth fingers. No calluses here, so not the hands of a working man. Clearly a man of wealth, as confirmed by his ruined clothes. They were made by a London tailor if she knew anything about it. Which she didn’t—but enough to recognise the skill was beyond anything produced in Brighton or Lewes. Gently enough she replaced the hand on the man’s chest, although her sense of loyalty and justice damned him for his treacherous calling. Many would call smuggling a disgraceful operation, putting gold into the hands of the French enemy, but compared with spying—well, it did not compare, did it?
It was a striking face, a haunting face, without doubt. Unable to resist, Harriette Lydyard ran her knuckles down the unblemished cheek, along the firm jawline, and felt her heart thud in her chest. No where was a face that would take any woman’s eye. A faint ripple of awareness of this man who was in her power shivered over her skin. If things were different…
Harriette hitched a shoulder as a fitful cloud covered the moon and hid the traitor from her gaze. There was nothing she could do for him. For now he would have to take his chances, but with practical roughness she unwound his crumpled cravat—once impeccably starched and superbly folded—then wadded and stuffed the pad of cloth within the shoulder of his coat to staunch any further bleeding. If fate intended him to survive, then he would.
Head tilted, her appraisal moved back, of its own volition, to his face, the straight nose, the well-sculpted cheekbones, to be thwarted once again when the moon slid behind a bank of clouds.
Harriette Lydyard rose to her feet with a huff of breath. A shame that a man so attractive should be so reprehensible as to be a trader in English secrets. Still, she found the time and inclination to throw a heavy rug over the prone body and push a small packet of priceless lace beneath his head.
Some hours later Harriette breathed out steadily, a long sigh of relief. The excitement of a run was heady, the success of it heated her blood, but the dangerous tension of the landing was always acute. There was always the chance that it would end in disaster, their cargo taken into custody by triumphant Excise men and the crew of Lydyard’s Ghost hauled before the magistrate. As all Gentlemen of the Free Trade knew, the penalty for smuggling could be the noose.
Tonight, as smooth as the bolts of silk they carried, all went without a hitch. A silent cove. No sneaky Revenue lugger lying in wait for them, no squad of Excise men with a lookout on the cliffs. Would that all landings were as sweet. Captain Rodmell, the keen-eyed Preventive Riding Officer, and his company of dragoons were no doubt all asleep in their beds in the Guard House at Lewes, dreaming of apprehending a priceless consignment of liquor and tea, lace and silk, unaware of what was unfolding on the shingle beach at Old Wincomlee.
Standing on the beach at last, Harriette rubbed her hands down the sides of her breeches in satisfaction at a job well done. It was the perfect location for such an enterprise where a natural dip in the land and the cliffs created an inlet with a gently sloping beach, a smugglers’ paradise. Harriette’s own, much-loved, house, Lydyard’s Pride, stood high above them on the cliffs that enclosed and protected. From there, an unshuttered lantern lit in the Tower Room above the east wing had sent its beams out to sea, assuring them that all was well for a landing. Now it was done. Barrels and bales had been speedily dispatched to the welcoming hands of lords and labourers alike, by pony or brawny shoulders. The cutter, her own pride and joy, the Lydyard’s Ghost, was beached and drawn up on the shingle within the bay as any fishing smack might be.
The beach emptied apart from George Gadie and his son, Gabriel, fishermen whose family had lived in Old Wincomlee for generations, smuggling in their blood. And in Harriette’s, too, as a Lydyard through and through. All Lydyards had sailed between England and France for at least two centuries to bring back illicit luxuries that were taxed beyond belief. All except for Harriette’s brother, Sir Wallace Lydyard, knight, Justice of the Peace and proud owner of Whitescar Hall. Her half-brother, not a true Lydyard, which probably explained the man’s mealymouthed disapproval of the Free Trade. So it was on Harriette’s shoulders to carry on the tradition and the responsibility of the runs, for the benefit of the whole fishing community of Old Wincomlee.
But now Harriette must deal with her unexpected cargo. He lay on the shingle where he had been dropped by two burly landsmen, more interested in disposing of barrels of liquor than in the comfort of the unknown and bloody traveller.
‘Well, Cap’n Harry? What’s it to be?’ George asked.
Well, what was it to be? Harriette looked down at the broken figure at her feet. Leave him to die on the beach, and good riddance to a traitor? Hand him over to Captain Rodmell and the Preventive men? Or…or what? He might even be dead for all she knew. His face was turned away from her, but one hand was flung out on the ground, fingers curled, as if beseeching mercy.
Against all her better judgement, that helpless gesture wrung her heart.
She looked up, tensing, eyes wide and instantly alert as she caught the scrunch of pebbles beneath booted feet. A figure strode across the beach towards them. Harriette promptly relaxed and raised a hand in greeting.
‘It went well, Harry.’ Her cousin, Alexander Ellerdine, his face full of wild energy, joined them. ‘A good run, in a quick time.’
‘Zan! Excellent.’ A brief clasp of hands. ‘And an equally good landing, all due to you. Monsieur Marcel is willing for another run within the month.’
‘We can do that.’ Alexander’s confidence was as bright as the lantern in the Tower Room window. ‘I’ll pass the word.’ He turned to go. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked, appraising the body.
Harriette’s lips parted to tell him. Then, uncertain as to why, she changed her mind. She wasn’t used to keeping secrets from Alexander, but she would keep her knowledge of this man with the haunting face and wicked crime tucked away. Just until she know more of him—and had made up her mind what to do with him.
‘An Englishman who fell on bad times,’ she announced. ‘We don’t know anything more, other than that his clothes suggest he’s got deep pockets. Marcel delivered him with the barrels and we brought him home.’ She ignored George Gadie’s angled glance, even as she felt quick colour rise in her face. Lies did not come easily to her.
‘Shall I take him?’ Zan offered with barely a glance and less interest. ‘I’ll hand him over to Sam Babbercombe at the Silver Boat.’
‘No.’ It came out sharper than she had intended. ‘I’ll take him.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘No reason.’ She tightened her lips as she considered the helpless figure. Hand him over to the rough care of the innkeeper in Old Wincomlee, who would kill him with neglect before he put himself out for a penniless, injured man? Never. And besides…Harriette felt an uncomfortable response touch her spine as the man groaned, little more than a sigh, and turned his head. The wound was stark and ugly on his cheek. For some inexplicable reason she did not want to abandon him into Alexander’s care. ‘He’s halfdead already. It’s closer to take him to Lydyard’s Pride than the inn.’ When she saw Zan’s brows rise, she hurried on. ‘He might have information of use to us.’ Harriette cast about for logical reasons. ‘It might be in our interests to restore him to health.’ She chuckled to hide her discomfort. ‘We can always extort money from him for saving his life! Sam at the Silver Boat won’t care whether he lives or dies.’
‘I don’t see how he can know anything to our advantage…’ Harriette watched, all the tension returning to her tired muscles as Alexander knelt to turn the man’s face, to make what he could of the features. Harriette thought his frown deepened and caught his sharp, rather sly, glance. ‘Going to save his life, Harriette? Play the guardian angel to soothe his brow?’
‘Nothing of the sort. How foolish you are!’ She did not like the smooth teasing, nor the hint of malice, but summoned a smile. ‘We can’t stand here arguing the case, Zan,’ she responded lightly enough. ‘Have all the goods gone?’
Alexander stood, his face alight. ‘Yes. I kept some particularly fine lace for the fashionable ladies of Brighton. They’ll pay handsomely.’ To her inexplicable relief his interest in the man had died. ‘Do you need help?’ He wound a warm arm around her waist and pressed a quick kiss to her temple.
Momentarily Harriette leaned her head against her cousin’s shoulder in gratitude, then straightened. ‘No. George and Gabriel will take care of him. You can do one thing for me, Zan. Best if my brother doesn’t get wind of this, or my whereabouts tonight. You can head Wallace off if he wants to know where I am. Tell him I’ll stay the night at the Pride and return to Whitescar Hall tomorrow. It might save my skin from a rare tongue lashing. And then send Meggie to me, would you? She’ll know what to bring. And tell her—bring some linen and one of Wallace’s dressing gowns. I think we’ll need it.’
‘I’ll do that.’ Alexander again searched her face with a quizzical gleam and ran his hand down Harriette’s arm, an intimate little gesture that surprised her and impelled her to take a step away. Alexander had never treated her with anything but cousinly affection, not even a casual flirtation, certainly no attempt to engage her interest. Then the moment was gone, so fast that she thought she must have been mistaken. ‘Don’t waste too much energy on your bloody catch,’ he now added, nudging the man’s foot with the toe of his boot. ‘Probably not worth anything. I’d throw it back in the sea and have done with it.’
A salute to her cheek, and Alexander strode off to where his horse waited on the shingle. The bloody catch, as he had put it with singular lack of compassion, was pushed ignominiously by Gabriel Gadie across the back of a pony, before George set off to lead the animal up the steep but well-worn track between the beach and Lydyard’s Pride, the house on the cliff where the lantern still beamed its welcome. And Harriette, walking at the side of the inert figure, resisted a temptation to smooth her fingers over the dark hair.
Chapter Two
At Lydyard’s Pride, the Gadies manhandled the man, with some rich cursing to accompany their efforts, into one of the many uninhabited bedchambers. Dusty, cold as a room in an unused house must be, at least it was furnished with a bed, chair and nightstand. Kindling was laid ready in the grate.
Harriette followed in their wake, wrapped around as she always was by a sense of belonging when she set foot in this house. Empty, shut up for the most part it might be, but Lydyard’s Pride was hers and the walls closed around her like the embrace of a lover. She felt her breathing slow, her pulse level. She was safe in this vast mausoleum, left to her by her Aunt Dorcas, because Lydyard’s Pride had always been passed from generation to generation of Lydyards through the female line. Harriette would have lived here if Wallace would only permit it, but Wallace thundered about her lack of years, her unmarried state, her need for a chaperone, whenever she raised the subject, insisting that she live under his authority at Whitescar Hall. How could she consider living alone and unprotected in this vast pile of a house that had had no money spent on its upkeep at any time in the past century. It would fall down around her ears and then where would she be? And since Harriette lacked the financial independence to defy her brother, Lydyard’s Pride was shut up and gathered dust under the eye of an elderly Lydyard retainer and two girls from the village. Its only use was to signal to the Free Traders from the lofty vantage point of the Tower Room.
But this was no time for wallowing in self-pity. Harriette turned her mind to the uninvited guest as the two men deposited their burden on the bed.
‘Gabriel—light the fire, then go below and send Wiggins up with hot water and cloths. Linen for bandages. And a bottle of brandy. Not a word of this, mind, outside this house.’ She rubbed her palms down her sides and approached the bed. ‘Let’s get him out of these sodden clothes, George.’ She turned back the collar of the ruined coat and began to ease it from the injured shoulder.
‘I’ll do it, Cap’n. It’s not seemly, Miss Harriette,’ George reprimanded.
Harriette smiled through her impatience. Despite her smuggler’s garb, she had suddenly in George Gadie’s mind been transformed from Captain to lady of the house. ‘Not seemly? He’s probably dying, and will surely do so if we leave him as he is.’
‘It’s not seemly for you to strip a man to his skin, Miss Harriette!’
‘I know the form of a man.’ Harriette continued to struggle to pull off the garment, noting in passing the fine cloth, its superb cut. ‘I’ve seen your spindle shanks often enough when you’ve been soaked to the skin and stripped off on the beach.’
Which raised a guffaw from Gabriel as he left the room.
‘Dare say. Not the same. This’n’s young and comely!’ Nevertheless George began to pull off the man’s boots. ‘Don’t blame me, Miss, when your brother hears and kicks up a fuss.’
‘I won’t. And with luck, Sir Wallace won’t hear.’
Whilst George attended to the boots, Harriette struggled to ease the tight-fitting coat from her guest’s shoulders. Best to do it as fast as possible whilst he was still unconscious. Exasperated, she pulled a knife from her belt and began to use it against the seams—it was ruined anyway. The shirt, of the finest linen as she had suspected despite the muck and blood that soiled it, gave her no trouble. She had already used his once-elegant cravat as an impromptu padding. Her lips curved in contempt as they had on board Lydyard’s Ghost. Payment for state secrets must be high.
‘Miss Harriette, I think you should leave.’
‘Just do it, George.’
With a click of tongue against teeth, George stripped off the man’s breeches, undergarments and hose.
Well, now! Harriette was not ignorant of a degree of male nakedness. On board the cutter, when sailors stripped off their shirts to haul and pull on rope and sails, she had watched without embarrassment the play of smooth, welldefined muscle as arms and backs took the strain, when thighs had braced, sinews taut, against the drag of wind and wave. As a member of the crew, it was an occurrence that no longer disturbed her. A man was a creature of blood and bone and muscle, much like a horse, superbly crafted to carry out a task against the elements.
She had seen a half-naked man before. But nothing like this man, fully naked. Harriette found herself locked in a moment of splendid appreciation.
His fine skin was smooth, unweathered, his physique magnificent, lean and rangy. Broad shoulders, superbly muscled under the skin, informed her unequivocally that the condition of his body mattered to him. Perhaps he fenced, she thought. Or sparred at Gentleman Jackson’s saloon. Arms sleekly powerful, from using the reins if he was wealthy enough to own his own curricle or phaeton. She could imagine him looping the leathers, controlling and steadying the power of a pair of blood horses. He might be rich, but he was not idle, sinking beneath rolls of fat as did some of her brother’s associates, who spent their lives doing little but eating, drinking and hunting.
Harriette’s eyes lingered, moved on to the flat planes of hard flesh as his chest narrowed to a slim waist, a light smattering of silky dark hair arrowing towards a firm belly. Narrow hips, strong thighs, his powerful masculinity obvious, strong and impressively formed even though unaroused. She felt heat rise in her cheeks and her mouth dry, shocked by her very physical reaction to this man, whom she ought to despise—until George flung a sheet over the man’s lower limbs with a frown, a curse and a muttered comment on what was right and not right for well-brought-up young women to see.
Still Harriette stood and simply looked, drawn by a force beyond her control. If she ever visualised the sort of man she would wish to marry, this man would take centre stage in her dreams. And here he was under her hands, within her power. Unfortunately unconscious. Perhaps just as well, she decided, blinking and ordering her wayward thoughts back into line as Wiggins delivered the requested items. She was hardly at her society best in fisherman’s smock, boots and breeches, to capture a wealthy and handsome man as a husband. To capture any husband. So far in her twenty-three years she had proved a dismal failure.
Not that she would want this one, of course, with dubious morals and treacherous intent.
Consigning George to wash the mud and sand from his abused body, Harriette applied herself to his injuries. Any remaining bleeding was sluggish, and on cursory examination, the wounds looked far worse then they actually were. A hard blow to the head had broken the skin, hard enough to cause the confusion and the lack of consciousness, but she did not think there would be permanent damage. A crust of dried blood had already formed. Bruising spread over one shoulder, dark and ugly, as if he had been beaten with a club. A thin blade had split his cheek, not deep, not dangerous, and would heal well enough—although it might leave a scar. Most worrying was a bullet wound in his upper left arm—thank God, not his shoulder or chest—but the bullet had passed through the flesh, so no need to cause more damage by digging it out, which George would have had to do with more enthusiasm than skill since there was no doctor in Old Wincomlee. With luck, it too would heal well if cleaned and bound up.
Harriette set to work with water and cloth and gentle hands to cleanse and bind, wrapping his arm tight, applying a compress to his shoulder. Only when she was satisfied that she had done all she could did she allow herself to perch on the side of the bed and investigate his face.
He was handsome, a face that could lodge in a woman’s mind, in her private longings. A striking male beauty. Blessed with a fine straight nose, straight brows, a lean face to match his body with fine planes and sharply elegant cheekbones. His lips, now soft and relaxed, were masterfully carved. Harriette could imagine them curving in a smile, or firm with temper. Softly she drew her fingertip across and along, a mere breath of touch. They were cold and unresponsive.
What would it be like to press her own lips to his? To warm them into life, to feel them heat and respond…? She had no idea.
Harriette Lydyard had never been kissed.
As if aware of her regard, and causing Harriette to snatch her hand away, his eyelids fluttered, then slitted open, a shine of green, yet blurred as they had been in the cutter. A murmur, a slur of words.
‘Where is she? You promised…Had an agreement…’
Harriette leaned forwards to listen, smoothing her palm over his forehead, down his uninjured cheek.
‘…you must let her go…let her come with me…’
So he had lost someone, a woman it seemed. Harriette allowed herself another soft caress as a keen regret settled in her heart. Searching for her was important enough to cause him anxiety. What would it be like to have this man search for her, raging at her loss? Her cheeks flushed, her heart fluttered a little. What would it be like to be prized enough by so desirable a man that he must seek you out, even to the point of wounding, even near death. What would it be like to feel those arms close around her and hold her body against his…?
How foolish! How shocking! What would Wallace say if he could read her entirely unseemly thoughts? Harriette snatched her hands away and pushed herself to her feet. A silly girl’s dreaming. She would end up wed to one of Wallace’s drinking, hunting, entirely unattractive cronies if he had his way. No future in wishing and sighing over a handsome man as if she were a child barely out of the schoolroom. And where would she possibly meet such a one as he? She was hardly likely to persuade Wallace to give her a Season in London. Or even Brighton.
‘Where is she? You promised…I can’t leave her!’
Against her will, lured by the undoubted anguish, Harriette was drawn back again to push the tangled hair from his face.
‘Hush now. I’ll care for you.’ So racked and troubled. But who wouldn’t be with a dent in his skull and a bullet through his arm? Yet a strange tenderness was stirred.
‘I’m afraid for her….’
‘There’s no need to fear.’ Empty words, but she must reassure him.
‘Help me…’With a deep sigh, almost a groan, he lapsed into silence again, dark lashes heavy against his pale skin.
‘I will. Sleep now…’ She closed her hand around his and felt an instant response, weak, in truth, but a curl of his fingers around her own as if in ownership, as if an unbreakable bond existed between them.
Harriette’s heart bounded heavily within her chest. Her breathing shuddered. In that one moment all she could desire was to stay beside him and comfort him, soothe his pain.
You love him! The words whispered in her ears, lodging in her mind. You have fallen in love with him!
‘No, I have not! Of course I have not!’ she remarked aloud, thrusting her hands behind her back like a small child caught out in some misdemeanour. As if she might reach out to touch him again because every instinct insisted that she do so, flesh against flesh. ‘How could I possibly have done anything so ridiculous!’ But her breath was short, as if she had just climbed the path to Lydyard’s Pride, her skin heated, the blood singing through her veins to make her aware of every inch of her body.
‘What’s that, Miss Harriette? Regret bringing him back here already?’ George Gadie came to stand at her side. ‘He’ll live, I reckon.’
‘And that’s the best we can do for now,’ Harriette remarked, furious with herself, but working hard to keep her voice calm, unconcerned. She drew her tongue over dry lips and prayed for a cold dose of common sense to cool her blood. ‘We’ll leave him to see if he recovers. One of the maids—Jenny—can sit by him.’
‘Then I’ll be back tomorrow, Cap’n, if you don’t want me now.’
‘You’ve done more than enough for me today.’ She touched his arm in thanks. ‘Go and let your wife know you’re safe. It was a good night’s run.’
‘Aye, it was. Hope he doesn’t cause you more trouble than he’s worth. Should’ve passed him over to the Silver Boat, as Mr Alexander said.’
Harriette angled a glance. ‘Would you have left Gabriel there under Sam Babbercombe’s care, if he was wounded?’ A grunt was all the reply she got as George opened the door for the maid, but she sensed his agreement. ‘Come for me if he wakes, or takes a turn for the worse,’ Harriette instructed Jenny, who settled herself on the only chair with a basket of stitching to keep watch. ‘I expect he’ll sleep through the rest of the night and much of the day.’
As Harriette walked slowly down the staircase, her thoughts remaining fixed on the man who astonishingly had the power to light a flame in her blood, she came upon Meggie climbing ponderously towards her, a deep wicker basket on each arm.
‘Well, Miss Harriette. Now what?’ She puffed out a breath, cheeks red with exertion.
Harriette beckoned. ‘Come with me and I’ll tell you.’ Retracing her steps to the first floor, she opened the door of the bedchamber she used when she could escape from Wallace and his overbearing wife, Augusta, and spend a night there. For furnishings and cleanliness it was little better than the one she had just left, but familiar with its lack of comfort she paid that no heed, walking immediately across the room to one of the windows, for the windows of the chamber looked out across the bay, offering a spectacular sweep of coastline.
Meggie, broad and stout, no nonsense snapping in her bright eyes, ignored the view as she deposited her burdens on the bed. Companion and servant to Miss Harriette Lydyard for more years than she cared to add up, and well used to her mistress’s eccentric lifestyle if not totally accepting of it, she did not mince her words. ‘What’re you doing this time, miss? Mr Alexander did not say.’
Harriette’s lips twitched wryly, knowing that her trust in Meggie could be absolute. ‘I think I’m bringing a spy back from the dead.’
‘A spy, is it? Do you think you should?’ Meggie did not appear altogether shocked.
‘No, but I can’t leave him to die, can I?’ The gleam of rich colour catching her eye, Harriette left the window and the view to dig into one of the baskets. ‘His clothes are ruined. He’ll need this until we can make other arrangements.’ She unfolded a dressing gown in stunning red-and-gold satin, dragons chasing their tails, with heavy gold frogging on breast and cuffs.
‘And he’ll have to be at death’s door to agree to wear it!’
Harriette chuckled. ‘Sir Wallace sees himself as the epitome of high fashion.’ She swirled the gown around her own shoulders and struck a stance remarkably similar to that of her pompous brother. ‘As for the occupant of my one furnished bedchamber, he’ll have no choice, however tasteless it might be.’ She looked up, eyes pinning her maid. ‘What did my brother say? Or did you manage to leave without his knowledge?’
‘More like what her ladyship said. Sir Wallace was gone on business to Lewes.’ Meggie stood, frowning, with her hands on her broad hips. ‘Lady Augusta had a fist-full of dissatisfaction, as you can imagine.’
Harriette grimaced, a little pain in her heart as she imagined the downward turn of Gussie’s mouth. Harriette had learned, almost, to live with the constant displeasure. ‘I’d hoped Zan would be more discreet. Does Lady Augusta know I was on a run?’
‘Of course she does. Can’t keep it a secret, can you, when every man in the Old Wincomlee knows the identity of Captain Harry? At least they all have the good sense and loyalty to keep their mouths shut so the Preventives’ll never hear the truth from them. And Sir Wallace’ll never help the Preventives, even if he is a JP. He knows where his next barrel of fine brandy comes from! But as soon as he returns, he’ll be up here before you know it, demanding to know what you’re about. And why you’ve not returned to Whitescar Hall, to don a pretty dress and play the genteel young lady of taste and refinement.’
‘Because I would die of the tedium of it all if I did! If Wallace’s taken himself off to Lewes, let’s pray God he stays there overnight, and I’ll be undisturbed here for a while longer.’ Harriette’s eyes lit with mischief as she refused to let her spirits sink into her boots. ‘Even better, I’ll send a message that I’ve caught a chill—or a fever from France. That’ll keep them away. Wallace fears ill health like the plague, and Augusta won’t come here without him.’ She stretched her arms above her head, loosening tight muscles, then ran her fingers through her windblown and knotted hair. ‘I might even manage a week’s freedom. Wallace won’t come to see how I am if he thinks I’ll spread some noxious disease in his path—and foreign at that! An enemy disease!’
Meggie snorted a laugh, then quickly became serious. ‘But Lady Augusta’s not far from the truth, Miss Harriette. You should be wed. Not that I can think of any of your acquaintance worthy of you.’ She rapidly changed the subject with skill born of long practice as Harriette rounded on her, the light of battle in her eyes, in her face. ‘I’ve brought you some clothes, so that when Sir Wallace does arrive to blister your ears, he won’t be able to take exception to your appearance.’ She scowled at the salt-and-sand-encrusted smugglers’ garb, the scuffed boots. ‘What he would say at this moment, the Devil only knows….’
A tap came at the door. Jenny entered, curtsied and ignored her mistress’s unconventional attire. ‘The gentleman’s awake, Miss Harriette. I thought you would wish to know.’
‘Is he now? A stronger constitution than I thought. Then I’ll come.’
‘Not like that you won’t, Miss Harriette.’ Meggie grasped her wrist without ceremony as she would have followed the maid. ‘What would he think?’
‘I don’t care what he thinks.’ Or perhaps she did. She might have little care for her appearance in general, and none when engaged on a run, but would she really want this unknown gentleman to see and judge her in her present dishevelled and scruffy state? Would she want him to look at her, eyes widening in disgust of her unseemly attire? Sir Wallace’s disapproval meant nothing to her. But her captive spy…Shame tinted her cheeks a glorious pink at the thought that he would see and condemn her as being unredeemably outré. Still, if she were clad as a smuggler…‘Besides,’ she spoke her thoughts aloud, testing the idea, ‘our guest might speak more openly if…’
‘If what?’
‘Well, he won’t confess his devious crimes to a woman, will he? On the other hand, to a man…’Twisting it up with a careless hand, she stuffed her hair back under her cap, pulled it well down. ‘He might speak to a smuggler, mightn’t he? Two reprobates together. The smuggler and the spy, Meggie. Now there’s an unholy alliance, wouldn’t you say? Not much to choose between us, many would think. Behold, Harry Lydyard.’ She struck a pose again, the lawless smuggler in boots and breeches.
‘One day, all that will get you into trouble, my girl!’
‘But think how exciting it makes life, Meggie!’ Perhaps she was unaware of it, but a shadow crossed her face. A little melancholy, a little regretful. ‘Why would I want to be wife to one of Sir Wallace’s sad associates when I can sail Lydyard’s Ghost on a lively sea?’
Lucius Hallaston became aware first of a grinding headache, as if a band of iron were being tightened around his skull. And if that were not bad enough, his shoulder throbbed, as when he had once taken a heavy fall from his horse sufficient to crack his collarbone. At the same time his left arm screamed with a fierce burning pain. Was there any place in his body that did not hurt?
He struggled, trying to sit up, abandoning the attempt as his wits scattered. It was almost too much trouble to chase after them and reassemble them into some sort of order as the pain beat with the insistency of a military drum behind his eyes. Memory came back in patches, with disconcertingly looming gaps. Lucius shook his head as if to shake them into a recognisable pattern and wished he had not.
He opened his eyes cautiously. A gloomy room, dusty bed hangings, few meagre furnishings. The linen sheets that covered him were worn and smelt of must and mildew, although were clean enough. Where in heaven’s name was he? It was no inn that he recognised. A young girl, a servant from her clothing, sat beside the bed, head bent over a needle. Mending more sheets, he thought inconsequentially.
‘Where am I?’ he managed to croak through a throat as dry as a desert.
‘You’re awake, sir.’ The girl looked up, rose to her feet.
‘Yes.’ His voice sounded rusty to his ears. ‘Will you tell me…?’
But then she left him, so that he almost wondered if he had imagined her, and the darkness claimed him once more. When awareness returned, it was to a different voice. Feminine yet cool and calm, instructing him to open his mouth and drink. An arm was behind his head, lifting him, and the rim of a cup pressed against his lips. It was cold and refreshing, a sharp tang of lemons, balm to his dry throat. And from somewhere came the soothing drift of lavender. He tried to thank the girl, the maid, for surely it was she—or was it? The voice was different—but it was all too difficult to work out truth from imagination.
He gave up and slept again.
Gradually, when consciousness returned, so did his memories. He remembered being in a boat. Remembered being set upon in the little French port. Port St Martin, that was it. Remembered failing in his task, outwitted and outmanoeuvred by that villain Jean-Jacques Noir. He felt anger rise within him, and shame that he should have been so tricked, but he had not expected such underhand treachery. Obviously he had been too naïve. He thought he might have been shot. Certainly he remembered pain, then blackness….
He did not know who had rescued him. One moment, he was being attacked and beaten on the quay, the next he was in the bottom of a small boat with water lapping against his cheek and a queasy swell. He remembered demanding to be taken back to France, and then nothing.
So where was he now?
A movement by the door as it opened. He risked moving his head and could barely repress a groan at the leaping pain. A young man approached in the sea-faring gear of boots and wide breeches, a heavy tunic, all worn and saltstained. He took the seat vacated by the maid and leaned forward, arms on thighs.
Lucius found himself being appraised by a pair of cool eyes, as pale grey as to be almost silver.
‘You are awake.’
‘Yes. Where am I?’ He would try again.
‘Old Wincomlee, a fishing village in Sussex. You’ll not know it but it’s a mere handful of miles from Brighton. This is my home. Lydyard’s Pride.’ Stern, unsmiling but with a surprisingly educated accent and turn of phrase, the young man had at least given him some information, if his pounding brain could retain it.
‘Who are you?’ he managed, frowning furiously.
‘My name is Harry Lydyard.’
‘You brought me back. From France.’
‘Yes. You were hurt.’
‘So I owe you my life.’
‘Perhaps you do. You bled all over my boat.’ A tight smile curled the lips but then he grew solemn again, his voice taking on a hard edge. ‘What were you doing in Port St Martin? Why were you set on?’
‘I…’ He sought for words in explanation—did he not owe his rescuer some sort of reasonable explanation?—but realising that he could not find the right words to say. Those that rushed into his mind, he must not say! Something deep and unpleasant in his gut prompted him towards fear and suspicion. Who to trust? It was becoming more and more difficult to know who to trust as time passed.
‘You were delirious when we brought you back here. From what you said you were looking for someone. A woman, I think…’
He shook his head, winced, groaned.
‘I see you’re reluctant to tell me the truth, so I must draw my own conclusions.’ Even sterner, the pale eyes piercing, pinning him to the bed in icy contempt. The tone of voice was a condemnation in itself.
‘A matter of business, let us say.’ The best he could do.
‘A business that left you half-dead with a bullet in your arm, a crack on the head and your pockets empty?’ Heavy cynicism lay strangely on the young face that swam before him.
‘So it seems.’ From the mists, he suddenly recalled the barrels and casks in the boat, the bales. ‘Were you engaged in the Free Trade? Are you a smuggler?’
The tone remained biting. ‘Yes. I am.’
‘You’re very young to be a smuggler,’ he commented, though why that should seem important to him he could not say.
‘But not too young to do it well. I am an excellent smuggler.’ The young man stood and advanced to the bed, leaned over to examine the wounds, fingers firm and searching, yet gentle enough, against his hair, his arm, but Lucius got the distinct impression that there was not much compassion in the solicitude, rather a hard practicality. ‘You’ll live.’ The blunt statement confirmed it. ‘The bullet went through your arm. A bang on the head—hence the headache. You were lucky. You’ve lost blood, but you’re strong enough. Another day and you’ll be on your feet again.’
Except that Lucius felt as weak as a kitten, and found himself sliding into sleep, unable to pull back, unable to keep his eyelids from closing. Not that he wouldn’t be sorry to block out the disparaging stare of the self-confessed smuggler. ‘I’m sorry. My mind seems to disobey my demands. Sorry to be a trouble to you…’ He fretted at his unaccustomed weakness, sensing some urgency that he could not grasp, his fingers pulling at the sheet. ‘I must get up now. I’ll be missed if I don’t…’
‘You can’t.’
‘I can’t stay here…’
‘You must for a little while. Sleep now. You’ll be stronger when you wake.’
And because he really had no choice, Lucius Hallaston did as the smuggler ordered.
Harriette continued to sit beside him. Her reactions to this man confused her. He wouldn’t answer her questions and she did not think it was because he could not recall anything of the previous night. Some mystery surrounded him. No doubt he was a spy after all and she should condemn him for it, yet she had seen fear in his face—but perhaps that was just the fear of any man who was set upon, his life threatened by a pistol shot. And there had definitely been that deep anxiety, for a woman. He had not denied it, had he? She leaned back, arms crossed, scowling at the sleeping figure, unable to disentangle her emotions. Was he not hurt and in trouble, his wits still scattered? Did he not demand her compassion, her understanding?
On the other hand, what did it matter that she knew not whether to damn him or care for him? What did it matter that he might sell his soul, or at least England’s security, for thirty pieces of silver? His treachery was entirely irrelevant because once he was recovered he would be on his way to whatever nefarious practice demanded his attention, and she would never see him again.
Yet still, accepting that, Harriette allowed herself a little time of sheer self-indulgence, of self-deception, for that was surely what it was, and allowed her deepest instincts to surface again. His voice, deep and smooth as honey, was as pleasant on the ear as his features were to her eye. For a little while at least she could pretend that he was hers and this was their home where the world could not encroach. Where she could live as she chose. She would walk on the cliffs, this man holding her hand, telling her how beautiful she was, how his heart beat for her, whilst she could tell him that her heart had fallen into his hands, as softly as a ripe plum. At night he would hold her in his arms, unfolding for her all the delights that could exist between a man and a woman. Rousing her with hands and mouth, with the slide of his naked flesh against hers…No harm in imagining the possessive touch of his fingers as they linked with hers, as they curled into her hair, holding her captive so that his mouth could take hers. No harm in considering the breathless, heated pleasure of that body, stripped and powerful, pinning her to the sheets, taking her, making her his.
Enough! Harriette’s smile became contemptuous. It was all an illusion, a figment of her sad imagination. He would approve of her being a smuggler quite as little as she would accept that he was a spy! Yet for a moment, still clutching at her ridiculous dreams, Harriette leaned over him and touched the sculpted sinews and tendons of his unbound arm, encircling his wrist where his pulse beat against her fingers, turning his hand, shivering when once again his fingers instinctively curled around hers and held on. Whatever he was, whoever he was, she was glad he was safe.
‘Sleep now,’ she whispered. ‘I will care for you. No need to fear.’
She still did not even know his name.
It was a long night. The man slept but restlessly. When his breathing became ragged, Harriette dosed him with some nameless and evil-tasting concoction of Meggie’s, thinking it at least as good as anything Sam Babbercombe would do. Then, since she hadn’t the heart to summon Jenny back, she took it upon herself to sit and watch over him through the dark hours. So she sat and let the hours pass. Stood, stretched, looked out of the window at the changing shape of clouds over the waxing moon. Tried to read by the flickering light of the two candles and gave it up. Simply sat and watched the pain and confusion shift over his face, praying more fervently than she had for years that this was simply a fever that would pass.
At some point after midnight, his restlessness became more intense, hands clawing to grip the sheet as he fell under the control of some dream, head thrashing from side to side. Perspiration beaded his brow, the expanse of his chest. Although his eyes opened, the bright gaze was blurred and unseeing.
‘Softly.’ She stood to make use of a damp cloth soaked in lavender, afraid his restlessness would start the bleeding again. ‘You’re safe. You’re in no danger.’
As if responding to her voice, he grasped her wrist urgently. Surprising her with its power. His voice was harsh, his question stark with fear.
‘Marie-Claude. Are you Marie-Claude?’
‘No. I am not.’
‘Marie-Claude…Where is she?’
‘She’s safe.’ It was an obvious answer in the face of his despair.
‘I can’t find her…’ His grip tightened.
‘You will. Rest now. She’ll come to you….’
He lay quietly. Harriette thought for a moment that he had accepted her assurance, but then his movements became edgy as if still caught up in a web of anxieties.
‘But she’s lost,’ he whispered, eyes opening blindly. ‘I don’t know where she is and I can’t find her.’
Harriette was moved by a desire to give him some respite from whatever tracked and haunted him in his dark mind as she enclosed his hand between both of hers. If she could anchor him to the present, it might stave off the monsters in his dreams. ‘Hush. You need to sleep. I’ll keep the nightmares at bay.’
It seemed that he focused on her in the end. But to no great satisfaction.
‘No one can do that for me. No one can stop them.’Then he slid down the slope into unconsciousness again. His hand fell away.
Disturbed, Harriette bathed his face in cool water, his chest where sweat had pooled in the dip of his collarbones. Who was Marie-Claude? His wife? She did not think so since he did not seem to know her. Not, therefore, his lover, either? French, from her name. Had she some connection with his presence in France at Port St Martin?
There were no answers, only questions.
He seemed calmer, his sleep deeper. Harriette contemplated leaving him, but dared not, so she was committed to spending the night. The upright chair proving far too uncomfortable for sleep, she leaned her arms and head on the folded quilts at the foot of the bed and dozed, confident she would wake if he did. No one need know that she stayed the night with him. Her lips twisted wryly. Certainly not her imaginary lover who knew nothing of her dreams and who now was dead to the world.
When Lucius awoke it was daybreak, when she had doused the candles and was watching the sun, the faintest sliver of red-gold on the horizon. Harriette found herself held by a direct stare, keen and searching, and of a striking grey-green. The earlier confusion was gone and now the eyes that held hers were awake, aware. In their supreme confidence Harriette detected the recovery of a formidable will. Here was a man used to authority, to having no one question his wishes, wearing the habit of command like a glove, despite his unorthodox lack of clothing. She could not look away from his regard, but forced herself to keep her expression carefully controlled in defiance of the unfortunate tremor in her heart. At least she had had the presence of mind to stuff her long-suffering hair back under her stocking-cap with the coming of the day. She really could not face an explanation of her sex and unchaperoned presence in his bedchamber.
‘Good morning.’ She broke the little tension.
‘I feel better,’ he replied.
‘Does your head ache still?’
‘Not so much. My shoulder hurts like the Devil.’
‘It’s badly bruised. Are you hungry?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded surprised.
‘I’ll send Jenny with some soup.’
He rubbed a hand slowly over his chin, grimacing at the roughness, casting a glance down at his torso that the sheet did not cover. ‘Will you arrange for some clothes for me?’
‘Yes. You won’t like them. Not much haut ton to be found in Old Wincomlee, and your own garments were too badly damaged, I think, to be of further use to you.’
‘I’m relieved to be alive to wear them at all.’
A surprising note of dry humour. Harriette steadied her gaze. So far their exchange had been ridiculously innocuous, as if meeting in a polite withdrawing room. If she did not take the matter in hand, if she succumbed to cowardice, she would bid him good day and wave him from her door, as if he were not in possession of a bullet wound and an unsavoury reputation. She took a breath and stirred the mud in the bottom of the pool. ‘Are you a spy?’
The humour was quickly gone. ‘No. I am not a spy.’ There was no hesitation, but then he would be unlikely to tell the truth, even if he was. ‘Why did you think I was?’
‘Marcel—the French smuggler who brought you to my cutter—said you were associated with an individual called Jean-Jacques Noir.’
A quick frown between his brows, a thinning of lips. She saw immediately that he recognised the name. ‘I know him. But I am no spy.’
‘Marcel says he is a man of vicious character.’
‘Yes. I believe he is.’
She was getting nowhere. ‘Who is Marie-Claude?’ He certainly recognised that name. His eyes snapped to hers. ‘I don’t know.’
A lie. He had looked dangerously uneasy, but nothing to be gained in pressing him if he would not say. It was, after all, none of her concern. ‘Very well. I don’t believe you, but can’t force you to tell, except by torture!’ She walked to the door, then paused, looking back. ‘Will you tell me this, then—what is your name?’
‘Lucius Hallaston.’
It meant nothing to her. She gave a brief nod and would have left him, aware of nothing but a deep disappointment that the man who seemed for some inexplicable reason to have such a claim on her was entirely disreputable. This man who had awoken her inexperienced heart and her emotions, who had reminded her painfully of what was lacking in her loveless life, had feet of clay. The disillusion settled like a heavy stone below her heart.
On her way to the door she stopped beside him, to press her fingers against the hard flesh of his shoulder. Yes, it was cool, the fever gone. But not in her own blood. Even so slight a touch sent heat racing through her blood. This is simply physical desire! Harriette felt her face flush with shame.
‘Do you have family who will miss you?’ she demanded, curtly, to cover her embarrassment.
‘A brother in London. I won’t be missed for a little time. You, I think I remember, are Harry Lydyard.’
‘Yes.’ She repressed a little laugh of wry mirth. ‘I am Harry Lydyard.’
He still thought of her as a man. It didn’t matter. He was devious, deceitful and well on the road to recovery. She would send George to deal with his needs and there was no need for her to see him again. Within twenty-four hours he would be gone from her life.
And good riddance! But her heart trembled as if at a great loss.
Chapter Three
Lucius Hallaston spent the slow passage of time whilst his strength returned alone, considering his situation. It was not an operation that encouraged optimism, although he tried. His body was sore as if trampled by a team of his blood horses, his head hammered, a sharp pulse of pain just behind his eyes, but he was not incapacitated. It could have been much worse, he supposed. He could be dead. True, lifting his left arm and shoulder was an excruciating movement, but if someone could find him some clothes, he could take control of his life once more. Or could he? The desperate failure of the enterprise in France was hardly evidence of his controlling the events of his life!
He pushed aside that bitter memory because to worry at it would achieve nothing but make his head pound more. All that would be required of him in the near future was to wait for further communication from Jean-Jacques Noir—and there would be one for sure—and explain away to his brother a bullet in his arm and a hole in his head with as much plausibility as he could dredge from the debacle.
His brows settled into a solid bar. It shouldn’t be too difficult to smooth over the immediate problems. But as for Monsieur Noir…It was a damnable situation! Lucius bared his teeth in what was not a smile and fell to contemplating the array of cobwebs that festooned the curtains and the scurrying antics of a spider, trying not to allow the disdain he had read in the eyes of Captain Harry Lydyard to disturb him.
But it did. The young man’s stare had been contemptuous, scornful of his obvious sliding round the truth. By what right did a common smuggler pass judgement on him, Lucius Hallaston?
By the same right you pass judgement on yourself. You deserve it for allowing yourself to get into this mess! his conscience sneered in his ear.
He must have dozed. When the door to his bedchamber opened again later in the morning, disturbing a quantity of dust, a sturdy individual, more appropriately clad for a day’s work in a fishing smack than a period of duty as a gentleman’s valet, entered. A bundle of clothes in his arms, he was followed by an equally robust woman with a determined air and lines of profound censure on her broad features. She carried a tray with a bowl, a ewer of hot water and a dish of something steaming that smelled—well, good.
‘Morning, y’r honour.’ The fisherman lost no time, depositing the bundle on the bed. ‘I’ve been sent by Cap’n Harry to take care o’ you.’
‘My thanks.’ Lucius pushed himself up on the pillows.
‘Some rare bruises, I’d imagine.’ Without hesitation, the fisherman thrust an arm around Lucius’s shoulders and heaved. ‘You’ve a tighter hold on life this morning, y’r honour, I’ll say that. Thought you was a gonner—all the blood an’ all. George Gadie, y’r honour. Fisherman.’
‘And smuggler?’ Lucius’s memory was vague at best, but some aspects of his rescue were clear enough.
‘Aye, sir…’ Wariness flitted across the man’s face but there was a glint in his eye. ‘And you, y’r honour?’
‘Lucius Hallaston.’
‘Well, Mr Hallaston, the Cap’n says you’re to drink this.’ A mug of ale changed hands.
The woman who had been bustling round the room nudged George aside with bowl, spoon and napkin. ‘I’ll say one thing, though some would say it’s none of my business. The sooner you leave here, the better for all our sakes, sir. Especially for—’
‘Take yourself off, Meggie,’ George broke in. ‘Let the man drink and get his breath.’
‘All I was saying was…’
‘Least said, soonest mended,’ George growled.
With a smile of thanks to Meggie that was ignored as she stomped to the door, Lucius gripped the bowl as best he could with his injured left arm, dipped the spoon and drank. It was good, deliciously aromatic to enhance the flavour of chicken. He realised how long it was since he had had anything to eat.
Meanwhile George sat down beside the bed, leaning forwards with arms on stalwart thighs as if anticipating a conversation. Much as Harry Lydyard had done. Lucius cocked his head, continued to spoon up the broth and waited.
‘Are you a spy, then, y’r honour?’
Lucius abandoned the spoon and wiped his mouth with the napkin as he struggled against impatience. ‘Why does everyone presume that I am? No, I am not a spy.’ He read the patent disbelief in the smuggler’s seamed face, but said no more. What proof had he but mere denial—but no point in dwelling on what could not be changed. ‘Can I get to Brighton?’ he asked, the uppermost thought in his mind.
‘Expect so. When you can get to your feet.’
‘I can do that. I don’t want to impose on you more than I have already. The maid—Jenny, was it?—I must thank her. I think she sat with me during the night, when I was restless.’
‘No. Not Jenny. It would be the Cap’n.’
Was there the slightest hesitation. Did he detect some disfavour in the gruff announcement? Impossible to tell. And why would the fisherman have any opinion on it? The beat of pain in his head made it not worth considering. ‘Then I must thank the Captain. Lydyard, I think he said. A local family?’
‘Aye, sir. The Capn’s brother—he’s the local landowner. Sir Wallace.’
‘Then I must thank Captain Harry for his hospitality before I go.’ Lucius carefully placed the bowl on the nightstand.
‘Don’t think he’s around.’ There was that scowl again, the brusque reply. ‘Shall I shave you, y’r honour?’
‘No need. You hold the bowl and towel, but hand me the razor. I can use my right arm well enough, although the left’s pretty useless. Have you a mirror?’
‘Aye, sir.’ George wiped the square on his thigh and held the smeared glass. He chuckled. ‘You mightn’t like what you see, though.’
It was a shock.
‘By God! That’s a mess.’ Lucius looked at the reflection in the mirror. Ran his fingers over the growth of beard and then, gently, down the livid scar on his cheek, flinching at the soreness. If vanity was an issue, if his looks mattered as much to him as it did to his younger brother who was in the throes of incipient dandyism, he would be cast into despair. Together with the purple bruising on his temple and jaw, and the matted hair stuck to his head with God knew what, he looked a criminal fit for Newgate. ‘It’ll heal, I expect.’ He winced as he once again pressed his fingers against the knife wound.
‘So Capn Harry said. He cleaned it up as well as he could.’
‘Hmm. Then let’s see if we can put the rest to rights.’
Within the next half-hour Lucius had to admit to looking relatively more respectable. Shaving complete, he struggled into boots and breeches—fortunately his own, if hopelessly stained—and a linen shirt that was not his, but of good quality.
‘Best we could do.’ George gave him a helping hand to pull on the boots. ‘Meggie’s trying to find you a coat. Yours isn’t in a fit state. Until we do—what do you think of this, y’r honour?’ He held up the dressing gown with a rough flourish, unable to repress a guffaw.
‘Hell and the Devil! Now that’s an eyeful.’ Lucius grinned as he shrugged his right arm carefully into the vibrant glory of rampant dragons. The other he couldn’t manage so allowed the magnificent beasts on the left to simply hang.
‘Sir Wallace’s.’ George smirked. ‘We borrowed it. Like the shirt. He’s an eye to fashion.’
‘Has he now?’ Looping the belt, Lucius was willing to tolerate it for the sake of respectability. ‘My thanks. Now, if you can find me a coat and a horse, I’ll be out of your hair. If I can get to Brighton…’
George shook his head. ‘Don’t think you should ride, y’r honour. Not with the blood you lost. I can arrange a pony and trap easy enough from the Silver Boat to get you to Brighton. If you had money,’ he added slyly.
‘And there’s the rub. But we’ll work something out.’ Lucius rubbed his hand over his newly shaven cheek. ‘I had a gold hunter with me when I went to France.’
‘Not any longer, sir. Gone the way o’ the rest o’ y’r possessions.’
A peremptory knock on the door.
It heralded the entrance of a man driven by righteous anger and blunt discourtesy. His accusation followed without introduction.
‘So the tales in the village were right enough.’ The visitor slammed the door behind him, eyes narrowed into a glare. ‘What’s this? A nameless ruffian dragged from the high seas, and wearing my dressing gown?’
Lucius resisted the inclination to raise his brows at the intrusion, struggling to keep a civil tongue in his head. Nothing to be gained by taking the offensive. The man—a gentleman despite his lack of good manners—was perhaps thirty-four or -five, around Lucius’s age, clad in a fashionable greatcoat of indeterminate drabness reaching to his ankles, with innumerable shoulder capes, the whole magnifying his rotund appearance and short stature. His face was broad, his complexion florid, telling of a close association with Free Trade liquor. Lucius heard George clear his throat uncomfortably. So this was Sir Wallace Lydyard, owner of the dubious taste in garments. But Lucius did not appreciate the overt hostility, the sheer lack of good manners or breeding.
‘My apologies, sir,’ Lucius replied as he rose slowly to his feet. A cool chill, the curtest inclination of the head, a deliberate lack of recognition. He would not be reduced to such discourtesy but, by God, he would not ignore such rank ill manners. ‘The rumours you were so quick to take at face value are incorrect. I was an innocent traveller in France, injured and robbed through no fault of my own. Fortunately I was rescued by some gentlemen of the Free Trade.’ Now, deliberately, he allowed his brows to lift infinitesimally. ‘I was not aware that that entitled me to be painted as a ruffian of the high seas.’
‘No?’ Sir Wallace was not to be discouraged. ‘What is any law-abiding Englishman doing in a French port if not to England’s danger, when the French are our sworn enemies, even at this moment engaged in battle with our brave forces in the Peninsula?’
‘Urgent business of a family nature that can be of no possible interest to you, sir.’ The raised brows were superb in their arrogance. Lucius had had enough of slurs on his character. ‘If I am making use of your splendid garment, then I must offer you my thanks. My own coat is ruined or I should not have taken such a liberty. Perhaps you would be so good as to advise me of your name, sir?’
‘Lydyard. Sir Wallace Lydyard.’
Again Lucius managed the slightest inclination of his head, icily polite, a barbed and poisonous weapon to depress pretension and boorishness. ‘Lydyard. Let me make myself known, to clear any misunderstanding between us. I am Lucius Hallaston. Earl of Venmore.’
‘Venmore!’
‘That is so.’
Sir Wallace was flustered. ‘My lord…’ For once Lucius enjoyed the effect of his consequence with not a little malice. ‘Perhaps I was hasty.’ An unattractive flush mantled Lydyard’s features. ‘You’ll understand—the circumstances, your presence here at the Pride…’
‘I was unconscious when I was brought ashore. A bullet wound.’
Lydyard’s eyes suddenly acquired an unpleasant reptilian gleam, and his glance snapped to George Gadie. ‘Did you spend the night here, Gadie, to care for his lordship?’
George shuffled. ‘No, Sir Wallace. I did not.’
‘You were not here at the Pride?’
‘No, Sir Wallace. The Cap’n sent me home.’
‘So I heard correctly.’ Sir Wallace’s voice was soft, a slyness sliding across his features. ‘My sister stayed here last night, then.’
‘Aye, Sir Wallace.’
Lucius remained silent, unable to follow this line of exchange, even more when Lydyard’s speculative appraisal was turned on him.
‘You look much restored this morning, my lord.’
‘Well enough to take my leave,’ he replied curtly, yet with restraint. There were suddenly undercurrents in the room that made no sense to him, but his patience was at an end. No man addressed a Hallaston of Venmore in such an impertinent manner!
‘Knowing my sister, I suppose she spent the night at your side, in this room.’
A warning flitted across his skin, like a draught from an ill-fitting window. ‘Your sister, sir? I have no knowledge of your sister.’
With a grunt, Sir Wallace promptly turned on his heel and marched to the door. Opened it. ‘Jenny?’ he bellowed, followed by a distant reply of assent. ‘Tell my sister I wish to see her here immediately.’
Then he continued to stand beside the door, arms folded.
Lucius rummaged unsuccessfully through his incomplete recollections. He recalled Jenny, the dark-haired maid. But Lydyard’s sister? ‘As I said, as far as I have any memory of last night, I am not acquainted with your sister, sir.’
But Sir Wallace’s lips curled in marvellous disbelief. ‘Do you presume that your birth and title will allow you to compromise my sister? She spends a night here with you, in this very bedchamber, and her honour is besmirched.’ He lingered on the word. ‘However well bred she might be, however excellent her connections, she is unwed and, apart from myself, defenceless. What will her reputation be now? I had a marriage in line for her, but the bridegroom will surely cry off when he gets wind of this, my lord.’
‘As far as I am aware, my care was undertaken by the Captain of the smug—the sailing vessel that rescued me. Harry Lydyard, your brother.’
‘Ha! Such pretence does not become you, my lord!’
Light footsteps echoed on the stairs. Sir Wallace flung the door back.
‘Come in. Come in. There’s scandal in the air, with you at the centre of it, my dear sister. I should have known!’ His tone, Lucius noted, despite his expressed concern, was not that of a compassionate brother, but rather that of a hanging judge. ‘Once again you have put the Lydyard reputation in jeopardy, leaving me to smooth over the unpleasantness.’
A young woman stepped into the room.
So this was the Lydyard sister. Lucius cast a briefly appraising eye over her. Nothing like her brother in looks, thank God, but nothing more than a country girl with no hint of town bronze. Tall for a girl, her hair was dark, unfashionably long, tied carelessly with a ribbon to cascade in a thick mass of curls to her shoulders and beyond. A neat figure, fine boned and well proportioned. Pleasing enough features in an oval face with well-marked dark brows and a straight uncompromising nose. Her lips as this moment were tense and unsmiling. He would never have guessed at the relationship between the two, except that she did not refute her brother’s harsh welcome. Her dress was unfashionably full-skirted and high-collared, drab and plain in an unflattering shade of green. As Lucius was forced to admit, he would not have given the young woman, who looked nothing more than a lowly governess, a second look in a crowded salon in Mayfair. Yet she bore herself with a confidence and an elegant simplicity at odds with her garments. Perhaps because she was no schoolroom miss, but a lady of more than twenty years. She stood just inside the door, calmly waiting for whatever would happen next, her eyes firmly on her brother.
‘Miss Lydyard. It is an honour to meet you.’ Lucius bowed as gracefully as he could manage despite the torn muscles. He smiled bleakly. ‘As I have informed Sir Wallace, we have no prior acquaintance. Any accusations on his part are misinformed. Your honour is without blemish.’
Sir Wallace waved the apology away, his attention on his sister. ‘Your guest at the Pride is Lucius Hallaston, Earl of Venmore,’ he announced with relish. ‘Were you aware of that?’
Entirely composed, Miss Lydyard ignored her brother and curtsied, eyes now lowered. ‘My lord. I see you are much recovered.’
It was the voice that did it for Lucius. Cool, low tones, carefully controlled, calmly confident. Astonishing in the circumstances. And then the eyes confirmed it as they rose to meet his across the room. Oh, yes, he could not mistake those eyes. As cool as her voice, grey, almost silver in the morning light, like the flash of sunlight on water at daybreak. And her hands, now clasped firmly before her, her knuckles white, if he were not mistaken. So perhaps she was not as composed as he had thought. Longfingered, capable hands, able to pull on a rope or manoeuvre a barrel on a moving deck. Or bathe a man’s forehead with cool water and bind a wound…
The suspicion transformed itself into a certainty. This was Captain Harry. The knowledge, the memory of the Captain’s intimate ministrations, lurched uncomfortably in Lucius’s belly.
‘So Harry Lydyard tended to you, did he, my lord? I fail to see how you could be unaware.’ The words burst from Sir Wallace. ‘A foolish notion that no man of sense would believe. This is my sister, Miss Harriette Lydyard. Whom you, my lord, have dishonoured!’
Seeing a chasm opening up before his feet, Lucius viewed the occupants of his borrowed bedchamber with distaste. Miss Lydyard continued to make no response to her brother’s recriminations, a matter that earned his reluctant respect, except for the little line that had dug itself between her brows and a tinge of colour to her cheeks. She was not afraid of her brother, nor of the situation, even though her brother was accusing her of immodesty and him of some form of lascivious seduction, remarkable given the condition he had been in! As for the brother…Had he imagined it or had Lydyard’s interest grown as soon as he knew his title? Lucius’s head might ache, but there was nothing wrong with his wits. Here was a situation that had the makings of a trap set to catch a man of wealth and consequence and some degree of honour. How to snap up a prize for a spinster sister who was not in the first flush of youth or blessed with obvious beauty. And he, the Earl of Venmore, was to be the prize. Lydyard had said he already had a marriage arranged for his sister. Like Hell, he had! Lydyard had an eye to the main chance and had leapt to secure it.
Well, he would not be caught in that trap. Lucius’s nostrils flared at the audacity of the man. And at the same time caught the eyes of the lady. Grave and solemn, they touched his and held there, and if he were not mistaken there was a plea in their silver intensity. But for what? Perhaps that he should not make it worse for her than it already was. He set himself to do his best. He owed her that much.
‘As I recall, Lydyard, not that I recall much of it, I was unconscious for most of the night. I could have spent the night with an entire gang of smugglers in the room, together with their contraband and an invading force of Preventive officers, and been unaware of it.’
But Lydyard’s smile widened to show an array of unpleasantly discoloured teeth. ‘And would the gossipmongers of London society believe that? That Earl Venmore spent the entire night with my sister in his room, in an empty house, with her honour still intact at daybreak? Hardly, my lord. My sister will be disgraced. Nor, I hazard, will it do much for your own reputation, robbing an innocent girl of her good name. We may be distant from London, but news and gossip travels. One of the biggest catches in the marriage market as you are, if I am not mistaken, reduced to seducing and abandoning innocent girls. Will the gossips believe the innocence of all concerned? And your presumed unconsciousness throughout?’
The chasm not of Lucius’s making yawned wider. ‘No, probably not.’
‘For certain they will not! You have rendered my sister unmarriageable, sir!’
And Lucius saw Harriette Lydyard grow pale, as she had never done when she had his blood on her hands. He saw horror dawn and spread over her face in a tightening of the skin along her cheekbones. Still she made no reply. On her behalf as much as his own, anger bubbled up, enough to make him light-headed in his weakened state. He had been neatly trapped, had he not, one disaster following upon the next, but if he read the girl’s reaction right, she was as much a victim as he.
So he would take control of this situation. He had had quite enough in recent weeks—more than any man could tolerate—of being outmanoeuvred and manipulated, outwitted and outgunned. Jean-Jacques Noir might have got the better of him in France, but he was damned if he would allow Sir Wallace Lydyard to do so in—where was this God-forsaken place?—Old Wincomlee! Nor would he allow the man to take such a bullying tone of voice with his innocent sister. A vulnerable, gently reared girl did not deserve that.
Hell and the devil! Did he not have enough to plague him without this? But those grey eyes were suddenly dark like a winter sea, wide and anxious.
Harriette continued to stand where she had stood since the beginning of this appalling scene, a mere step into the room, wishing with all her heart that she could remain Captain Harry for just a little while longer. Or that the rotten floorboards of the chamber would collapse beneath her feet and swallow her down into a black hole. Her heart sank to the depth of her scuffed satin shoes. She had hoped to make her escape back to Whitescar Hall with no one being the wiser, certainly without any further conversation between herself and her wounded spy. And here she was, summoned by her brother as if she were a servant. She had managed, if nothing else, to dispose of her breeches, which would have added kindling to the flames, but Wallace, damn him, had come hotfoot. Wallace was furious. She slanted a look towards his unappealing features and her attention was caught. Perhaps Wallace was not so furious as he might wish to appear. Manipulative was more the order of the day. Her half-brother had seen an opportunity and was intent on making the most of it. Harriette did not know whether to descend into hysterical laughter or weep from the sheer incongruity of the whole situation
An earl! Her spy was an earl! Ridiculous. And was, furthermore, accused of dishonouring her. As if her private dreams had blossomed into reality. What arrant nonsense was that?
No point in her arguing the case with Wallace. When he was in this mood, he would listen to neither excuse nor reason, so she might as well keep her silence until he ran out of foolish accusations and the exquisite Earl had made his inevitable rapid escape from Lydyard’s Pride.
She risked another glance at the Earl.
The ripple of laughter almost won despite the horrors. Because the Earl of Venmore was a Corinthian. All that Wallace wanted to be, tried so ineffectually to ape, here was his heart’s desire in the flesh. Wallace had the ambition to be a sportsman, proficient and lauded for his abilities in the saddle, with pistol and rapier. To be admired for his splendid physique, his handsome looks. To be recognised as a leader of fashion. He never could. And here standing before him was the epitome of all his dreams.
And hers.
Washed, shaved, his hair settling into shining, elegant dishevelment, the Earl cut a splendid figure. He was taller than she had thought, more than six feet, his shoulders impressively broad beneath the lurid monstrosity, and did she not know at first hand how the muscles ran sleek and smooth, as water over a rock, beneath his skin, the athletic moulding of his strong thighs and firm belly? Did she not know the smooth satin of his skin beneath her palms when she had washed and bound his wounds? And Harriette felt her face and her blood heat at the memory.
How degrading that he should look at her with such arrogance printed on his features, as if she were of no consequence to him. But then why should she be? If he were a man of intellect, the Earl of Venmore would have quickly detected Wallace’s disgraceful plotting to catch a husband for her.
Her concentration was dragged back as her brother’s anger filled the room.
‘You have dishonoured my sister, Venmore. I demand retribution.’
‘No…! There was no dishonour,’ Harriette gasped, a knot of ice forming in her belly.
‘Be silent!’ Wallace rounded on her. ‘This is not for you. Although many would say you brought it on yourself, cavorting as you do with the Free Traders. I will settle this. What hopes for a suitable match if this gets out—as it surely will?’
‘Then there is only one remedy, is there not?’ A cold interjection in the heat.
The Earl walked across the room towards her, slowly but steadily enough. His eyes were on her face, and Harriette saw banked fire there and recognised a lethal fury at her brother’s wily methods. Even so, he bowed before her with inestimable grace.
‘Miss Lydyard. There is one solution to restore your good name in the eyes of the world. Would you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?’
Marriage! To become the wife of this man? The knot of ice melted in a rush of heat. If she could choose her heart’s desire, would it not be this gift that was being offered to her, as in a childhood fairytale? A precious jewel on a silk cushion? She might have damned him as a traitor, but now she must acknowledge the depth of honour that he should come to her rescue, much as a knight of old would ride to slay the dragon—Wallace—and carry off the damsel in distress.
Would not this miraculous offer make her heady dreams come true?
But Harriette heard herself reply, her voice as distressingly matter of fact as his. ‘No, my lord. There is no need. As we both know, my brother was ill informed. I am grateful and will never forget your kindness in making so great a sacrifice, but I must refuse your generous offer.’
She saw him react. That was not what he had expected. The muscles along his jaw tightened. ‘Perhaps you do not quite understand the situation, Miss Lydyard.’
‘I am not a fool, my lord.’ A flash of impatience, which she strove to temper, but without much success. ‘I understand the situation perfectly. As I see it, there is no situation between us.’ And gasped as her brother grasped her wrist with painfully hot fingers.
‘Show some sense, girl—’
‘Sir Wallace,’ the Earl interrupted icily, raising a peremptory hand as Harriette tugged ineffectually for her release, ‘I need a moment’s private conversation with your sister. Alone, if you will. Is there a library or drawing room in this establishment that we can use?’
Sir Wallace drew himself up to his most pompous. ‘I’ll not allow it. It’s not appropriate that you—’
‘Sir,’ the Earl interrupted bitingly, without finesse, ‘if I spent the night with Miss Lydyard behind locked doors as you imply, luring her into my bed and proceeding to destroy her reputation by the physical demands of my body on hers, five minutes in a library in the full light of morning will not make matters any the worse.’
Harriette froze at the brutal description of what had not occurred. And for the length of a heartbeat wished that it had.
‘Five minutes, then.’ Sir Wallace allowed Harriette to pull her wrist away. ‘Take his lordship to the library, miss, and try to keep some sense in your stubborn head.’
They descended the stairs, Harriette leading the way into a library as dusty and disused as the rest of the house, what furniture there was shrouded in Holland covers. The leather spines of the few books on the shelves were dull, clearly unread. Immediately the door was closed behind them, a swathed form of a sofa strategically positioned between them, Harriette swung round to face the Earl. Her eyes were clear and bright and very determined. She might have been proud of her earlier reticence, but she could remain silent no longer, even if it meant rejecting the heartstopping image painted in her mind by the Earl’s savage words.
‘There’s no need for this, my lord. I know what my brother is about. I’ll lay odds he didn’t suggest marriage until he heard you were an earl!’ She saw her sharp cynicism cause a slash of high colour along the Earl’s magnificent cheekbones—whether from anger at her brother’s presumption or disapproval of her lack of discretion she could not tell—but she would not simper and prevaricate.
‘I wouldn’t take your odds, Miss Lydyard. Sir Wallace certainly saw the opportunity.’
‘I’ll wager the Lydyard’s Ghost he did! To get me off his hands, and to gain a connection with a man of wealth and consequence.’ Harriette made no attempt to bury the bitterness. ‘My brother is nothing if not ambitious. And I should tell you, I won’t do it, just to further Wallace’s ambitions. Not even if you were the Prince Regent himself!’
‘Fortunately for both of us, I am not!’ the Earl responded, taken aback. What was the impression he had gained not ten minutes ago? Here was no innocent, vulnerable, gently reared girl, bullied by her brother. Here was a highly opinionated young woman actually refusing his offer of marriage. And with a forthrightness that, quite frankly, he resented. His lips thinned. ‘Would marriage to me be such an anathema, Miss Lydyard?’
‘That’s not the issue here. What possible advantage could there be for you in such a mésalliance? I think you must be all about in your head to even consider it, my lord!’
‘The blow from a club might have rattled my senses as a temporary measure,’ he snapped back, ‘but I think I am sane enough.’ What possible advantage…? The kernel of an idea began to form in his mind. That such a marriage might just bring him a glimmer of light, an unforeseen advantage….
‘We know nothing about each other. How would I fit into your elevated social circle in London? I have no notion how to go on there. I have never been to London, not even further than Brighton. Why would you possibly wish to marry me? A beautiful debutante? No. A wife skilled in the social mores of London? Not that. A rich wife with powerful connections? Not that, either. So why? I am no fit wife for you.’ Harriette kept her voice unemotional, ignoring the weight of regret that lay on her heart. He would never know how difficult it was to reject him. ‘I am twenty-three years old, my lord!’
‘And I am thirty-four, if that is of any interest to anyone but myself.’
She saw the flash of proud temper as she resisted him, but would not retreat. ‘I agree your age is irrelevant. Mine is not. I did not think you obtuse, my lord.’
‘Obtuse?’ His eyes hardened, unused to being challenged.
‘I am firmly on the shelf, with nothing to recommend me as a wife, fit for nothing but to be governess to my brother’s children.’ She stated the uncompromising truth without a quiver, her chin raised.
His face remained stern. ‘I commend your shining honesty, Miss Lydyard, but marriage can be the answer—if you are not determined to be so stubborn.’
‘What will your family say with a plain nobody like me for a bride, trailing behind you on your expensive doorstep, somewhere I expect, in Mayfair?’
‘I have no idea, nor do I care,’ he replied, struck by the sad little image. ‘It seems to me, Miss Lydyard, that you sell yourself short. You are hardly a nobody. Your family is perfectly respectable.’
But Miss Lydyard did not retreat. ‘Respectable! How damning a word is that? Compared with the Hallaston family, the Earls of Venmore, we are parvenus indeed. It takes no intelligence to guess the on dit of the Season. A common smuggler as the Countess of Venmore! As bad as Lady Lade. I can’t wed you, my lord.’
At which he smiled, for the first time with some level of genuine humour. It lit his face, softening his mouth, rendering her instantly breathless. ‘Not as bad as Letty Lade. She, as I recall, before she was elevated to society, was a servant in a brothel and mistress of Sixteen-String Jack, who ended on the gallows. I doubt you, Miss Lydyard, have any such claim to fame.’
His face was alight with laughter, atrociously handsome despite the disfiguring bruises and the vicious path of the knife on his cheek. Harriette was forced to look away, forced to take a steadying breath as her dreams shattered before her eyes. He was not for her. To know that he had offered for her under duress, driven into an honourable gesture by her despicable brother, was entirely shaming for her. Without Wallace’s spiked accusations, the Earl of Venmore would never have noticed her, much less invited her to share his life and his bed. She took another breath against the sharp dejection and wished with all her heart it could be otherwise, but she could not, would not, let him be a sacrifice for her brother’s greed. It would humiliate her—and him. Marriage on such terms, when all he had shown her was kindness, would be beyond tolerance for both of them.
‘Why did you do it?’ His soft question surprised her.
‘What?’
‘Take on the appearance and identity of Captain Harry?’
‘A family obligation.’ She walked away to look out towards the cliffs where seabirds wheeled and dived in a joyous freedom, finding it easier not to face him.
‘It’s a hard burden for a family to ask of a young girl.’ To her dismay he followed her to stand at her shoulder, a solid physical presence so that she was immediately aware of the heat of his skin against hers, the sheer dominance of his tall figure. But she would not allow herself to feel vulnerable.
‘It’s not just an obligation.’ She felt an inexplicable need to defend herself to him. ‘It’s the excitement, too. Lydyard’s Ghost is my own. So is Lydyard’s Pride, this house that I love but can’t afford to keep and where my brother refuses to let me live.’ Unaware, animation coloured her words and her face. ‘The smuggling runs have become part of my life. Without them, what do I have before me? I am unwed and unlikely to be so, whatever my brother might say. So I must die of boredom—a neverending round of embroidery, painting, sedate walks under my sister-in-law’s caustic eye. When Zan first took me on a run…’ She flushed, regretting having laid herself open to his interest. ‘It’s in my blood, I suppose.’
‘Zan?’ he asked.
‘Alexander Ellerdine. My cousin. My friend. He showed me the…the satisfaction of it. And since Wallace would not, I took on the family connection. The sea is in my blood, too. Lydyards have always had an interest in the Free Traders.’
The idea that had crept into Luke’s mind blossomed into a fully fledged possibility. To rescue Miss Lydyard from dishonour—a matter of duty in itself—and at the same time…the cutter, Lydyard’s Ghost! He turned to lean, careful of his shoulder, against the window shutter so that he might look directly at her, obliging her to raise her eyes to his.
‘Since you don’t appear to value my offer of marriage overmuch…’his mouth curled in a touch of self-contempt ‘…allow me to suggest a contract that might appeal to you Miss Lydyard. A business deal, if you will.’
‘A business deal?’ That she had not expected.
His eyes narrowed as if he contemplated some distant plotting. ‘I find I might have the need for a fast cutter to give me easy access to the French coast. You own such a cutter.’
‘Well—yes. But if you need one, would it not be simpler to just buy one?’ Harriette’s brows rose in blatant disbelief. ‘Why saddle yourself with a wife?’
He thought fast of the advantages that he might just make use of. ‘I need a trustworthy crew and an experienced captain with knowledge of tides. A captain with knowledge of the French coast and a connection there. And speed would be important—might be crucial in my planning. You could offer me all of that.’
Harriette folded her arms. ‘I could. Why?’
‘A matter of family business. It need not concern you.’ And Harriette watched as a grimness settled about the Earl’s mouth. It was like a shutter closing, she thought, masking any emotion.
‘So you get use of the Ghost.’ She pursed her lips. ‘What do I get?’
‘Simple enough.’ He lifted a hand, palm spread. ‘My title and consequence. My purse strings. I can give you comfort, luxury if that is what you would enjoy, social standing, independence. There will be no compulsion on you to paint or embroider from me! You will no longer be under the eye of either your sister-in-law or your brother. Is that not at least tempting? I own a number of houses that you might like. You might find that you enjoy a London Season.’
‘Ha! With nothing to think of but what I wear and what I say, and if I can manage the steps of a country dance at Almack’s without tripping over my feet? You should know that I have never been taught to dance, either!’ She let the ideal filter through her mind. ‘You think that money would matter to me?’
‘As a smuggler, I imagine profit is an important consideration for you.’
‘You would think that,’ she replied enigmatically. If that is what he thought of her…But how should he not since he did not know her? ‘Why would I choose to escape from my brother into your controlling, my lord?’
‘You would not find me too rigorous a husband. Will you do it?’
Harriette studied the unsmiling, masterful features and was not sure, not sure at all. The Earl of Venmore did not seem to have the makings of an easy, tolerant husband. There was suddenly no similarity between this man and the helpless figure who had been tumbled broken and bleeding at her feet. This man who insisted on her striking this remarkable bargain with him.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.
‘Why not? Consider what a profitable catch I turned out to be.’
There was no mistaking the edge of a sneer in his voice. What a low opinion he appeared to have of her. Well, she would reply in similar vein. ‘So there’s something in this for both of us. Youw ould be as self-interested as I in finding an advantage in this match.’
‘Yes. Why not?’
Harriette dragged in a breath. Here was honesty between them at least. And it was tempting; she felt herself weakening. The Earl of Venmore was clearly a devious man, knowing that independence would be a priceless gift to her. What would it be like to share his life, to share his bed? She shivered at the thought of the Earl’s physical ownership of her. It was an image that would destroy her resolution, she admitted in her heart, if she allowed it.
‘You said you could not afford the upkeep of this house.’ His words brought her back to the present. ‘It obviously means much to you. If you wish to spend money to put this place back in order…’
Harriette stared at him.
‘…then I could enable you to do it.’
Was he actually offering to pay to resurrect Lydyard’s Pride from dilapidation to its former glory? Why would he put himself out to be so persuasive? There was no debt for him to pay. Harriette could find no words to reply between what her heart desired and what her mind informed her was only right and proper. Her mind, of course, had the victory.
‘You don’t have to, my lord. We both know my honour was not compromised.’
‘I know it, as do you. But unfortunately the polite world is not kind to even the veriest whisper of scandal. It can be cruel and malicious. If you have any ambition to attract a husband, you must be aware of the dangers for you if gossip wags its spiteful tongue.’
He watched her as she thought over his words with utmost seriousness. She frowned a little as she replied, as if her words were painful to her, as they were. ‘It seems to me, my lord, that there are far more advantages for me in this arrangement. All you get is an unsuitable wife and the Ghost.’
‘And it’s important to me.’ Surprising her, and perhaps himself, the Earl took her hand in his good right one and Harriette felt an arresting sparkle of light ripple through her blood. His clasp was firm around her fingers, strong with more than a hint of possession. Never in her life had she felt so dominated by a man. She was intensely aware of his forceful presence and their seclusion, of the strength of his will when he had set his mind to a course of action. His words confirmed it. ‘Let us have plain speaking between us, Miss Lydyard. Is there someone whom you love, to whom you are promised?’
Harriette shook her head.
‘Then we are both without entanglements and of an age to enter into this agreement of our own free will.’
‘But that isn’t so. I think there is a lady close to your heart.’
His brows twitched together. ‘I don’t…’
‘A lady named Marie-Claude.’
His eyes flashed a warning. ‘No. Whatever I said in delirium, you misunderstood, Miss Lydyard. She is nothing to me.’ His response held a hard bite. ‘I promise to be an attentive and tolerant husband. I will defend your name and your honour with all the power I have. I will not make more demands on you than you are willing to give—and in return you will allow me use of the Ghost. Miss Harriette Lydyard, will you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?’ His proposal held none of the warm emotion that might be expected in a bridegroom towards the woman who would put her future into his hands, but he kissed Harriette’s fingers, lips cool on her skin, that stirred a hot little flame in her heart. ‘It would please me, restore us both to the good graces of polite society and solve all manner of problems for you.’
A proposal of marriage. Harriette floundered in a morass of indecision. How remote, how austere he was, as if it meant nothing to him. And perhaps it didn’t. She could not do it. It would bring her more sorrow than happiness.
Then the Earl smiled at her. What an impossibly charming smile he had, making him too dangerously attractive. And suddenly Harriette found herself tottering on the edge of forgetting all her clear reasoning as to why she should not take this step. It was so very appealing. Her gaze was caught by his so that she felt as if she were pulled along as by waves in a strong tide. If she were not careful, she would be dragged inexorably below the surface and then she would be lost…
‘Miss Lydyard? My future hangs on your reply.’
‘Really?’ She looked askance.
‘Really, Miss Lydyard!’ His mouth firmed into an impatient line.
She must give him an answer of course. And did so with dry appreciation. ‘Your tongue is as smooth as French silk, my lord. The only thing I regret is that, if I do agree, it will please my brother.’
‘He is no longer of any concern to you. For you, Miss Lydyard, if you will accept my offer, you now belong to me.’
It was outrageously proprietary. Intensely possessive. Very male and very confident. Harriette’s heart leaped within the confines of her outmoded bodice. And again, a harder beat, when his clasp tightened and he pulled her slowly towards him. Was he intending to kiss her? Fear struck.
‘I should tell you, my lord, that not only can I not dance, but I have never been kissed, either.’
‘Then it will be my pleasure to show you how it is done, to consolidate our agreement.’
As a kiss it surprised her. It was very gentle, the softest of meetings of lips, hardly more than a sharing of breath between them. Harriette felt he had made an effort not to frighten her, but now fear was not in her mind. She sighed, taking a step closer, and, sensing it, the Earl slid his good arm around her waist and drew her closer still, firm against his chest, his thighs, whilst his lips warmed and teased. Enveloped by his arms, it was as if all her senses became startlingly alive so that his scent, his touch stroked her, to fill her with a delight that she could never have imagined. Gentle as it was, it reduced her to a shimmer of liquid pleasure. Until he released her, tilted his head as if struck by a thought, before placing a final caress between her brows.
‘So we are agreed? It would not be appropriate for me to kiss a lady who was other than my betrothed.’
And Harriette, hopelessly entranced, gasped at his slide into light humour. How could she possibly tell him that he had stolen both her breath and her heart in that one simple undemanding gesture? ‘Then I must accept, mustn’t I, for I am not in the habit of allowing any gentleman to kiss me. But one thing I would ask.’ She lowered her eyes so he would not see the anxiety that began to build in her chest again.
‘Since you saved my life, I think I am duty bound to grant whatever you request, Miss Lydyard.’
‘I don’t want a society wedding. Not at some fashionable church in London under the eyes of the ton. Not in the midst of your Corinthian set.’
‘Very well. Then where?’
‘Here. With a special licence.’
‘Then it shall be so.’
Relief swept through her, and astonishment that he would agree so readily. He had not even asked her to explain, something she did not wish to do. ‘If I am to escape, then let it be quick. Do you know a bishop, my lord?’
‘I think I can lay claim to it.’ Then, ‘My name is Lucius,’ he prompted.
‘Lucius.’ She tried it on her tongue. Heavy. Classical. Aristocratic. She must have frowned.
His mouth was a touch sardonic. ‘If you don’t care for it, try Luke.’
‘Is that what your family call you?’
‘My brother, Adam, does.’
Harriette tried it in her mind. Luke! She liked it. It suited his dark good looks. ‘Then I will.’
‘So we are decided. As long as I don’t have to wed you in this garment.’
‘I doubt your own coat will be redeemable—although I’m sure you have any number of such fashionable garments. I should tell you I took a knife to the seams. I thought you were bleeding to death.’
‘Then I must thank God you did. Although Weston might not be too happy at the destruction of his masterpiece.’
‘Whoever Weston might be, he did not have to deal with an emergency! I promise I won’t wed you in boots and breeches.’
‘I can ask for nothing more, Captain Harry.’
‘I am very grateful.’
Reaching out, he startled Harriette by running a finger along the edge of her jaw, lifting her chin so that she must look up at him. Then with a swift movement belying his bruising, Luke swooped and kissed her again, hard and sure.
His demeanour might be cool, but his mouth held the heat of a searing flame. His previous kiss had warmed her with pleasure. This was a brand that scorched her, fire consuming every inch of her body. It stirred a hunger in her of which she had no experience. It turned her limbs to water. Harriette pressed her hands against his chest, not to make a distance between them but simply to savour the warmth of his body, the solid beat of his heart under her palm.
Then, as quickly as he had taken her, he released her.
‘I don’t need your gratitude, only your acceptance, Miss Lydyard.’
He took her hand to lead her back to break the news to Sir Wallace, the only sensible thought in Harriette’s mind—What have I done, offering to wed a man whose way of life might be totally immoral? followed quickly by—Why would the Earl of Venmore need the use of a fast cutter to get him to France? A question that lodged, hard and heavy as a stone, in Harriette’s chest. For if the Earl intended to use the Ghost in some nefarious practice with the enemy—and did all the evidence not point to that?—how could she be attracted to a man who might very well be a spy?
A smuggler. A smuggler as Countess of Venmore? By God! What had he done?
Whilst George Gadie set to work to negotiate the hire of a horse and gig from the tight-fisted landlord of the Silver Boat, Luke was left to juggle a range of unpalatable thoughts, all centring on Harriette Lydyard. For most of them he had no answer. Such as, why had he fought so hard to get her? And what had happened to his legendary charm, his ability to conduct an elegant flirtation, that he had made so ham-fisted an attempt, stricken into damning silence when she had listed her faults and accused him of not wanting a bride such as she? He had simply stood there like an ill-educated and mannerless boor, all his presence of mind buried beneath a cold dose of honesty, skewered by the lady’s forthright stare. The fact that all her observations were a fairly accurate reading of the situation was by the by. What had she said? Unfashionable, no fortune, no looks to speak of, past the age of a débutante with no inclination to come out into society.
Dispassionately, the Earl reconsidered his bride. Miss Lydyard had sold herself short. Blinding honesty was certainly one of her attributes. That’s what he would get. An honest, outspoken wife, a capable woman who did not faint at the sight of blood with the courage not to retreat before her brother’s bullying and intimidation. His wealth, his title, his entrée into society held no apparent attraction for her. He smiled sardonically at her reaction to his prestigious tailor. Unfortunate Weston! She did not even know who he was.
And, no, she was not unattractive. There was an elusive charm about her, of which he thought even she was unaware. When she had explained about this ruin of a house, full of vital energy, her features had lit, her eyes—and what remarkably beautiful eyes they were—had glowed. No, she was not unattractive at all. When she had smiled, she had been transformed. He thought that he had not seen her laugh, and wished he had. Instead there had been that sudden shadow of fear when she had asked for a discreet wedding. What had that been about? What woman of his acquaintance would resist the chance of a society wedding, to be the envy of the haut ton when she became the Countess of Venmore? He was not so naïve that he did not appreciate his own worth as a bridegroom. But there had been a lingering sadness there.
Who would have thought any woman would have tried so hard not to marry him? A harsh laugh escaped him. A wise man, he decided, would make a fast escape and thank the gods for it—but an honorourable man would not. Luke had no intention of allowing Harriette to suffer through the strange workings of fate that had tumbled him into her boat. Nor of his name being coupled with her dishonour. His family name deserved better than that, as did her own.
Would he regret this further complication in his life? He shrugged the thought away abruptly, until his bruised shoulder caused him to hiss through his teeth at the pain. Probably he would. Did he not have enough troubles at the moment with discovering the present whereabouts of Mademoiselle Marie-Claude? He frowned, not seeing a way forward there, and contact with Jean-Jacques Noir was becoming hazardous. Should he tell Harriette about that? No. Not yet, at least. Better to keep his mouth tightly shut and his fears to himself—as he had been warned that he must.
For now he had the prospect of a wife, the last thing he wanted at this point in his life when he was living a lie and burdened with guilt, but in all honour, he could not abandon her. A strange alliance. A smuggler and a…what? Spy? Traitor? Some would undoubtedly say the latter. An unscrupulous pairing, but Miss Lydyard had the Ghost, too good a chance to miss it if it allowed him to save an innocent young woman from harm.
And whatever happened, he would make sure Miss Harriette Lydyard did not suffer for her compliance.
Would Harriette Lydyard enjoy being a countess? Somehow he doubted it. He would wager she would rather face a gale-force wind in the Lydyard’s Ghost than a dress ball. But she wanted freedom from family restrictions; he saw the value of a fast ship to France. Both had an eye to a main chance, as she had observed in those cool tones of disdain, pure self-interest for both of them.
And what did he think of a girl who wore breeches and boots, evaded the law and ran the gauntlet of the Revenue men without any hint of fear? He ought to be outraged. Luke smiled wryly. Somehow he could not summon that emotion in his dealings with Miss Harriette Lydyard. He ought to be thoroughly outraged, condemning her morals and her sense of propriety. Even now, their final exchange in the library remained to echo uncomfortably in his mind.
As he was about to open the door, Harriette had stopped him. ‘If I am to wed you, does this mean that you would prefer me to give up smuggling?’
‘Yes,’ he had replied in some surprise, without hesitation. ‘How could I wish my wife to be involved in criminal activities? Ah!—that’s to say…’
‘I suppose you think it’s a vicious, damnable trade.’ She must have seen him searching for a tactful response. ‘Most people do, you know, even though it puts food into the mouths of poor women and children in fishing villages, who might otherwise starve.’ She raised her hand when he might have replied. ‘I understand—you don’t have to hide your condemnation of it, or me. I will just say this, my lord. I will consider retiring from the Trade, because it is your preference.’
And that was as much as she would promise. Now he must live with the consequences. Was it possible to build a future on a fleeting and wholly inexplicable admiration for Miss Lydyard, simply because she had rescued him and saved his life? An admiration because she had faced him and flung his offer of wealth and consequence at his feet as so much dross?
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Anne OBrien
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: He remembers luminous grey eyes… and a mysterious gentle touch… Despite being unconscious for most of the night, Lucius has been accused of compromising a lady. She may not be an obvious beauty, dressed as she is in seaman’s garb, but his rescuer is all woman – and now he must marry Miss Harriette Lydyard.The Earl of Venmore is lethally attractive, and Harriette knows she should refuse him. Only with her reputation in tatters she must face the consequences of her actions – by making a pact with this disreputable, dangerous devil of a man!