Unwed and Unrepentant
Unwed and Unrepentant
Marguerite Kaye
PRETEND ENGAGEMENTBurned by love, and fearful of being trapped by marriage, headstrong Lady Cordelia Armstrong is furious when her father manipulates her into a betrothal with his business partner and her one-time lover Iain Hunter.Understanding Cordelia’s reluctance, Iain proposes a pretend engagement. For now they will make believe – but there is no need to fake the attraction that still burns hotly between them. As they travel to magical Arabia the lines between fantasy and reality blur. Will either of them really be able to walk away once their deal is done?
His fingers were stroking the skin at the nape of her neck.
His mouth was curved into a smile that was blatantly sensual. It was there again in his eyes, that heat, and she was pretty certain it was there in hers too.
‘Iain, we are just pretending to be engaged.’
‘Aye, but there are other things we’ve no need to pretend about. You know I still want you, Cordelia.’
‘Did you have this in mind when you suggested our engagement?’
‘No, and I won’t change my mind if you’re not interested. I think you are, though.’ Iain laughed softly. ‘Knowing that you want me as much as I want you—have you any idea what that does to me?’ His expression darkened momentarily. ‘I don’t want you subservient to my desires, Cordelia, I want my desires to be yours. Yours to be mine.’
His words were a low, stomach-clenching growl. ‘My desires to be yours?’ she repeated, mesmerised.
‘And yours to be mine. Admit it, we have unfinished business.’
Born and educated in Scotland, MARGUERITE KAYE originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practise. Instead, she carved out a career in IT and studied history part-time, gaining a first-class honours and a master’s degree. A few decades after winning a children’s national poetry competition she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition to write, and submitted her first historical romance to Mills & Boon
. They accepted it, and she’s been writing ever since.
You can contact Marguerite through her website at: www.margueritekaye.com (http://www.margueritekaye.com).
Previous novels by the same author:
THE WICKED LORD RASENBY
THE RAKE AND THE HEIRESS
INNOCENT IN THE SHEIKH’S HAREM† (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) (part of Summer Sheikhs anthology) THE GOVERNESS AND THE SHEIKH† (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) THE HIGHLANDER’S REDEMPTION* (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) THE HIGHLANDER’S RETURN* (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) RAKE WITH A FROZEN HEART OUTRAGEOUS CONFESSIONS OF LADY DEBORAH DUCHESS BY CHRISTMAS (part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses anthology) THE BEAUTY WITHIN RUMOURS THAT RUINED A LADY
and in Mills & Boon
Historical Undone! eBooks:
THE CAPTAIN’S WICKED WAGER
THE HIGHLANDER AND THE SEA SIREN
BITTEN BY DESIRE
TEMPTATION IS THE NIGHT
CLAIMED BY THE WOLF PRINCE‡ (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) BOUND TO THE WOLF PRINCE‡ (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) THE HIGHLANDER AND THE WOLF PRINCESS‡ (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) THE SHEIKH’S IMPETUOUS LOVE-SLAVE† (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) SPELLBOUND & SEDUCED BEHIND THE COURTESAN’S MASK FLIRTING WITH RUIN AN INVITATION TO PLEASURE LOST IN PLEASURE HOW TO SEDUCE A SHEIKH
In the Mills & BoonCastonbury ParkRegency mini-series:
THE LADY WHO BROKE THE RULES
and in M&B eBooks: TITANIC: A DATE WITH DESTINY
† (#ulink_edce0aa2-5993-5152-8f29-b6b9e31079d7)linked by character * (#ulink_edce0aa2-5993-5152-8f29-b6b9e31079d7)Highland Brides‡ (#ulink_b2c40f6c-bd65-5f33-b536-219d1929d38a)Legend of the Faol
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Unwed and
Unrepentant
Marguerite Kaye
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
AUTHOR NOTE
I live on the west coast of Scotland and work in a room that faces right out onto the River Clyde. While I write I see the ferries traipsing back and forth across the river, I see warships and nuclear submarines making their way to and from the naval base at Faslane, and I see huge cruise ships, tankers, trawlers and tiny creelers. In the summer months I also see the Waverley, the only surviving sea-going paddle steamer in the world, and it was the Waverley which provided me with the inspiration for my ship-building hero Iain.
Mind you, I suppose you could say that ship-building is in my blood. My paternal grandfather worked in some of the biggest yards on the Clyde during the Second World War, and in the 1960s was part of the team that built the Queen Elizabeth II. My maternal grandfather was a captain in the Merchant navy, and twice sunk during the same war (he survived both). When I first started to write I remember reading the mantra ‘write what you know’ over and over in various ‘how to write’ books. Since I’ve never found my previous life in IT particularly romantic, I guess this story is as good as ‘writing what you know’ as I’m going to get!
As ever with my books, the plot has gone through a whole series of changes as the characters developed. My dogged perusal of a learned tome called Money, Mania and Markets by R. C. Michie resulted in one fleeting reference to Cordelia’s investment portfolio. The majority of the scenes that I had planned to set in Glasgow ended up on my virtual cutting-room floor, though I’ve used some of their ambience in the scene where Cordelia and Iain visit the Isle of Dogs. While I’d set Cordelia up with some passing references in both THE BEAUTY WITHIN and RUMOURS THAT RUINED A LADY, to be honest, I had no more idea than her sisters of why she ran away and what her fate was. I started out putting her in a convent in Italy, then I set her up in business in Glasgow building hotels for young ladies, and at one point I gave her a child, which I killed off and then abandoned altogether.
What I did realise very early on was that she needed a very strong hero—a self-made man to match her self-made woman. Setting the story in the year of Queen Victoria’s ascendancy followed—not only because I needed Cordelia to have packed a bit of experience under her belt, but because it was with Victoria that the meritocracy started to nudge the aristocracy out of power, and I was very keen that her blackguard of a father, Lord Armstrong, was dealt if not a mortal blow then a fairly serious wound to his power base.
This is the last of the Armstrong sisters’ stories—a series which didn’t start out as a series at all, but as a one-off Regency sheikh story. I didn’t plan to come full circle back to where it started, but as I wrote Iain and Cordelia’s story, it felt right to do so.
Thanks to my Facebook friends for all their help and support, assistance with points of detail and ideas—you are stars. And once again thank you to Flo, who deserves some sort of medal for being so patient with me on this one, which had more false starts than the Grand National!
For J.
When you read this, you’ll know why.
First, last and always love.
Contents
Prologue (#udb12167b-e89d-5c2c-85d9-469f88510a43)
Chapter One (#u94dbccd4-500f-53e1-90b7-85f3fc726fde)
Chapter Two (#ubb135e3a-54e8-50fd-85ac-3d3c795c9a6e)
Chapter Three (#u0767fa53-0913-54d9-9d58-872a93a3f5f3)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Historical Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Cavendish Square, London—spring 1828
Clutching a portmanteau in one hand, a bandbox tied with string in the other, Lady Cordelia Armstrong crept down the main staircase of her father’s town house. It was late afternoon, and her Aunt Sophia was taking a nap. Cordelia had been pledged to attend an expedition to Richmond Park. She had been at pains, when the invitation was first issued, to inform her aunt that the company would include at least one rake, one notorious fortune-hunter and the young lady who was competing with Cordelia in a wager—registered by one obliging gentleman in White’s betting book—to amass the most offers for her hand in one Season.
Lady Sophia had, as Cordelia anticipated, forbidden her to go. ‘If you are seen in an open carriage in such company,’ she had said, her face turning the most alarming shade of puce, ‘I have no doubt whatsoever that your vouchers for Almack’s will be withdrawn.’
‘And all poor Papa’s plans to marry me off to one of his minions will be in tatters,’ Cordelia had been unable to resist retorting.
‘I do not understand you. Don’t you want to make a good match?’
‘One that is good for me, yes, indeed. Sadly, that rather precludes it being a man whom Papa has selected.’
Her aunt had looked genuinely shocked, a reaction which had quite taken Cordelia aback. Having seen for herself how miserable trying to please their father had made Cressie, and how very changed poor Caro had become since marrying the man chosen for her, Cordelia had a very low opinion indeed of Lord Armstrong’s ability to pick a husband for her, but it seemed Lady Sophia did not agree. It was true, Cordelia had originally pretended to go along with her father’s plans for her, but she had assumed that her aunt, who was no fool, understood this was simply a ruse to ensure she was not, like Cressie, confined to the country until she agreed to do his bidding. Papa did not like open defiance. Keep your enemies close, was one of his maxims, and Cordelia had paid it great heed.
The moment was now ripe to strike, for her father was en route to Russia with Wellington. Sadly, it seemed the wool must also be pulled over Aunt Sophia’s eyes too, for the time being. So Cordelia had said defiantly that she would go to Richmond Park no matter how low the company, ensuring that no other invitation could be accepted on that fateful date, and that her sadly abused relative would be too relieved to question her, when informed upon the day that her niece, having thought the matter over, was of the opinion that the expedition would be a mistake. Which was exactly what had happened this morning, as a result of which Aunt Sophia was sleeping soundly in her bedchamber, under the illusion that her apparently contrite charge, with an engagement-free afternoon, was resting in hers.
The house was silent, with not even a footman attendant in the marbled hallway to impede Cordelia’s departure. Placing the brief missive on the polished half-table beside the silver salver upon which callers to Lord Armstrong’s abode left their visiting cards, she felt a twinge of guilt. Though her ambitious and scheming Papa deserved not a whit of loyalty or consideration in her opinion, she did not feel comfortable deceiving Aunt Sophia, who might look like a camel, might even upon occasion bray like one, but had in her own way always done her best by her nieces.
Biting her lip, Cordelia stared at her reflection in the mirror. Nature had given her the dark golden curls, the cupid’s-bow mouth and soft curves which were deemed by society to be beautiful—this Season, at least. At one-and-twenty, combined with an adequate dowry, her lineage and her connections, she was under no illusions about her value on the marriage mart—indeed, she had already amassed enough proposals to prove it.
‘And not a single one of them could care less what goes on behind this pretty facade,’ she said aloud, her lip curling with contempt. ‘Within five years, perhaps less, when I’ve done my duty and produced the requisite heir or two, I’ll be retired to the country to grow fat and miserable like poor Bella. Or worse, if I fail, forced into hiding in the shadows like Caro.’
Turning away from the mirror, she picked up her luggage with renewed resolve. Soon, she would be married to a man of her own choosing. A man who derided politics and her papa equally. A man who paid her no pretty, facile compliments but talked to her as if she had a mind of her own, and made it very clear that he desired her not as a matrimonial conquest but as a woman. A man whose kisses made her pulses race. A man who could heat her blood by his very presence in the room. A man whose body and bed she longed to share.
‘Gideon,’ she whispered. Heart thumping, Cordelia slid open the heavy front door of her father’s house, closing it carefully behind her. The next time she returned, she would be a married woman. ‘And for once, Papa shall dance to my tune, for the one thing he abhors more than disobedience is scandal,’ she murmured to herself as she tripped down the stone stairs into Cavendish Square and hailed a hackney cab which was most fortuitously passing. Taking it as a good omen, she clambered in with her luggage and gave her direction.
The carriage rumbled off and Cordelia settled herself for the journey to the posting house where they were to meet before setting out on their journey. Of course, the Honourable Gideon d’Amery had not specifically mentioned marriage, but that was a mere detail. Papa and Aunt Sophia would tell her that no gentleman would propose an elopement to a lady, but Papa and Aunt Sophia had not a romantic bone in their bodies. Cordelia was of age, and Gideon was a man of the world who would see to whatever details were required to formalise their union. Not that she had any idea what such details comprised, though she was hazily aware they required some sort of special licence unless they were headed to Gretna Green.
She didn’t care and it mattered not a whit. Gideon would see to it. Cordelia would concentrate on the important things, such as his smile and his kisses and the heated look in his dark-brown eyes when he gazed at her, and the delicious frisson that ran through her when he ran his fingers over her breasts in that shocking manner through her gown, and the even more shocking and even more delicious frisson when he pressed the evidence of his desire against her as they danced.
She touched her gloved hands to her heated cheeks. How perfectly lovely it was to be in love and to know that she was loved in return. When she came back to London on the arm of her husband, glowing with happiness, Papa would have no option but to acknowledge that Cordelia, and not her father, knew what was best for her. A month, perhaps three, if they made their marriage trip to the Continent. Rome. Venice. And Paris of course, for she would need new gowns, having been forced to leave most of her coming-out wardrobe at home.
‘Six months at most,’ she said dreamily, ‘and then I shall return, the Prodigal Daughter, and Papa shall be forced to kill the fatted calf.’ On that most satisfying image, Cordelia closed her mind to the troubles she was leaving behind her, and turned instead to the night of passion which lay ahead.
Chapter One
Cavendish Square, London—spring 1837
Though he wore the familiar livery, the footman who opened the door was a stranger to her. The name inscribed on her visiting card would mean nothing to him, so she did not place it on the silver salver he held out— The same one as had always been used, she noted. ‘Please inform Lord Armstrong that Lady Cordelia is here,’ she said. ‘He is expecting me.’
The startled look the servant gave her informed her that he knew her by reputation if nothing else, but he had been trained well, and quickly assumed an indifferent mask. Cordelia had no doubt, however, that she would be the topic of the day in the servants’ hall, and that every inch of her appearance would be recounted within minutes of her arrival.
The marbled hallway had changed surprisingly little in the nine years since she had last been here, but instead of ascending the grand central staircase that led to the formal drawing room where visitors were received, Cordelia was ushered through a door directly off the reception area. The book room. A choice of venue which spoke volumes.
‘I shall inform his lordship of your arrival.’
The door closed behind the footman with a soft click, leaving Cordelia alone, suddenly and quite unexpectedly shaking with nerves. The walnut desk before her was as imposing as ever. Behind it, the leatherbound chair held the indent of her father’s body. In front of it, as ever, two wooden chairs whose seats, she knew from old, placed the person who took them at a lower level than the man behind the desk. The scent of beeswax polish mingled in the air with the slightly musty smell from the books and ledgers which lined the cases on the walls. From the empty grate came the faint trace of ash. No fire burned, though there was a nip in the spring air. Another trick of her father’s. Lord Armstrong never felt the cold—or at least, that was the impression he liked to give.
Nine years. She would be thirty next birthday, and yet this room made her feel like a child waiting to be scolded. There was a similar room at Killellan Manor, where she and her sisters had been reprimanded and instructed in their duties as motherless daughters of an ambitious diplomat and peer of the realm.
Memories assailed her, things she had not thought of in years, of the pranks they had played, and the games. In the days before Celia married, they had been a tight-knit group. She had forgotten how close, or perhaps she had not allowed herself to remember, in the Bella years. She smiled to herself, remembering now. Unlike Cressie, who had always been too confrontational, or Caro, who had always been the dutiful sister, Cordelia’s strategy had been to give the appearance of compliance while going her own way. It had worked more often than it had failed. Rarely had her father perceived her to be the ringleader—that honour fell to poor Cressie. Cordelia had thought herself a master manipulator by the time she arrived in London for the Season. She had been so naive, thinking that her father was the only man in her orbit with a game to play.
The clock ticking relentlessly on the mantel showed her that she had been standing before the desk for almost fifteen minutes. Another of her father’s favourite ruses, to keep his minions waiting, ensuring that they understood their relative unimportance. She felt quite sick. Her stomach wasn’t full of butterflies but something far more malicious. Hornets? Too stingy. Toads? Snakes? Too slimy. Cicadas? She shuddered. Revolting things.
She checked the time on the little gold watch which was pinned to the belt of her carriage dress. By her reckoning, her dear father would keep her at least another ten minutes. Not quite the full half-hour. She would be better occupied preparing herself for the ordeal that lay ahead than making herself ill.
For a start, she should not be caught standing here like a penitent schoolgirl. Cordelia peeled off her gloves and laid them on the polished surface of the desk. Her fringed paisley shawl she folded neatly over the back of one of the wooden chairs. The high-crowned bonnet she had purchased, as she did most of her clothes, in Paris, was next. The wide brim was trimmed with knife-pleated silk the same royal blue as her carriage gown, a colour she favoured, for not only did it suit her, it gave her a deceptive air of severity which she liked to cultivate simply because contradictions had always amused her. The expensive bonnet joined her shawl on the chair. Pulling out a hand mirror from her beaded reticule, Cordelia shook out the curls which had taken the maid she had hired an age to achieve with the hot tongs. Far more elaborate than the style she normally favoured, her coiffure, with its centre parting and top knot, was the height of fashion and, in her opinion, the height of discomfort, but it added to her confidence, and that was, she admitted unwillingly to herself, in need of as much boosting as she could manage.
A quick mental check of the latest statement from her bank and an inventory of her stocks helped. The knowledge that her father could have no inkling of either made her smile and calmed the roiling in her stomach a little. She had no need to read the missive which had been his reply to her own request for an interview, but she did anyway, for those curt lines were a salient reminder that despite all her sisters’ assertions, her father had not changed. She would need every ounce of her resolution and backbone if she was to have any chance of succeeding.
I have granted this interview in the hope that sufficient time has passed for you to have regretted your gross misdemeanour, and for mature reflection to have inculcated in you the sense of duty which was previously sadly lacking. While the pain of your wilful disobedience must always pierce my heart, I have concluded that my own paternal duty requires me to permit you a hearing.
Your self-enforced exile has wounded others than myself. Your brothers scarce recall you. Your youngest sister has never met you. You should be aware too, that my own sister, your aunt Sophia, has been made decrepit by the passing years and has likely very few left to her on this earth.
Sincere contrition and unquestioning obedience in the future will restore you to the bosom of your injured family. If you come to Cavendish Square in any other frame of mind, your journey will have been pointless. On this understanding, you may arrange a time convenient to me with my secretary.
Yours etc.
Cordelia curled her lip at the reference to his heart, which she was fairly certain her father did not possess. Not that it precluded him tugging on the heartstrings of others. He knew her rather too well. The stories Caro shared with her, of their half-brothers and half-sister, were bittersweet. She had missed so much of their youth already that she would be a stranger to them. She even harboured a desire to become reacquainted with Bella, whose many foibles and viciousness of temperament she thought she understood rather more— For who would not be twisted by the simple fact of being married to one such as the great Lord Armstrong? Her feelings for Lady Sophia were both simpler and more complex, for while she had wronged her aunt, she could not help feeling that her aunt had wronged her too. And as to her father...
Cordelia folding the letter into a very small square and stuffed it back into her reticule. Neither salutation nor signature. He thought he was summoning an impoverished and contrite dependant. She wondered what penance he had in mind for her, and wondered, with some trepidation, how he would react when he discovered her neither contrite nor in need of financial support, but set upon reparation. In her father’s eyes, she had committed a heinous crime. His punishment had been extreme and it had taken Cordelia, her own fiercest critic, a very long time to realise that it was unmerited. Longer still to face up to the consequences of this, for of all things, she abhorred confrontation. Focusing her decided will on achieving independence and defying convention had alleviated the pain of her exile, but success, she discovered, instead of putting an end to her grievance, allowed it to grow. Becoming reacquainted with Cressie and Caro forced her to acknowledge the huge chasm which the rift with her family had created, though it was not until that strangest of days, last year, that she faced up to the fact that in order to heal it she would have to confront the cause of it.
Her father. Were she a man, he would be impressed by her business acumen. Though were she a man, she would not be in this position in the first place. Which made her wonder what on earth she was doing here anyway, because she didn’t need his permission to contact her own family. They were her family just as much as his.
Cordelia sighed heavily. Truth. How she hated the truth. Despite everything, despite the fact that he was far more in the wrong than she, what she wanted was his forgiveness just as much his acceptance of who she was, and the fact that she would never be the daughter he expected her to be. It was ridiculous and irrational and most likely unattainable, but there it was, that was what she really wanted from today.
The hand she held was slim. She would have to play it with skill. Lord Armstrong must be made aware from the outset of this interview that his daughter was no mat for him to wipe his feet upon. She considered seating herself behind the desk, but her father’s imprint on the leather chair made her feel squeamish. Instead, she spread the silk skirts of her carriage dress out and endeavoured to look as relaxed and comfortable as she could on the hated wooden chair. Her gown, with its wide leg-of-mutton sleeves and tight cuffs, was deceptively simple. The scalloping on the bodice and collar was subtle but intricately worked, continuing down the front panel to the the hem. The belt of the same royal blue which cinched her waist was held with a gold buckle. Her outfit was elegant and so à la mode that it screamed Paris to anyone who cared to notice. Her father, however, had little time for women and things feminine. It gave her a little kick of satisfaction, knowing that the evidence of her success, displayed in full view, would be quite lost on him.
The sound of a footfall outside the door alerted her to his arrival. Cordelia put a hand over the heart which threatened to jump out of her chest, and sternly quelled the instinct to rise from her seat.
* * *
She had thought herself prepared, but as the door opened and Lord Armstrong made his entrance, a lump formed in Cordelia’s throat. There were, it seemed, some things which neither logic nor experience could tame. Here was her father, and she could not control the rush of affection which brought tears to her eyes, stemmed only by a supreme effort of will from falling. Foolish of her, but she had not expected him to look so much older. His grey hair was sparser, revealing tender patches of pink pate. Pouches had formed under his eyes, though the blue-grey colour of his irises was still disconcertingly the exact shade of her own. His face was thinner too, giving a beakiness to his nose and a translucence to his skin, though he was still a handsome man.
He still had presence too. Barely a falter in his step there was, as he nodded curtly, as if it had been a few days since last they had met. The atmosphere in the book room changed too, when he took his seat behind the desk. She had forgotten that about him. He was like a necromancer, conjuring moods at will. She was already tense, her toes curled inside her kid boots, her shoulders straight like a soldier on parade, and it was too late to relax, because his eyes were upon her and he was drumming his fingers, his chin resting on one hand. But she was no longer a child, and had, for nine years, perforce, to consider herself no longer his daughter. He had not the right to judge her, and she was not inclined to permit him to do so.
Silence stretched. Another of his tricks, but it was one which Cordelia had also acquired. By the time he raised his brows after what seemed like an eternity, she had herself under control.
‘You are looking surprisingly well.’
‘Yes,’ she replied with a cool smile. She waited, listening to the clock on the mantel ticking. It always seemed to tock much louder than it ticked, counting out the seconds like a measured, doom-laden tread towards eternity. She wondered, as she had so many times before, if he had had it adjusted to do so.
Finally, her father spoke. ‘Almost a decade ago you absconded from these premises, leaving devastation in your wake. I shall never understand what I did to deserve such ingratitude, nor such a flagrant flouting of my will.’
‘Your will!’ The words were out before she could stop them. ‘What about my will, Father? Did you ever stop to consider...’
‘Unlike yourself, I never act without a great deal of consideration.’
Lord Armstrong steepled his fingers and eyed her across the expanse of polished walnut. Furious with herself, Cordelia bit her lip, grateful that the layers of corsets and stiffened petticoats which her robe required, concealed her heaving chest. ‘I did not request this interview to discuss the past, but the future,’ she said.
‘Indeed? You do not think the past pertinent, then? You do not feel it incumbent to explain how you have spent your years...’
‘In exile? In the wilderness?’
‘Outwith the shelter of your family,’ Lord Armstrong concluded smoothly.
‘No,’ Cordelia said baldly. ‘Caro and Cressie informed you that I was well,’ she continued, unable to tolerate another lengthy silence. ‘They also informed you that should you wish to contact me, you could do so through either of them. You did not, I must assume because you were not interested or did not care. Both most likely. So no, I don’t think it either pertinent or—or incumbent upon me to explain myself,’ she concluded hurriedly, realising that she was on the brink of doing just that.
She glared at him, defying the stupid, stupid tears to fall. He didn’t care. It made it so much more humiliating to discover that she, after all, cared a great deal.
‘You are thirty years of age,’ Lord Armstrong said.
‘Next month,’ Cordelia replied cautiously, wondering where this new tack would lead.
‘And still, I assume, unmarried?’
‘May I ask why you make such an assumption?’
Her father smiled thinly. ‘Though I am sure we would both rather the case were otherwise, you are my daughter, and I do understand you. You would not be here playing the supplicant had you any other means.’
‘You don’t think my sisters would support me?’
‘I don’t think you would accept their support,’ Lord Armstrong retorted.
The truth of this made her determined to destroy that smug certainty of his. ‘The possibility of my having a dependant of my own has not occurred to you, I suppose,’ Cordelia said.
Her father looked fleetingly appalled, but his expression was quickly veiled. ‘Even you, Cordelia, would not have the temerity to foist a bastard upon the family.’
Even she! Thinking of her sisters’ various exploits, Cordelia was forced to repress a smile. Marriage, no matter how belated, had obviously mitigated their actions in her father’s eyes, despite the fact that not a single one of those marriages had been of his making. How pleasant it must be, to bend the facts to one’s perception, as he did. She doubted he ever had trouble sleeping at night, and wished fleetingly that she too, had the knack of looking at the world through a window of her own making.
But she had not, and she did not really wish to be cast in her father’s mould. What she wanted, more than anything, was to be out of this room and this house as quickly as possible. There would be no conciliation, no regrets or apologies nor even a passive acceptance. ‘I didn’t come here to beg your forgiveness, Father,’ Cordelia said. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but nor am I in need of support, monetary or moral.’
To anyone who did not know him, his face remained impassive, but Cordelia did know him. Lord Armstrong sat a little straighter. His eyes lost that deceptively faraway look. ‘You will explain yourself.’
‘Contrary to your expectations, these last nine years have been most productive and extremely enjoyable. I do not regret an action or a moment.’ Which was mostly true. ‘However, I am tired of my itinerant life, and I wish to settle back home, here in England. I do not need your help with this as I have more than adequate means for the purchase of an estate.’
She waited, but Lord Armstrong seemed rather stunned. Cordelia hugged her satisfaction to herself. ‘My sisters were of the opinion that you had changed, that you would regret the enmity between us. I hoped rather than believed they were right, just as I hoped rather than believed that you would apologise for the wrongs you have done me. Sadly, you have lived down to my expectations, Father. It behoves me only to inform you that I intend to re-establish contact with my family, regardless of your wishes.’
She was rather pleased with this little speech, and her own unwavering delivery. If she was expecting it to have any impact on her father, Cordelia was, however, destined to be disappointed. ‘I wonder why, since you are so unrepentant and so confident in achieving your aims, you have not returned before now,’ Lord Armstrong said. ‘To be plain, if you truly cared so little for my opinion, Daughter, I wonder that you did not simply disregard it.’ His lordship once more steepled his fingers. ‘Your silence, as they say, speaks volumes, Cordelia.’
‘My silence,’ she retorted through gritted teeth, ‘is testament to the effort I am making not to tell you what I think of you, Father. I came here to draw a veil over the past, but you will not allow it. I have done as you bid me for almost ten years, making no attempt to contact my family...’
‘You do not, then, count your sisters?’
‘Caro and Cressie had nothing to lose. I have not written to Celia or Cassie. I have not written to Aunt Sophia. Or...’
‘Spare me the litany,’ Lord Armstrong said, rising from his seat and leaning over the desk. ‘Rather let me set the record straight, Cordelia. My wife will ensure that any attempt to contact your half-brothers or Isabella will be unavailing. I myself will speak to Sophia. Her sense of what is owed to a brother will dictate her actions, as it always has.’
Cordelia also got to her feet. Though she had quelled the urge to shrink back in her chair, she was nevertheless horrified. She was also deeply hurt, humiliated and absolutely furious with herself for having given him the chance to hurt and belittle her again. ‘I don’t believe you. I shall not listen to you. I don’t need your permission or your forgiveness. I will allow no one—no one!—to dictate my actions other than myself. I thwarted you—there, I have said it—by refusing to marry a man of your choice, and you have held a grudge against me for ten years. Unbelievable! You are utterly unbelievable, Father.’
She began to gather up her things, her hands shaking with anger. Jamming on her bonnet anyhow, she bit the inside of her cheek very, very hard. So intent was she on getting out of the house before she broke down, that she did not notice the door to the book room opening until the same impassive servant, who had no doubt heard the muffled altercation, was standing in front of her father holding out the silver salver. ‘Your twelve-thirty appointment has arrived a little early,’ he said.
‘It’s fine. I’m leaving,’ Cordelia said. Snatching her shawl from the chair, she caught a glimpse of the card on the tray before her father picked it up, and her heart, already beating like a wild thing, skipped a beat. It could not be. Looking up, she found her father’s gaze on her. ‘You know, it may very well be in your interests to remain for this meeting,’ he said.
He had that faraway look. Considering. Scheming. She began to feel sick again. ‘No,’ she said, though her voice seemed to come from a long way away, because he had put the card back down on the desk, and she could read it.
‘Politics,’ he continued smoothly, as if she had not spoken, another of his tactics, ‘is all about compromise. I will concede that I cannot stop you from attempting to do as you say. You will fail, but your attempt, I will also concede—you see what I mean about compromise—will be unpleasant. For all of us.’
She stared at him. Her body was screaming at her to run. Her mind was struggling to deal with her father’s admission that he was— What, fallible? No. But he seemed to be offering her a deal. What deal? She looked at the card on the desk, but it made no sense, and the instinct to run got the upper hand. ‘No,’ she said, turning towards the door just as it opened, crashing full tilt into the man entering the room.
‘Ah, Mr Hunter,’ her father said, urbane as ever, ‘let me introduce you to my daughter Lady Cordelia.’
Chapter Two
Broomilaw, Glasgow—1836
Cordelia stood on the aft deck of the PS Argyle as the paddle steamer chugged down the River Clyde on the last stage of her journey. After several weeks travelling in the Highlands, the change to this vast city was almost overwhelming. The air was thick with smoke, tasting distinctly of coal, the clouds in the tarnished sky above were a strange metallic yellow colour.
Argyle sounded her horn, a loud, low, mournful cry that made the deck vibrate, and sent a noxious plume of black smoke into the air from the high stack of funnel as she began to slow, narrowly avoiding a large three-masted clipper anchored in the centre of the channel. The sound of the water being churned up by the two huge wooden paddles changed from a torrent to a slow slap as they drew alongside their berth, scraping between a host of other craft—so many, it seemed to Cordelia, that every ship in Scotland must be vying for space here in Glasgow.
The docks were crowded as she picked her way carefully over the narrow wooden gangway from the Argyle, across the deck of another steamer and up on to the pier, clutching her portmanteau. Beautiful as the Highlands had been, she had felt more alien there than at any time since leaving London eight years before. The Gaelic language, with its soft, lilting tones, was lovely to listen to, impossible to decipher. She had not been prepared for her own English accent to mark her out as foreign. At times, she had encountered downright hostility. They had long memories, those whose families had paid the price for fighting for the Jacobite Prince Charlie. More recently, enclosure and the introduction of sheep to the lands had brought a new grudge against the Sassenach landowners. Cordelia, raised in a household which lived and breathed the politics of Britain’s growing Empire, had been appalled by her own ignorance of what was, in theory, part of her own country.
On a very small scale, politics had torn her own family apart. Listening to the tales of what politics had done to the Highlanders gave her rather a different perspective on her own life. In those remote, tiny, hard-working communities, family was all. Cordelia could no longer ignore how much she missed her own. She was lonely. There were times when the cost of this independent path she had chosen felt like too high a price to pay. Times, such as now, standing on the quay with the crowd pressing round her, when she would have given anything for a familiar face.
But she had never been one to mope, had always loathed regrets, and there was no point in wishing things could be different. Cordelia turned her mind to the problem of her baggage, and where, and how she was supposed to collect it. Jostled, her skirts and toes well and truly trodden on, she looked for a porter. There were many, but all were occupied, and all seemed to be deaf too. She had thought that being back in a city would restore a little of her equilibrium, but the harsh language here sounded almost as foreign as Gaelic.
‘And to make matters worse, I seem to have become invisible,’ she muttered to herself, resorting to using her elbows to push past a large man holding a very loud conversation with a very small man on one of the steamers.
It was then she saw him, standing quite alone a few yards down, at the end of the quay. She could not have said what drew her attention, only that it was drawn, almost as if she were compelled to look at him. He was dressed sombrely, in a black coat and trousers, black shoes. His hair was cut short. Deep auburn, it was burnished by the silver-yellow rays of the setting sun filtered through the darkening clouds, giving him the look of a fallen angel. He had been staring off into the distance, but as she watched him he turned, their eyes met, and Cordelia felt a jolt of recognition, though she was sure she had never seen him before. Perhaps it was from having listened to too many ghost stories while she was in the Highlands, but she had the strangest feeling, like seeing another form of herself. You, her bones and her skin and her blood called, it’s you.
She couldn’t look away. It was with a feeling of déjà vu, or fate, inevitability, that she watched him approach her. His face was not gaunt, but it had little spare flesh. The lines which ran from his nose to his chin spoke of a tough life rather than either age or decadence. A hard face with a strong chin and nose, his mouth was his only soft feature, with a full bottom lip forming into a querying smile. The quiver inside her turned from recognition to attraction. This one, her body was saying now, this man.
‘Is there something I can do for you?’ he asked.
Is there something ah can do furr you? His accent was strange, a soft burr with a rougher edge lurking in the background, the sweetness of chocolate mixed with the grittiness of salt. ‘My luggage,’ Cordelia said, ‘I don’t suppose you know where I can collect it?’
‘You’re English.’ She must have instinctively braced herself for he smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to hold it against you.’
Ah’m no gonnae haud it against you. Cordelia smiled. ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am to hear that. I had thought the French held my country in low esteem, until I travelled north. I am just come from Oban, but I have been travelling in the Highlands for several weeks and I—’
‘I thought I knew you,’ he interrupted her. ‘When I saw you staring at me, I thought we must have met, but I don’t think we have.’
He had caught her arm as she made to turn away. She had taken a step towards him in response. He was not wearing gloves. His skin was pale. His nose looked as if it had been broken. His eyes were deep-set and deep blue. His lashes were the same dark auburn as his hair. He was frowning at her, studying her closely, a puzzled look on his face that echoed just what she had felt when first setting eyes on him.
‘I thought it too,’ Cordelia said. ‘That I knew you, I mean. It’s why I was staring. I’m sorry, it was rude of me. I did not mean to disturb you.’
She made no move to go, however, for her body was rooted to the spot. She was acutely aware of him, of his hand on her arm, of the concentration of his gaze. He had very broad shoulders. Under that dark suit, there was a hard body. The thought made her blood heat. She could feel a flush creeping up her neck.
‘You didn’t,’ he said. ‘Disturb me, I mean.’ He looked down at his hand, but instead of releasing her, pulled her towards him, linking them together, arm in arm. ‘Oban, you said you sailed from?’
She nodded.
‘You’ll have come on the Argyle then. She’s sound enough, though that beam engine of hers is well past its prime. Napier’s steeple will become the standard, you mark my words, though if you ask me—’ He broke off, smiling at the confusion which must be writ large on her face. ‘I’m havering. Your luggage will be this way,’ he said. ‘I’m Iain Hunter.’
‘Cordelia. That is, Cordelia Williamson. Mrs.’
‘You’re married.’
‘Widowed,’ she said hastily, not pausing to think why it mattered to reassure him.
‘I’m glad,’ he said. Then, ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
He didn’t look in the least bit contrite. In fact, there was a gleam in his eyes that gave Cordelia a fizzy feeling in her stomach and made her decidedly light-headed. A more prosaic woman would have said she needed food, but though she had many faults, she had not once in her twenty-eight years been accused of being matter of fact. Impetuous, yes, and heedless too. Both of those traits she had worked very hard to curb in the past few years. Now, as she tripped along beside Iain Hunter, shielded from the bustle not just by his body but by the way the crowd seemed to part for him, she felt a terrible, wicked, irresistible impulse to be both.
‘What about you, Mr Hunter,’ she asked, ‘are you married?’
‘No,’ he replied.
‘I am glad,’ Cordelia said.
He stopped in his tracks. ‘What am I to take from that?’
It was a fair question. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, deflated. ‘I’m in a strange mood. The travel, most likely. I thought— When I saw you, I thought— But it was silly of me.’
He touched her cheek, where the pulse beat at her temple. His fingers were cold. It was the lightest of touches. She felt as if he were trying to read her mind. ‘You could have asked me the same thing,’ he said, ‘when I told you I was glad you were widowed.’
‘What would you have said?’
‘Something along the same lines,’ he answered. ‘I was thinking— I was feeling—strange. I saw you, and I thought, oh, there she is.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’m not usually the fanciful sort.’
‘I am not usually the sort who talks to strangers at dockyards,’ Cordelia said, smiling again.
‘I thought we had established I’m not a stranger.’
‘It is certainly a strange sort of day. I am beginning to wonder if any of this is real.’
‘That’s most likely because you haven’t eaten. I’ll wager the Argyle did not give you the smoothest of journeys.’
Cordelia chuckled. ‘Poor Argyle. You should not be so unkind to her, for she brought me here.’
‘And here you are.’ He ran his fingers down her arm, from shoulder to wrist, as if to reassure himself of the fact of her presence. The gesture was intimate, not that of a stranger at all. It made her feel—not alone. ‘And I’m glad for it,’ he said.
The warehouse he led her to was huge, the double doors open on to the quayside, in which were literally hundreds of trunks, bandboxes, portmanteaux, boxes, parcels, crates. Though Cordelia could see no sign of demarcation, Iain Hunter made his way confidently to one of the distinct heaps. ‘Which is yours?’
She pointed out her trunk, and a porter appeared at her side, looking at her enquiringly. ‘Could you recommend an hotel, Mr Hunter?’
‘I’ll take you,’ he said, and though this was exactly the sort of situation which she cautioned the readers of every single one of her guidebooks to avoid at all costs, Cordelia followed him out of the docks into the cobbled street beyond the wharf buildings, watching meekly as her chest was strapped on to a carriage which, like the porter, appeared magically, and then equally meekly followed Mr Hunter inside.
* * *
The Queen’s Hotel was a converted town house in the heart of the city. Cordelia took a set of rooms looking out on to the newly built George Square. She had asked Iain Hunter to dine with her, not because she was hungry but because she didn’t want him to go. He would have gone. She had only to say the word, and he would go. That was implicit between them, just as it was implicit that neither wanted him to leave. Now, he sat opposite her toying with a glass of wine, his food almost untouched, as was hers.
Not even with Gideon had she felt like this. This was not flirting. It was not the dance of will-we-won’t-we? It was—communing. Ridiculous. The Highlanders must have infected her with their taste for whimsy.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Iain leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand.
‘I’ve never done this before.’
‘Nor have I.’
He leaned across the table and took her hand. She still wore her travelling gown, but had loosened the buttons around her wrist. He stroked the skin there with his thumb, little circles that soothed and roused, drawing all her body’s focus to that point, where they touched. He didn’t ask her, what, what is it you haven’t done before? She liked that he didn’t pretend. She had always hated that part of the dance—the pretending, the false misunderstandings, the advance and retreat.
‘What were you doing on the docks today?’ Cordelia asked.
‘Thinking,’ Iain answered, not at all perturbed by her turning the conversation. ‘Planning. I’m at a—a what is the word—hiatus? A turning point. I need a change.’
‘What do you do?’
He grinned. ‘Didn’t you guess? I build ships. Paddle steamers.’
‘With spire engines, I assume?’
‘Steeple. Aye. Though I have in mind some modifications.’
‘Is that what you were thinking about, then?’
Iain shook his head. ‘That’s just business as usual. I need— Ach, I don’t know. I need a bigger change.’
He was still stroking her wrist. Shivers of sensation were running up her arm, heating her skin, setting it tingling. She seemed to be doing the same to him, though she had no recollection of leaning across the table and touching him. It was as if her body and her mind were disconnected. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what bigger change were you thinking of?’
‘New markets. New seas. New something. I don’t know. What were you doing there?’
‘I’m going to Edinburgh.’
‘That’s no answer.’
He lifted her hand to his mouth and began to kiss her fingers. The tip of each one. Then the pad of her thumb. His eyes never left hers. They were darker in the lamplight, gleaming with a combination of desire and challenge. Did she want this? He took her index finger in his mouth, and sucked. She released his other hand, slumping down in her chair. Her foot, clad in stockings but not her boots, found its way to his leg. She ran it up his calf over his trousers, and saw the surprise register.
He sucked on her middle finger, his tongue tracing the length of it. ‘Cordelia?’
Corr-deel-ia. ‘Guidebooks,’ she said, sliding her foot higher, over his knee, to the inside of his thigh. He clamped his legs together, holding her there. ‘I write guide books. The Single Lady Traveller’s Guide To—Paris, Brussels, Rome, Dresden. Others. I can’t remember. And now the Highlands.’
‘Impressive. Surprising. You’ve not done any destinations closer to home?’
‘I don’t have a home.’
‘I know how that feels,’ he said.
Sadness chased across his face, but was quickly banished. No questions. ‘No, let’s not talk about it,’ Cordelia said, as if he had spoken aloud. ‘I am tired of thinking about it. My own turning point. There is nothing—I’m tired of it.’
‘Then we won’t talk of it. Should I go, Cordelia?’
‘Do you want to?’
‘You know I don’t, but you also know that I will.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want you to go.’
He let go her hand. He let her foot slide back on to the floor. He got to his feet and came round to the other side of the little table and pulled her upright, sliding his arms around her waist. ‘I am glad,’ he said, ‘because I have never in my life wanted any woman the way I want you. Now.’ And then he kissed her.
* * *
He kissed her, and the connection was elemental. She understood it, when he kissed her, this feeling of knowing, of being known. You. You. You. She recognised him with such a strong physical pull that she staggered. As if she had been waiting all her life for him. As if none had gone before him. As if none but him would ever matter. She could analyse and question and dissect, but she had no interest in doing any of that, no interest in establishing a conflict between her mind and her body. Her body had already won. ‘Yes,’ she said, though he had not asked, ‘the answer is yes.’
She led him into the bedchamber. No words were necessary after that, though they spoke with their lips, hands, eyes. Kissing. His mouth felt as if it were made to kiss hers, hers to fit his. His kisses were like questions. This? And this? And this?
And this, she replied, touching her tongue to his, relishing the sharp intake of his breath in response. And this. She opened her mouth. His kisses deepened, his fingers tangling in her hair, his breath warm on her face.
Her hairpins scattered. She pulled at his coat. He threw it on to the floor, then kissed her again. She reached behind her to unfasten her gown. He turned her around, wrestling with the buttons and fasteners, kissing her neck, her shoulders, his breathing ragged. The gown took some time to wriggle out of, hindered and impeded by kisses. He pulled her against him when it finally fell to the floor, her bottom against his thighs. She was frustrated by the layers of her undergarments. He curved his arms around her to cup her breasts. She shuddered, wanting his skin on hers, her nipples hard, aching for his touch. He began to untie the strings of her corsets.
He cursed under his breath. She could not understand the language, which might have been Gaelic, but might have been something more colloquial. When her stays dropped to the floor, releasing her breasts with only her chemise to cover them, he turned her around. Slashes of colour on his cheeks. His eyes glittering with desire. Her own breath quickened, the knot in her belly tightened, the low throb lower down began. ‘Take them off,’ she said, pulling at his waistcoat.
He discarded his own clothes quickly, efficiently, without any modesty. He was as lean and hard as she had imagined, his shoulders broader, his skin paler, the muscles beneath tensed. And he was more than ready, his erection jutting up against his stomach. Cordelia shuddered. She had never wanted anything so much as this man inside her.
He had been watching her studying him. She smiled at him then, quite deliberately, and felt an answering heat as he smiled the same smile in response. This was going to be—everything. Anything. All. Did she say it aloud? She thought it as he pulled her to him once more, and she felt the thickness of him against the apex of her thighs. His kiss was desperate now. Her own too, her mouth ravaging his, her hands clawing at his back, at his buttocks, at his flanks.
He pulled her chemise over her head. She untied the drawstrings of her pantalettes. She wore only her stockings and her garters. He swore again, this time a word she recognised, a harsh, guttural word that should have shocked her, but expressed exactly what she was feeling. Then he cupped one of her breasts in his hand, covered the nipple of the other with his mouth.
Heat, shivering, frissons of pleasure, tugging, connecting up. Delightful. Delicious. But almost too late. There was no time for this, not now. She pulled his face back up to hers and kissed him frantically, pressing herself against him with abandon. Now, now, now. ‘Now!’
‘Aye. I hear you. Dear God, I hear you. Cordelia, I am so—I don’t think I can wait.’
‘Iain, I know I cannot.’
He laughed. A deep, masculine laugh that vibrated against her breasts, her stomach. Then he kissed her, pulling her on to the floor because even the small distance to the bed was too much. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, her legs around his waist, as he thrust into her.
She cried out.
‘Wheesht yourself, these walls are thin,’ he said, but he was smiling wickedly, and he thrust, and she covered her mouth to muffle her cries, and dug her heels into his buttocks and clenched around him, holding him deep inside her, and he stopped smiling and swore again, that shocking word that said exactly what it was she wanted from him, and inside her, she felt him thicken.
He thrust again. She felt her climax building. She never climaxed as easily as this, not this way, but it hadn’t even occurred to her that she would not. He was sweating. His face was strained, his eyes were dark, but focused on her with an intensity that made her feel as if they were connected. Not just joined, but connected. He was inside her. She was inside him. When he kissed her, she responded with every part of her body.
‘Come with me,’ he said. She had heard that before. Had pretended before. This time, there was no need to pretend. She nodded. He thrust. She held him. He pulsed high inside her. She could feel it, the spiralling, but she could still hold on to it. He thrust again. She arched up under him, tilting her body to hold him higher, and it happened, the loss of control, the fall, the clutching, pulsing, ecstasy, and she cried out, and he thrust one more time, and cried out too, pulling himself free of her at the very last moment, and she had the urge to hold him, to keep him there inside her, regardless of the consequences. Or courting them, even.
When it was over they lay panting, sweating, tangled on the floorboards, like victims of a tempest. In the aftermath, as the urgency abated, and the bliss cocooned her, Cordelia forgot about the ending. One of Iain’s legs covered hers. His hand lay possessively on her stomach. He was staring up at the ceiling, his face a blank. Empty. Sadness washed over her. Something else that was different. It had never been anything other than a pleasure before. Some more pleasurable than others, but always fun, usually satisfying, in the way that a glass of wine fresh from the cellar was satisfying, or a bowl of fresh pasta eaten in the sunshine, or a walk on hot sand in bare feet.
Not like this. This was something much more elemental. Before, during, she would have given him anything not to stop. He had invaded her, seen things she did not want anyone to see on her face. Come with me, he had said, and she could not have done anything but what he asked. He hadn’t taken her, she had given herself to him. All of herself, in a way she never had, nor ever thought she would want to. That he had, despite the power he had over her, been so careful of her too, made it somehow much worse. That she had not wanted him to be careful, that she had for one wild, fierce moment, wanted to court the consequences, frightened her.
It was as if the whole day had been a peeling back of all her layers culminating in this revelation, the core of her, the lonely inner self. Cordelia jumped to her feet, suddenly appalled at what she had done. Her dressing gown was at the top of her trunk. Pale-yellow silk embroidered with flowers, it was masculine in cut, with straight sleeves and a collar. It was one of her favourite pieces of clothing. She tightened the belt, turning to find Iain on his feet, his expression troubled.
‘I’m sorry that was so— We got carried away. I am not usually so...’ He shrugged hopelessly. ‘I’m sorry, I thought it was what you wanted.’
‘I did,’ she said shortly, unwilling, unable to lie. She had never been the type of woman to take pleasure in making a man feel guilty.
‘Then what’s wrong?’
‘I’m tired. I have to leave early.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Cordelia, and don’t think you have to pander to my ego either. If it didn’t work for you—though if it did not, you’re a bloody good actress.’
‘It did.’ Now she was embarrassed. After all that. She would not think of all that. Cordelia began to pick up her clothes.
Iain was already wearing his trousers, pulling on his shirt. ‘Then what is it? And don’t give me the line about being tired.’
Don’t give me the line. His accent was rougher, the Lowland gruffness taking front stage. She couldn’t think what to say. I can’t believe I did that, would give him the wrong impression, though it would certainly help get him out the door, and getting him out the door was what she needed more than anything.
Whatever he read in her face, it made him look grim. Iain picked up his coat and pulled it on, stuffing his stock into the pocket. ‘So you’ve had your bit of rough, and now you want to be alone, is that it?’
‘No! What an appalling thing to say.’
He ignored her, pulling on his shoes.
‘Iain, that’s not it.’
‘Then what?’
Fully dressed, he looked intimidating. There was a wild look in his eye that made her think of some of the Highlanders she had seen. Cordelia ran her hand through her tangled hair, coming up with a ball of fluff and a splinter of floorboard. ‘It was too much,’ she admitted.
‘Are you sorry?’
‘No.’
The answer was out without needing to think. Iain sighed heavily, but he managed a lopsided smile. ‘I’m not sorry either, but my head’s reeling, if you must know. You’re not the only one to find it all a bit much.’
His honesty disarmed her. ‘It has been a very strange day,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘Extraordinary.’
‘Cordelia.’
He touched her temple, just as he had on the docks. This time, she had to fight the impulse to pull away, for she was fairly certain he could read her thoughts.
‘I hope whichever direction you take, it makes you happier,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’m not unhappy.’
‘I told you not to lie,’ he said gently. ‘I know you don’t want to hear from me again, but if there should be anything you need me for, here’s where you can find me. You understand, I would not expect you to deal with any consequences alone.’
He handed her a card.
‘Thank you,’ Cordelia said, ‘but I am sure...’
‘I mean it.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s something,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Cordelia.’
He did not touch her. She felt an absurd, contrary desire that he would kiss her. ‘Goodbye.’ She touched his temple, echoing his own gesture. ‘I hope whichever direction you take, it makes you happier too.’
He acknowledged this admission of her own state of mind with a nod. Then he turned and walked through the door. She stood where she was. The outer door opened softly, then closed. She went to the window, pulling the curtains to hide her, and looked out. The lamps were lit around the square. He emerged a few minutes later, through the main hotel entrance. She could not imagine what the night porter must have thought, and did not care. She thought he would stop, look up, even though she was careful not to let him see her, but he did not. He pulled his coat around him, and headed across the square, in the direction of the river, without looking back.
Chapter Three
Cavendish Square, London—spring 1837
Iain’s hands automatically went round the woman to stop the pair of them falling. His body recognised her before his mind caught up, before even he had a glimpse of her face, which was burrowed into his chest. ‘Cordelia.’
Blue-grey eyes, wide with the shock, met his. Her hand went to her mouth, as if to push back the words, and he remembered that same gesture, self-silencing, only the last time it had been a cry of ecstasy she had stifled after he’d warned her about the walls of the hotel being thin. Her legs had been wrapped around his waist. The hair that was now so demurely curled and primped under her bonnet had been streaming in wild disarray over her shoulders on to the floorboards. Now, she was struggling to free herself. He let her go, but blocked the doorway, a firm shake of his head telling her he’d read her thoughts. Not a chance, he told her. She glared at him, but retreated into the room.
‘Mr Hunter. You are a tad early.’
Lord Henry Armstrong held out his hand. Iain took it automatically, his mind racing. ‘Five minutes at most,’ he replied. ‘Am I interrupting?’
It was a rhetorical question, for the atmosphere in the room was tense. The muffled sound of heated words had been audible in the hallway as he handed over his hat and gloves. And now he looked at her properly, Cordelia’s bonnet was askew, her shawl dangling from one arm. Not, it seemed, escaping his arrival, but running from the man who claimed to be her father.
The man who was now bestowing upon him a smile which Iain found peculiarly irritating. Condescending. Patronising. Mendacious. One or all, it aroused all his base instincts, and made him want to punch something.
‘Cordelia,’ said his lordship, ‘this is Mr Iain Hunter.’
It was the mute appeal in her eyes that kept him silent. Lady Cordelia, whom he knew as the widow, Mrs Cordelia Williamson, was obviously eager that her father should remain in ignorance of their previous acquaintance. Her father! Iain bent over the hand she extended and just touched her fingertips. The eyes were indeed the same colour as Lord Armstrong’s, but he could discern no other resemblance.
‘Do sit down, Mr Hunter. And you, Cordelia.’
When he spoke to his daughter, there was a steeliness that made Iain’s hackles rise. ‘I came here to discuss business,’ he said. ‘I don’t see that is any concern of your—your—Lady Cordelia’s.’
Lord Armstrong laughed, a dry little sound like paper rustling. ‘Take a seat, Mr Hunter, and I’ll explain,’ he said, taking his own seat behind the desk.
Iain paid him no heed. Cordelia stood poised for flight, but he was damned if he’d let her go without an explanation. ‘You’ll take the weight off your feet, Mrs—Lady Cordelia,’ he said, pressing her down firmly into one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs, pulling the other closer to her, stretching out a leg casually in front of hers, just to make his message clear. She threw him a look, but he was pretty certain it was because she resented his managing her, rather than any desire to flee.
‘Mr Hunter,’ Lord Armstrong said, addressing his daughter, ‘is hoping to win a contract to build steam ships for Sheikh al-Muhanna.’
‘Celia’s husband!’ From the tone of her voice, this was news to Cordelia. ‘You mean the prince has entrusted you to award a contract to build ships on his behalf?’ she demanded of her father.
‘As you would know, if you were au fait with family matters,’ Lord Armstrong replied pointedly, ‘my son-in-law is very ambitious for his principality. It is not simply a matter of building ships, he wishes the skills to be passed on to his own people. Since it is a well-known fact that England is at the forefront of the industry...’
‘I think you’ll find that it’s Scotland, actually. The Clyde to be more specific,’ Iain interjected.
‘Yes, yes, we are all one country,’ Lord Armstrong said with a condescending smile.
‘Aye, when it suits you.’
‘As you say.’
His lordship took a visible breath. His daughter—hell and damnation, that woman was Lord Armstrong’s daughter!—sat quite still, ramrod straight, only the nervous tapping of her little boot at the hem of her gown giving her away.
‘The long and the short of it is,’ Iain said, addressing Cordelia directly, ‘I’ve the best people for the job, and I build the best ships, so his lordship here is going to grease the diplomatic wheels and jump through all the hoops of permissions and licences on my behalf. Not to put too fine a point on it, unless I have him on my side to tell me which pockets should be lined and which pieces of paper must be signed, it doesn’t matter how good my ships are, they will never be built. In return for these valuable services, your father will get a hefty fee. Isn’t that right, Lord Armstrong?’
Cordelia’s response to this straightforward speech was, to Iain’s relief, one of glee. Lord Armstrong, who should have been put firmly in his place, had the look of a cat about to pounce.
‘Not quite right, Mr Hunter,’ he said. ‘My terms have changed.’
‘I’m not giving you any more money.’
His lordship smiled. ‘I don’t want any of your money.’
The hairs on Iain’s neck stood on end, for that smile was the very opposite of benign, whatever that was. Malign? ‘You were keen enough to take it when we first talked.’
‘Since we first talked, Mr Hunter, my circumstances have changed.’
‘Be that as it may, your circumstances have nothing to do with me.’
‘On the contrary,’ Lord Armstrong said. ‘In fact, I hope that in the future our circumstances will be very much—entwined.’
Iain was now thoroughly rattled. ‘I’m a plain-talking man, and I’m a plain-dealing one too. I’m not interested in playing games, your lordship, just name your price.’
‘My daughter, Mr Hunter, is my price. I wish you to ally yourself with my daughter.’
* * *
Cordelia’s jaw actually dropped. It was no consolation at all to see that Iain’s did the same.
Her father took advantage of their stunned silence to inform Iain of the excellent bargain he would be making. ‘Now, I accept that Cordelia here may not be as young as you would wish,’ he said, ‘but she comes from excellent breeding stock and her lineage, Mr Hunter, unlike yours, is impeccable.’
As if she were a prize ewe past her prime! Cordelia felt her mouth drop further. Just when she thought she had his measure, her father surprised her. Really, he quite took her breath away. A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to escape. She made a choking sound, quickly muffling it with her hand.
‘Our alliance will bring you benefits far beyond the contract with my son-in-law,’ Lord Armstrong continued, getting into his stride. ‘Marrying into one of the oldest families in the land will give you access to my considerable experience and influence. If I say so myself...’
‘You’ve said more than enough. I don’t want to hear any more!’
Iain’s accent thickened considerably as his temper rose. It broadened even more in the heat of passion, Cordelia recalled, then wished fervently that she had not. This situation was beyond belief. Iain was on his feet, leaning over the desk. She too got up from her chair. The three of them faced each other, an oddly assorted triangle which under any other circumstances would have made her laugh.
‘Mr Hunter...’
‘Lord Armstrong, sit down and shut your mouth.’
The menace in his voice had finally registered with her father. Cordelia watched, fascinated, for she could almost see his diplomatic mind flicking through and discarding a myriad of responses. He seemed to be, for one of the very few times in his life, at a loss for words.
‘I came here to discuss contracts for steamships,’ Iain continued. ‘I’m not on the hunt for a wife, and if I was, I wouldn’t need you or anyone else to pick one for me.’
Iain was refusing her, which was absolutely what she wanted, so it was really rather silly of her to feel rejected, though it did give her the advantage of being able to claim that she would have complied, Cordelia thought, frowning. Not that she intended entering into a bargaining war with her father. And actually, it was insulting to be rejected so firmly and with so little consideration, especially by a man who had— With whom she had— And what’s more it had been— Well, it had been memorable. Very memorable. So memorable that she had only to close her eyes to conjure up...
‘...think it for the best if we discuss it alone.’
Cordelia’s eyes snapped open. Was this her cue to leave? But to her surprise, Iain was ushering her father out of his own book room, and her father was making not one sound of protest. The door closed once again, and Iain leaned his really very broad shoulders against it, smiling at her in a way that made her want to run as fast as she could in the other direction—which would be out the window on to the Cavendish Square, so that was out of the question—and at the same time rooted her to the spot.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘What did you say to my father?’
‘Weren’t you listening, Mrs Williamson—or should I say Lady Cordelia?’
Corr-dee-lia. ‘Mr Hunter...’
‘Iain. It was Iain the last time we met, and given what went on between us, I’m not particularly inclined to go back to more formal terms now.’
He eased himself away from the doorway. She found herself trapped in his gaze. ‘I see no reason why we should be on any terms at all,’ Cordelia said. ‘You made it very clear that you were not interested in my father’s proposal.’
‘I wanted to get you alone.’
‘Oh.’ Cordelia tried to back away, and her bottom encountered the desk. She folded her arms, unfolded them again and pulled off her bonnet. It was giving her a headache. She was deflated and depressed by the encounter with her father.
‘So you’ve a title,’ Iain said. ‘Not plain missus after all, but a lady.’
He was standing right beside her now. It irked her that she was so aware of him. Not that he was in any way bulky, Iain Hunter was tall and lean. It was not his dress either. Not for this dour Scotsman the wasp-waisted coats and padded shoulders of fashion, his brown wool suit was plain, austere even, but he had no need of artificial aids to emphasise the breadth of those shoulders, and the modest cut of his trousers only drew attention to the length of his legs. She was tall, but she still had to tilt her head to meet his eyes.
She hated being put on the back foot, especially when she was not in the wrong. ‘I find that a plain missus attracts rather less notice than a title.’ Claiming to be another man’s relic also legitimised her lack of innocence, but Cordelia saw no need to point that out.
‘Your father had no idea we’d met before. I’m wondering why you were so hell-bent on not telling him.’
‘My father trades in information. I find a policy of withholding as much as I can works best.’
Iain laughed. ‘In other words, it’s better to lie. It’s not a policy I’d normally advocate, but in this case—I doubt the man’s ever been honest with anyone in his life. Not even himself.’
‘Especially not himself. It is how he manages to be so very convincing in his mendacity,’ Cordelia said with feeling.
Her cheeks were hot. There was barely a few inches between them. Beneath the tension it was still there, that—that thing between them. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to notice that in the year since that night, the grooves that separated his brows had deepened. She didn’t want to notice that his hair was still the same shade of auburn, that he still kept it so close-cropped. She was having great difficulty regulating her breathing. She yearned for him to touch her. She would die rather than admit that. She needed to get away. Regroup. Retrench. Re-something. But first she wanted to get into bed in a dark room and pull the covers over her head and hide.
It occurred to her that he was probably just as keen to escape. Then it occurred to her that he had come to Cavendish Square expecting to conclude a very lucrative business deal and that she, inadvertently, had put a spoke in the wheel. They were both suffering at her father’s hands, but Iain was utterly innocent.
‘Forget about what passed between you and me,’ Cordelia said, ‘it’s quite irrelevant. If I had not happened to be here when you called, this would not have happened. I am very, very sorry that I was. I am sure that when my father comes to his senses and realises that you will walk away from this contract rather than marry me...’
‘I’ve no intentions of walking away from this contract.’
‘Yes, I know. I mean I assumed— You told me, remember? You said that you needed new markets. I know how important this must be to you, but I merely meant you would call his bluff.’
‘Oh, I’ll do that all right.’
‘Good. Excellent.’ Cordelia picked up her bonnet again.
Iain took it from her and set it back down. ‘You remembered, didn’t you? The minute you crashed into me, you remembered that day. That night.’
‘I said we should forget it.’
‘I haven’t been able to forget. Have you?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. No! Are you happy now?’
‘Do you remember, I had to tell you to wheesht?’ Iain closed the tiny space between them. His voice was soft, a whispering burr without any trace of the Lowland growl. If it were not for that look in his eyes, she would have said it was seductive. He took one of her artful curls and began to twist it round his finger. He had an artist’s hands, the fingers long and delicate, though the skin was rough.
The muscles in her belly clenched. ‘You were every bit as— You enjoyed it every bit as much, as I recall.’
‘I did.’ He let her curl slip from her finger, only to cup her jaw in his hand, his thumb running along the length of her bottom lip. ‘Too right I did,’ he said, and covered her mouth with his.
She almost surrendered. His mouth fit so perfectly with hers, as no other ever had or would. Her lips clung to his, her mouth opening, her hands reaching automatically to twine around his neck, her body arching into the hard length of his. Cordelia yanked herself free and delivered a very hard slap.
* * *
Iain staggered back, his hand cupped to his throbbing cheek. Cordelia had not been messing about, and to judge by the way she was glaring at him, she would have hit him a deal harder if she’d had a chance. Or more precisely, she’d hit him again if he took another chance. He was forced to laugh. ‘I suppose you’ll tell me I deserved that.’
She folded her arms across her chest and stuck her nose in the air. ‘You know perfectly well that you did.’
‘And I suppose that you’ll also tell me you didn’t want me to kiss you?’
She raised her brows and pursed her lips, giving him one of those looks that managed to be both sceptical and challenging. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone whose ego is in less need of pandering than yours, Mr Hunter.’
This time his laugh was spontaneous. ‘Come now, hasn’t the very man just left the room! But since we’re talking extremes, let me tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman quite like you, Mrs—Lady Cordelia.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
Iain shrugged. ‘It’s the truth. I take it you had no more idea than I of what your father was going to suggest today?’
‘I am pretty certain my father had no idea either, until your card was sent in. It was a surprise attack. He was ever fond of Wellington you know, even though the duke has fallen from favour. And with him my dear father,’ Cordelia said sardonically.
‘They say that the king is in poor health. When he dies, there will be another General Election, though I doubt the Tories will win, even with Peel in charge.’
‘No, my father’s star is finally on the wane. We will have a woman on the throne too. The influential Lord Armstrong is now past his prime and stripped of influence.’ Cordelia’s smile was twisted. ‘Not that I believe that for a second. My father will bend with the wind, even if he can no longer direct it.’
‘What’s more, he’s sharp enough to see it’s men like myself who’ll be doing the directing in the future.’ Iain grinned. ‘I have to admire the devious old bugger, even if he is deluded. I’ve no interest in earning a fancy title, and I’ve certainly no desire to rub shoulders with those who’ve nothing better to do than spend their ill-gotten gains on clothes and parties and horses.’
‘Good heavens, are you a revolutionary? Perhaps you have ambitions to put my father’s neck on a guillotine?’
‘No, but I suspect you would. You’ll forgive me being blunt,’ Iain said, ‘but you don’t hold the old man in much esteem, do you?’
‘I doubt you are ever anything else but blunt.’ Cordelia turned towards the desk and began to footer with the blotter, aligning the pen holder and inkstand up. ‘No, I don’t have much respect for him. About as much as he does for me.’
He could not see her expression, but something in the hunch of her shoulders made him guess at the hurt she was attempting to disguise. ‘If he means so little to you, why do you let him upset you?’
She turned at that, and he saw he was right. Pain shadowed her eyes, though she was fighting it. ‘My sister Cressie said something similar to me recently. She seems to have found a way of overcoming nature which I have as yet to discover, despite my attempts to do so.’
‘I must consider myself fortunate not to be encumbered by parents then,’ Iain said gruffly.
‘You are an orphan?’
It was his turn to shrug. He had no desire to add a discussion of his pathetic history into the conversation that was already convoluted enough. ‘He may be your father, but you’re a grown woman, Cordelia, he can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’
‘All very well for you to say that. You are a man.’
‘Aye, and when you look at me like that, I’m very glad I am,’ Iain replied, because the mocking look was back in her eyes, and there was something irresistible about the challenge of it, and in the sensual downward curl of that mouth of hers.
He caught her arm and turned her towards him, losing his train of thought in the scent of her, and the rustle of her gown against his legs, and in the way she reacted to the heat of his gaze, neither shrinking from it nor denying her own reaction.
‘I’m not going to kiss you,’ she said.
She spoke coolly, though her words were belied by the tempting tilt of her mouth. He slid his hand up her back, finding the delightful patch of naked skin at her nape, under her hair. ‘You’d better not hit me again.’
‘What, will you hit me back? I should warn you, Iain, I am not the sort of woman to take that sort of pleasure.’
‘Firstly, I never hit any woman, no matter what kind.’ Iain put his other arm around her waist, pulling her close. The perfume she wore was exotic, though the scent eluded him. The way she spoke his name made him shiver, made the muscles in his belly tighten, sent the blood coursing to his groin. ‘And secondly, you seem to have forgotten that I know very well what particular kind of pleasure you like.’
She did not move. He knew, despite her denial, that she would kiss him back this time. It shocked him, the fierce possessiveness he felt just touching her, so much so that he let her go. ‘I want that business, Cordelia. What has he got on you? I’m not daft, you wouldn’t still be here talking to me if he didn’t have some sort of hold over you. What is it?’
She hesitated, returning to her compulsive straightening of the desk furniture, aligning the already aligned pen holder and inkpot. Then she turned, her mouth tight with anger. ‘My family. My aunt. My half-brothers I have not seen since I left nearly ten years ago, the half-sister I have never met. And most of all Celia and Cassie. They were his trump cards.’ The pen in her hand snapped. ‘My two elder sisters,’ she explained with a curl of her lip. ‘Both are married to Arabian princes. I knew Caro and Cressie—they are my other sisters—would pay no heed to my father’s decree. Indeed, I was fairly certain his disowning me was sufficient for them to make a point of keeping in touch, but as to Celia and Cassie—’
She broke off, obviously near to tears. Iain wrestled with this completely unexpected revelation. ‘Your father disowned you? What on earth for?’
‘I refused to marry a man of his choosing.’
Iain shook his head in bemusement. ‘You wouldn’t marry the man he picked for you and he took the hump?’
‘I wouldn’t marry any man he picked for me. And if by taking the hump you mean he was offended—he was furious.’ Cordelia cast the broken pen on to the desk. ‘I know it sounds mediaeval, but he really could have ensured that all doors were closed to me if I’d given him the pleasure of trying to open them.’
Iain stared at her in horror. ‘Your own flesh and blood! Who does he think he is—some sort of god?’
‘One of my other sisters calls him a puppet master,’ Cordelia said wryly.
‘So they don’t condone what he did? But you said the eldest two...’
‘Celia and Cassie. It’s not that they condone it exactly, but to respond to any overture of mine would require them to keep it secret from their husbands. I have never met Cassie’s husband, and Celia’s but once, but the code of honour with desert princes is strong. No matter what they may think of the circumstances, my father’s will must be respected. That is the ace he was going to play, I suspect,’ Cordelia finished contemptuously.
Iain shook his head in disgust. ‘I can’t believe he would stoop so low. To keep your own sisters from you, and him your father.’
‘Which is exactly why he does not see it as anything other than his natural right, to order my life,’ she replied bitterly. ‘Cressie—my middle sister—used to say that we were his pawns in the game of matrimonial chess. She was right, Iain, believe me.’
‘And unless you do as he says, you won’t get to see your sisters in Arabia?’
‘I don’t know. I had hoped today that I could persuade him to—but that was before he came up with this ridiculous idea. Now—I simply don’t know.’
She shook her head, biting her lip and screwing shut her eyes, and Iain cursed himself for being so blunt. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve nothing to apologise for.’
‘He’s a right wee shite, your father.’
She laughed tearfully. ‘I have no idea what that means, but I suspect you’re right.’
‘Aye, sorry about the language. You can take a man from the docks, but you can’t take the docks from the man.’
She smiled at this quip, but seemed suddenly at a loss. ‘I’d better be off.’
‘You’re not staying here?’
She shuddered theatrically. ‘Good heavens, no. I have rooms at Milvert’s on Brook Street. I suppose this is goodbye. I wish you luck with your contract.’
‘We’ve both got too much to lose to turn our backs on this. I’ll walk with you.’
He was not fooling himself. That day over a year ago had been in every way extraordinary. He had never, before or since, experienced that instant of certainty, that deep connection that had led them both to believe they’d met before, that had transformed into the most intense attraction he’d ever known. Circumstances had colluded to put them together on the docks at the Broomilaw at the same time in the same frame of mind. Since then, he had thought of it as a day—and night—out of time. It had not occurred to him that they would ever meet again, but now they had done so, under the strangest of circumstances, Iain couldn’t help thinking that fate must have taken a hand. Not that he believed in fate, though his mother had been a great one for it.
‘I beg your pardon?’
He realised, as he took his hat and gloves from the footman, that he’d spoken his mother’s words aloud. ‘What’s for you won’t go by you,’ he repeated tersely, as they ascended the steps into Cavendish Square.
‘You think that fate has brought us together?’ Cordelia asked.
She had a smile that did things to his insides. Provocative, that was the word for it. Iain never spoke of his mother. His memories of his family were so painfully tarnished that he rarely allowed himself to remember the few happier times when Jeannie was still alive. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed, and he automatically closed his mind to that memory. He had always been driven, but this last year, he had immersed himself in his work to the exclusion of all else. He hadn’t realised he’d missed Cordelia until he saw her today. It didn’t matter that their entire acquaintance spanned less than twenty-four hours either. At some elemental level, he and she were the same.
Iain took her hand and tucked it into his arm. ‘You want to know what I really think?’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I think we should tell your father we’re getting married.’
* * *
Cordelia’s rooms at Milvert’s exclusive hotel were on the corner of the second floor. Pushing open the window of her sitting-room, she gazed out on to the busy street, her head whirling. With the Season starting to get into full swing, there was a steady flow of carriages and horses making their way past Grosvenor Square to Hyde Park.
‘You haven’t said what you thought of my suggestion,’ Iain said, throwing his hat and gloves on to the table.
She pulled the casement closed and began to wander disconsolately about the room, tidying her notebooks, folding her cuffs, wiping her pen, absent-mindedly straightening the various objects which sat on the tables, the mantelpiece, the hearth, before finally taking a seat opposite him. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘Do you have an alternative plan?’
She shook her head, pursing her lips. ‘Though I am more determined than ever to act, despite the fact that my father could make things very difficult. What’s more, now that he has set his heart on this ridiculous idea of us marrying, he will not listen to any alternatives.’
‘Which is all the more reason to pretend to give him what he wants.’
‘Pretend we are engaged, you mean?’ Cordelia asked, for she was still unsure about how serious Iain had been. ‘Lie to him, make him think we are doing exactly what he wants, so that we get exactly what we want, and then, when we have succeeded, tell him it was all a ruse?’
‘Strictly speaking, it would not be a lie. “Ally yourself with my daughter” is what he said, not “marry her”.’
‘Semantics.’
Iain shrugged. ‘He’s a diplomat—or he was. Don’t they trade in semantics?’
‘When you put it that way...’ He really was serious, Cordelia mused. It really was a scandalously attractive idea. She really could not believe he meant it. ‘But I thought—you said it yourself, Iain, you are a plain-talking man, an honest man. I can’t believe you are contemplating this. You are so—so straight.’
‘Unlike your father, who is as crooked as a bent pin,’ Iain said with a grin.
She spluttered. ‘No, no. Devious, scheming, but never criminal.’
‘He deserves to be locked up for the way he treated you.’
‘Yes, I quite agree, but I rather think this would be better punishment.’ Her laughter faded. ‘You really want this business badly enough to achieve it by deceit? I confess, you surprise me.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment. The man I’ll be dealing with will be Sheikh al-Muhanna, and I’ve no intention of deceiving him.’ Iain stretched his long legs out in front of him, tugging at his neckcloth as if it was too tight. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Cordelia. This deal means a lot to me. It’s not just the money—in fact, it’s not about the money at all. It’s what we talked about that day in Glasgow, you remember?’
‘Your turning point.’
‘Aye.’ He smiled at her. ‘The engineering challenges alone would have tempted me to go in at a loss. I don’t just want the deal, I need it.’
‘And you could have it, can have it, if I tell my father I won’t marry you. I’m sure he wants it as much as you.’
‘I’m sure he does, but after today, I’ll be damned if I’ll let him have anything the way he wants. I won’t be manipulated, and I won’t have you pay the price of my victory. You’re a feisty wee thing, and you’ve been hard done to.’
She threw back her head and glared at him, immediately on the defensive. ‘I don’t need your pity, Iain.’
‘I don’t feel sorry for you. I admire you, and I don’t see why you should sacrifice yourself so that I can have what I want, when we can both win. He’s no right to keep you from your own flesh and blood. Your own sisters. If I wasn’t the best person for the job, it would be different,’ Iain said earnestly, ‘but I am, and I’m not about to lose it because the likes of your father wants to stick his oar into my business. Chan eil tuil air nach tig traoghadh.’
‘Is that Gaelic?’
He seemed somewhat disconcerted, as if he had not intended her to hear the words. ‘It means every flood will have an ebb. Your father’s day is coming to an end. It’s not blood that will count in the new age, it’s science, and industry, and people like me who aren’t scared to get their hands dirty.’
Cordelia shivered. ‘Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you.’
‘We are both on the same side. Don’t you want revenge?’
She stared at him, sifting her responses, measuring them carefully. ‘If you had asked me a few hours ago, I would have said revenge was the last thing on my mind,’ she said finally. ‘I went to Cavendish Square today thinking to achieve reconciliation. Foolish of me, but I had to try. One last time. I shouldn’t have bothered, but at least I can be in no doubt of his feelings. Not even I could persuade myself he cared after that.’
Fury, red-hot and vicious, caught her suddenly in its grip. The muscles in the backs of her legs actually trembled from it. Her hands were clenched into painful fists. What had she been thinking of! He would never, ever agree to what she wanted from him because he simply didn’t care. ‘He doesn’t love me.’
There, she had said it out loud. Cordelia looked out of the window. The sky had not fallen down. ‘My father doesn’t love me. My father doesn’t give a damn about me!’ It felt good. It felt very good. There could be no excuses, no mitigating factors. He had been cruel, deliberately so, and malicious too. She forced herself to recall in great detail, every word he had said, determined this time to etch it on to her mind, a sort of memory-prompt should she retract, as she had so often in the past. He didn’t love her, but he thought, he still thought, he owned her, and it was that fact she had until now never truly questioned. Every act of hers had been in defiance. She had never felt entitled to her own life even when she had acted as if she did.
‘My God, what a fool I have been.’ It really was as if she had lifted the shutters on a darkened room, allowing the light to filter in, displaying the murky contents for what they were. She owed him nothing. What she had taken for love had been a sense of duty, a habit, nothing more. She didn’t love her father. Right now, thinking of how he had so nearly managed to manipulate her, she almost hated him.
‘So you’ll do it?’
She had almost forgotten Iain in the heat of her anger. It faded now, replaced by something else. She came back across the room towards him, smiling. Power, that’s what she felt, and it was intoxicating. ‘A double coup,’ she said. It was a very satisfying notion. ‘You know, it is really very liberating, being freed from guilt.’ She stretched her arms wide, laughing as she twirled round, the skirts of her gown whirling around her. ‘I feel quite giddy with it.’
‘I can see that.’ Iain got to his feet, catching her as she stumbled. ‘Mind you don’t fall.’
‘I can mind myself perfectly well. Just because we have an—an alliance doesn’t mean that I can’t fight my own battles.’
She spoke more aggressively than she intended, but Iain merely smiled. ‘I know that fine, and it’s one of the things I like about you.’
‘You mean there’s more than one?’
She meant it simply to deflect the compliment, to distract her from the realisation that it would be very nice indeed to have someone fight her battles for her, just once. But it was a mistake.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/marguerite-kaye/unwed-and-unrepentant/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Marguerite Kaye
PRETEND ENGAGEMENTBurned by love, and fearful of being trapped by marriage, headstrong Lady Cordelia Armstrong is furious when her father manipulates her into a betrothal with his business partner and her one-time lover Iain Hunter.Understanding Cordelia’s reluctance, Iain proposes a pretend engagement. For now they will make believe – but there is no need to fake the attraction that still burns hotly between them. As they travel to magical Arabia the lines between fantasy and reality blur. Will either of them really be able to walk away once their deal is done?
His fingers were stroking the skin at the nape of her neck.
His mouth was curved into a smile that was blatantly sensual. It was there again in his eyes, that heat, and she was pretty certain it was there in hers too.
‘Iain, we are just pretending to be engaged.’
‘Aye, but there are other things we’ve no need to pretend about. You know I still want you, Cordelia.’
‘Did you have this in mind when you suggested our engagement?’
‘No, and I won’t change my mind if you’re not interested. I think you are, though.’ Iain laughed softly. ‘Knowing that you want me as much as I want you—have you any idea what that does to me?’ His expression darkened momentarily. ‘I don’t want you subservient to my desires, Cordelia, I want my desires to be yours. Yours to be mine.’
His words were a low, stomach-clenching growl. ‘My desires to be yours?’ she repeated, mesmerised.
‘And yours to be mine. Admit it, we have unfinished business.’
Born and educated in Scotland, MARGUERITE KAYE originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practise. Instead, she carved out a career in IT and studied history part-time, gaining a first-class honours and a master’s degree. A few decades after winning a children’s national poetry competition she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition to write, and submitted her first historical romance to Mills & Boon
. They accepted it, and she’s been writing ever since.
You can contact Marguerite through her website at: www.margueritekaye.com (http://www.margueritekaye.com).
Previous novels by the same author:
THE WICKED LORD RASENBY
THE RAKE AND THE HEIRESS
INNOCENT IN THE SHEIKH’S HAREM† (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) (part of Summer Sheikhs anthology) THE GOVERNESS AND THE SHEIKH† (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) THE HIGHLANDER’S REDEMPTION* (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) THE HIGHLANDER’S RETURN* (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) RAKE WITH A FROZEN HEART OUTRAGEOUS CONFESSIONS OF LADY DEBORAH DUCHESS BY CHRISTMAS (part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses anthology) THE BEAUTY WITHIN RUMOURS THAT RUINED A LADY
and in Mills & Boon
Historical Undone! eBooks:
THE CAPTAIN’S WICKED WAGER
THE HIGHLANDER AND THE SEA SIREN
BITTEN BY DESIRE
TEMPTATION IS THE NIGHT
CLAIMED BY THE WOLF PRINCE‡ (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) BOUND TO THE WOLF PRINCE‡ (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) THE HIGHLANDER AND THE WOLF PRINCESS‡ (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) THE SHEIKH’S IMPETUOUS LOVE-SLAVE† (#ulink_86b81877-7b71-588e-8439-c9cc96cc27b4) SPELLBOUND & SEDUCED BEHIND THE COURTESAN’S MASK FLIRTING WITH RUIN AN INVITATION TO PLEASURE LOST IN PLEASURE HOW TO SEDUCE A SHEIKH
In the Mills & BoonCastonbury ParkRegency mini-series:
THE LADY WHO BROKE THE RULES
and in M&B eBooks: TITANIC: A DATE WITH DESTINY
† (#ulink_edce0aa2-5993-5152-8f29-b6b9e31079d7)linked by character * (#ulink_edce0aa2-5993-5152-8f29-b6b9e31079d7)Highland Brides‡ (#ulink_b2c40f6c-bd65-5f33-b536-219d1929d38a)Legend of the Faol
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Unwed and
Unrepentant
Marguerite Kaye
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
AUTHOR NOTE
I live on the west coast of Scotland and work in a room that faces right out onto the River Clyde. While I write I see the ferries traipsing back and forth across the river, I see warships and nuclear submarines making their way to and from the naval base at Faslane, and I see huge cruise ships, tankers, trawlers and tiny creelers. In the summer months I also see the Waverley, the only surviving sea-going paddle steamer in the world, and it was the Waverley which provided me with the inspiration for my ship-building hero Iain.
Mind you, I suppose you could say that ship-building is in my blood. My paternal grandfather worked in some of the biggest yards on the Clyde during the Second World War, and in the 1960s was part of the team that built the Queen Elizabeth II. My maternal grandfather was a captain in the Merchant navy, and twice sunk during the same war (he survived both). When I first started to write I remember reading the mantra ‘write what you know’ over and over in various ‘how to write’ books. Since I’ve never found my previous life in IT particularly romantic, I guess this story is as good as ‘writing what you know’ as I’m going to get!
As ever with my books, the plot has gone through a whole series of changes as the characters developed. My dogged perusal of a learned tome called Money, Mania and Markets by R. C. Michie resulted in one fleeting reference to Cordelia’s investment portfolio. The majority of the scenes that I had planned to set in Glasgow ended up on my virtual cutting-room floor, though I’ve used some of their ambience in the scene where Cordelia and Iain visit the Isle of Dogs. While I’d set Cordelia up with some passing references in both THE BEAUTY WITHIN and RUMOURS THAT RUINED A LADY, to be honest, I had no more idea than her sisters of why she ran away and what her fate was. I started out putting her in a convent in Italy, then I set her up in business in Glasgow building hotels for young ladies, and at one point I gave her a child, which I killed off and then abandoned altogether.
What I did realise very early on was that she needed a very strong hero—a self-made man to match her self-made woman. Setting the story in the year of Queen Victoria’s ascendancy followed—not only because I needed Cordelia to have packed a bit of experience under her belt, but because it was with Victoria that the meritocracy started to nudge the aristocracy out of power, and I was very keen that her blackguard of a father, Lord Armstrong, was dealt if not a mortal blow then a fairly serious wound to his power base.
This is the last of the Armstrong sisters’ stories—a series which didn’t start out as a series at all, but as a one-off Regency sheikh story. I didn’t plan to come full circle back to where it started, but as I wrote Iain and Cordelia’s story, it felt right to do so.
Thanks to my Facebook friends for all their help and support, assistance with points of detail and ideas—you are stars. And once again thank you to Flo, who deserves some sort of medal for being so patient with me on this one, which had more false starts than the Grand National!
For J.
When you read this, you’ll know why.
First, last and always love.
Contents
Prologue (#udb12167b-e89d-5c2c-85d9-469f88510a43)
Chapter One (#u94dbccd4-500f-53e1-90b7-85f3fc726fde)
Chapter Two (#ubb135e3a-54e8-50fd-85ac-3d3c795c9a6e)
Chapter Three (#u0767fa53-0913-54d9-9d58-872a93a3f5f3)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Historical Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Cavendish Square, London—spring 1828
Clutching a portmanteau in one hand, a bandbox tied with string in the other, Lady Cordelia Armstrong crept down the main staircase of her father’s town house. It was late afternoon, and her Aunt Sophia was taking a nap. Cordelia had been pledged to attend an expedition to Richmond Park. She had been at pains, when the invitation was first issued, to inform her aunt that the company would include at least one rake, one notorious fortune-hunter and the young lady who was competing with Cordelia in a wager—registered by one obliging gentleman in White’s betting book—to amass the most offers for her hand in one Season.
Lady Sophia had, as Cordelia anticipated, forbidden her to go. ‘If you are seen in an open carriage in such company,’ she had said, her face turning the most alarming shade of puce, ‘I have no doubt whatsoever that your vouchers for Almack’s will be withdrawn.’
‘And all poor Papa’s plans to marry me off to one of his minions will be in tatters,’ Cordelia had been unable to resist retorting.
‘I do not understand you. Don’t you want to make a good match?’
‘One that is good for me, yes, indeed. Sadly, that rather precludes it being a man whom Papa has selected.’
Her aunt had looked genuinely shocked, a reaction which had quite taken Cordelia aback. Having seen for herself how miserable trying to please their father had made Cressie, and how very changed poor Caro had become since marrying the man chosen for her, Cordelia had a very low opinion indeed of Lord Armstrong’s ability to pick a husband for her, but it seemed Lady Sophia did not agree. It was true, Cordelia had originally pretended to go along with her father’s plans for her, but she had assumed that her aunt, who was no fool, understood this was simply a ruse to ensure she was not, like Cressie, confined to the country until she agreed to do his bidding. Papa did not like open defiance. Keep your enemies close, was one of his maxims, and Cordelia had paid it great heed.
The moment was now ripe to strike, for her father was en route to Russia with Wellington. Sadly, it seemed the wool must also be pulled over Aunt Sophia’s eyes too, for the time being. So Cordelia had said defiantly that she would go to Richmond Park no matter how low the company, ensuring that no other invitation could be accepted on that fateful date, and that her sadly abused relative would be too relieved to question her, when informed upon the day that her niece, having thought the matter over, was of the opinion that the expedition would be a mistake. Which was exactly what had happened this morning, as a result of which Aunt Sophia was sleeping soundly in her bedchamber, under the illusion that her apparently contrite charge, with an engagement-free afternoon, was resting in hers.
The house was silent, with not even a footman attendant in the marbled hallway to impede Cordelia’s departure. Placing the brief missive on the polished half-table beside the silver salver upon which callers to Lord Armstrong’s abode left their visiting cards, she felt a twinge of guilt. Though her ambitious and scheming Papa deserved not a whit of loyalty or consideration in her opinion, she did not feel comfortable deceiving Aunt Sophia, who might look like a camel, might even upon occasion bray like one, but had in her own way always done her best by her nieces.
Biting her lip, Cordelia stared at her reflection in the mirror. Nature had given her the dark golden curls, the cupid’s-bow mouth and soft curves which were deemed by society to be beautiful—this Season, at least. At one-and-twenty, combined with an adequate dowry, her lineage and her connections, she was under no illusions about her value on the marriage mart—indeed, she had already amassed enough proposals to prove it.
‘And not a single one of them could care less what goes on behind this pretty facade,’ she said aloud, her lip curling with contempt. ‘Within five years, perhaps less, when I’ve done my duty and produced the requisite heir or two, I’ll be retired to the country to grow fat and miserable like poor Bella. Or worse, if I fail, forced into hiding in the shadows like Caro.’
Turning away from the mirror, she picked up her luggage with renewed resolve. Soon, she would be married to a man of her own choosing. A man who derided politics and her papa equally. A man who paid her no pretty, facile compliments but talked to her as if she had a mind of her own, and made it very clear that he desired her not as a matrimonial conquest but as a woman. A man whose kisses made her pulses race. A man who could heat her blood by his very presence in the room. A man whose body and bed she longed to share.
‘Gideon,’ she whispered. Heart thumping, Cordelia slid open the heavy front door of her father’s house, closing it carefully behind her. The next time she returned, she would be a married woman. ‘And for once, Papa shall dance to my tune, for the one thing he abhors more than disobedience is scandal,’ she murmured to herself as she tripped down the stone stairs into Cavendish Square and hailed a hackney cab which was most fortuitously passing. Taking it as a good omen, she clambered in with her luggage and gave her direction.
The carriage rumbled off and Cordelia settled herself for the journey to the posting house where they were to meet before setting out on their journey. Of course, the Honourable Gideon d’Amery had not specifically mentioned marriage, but that was a mere detail. Papa and Aunt Sophia would tell her that no gentleman would propose an elopement to a lady, but Papa and Aunt Sophia had not a romantic bone in their bodies. Cordelia was of age, and Gideon was a man of the world who would see to whatever details were required to formalise their union. Not that she had any idea what such details comprised, though she was hazily aware they required some sort of special licence unless they were headed to Gretna Green.
She didn’t care and it mattered not a whit. Gideon would see to it. Cordelia would concentrate on the important things, such as his smile and his kisses and the heated look in his dark-brown eyes when he gazed at her, and the delicious frisson that ran through her when he ran his fingers over her breasts in that shocking manner through her gown, and the even more shocking and even more delicious frisson when he pressed the evidence of his desire against her as they danced.
She touched her gloved hands to her heated cheeks. How perfectly lovely it was to be in love and to know that she was loved in return. When she came back to London on the arm of her husband, glowing with happiness, Papa would have no option but to acknowledge that Cordelia, and not her father, knew what was best for her. A month, perhaps three, if they made their marriage trip to the Continent. Rome. Venice. And Paris of course, for she would need new gowns, having been forced to leave most of her coming-out wardrobe at home.
‘Six months at most,’ she said dreamily, ‘and then I shall return, the Prodigal Daughter, and Papa shall be forced to kill the fatted calf.’ On that most satisfying image, Cordelia closed her mind to the troubles she was leaving behind her, and turned instead to the night of passion which lay ahead.
Chapter One
Cavendish Square, London—spring 1837
Though he wore the familiar livery, the footman who opened the door was a stranger to her. The name inscribed on her visiting card would mean nothing to him, so she did not place it on the silver salver he held out— The same one as had always been used, she noted. ‘Please inform Lord Armstrong that Lady Cordelia is here,’ she said. ‘He is expecting me.’
The startled look the servant gave her informed her that he knew her by reputation if nothing else, but he had been trained well, and quickly assumed an indifferent mask. Cordelia had no doubt, however, that she would be the topic of the day in the servants’ hall, and that every inch of her appearance would be recounted within minutes of her arrival.
The marbled hallway had changed surprisingly little in the nine years since she had last been here, but instead of ascending the grand central staircase that led to the formal drawing room where visitors were received, Cordelia was ushered through a door directly off the reception area. The book room. A choice of venue which spoke volumes.
‘I shall inform his lordship of your arrival.’
The door closed behind the footman with a soft click, leaving Cordelia alone, suddenly and quite unexpectedly shaking with nerves. The walnut desk before her was as imposing as ever. Behind it, the leatherbound chair held the indent of her father’s body. In front of it, as ever, two wooden chairs whose seats, she knew from old, placed the person who took them at a lower level than the man behind the desk. The scent of beeswax polish mingled in the air with the slightly musty smell from the books and ledgers which lined the cases on the walls. From the empty grate came the faint trace of ash. No fire burned, though there was a nip in the spring air. Another trick of her father’s. Lord Armstrong never felt the cold—or at least, that was the impression he liked to give.
Nine years. She would be thirty next birthday, and yet this room made her feel like a child waiting to be scolded. There was a similar room at Killellan Manor, where she and her sisters had been reprimanded and instructed in their duties as motherless daughters of an ambitious diplomat and peer of the realm.
Memories assailed her, things she had not thought of in years, of the pranks they had played, and the games. In the days before Celia married, they had been a tight-knit group. She had forgotten how close, or perhaps she had not allowed herself to remember, in the Bella years. She smiled to herself, remembering now. Unlike Cressie, who had always been too confrontational, or Caro, who had always been the dutiful sister, Cordelia’s strategy had been to give the appearance of compliance while going her own way. It had worked more often than it had failed. Rarely had her father perceived her to be the ringleader—that honour fell to poor Cressie. Cordelia had thought herself a master manipulator by the time she arrived in London for the Season. She had been so naive, thinking that her father was the only man in her orbit with a game to play.
The clock ticking relentlessly on the mantel showed her that she had been standing before the desk for almost fifteen minutes. Another of her father’s favourite ruses, to keep his minions waiting, ensuring that they understood their relative unimportance. She felt quite sick. Her stomach wasn’t full of butterflies but something far more malicious. Hornets? Too stingy. Toads? Snakes? Too slimy. Cicadas? She shuddered. Revolting things.
She checked the time on the little gold watch which was pinned to the belt of her carriage dress. By her reckoning, her dear father would keep her at least another ten minutes. Not quite the full half-hour. She would be better occupied preparing herself for the ordeal that lay ahead than making herself ill.
For a start, she should not be caught standing here like a penitent schoolgirl. Cordelia peeled off her gloves and laid them on the polished surface of the desk. Her fringed paisley shawl she folded neatly over the back of one of the wooden chairs. The high-crowned bonnet she had purchased, as she did most of her clothes, in Paris, was next. The wide brim was trimmed with knife-pleated silk the same royal blue as her carriage gown, a colour she favoured, for not only did it suit her, it gave her a deceptive air of severity which she liked to cultivate simply because contradictions had always amused her. The expensive bonnet joined her shawl on the chair. Pulling out a hand mirror from her beaded reticule, Cordelia shook out the curls which had taken the maid she had hired an age to achieve with the hot tongs. Far more elaborate than the style she normally favoured, her coiffure, with its centre parting and top knot, was the height of fashion and, in her opinion, the height of discomfort, but it added to her confidence, and that was, she admitted unwillingly to herself, in need of as much boosting as she could manage.
A quick mental check of the latest statement from her bank and an inventory of her stocks helped. The knowledge that her father could have no inkling of either made her smile and calmed the roiling in her stomach a little. She had no need to read the missive which had been his reply to her own request for an interview, but she did anyway, for those curt lines were a salient reminder that despite all her sisters’ assertions, her father had not changed. She would need every ounce of her resolution and backbone if she was to have any chance of succeeding.
I have granted this interview in the hope that sufficient time has passed for you to have regretted your gross misdemeanour, and for mature reflection to have inculcated in you the sense of duty which was previously sadly lacking. While the pain of your wilful disobedience must always pierce my heart, I have concluded that my own paternal duty requires me to permit you a hearing.
Your self-enforced exile has wounded others than myself. Your brothers scarce recall you. Your youngest sister has never met you. You should be aware too, that my own sister, your aunt Sophia, has been made decrepit by the passing years and has likely very few left to her on this earth.
Sincere contrition and unquestioning obedience in the future will restore you to the bosom of your injured family. If you come to Cavendish Square in any other frame of mind, your journey will have been pointless. On this understanding, you may arrange a time convenient to me with my secretary.
Yours etc.
Cordelia curled her lip at the reference to his heart, which she was fairly certain her father did not possess. Not that it precluded him tugging on the heartstrings of others. He knew her rather too well. The stories Caro shared with her, of their half-brothers and half-sister, were bittersweet. She had missed so much of their youth already that she would be a stranger to them. She even harboured a desire to become reacquainted with Bella, whose many foibles and viciousness of temperament she thought she understood rather more— For who would not be twisted by the simple fact of being married to one such as the great Lord Armstrong? Her feelings for Lady Sophia were both simpler and more complex, for while she had wronged her aunt, she could not help feeling that her aunt had wronged her too. And as to her father...
Cordelia folding the letter into a very small square and stuffed it back into her reticule. Neither salutation nor signature. He thought he was summoning an impoverished and contrite dependant. She wondered what penance he had in mind for her, and wondered, with some trepidation, how he would react when he discovered her neither contrite nor in need of financial support, but set upon reparation. In her father’s eyes, she had committed a heinous crime. His punishment had been extreme and it had taken Cordelia, her own fiercest critic, a very long time to realise that it was unmerited. Longer still to face up to the consequences of this, for of all things, she abhorred confrontation. Focusing her decided will on achieving independence and defying convention had alleviated the pain of her exile, but success, she discovered, instead of putting an end to her grievance, allowed it to grow. Becoming reacquainted with Cressie and Caro forced her to acknowledge the huge chasm which the rift with her family had created, though it was not until that strangest of days, last year, that she faced up to the fact that in order to heal it she would have to confront the cause of it.
Her father. Were she a man, he would be impressed by her business acumen. Though were she a man, she would not be in this position in the first place. Which made her wonder what on earth she was doing here anyway, because she didn’t need his permission to contact her own family. They were her family just as much as his.
Cordelia sighed heavily. Truth. How she hated the truth. Despite everything, despite the fact that he was far more in the wrong than she, what she wanted was his forgiveness just as much his acceptance of who she was, and the fact that she would never be the daughter he expected her to be. It was ridiculous and irrational and most likely unattainable, but there it was, that was what she really wanted from today.
The hand she held was slim. She would have to play it with skill. Lord Armstrong must be made aware from the outset of this interview that his daughter was no mat for him to wipe his feet upon. She considered seating herself behind the desk, but her father’s imprint on the leather chair made her feel squeamish. Instead, she spread the silk skirts of her carriage dress out and endeavoured to look as relaxed and comfortable as she could on the hated wooden chair. Her gown, with its wide leg-of-mutton sleeves and tight cuffs, was deceptively simple. The scalloping on the bodice and collar was subtle but intricately worked, continuing down the front panel to the the hem. The belt of the same royal blue which cinched her waist was held with a gold buckle. Her outfit was elegant and so à la mode that it screamed Paris to anyone who cared to notice. Her father, however, had little time for women and things feminine. It gave her a little kick of satisfaction, knowing that the evidence of her success, displayed in full view, would be quite lost on him.
The sound of a footfall outside the door alerted her to his arrival. Cordelia put a hand over the heart which threatened to jump out of her chest, and sternly quelled the instinct to rise from her seat.
* * *
She had thought herself prepared, but as the door opened and Lord Armstrong made his entrance, a lump formed in Cordelia’s throat. There were, it seemed, some things which neither logic nor experience could tame. Here was her father, and she could not control the rush of affection which brought tears to her eyes, stemmed only by a supreme effort of will from falling. Foolish of her, but she had not expected him to look so much older. His grey hair was sparser, revealing tender patches of pink pate. Pouches had formed under his eyes, though the blue-grey colour of his irises was still disconcertingly the exact shade of her own. His face was thinner too, giving a beakiness to his nose and a translucence to his skin, though he was still a handsome man.
He still had presence too. Barely a falter in his step there was, as he nodded curtly, as if it had been a few days since last they had met. The atmosphere in the book room changed too, when he took his seat behind the desk. She had forgotten that about him. He was like a necromancer, conjuring moods at will. She was already tense, her toes curled inside her kid boots, her shoulders straight like a soldier on parade, and it was too late to relax, because his eyes were upon her and he was drumming his fingers, his chin resting on one hand. But she was no longer a child, and had, for nine years, perforce, to consider herself no longer his daughter. He had not the right to judge her, and she was not inclined to permit him to do so.
Silence stretched. Another of his tricks, but it was one which Cordelia had also acquired. By the time he raised his brows after what seemed like an eternity, she had herself under control.
‘You are looking surprisingly well.’
‘Yes,’ she replied with a cool smile. She waited, listening to the clock on the mantel ticking. It always seemed to tock much louder than it ticked, counting out the seconds like a measured, doom-laden tread towards eternity. She wondered, as she had so many times before, if he had had it adjusted to do so.
Finally, her father spoke. ‘Almost a decade ago you absconded from these premises, leaving devastation in your wake. I shall never understand what I did to deserve such ingratitude, nor such a flagrant flouting of my will.’
‘Your will!’ The words were out before she could stop them. ‘What about my will, Father? Did you ever stop to consider...’
‘Unlike yourself, I never act without a great deal of consideration.’
Lord Armstrong steepled his fingers and eyed her across the expanse of polished walnut. Furious with herself, Cordelia bit her lip, grateful that the layers of corsets and stiffened petticoats which her robe required, concealed her heaving chest. ‘I did not request this interview to discuss the past, but the future,’ she said.
‘Indeed? You do not think the past pertinent, then? You do not feel it incumbent to explain how you have spent your years...’
‘In exile? In the wilderness?’
‘Outwith the shelter of your family,’ Lord Armstrong concluded smoothly.
‘No,’ Cordelia said baldly. ‘Caro and Cressie informed you that I was well,’ she continued, unable to tolerate another lengthy silence. ‘They also informed you that should you wish to contact me, you could do so through either of them. You did not, I must assume because you were not interested or did not care. Both most likely. So no, I don’t think it either pertinent or—or incumbent upon me to explain myself,’ she concluded hurriedly, realising that she was on the brink of doing just that.
She glared at him, defying the stupid, stupid tears to fall. He didn’t care. It made it so much more humiliating to discover that she, after all, cared a great deal.
‘You are thirty years of age,’ Lord Armstrong said.
‘Next month,’ Cordelia replied cautiously, wondering where this new tack would lead.
‘And still, I assume, unmarried?’
‘May I ask why you make such an assumption?’
Her father smiled thinly. ‘Though I am sure we would both rather the case were otherwise, you are my daughter, and I do understand you. You would not be here playing the supplicant had you any other means.’
‘You don’t think my sisters would support me?’
‘I don’t think you would accept their support,’ Lord Armstrong retorted.
The truth of this made her determined to destroy that smug certainty of his. ‘The possibility of my having a dependant of my own has not occurred to you, I suppose,’ Cordelia said.
Her father looked fleetingly appalled, but his expression was quickly veiled. ‘Even you, Cordelia, would not have the temerity to foist a bastard upon the family.’
Even she! Thinking of her sisters’ various exploits, Cordelia was forced to repress a smile. Marriage, no matter how belated, had obviously mitigated their actions in her father’s eyes, despite the fact that not a single one of those marriages had been of his making. How pleasant it must be, to bend the facts to one’s perception, as he did. She doubted he ever had trouble sleeping at night, and wished fleetingly that she too, had the knack of looking at the world through a window of her own making.
But she had not, and she did not really wish to be cast in her father’s mould. What she wanted, more than anything, was to be out of this room and this house as quickly as possible. There would be no conciliation, no regrets or apologies nor even a passive acceptance. ‘I didn’t come here to beg your forgiveness, Father,’ Cordelia said. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but nor am I in need of support, monetary or moral.’
To anyone who did not know him, his face remained impassive, but Cordelia did know him. Lord Armstrong sat a little straighter. His eyes lost that deceptively faraway look. ‘You will explain yourself.’
‘Contrary to your expectations, these last nine years have been most productive and extremely enjoyable. I do not regret an action or a moment.’ Which was mostly true. ‘However, I am tired of my itinerant life, and I wish to settle back home, here in England. I do not need your help with this as I have more than adequate means for the purchase of an estate.’
She waited, but Lord Armstrong seemed rather stunned. Cordelia hugged her satisfaction to herself. ‘My sisters were of the opinion that you had changed, that you would regret the enmity between us. I hoped rather than believed they were right, just as I hoped rather than believed that you would apologise for the wrongs you have done me. Sadly, you have lived down to my expectations, Father. It behoves me only to inform you that I intend to re-establish contact with my family, regardless of your wishes.’
She was rather pleased with this little speech, and her own unwavering delivery. If she was expecting it to have any impact on her father, Cordelia was, however, destined to be disappointed. ‘I wonder why, since you are so unrepentant and so confident in achieving your aims, you have not returned before now,’ Lord Armstrong said. ‘To be plain, if you truly cared so little for my opinion, Daughter, I wonder that you did not simply disregard it.’ His lordship once more steepled his fingers. ‘Your silence, as they say, speaks volumes, Cordelia.’
‘My silence,’ she retorted through gritted teeth, ‘is testament to the effort I am making not to tell you what I think of you, Father. I came here to draw a veil over the past, but you will not allow it. I have done as you bid me for almost ten years, making no attempt to contact my family...’
‘You do not, then, count your sisters?’
‘Caro and Cressie had nothing to lose. I have not written to Celia or Cassie. I have not written to Aunt Sophia. Or...’
‘Spare me the litany,’ Lord Armstrong said, rising from his seat and leaning over the desk. ‘Rather let me set the record straight, Cordelia. My wife will ensure that any attempt to contact your half-brothers or Isabella will be unavailing. I myself will speak to Sophia. Her sense of what is owed to a brother will dictate her actions, as it always has.’
Cordelia also got to her feet. Though she had quelled the urge to shrink back in her chair, she was nevertheless horrified. She was also deeply hurt, humiliated and absolutely furious with herself for having given him the chance to hurt and belittle her again. ‘I don’t believe you. I shall not listen to you. I don’t need your permission or your forgiveness. I will allow no one—no one!—to dictate my actions other than myself. I thwarted you—there, I have said it—by refusing to marry a man of your choice, and you have held a grudge against me for ten years. Unbelievable! You are utterly unbelievable, Father.’
She began to gather up her things, her hands shaking with anger. Jamming on her bonnet anyhow, she bit the inside of her cheek very, very hard. So intent was she on getting out of the house before she broke down, that she did not notice the door to the book room opening until the same impassive servant, who had no doubt heard the muffled altercation, was standing in front of her father holding out the silver salver. ‘Your twelve-thirty appointment has arrived a little early,’ he said.
‘It’s fine. I’m leaving,’ Cordelia said. Snatching her shawl from the chair, she caught a glimpse of the card on the tray before her father picked it up, and her heart, already beating like a wild thing, skipped a beat. It could not be. Looking up, she found her father’s gaze on her. ‘You know, it may very well be in your interests to remain for this meeting,’ he said.
He had that faraway look. Considering. Scheming. She began to feel sick again. ‘No,’ she said, though her voice seemed to come from a long way away, because he had put the card back down on the desk, and she could read it.
‘Politics,’ he continued smoothly, as if she had not spoken, another of his tactics, ‘is all about compromise. I will concede that I cannot stop you from attempting to do as you say. You will fail, but your attempt, I will also concede—you see what I mean about compromise—will be unpleasant. For all of us.’
She stared at him. Her body was screaming at her to run. Her mind was struggling to deal with her father’s admission that he was— What, fallible? No. But he seemed to be offering her a deal. What deal? She looked at the card on the desk, but it made no sense, and the instinct to run got the upper hand. ‘No,’ she said, turning towards the door just as it opened, crashing full tilt into the man entering the room.
‘Ah, Mr Hunter,’ her father said, urbane as ever, ‘let me introduce you to my daughter Lady Cordelia.’
Chapter Two
Broomilaw, Glasgow—1836
Cordelia stood on the aft deck of the PS Argyle as the paddle steamer chugged down the River Clyde on the last stage of her journey. After several weeks travelling in the Highlands, the change to this vast city was almost overwhelming. The air was thick with smoke, tasting distinctly of coal, the clouds in the tarnished sky above were a strange metallic yellow colour.
Argyle sounded her horn, a loud, low, mournful cry that made the deck vibrate, and sent a noxious plume of black smoke into the air from the high stack of funnel as she began to slow, narrowly avoiding a large three-masted clipper anchored in the centre of the channel. The sound of the water being churned up by the two huge wooden paddles changed from a torrent to a slow slap as they drew alongside their berth, scraping between a host of other craft—so many, it seemed to Cordelia, that every ship in Scotland must be vying for space here in Glasgow.
The docks were crowded as she picked her way carefully over the narrow wooden gangway from the Argyle, across the deck of another steamer and up on to the pier, clutching her portmanteau. Beautiful as the Highlands had been, she had felt more alien there than at any time since leaving London eight years before. The Gaelic language, with its soft, lilting tones, was lovely to listen to, impossible to decipher. She had not been prepared for her own English accent to mark her out as foreign. At times, she had encountered downright hostility. They had long memories, those whose families had paid the price for fighting for the Jacobite Prince Charlie. More recently, enclosure and the introduction of sheep to the lands had brought a new grudge against the Sassenach landowners. Cordelia, raised in a household which lived and breathed the politics of Britain’s growing Empire, had been appalled by her own ignorance of what was, in theory, part of her own country.
On a very small scale, politics had torn her own family apart. Listening to the tales of what politics had done to the Highlanders gave her rather a different perspective on her own life. In those remote, tiny, hard-working communities, family was all. Cordelia could no longer ignore how much she missed her own. She was lonely. There were times when the cost of this independent path she had chosen felt like too high a price to pay. Times, such as now, standing on the quay with the crowd pressing round her, when she would have given anything for a familiar face.
But she had never been one to mope, had always loathed regrets, and there was no point in wishing things could be different. Cordelia turned her mind to the problem of her baggage, and where, and how she was supposed to collect it. Jostled, her skirts and toes well and truly trodden on, she looked for a porter. There were many, but all were occupied, and all seemed to be deaf too. She had thought that being back in a city would restore a little of her equilibrium, but the harsh language here sounded almost as foreign as Gaelic.
‘And to make matters worse, I seem to have become invisible,’ she muttered to herself, resorting to using her elbows to push past a large man holding a very loud conversation with a very small man on one of the steamers.
It was then she saw him, standing quite alone a few yards down, at the end of the quay. She could not have said what drew her attention, only that it was drawn, almost as if she were compelled to look at him. He was dressed sombrely, in a black coat and trousers, black shoes. His hair was cut short. Deep auburn, it was burnished by the silver-yellow rays of the setting sun filtered through the darkening clouds, giving him the look of a fallen angel. He had been staring off into the distance, but as she watched him he turned, their eyes met, and Cordelia felt a jolt of recognition, though she was sure she had never seen him before. Perhaps it was from having listened to too many ghost stories while she was in the Highlands, but she had the strangest feeling, like seeing another form of herself. You, her bones and her skin and her blood called, it’s you.
She couldn’t look away. It was with a feeling of déjà vu, or fate, inevitability, that she watched him approach her. His face was not gaunt, but it had little spare flesh. The lines which ran from his nose to his chin spoke of a tough life rather than either age or decadence. A hard face with a strong chin and nose, his mouth was his only soft feature, with a full bottom lip forming into a querying smile. The quiver inside her turned from recognition to attraction. This one, her body was saying now, this man.
‘Is there something I can do for you?’ he asked.
Is there something ah can do furr you? His accent was strange, a soft burr with a rougher edge lurking in the background, the sweetness of chocolate mixed with the grittiness of salt. ‘My luggage,’ Cordelia said, ‘I don’t suppose you know where I can collect it?’
‘You’re English.’ She must have instinctively braced herself for he smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to hold it against you.’
Ah’m no gonnae haud it against you. Cordelia smiled. ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am to hear that. I had thought the French held my country in low esteem, until I travelled north. I am just come from Oban, but I have been travelling in the Highlands for several weeks and I—’
‘I thought I knew you,’ he interrupted her. ‘When I saw you staring at me, I thought we must have met, but I don’t think we have.’
He had caught her arm as she made to turn away. She had taken a step towards him in response. He was not wearing gloves. His skin was pale. His nose looked as if it had been broken. His eyes were deep-set and deep blue. His lashes were the same dark auburn as his hair. He was frowning at her, studying her closely, a puzzled look on his face that echoed just what she had felt when first setting eyes on him.
‘I thought it too,’ Cordelia said. ‘That I knew you, I mean. It’s why I was staring. I’m sorry, it was rude of me. I did not mean to disturb you.’
She made no move to go, however, for her body was rooted to the spot. She was acutely aware of him, of his hand on her arm, of the concentration of his gaze. He had very broad shoulders. Under that dark suit, there was a hard body. The thought made her blood heat. She could feel a flush creeping up her neck.
‘You didn’t,’ he said. ‘Disturb me, I mean.’ He looked down at his hand, but instead of releasing her, pulled her towards him, linking them together, arm in arm. ‘Oban, you said you sailed from?’
She nodded.
‘You’ll have come on the Argyle then. She’s sound enough, though that beam engine of hers is well past its prime. Napier’s steeple will become the standard, you mark my words, though if you ask me—’ He broke off, smiling at the confusion which must be writ large on her face. ‘I’m havering. Your luggage will be this way,’ he said. ‘I’m Iain Hunter.’
‘Cordelia. That is, Cordelia Williamson. Mrs.’
‘You’re married.’
‘Widowed,’ she said hastily, not pausing to think why it mattered to reassure him.
‘I’m glad,’ he said. Then, ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
He didn’t look in the least bit contrite. In fact, there was a gleam in his eyes that gave Cordelia a fizzy feeling in her stomach and made her decidedly light-headed. A more prosaic woman would have said she needed food, but though she had many faults, she had not once in her twenty-eight years been accused of being matter of fact. Impetuous, yes, and heedless too. Both of those traits she had worked very hard to curb in the past few years. Now, as she tripped along beside Iain Hunter, shielded from the bustle not just by his body but by the way the crowd seemed to part for him, she felt a terrible, wicked, irresistible impulse to be both.
‘What about you, Mr Hunter,’ she asked, ‘are you married?’
‘No,’ he replied.
‘I am glad,’ Cordelia said.
He stopped in his tracks. ‘What am I to take from that?’
It was a fair question. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, deflated. ‘I’m in a strange mood. The travel, most likely. I thought— When I saw you, I thought— But it was silly of me.’
He touched her cheek, where the pulse beat at her temple. His fingers were cold. It was the lightest of touches. She felt as if he were trying to read her mind. ‘You could have asked me the same thing,’ he said, ‘when I told you I was glad you were widowed.’
‘What would you have said?’
‘Something along the same lines,’ he answered. ‘I was thinking— I was feeling—strange. I saw you, and I thought, oh, there she is.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’m not usually the fanciful sort.’
‘I am not usually the sort who talks to strangers at dockyards,’ Cordelia said, smiling again.
‘I thought we had established I’m not a stranger.’
‘It is certainly a strange sort of day. I am beginning to wonder if any of this is real.’
‘That’s most likely because you haven’t eaten. I’ll wager the Argyle did not give you the smoothest of journeys.’
Cordelia chuckled. ‘Poor Argyle. You should not be so unkind to her, for she brought me here.’
‘And here you are.’ He ran his fingers down her arm, from shoulder to wrist, as if to reassure himself of the fact of her presence. The gesture was intimate, not that of a stranger at all. It made her feel—not alone. ‘And I’m glad for it,’ he said.
The warehouse he led her to was huge, the double doors open on to the quayside, in which were literally hundreds of trunks, bandboxes, portmanteaux, boxes, parcels, crates. Though Cordelia could see no sign of demarcation, Iain Hunter made his way confidently to one of the distinct heaps. ‘Which is yours?’
She pointed out her trunk, and a porter appeared at her side, looking at her enquiringly. ‘Could you recommend an hotel, Mr Hunter?’
‘I’ll take you,’ he said, and though this was exactly the sort of situation which she cautioned the readers of every single one of her guidebooks to avoid at all costs, Cordelia followed him out of the docks into the cobbled street beyond the wharf buildings, watching meekly as her chest was strapped on to a carriage which, like the porter, appeared magically, and then equally meekly followed Mr Hunter inside.
* * *
The Queen’s Hotel was a converted town house in the heart of the city. Cordelia took a set of rooms looking out on to the newly built George Square. She had asked Iain Hunter to dine with her, not because she was hungry but because she didn’t want him to go. He would have gone. She had only to say the word, and he would go. That was implicit between them, just as it was implicit that neither wanted him to leave. Now, he sat opposite her toying with a glass of wine, his food almost untouched, as was hers.
Not even with Gideon had she felt like this. This was not flirting. It was not the dance of will-we-won’t-we? It was—communing. Ridiculous. The Highlanders must have infected her with their taste for whimsy.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Iain leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand.
‘I’ve never done this before.’
‘Nor have I.’
He leaned across the table and took her hand. She still wore her travelling gown, but had loosened the buttons around her wrist. He stroked the skin there with his thumb, little circles that soothed and roused, drawing all her body’s focus to that point, where they touched. He didn’t ask her, what, what is it you haven’t done before? She liked that he didn’t pretend. She had always hated that part of the dance—the pretending, the false misunderstandings, the advance and retreat.
‘What were you doing on the docks today?’ Cordelia asked.
‘Thinking,’ Iain answered, not at all perturbed by her turning the conversation. ‘Planning. I’m at a—a what is the word—hiatus? A turning point. I need a change.’
‘What do you do?’
He grinned. ‘Didn’t you guess? I build ships. Paddle steamers.’
‘With spire engines, I assume?’
‘Steeple. Aye. Though I have in mind some modifications.’
‘Is that what you were thinking about, then?’
Iain shook his head. ‘That’s just business as usual. I need— Ach, I don’t know. I need a bigger change.’
He was still stroking her wrist. Shivers of sensation were running up her arm, heating her skin, setting it tingling. She seemed to be doing the same to him, though she had no recollection of leaning across the table and touching him. It was as if her body and her mind were disconnected. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what bigger change were you thinking of?’
‘New markets. New seas. New something. I don’t know. What were you doing there?’
‘I’m going to Edinburgh.’
‘That’s no answer.’
He lifted her hand to his mouth and began to kiss her fingers. The tip of each one. Then the pad of her thumb. His eyes never left hers. They were darker in the lamplight, gleaming with a combination of desire and challenge. Did she want this? He took her index finger in his mouth, and sucked. She released his other hand, slumping down in her chair. Her foot, clad in stockings but not her boots, found its way to his leg. She ran it up his calf over his trousers, and saw the surprise register.
He sucked on her middle finger, his tongue tracing the length of it. ‘Cordelia?’
Corr-deel-ia. ‘Guidebooks,’ she said, sliding her foot higher, over his knee, to the inside of his thigh. He clamped his legs together, holding her there. ‘I write guide books. The Single Lady Traveller’s Guide To—Paris, Brussels, Rome, Dresden. Others. I can’t remember. And now the Highlands.’
‘Impressive. Surprising. You’ve not done any destinations closer to home?’
‘I don’t have a home.’
‘I know how that feels,’ he said.
Sadness chased across his face, but was quickly banished. No questions. ‘No, let’s not talk about it,’ Cordelia said, as if he had spoken aloud. ‘I am tired of thinking about it. My own turning point. There is nothing—I’m tired of it.’
‘Then we won’t talk of it. Should I go, Cordelia?’
‘Do you want to?’
‘You know I don’t, but you also know that I will.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want you to go.’
He let go her hand. He let her foot slide back on to the floor. He got to his feet and came round to the other side of the little table and pulled her upright, sliding his arms around her waist. ‘I am glad,’ he said, ‘because I have never in my life wanted any woman the way I want you. Now.’ And then he kissed her.
* * *
He kissed her, and the connection was elemental. She understood it, when he kissed her, this feeling of knowing, of being known. You. You. You. She recognised him with such a strong physical pull that she staggered. As if she had been waiting all her life for him. As if none had gone before him. As if none but him would ever matter. She could analyse and question and dissect, but she had no interest in doing any of that, no interest in establishing a conflict between her mind and her body. Her body had already won. ‘Yes,’ she said, though he had not asked, ‘the answer is yes.’
She led him into the bedchamber. No words were necessary after that, though they spoke with their lips, hands, eyes. Kissing. His mouth felt as if it were made to kiss hers, hers to fit his. His kisses were like questions. This? And this? And this?
And this, she replied, touching her tongue to his, relishing the sharp intake of his breath in response. And this. She opened her mouth. His kisses deepened, his fingers tangling in her hair, his breath warm on her face.
Her hairpins scattered. She pulled at his coat. He threw it on to the floor, then kissed her again. She reached behind her to unfasten her gown. He turned her around, wrestling with the buttons and fasteners, kissing her neck, her shoulders, his breathing ragged. The gown took some time to wriggle out of, hindered and impeded by kisses. He pulled her against him when it finally fell to the floor, her bottom against his thighs. She was frustrated by the layers of her undergarments. He curved his arms around her to cup her breasts. She shuddered, wanting his skin on hers, her nipples hard, aching for his touch. He began to untie the strings of her corsets.
He cursed under his breath. She could not understand the language, which might have been Gaelic, but might have been something more colloquial. When her stays dropped to the floor, releasing her breasts with only her chemise to cover them, he turned her around. Slashes of colour on his cheeks. His eyes glittering with desire. Her own breath quickened, the knot in her belly tightened, the low throb lower down began. ‘Take them off,’ she said, pulling at his waistcoat.
He discarded his own clothes quickly, efficiently, without any modesty. He was as lean and hard as she had imagined, his shoulders broader, his skin paler, the muscles beneath tensed. And he was more than ready, his erection jutting up against his stomach. Cordelia shuddered. She had never wanted anything so much as this man inside her.
He had been watching her studying him. She smiled at him then, quite deliberately, and felt an answering heat as he smiled the same smile in response. This was going to be—everything. Anything. All. Did she say it aloud? She thought it as he pulled her to him once more, and she felt the thickness of him against the apex of her thighs. His kiss was desperate now. Her own too, her mouth ravaging his, her hands clawing at his back, at his buttocks, at his flanks.
He pulled her chemise over her head. She untied the drawstrings of her pantalettes. She wore only her stockings and her garters. He swore again, this time a word she recognised, a harsh, guttural word that should have shocked her, but expressed exactly what she was feeling. Then he cupped one of her breasts in his hand, covered the nipple of the other with his mouth.
Heat, shivering, frissons of pleasure, tugging, connecting up. Delightful. Delicious. But almost too late. There was no time for this, not now. She pulled his face back up to hers and kissed him frantically, pressing herself against him with abandon. Now, now, now. ‘Now!’
‘Aye. I hear you. Dear God, I hear you. Cordelia, I am so—I don’t think I can wait.’
‘Iain, I know I cannot.’
He laughed. A deep, masculine laugh that vibrated against her breasts, her stomach. Then he kissed her, pulling her on to the floor because even the small distance to the bed was too much. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, her legs around his waist, as he thrust into her.
She cried out.
‘Wheesht yourself, these walls are thin,’ he said, but he was smiling wickedly, and he thrust, and she covered her mouth to muffle her cries, and dug her heels into his buttocks and clenched around him, holding him deep inside her, and he stopped smiling and swore again, that shocking word that said exactly what it was she wanted from him, and inside her, she felt him thicken.
He thrust again. She felt her climax building. She never climaxed as easily as this, not this way, but it hadn’t even occurred to her that she would not. He was sweating. His face was strained, his eyes were dark, but focused on her with an intensity that made her feel as if they were connected. Not just joined, but connected. He was inside her. She was inside him. When he kissed her, she responded with every part of her body.
‘Come with me,’ he said. She had heard that before. Had pretended before. This time, there was no need to pretend. She nodded. He thrust. She held him. He pulsed high inside her. She could feel it, the spiralling, but she could still hold on to it. He thrust again. She arched up under him, tilting her body to hold him higher, and it happened, the loss of control, the fall, the clutching, pulsing, ecstasy, and she cried out, and he thrust one more time, and cried out too, pulling himself free of her at the very last moment, and she had the urge to hold him, to keep him there inside her, regardless of the consequences. Or courting them, even.
When it was over they lay panting, sweating, tangled on the floorboards, like victims of a tempest. In the aftermath, as the urgency abated, and the bliss cocooned her, Cordelia forgot about the ending. One of Iain’s legs covered hers. His hand lay possessively on her stomach. He was staring up at the ceiling, his face a blank. Empty. Sadness washed over her. Something else that was different. It had never been anything other than a pleasure before. Some more pleasurable than others, but always fun, usually satisfying, in the way that a glass of wine fresh from the cellar was satisfying, or a bowl of fresh pasta eaten in the sunshine, or a walk on hot sand in bare feet.
Not like this. This was something much more elemental. Before, during, she would have given him anything not to stop. He had invaded her, seen things she did not want anyone to see on her face. Come with me, he had said, and she could not have done anything but what he asked. He hadn’t taken her, she had given herself to him. All of herself, in a way she never had, nor ever thought she would want to. That he had, despite the power he had over her, been so careful of her too, made it somehow much worse. That she had not wanted him to be careful, that she had for one wild, fierce moment, wanted to court the consequences, frightened her.
It was as if the whole day had been a peeling back of all her layers culminating in this revelation, the core of her, the lonely inner self. Cordelia jumped to her feet, suddenly appalled at what she had done. Her dressing gown was at the top of her trunk. Pale-yellow silk embroidered with flowers, it was masculine in cut, with straight sleeves and a collar. It was one of her favourite pieces of clothing. She tightened the belt, turning to find Iain on his feet, his expression troubled.
‘I’m sorry that was so— We got carried away. I am not usually so...’ He shrugged hopelessly. ‘I’m sorry, I thought it was what you wanted.’
‘I did,’ she said shortly, unwilling, unable to lie. She had never been the type of woman to take pleasure in making a man feel guilty.
‘Then what’s wrong?’
‘I’m tired. I have to leave early.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Cordelia, and don’t think you have to pander to my ego either. If it didn’t work for you—though if it did not, you’re a bloody good actress.’
‘It did.’ Now she was embarrassed. After all that. She would not think of all that. Cordelia began to pick up her clothes.
Iain was already wearing his trousers, pulling on his shirt. ‘Then what is it? And don’t give me the line about being tired.’
Don’t give me the line. His accent was rougher, the Lowland gruffness taking front stage. She couldn’t think what to say. I can’t believe I did that, would give him the wrong impression, though it would certainly help get him out the door, and getting him out the door was what she needed more than anything.
Whatever he read in her face, it made him look grim. Iain picked up his coat and pulled it on, stuffing his stock into the pocket. ‘So you’ve had your bit of rough, and now you want to be alone, is that it?’
‘No! What an appalling thing to say.’
He ignored her, pulling on his shoes.
‘Iain, that’s not it.’
‘Then what?’
Fully dressed, he looked intimidating. There was a wild look in his eye that made her think of some of the Highlanders she had seen. Cordelia ran her hand through her tangled hair, coming up with a ball of fluff and a splinter of floorboard. ‘It was too much,’ she admitted.
‘Are you sorry?’
‘No.’
The answer was out without needing to think. Iain sighed heavily, but he managed a lopsided smile. ‘I’m not sorry either, but my head’s reeling, if you must know. You’re not the only one to find it all a bit much.’
His honesty disarmed her. ‘It has been a very strange day,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘Extraordinary.’
‘Cordelia.’
He touched her temple, just as he had on the docks. This time, she had to fight the impulse to pull away, for she was fairly certain he could read her thoughts.
‘I hope whichever direction you take, it makes you happier,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’m not unhappy.’
‘I told you not to lie,’ he said gently. ‘I know you don’t want to hear from me again, but if there should be anything you need me for, here’s where you can find me. You understand, I would not expect you to deal with any consequences alone.’
He handed her a card.
‘Thank you,’ Cordelia said, ‘but I am sure...’
‘I mean it.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s something,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Cordelia.’
He did not touch her. She felt an absurd, contrary desire that he would kiss her. ‘Goodbye.’ She touched his temple, echoing his own gesture. ‘I hope whichever direction you take, it makes you happier too.’
He acknowledged this admission of her own state of mind with a nod. Then he turned and walked through the door. She stood where she was. The outer door opened softly, then closed. She went to the window, pulling the curtains to hide her, and looked out. The lamps were lit around the square. He emerged a few minutes later, through the main hotel entrance. She could not imagine what the night porter must have thought, and did not care. She thought he would stop, look up, even though she was careful not to let him see her, but he did not. He pulled his coat around him, and headed across the square, in the direction of the river, without looking back.
Chapter Three
Cavendish Square, London—spring 1837
Iain’s hands automatically went round the woman to stop the pair of them falling. His body recognised her before his mind caught up, before even he had a glimpse of her face, which was burrowed into his chest. ‘Cordelia.’
Blue-grey eyes, wide with the shock, met his. Her hand went to her mouth, as if to push back the words, and he remembered that same gesture, self-silencing, only the last time it had been a cry of ecstasy she had stifled after he’d warned her about the walls of the hotel being thin. Her legs had been wrapped around his waist. The hair that was now so demurely curled and primped under her bonnet had been streaming in wild disarray over her shoulders on to the floorboards. Now, she was struggling to free herself. He let her go, but blocked the doorway, a firm shake of his head telling her he’d read her thoughts. Not a chance, he told her. She glared at him, but retreated into the room.
‘Mr Hunter. You are a tad early.’
Lord Henry Armstrong held out his hand. Iain took it automatically, his mind racing. ‘Five minutes at most,’ he replied. ‘Am I interrupting?’
It was a rhetorical question, for the atmosphere in the room was tense. The muffled sound of heated words had been audible in the hallway as he handed over his hat and gloves. And now he looked at her properly, Cordelia’s bonnet was askew, her shawl dangling from one arm. Not, it seemed, escaping his arrival, but running from the man who claimed to be her father.
The man who was now bestowing upon him a smile which Iain found peculiarly irritating. Condescending. Patronising. Mendacious. One or all, it aroused all his base instincts, and made him want to punch something.
‘Cordelia,’ said his lordship, ‘this is Mr Iain Hunter.’
It was the mute appeal in her eyes that kept him silent. Lady Cordelia, whom he knew as the widow, Mrs Cordelia Williamson, was obviously eager that her father should remain in ignorance of their previous acquaintance. Her father! Iain bent over the hand she extended and just touched her fingertips. The eyes were indeed the same colour as Lord Armstrong’s, but he could discern no other resemblance.
‘Do sit down, Mr Hunter. And you, Cordelia.’
When he spoke to his daughter, there was a steeliness that made Iain’s hackles rise. ‘I came here to discuss business,’ he said. ‘I don’t see that is any concern of your—your—Lady Cordelia’s.’
Lord Armstrong laughed, a dry little sound like paper rustling. ‘Take a seat, Mr Hunter, and I’ll explain,’ he said, taking his own seat behind the desk.
Iain paid him no heed. Cordelia stood poised for flight, but he was damned if he’d let her go without an explanation. ‘You’ll take the weight off your feet, Mrs—Lady Cordelia,’ he said, pressing her down firmly into one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs, pulling the other closer to her, stretching out a leg casually in front of hers, just to make his message clear. She threw him a look, but he was pretty certain it was because she resented his managing her, rather than any desire to flee.
‘Mr Hunter,’ Lord Armstrong said, addressing his daughter, ‘is hoping to win a contract to build steam ships for Sheikh al-Muhanna.’
‘Celia’s husband!’ From the tone of her voice, this was news to Cordelia. ‘You mean the prince has entrusted you to award a contract to build ships on his behalf?’ she demanded of her father.
‘As you would know, if you were au fait with family matters,’ Lord Armstrong replied pointedly, ‘my son-in-law is very ambitious for his principality. It is not simply a matter of building ships, he wishes the skills to be passed on to his own people. Since it is a well-known fact that England is at the forefront of the industry...’
‘I think you’ll find that it’s Scotland, actually. The Clyde to be more specific,’ Iain interjected.
‘Yes, yes, we are all one country,’ Lord Armstrong said with a condescending smile.
‘Aye, when it suits you.’
‘As you say.’
His lordship took a visible breath. His daughter—hell and damnation, that woman was Lord Armstrong’s daughter!—sat quite still, ramrod straight, only the nervous tapping of her little boot at the hem of her gown giving her away.
‘The long and the short of it is,’ Iain said, addressing Cordelia directly, ‘I’ve the best people for the job, and I build the best ships, so his lordship here is going to grease the diplomatic wheels and jump through all the hoops of permissions and licences on my behalf. Not to put too fine a point on it, unless I have him on my side to tell me which pockets should be lined and which pieces of paper must be signed, it doesn’t matter how good my ships are, they will never be built. In return for these valuable services, your father will get a hefty fee. Isn’t that right, Lord Armstrong?’
Cordelia’s response to this straightforward speech was, to Iain’s relief, one of glee. Lord Armstrong, who should have been put firmly in his place, had the look of a cat about to pounce.
‘Not quite right, Mr Hunter,’ he said. ‘My terms have changed.’
‘I’m not giving you any more money.’
His lordship smiled. ‘I don’t want any of your money.’
The hairs on Iain’s neck stood on end, for that smile was the very opposite of benign, whatever that was. Malign? ‘You were keen enough to take it when we first talked.’
‘Since we first talked, Mr Hunter, my circumstances have changed.’
‘Be that as it may, your circumstances have nothing to do with me.’
‘On the contrary,’ Lord Armstrong said. ‘In fact, I hope that in the future our circumstances will be very much—entwined.’
Iain was now thoroughly rattled. ‘I’m a plain-talking man, and I’m a plain-dealing one too. I’m not interested in playing games, your lordship, just name your price.’
‘My daughter, Mr Hunter, is my price. I wish you to ally yourself with my daughter.’
* * *
Cordelia’s jaw actually dropped. It was no consolation at all to see that Iain’s did the same.
Her father took advantage of their stunned silence to inform Iain of the excellent bargain he would be making. ‘Now, I accept that Cordelia here may not be as young as you would wish,’ he said, ‘but she comes from excellent breeding stock and her lineage, Mr Hunter, unlike yours, is impeccable.’
As if she were a prize ewe past her prime! Cordelia felt her mouth drop further. Just when she thought she had his measure, her father surprised her. Really, he quite took her breath away. A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to escape. She made a choking sound, quickly muffling it with her hand.
‘Our alliance will bring you benefits far beyond the contract with my son-in-law,’ Lord Armstrong continued, getting into his stride. ‘Marrying into one of the oldest families in the land will give you access to my considerable experience and influence. If I say so myself...’
‘You’ve said more than enough. I don’t want to hear any more!’
Iain’s accent thickened considerably as his temper rose. It broadened even more in the heat of passion, Cordelia recalled, then wished fervently that she had not. This situation was beyond belief. Iain was on his feet, leaning over the desk. She too got up from her chair. The three of them faced each other, an oddly assorted triangle which under any other circumstances would have made her laugh.
‘Mr Hunter...’
‘Lord Armstrong, sit down and shut your mouth.’
The menace in his voice had finally registered with her father. Cordelia watched, fascinated, for she could almost see his diplomatic mind flicking through and discarding a myriad of responses. He seemed to be, for one of the very few times in his life, at a loss for words.
‘I came here to discuss contracts for steamships,’ Iain continued. ‘I’m not on the hunt for a wife, and if I was, I wouldn’t need you or anyone else to pick one for me.’
Iain was refusing her, which was absolutely what she wanted, so it was really rather silly of her to feel rejected, though it did give her the advantage of being able to claim that she would have complied, Cordelia thought, frowning. Not that she intended entering into a bargaining war with her father. And actually, it was insulting to be rejected so firmly and with so little consideration, especially by a man who had— With whom she had— And what’s more it had been— Well, it had been memorable. Very memorable. So memorable that she had only to close her eyes to conjure up...
‘...think it for the best if we discuss it alone.’
Cordelia’s eyes snapped open. Was this her cue to leave? But to her surprise, Iain was ushering her father out of his own book room, and her father was making not one sound of protest. The door closed once again, and Iain leaned his really very broad shoulders against it, smiling at her in a way that made her want to run as fast as she could in the other direction—which would be out the window on to the Cavendish Square, so that was out of the question—and at the same time rooted her to the spot.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘What did you say to my father?’
‘Weren’t you listening, Mrs Williamson—or should I say Lady Cordelia?’
Corr-dee-lia. ‘Mr Hunter...’
‘Iain. It was Iain the last time we met, and given what went on between us, I’m not particularly inclined to go back to more formal terms now.’
He eased himself away from the doorway. She found herself trapped in his gaze. ‘I see no reason why we should be on any terms at all,’ Cordelia said. ‘You made it very clear that you were not interested in my father’s proposal.’
‘I wanted to get you alone.’
‘Oh.’ Cordelia tried to back away, and her bottom encountered the desk. She folded her arms, unfolded them again and pulled off her bonnet. It was giving her a headache. She was deflated and depressed by the encounter with her father.
‘So you’ve a title,’ Iain said. ‘Not plain missus after all, but a lady.’
He was standing right beside her now. It irked her that she was so aware of him. Not that he was in any way bulky, Iain Hunter was tall and lean. It was not his dress either. Not for this dour Scotsman the wasp-waisted coats and padded shoulders of fashion, his brown wool suit was plain, austere even, but he had no need of artificial aids to emphasise the breadth of those shoulders, and the modest cut of his trousers only drew attention to the length of his legs. She was tall, but she still had to tilt her head to meet his eyes.
She hated being put on the back foot, especially when she was not in the wrong. ‘I find that a plain missus attracts rather less notice than a title.’ Claiming to be another man’s relic also legitimised her lack of innocence, but Cordelia saw no need to point that out.
‘Your father had no idea we’d met before. I’m wondering why you were so hell-bent on not telling him.’
‘My father trades in information. I find a policy of withholding as much as I can works best.’
Iain laughed. ‘In other words, it’s better to lie. It’s not a policy I’d normally advocate, but in this case—I doubt the man’s ever been honest with anyone in his life. Not even himself.’
‘Especially not himself. It is how he manages to be so very convincing in his mendacity,’ Cordelia said with feeling.
Her cheeks were hot. There was barely a few inches between them. Beneath the tension it was still there, that—that thing between them. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to notice that in the year since that night, the grooves that separated his brows had deepened. She didn’t want to notice that his hair was still the same shade of auburn, that he still kept it so close-cropped. She was having great difficulty regulating her breathing. She yearned for him to touch her. She would die rather than admit that. She needed to get away. Regroup. Retrench. Re-something. But first she wanted to get into bed in a dark room and pull the covers over her head and hide.
It occurred to her that he was probably just as keen to escape. Then it occurred to her that he had come to Cavendish Square expecting to conclude a very lucrative business deal and that she, inadvertently, had put a spoke in the wheel. They were both suffering at her father’s hands, but Iain was utterly innocent.
‘Forget about what passed between you and me,’ Cordelia said, ‘it’s quite irrelevant. If I had not happened to be here when you called, this would not have happened. I am very, very sorry that I was. I am sure that when my father comes to his senses and realises that you will walk away from this contract rather than marry me...’
‘I’ve no intentions of walking away from this contract.’
‘Yes, I know. I mean I assumed— You told me, remember? You said that you needed new markets. I know how important this must be to you, but I merely meant you would call his bluff.’
‘Oh, I’ll do that all right.’
‘Good. Excellent.’ Cordelia picked up her bonnet again.
Iain took it from her and set it back down. ‘You remembered, didn’t you? The minute you crashed into me, you remembered that day. That night.’
‘I said we should forget it.’
‘I haven’t been able to forget. Have you?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. No! Are you happy now?’
‘Do you remember, I had to tell you to wheesht?’ Iain closed the tiny space between them. His voice was soft, a whispering burr without any trace of the Lowland growl. If it were not for that look in his eyes, she would have said it was seductive. He took one of her artful curls and began to twist it round his finger. He had an artist’s hands, the fingers long and delicate, though the skin was rough.
The muscles in her belly clenched. ‘You were every bit as— You enjoyed it every bit as much, as I recall.’
‘I did.’ He let her curl slip from her finger, only to cup her jaw in his hand, his thumb running along the length of her bottom lip. ‘Too right I did,’ he said, and covered her mouth with his.
She almost surrendered. His mouth fit so perfectly with hers, as no other ever had or would. Her lips clung to his, her mouth opening, her hands reaching automatically to twine around his neck, her body arching into the hard length of his. Cordelia yanked herself free and delivered a very hard slap.
* * *
Iain staggered back, his hand cupped to his throbbing cheek. Cordelia had not been messing about, and to judge by the way she was glaring at him, she would have hit him a deal harder if she’d had a chance. Or more precisely, she’d hit him again if he took another chance. He was forced to laugh. ‘I suppose you’ll tell me I deserved that.’
She folded her arms across her chest and stuck her nose in the air. ‘You know perfectly well that you did.’
‘And I suppose that you’ll also tell me you didn’t want me to kiss you?’
She raised her brows and pursed her lips, giving him one of those looks that managed to be both sceptical and challenging. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone whose ego is in less need of pandering than yours, Mr Hunter.’
This time his laugh was spontaneous. ‘Come now, hasn’t the very man just left the room! But since we’re talking extremes, let me tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman quite like you, Mrs—Lady Cordelia.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
Iain shrugged. ‘It’s the truth. I take it you had no more idea than I of what your father was going to suggest today?’
‘I am pretty certain my father had no idea either, until your card was sent in. It was a surprise attack. He was ever fond of Wellington you know, even though the duke has fallen from favour. And with him my dear father,’ Cordelia said sardonically.
‘They say that the king is in poor health. When he dies, there will be another General Election, though I doubt the Tories will win, even with Peel in charge.’
‘No, my father’s star is finally on the wane. We will have a woman on the throne too. The influential Lord Armstrong is now past his prime and stripped of influence.’ Cordelia’s smile was twisted. ‘Not that I believe that for a second. My father will bend with the wind, even if he can no longer direct it.’
‘What’s more, he’s sharp enough to see it’s men like myself who’ll be doing the directing in the future.’ Iain grinned. ‘I have to admire the devious old bugger, even if he is deluded. I’ve no interest in earning a fancy title, and I’ve certainly no desire to rub shoulders with those who’ve nothing better to do than spend their ill-gotten gains on clothes and parties and horses.’
‘Good heavens, are you a revolutionary? Perhaps you have ambitions to put my father’s neck on a guillotine?’
‘No, but I suspect you would. You’ll forgive me being blunt,’ Iain said, ‘but you don’t hold the old man in much esteem, do you?’
‘I doubt you are ever anything else but blunt.’ Cordelia turned towards the desk and began to footer with the blotter, aligning the pen holder and inkstand up. ‘No, I don’t have much respect for him. About as much as he does for me.’
He could not see her expression, but something in the hunch of her shoulders made him guess at the hurt she was attempting to disguise. ‘If he means so little to you, why do you let him upset you?’
She turned at that, and he saw he was right. Pain shadowed her eyes, though she was fighting it. ‘My sister Cressie said something similar to me recently. She seems to have found a way of overcoming nature which I have as yet to discover, despite my attempts to do so.’
‘I must consider myself fortunate not to be encumbered by parents then,’ Iain said gruffly.
‘You are an orphan?’
It was his turn to shrug. He had no desire to add a discussion of his pathetic history into the conversation that was already convoluted enough. ‘He may be your father, but you’re a grown woman, Cordelia, he can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’
‘All very well for you to say that. You are a man.’
‘Aye, and when you look at me like that, I’m very glad I am,’ Iain replied, because the mocking look was back in her eyes, and there was something irresistible about the challenge of it, and in the sensual downward curl of that mouth of hers.
He caught her arm and turned her towards him, losing his train of thought in the scent of her, and the rustle of her gown against his legs, and in the way she reacted to the heat of his gaze, neither shrinking from it nor denying her own reaction.
‘I’m not going to kiss you,’ she said.
She spoke coolly, though her words were belied by the tempting tilt of her mouth. He slid his hand up her back, finding the delightful patch of naked skin at her nape, under her hair. ‘You’d better not hit me again.’
‘What, will you hit me back? I should warn you, Iain, I am not the sort of woman to take that sort of pleasure.’
‘Firstly, I never hit any woman, no matter what kind.’ Iain put his other arm around her waist, pulling her close. The perfume she wore was exotic, though the scent eluded him. The way she spoke his name made him shiver, made the muscles in his belly tighten, sent the blood coursing to his groin. ‘And secondly, you seem to have forgotten that I know very well what particular kind of pleasure you like.’
She did not move. He knew, despite her denial, that she would kiss him back this time. It shocked him, the fierce possessiveness he felt just touching her, so much so that he let her go. ‘I want that business, Cordelia. What has he got on you? I’m not daft, you wouldn’t still be here talking to me if he didn’t have some sort of hold over you. What is it?’
She hesitated, returning to her compulsive straightening of the desk furniture, aligning the already aligned pen holder and inkpot. Then she turned, her mouth tight with anger. ‘My family. My aunt. My half-brothers I have not seen since I left nearly ten years ago, the half-sister I have never met. And most of all Celia and Cassie. They were his trump cards.’ The pen in her hand snapped. ‘My two elder sisters,’ she explained with a curl of her lip. ‘Both are married to Arabian princes. I knew Caro and Cressie—they are my other sisters—would pay no heed to my father’s decree. Indeed, I was fairly certain his disowning me was sufficient for them to make a point of keeping in touch, but as to Celia and Cassie—’
She broke off, obviously near to tears. Iain wrestled with this completely unexpected revelation. ‘Your father disowned you? What on earth for?’
‘I refused to marry a man of his choosing.’
Iain shook his head in bemusement. ‘You wouldn’t marry the man he picked for you and he took the hump?’
‘I wouldn’t marry any man he picked for me. And if by taking the hump you mean he was offended—he was furious.’ Cordelia cast the broken pen on to the desk. ‘I know it sounds mediaeval, but he really could have ensured that all doors were closed to me if I’d given him the pleasure of trying to open them.’
Iain stared at her in horror. ‘Your own flesh and blood! Who does he think he is—some sort of god?’
‘One of my other sisters calls him a puppet master,’ Cordelia said wryly.
‘So they don’t condone what he did? But you said the eldest two...’
‘Celia and Cassie. It’s not that they condone it exactly, but to respond to any overture of mine would require them to keep it secret from their husbands. I have never met Cassie’s husband, and Celia’s but once, but the code of honour with desert princes is strong. No matter what they may think of the circumstances, my father’s will must be respected. That is the ace he was going to play, I suspect,’ Cordelia finished contemptuously.
Iain shook his head in disgust. ‘I can’t believe he would stoop so low. To keep your own sisters from you, and him your father.’
‘Which is exactly why he does not see it as anything other than his natural right, to order my life,’ she replied bitterly. ‘Cressie—my middle sister—used to say that we were his pawns in the game of matrimonial chess. She was right, Iain, believe me.’
‘And unless you do as he says, you won’t get to see your sisters in Arabia?’
‘I don’t know. I had hoped today that I could persuade him to—but that was before he came up with this ridiculous idea. Now—I simply don’t know.’
She shook her head, biting her lip and screwing shut her eyes, and Iain cursed himself for being so blunt. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve nothing to apologise for.’
‘He’s a right wee shite, your father.’
She laughed tearfully. ‘I have no idea what that means, but I suspect you’re right.’
‘Aye, sorry about the language. You can take a man from the docks, but you can’t take the docks from the man.’
She smiled at this quip, but seemed suddenly at a loss. ‘I’d better be off.’
‘You’re not staying here?’
She shuddered theatrically. ‘Good heavens, no. I have rooms at Milvert’s on Brook Street. I suppose this is goodbye. I wish you luck with your contract.’
‘We’ve both got too much to lose to turn our backs on this. I’ll walk with you.’
He was not fooling himself. That day over a year ago had been in every way extraordinary. He had never, before or since, experienced that instant of certainty, that deep connection that had led them both to believe they’d met before, that had transformed into the most intense attraction he’d ever known. Circumstances had colluded to put them together on the docks at the Broomilaw at the same time in the same frame of mind. Since then, he had thought of it as a day—and night—out of time. It had not occurred to him that they would ever meet again, but now they had done so, under the strangest of circumstances, Iain couldn’t help thinking that fate must have taken a hand. Not that he believed in fate, though his mother had been a great one for it.
‘I beg your pardon?’
He realised, as he took his hat and gloves from the footman, that he’d spoken his mother’s words aloud. ‘What’s for you won’t go by you,’ he repeated tersely, as they ascended the steps into Cavendish Square.
‘You think that fate has brought us together?’ Cordelia asked.
She had a smile that did things to his insides. Provocative, that was the word for it. Iain never spoke of his mother. His memories of his family were so painfully tarnished that he rarely allowed himself to remember the few happier times when Jeannie was still alive. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed, and he automatically closed his mind to that memory. He had always been driven, but this last year, he had immersed himself in his work to the exclusion of all else. He hadn’t realised he’d missed Cordelia until he saw her today. It didn’t matter that their entire acquaintance spanned less than twenty-four hours either. At some elemental level, he and she were the same.
Iain took her hand and tucked it into his arm. ‘You want to know what I really think?’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I think we should tell your father we’re getting married.’
* * *
Cordelia’s rooms at Milvert’s exclusive hotel were on the corner of the second floor. Pushing open the window of her sitting-room, she gazed out on to the busy street, her head whirling. With the Season starting to get into full swing, there was a steady flow of carriages and horses making their way past Grosvenor Square to Hyde Park.
‘You haven’t said what you thought of my suggestion,’ Iain said, throwing his hat and gloves on to the table.
She pulled the casement closed and began to wander disconsolately about the room, tidying her notebooks, folding her cuffs, wiping her pen, absent-mindedly straightening the various objects which sat on the tables, the mantelpiece, the hearth, before finally taking a seat opposite him. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘Do you have an alternative plan?’
She shook her head, pursing her lips. ‘Though I am more determined than ever to act, despite the fact that my father could make things very difficult. What’s more, now that he has set his heart on this ridiculous idea of us marrying, he will not listen to any alternatives.’
‘Which is all the more reason to pretend to give him what he wants.’
‘Pretend we are engaged, you mean?’ Cordelia asked, for she was still unsure about how serious Iain had been. ‘Lie to him, make him think we are doing exactly what he wants, so that we get exactly what we want, and then, when we have succeeded, tell him it was all a ruse?’
‘Strictly speaking, it would not be a lie. “Ally yourself with my daughter” is what he said, not “marry her”.’
‘Semantics.’
Iain shrugged. ‘He’s a diplomat—or he was. Don’t they trade in semantics?’
‘When you put it that way...’ He really was serious, Cordelia mused. It really was a scandalously attractive idea. She really could not believe he meant it. ‘But I thought—you said it yourself, Iain, you are a plain-talking man, an honest man. I can’t believe you are contemplating this. You are so—so straight.’
‘Unlike your father, who is as crooked as a bent pin,’ Iain said with a grin.
She spluttered. ‘No, no. Devious, scheming, but never criminal.’
‘He deserves to be locked up for the way he treated you.’
‘Yes, I quite agree, but I rather think this would be better punishment.’ Her laughter faded. ‘You really want this business badly enough to achieve it by deceit? I confess, you surprise me.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment. The man I’ll be dealing with will be Sheikh al-Muhanna, and I’ve no intention of deceiving him.’ Iain stretched his long legs out in front of him, tugging at his neckcloth as if it was too tight. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Cordelia. This deal means a lot to me. It’s not just the money—in fact, it’s not about the money at all. It’s what we talked about that day in Glasgow, you remember?’
‘Your turning point.’
‘Aye.’ He smiled at her. ‘The engineering challenges alone would have tempted me to go in at a loss. I don’t just want the deal, I need it.’
‘And you could have it, can have it, if I tell my father I won’t marry you. I’m sure he wants it as much as you.’
‘I’m sure he does, but after today, I’ll be damned if I’ll let him have anything the way he wants. I won’t be manipulated, and I won’t have you pay the price of my victory. You’re a feisty wee thing, and you’ve been hard done to.’
She threw back her head and glared at him, immediately on the defensive. ‘I don’t need your pity, Iain.’
‘I don’t feel sorry for you. I admire you, and I don’t see why you should sacrifice yourself so that I can have what I want, when we can both win. He’s no right to keep you from your own flesh and blood. Your own sisters. If I wasn’t the best person for the job, it would be different,’ Iain said earnestly, ‘but I am, and I’m not about to lose it because the likes of your father wants to stick his oar into my business. Chan eil tuil air nach tig traoghadh.’
‘Is that Gaelic?’
He seemed somewhat disconcerted, as if he had not intended her to hear the words. ‘It means every flood will have an ebb. Your father’s day is coming to an end. It’s not blood that will count in the new age, it’s science, and industry, and people like me who aren’t scared to get their hands dirty.’
Cordelia shivered. ‘Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you.’
‘We are both on the same side. Don’t you want revenge?’
She stared at him, sifting her responses, measuring them carefully. ‘If you had asked me a few hours ago, I would have said revenge was the last thing on my mind,’ she said finally. ‘I went to Cavendish Square today thinking to achieve reconciliation. Foolish of me, but I had to try. One last time. I shouldn’t have bothered, but at least I can be in no doubt of his feelings. Not even I could persuade myself he cared after that.’
Fury, red-hot and vicious, caught her suddenly in its grip. The muscles in the backs of her legs actually trembled from it. Her hands were clenched into painful fists. What had she been thinking of! He would never, ever agree to what she wanted from him because he simply didn’t care. ‘He doesn’t love me.’
There, she had said it out loud. Cordelia looked out of the window. The sky had not fallen down. ‘My father doesn’t love me. My father doesn’t give a damn about me!’ It felt good. It felt very good. There could be no excuses, no mitigating factors. He had been cruel, deliberately so, and malicious too. She forced herself to recall in great detail, every word he had said, determined this time to etch it on to her mind, a sort of memory-prompt should she retract, as she had so often in the past. He didn’t love her, but he thought, he still thought, he owned her, and it was that fact she had until now never truly questioned. Every act of hers had been in defiance. She had never felt entitled to her own life even when she had acted as if she did.
‘My God, what a fool I have been.’ It really was as if she had lifted the shutters on a darkened room, allowing the light to filter in, displaying the murky contents for what they were. She owed him nothing. What she had taken for love had been a sense of duty, a habit, nothing more. She didn’t love her father. Right now, thinking of how he had so nearly managed to manipulate her, she almost hated him.
‘So you’ll do it?’
She had almost forgotten Iain in the heat of her anger. It faded now, replaced by something else. She came back across the room towards him, smiling. Power, that’s what she felt, and it was intoxicating. ‘A double coup,’ she said. It was a very satisfying notion. ‘You know, it is really very liberating, being freed from guilt.’ She stretched her arms wide, laughing as she twirled round, the skirts of her gown whirling around her. ‘I feel quite giddy with it.’
‘I can see that.’ Iain got to his feet, catching her as she stumbled. ‘Mind you don’t fall.’
‘I can mind myself perfectly well. Just because we have an—an alliance doesn’t mean that I can’t fight my own battles.’
She spoke more aggressively than she intended, but Iain merely smiled. ‘I know that fine, and it’s one of the things I like about you.’
‘You mean there’s more than one?’
She meant it simply to deflect the compliment, to distract her from the realisation that it would be very nice indeed to have someone fight her battles for her, just once. But it was a mistake.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/marguerite-kaye/unwed-and-unrepentant/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Marguerite Kaye
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: PRETEND ENGAGEMENTBurned by love, and fearful of being trapped by marriage, headstrong Lady Cordelia Armstrong is furious when her father manipulates her into a betrothal with his business partner and her one-time lover Iain Hunter.Understanding Cordelia’s reluctance, Iain proposes a pretend engagement. For now they will make believe – but there is no need to fake the attraction that still burns hotly between them. As they travel to magical Arabia the lines between fantasy and reality blur. Will either of them really be able to walk away once their deal is done?