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‘Shh…shh,’ he said, rocking her. ‘Hush, lass. I know you’re not that kind of woman, but since your name is now linked with mine, whether you like it or not, all you have to do is to be seen with me on a regular basis and to agree to our engagement.’ Tenderly, he brushed his thumb along the line of her jaw.
‘Only seen with you?’
‘Er, no. There will be times when I’m sure we shall not be seen, but there will be other times when I shall wish to be accompanied by my future wife to various functions. It makes life less complicated if I can rely on a woman of your calibre to play hostess to my host. All those dreadful mothers and daughters. Ugh!’
Stiffly, she drew away from him and wiped a finger across one eyelid, giving herself time to recover. He waited until she was ready, then he rose and eased her to her feet, handing her a slipper that had fallen off and watching how her dark curls fell untidily at odds with her attempts to pull herself together. In his eyes, the tousled hair and her recovering composure seemed to typify this complicated woman with her conflicting social needs, her passionate yet fearful nature, her astounding stylishness and amazing generosity of spirit that was leading her into untold trouble. Hearing at first hand of her last four years, he could see how lesser women would have become hardened and embittered by the strain far more than she, though her cynicism had already made her distrustful of men, shunning their company. He could also sense the struggle taking place inside her and how, although she had responded to him, she was still on the point of refusing his offer. She would take more persuading than this. He took her by the elbows, turning her to face him.
‘My lord,’ she said, ‘I realise how you are trying to make this suggested arrangement sound equally advantageous to us both, but it isn’t, is it? For instance, did you ever make any provision for your lovers when they reached an interesting condition? Did you send unwanted infants to the Foundling Hospital? Did you pack the mothers off to the workhouse to get on with it alone? They do, after all, get themselves into that awkward situation, don’t they?’
‘Tch! Tch!’ He shook his head at her. ‘My, but you’re a fierce one, my beauty. Like a dog with a favourite bone. What is it that set you on this path, I wonder? Could we not agree to deal with that problem if and when it arises?’
‘That would do well enough for a man, I’m sure. But I know of a better way of dealing with the problem, my lord. From a woman’s point of view.’
‘Which is?’
‘Surely you can guess. This talk of engagements and understandings is merely a cover for something else, isn’t it? To all intents and purposes, I would be your mistress and you would leave it so, if it were not for my resistance to the idea. You see, I am not such a fool that I cannot see what you want from this relationship, but what would you say, I wonder, if we left that part out of the bargain altogether?’
His head tipped slightly, and Amelie found that she was being scrutinised until a ripple of colour stole around her neck like a scarf. ‘That,’ he said, ‘sounds to me almost like a contradiction in terms, my lady.’
‘Yes, I can see that it would. Still, who’s to know?’
‘I would. And you would.’
‘Does that matter?’
She knew what his reply would be, for he had already demonstrated to her how important it was. ‘Lady Chester,’ he said, ‘listen to me a while. Your fears about the intimate side of things are groundless…no…don’t protest. I can see that you have concerns, but you need not. I shall take into account your period of widowhood and, before that, your marriage to an older husband which, I take it, must have been more your parents’ choice than yours. Am I correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you had no children?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, then. But I think you may be overlooking some of the benefits to you in this. There is the matter of Miss Chester, isn’t there? Together, you and I can take her into the heart of society and, with the protection of my name, doors will be opened to her. Isn’t that worth something to you?’
‘You know it is, my lord. In fact, my niece’s welfare is my only reason for even considering your proposal which, I should tell you, offends every code of decency I’ve ever been taught.’
‘Coming from one who flouts the law when it suits her purposes, my dear lady, that is a load of moonshine that doesn’t wash with me. If there was ever a way out of the tricky situation you got us both into, this is it. Can you not see that? It may be that people will wonder at it. Well, I have never offered for a woman before, but we are both old enough to make our own decisions, and I am not likely to leave you in an embarrassing situation, my lady. I can promise you that, if you should find yourself so, as a result of our relationship, I shall not abandon you. There, how does that sound?’
‘It sounds like a typical man trying to make light of his responsibilities, my lord, if you must know.’
He drew her slowly towards him until her face was under his. ‘And this evasive idea of yours about being mine in name only sounds to me like a woman doing exactly the same. So now I shall make a decision for both of us, and if you think it’s weighted in my favour, that’s because you were the one to cause the problem in the first place. You have yourself to thank for it.’
‘You are ungallant, and a fiend!’
‘And you cannot afford to refuse my offer, can you?’
Before he could kiss her again, which she knew he was about to do, she lifted his arms away and stepped sideways out of reach. She felt trapped and angry, yet now there was a kind of excitement, an anticipation, a new dimension in her life to take her into the future, beckoning even while warning her of the risks and of the fearfully intimate part of the deal which she would somehow have to delay. He had not been duped by the ‘name only’ idea.
‘This is not going to look good, my lord,’ she said, picking up the sadly abused reticule. ‘A widow of only two years engaging herself so soon. I left Buxton to escape the gossip only to plunge myself into a different sort. I cannot imagine what my brother-in-law is going to say. Or Caterina, for that matter.’
She would have expected him to offer some dismissive reply to that. After all, had she not already been seen in his company, been visited, and had he not made his interest in her quite obvious to Richmond’s prying eyes? Who would be really surprised to learn of their deepening friendship, and who would be upset by the news except those dreadful mothers and daughters he had mentioned? And his parents. But to her annoyance, he simply rested his behind on the scrolled end of the sofa, sprawled out his long legs, folded his arms and waited for the rest of her objections.
Disconcerted, she tried another tack. ‘How long does it usually take you to win a woman’s consent to be your mistress, my lord? Hours, is it? Days…weeks?’
‘Never much longer than that.’
‘So you’ve never had to work too hard at it, then?’
‘I’ve been fortunate, I suppose. I find it best playing it by ear.’
‘Forgive the indelicacy. I need to know, you see, because you are apparently expecting a commitment from me in a matter of minutes, which surely must be some kind of record. I would not call that “playing it by ear", my lord, I would call it molto allegro con brio more like. Wouldn’t you?’
His laughter was so prolonged that it was some moments before he could speak. ‘Lady,’ he said, still gasping a little, ‘you have shown up a problem that had not occurred to me, I have to admit. Blame it on my keenness. If it will make you easier, I will woo you, take time to win you, seduce you. I don’t want to rush my fences, believe me.’
Blinking a little at the change of metaphor, she felt another surge of heat flood into her throat as the thought skipped into her mind that it might not take her as long to submit to him as she was indicating, and that she had already begun the journey, to her shame. ‘I have not been likened to a fence since I don’t know when,’ she murmured, moving away from him.
But his reach was long and she was scooped up against him and held fast while he looked down into her troubled eyes, all signs of his former levity gone. ‘Steady, my beauty,’ he said, quietly. ‘You are an exception. I would have pursued you anyway, with or without the complications, but they give me a hold over you that I will not let go of. I need to be sure of you; you with your prickly defences. I suspect you’ve never been truly wooed before, have you? It’s not only the Hurst ordeal that’s cooled you towards men, is it? It’s fear, too. I can feel it in your kisses. Well, we’ll take it slowly, eh? And you’ll not find me difficult to please, or too demanding.’
His kiss did nothing to convince her of that and, at the back of her mind, Amelie wondered once again how long she would be able to keep him waiting for her full involvement in the art of being a lover.
Breathless and reeling, she held herself away. ‘I cannot approve of this arrangement, my lord, except that it appears to solve my major problems. But I beg one thing of you before I am obliged to accept it. Please do not ever offer me money, for then I shall be no better than a kept woman. A whore, to put it plainly. I value my independence, you see.’
His face revealed nothing of his reaction to that, and Amelie thought that perhaps this time her outspokenness had gone too far. Indeed, she doubted she had ever spoken that word out loud before.
‘I shall not offer you anything, my lady, that you have no need of. Does that reassure you?’ he said.
It was a cleverly crafted, if ambiguous, reply that made her feel ungracious. Instead of warning him, she could have thanked him for helping her out of more than one very damaging predicament which, if it created others of a different kind, would surely be of a more manageable order. But for the life of her the only difference she could see between the blackmailing methods of Ruben Hurst and Lord Elyot was that one man was a vile and treacherous murderer and the other an attractive but heartless rake whose offer had perhaps not insulted her as much as it ought to have done.
As for not offering her what she had no need of, he would probably never appreciate the full significance of that or how it created the greatest of all her fears, which he had thought too remote to be worth discussing. In which case she must ensure that his promise of a slow seduction was performed ralentando.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that does reassure me. Thank you. Now, we must not trespass upon your brother’s patience any longer. I cannot hear any sounds of Haydn. Do you think.?’
‘That’s probably because they’re both out there,’ he said. Looking over the top of her head towards the garden, he had caught sight of Miss Chester leading his brother towards the summer house in the far corner of a lawn. ‘Shall we follow?’
The french windows opened on to a large verandah with steps leading down to pathways, plots and lawns. Further along the verandah another pair of french windows were open, too. ‘My workroom,’ she said, seeing him look, ‘where I am presently trying to incorporate a blackcurrant stain into a painting of a toadstool.’ She took the arm he offered, thinking it a particularly comforting gesture after what had just transpired. ‘What of your father?’ she said. ‘He will be expecting some kind of result from your investigations, surely?’
‘As long as the matter is cleared up, he will accept my findings. There will be no proceedings.’
‘Thank you. Will he accept your choice of mistress…er…wife?’
The arm clasped hers tightly to his side as they reached the bottom of the steps. ‘What a beautiful garden,’ he said. ‘Your design, of course?’
This was all very well, Amelie thought, walking by his side, but what is to happen when he wearies of the pretence or finds someone to love, someone he really wants to marry? Would she then be obliged to quietly fade away into a demimonde like Mrs Fitz Herbert, the Prince of Wales’s ‘wife'? Would the two of them have any kind of future together, her with her unacceptable northern industrial connections and him with his noble mistresses, while there in the background was the possibility of a pregnancy, which he preferred to believe would not happen after a childless two-year marriage. Not so, my lord. Not so. You do not know the truth of it.
‘My design,’ she said. ‘But still immature, as you see.’
Chapter Five
The needs of Miss Caterina Chester were of an immediate kind upon which good breeding and example from her elders would have not the slightest effect, and when she might have benefited from her aunt’s advice, that dear lady was talking privately with Lord Elyot.
Lord Rayne’s professed enthusiasm for the music of Mr Haydn appeared to have deserted him and, despite Caterina’s invitation to sit close to her, he neither helped her to interpret the score nor did he take advantage of their closeness, which Caterina thought a great waste. There was not even a hand-touching. Not even a long gaze into her eyes. Nothing except a murmured enquiry about her aunt’s horses.
In Buxton, she and her sister had commanded a faithful following of male and female friends who had taken the art of flirting just a little way beyond the boundaries proscribed by their governess. But Lord Rayne was in a class all his own—a man, the very first attractive man who had shown her some interest, and she was falling more deeply in love with him each day. If she was not allowed to show it, how would he ever know? Was she supposed to wait for ever?
‘Will you tell me something, Lord Rayne?’ she said. ‘Without thinking me too presumptuous?’
‘Probably, my dear Miss Chester,’ he drawled, stifling a yawn.
‘Probably what? You’ll think I’m being presumptuous?’
‘Er…oh, no. Of course not. What is it?’
‘Then may I ask you your age?’
‘That’s easy enough. Twenty-four. Why?’
‘Seven years older than me. That’s quite a lot.’ Caterina sighed, gathered the music sheets together and took them over to the table. ‘So am I the youngest of your lady friends?’ She glanced down to appreciate the smooth curves inside the white muslin, which could hardly have failed to impress him.
‘Oh, by far,’ he said, knowing exactly where this was leading.
‘And am I.? But, no, that’s unfair, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. I was about to ask if I’m the prettiest, but you would be bound to say yes out of politeness.’
‘No, I assure you I wouldn’t.’
‘Wouldn’t what?’
‘Say yes out of politeness.’
‘Oh. Then what would you say?’ She turned to stare at him, feeling that her innocent enquiries had suddenly turned into a challenge.
‘I would say, Miss Chester, that you were angling for compliments, and that I never compare my lady friends with each other for their delight. Bad form, you know.’
‘But I was not angling for compliments. I simply wanted to know what kind of lady attracts you. I’m sure you must have known dozens.’
Lord Rayne strolled over to the window, wondering how long his brother would take to win the prickly widow to his side. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Dozens.’ It was some time before he noticed that the questions had stopped. ‘Well…er…not exactly dozens, but a fair few, anyway. Look,’ he said, realising that something was going amiss, ‘shall we go down into the garden? Is that a summer house over there?’
It was a mistake. He knew it as soon as Caterina’s face softened into a flirtatious smile with a well-rehearsed nibble at her bottom lip.
‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly demure again. ‘I’ll show it to you, shall I?’
Summoning all his past experiences of summer houses, Lord Rayne wondered whether she would employ the squeeze-through-the-door technique, the cobweb-in-the-hair, or the it’s-quite-cold-in-here method. As it turned out, she tried the one where the top of her sleeve gets caught on something, but he was saved from the predictable consequences of that by the timely arrival of his brother and Lady Chester, who appeared to be gently arguing. Then, after a summary of the view across Richmond, they were off again, the men to their horses and Lady Chester to a late breakfast.
For Caterina, it was to do some soul-searching about the ingredients lacking in her usually irresistible flirting. ‘What more can I do?’ she asked, almost in tears.
‘Less,’ said Aunt Amelie, ‘not more. Rarely more, my dear.’ Impolitely, she licked the last smear of porridge off the back of her spoon and placed it at an exact half-past position in her empty bowl so as not to spoil the symmetry of the design. ‘Will you take chocolate?’
‘Yes, please. If I did any less, he’d fall asleep.’
‘That’s not what I meant. Pass your cup. What I mean is that you appear to be taking the lead, Caterina. That doesn’t give a man much to do, you see.'Amelie handed back the cup of chocolate, reading the affliction in her niece’s eyes. ‘It’s also a question of age difference, and the best way to deal with that problem, since you cannot catch him up, is to emphasise it. Pretend he’s too old for you, not that you’re too young.’
‘How?’
‘Easy. Start by ignoring him more. Show less interest in him. Look at him less, and pretend not to hear, sometimes, when he addresses you. That kind of thing. Smile and be animated, but not for his benefit. You’re far too concerned by what he thinks of you at the moment and he knows it. It’s not good for him. Don’t show him your heart. Keep some secrets.’
‘You don’t mean that I should cut him, surely?’
‘No…oh, no…nothing as drastic. Just pretend he’s a minor character instead of the main one. Men hate to be ignored, love. It really puts them in a quake, especially when they’re supposed to be escorting you. You saw how all those young officers buzzed round you this morning? Well, take advantage of their interest. There was that dashing Captain Flavell at the ball. He was interesting. And the one they called Bessie?’
‘Captain Tom Bessingham.’
‘Another captain? Well, my dear.’ Amelie sat back, smiling.
‘What happens when Lord Rayne offers to take me driving?’
‘You don’t have to accept him, my dear. Anyway, we’re riding this afternoon, so when he offers to assist you, show him politely that you don’t need him. It’s just as much fun, you know.’
Caterina was smiling again. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘oh, yes. I think I could have some fun with that. Where shall we be going?’
‘I really haven’t been able to find that out yet.’ She stood up, catching sight of a newly ironed newspaper draped over one of the chairs.
Lord Elyot had been annoyingly mysterious, and Amelie’s trust in his motives had now taken such a pounding that the idea of a mystery tour held no appeal for her. Although she was trying her hardest to conceal it, the events of that morning had turned her careful plans upside-down along with her personal code, which was to keep men at a distance and, as far as possible, out of her life completely. To progress from that to being little better than a nobleman’s mistress in a matter of days went against all her intentions, for which she blamed Hurst for his baseness, and herself for allowing her heart to rule her head. Lord Elyot was right about her being unworldly, and now her chat to Caterina about how to deal with men had left her feeling distinctly hypocritical and by no means as sure as she sounded about the outcome. Perhaps she ought to take the plunge by taking Caterina into her confidence, but the young lady was having enough trouble understanding her own situation without trying to make sense of her aunt’s also. And there was a limit to Caterina’s knowledge of the Buxton scandal.
‘You’ve what?’ said Lord Rayne to his brother. A deep crease drew his dark brows closer together like a thundercloud, his mouth forming a narrow line that heralded some caustic remark regarding the cool announcement. ‘You’ve formed an alliance already? I know you work fast, Nick, but this is almost indecent.’
‘Lord, brother, you sound more like Father every day,’ Lord Elyot muttered.
‘No, I don’t. Father would remind you that you don’t form that kind of alliance without first consulting him so that he can tell you why it won’t work. Is that why you’ve given him the slip?’ He grinned, mischievously.
Approaching the heavy wrought-iron gates of Sheen Court, Nick waited until they were on the long driveway before answering. ‘It was not the way it appears. I’ve had to move rather faster than usual, that’s all. Well…no, that’s not quite all. This one is different, Sete.’
Seton’s frown returned as he stole a sideways glance to judge his brother’s seriousness and saw, by the total absence of the usual triumphant grin, that it was indeed quite a different matter, this time. He drew gently upon his reins. ‘Well slow down and tell me, then. Are you saying you’ve offered for her? Why couldn’t you come to the same informal arrangement you usually do?’
‘Take her as my mistress, you mean? That suggestion would not have gone down very well, but the problem is that word has already got out that Lady Chester and I have an understanding. Don’t ask me how it happened, because I’m not at liberty to explain, but it’s there, and rather than have to deny it at every end and turn, which would take some doing, it suits my purpose to go along with it. But it looks as if Father and Mother may hear our names linked before I can inform them of my intentions.’
‘Which they will not like one bit. Send them a letter, Nick.’
‘Yes, I shall send Todd up to St James’s Square this afternoon with some other information. That’s the best I can do. Don’t look like that, lad. They’ve been nagging me for years to find a wife, so I may well get round to it, eventually.’
Seton picked up on the tone. ‘That sounds as if you’re not too sure of her, in spite of the understanding. Is she not willing, after all?’
‘The story’s a bit complicated, Sete. I’ll tell you one day, but I wanted you to know that she’s accepted me partly because it will help to get Miss Chester launched into the auction ring, which she’s having trouble with down here.’
‘Only partly? What’s the other part?’ When his brother’s reply was slow to emerge, Seton made it for him. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘so you’ve got something on her. She’s not willing, but she has to accept you to keep you quiet. Eh? Well, that’s not your usual style. And how long is this…engagement…going to last, may I ask, until you snare another bird, or until she.?’
