The English Witch

by Loretta Chase

  Though the words were rational enough, there was an edge of despair in the tone. Nonetheless, Lady Bertram only nodded and remarked, "Basil comes out of the adventure quite a prodigy of virtue. How very distressing that must be for him, after devoting so much time and imagination to wickedness."

  "Has he?" Alexandra couldn't help asking. "I mean, has he always been wicked?"

  "My dear child—you don't mean to tell me he's pulled the wool over your eyes?"

  "Of course not. I was only wondering if he was always so."

  The countess hesitated, but only for a moment. Then, without mincing matters—yet without dwelling on them either—she gave her goddaughter a concise history of Basil's career from the time he entered Oxford.

  When she had done, Miss Ashmore nodded as though the account was only confirmation of what she'd known all along. She smiled, very winningly indeed, and asked for news of Family and Society—in short, all the sorts of things a young lady who'd been out of England for six years would want to know.

  A week later, as Alexandra reclined upon a chaise longue trying to read a book, she found herself wondering where Basil was and what wickedness he could be up to now. Sense and Sensibility lay neglected on her lap while she debated whether his new ladybird was an actress or an opera dancer and whether her eyes were blue or brown or even green like Alexandra's own.

  But what concern was that of hers? She hadn't really expected him to visit her, had she? Still, she'd thought he might at least call on his own aunt. The days had passed, and there was no sign of him. Doubtless he was too busy with his dissipations.

  She was a fool to wait and brood like Miss Austen's painfully passionate Marianne, pining in vain for her faithless Willoughby. At any rate, there were far better things in store for Alexandra Ashmore. Tonight she would dine with the Deverells and meet a young gentleman who'd been invited especially on her account.

  "Randolph is all well and good, my dear," Lady Bertram had told her. "If you come to have a care for him, so much the better as you'll please yourself and your father all at once. But I'd rather you looked around a bit first. Marriage is usually a permanent arrangement, you know."

  Tonight it was proposed that Alexandra look at one William Farrington, Marquess of Arden, heir to the Duke of Thorne, and "as handsome a devil as you're like to meet," according to Aunt Clem.

  "He's all on pins and needles to meet you, my dear. He caught a glimpse of you the other afternoon as you left Madame Vernisse's and pestered Maria day and night for an introduction."

  Alexandra closed Miss Austen's book with a resigned thump. Well then, she'd look at him, and he'd look at her. It would be pleasant if he was handsome and even more pleasant if he was also relatively intelligent—though that might be too much to hope for. Her experience of idle, upper-class English gentlemen had led her to conclude that they were exemplars of the evils of inbreeding and, in short, not very bright.

  Mr. Trevelyan was bright, however. He did listen, too, and his answers were never patronising even if he did tease dreadfully. She missed his teasing, missed looking for the reality in his theatrical effusions and the bit of truth in his charming lies, just as much as she missed for once being treated by a man as an intellectual equal.

  There had even been those rare occasions when she'd startled him out of his formidable composure. She'd certainly surprised him that last night in Prevesa. Apparently, he'd taken her words to heart, for he'd been scrupulously well behaved through the whole voyage. She didn't like to admit it, but she wished he'd been a little less well behaved.

  That was the problem. She might have reasonably pleasant thoughts about him, except that the memory of his embrace kept intruding. Perhaps it wasn't terrible to enjoy being kissed—not when one was kissed so beautifully by so experienced a gentleman. With all that experience to inform it, perhaps a kiss should be enjoyable. Practise does make perfect after all. Still, the heat and breathlessness and sudden, frightening urgency of it—well, that wasn't proper. No, that part could not be proper.

  Which was, of course, why respectable young women did not go off alone with gentlemen and get themselves kissed.

  What started as a lovely kiss was bound to turn into something else, something that led to ruination.

  It was humiliating to admit even to herself that she'd been—at least at the moment—willing to risk such ruin. She flushed at the memory. Pride, not regard for her virtue, had stopped her. She was afraid they'd be caught and forced to wed. Yes, Mr. Trevelyan did make her think wicked thoughts, and yes, he was very attractive, and yes, his kisses were lovely. But as a husband—one who'd resent and hate her for entrapping him, who'd humiliate her with his mistresses—he was out of the question.

  How careless of him to begin it in the first place, to think only of amusing himself, and leave her to worry about the consequences. But why not? Hadn't she behaved like a common lightskirt? What was wrong with her anyhow? Was she wicked? Was she infatuated with him? Or was it only that he was so skilled a seducer?

  Yes, that must be it. She was the innocent victim of his wiles.

  While the innocent victim of Basil Trevelyan's wiles was staring obliviously at Miss Austen's book, Mr. Trevelyan himself had been having a highly agreeable conversation with Mr. Weston of Bond Street. Basil was just finishing his business with the tailor when Lord Arden sauntered in.

  The marquess's enthusiastic greeting caused Basil to look at him suspiciously. While their families were intimate, and the two young men had grown up together and caroused and gambled together, they were rather too much alike to trust each other overmuch. Thus, no real intimacy had evolved between them despite many opportunities.

  In a very few minutes, the mystery was solved. "I say, Trev," Lord Arden drawled as they left the tailor's shop and made their way to Watier's, "who is that perfectly stunning creature your aunt's taken in?"

  Only a week and she'd called herself to Arden's attention. Naturally. Every rogue remaining in London must have sensed her presence in their midst, just as experienced hounds would sniff out a fox. Basil pretended to think very hard.

  "Stunning creature?" he asked ingenuously.

  "Why, you sly devil. Of course you know who I mean, is this some sort of family secret? Your aunt refuses to be at home to me, and Maria won't say a word, only tells me I might come to dinner tonight and perhaps the young lady will be there. You must tell me who the mysterious beauty is."

  "If Lady Deverell is determined to tease you, then I certainly won't spoil her fun." What the deuce did the woman mean by inviting one of London's most notorious rakeshames to dinner with Miss Ashmore? Arden's reputation was worse even than Basil's. The marquess had both enormous wealth and exalted rank and took full advantage of the privileges attached thereunto.

  Not, certainly, that Basil could have expected an invitation. Lord Deverell, Isabella's father, was hardly likely to welcome into his home the young man who'd threatened his wife's reputation and his daughter's future.

  "Then you do know," Lord Arden said, calling Basil back to the present. "Well, I must be content to look upon it as a delicious mystery. Obviously, I dare not describe her to anyone and invite rivals. Not, of course, that there's anyone in town at this time of year. Still, I expect she will be there tonight. Maria can't be as conscienceless as all that. Come now, you must give me a clue. Is she a relation? Part French, maybe? Lived abroad most of her life?"

  "Possibly," was the unhelpful reply.

  "What a close-mouthed fellow you've got to be, Trev." There was a speculative gleam in Lord Arden's grey eyes. "But then I daresay you've got your eye on her yourself. Our tastes have always been remarkably like. Still, you must know she's not your type—not at all."

  "And what, precisely, do you think is not my type?"

  "Why, the price is too high, Trev. Marriage. Your aunt's standing guard, after all. No slip of the shoulder in this case, I'm afraid."

  "Then why are you so eager to meet her?"

  "Because I’ve ta
ken it into my mind to marry. Actually, she's put it into my mind. You know that my Respected Parent has been growling at me the last decade at least to be married and get heirs. He's been throwing that insufferable Honoria Crofton-Ash at me this age. Fortunately, my mother believes that a young man must sow his wild oats."

  "And so you have, Will. You've sown them with a ven—”

  "And here," Lord Arden rhapsodised, quite deaf to his companion, "is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Though she was across the street, stepping out of the dressmaker's, your aunt hurried her into the carriage as though all the demons of Hell were after them."

  "She only saw you coming, Will—"

  "I could tell she was no schoolroom miss, and I had nearly resigned myself to one day being leg-shackled to some green girl fresh out of the nursery—and they're all so much alike, one Season after another, that you'd think Almack's baked them from a single mold. Well, I can only thank my lucky stars I obliged my sister by taking her into town. It's the greatest piece of good luck.''

  The man was insufferable. He'd only glimpsed Miss Ashmore from across the street and promptly decided to take possession, as if she were a handsome stickpin he'd taken a fancy to at Rundell and Bridge's. What a coxcomb he was! Still, Basil only looked amused as he answered, "But you don't even know her yet, Will. I wouldn't count it good luck so soon. Suppose you find she's ill-natured?"

  "She couldn't look like that and be ill-natured. It's completely impossible. And even if she is—why, I fancy I might find ways to put her in better temper."

  The smirk on Will's conceited face might have goaded a lesser man to violence. Basil, however, only answered amiably, "Pray, my lord, do not enlighten me on your methods. You must consider my delicate sensibilities."

  The smile broadened. "Delicate sensibilities, indeed. Oh, you are droll, Trev. Not changed a bit after all this time. And what have you been doing with yourself—what is it?—three years now? How time flies. But come. Though I can't take you to dinner—being so agreeably engaged elsewhere—I will have a glass or two with you and you must tell me about these heroics of yours."

  Chapter Six

  "Ashmore? Not Sir Charles's daughter?" Lord Arden asked in some surprise. Surely that walking piece of antiquity had not produced this Incomparable? "I’ve read your father's accounts with the greatest pleasure, Miss Ashmore."

  The melting look he bent on her belied entirely his private opinion that it was the most boring stuff he'd ever had the misfortune to come across and that even sermons were better by half.

  Not having expected quite so sudden or so intense an assault, Alexandra was momentarily disarmed. However, having never been easily melted—well, perhaps with one exception—she was able, quickly enough, to school her features into a polite smile before turning to be introduced to someone else.

  It was a small group. In addition to the Deverells and Lord Arden, there was Major Wells, an old friend of Lady Bertram, and Sir Philip Pomfret, an old friend of Lord Deverell, with his wife, and Lord and Lady Tuttlehope. The latter was Henry Latham's eldest daughter.

  While civilities were being exchanged, Alexandra tried to sort out what Aunt Clem had told her about the Deverells and their affairs. Lady Deverell had been secretly married to Harry Deverell some thirty years ago. Not long after, Harry had drowned, and the then-pregnant Maria had married Matt Latham, Henry's brother. Only Harry hadn't drowned, after all. Three years ago, he'd resurrected himself and come back to England to claim his title and reclaim his wife and daughter.

  Half of Society, according to Aunt Clem, had decided that Lady Deverell had been a bigamist. The other half, apparently, had decided that Harry was two people: the one who'd drowned nearly thirty years ago, and the one who was now a fair-haired, handsome man in his early fifties and very much alive. At any rate, regardless which half of the ton had decided what, virtually all its members somehow found themselves accepting the languid Maria into their midst, her scandalous history dismissed as little more than another one of her eccentricities. As to Isabella, she was not only Harry's legitimate daughter, but Countess of Hartleigh as well, and even the highest sticklers could not exclude her.

  It was Isabella that Basil had schemed to marry. Alexandra wondered what she was like. She must be handsome since both her parents were. But was she languid and absentminded like her mother or energetic and blunt like her father?

  While Miss Ashmore was at her wondering, she was also curious about Lord Tuttlehope. Obviously devoted to his lovely blond wife, obviously not a rogue of even the mildest sort, and so inarticulate and shy he could hardly put a whole sentence together—how could he be, as Aunt Clem had asserted, Basil's very best friend?

  Alexandra had little opportunity for further speculation because the friendly, talkative Lady Tuttlehope pounced immediately upon her, drawing her away from the others.

  "Oh, how pleased I am to meet you at last!" the baroness burst out. "What an exciting time you must have had. I haven't been abroad once, you know, because Freddie wouldn't stir from England while that dreadful Napoleon was about. I can't monopolise you now, I know," (though she showed every intention of doing so) "because that would be monstrous rude. But you must come to tea one day soon."

  Not that her ladyship could wait for that happy time. Even as Alexandra smiled acquiescence, her companion went on chattering like an eager schoolgirl. Wasn't it an odd coincidence how they'd run into Basil so far away? And wasn't it amazing that Basil was a hero now and practically reformed—or so her Papa claimed, while Freddie maintained that Basil was quite the same as ever, and her ladyship must debate this with herself at length. "But here," she said, pausing to catch her breath, "I'm running on frightfully. What did you think?"

  Alexandra didn't know what to think and was somewhat taken aback by both the barrage and the sudden question. Not that this incommoded her interlocutor in the least. Lady Tuttlehope went on about Basil and about how Harry Deverell had wanted to shoot him, but his wife had convinced him otherwise, saying that it was a very long way back to India, and Harry had only just gotten home, and it was bad enough that he had drowned, but then to get himself hanged for murder was too tedious for words. While Alexandra struggled to keep in countenance—her companion's imitation of Lady Deverell was uncanny—the baroness was telling her how terribly disappointed Freddie was that Basil would not be joining them for dinner.

  "Oh. Then he was invited?" Alexandra asked in the most offhand way.

  "Well, actually, I don't know. Aunt Maria made such a mystery of everything. She's so clever, you know, though one would never think it. They're all clever—at least they were clever enough for Basil," she added, meaningfully. "But then, you know about that. I'm sure Aunt Clem has told you." Without giving Alexandra a chance to reply, she artlessly confessed that she was not clever at all. "And it's a good thing, too, or Freddie would never know what to say to me."

  As Lady Tuttlehope went on to tell what Freddie did say, Alexandra, feeling rather giddy, let her attention stray occasionally to the others in the company. She noted that Lord Arden had turned her way more than once, as though about to approach. Each time, Lady Deverell called his attention back to herself. Thus, when they sat down to dinner, Alexandra had still not formed any sort of opinion about him beyond the fact that he was a most attractive man whose attire could not be faulted.

  Lord Arden, who found himself seated on the opposite side of the table from Miss Ashmore and down at the other end on Lady Deverell's right, was beginning to wish his languid hostess at the devil. Maria had placed him there deliberately to torment him. There was no way he could converse with Miss Ashmore at this great distance. He must perforce be content to hear Maria sigh at him now and then between sighs at Sir Philip, or to talk with Lady Pomfret, who only complained interminably of India when she wasn't complaining that there wasn't a cook in London who knew how to make a proper curry.

  Well, if he couldn't talk, he could look, and there was feast enough for the eyes to make a man
never eat again, although it must be admitted that Lord Arden did honour to his dinner, nonetheless. She was even more beautiful than he'd thought. What wicked chestnut curls, to tease themselves loose from their pins and make her look ever so slightly but oh so provocatively dishevelled. And those eyes. Quite emerald green—or darker even—with naughty gold specks that danced when she laughed. She was delicious. Though she hadn't said more than two words to him, he knew she was perfection, which obviously meant that she must be his wife.

  This knowledge must console him as he lingered with the gentlemen over port—and they did linger, an unconscionable long time. When they'd finally done and moved on to the drawing room to join the ladies, Lord Tuttlehope drew him

  "I say, Will, odd tiling, ain't it?"

  "What is?" the marquess asked impatiently.

  "Couldn't say a word back there—Harry, you know. But he ain't here, is he?"

  "Who isn't here?" Really, Freddie could be the most exasperatingly slow fellow. A small crowd was forming around Miss Ashmore, and that made Lord Arden unhappy. Crowds were inimical to private conversation, and besides, they blocked his view of her form, so tantalisingly outlined by the elegantly simple, sea-green gown she wore.

  "Why, Trev." Lord Tuttlehope blinked in some surprise that Arden hadn't worked this out for himself. "Don't seem right when he went out of his way on her account. Could have come straight from Greece weeks ago. Least they could do is feed him, what?"

  This was amazing eloquence from the inarticulate Freddie and it seemed to have a point. "On whose account was he delayed, Freddie?"

  "Her. Ashmore's girl."

  Lord Arden patiently questioned Freddie more closely and learned that Basil knew Miss Ashmore and had travelled with her all the way from Albania. The sly devil had never even hinted at it through all the bottles they'd shared this afternoon. But then, why should the man make anything of it? Even Trev wouldn't dare toy with his aunt's goddaughter. He'd said nothing about the matter because there was nothing to say. They'd travelled together with her Papa and others, and that was all there was to it.