“And when are you going to eat?”
Swallowing, Moses shrugged. He did not owe this woman any conversation; if she was determined to force it, then all he could do was give the absolute minimum answers.
“You must eat, Sir Moses. Why have you not yet eaten, as ‘tis nearly nine o’clock?”
Why won’t she stop asking questions? Moses raised his eyes to her and saw nothing but good nature, and it burnt him like a brand as it came into contact with his constant bad temper.
“You are making that seat damp,” he barked gruffly, ignoring all her comments about food and meals.
Miss Vaughn jumped up hastily, and Moses was relieved to see a little embarrassment on her face. So, she was not totally immune to it either – but she was no fool.
“That is as may be,” she snapped back. “But your book is upside down, Sir Moses, and I am surprised that you did not notice that sooner.”
Mortification rushed through him as Moses glanced down and saw that she was absolutely right and turned it around hastily – but before he could say anything more, Miss Vaughn was moving across the room.
“And why have you not eaten yet?” She asked, peering out of one of the windows.
Now that she was not staring at him, Moses relaxed slightly, and closed the book with his finger marking the page. “I am not hungry.”
“Not at all?” Miss Vaughn raised a hand to stroke the velvet of the curtains, and Moses watched her, unable to look away, as she stopped hastily, feeling the dust on her fingertips. “What is there to eat, may I ask?”
Moses did not answer immediately; he was utterly transfixed by the way she moved. It was not purposeful: she did not seem to have any intended plan for her exploration of the room. She moved like water, forming her own path in defiance of the world, elegantly moving one way and then the next as her eye caught something else of interest, though shivering all the while.
“Sir Moses, is there anything to eat here?”
Moses coloured. Without speaking a word, he stood up, pulled at the bell by the fireplace, and dropped once more into his armchair.
Miss Vaughn did not seem to have noticed. She had discovered his collection, and before he could ask her not to touch any of the stuffed birds that he had so carefully organised, she spoke.
“Dactylortyx thoracicus, the singing quail.”
That was enough to capture his attention. “How the blazes do you know that?”
Miss Vaughn turned at the sound of his voice, and even in the darkness he could make out the growing blush. “‘Tis a remarkable collection – I especially admire the fact that you have included both the male and female quail, for I know how difficult they are to catch unharmed.”
Moses unconsciously put down the book. “Yes, it was considered quite a victory at the time. Only a few other museums have a set anything near like it.”
Miss Vaughn smiled, and Moses felt the power of it and himself quite under it. By God, she could ask almost anything of him and he would obey, obey without question. She was truly beautiful, but now this understanding of ornithology? What was she, a sprite that he had dreamed up from his imagination?
“And have you considered,” she began, but Miss Vaughn stopped as the door to the room was flung open and Baxter strode in.
Moses himself was startled; it could only have been three or four minutes since he had requested him through the bell pull, but he had completely forgotten.
Now he remembered, and Moses could not look at her as he said gruffly, “Take Miss Vaughn away, Baxter, away out of the house.”
Try as he might, it was impossible for Moses not to see the look of shock and astonishment on Miss Vaughn’s face, and it gave another level to her beauty that he fought to ignore.
“Out of the house, sir?” Baxter stared at him for a moment, and then shook his head. “No sir, not in this storm. She can wait it out here, surely?”
Moses swallowed. This woman was doing strange things to him, awakening parts of him that he had been sure were dead, had died a year ago, and the longer that she was here, the less control he would have around her. He wanted her gone, and he wanted her in his bed, and if he was not careful the first instinct would soon be replaced with another.
“Send her home in the coach,” he snapped.
But Baxter lowered his eyes and said quietly. “The coach is in the village for its annual repairs, sir.”
Moses’ heart sunk. “Typical. Send a note then, to wherever it is she comes from. Tell them she is safe and will be returned in the morning.”
He looked up at her and saw the intrigue and interest on her face. He puzzled her, that was for sure, and it stirred his passions to find himself the centre of a beautiful woman’s attention.
“Lady Kathryn, I believe is the young lady’s chaperone in this part of the country,” Baxter was saying, but Moses could hardly listen to him.
“Yes yes, send a letter to Lady Kathryn and let her know that her charge is well,” Moses snapped, cutting off his butler. “Sign it with all the trimmings, Baronet of Wandorne, that sort of thing. Make it so, Baxter.”
How could it hurt? Just one evening, after all, and she would be gone by the morning. And it was not as though he had much of a choice, with Baxter standing there mutinously.
“So be it,” he managed to say with as little emotion as possible. “Miss Chloe Vaughn, you may stay. For this one night, only.”
She sank into a deep curtsey, and Moses tried to ignore the desire to stride across the room, take her in his arms, and sink his lips upon hers.
A roll of thunder boomed over the house, and it seemed to shake the three of them back to their senses, moving as though unfrozen.
“Dry clothes,” managed Moses in a strangled voice, “and food.”
Baxter nodded and backed out of the room, closing the door with a snap that seemed to Moses’ ears to echo around the room just as the thunder had done so.
No matter what he did, he could not prevent his eyes from roving around the room, back to her. She had turned her back to him, gazing once more at the specimens that he had collected with such care. His instinct to call her back – to call her away from his precious collection – had faded with the sight of her delicacy. She did not touch them, peering with her hands clasped behind her back, as though to prevent the temptation.
Temptation was the last thing that his mind should wander to. By God, but they were so alike in some ways, Moses thought. Look at her curiosity: she could barely contain herself to find out about myself, and my habits – and now she examines the room in a manner so forensic, some of the best chaps at Oxford could not compete with her.
A strange sort of ache was growing in his chest, and Moses fought to ignore it. Miss Vaughn was just a woman – a beautiful woman, to be sure, and a woman whose figure was outlined most splendidly whenever he looked up – and beached or no, she would be gone when the sun rose tomorrow morning.
Not a word had been spoken by either of them when Baxter entered the room, placed a tray covered in food down on a table nearest Miss Vaughn, bowed silently to his master, and then left.
For a moment, Moses hesitated. It could not hurt him, surely, to partake in the meal with her? Something in him hungered, and he was attempting to convince himself that it was merely his stomach that growled for satisfaction – but the moment was lost. Miss Vaughn strode forward, picked up the plate, and began to eat where she stood.
Temptation surfaced once again in his heart, but this time, for a different instinct. Eventually, Moses gave into it.
“Miss Vaughn, why are you not seated when you eat?”
It was an innocent question, Moses reasoned, and he had managed to speak the words without shouting. Just about.
Her response, however, was not nearly as civil.
“La, sir, I am feared of getting your seat damp once more,” she said with a sarcastic smile. “So here I stand, and I beg your kind sir will forgive me if a puddle appears on the floor.”
Moses flushed, and an unwelcome sense of embarrassment crept over him. “I was not always so discourteous to my houseguests, but usually I have some choice in them! Be seated, by God, and let’s have no more words about it.”
Typically, this brutish manner of speaking worked well – at least, it certainly drove the servants to his bidding most efficaciously.
But for some reason, it did not work so well with Miss Vaughn.
With her grey eyes pointedly fixed on his own, she stood up a little straighter and made absolutely no move whatsoever.
Moses could feel his temper rising, and he tried to force it down. This lady was gentleborn, and it would not do for her to run and tell tales of his animal manner – particularly as he had been avoiding society for so long.
“Do tell me, sir,” Miss Vaughn said in a mock sweetness, “when was it that you last had a houseguest here? I admit myself astonished that it could be within the last twelvemonth, the place being as decrepit as it is.”
Moses swallowed. It would do no good to rise to her bait, that was for sure, and he did not have to sit here and take such insolence from a mere whit of a girl.
“You must be tired,” he said gruffly, rising from his seat. “I will leave you to finish your meal and – ”
“Is there a Mrs Moses Wandorne who prefers to greet guests?”
The dull pain that Moses ever hoped would one day disappear struck him in the chest, and he almost physically staggered with the sting it caused him. Blinking quickly as though a bright torch had been thrust in his face, he stared at his unwanted guest with painfilled eyes.
But in the gloom, she must not have noticed the effect her words were having on him – she could not, surely, for her next words were a murmur. “Though I suppose there cannot be a Lady Wandorne, or the house would be in better repair.”
And that was the moment that Moses snapped.
“‘Tis none of your goddamn business!” He snarled. “Who are you to ask such questions – you have no right to be here, let alone enquire into my personal business!”
He expected her to cower; he expected her to wince at his words, to feel the shame of them, to realise the pain that she had caused, although unwittingly.
But Miss Vaughn did none of these things.
“I am only making conversation!” She shouted back. “I am just as much stuck with your company as you are with mine, but at least I am attempting to make the best of it, with very little help I may add!”
Two pink dots had appeared in her cheeks, and a furrow on her forehead joined them to complete the look of outrage – but Moses found, much to his discomfort, that the expression only improved her countenance.
He stared at her in astonishment. This was nothing like Charlotte, who had been the epitome of meekness. Whereas she had been like a brook, bubbling in woodland, this woman was the ocean, crashing her waves down on whomsoever got in her way.
Moses found himself pulled in her tide, unable – and perhaps unwilling – to fight the current that was pulling him to her. There was something about this woman, something beyond the prettiness of her face and the strange mind that could declaim Latin and recognise strange birds.
Miss Chloe Vaughn was unlike any woman Moses had had the misfortune of meeting, and whatever uniqueness she possessed, he simply had to find out what it was. She was an enigma, a puzzle, and he could never leave one alone.
Certainly not one wrapped in such a delectable form.
3
In the instant that Moses opened his mouth to speak, although with no idea what those words would actually be, the door opened once more.
“Baxter,” he almost shouted, and the servant jerked in surprise.
The butler bowed. “Apologies for startling you, sir,” he said a little reproachfully, as though fully aware that he had done nothing wrong for entering a room, “but you had requested a gown for Miss Vaughn, and ‘tis only now that I have procured one, seeing as it is not an item I often have on my…ahem … person.”
It was all so absurd that Moses almost laughed. Here he was, desperate to be left alone and quite successfully so for almost a year, and now he was thrust with a woman dripping on his carpet who seemed quite unawed in his presence, and now a butler who, against all previous experience of his character, was attempting to make jokes?
All he wanted to do, thought Moses as he gritted his teeth, was to be left alone. Did that have to be so difficult?
“Why, thank you, Baxter,” Miss Vaughn swept towards him, gracefully putting the plate down as she moved. “It looks wonderful. There is a place, I take it, where I may change?”
Lightning flashed across the window, illuminating the three of them in some sort of grotesque theatrical scene: the butler gaping at Miss Vaughn, Miss Vaughn evidently delighting in the effect that she was having on both master and butler, and he – he was utterly lost in her presence. He had never experienced anything like this before: she left him speechless, whether shouting at him or identifying unusual birds. What sort of sprite was she?
And then she was gone. As the shimmer from the lightning faded, Moses looked around himself like a fool, certain that she had vanished into the light. She was like a dream, like a daydream that drifted into the mind and then vanished again.
It was difficult to believe that she had been there at all.
“Baxter, where did she come from?” He asked hoarsely.
Baxter frowned, as though the question was impertinent. “I have no idea, sir. Miss Vaughn appeared at the front door with a certain amount of noise and a definite amount of water, sir, and she begged for entrance. I did not deem it wise to leave her out of doors.”
“But she was alone?” Moses pressed. “None were with her, no one at all?”
Baxter inclined his head, and Moses felt a flicker of irritation spark in his gut again.
“Vaughn. Vaughn of Chequerbent,” he repeated in a low voice. “I have never heard of Sir William Vaughn, have you?”
This time Baxter smiled slightly. “Why do you not ask the young lady these questions, sir? Surely she will have an easier time answering them than myself.”
Moses coloured slightly. Baxter did not have to say the word, but he knew that he was being chided for his impertinence, and perhaps rightly so. There was no need for him to enquire about a young lady’s family; not unless you had particular designs on said young lady, and that part of him had died a year ago.
Most of it. It certainly felt as though a small part of it was resurrected each and every time that Miss Chloe Vaughn looked his way.
There was a servile cough. Moses looked up and saw Baxter looking at him with the first knowing smile that had ever graced his lips.
“May I make a suggestion, sir?”
Moses nodded curtly. Miss Vaughn’s fierce anger, the way her fingers twitched to touch the specimens but knew that she could not, the way the air seemed to change around her …
He was smiling. Why was he smiling?
Baxter’s smile broadened. “If you are so curious about the lady, sir, I suggest that you ask the one person that I can guarantee will have all the answers that you seek.”
Something leapt in Moses’ stomach. So, there was a person who knew all of Miss Chloe Vaughn’s secrets, was there? “Who?”
Baxter bowed his head and took a step to the side as the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen walked through the door. “Miss Chloe Vaughn, sir.”
Moses found his breath utterly taken away and cursed himself inwardly to be so affected by a woman, by anyone. But just one look at her was enough to force his lungs empty. His head started to spin with the lack of oxygen, and with a control he barely thought possible, he reminded himself to breathe.
The gown was a deep buttercup yellow, richly made from silk, but it was nothing to the woman that it encircled. Her eyes were brighter now that she was out of those wet things, her hair completely undone and flowing over her shoulders. There was an archness to her eye and a smile that threatened to dance across h
er face at any moment, as though she knew, as if she could see inside his mind and read the confusion there.
And then Moses saw that her fingers, slender but shaking slightly, were clutched to the capped sleeves of the gown, and they would not let go – and little wonder, for as she walked forward a ribbon danced in the breeze she created, and Moses almost groaned aloud as he realised that the gown was not done up at the back.
“I…I was wondering, Sir Moses,” she said in a faltering voice, and then she stopped, as though his face was murderous and she dare not take a step forward.
Moses swallowed and thanked his stars that he was seated and hence able to hide the very physical reaction that her reappearance had made to his body.
“Yes?” He managed to force his typical gruffness back into his voice, but it was an effort. The last thing he wanted to do was be gruff to this creature, this nymph of beauty that stood before him, vulnerable, almost certainly naked from the back, and his body responded to the licentious thought that rocked through him.
Miss Vaughn smiled nervously, but the colour in her cheeks spoke more of embarrassment than merriment. “‘Tis most unfortunate, but I must admit that I typically have a girl to help me into gowns this complex, and I find myself unable to … to tie the ribbon. At the back.”
No matter how many times Moses swallowed, it did not seem possible to moisten his mouth. With a croak, he said, “What a conundrum.”
“Is not it?” She was speaking now as though they had just been introduced at Almack’s and she was explaining that she had dropped her fan and could barely deign to pick it up, but Moses was not fooled. Behind the brevity, there was a deep crimson growing in her cheeks – and why not? This was a scandalous situation in itself, a young lady and a man alone in a house. And now gowns, and ribbons, and what he felt surely would soon be a request?
He was not wrong.
Ravishing Regencies- The Complete Series Page 46