The Seducer

by Madeline Hunter

  She guessed the reason for this decisiveness. It was the same guilt that had probably brought him to her chamber last night. She would have preferred not to see evidence of that. “I see. You have decided to do the right thing. I understand. However, that is not necessary. I did not expect—”

  “You expected nothing. I know that. It does not speak well of your opinion of me. A young woman has the right to expect something of the man who takes her innocence.”

  “It was not your fault.”

  “I have refused more blatant offers before.”

  A marriage of obligation was the last thing she wanted with this man of all men. “This is kind of you. Very decent. I do not think that we should do this, however. You don’t really want to, and I’m not sure that I do either.”

  “Diane, there are many reasons why this may be a mistake, and most of them have to do with my character. But you must do it, even if you are not sure. It will silence the rumors about Tyndale, and about you and me.”

  “So would my absence. My disappearance.”

  “I have already told you that I cannot let you leave.”

  She resented the way he kept saying that, as if he controlled everything about this. “I have the say in that. It is my choice. I do not need any money from you to do it, so you cannot stop me if I am determined.”

  “That is true. I can only do my best to make sure you are not determined.” He laid his hand against her cheek and looked into her eyes. “Do I have to show you how it is in my power to ensure that you are not?”

  His touch alone showed her. Warmth flowed down her neck to her breasts, and his gaze forced the time to slow. She realized that he had always known his effect on her. His indifference had protected her, serving as a shield that he wore for her sake, because he knew the easy pickings she had always represented.

  “Do you have misgivings because of last night? It is often not pleasant for a woman the first time. It will not be like that in the future.”

  She felt her cheek blushing under his palm. She lowered her gaze and shrugged. She did have misgivings because of last night, but not the way he meant. The pain had been the easy part. “Not all of it was unpleasant.”

  “So you said. Not entirely horrible. I promise it will not be at all horrible next time.” He lifted her chin with his finger so she had to look at him. “Do you accept my proposal, Diane?”

  The way he looked at her, so handsome and promising in his warmth, so appealing in his dark power, lured her to cast caution aside.

  Her heart wanted to accept. Her love yearned to be euphoric. Both were eager to be overwhelmed by him and the magical, enlivening spell that he now spun.

  Her better sense would not permit total capitulation. It whispered that she did not really know what she got in him. Jeanette’s warnings echoed in her ears. She was out of her depths with this man. There were layers in him that she did not know and possibly never would.

  “You are very wrong about something,” he said. “I am not only doing the right thing. I want this. I am hoping that you spoke honestly last night, and that you want it too.”

  He spoke roughly, as if the words were difficult to utter. It sounded as though the declaration was not one that he welcomed admitting to, and had been torn from his heart.

  Tilting his head, he kissed her. It was the gentlest kiss he had ever given her. It offered care and comfort and a hint of future excitements. It promised affection if not love. It filled her heart the way his long embrace had last night.

  That reassured her as nothing else could. The dark, unknown fathoms did not matter suddenly. Nor did the danger she had sensed in their lovemaking. No matter how this unfolded, she knew at that moment that his intentions were good.

  “Do you accept?”

  Despite the sensation that she took a reckless step, she nodded. In the daze he created, it seemed the only right thing to do.

  He smiled as if her decision had been important to him. “I will tell my sister,” he said, stepping away. “We will go to Scotland, if you are agreeable to that. The marriage will be legal, and our ambiguous histories will not interfere. I would like her and Paul to accompany us and stand as witnesses. Is that acceptable to you?”

  “Of course. However, since you barely asked if the marriage was acceptable, this new solicitous manner is a delightful surprise.”

  Her words caught him as he walked to the door. He paused and glanced back at her. “I regret to say that it probably will not last.”

  She had just been given fair warning and she knew it. “I am quite sure that it will not. People do not change so quickly.”

  “No, I suppose that they do not.”

  chapter 20

  Paul carried Jeanette into the chapel in the tiny hamlet near Dunbar. The clean scents of spring blew in the windows, and the vicar waited at the end of the nave.

  Diane sneaked a glance at Daniel. He appeared calm enough. Having made a decision, this was now merely something to see through to the end for him. He had not spent the three days’ journey here so unsettled that he could not eat. During their meals at the inns along the way, his manner had been astonishingly relaxed, even lighthearted.

  So had Paul’s. It had been Jeanette and herself who lived in tense silence. The two of them had taken one carriage, accompanied by Jeanette’s maid, and Paul and Daniel had ridden in another. That had left Diane with many hours to think, because Jeanette said very little the whole way north.

  Paul settled Jeanette on a chair near the vicar and stood beside her. Daniel offered Diane his arm. They walked forward.

  The vows were a blur. As if from a distance, she heard herself saying the words. It all seemed so much a dream that when they left the chapel the glare of the sun stunned her and seemed to snap her awake.

  “We will return in ten days, I expect,” she heard Daniel saying.

  Over at the carriages a coachman was lifting her trunk up onto the equipage Daniel and Paul had used.

  Jeanette gave her a kiss. Then Paul carried her away, placed her in the coach where the maid waited, and climbed in with them.

  “Where are they going?” Diane asked.

  “Back to London. Jeanette will announce the marriage, and by the time we return it will be old news.”

  The coach rolled away. Diane looked at the one remaining. “Where are we going?”

  “I have a small property nearby.”

  “We are going to hide out until the whispers die?”

  “I think of it as having you alone for a week.”

  She had been nursing a knot in her stomach since they left London, and now it twisted. The coach’s open door waited for the bride. She felt much as she had when she faced the front of Daniel’s Paris home, paralyzed by a fear that she had gotten herself into something that she had not planned out very well.

  A life with Daniel St. John waited in that coach. She only knew one thing about marriage, and she guessed it was all that would matter for the next week. If she were still ignorant she would be less nervous.

  His arm slid across her back. “Come with me now. I promise not to ravish you on the way, so you do not have to look as if you are facing the noose just yet.”

  The property might be small to Daniel’s mind, but she thought it was charming and just the right size. Nestled at the base of a low hill and flanked by a copse of trees, the old stone house looked out over a small lake. Two levels in height, it offered four chambers below and four above. The man and woman who cared for it lived in a cottage nearby.

  She and Daniel had not been expected, and they went for a walk as the couple rushed to prepare things.

  “They seemed astonished to see you,” she said as they strolled around the lake.

  “I rarely come here anymore. It has been some years since I visited. I lived here for a few years as a boy, but that was before Harold and Meg came. To them, I am an absent owner and the place is more theirs than mine now.”

  She looked around the property with new interest. �
��You lived here? After you came over from France?”

  He walked a silent twenty steps before answering. “Yes.”

  “Was this your family’s, then?” She pictured the house filled with people, and a very young Daniel running in the grass.

  “My mother’s family had owned it for generations. I do not know how they even came to have it. Probably from the time when France and Scotland plotted together against England.”

  “How old were you when you came? When you left France?”

  “Eight.”

  “That was the same age I was when I left England. What an odd coincidence. You left France to come here and I left England to go there, at the same age. I always thought we had nothing in common, but it seems we do.”

  “I suppose so.”

  They left the edge of the lake and followed a path into a small woods. Soon they emerged on the other side. A stone wall enclosed a graveyard near the edge of the trees. Daniel aimed north, toward the hill, but Diane entered the graveyard, curious.

  He followed and stood beside her as she scanned several dozen stones rising out of the ground. “They are old servants and such,” he said.

  “They are the history of this place, and the families who lived here. I find such things fascinating, since I have none of that myself.” Her gaze slid over the names that defined the lives lived here. McGregor and Graham, LaTour and Mirabeau and Jervais. Smith and Johnson and Scott. “There is no St. John,” she said, starting to walk so she could examine the rest.”

  His hand took her arm. “It was my mother’s family who owned it, not my father’s, and I said that it is mostly servants buried here. Let us go now. I do not care for graves as much as you do.”

  She let him lead her toward the hill. They went to its top and looked down on the house and the lake.

  “Thank you for bringing me. I like that you lived here as a boy, and that your family owned it for generations. It is not my family, of course, but I am officially connected to it now, aren’t I?”

  He gave her a speculative look. “It appears that you are now. Officially.”

  “You do not like to do this, do you?”

  “Nonsense. It is great sport. I don’t have the chance to enjoy it often enough, and welcome the opportunity.”

  They were fishing.

  After their dinner she had asked Daniel to teach her. Readily agreeing, he had found some poles, baited the lines, and now they stood side by side, waiting for something to happen.

  Something was what had not happened for a long time.

  “Perhaps it is supposed to induce meditation, much like watching the waves of the sea,” she said.

  “No doubt. Only less sublime.”

  “Yes, fishing in a small lake on a cultivated property isn’t very sublime at all, is it? A vista needs to be full of grandeur and power for that.” She glanced at a small volume poking out of his pocket. “If you prefer to read your book, I won’t mind.”

  He bobbed his line up and down a few times. “You are sure you can manage alone? They won’t be too much for you? Won’t pull you to the depths while you fight them?”

  She laughed. “I think I am safe.”

  “If you are sure, perhaps I’ll sit under that tree until you have had your fill.”

  He laid down his pole and strolled away.

  She played with her rod and line, trying to catch one of the silvery, slithering forms in the water.

  She decided that it was one of the best afternoons of her life. When he had spoken of having her alone, she had assumed he meant in bed. She had not expected this quiet companionship that they had shared during these hours, imbued as it was with the intimacy of that long night in his arms.

  The fish simply did not want to be caught. She knew that if she could get her line farther in the lake, her luck would improve. Looking back at Daniel, she saw that he was involved with his reading.

  Sitting on the ground, she peeled off her hose. Skirt bunched to her knees in one hand and rod in the other, she waded into the lake and cast her line.

  The hook sank. She stood as still as she could, with the cool water lapping at her, dampening the edge of her dress. She hitched it a bit higher and tucked the pole under her other arm.

  A sharp tug told her a fish was on her hook. There was no way to bring it in, however, without dropping her skirt into the water. Excited by her success, she turned and walked back to the lake’s edge, dragging the squirming weight behind her.

  She stepped onto the grass, water dripping down her legs, her skirt scrunched in her hand and up her thighs. She examined her muddy feet, and then looked up, right into Daniel’s eyes.

  He no longer read. He watched her, and she guessed he had been doing so for some time. She let her gown drop and turned to bring in the fish.

  “It isn’t nearly as large as it felt on the line,” she said as she pulled it out of the water. “I think I should put it back.”

  “I will do it.” He got up to come and help.

  She had already taken care of it, however. Without thinking, she grasped the fish and removed the hook. By the time he reached her, the little fish was flying through the air, back to the water.

  “You did that very well. Most women do not like to touch them.”

  She gazed at her hand where the fish had just been. She had done it very well. Nor had the feel of the fish been a surprise. “I think that I did it before. As a child. Certainly not since, or I would remember. I will smell of fish now, I’m afraid.”

  He took her hand and sniffed it. His breath sent chills up her arm. “Not a bad smell. All the same, we will bathe you.” He took the rod from her hand. “Let us go in now. It is getting late.”

  She grabbed up her hose and shoes, and walked barefoot back to the house. The grass felt familiar beneath her feet. She had done this before too. It was another little echo from her lost childhood, she was sure.

  Daniel spoke privately with Harold before joining her in the sitting room. As he sat by the window in the late-afternoon sun’s glow, numerous bootsteps sounded on the back stairs.

  A Chinese urn stood on a table in a corner. She examined it. “One of yours?”

  “Yes. I brought it back from one of my first journeys to the East.”

  “Ming?”

  He laughed. “No. You can break this one. It was made for export and is not very valuable. I did not know what it was at the time, but it appealed to me and I began learning more about them.”

  “You have many Oriental things. Your chamber in London . . .” She caught herself as memories of that chamber blocked her throat. “Is that what you carry in your ships mostly? Urns and such?”

  “Sometimes. Often less interesting things.”

  “They must have been valuable even if less interesting, if they made you wealthy.”

  “Luck played its role. So did big risks that turned out well. For years I did not carry other men’s cargo, only my own. If one ship had gone down I might be plying the waters today, hauling nothing but dried fish.”

  “Why didn’t you avoid those risks?”

  He shrugged. “I was very young when I started, and very impatient.”

  How young? She swallowed the question, but she wanted to ask it. After all, he was still fairly young. He must have been very young when he brought her to Rouen, but he spoke of knowing her father through shipping, so it had to be after some of those big risks. But that would make him ridiculously young when he began making his fortune.

  She glanced at him. Maybe he was older than she thought. Some men look younger than their years. His life had not been pampered, however. For a long time he was at sea and traveling around the world.

  “You say very young as if you are an old man. You can’t be more than thirty-two or -three.”

  “When the years are full, it takes longer to live them.”

  It was a good answer, but not the one she wanted. He had neither corrected her, nor agreed.

  “There are rumors about you, besides
those involving me. Did you know that? The countess told me that some say you were a pirate in the eastern seas. Were your risks as big as that?”

  “You worry that you have married a pirate? Nothing so dashing, I’m afraid. Why, there were not more than two or three episodes in all those years that could be described that way.”

  He was teasing her. Mostly. She suspected that there had been episodes that might indeed be described that way.

  She perused the books in the case on one wall. She did not really see the titles and bindings. She pictured him in the chair by the window, his booted legs crossed, his cravat indifferently tied, his elbow propped on the chair’s arm, and his chin in his hand.

  She felt his attention on her.

  Harold appeared at the door, caught Daniel’s eye, and made a vague gesture to the second level. He disappeared. Other sounds from the back of the house, of Meg moving about the kitchen, stopped.

  “Your bath is ready upstairs,” Daniel said.

  A bath would be welcome. She still stood in bare feet, and the lake’s mud had crusted on her legs. Her hand still smelled vaguely of fish.

  She turned to leave the room. He sat there, much as she had seen him in her mind. He appeared so handsome that she did not want to move. His presence charged the air in the chamber, flustering her even though he merely looked at her.

  “How do you want to do this, Diane? Would you prefer to bathe alone before I come up?”

  A stimulating stab jolted her low and deep as her body understood the implications of what he said.

  He had been so mild all day. He had barely touched her. She had assumed that this would be delayed until after supper. Until tonight.

  She just stood there, feeling stupid and nervous.

  He rose and came over to her. Her heart began a slow, rising spin. “Meg has left with Harold and returned to their cottage. You will probably need some help with lacings and such.”

  He took her hand. Resisting the urge to dig in her heels, she let him lead her from the chamber. She plucked up her courage and tried to contain the muddle of reactions swimming through her. They were married now, and she would not act like a foolish girl. She was not even an innocent, and would not behave like one.