The Rules of Seduction

by Madeline Hunter

  “Miss Longworth, I have just told your brother that three thousand pounds are sitting in the Bank of England under Benjamin’s name. As his heir, your brother can claim the money. However, since he is so often ill, you may want to inform yourself as to his intentions for it.”

  Miss Longworth closed her book. She did not look at him. “Thank you for telling me, Lord Hayden. I will endeavor to help him use it wisely.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  Alexia did not confront Hayden about the way he had forced his presence on her cousins. Instead, she wrote to Rose as soon as she returned to London, hoping she could just pick up the threads of their reunion. For four days she impatiently waited for Rose’s response.

  Hayden was with her in the morning room when the early post arrived on the fifth day. When it contained no letter from Rose, the annoyance she had been harboring spiked.

  While she simmered with agitation, she fussed with the letters that had come. Invitations from the curious were pouring in as society returned to town for the season.

  She noted the names of families that would have never received Rose, let alone Alexia Welbourne. She would never have real friends among his circle. They would always be whispering about her marriage, always assuming Hayden had said his vows at the point of a sword.

  “You appear vexed, Alexia,” Hayden said.

  “You misinterpret my mood.”

  “I do not think so. What about the mail angers you?”

  She wished he would go back to his own letters and papers. Actually, she wished he were not even here. When had he changed his morning habits like this? He used to be gone when she came down, but now he was often still in the morning room when she took her breakfast.

  She held up the letters. “There are too many of them. Starting next week I will be onstage every night, performing for people who are not even your friends.”

  “Then we will accept fewer.”

  “You said we would accept most.”

  “Not if it makes you unhappy. Choose those that interest you, and decline the rest.”

  That should make her feel better, but it did not. She shuffled through the letters again.

  “Is it the letters that have come that vex you or the ones that have not?”

  How like him to sense the truth. How unlike him to force a conversation about the Longworths, however. By agreement the subject never invaded their nights, and it rarely touched their days.

  He commanded the room even in his relaxed pose on the chair. He had dressed for his day in the City in dark coats, and his appearance stunned her a little, as it always did. The coolness that had claimed him since they argued in Aylesbury hung like crisp air around them. He did not command her, but he expected an answer.

  She balanced for a moment between prudence and plain-speaking. As too often in her life, the latter won out.

  “Rose has not written since we left Oxford. I fear she will not and that my visit to her was ruined.”

  He reacted to the last word, badly. “By me?”

  “Your arrangements with the carriages could be seen as a kindness, if not for the way you followed her into the house.”

  “It is a pity she has not written and told you what happened in that house. It is peculiar that you have not asked me about it.”

  “Some subjects are better left alone. You have indicated that my cousins and their situation are among them.”

  “I did not anticipate how you would not need words to communicate your resentments. I do not intend to have my home filled with unspoken recriminations. Let us clear the air now.”

  “On everything?”

  The challenge hung there. The danger it contained shivered through her, and she wished she had not flung it out. She did not want to talk about all of it.

  Nor did he, apparently. In subtle shifts in posture and expression, he retreated from the brink. “I went to that house to tell Timothy Longworth I had discovered that Ben had an account at the Bank of England, one unknown to Timothy. A good amount of money rests there.”

  “That is all you spoke of?”

  “That is all that matters.”

  She did not know what to say. “Does Rose know this?”

  “I told her myself, so she would be aware that he was coming into some money.”

  “You could have just written to Timothy.”

  “I chose not to.”

  She looked down at her letters. The absence of one from Rose had a different meaning now. Perhaps their reunion had not been as successful as she thought. Maybe she had misunderstood. It might have merely been the final visit before a death.

  Hayden stood. His expression reflected thoughts of other things already.

  “Thank you for finding the account. That must have taken some time.”

  Her words surprised him. “It was an accident of sorts.”

  “Then I thank Providence for allowing you to find the account. It was very kind of you to be sure Rose knew of it too.” She looked up at him, and that physical pain stabbed her heart. “I wish we had not argued at Aylesbury. I want you to know that I am not disloyal to you when I speak to Rose. I do not compromise you in trying to build that bridge.”

  He cupped her chin in his hand. His gaze entered her, and his thumb lined along her jaw. Suddenly he was not distant and cool but so close and warm in body and spirit that it mesmerized her.

  “Are you going to your City chambers this morning?” she asked.

  “Eventually. I have some meetings first. Chalgrove and a few others…” He spoke in a random mutter, words that did not matter because all she noticed was how he prolonged the moment’s delicious connection.

  After the last days’ distance, this sudden intimacy, so close she felt their thoughts melting together, awed her. He stood before her so real too. So of the world and time, not a visitor who touched her body and soul under the cloak of night’s silence and mystery.

  Did he experience the same thing? Did he deliberately make the connection last and intensify, or did time stretch only in her imagination?

  He bent and kissed her. “I will not be able to return until tonight. Be here.”

  The servant found her in her old bedroom. She had retreated there to work on her new hat. Even though this activity would not earn the money to relieve her cousins’ straits, she still enjoyed it. She would wear the hats herself. Not having to please Mrs. Bramble’s customers freed her to design this one just the way she wanted.

  She accepted the letter the servant brought and recognized Rose’s hand. She carried the letter to the window as joy and dread battled in her. Would this missive be filled with the warmth they had shared again in Oxford or politely explain that Hayden’s intrusion had made any further alliance unlikely?

  Neither hope nor fear was warranted. Rose had written with a different purpose.

  Timothy has left. I fear he has abandoned us.

  She read the details with increasing alarm. Her impotence to stop this final injustice brought her to the brink of tears. The urge to do something, to somehow thwart Tim’s irresponsible behavior, sent hopeless, disorganized plans streaking through her mind.

  She sat on her old bed and read it again, trying to concentrate. Why had Tim done such a thing? Surely Rose was wrong and he would return.

  She wished Hayden were home. She wanted to show this to him, to ask him if it heralded the disaster she feared. She wanted him to reassure her that he would never allow Rose and Irene to become truly destitute.

  He was not here, however, nor would he return until night.

  When had it happened?

  The thought came to Hayden at the peak of his passion, when his consciousness split apart in an explosion of sensation.

  Did she hear the question? Did he speak it? She was with him in the ecstasy, her legs wrapping his body and her scent and cries filling his head. The question echoed in the aftermath, while they slowly relinquished the unity.

  When had it happened? When had the passi
ons of the nights altered the realities of the days?

  When had the desire to share her company changed his habits? When had her moods begun to determine his own? Her smile brought joy and her frowns brought worry. Either way she filled his thoughts, distracting him. No diversion appealed enough to keep him away long. He always came back early enough to slide into her bed, as he had tonight.

  He floated in a peace so perfect it would be a sin to disturb it. He did not care right now that his affection put him at a disadvantage. It was during the day that he sometimes analyzed this unexpected emotion and how it made him a man he did not recognize.

  He waited for his self-possession to reassemble itself, not much caring if it ever did. When that moment finally came, it jolted him awake. He realized he had drifted to sleep. He began to reach for Alexia and understood why the separateness had come so abruptly. She was not in the bed.

  No sounds came from the dressing room. He rose and looked anyway, then checked his own chambers. Curious now, he put on a robe, lit a lamp, and made his way to her old bedroom.

  A half-made hat perched atop a makeshift form. A scattering of notions indicated she had worked on this creation recently. Was that how she occupied herself while she waited to build a presence in his world? He examined the hat’s careful stitching and wondered if she would always prefer this artistry to making calls on ladies.

  A visit below to the library revealed only darkness. Concern began to simmer, then another possibility occurred to him. He mounted the stairs to the top floor and walked the length of the corridor that separated the servants’ chambers. He eased open the door at the end and entered the attic.

  A glow of light greeted him, swallowing that from his own lamp. Alexia sat on the floor near the window, much as she had the last time he found her here. Papers surrounded her again, and one of Ben’s trunks stood open.

  She did not cry this time. She sat straight, head high, her eyes closed, utterly self-contained. She seemed so separate from him that she might have been a stranger.

  He tried to tame the anger that flared in him. Perhaps this was how she spent her afternoons, not making hats. How often after he left her bed did she slip up here to gain comfort from this last remaining connection to her old love?

  She was his wife, damn it. His wife. She was turning him into a romantic fool, the kind of man he scorned, and she did not even know it. Nor would she care if he did know. He was only the man who had ruined her family, seduced her, then done the right thing.

  The anger conquered him, stoked by the admission that she had made him ridiculous, prodded by the stupid weight in his chest that proved how much she mattered.

  He strode toward her. His shoulder brushed some books stacked on a chest, knocking the top ones to the floor. The sound startled her. She opened her eyes and cocked her head, as if his presence made no sense.

  He stared down at the open trunk. He recognized the personal effects of an old friend long dead. They were also the talismans of a rival whose presence was so strong that even the grave could not hold it.

  Benjamin. Hale and happy Ben. So impulsive, so free. Logic did not decide Ben’s path in life. Practicalities did not curb his impulses. Nor did laws and morals, it seemed.

  He had tasted that freedom of spirit vicariously through Ben. Ben had been the direct opposite of Hayden Rothwell, and that had been his appeal. To Alexia too, he did not doubt.

  He understood. Right now it infuriated him anyway.

  “These trunks do not belong in this house,” he said.

  “I know that I should have sent them to my cousins weeks ago. I am glad I did not, however.”

  That did it. “I am going to burn them come daylight.”

  She grabbed the edge protectively. “Burn them? Why?”

  “Why?” She shrank as if he had yelled. Had he? “You leave my arms and sneak up here to wallow in sentimentality about a man who played you false, and you ask me why I want to burn the damned trunks that feed your unhealthy attachment to his memory?”

  She angled away in shock. His satisfaction at her reaction was short-lived. Composing herself, she straightened and faced him down. She might have stood and donned armor, so confidently did she pull her dignity into a defense to meet his assault.

  Hell, she was magnificent. Incomparable. No wonder he wanted her.

  “First of all, I did not sneak here,” she said, her eyes blazing. “Second, I did not come here to indulge in sentimentality. I received a letter from Rose today that greatly distressed me. Some details prodded my memory while you slept, and I came here to see if—well, I came to check a few things.”

  Her crisp, angry words punched the brittle silence that had engulfed them.

  “Rose wrote to you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted to, but you were not home.”

  “I am home now. I have been home with you for hours. If you were distressed by her letter—”

  “You made a rule that my cousins were not to be discussed at night. You made it clear that you did not want your pleasure disturbed by that which distresses me.”

  She said it factually, without bitterness. Her calm took him aback more than her assumptions. It was the voice of a dutiful wife accepting the limitations imposed by her husband. It was also the voice of a woman who had no expectations.

  Of course she saw the banishment of her cousins from their bed that way. What else would she think? Not that he had vaguely sensed from the start that they might share more than mere pleasure, but only if that acrimony were put aside at night.

  He sat beside her on the floor, just as he had the day he took her virginity. His loss of control had so astonished him that afternoon. It made much more sense now.

  “It was a selfish rule, Alexia. Very selfish, if it leaves you alone at night with your worries when you are distraught.”

  “I was not alone for a while,” she said softly. “I was not distraught for a while.”

  He was glad to hear he did not imagine the best of it.

  “What did the letter say?”

  “Tim has left them. Rose writes that after your visit he stopped drinking. He became ruthlessly sober—those were her exact words. He left three days ago.”

  “I expect he came to London to see about that bank account.”

  “That is what he told her. Off to find his fortune, he said. He kept laughing when he said it, as if he harbored a private joke. As of last night, he had not returned.”

  He smoothed her hair with his hand. “He is probably enjoying a good debauch now that the money is his. There is no reason to think he is abandoning them.”

  “Rose says he took a goodly amount of clothing. Two trunks. When she asked why he packed so much, he said there is more money, and he thinks he knows where to find it.”

  “Once he looks where he thinks, he will return.” He spoke with more conviction than he felt now. The bastard may well have left his sisters to their fates and taken off with the three thousand. He’d think it was his right to run through it while he ignored his debts back home.

  The little pile of letters on the floor drew his attention. “Why were you reading these again, Alexia? They have nothing to do with Timothy.”

  She lifted one. “I was not reading them. I came here to check their dates and the location of this woman.” She pointed to the letter’s top, and the date and town. “It was sent shortly before he left for Greece. It was sent from Bristol.”

  “So it was.”

  “Rose said something odd when we met in Oxford. It nudged at me then, but I forgot it as soon as we left the church and you—well, you were there.”

  You interfered, she almost said. He had interfered. He had staked his claim on her, visibly and physically. He had made it clear to her cousin that whatever had been said as they spoke privately, he would not have his place compromised. He had announced his possession and authority and been as petty about the whole meeting as a green boy.

  He had been an ass.

 
; “What did she say that provokes you?”

  She looked at him, checking whether he was really interested. Evidently convinced he meant well, she resettled her rump so she faced him.

  “When I visited their house before we married, I had asked Rose about Benjamin, just as you had asked me. I inquired about his finances when we lived in Cheapside and why he did not spend more then. Rose said he had still been paying one of his father’s debts and that was where the fruits of his early success were spent.”

  “That was the honorable thing for him to do. It would not make him melancholy.”

  “In Oxford, Rose told me that when Tim was in his cups, he’d begun to blame Ben for their situation. He said they would not be in such dire straits if Ben had not sent all that money to Bristol. Rose and I thought it a little mad for Tim to blame his brother for paying off his father’s debt. Tonight, however, I remembered Ben had another connection to Bristol.”

  She waved the letter. The town’s name hung in the air. It loomed from the letter in her hand. Her sharp mind had latched on to this coincidence, and her expression showed how significant she thought it to be.

  “Hayden, what if Ben was not paying off a debt but sending this woman money? A lot of it. Perhaps he owed her, or perhaps he loved her, or perhaps…perhaps he had even married her. She writes with great familiarity, as if he is most certainly hers forever. What if her demands, or his obligations, had become unbearable? What if—”

  She stopped, biting her lower lip. What if Ben found himself in a situation where he was bound to one woman through promises or fortune but actually wanted another? Would it be enough to send him into the sea?

  She was halfway to a plausible explanation of everything, even Ben’s death. Only it was the wrong explanation. Money had indeed gone to a bank in Bristol, but to repay that old debt from his father. And much of the other fruits of Ben’s success had gone to Suttonly.

  There was no way to explain that without telling her about Ben’s and Timothy’s thievery. The temptation to do so grew as he watched her hopeful expression. Her story absolved Ben of playing her false. She could go back to believing he had loved her as she loved him. Hell, Ben’s name would probably be the last word she spoke before she died then.