by Louise Allen
‘Lady Carstairs? She always was an empty-headed peahen. If your poor dear mama couldn’t keep you in line, what hope has Florence Carstairs?’
‘I am resolved not to be a trial to her,’ Laura said and was rewarded with a crack of laugher.
‘Well, you are too pale to compete with this year’s beauties—and you are getting to be too old for any nonsense into the bargain. Time to stop flitting about and find a husband.’ The dowager flapped her hands at Laura as if she was a troublesome chicken. ‘Go on, there are enough of them out there. In fact, I saw just the man a moment ago. Neither of you are in a position to be too fussy. Now where has he gone?’
There were limits to polite toleration of one’s elders, Laura decided, murmuring an excuse and moving away into the thronged reception room before the old dragon spotted that Cousin Florence was nowhere to be seen or located the rather less-than-ideal candidate she had in mind for Laura’s hand. She was too pale, too old and had too much of a reputation to be entirely eligible apparently, but what were the gentleman’s faults, such that he could not afford to be fussy either? she wondered. Buck teeth, a spreading waistline and a gambling habit, perhaps?
‘Lady Laura! You have returned to us and as lovely as ever.’ Lord Gordon Johnston placed one elegant hand on his beautifully tailored chest, approximately where his heart would be if he possessed one, and sketched a bow.
‘Nonsense, Lord Gordon. I have it on the best authority that I am too pale and too old and had best find myself a husband before I am at my last prayers.’ She had known him for years and knew, too, that the only way to avoid becoming the victim of his barbed tongue was to show him no chink in one’s armour.
Lady Birtwell was right: she was too pale, she had lost her bloom and it was going to take sunshine, excitement and entertainment to bring it back and drive away the memories of the past few months. Meanwhile she must take care to seem as carefree and as secure as ever if she wanted to hold her place amongst the ton and not slip into being that poor Lady Laura, on the shelf and at her last prayers.
‘As white as the lily,’ Lord Gordon agreed, running the tip of one finger down her cheek. ‘Such a dutiful daughter to shut yourself away in your blacks for so long. And when will we be seeing the new Earl of Hartland in town?’
‘Very soon, I hope. The house is all ready for him.’ Smile, don’t let him see you care about another man in Papa’s place.
‘And you are ready for a whirl of pleasure, my dear?’
‘Of course. Now who is new on the scene and lots of fun?’ And why don’t I care any more? Must pretend, must keep up the mask.
‘Let me think.’ Lord Gordon surveyed the guests through narrowed eyes. ‘How about Viscount Newlyn? Fresh in town, still a trifle gauche, pots of money and an itch to spend it. And such a pretty boy, if rather too aware of it. He’s over there, I’ll introduce you.’
Laura allowed him to guide her through the crowd to a group of old acquaintances clustered around a tall, blond young exquisite who looked as though he was all too conscious of every detail of his own appearance and who had spent a good hour before the mirror preening before he came out.
Irritating puppy, Laura decided, taking a mild dislike to him on sight. Still, if he threw good parties and was amusing she supposed she could tolerate him.
‘Lady Laura!’ He took her hand and pressed his lips to it. Laura extricated it with some difficulty and smiled at the various acquaintances who were greeting her. A year ago she would have called them her friends, now, she realised, she had not missed one of them while she had been out of society. ‘…delighted.’ The viscount was still talking. ‘I had no idea I would be so fortunate as to be introduced to Scandal’s Virgin herself within a week of arriving in London.’
The circle around him fell silent. The nickname was whispered but never spoken in the presence of Lady Laura herself. Miss Willmott, always nervous, gasped and gave a frightened little giggle, Lady Pamela Tutt started an abrupt, desperate monologue about the problems she was having with her maid and Lord Gordon’s rather thin lips curved in anticipation of an explosion.
Laura waited a heartbeat, just long enough for Lord Newlyn to realise he had made a major error, then smiled. ‘Why, my lord, I had no idea we were already on such terms as to be using pet names. What is yours? The Blond Blunderer, perhaps?’
There was laughter all round the group at that and the gentlemen, several of whom had stiffened, ready to intervene on Laura’s behalf, relaxed. The viscount coloured, his expression rigid, but there was real anger in his eyes, she recognised. He was obviously not used to set-downs. ‘My apologies, ma’am,’ he said before he turned out of the small circle and stalked away towards the card room.
‘A clumsy youth,’ Lord Petersfield drawled. ‘A mother’s boy, no doubt, used to being the centre of attention amongst his little circle in Essex.’
‘Oh well, Essex…’ Lady Pamela tittered ‘that explains it. Now, my dear Lady Laura, how are you going to amuse yourself now you are back amongst us? Mrs Bridgeport is promising the most delightful picnic next week if the weather holds…’
*
Laura finally found herself alone after an hour, talked out and rather weary. She was, she realised, thoroughly out of practice for late nights, hot rooms and constant conversation. Either that or the social scene was no longer enough to hold her attention, which was alarming. If she did not have that, her drug to stop her thinking, then how was she going to cope with the cold, empty centre of her life?
She didn’t even want to flirt and tease now, to punish any more men for her abandonment by one of them. Because now she knew it was not Piers who had thoughtlessly abandoned her, but Lord Wykeham who had torn him from her and made her baby illegitimate. He is probably to blame for Piers’s death as well, she thought, staring up at a lurid battle scene in oils that hung by the terrace doors. If Piers had not gone back just in time for that skirmish…
‘Lady Laura, allow me to offer you this glass of champagne.’ It was Lord Newlyn, a glass in each hand and expression of contrition on his handsome, boyishly smooth, face. ‘Let me make amends for my blunder just now.’
She could have snubbed him, turned on her heel, or cut at him with some clever jibe, but, Laura thought with a sigh, it was not his fault she was in such a bad mood and perhaps she should give him the benefit of the doubt.
‘Thank you.’ She took the glass and sipped. ‘Please, do not regard it. I know you are but recently in London.’
‘Indeed. Please, could we not step out onto the terrace and talk? I am sure you could give me valuable pointers about how to go on.’
So that is to be my role in life, is it? Delivering wise words to young cubs. But it was too hot and too noisy and her head ached and her feet in the new satin slippers throbbed. ‘Very well.’
It was a mistake. She realised it as soon as she set her glass down on the balustrade, as soon as Lord Newlyn moved in and trapped her in the angle of the stonework with far too adroit a manoeuvre for the green young man she had thought him. ‘And who better to show me all the tricks but someone such as yourself?’ he said as he put one hand on her waist and the other firmly on her left breast.
Laura was taken off guard for a vital second and by the time she realised what she was dealing with he had bent and was pressing hot kisses all over her face. She twisted her head away, jerked up her knee and freed one hand to give him a stinging slap around the ear. ‘You lout!’ she gasped as he crashed backwards, far too far and violently for the blow she had struck him.
‘The very words,’ a deep, hard voice agreed and she realised a man had taken the viscount by the collar and had sent him sprawling on the flagstones. ‘Pick yourself up, apologise to the lady and remove yourself from this house before I find it necessary to deal with you further.’
They were all in shadow, but Laura pressed herself back against the unyielding stonework in one direction with as much desperation as Lord Newlyn was scuttling backwards on the ground in th
e other. With his back to her, obviously intent on shielding her, was a broad-shouldered figure she would have recognised anywhere.
‘I…I’m sorry, ma’am,’ the viscount managed. He got to his feet and hurried away, his tousled blond hair catching the light from the reception room as he stumbled past the doors.
‘Are you all right?’ The tall man turned, his face still shadowed. ‘May I call your chaperon or a friend to you? It was perhaps not wise to have come out here alone with a young buck like that.’
‘Thank you, no. I need no one.’ It was impossible not to speak and impossible he would not recognise her voice, as she recognised his. ‘Lord Wykeham.’ What was he doing here, in London? In England, even?
‘Caroline?’ He went still.
‘No.’ Laura sidestepped and walked away towards the doors, stopped at the edge of the spill of light and turned to face him. ‘No, my lord. That is not my name.’ She could not make out his face beyond a pale oval against the blackness of the shrubs, let alone read his expression, but the shock and tension came off him like heat from a fire.
She lifted her chin and stood there, deliberately posed in the slender column of rose-pink silk overlaid with silver gauze. The neckline swooped low over her shoulders and bosom, the sleeves were mere puffs of ribbon and her hair was piled high in the latest style. She knew the rubies at her throat and in her ears would pulse in the light in time with her breathing because she had studied the effect in the mirror, and she knew she looked elegant, expensive and provocative, a hundred miles from the genteel respectability of the widow she had pretended to be. It was instinct to display herself and not to try to hide. Avery was here and there was no escape: she would stand and fight.
‘Then who are you?’ He took three long strides forward and confronted her. ‘Step back into the shadow, we cannot be seen like this.’
Laura shrugged, a careless twitch of one shoulder that had his gaze dropping to the swell of her breasts as the silk shifted. ‘No one will be surprised if I am seen on the terrace with a man.’
‘Who are you?’ Avery repeated. She could smell him, his familiar shaving soap, a discreet hint of cologne, the provocative warmth of a man who had been in a crowded room all evening. ‘What are you hiding from?’
‘I am not hiding from anything. Anyone.’ She tipped up her chin. ‘I am Lady Laura Campion.’
Avery went very still, the hiss of breath between his teeth the only sign of the shock she must have given him. ‘How dared you insinuate yourself into my house under false pretences?’ he said, the words low and even, at odds with the anger in the question.
‘How dared you steal my child?’ she flung back, unable to match his icy control. ‘How could you accuse Piers of being a coward and send him to his death?’
‘I sent him to do his duty. He made a choice when he took a commission and he knew the odds of being killed. If I failed him, it was by neglecting to teach him how to recognise a heartless wanton when he saw one. Just look at you now.’
‘You hypocrite.’ The stinging injustice of his words steadied her, gave her back some steadiness, even if it was only the rigidity of fury. ‘You just like control, that is it, isn’t it? You wanted to control Piers’s life, you want to control his estate, you want to control his daughter’s future.’
‘I love that child.’
‘I noticed. You love her so much that you let her think her mother left her.’
‘Instead of telling her that you gave her away?’
‘I—’ Her parents had done it for the best of motives, she tried to believe that. ‘It was the only thing to do.’
‘Of course it was,’ Avery said, his tone so reasonable that she gaped at him. He moved into the edge of the light and she saw his face, took a step back before she could control her reactions and stand her ground. ‘The only thing if you wanted to forget about Piers, if you wanted to resume your gilded life, catch an eligible husband and had no care for your child.’
‘What choice had I?’ she flung at him and moved away, out of the light where he had her pinned like a moth against a lantern. ‘You know perfectly well I would have ruined both my daughter and myself if I had kept her.’
‘Of course I know that, but you could have gone to his family.’
‘And what good would that have done?’ Laura enquired. She groped her way to the balustrade and gripped the cool stonework, the dried lichen rough against the fine kid of her long gloves. ‘His mother died shortly after he joined the army. There was no one to go to.’
‘There was me. I came back.’ Avery must have moved as she did, for he was very close now, the lepidopterist ready to skewer the captive moth with a long pin now she was fluttering, helpless.
‘And what would you have done, pray?’
‘Married you,’ he said.
‘Married me? Why? Why would you have helped me?’
‘I would have not crossed the road for you,’ Avery said dismissively. ‘I would have done it for Piers and for his child.’
‘Easy to say now,’ Laura jibed. Inside she quaked. Where did the brave, defiant words come from? She was shaking so much she could hardly stand.
‘You would not recognise a sense of honour if you fell over it.’ The anger had finally surfaced and cracked his control. ‘You sent the baby to the other end of the country to be brought up as a poor farmer’s daughter. You had no intention of keeping watch over her, simply of getting rid of an embarrassing encumbrance. You might have found her a good home close at hand, but that is too late now. You will stay away from Alice, do you understand me?’
‘Or what?’
‘Or your reputation will suffer for it. It is bad enough as it is, but I doubt even Scandal’s Virgin could ride out that storm.’ His lip curled. ‘And that’s the most inaccurate by-name I have ever heard.’
‘If you betray my secret, then you ruin Alice,’ Laura countered. ‘No one would forget that story. All your scheming to make her eligible and respectable would go out of the window simply because of your spite against me. We are at check, my lord. If Alice is in London, then I will see her, even if you prevent me speaking to her.’
‘I’ll not let you near her. If you had loved her, you would have stayed in touch with the family you sent her to, not left her for six years and then arrived to play with her emotions on some whim.’ All that hard-learned control had deserted him, she realised. Avery took a precipitate step closer, trapping her against the balustrade as Lord Newlyn had done.
‘You cannot stop me—’ Laura began. She had no idea what she was going to say, what she was going to do, for he took all her options away from her. His hands on her shoulders locked around the narrow bones as he pulled her towards him. Then his mouth took hers in a kiss that held nothing of sensuality or even simple arousal. This was punishment, anger, scorn and his own frustration at her defiance.
Laura stamped and kicked as Avery bent her back against the stonework. It took a few seconds to realise that there was cool air all around her, that his weight was gone, his hands had released her. ‘There is no need to scream,’ Avery said, his voice like a lash. ‘I would not touch you again for any consideration I could imagine. Respectable widows are one thing, selfish pleasure-seeking chits are quite another. To think I was under the illusion I was rescuing you just now.’ His laugh jarred, totally without humour. ‘Just believe that I will do whatever it takes to protect what is mine—and Alice is mine in every sense that matters.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she’d had no intention of trying to see Alice again, that she had resolved to leave her child in his care because she believed that was best for Alice. But now…now she would not admit that and let him think he had frightened her away, not if it killed her. Laura ran the back of her hand over her mouth and fixed him with a dagger glare that simply bounced off his disdain.
‘We are all in London,’ she said with a calm that belied her quaking knees. ‘Unless you want to make a mystery of Alice and have people sayi
ng you are ashamed of her and want to hide her, then there is every chance I will see her again. I will not approach her because that would confuse her, but believe me, if I ever have the slightest suspicion that she is not happy, that you are not the loving father to her that you purport to be, then I will make such a scandal you would not believe and I will fight you in the courts for her.’
Laura gathered her long skirts in one hand and turned towards the house with all the poise of one of society’s darlings. ‘I will be watching you, Lord Wykeham. Never forget it.’ She swept through the doors into the reception room again, into the heat and light and noise and almost stumbled with shock to find that this other world was continuing just feet from that encounter.
‘There you are!’ The dowager rapped on the floor with her cane as though she was rapping knuckles. ‘Sent Newlyn to his rightabouts, I see. Good girl, he’s a here-and-thereian, not worth dallying on the terrace with that one.’ She looked around the room. ‘Now where has he gone?’
‘Newlyn, ma’am?’ The astringent old bat was as effective as a splash of cold water in the face.
‘No, you silly chit. Wykeham.’
‘The Earl of Wykeham?’ Had she gone white or scarlet? Was her face a picture of guilt? She felt as though the pressure of Avery’s mouth must have branded her. Surely anyone looking at her would see her lips were swollen from his kisses?
‘There’s only the one. He’d do for you. Rank, money, good brain, although he’s encumbered with that by-blow he insists on acknowledging. He won’t do for some innocent girl straight out of the schoolroom, but you’ve enough town bronze to carry off that little embarrassment without any silliness. Eh? Men will be men.’
‘Indeed they will, ma’am.’ Laura agreed grimly. ‘Will you excuse me? I feel quite exhausted—I am not yet used to town hours again.’