THREE HEROES

by Jo Beverley

  “Well done,” said Harriette as they entered the hall. “Everything set.”

  “I think him moving here is a bit extreme.”

  “Truly?”

  Maria shrugged. “There’s a lot of work to be done. But he has friends. That’s a hopeful sign.” She explained what the duchess had said.

  “Tattoos?” said Harriette with a grimace. “What were their mothers thinking? But it will certainly be easier for Lord Vandeimen to meet his friends here.”

  Maria looked around at pale walls, marble pillars, and discreetly tasteful classical statues—or copies of them, to be precise. Maurice had made every effort to impress, and this house had been his principal point of impression. She had been another. Sadly, all his impressions had been imitation. Even the pillars were faux marble.

  He’d taught her many lessons, including that most people had two or even more faces. She’d already seen a number of faces to Lord Vandeimen, but she suspected there were more.

  The six weeks loomed in front of her and she hurried to the peaceful sanctuary of her bedroom, but even there uncomfortable memories stirred. She’d enjoyed Maurice’s demanding visits to her bed. Once she’d realized the truth, however—-that she was merely part of his strategy for entering and using English society—her hunger had shamed her.

  As her maid stripped off her finery, she remembered the many lonely nights when she’d longed for him to come to her. She’d often thought of going to him, but never found the courage. How could she? His care for her sprang at best from mild affection, and at worst from a need to keep her pacified so she wouldn’t crack his illusion of perfect success.

  Begging for more had been unthinkable.

  Though he’d been discreet, she’d known about his mistresses. They had all been lively, colorful women. Not like her.

  She knew about his bastards, too, because he’d told her about each one, and the provision he was making. The allowances had been specified in his will. Another inherited burden.

  And then there was Natalie.

  Natalie’s mother had been Maurice’s aristocratic Belgian cousin, Clarette, but she was also Maurice’s child. When her official parents had died, she had come to live with him. The truth was never spoken, but Tante Louise and Oncle Charles knew that Maurice and Clarette had been in love since their teens.

  Natalie was a delightful girl, but Maria had resented having a reproach at her infertility under her roof. Now she’d invited a demon there.

  She smiled wryly as she dried her hands and applied cream. No danger in that. If she hadn’t been able to go to her husband demanding sex, she certainly could not invade her hired escort’s rooms with that in mind.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning, Maria sat at the desk in her boudoir trying to pretend that she was working on her accounts, but with every sense alert for his arrival. She’d sent the coach and had no reason to believe that he wouldn’t come as arranged. Still, she felt she would not have a moment’s peace until he was here.

  Safe.

  Oh, what nonsense, but that’s how she felt.

  A laugh escaped, and she rested her head on her hand. She wanted to wrap the man in flannel cloth and protect him, like a mother with a delicate child. Was anything more ridiculous?

  And yet, it wasn’t ridiculous to see him as delicate, if by that she meant fragile. It was her task to make him robust again—without giving in to other, baser, desires.

  A carriage? She shot to her feet and peered out of the window. It was. Her carriage. At last!

  Heart suddenly racing, she made herself stand still and take a deep breath.

  You make him strong again, Maria, and then you let him go. You mustn’t permit anything to happen that might entangle him with you.

  Her throat actually ached, which was an alarming warning.

  If he even shows interest in you it will simply be a game, a game to prove he’s your master rather than your debtor. Have some pride!

  That worked better to bring her to her senses. She glanced in the mirror to be sure she was her usual cool and elegant self. Her simple morning gown was white with a narrow, pale blue stripe. A fichu ensured modesty, and matched the white cotton cap tied beneath her chin with pale blue ribbon. She looked a perfect, respectable widow, and thus armored, went down to greet her guest.

  She almost collided with Natalie rushing toward the stairs.

  “I just wanted to see,” the girl whispered, flashing her dimples. “I looked him up in the library this morning. He was mentioned in dispatches four times! He must be very brave.”

  “Yes, I believe so.” Instinct made Maria speak coolly even though she knew she should be acting besotted. She looked her sixteen-year-old “niece” over and reset a hairpin to hold up escaping curls. “Since you’re presentable, why not come down and be properly introduced?”

  Excited delight lit up Natalie’s face. She was not one to hide emotions. Every one showed, and usually at twice normal intensity.

  Being short with mousy hair, Natalie couldn’t claim beauty, but she had enough vivacity and character to become a raging success when Maria let her loose on the world. She was sixteen now. Next year there would be no putting it off. Such a daunting responsibility.

  She heard the door below open, and voices, and continued down, aware of Natalie by her side as if excitement gave off noise. Pray heaven she wasn’t as audible. At the bend in the stairs, where the hall came into view, she paused.

  He was wearing a brown jacket and buff breeches that could be the same ones he’d worn two days ago, but now they were neat. He looked so perfectly comfortable in them that she felt she was seeing him for the first time. She was caught by the fluid grace in the way he moved, and the effortlessly genuine smile he tossed as reward to the footman who had carried in his trunk.

  Such a beautiful young man . . .

  She collected herself and moved on, reaching the bottom of the stairs, then crossing the hall, hand extended. “Lord Vandeimen, welcome to my home.”

  He turned, still smiling, and bowed over it. “It was kind of you to invite me, Mrs. Celestin.”

  His eyes flickered to her side, and she said, “My niece, my lord. Natalie Florence.”

  He bowed, and Natalie dropped a curtsy, dimples deep with excitement. Oh Lord, Maria thought, don’t let her fall into an infatuation with him. I can’t cope with that on top of everything else.

  Then she realized he was chatting with Natalie in a very easy way, and if he had dimples they might be showing too.

  Oh Lord, don’t let him fall in love with Natalie!

  But then, like a cold wind, she realized it was all too likely. They were going to bump into one another all the time. And what would be wrong with it? In a year Natalie would be ready for her season, and if Lord Vandeimen courted her then, it would be completely appropriate.

  It would make her his secret stepmother!

  See it that way, she sternly directed.

  He turned back to her. “The notices have gone to the papers, my dear. I should perhaps seek a private moment for this, but why shouldn’t the world witness our happiness?” He produced a ring from his pocket and held out his hand.

  A quick glance showed Natalie standing there, hands clasped in vicarious ecstasy, showing no sign of jealousy. Yet.

  Maria hadn’t anticipated this. She hastily twisted off the rings Maurice had given her, and held out her hand. He pushed the new ring onto her finger—with a little difficulty.

  He gave her a rueful glance. “I estimated it for the jeweler, but I think it will have to be stretched a little.”

  “Easy enough.” She looked at the ring, which was surprisingly modest. The small diamond in the center was surrounded by pearls. She didn’t mind the simplicity, but she’d expected a pretentious statement. Perhaps she’d been remembering Maurice. The ring she’d just taken off held a very large blue diamond.

  “The smaller stones were rubies but I had them changed,” Vandeimen said. “Since you have a t
aste for pale colors.”

  She hadn’t liked Maurice’s ring, which had been tastelessly ostentatious, but she didn’t much care for this one either. Not because of the value, but because it was insipid. Was that how he saw her?

  She looked at him in buff and brown, and at Natalie in a boldly striped dress with a sky-blue sash.

  Perhaps it was time to change. But not for the next six weeks. For this business, insipid was good. Very good.

  “It’s lovely,” she said. “Now, let me show you the house and your room, my lord.”

  She shooed Natalie back to her lessons—she wanted no fledgling love affair for the next six weeks, at least— and led him upstairs.

  When Van was eventually alone in his bedchamber, he shook his head. When had he last been in such elegantly opulent surroundings? Had he ever?

  Steynings in his youth had been a fine country house, but it had been a country house, a home. The houses of his best friends had been even more so. Hawkinville Manor was an ancient, rambling place, Somerford Court a rather ugly Restoration construction, but wonderfully welcoming. Army living had thrown him into everything from pigstys to palaces, but they’d all been the worse for wear.

  This house must be less than twenty years old, and appointed with great wealth and fairly good taste. He didn’t exactly like it—he’d never been in a place before where everything seemed so shiny new—but it was an extraordinary setting.

  “Good reminder that it isn’t your setting, Van,” he muttered, exploring his new quarters.

  Noons had already put his scant belongings in the drawers, and a table held glasses, a number of full decanters, and bowls of fruit and nuts. A richly marqueteried breakfront desk contained heavy writing paper, and everything else needed. The glass-front shelves above held a selection of books that seemed to be chosen with care to meet every possible taste.

  By her?

  It hadn’t been wise to agree to move in here, but last night he’d not been able to resist. Comfortable living tempted him, but he also wanted to get to know Maria Celestin, to come to understand what was going on here, and the way he felt.

  Hades, he’d almost ravished her! It hadn’t felt like that at the time, but it was obvious from her reaction that he’d completely misjudged it. Of course he had. He was a hired servant, nothing more, and he’d attacked her.

  He’d gone over and over it in the night.

  There’d been pride involved, yes. He’d wanted to master her. Revolting thought. It had spun out of control, though.

  Something about her drove him wild. It wasn’t just her coolness, either. Today, when she’d come down the stairs, the way she moved had practically rendered him breathless, even if she had been in a shapeless pale dress and a concealing cap.

  Last night she’d worn an elaborate turban. At their first meeting she’d been in a toque. He felt almost rage that she hid her hair so much. Soft, dark blond curls had ruffled out around her cap, and when she’d turned to her niece he’d seen escaping tendrils against her long, pale neck.

  Did it curl all over? How was it arranged? How long was it? Naked in bed, would it flow long, loose, and pale around her?

  Stop it, Van.

  He pressed his fist to his mouth.

  Stop being an animal. She’s a mature, respectable widow who would not even let you touch her except for this eccentric plan of hers.

  He was rough from war. Broken in fortune. Broken in spirit. What was he doing now, after all, but marching to duty’s drum, left foot, right foot, like the most wretched dullard in the infantry?

  In six weeks he’d have enough money to continue the march, that was all, and doubtless he’d never see Maria Celestin again.

  They attended two routs and a soiree that night. Maria wanted first reaction over with. She had to endure some sly comments about his youth and good looks, and about his moving into her house, but people mostly seemed to accept the situation, though with amusement.

  She left Vandeimen to decide how to behave, and he managed to project a kind of reverent adoration that made her want to scream. Bad enough to be thought an older woman made foolish by lust. Even worse to be treated like a revered saint.

  But then, partway through the evening she began to wonder if he was doing it deliberately to try to counteract the more sordid aspects.

  If so, it didn’t work.

  “My dear,” said Emily Galman, a thin, predatory woman Maria had known since her first season, “a tiger on your leash! I shall study you for teeth marks.”

  Her quick dark eyes already were.

  “Divinely handsome,” said Cissy Embleborough, who’d also made her curtsy at the same time, but who was a friend. “I’m not sure I’d find him comfortable, though.”

  “Comfort isn’t everything.” Maria immediately wished the words unsaid.

  Cissy laughed. “True. And it may come in time.”

  It was three days later that she encountered Sarah Yeovil at a private exhibition of medieval art. “Maria,” Sarah said, drawing her into a quiet corner, “are you sure this is wise?”

  “Wise?” Despite the mild words, there was something ferocious in Sarah’s manner.

  “He’s such a disturbed young man. Are you being fair?”

  “It isn’t—”

  “A woman of your age should be wise for both, not . . . not use someone!”

  Maria knew she was coloring. “I’m not using him, Sarah,” she said, praying there wouldn’t be a scene. “I’m marrying him. And if you think he doesn’t want to—”

  “Of course he wants to,” Sarah hissed. “You’re rich as Croesus. But what else can you offer him? You’re old and barren.”

  It was so cruel that Maria froze. But then she realized that Sarah was thinking of her lost son, a man of the same age. She was reacting as if Maria had trapped Dare. She hadn’t trapped anyone, but the thought of herself and Dare, whom she’d known when he was a gap-toothed child, made her shrivel with shame.

  She longed to explain, but she didn’t want to reveal Maurice’s sin to anyone. Perhaps she was more like him than she’d thought, always trying to keep the facade in place.

  “We suit,” she said rigidly. “He’s excellent company.”

  Sarah was hectically red. “You met him less than a week ago! Gravenham should never have introduced you.”

  Maria had to stifle laughter at this reversal of Gravenham’s discreet warning, but she ached for her cousin’s pain.

  “You must release him,” Sarah said. “You know he cannot draw back.”

  Nor can I. “But we suit very well.”

  Sarah stared at her as if she were a worm, and walked away.

  Maria let out a breath, praying that her cousin not make this a public estrangement.

  Vandeimen came over. “You look upset.”

  She forced a smile. “The duchess still mourns her son. She sometimes says things she doesn’t mean.”

  “We all mourned Lord Darius. He had the gift of merriment.”

  She looked at him. “She said you and your friends were kind to him.”

  “A despairing sort of kindness, though his joie de vivre was a gift just then, before Waterloo. But you don’t want to speak of war. Come, the abbey choir is about to sing ‘Palestrina.’”

  She went, mainly because it would remove any need to talk for a while. She suspected that was his idea, too.

  To her, it was as if something pleasant had suddenly been spoiled. It surprised her that it had been pleasant, but she had begun to enjoy the season in the past few days. Her wasps had flown after other jam pots, but the true magic was that she’d enjoyed Vandeimen’s company.

  He was unfailingly courteous and an excellent, efficient escort. He wasn’t a wit, but he held up his end of a conversation. He knew how to acceptably flirt with the ladies and joke with the gentlemen. People were slowly looking past the shocking match and his reputation, and beginning to accept him as simply a gentleman, which he clearly was.

  Now, however, the thoug
ht of Dare rose up to corrode everything. Her family had regularly visited Long Chart, the Duke of Yeovil’s seat, and she could remember Dare still in a toddler’s skirts. She’d only been eleven, but that picture stuck because he’d managed to escape his nurse and climb a tree, causing pandemonium.

  He must have been eight when he’d recruited most of the children in the area to dig a moat around the castle folly in the grounds. The duke had been impressed enough to complete the job, but at sixteen and on her dignity, Maria had thought him a grubby menace.

  She’d last met him when he was a lanky, grinning youth passing through London on his way to Cambridge.

  She’d been married a few years by then, a matron and mistress of her own home. She’d also been veteran of awareness that she’d been duped by an imaginary love, and suspicion that she was barren. She had faced a difficult, dutiful life, whereas he had been practically bouncing with anticipation of a limitless future. She’d felt old then, and she felt old now.

  Listening to the angelic voices of the choir—she’d probably been dancing at a ball when Dare’s voice broke, when Vandeimen’s voice broke—she reminded herself that this engagement was completely imaginary.

  She glanced sideways at her youthful responsibility, at the strong, clear lines of his profile, and the vibrant health of his skin. In only days, the marks of dissipation had disappeared, but it would take longer for the inner wounds to heal.

  She’d begun to let him choose where they went, and he seemed to prefer the more cultural events. He’d chosen this one and was enjoying it. He’d been at war for so long that much of society’s routine pleasures must be fresh to him.

  Her personal reaction to him was her problem—hers to control and hers to conceal.

  As the days turned to weeks, control never became easy, but she managed it, helped by the fact that he kept his word. He never again tried to kiss her, or to touch her in any way other than courteously.

  The worst times were those spent quietly together— lingering over breakfast, or sitting in the Chinese room, or strolling in the summer garden. Sometimes they talked, but often they were each involved in reading or even thought.