‘I agree. It is always best. You...have not thought of remarrying?’
‘I am not looking for a wife,’ he told her, his words and his eyes conveying a message. ‘I am quite content to remain as I am, to go my own way and to enjoy female company from those who desire my company.’
‘And always careful to elude capture,’ Lydia said softly.
‘Always.’ He smiled. ‘I have not known you twenty-four hours, Miss Brook, and already you are beginning to know me a little too well.’ He looked down at his plate. ‘We should eat before the food gets cold.’
Picking up his fork, after toying with his food, Alex gazed across the table at her lovely face. My God, he thought, she really was a beauty. Her long lashes drifted down as she looked at her plate, her soft red lips slightly parted. Her hair and gown were both unadorned, yet the effect was almost like nakedness, and Alex was both embarrassed and ashamed of the animal thoughts that flew through his mind as he looked at her.
Looking up, Lydia met his gaze and raised her brows in silent enquiry.
He smiled. ‘What?’
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Why shouldn’t I look at a beautiful woman? You, Miss Brook, would make a saint forget his calling.’
Lydia swallowed, feeling her cheeks redden. The very fact of this weakness was an irritant to her, making her vulnerable to her own body. ‘I’ve heard many flowery compliments in my time, but that, Mr Golding, is the most flowery of them all.’ Later she would realise her mistake. The delicious food and the quiet, warm atmosphere of the room had lulled her into regarding her companion as an equal, a person whom she could relax with.
‘You are a strange young woman, Miss Brook. I find your company both pleasurable and enlightening.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘You are more intelligent than most women of my acquaintance and, if you are not careful, you will have me falling in love with a woman’s mind—but her physical attributes cannot be ignored,’ he murmured, his gaze languidly sweeping over her, his eyes settling on the gentle swell of her breasts straining beneath the raspberry dress, measuring, lingering, a slow smile curling his lips.
The soft sincerity of his voice, the tone of it, rippled over Lydia’s flesh and took her breath away—behind the words she detected an intractable force, coercing, seducing, and she was drawn to it, but then she remembered her purpose for being there. She tried to think of something to say, something that would restore the camaraderie and repartee of a moment before, but she was unable to say anything for the moment.
‘What else did Henry tell you about himself, Miss Brook?’ Alex asked, aware of the awkwardness of the moment and trying to steer clear of the direction in which his mind was wandering, but unable to take his eyes off her.
‘That—that his home was in America. When he proposed marriage I told him we should wait, to give it time until we knew each other better. But he said time was something he didn’t have. His father was dying across the Atlantic Ocean and he had to go home as soon as possible. I had no reason to doubt him. I cannot match him in education or experience—what knowledge I have was taught me by my mother. She was the daughter of a clergyman in Yorkshire. I have to work to make my living. Our backgrounds are dissimilar in every way.’
‘And yet you were prepared to marry him.’
‘Yes. He promised me so much.’
Alex smiled, noting that her every movement as she sat was graceful and ladylike. There was a serenity of expression and stillness that hung about her like an aura and just being with her was an experience he had not sufficiently prepared himself for. She really was quite beautiful, far more beautiful than any woman present, and she intrigued him, troubled him. His instinct told him that hidden desires were at play beneath her layer of respectability. He noted a certain unease in her eyes and what lay behind the unease was a sense that something was not quite right. Yet exactly what it was, not knowing anything about her, Alex couldn’t have said.
‘You saw Henry as a purveyor of dreams.’
‘Perhaps it is best not to dream at all,’ she said softly.
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Three months.’
‘Where did you go? Where did he take you?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘He is well known and popular among members of his club, his reputation that of a man about town who likes a good time.’
‘My time off from work was limited. We saw each other on Sundays and sometimes I could manage an afternoon during the week. We were alone mostly.’
‘That stands to reason. He wouldn’t want to advertise the fact he had taken a lover.’
‘We were not lovers,’ Lydia was quick to inform him, her cheeks flushing pink with indignation that he thought they were. ‘Never that.’
‘No? Then I have no doubt this is the reason why he insisted on a sham marriage. His desire to possess you must have been overwhelming—even though he never had any intention of leaving his wife.’
‘On occasion he did introduce me to a selection of his friends. Surely they would have said something—unless they didn’t know he was married either.’
‘Believe me, Miss Brook, they knew,’ he said drily.
‘You mean they were in on the deception? So I really was just some kind of amusement to liven up their bored lives?’
‘I’m afraid so. I told you it is not the first time he has done something like this, although he has never gone as far as being prepared to enter into a sham marriage to get what he wants. You must have something the others lacked.’
She bristled. ‘No, I’m just another one in a line of women.’
‘Were you impressed by him?’
She looked at him steadily. What woman would not be, she thought, having been raised as she was. ‘It was all so new to me. A different world.’
‘And now? Will you go back to what you were doing?’
‘I already told you that I have to. I have to work to live, Mr Golding. Throughout my life I have lived with the belief that happiness, security and future success would be available to me through the mainstay in my life—my mother—with her calm and gentle but firm ways. When she died all that changed—until I met Henry.’
Alex nodded with understanding. ‘I am sorry. And your father?’
Immediately Lydia’s eyes darkened and her face tensed. She looked away. ‘He...he is not in my life.’
‘I see.’ There it was, Alex thought, that was the something which was not quite right. He was intrigued. Why the reluctance to talk about her father? Sensing that his enquiry was sensitive to her, he did not press further. It was not his concern. ‘And your employer? Do you get on with him?’
‘I have always tried to, for my mother’s sake—they were lovers, you see.’
‘Then if that was the case, will he not help you?’
‘Alistair is a hard master. Working for him, I will never be more than an overworked, underpaid employee. I want to have a chance to make my own way, to be the dressmaker I know I can be—that my mother wanted me to be. I want to be a woman in my own right.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. How could you possibly?’
Alex did understand—more than she would ever realise. As the deprived son of an impoverished and more often than not inebriated estate worker, on the death of his parents when he was just a boy, his maternal grandfather had paid for his education at Marlborough and then Cambridge. Alex would be eternally grateful to his grandfather for making this possible, even though he’d spent almost every penny he had doing so.
When Alex was eighteen, with his entire fortune of one hundred guineas given to him by his grandfather, he had worked his passage to America. Life had taught him that he had to grasp the opportunities when they arose. Nothing was going to be given to him. Gambling his money on a serie
s of investments had paid off. Thirteen years later he had made his fortune and never looked back.
He continued to excel in business like Midas. The only other venture he had engaged in was the pleasurable pursuit and conquest of the opposite sex.
Though thoroughly put out by this whole sordid affair with Henry which had disrupted the smooth order of his business life, he was impressed by this young woman’s astuteness and he was amazed she hadn’t seen through Henry’s deception. She exuded tension and a certain authority and despite everything his curiosity was aroused as they ate their meal. She had an easiness of manner and a self-assurance and poise that was entirely at odds with her background. He was warmed by her sunny smile, the frank gaze and artless conversation, and he found himself sparing the time to listen to her.
There was an air of determination about her that manifested itself in the proud way she held her head and the square set of her chin and a bright and positive burning in her eyes when she outlined her plans for the establishment she hoped to open one day.
She told him how she was apprenticed at thirteen and how she had gained a thorough knowledge of fabrics and the business of supplying dressmakers. She had made a study of ladies’ fashions and, inspired by what she had learned and her own ideas, she had high hopes for the future. She told him she had a small nest egg put by and when she had saved enough she would realise her ambition and her mother’s before her. Alex found himself being carried along by the wave of her high expectations.
Finally falling silent, she looked at him and sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk so much. You must wonder how I can speak so enthusiastically about my work after what Henry has done. He told me all my hopes and dreams would be fulfilled once we got to America. Well, that won’t happen now—but I refuse to let what he has done to me ruin my hopes for the future. I cannot believe how I let myself be duped like that.’
‘No? They say love is blind.’
‘Love?’ She laughed at the absurdity of it. It was as humorous as it was bitter. ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t love. I was flattered that a man of such glamour and charm—with a merry smile and a certain devil-may-care approach to life—should pay me attention.’
‘So you didn’t love him?’ Alex felt curiously relieved on being told this, but once again he felt there was an edge to her manner—subtle, yes, but there—which led him to think there might be another reason why she had been so ready to accept Henry’s proposal of marriage, that she might be running away from something and she had seized on the opportunity to escape. After all, she had admitted she didn’t love Henry. So what other reason could there be?
Lydia smiled, a faint frown puckering her brow, and when she spoke it was as if the question was directed against herself. ‘How does one analyse love? It has always been one of life’s great mysteries to me. How can anyone adequately explain it? It’s like trying to explain why the sun shines, why the earth spins and why the moon controls the tides.’
He laughed. ‘The things you mention are rational to me. They are divined by nature.’
‘That’s another thing. How to explain nature.’
‘You sound very cynical, Miss Brook. Love does not need an explanation, surely? Love, so I’m told, is something that grows out of nothing and swells as it goes along. No one can tell another why if happens—only how it is.’
Lydia smiled at his teasing tone. ‘Now who is the cynic?’
‘Touché, Miss Brook. Tell me. Why would you want to go back to working for Alistair if you were not happy?’
She looked at him. ‘Happy?’ She pondered the question a moment. ‘I don’t think the world has much to offer in the way of happiness,’ she said, more to herself. ‘There’s too much grief—too much pain.’
‘And you have known both, I suspect.’ He looked across the table at her, his eyes curiously intense. ‘You have just told me that you do not love Henry, which I find curious since you agreed to marry him. Why, I ask myself, would a woman who is both beautiful and clever do that, unless you are running away?’
She looked at him sharply. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘It’s merely a suspicion I have. I am right, though, aren’t I?’
She looked down at her plate, tension in the angle of her jaw. ‘Yes—at least—something like that.’
‘Running away is not always the sensible thing to do.’
She looked at him from beneath her long lashes. ‘You may be right, but sometimes one is left with no choice.’
‘That’s true, but generally I think it is better to face the problem head on and deal with it.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
‘Why are you running away? That is if you want to talk about it.’
She eyed him with wary indecision, wondering what he would say if she were to divulge the more sinister truth behind her acceptance of Henry’s proposal of marriage, a marriage that would take her away from London—from England—far away from the awful truth that the man she had come to realise was her father, a man she had believed was dead, was very much alive. Having no wish to discuss this highly personal matter with a complete stranger, she shook her head. ‘No, thank you, I really do not want to talk about it.’
‘I understand, but I suspect it is connected to the grief and pain you mentioned.’
‘Yes, I have known both, borne out of attachment to the person or people who cause it, and knowledge.’
From bitter experience her mother had told her that knowledge was life’s blood in this world, that once gained it should not be thrown away, but used sensibly, ruthlessly, if necessary, that with knowledge a person could rule the world. And so she had applied herself diligently to her learning and then set about doing what her mother had told her to do. But when she had met Henry it hadn’t worked out that way.
She was a woman who had encountered hardships for most of her life. Even working for Alistair where her performance was valued and he paid her slightly more than the other girls, she’d learned to take care of herself, never allowing others to venture too close—her mother excepted when she had been alive—never completely letting down her guard lest the price of that familiarity would mean an equality of mind. She had allowed Henry into her life, but she had only given of herself as much as she had wanted to give.
‘My dream was that one day my luck would change and I truly thought it had when Henry came into my life. Suddenly I had a wonderful future before me, but it was not to be.’ She smiled, a smile that was quite enchanting and unbeknown to her did strange things to her companion’s heart. ‘Please do not mind me, sir. Considering who I am you are being most kind and understanding. But you should not trouble yourself. As a gentleman, you must be embarrassed by such a situation, I am sure.’
‘Not at all. You are a refreshing change to most of the ladies of my acquaintance. I find you are an interesting person to talk to. No doubt you will want to return to London immediately.’
‘Yes,’ she said decisively.
‘Can I be of service to you?’
‘No—thank you. You have done enough.’
The meal over, with his hand beneath her elbow Alex escorted Lydia out of the room. She was startled by his close proximity and she was puzzled by her body’s response to the simple sensation of his hand on her arm. They stood at the bottom of the stairs in the small hall, facing each other. Lydia’s lips parted in a tremulous smile, and her expression softened.
‘I am thankful you saved me from what would have been a terrible fate. I’m so sorry about your sister. You must be concerned about her—about the whole situation, in fact. It can’t be easy for her having an unfaithful husband—or for you, knowing what you do about him.’
Alex was strangely touched by her concern. He felt a stirring for her that was new to him on first acquaintance with any woman—a mixture of awe, desire and surprise that this glorious creature had actually fal
len for Henry’s smooth ability to manipulate the situation. She possessed the animal grace of a young thoroughbred and a femininity that touched a chord hidden deep inside him. Her full lips were inviting, her drawn-up hair displaying to perfection the long slender column of her throat—white and arched and asking to be caressed. In fact, she looked like a beautiful work of art.
When she had confronted him earlier, normally he would not have reacted quite so angrily, but he had been on edge ever since he had found out that Henry had absconded to Scotland with an unknown woman. He had been on edge before that, having spent an extremely tiresome few days dancing attendance on Irene—the wilful, spoilt sister of his good friend Sir David Hilton.
He had spent the past few weeks as David’s guest at his house on the outskirts of Paris, a city which David loved and to which he would escape at every opportunity. David had returned with him to London, his sister accompanying him. Alex had intended spending the day prior to him learning about Henry’s escapade at his house, Aspen Grange, in Berkshire. David was a close neighbour and the two of them had planned to do some fishing. It had been unfortunate for Alex that Irene had come along. That she nurtured hopes of marriage between them was evident, for she had hounded him ever since the demise of his wife.
But Irene would be disappointed, for he had no intention of marrying again in a hurry. He had nothing but contempt for an institution that he had once believed would bring him happiness and fulfilment, but which had brought him nothing but misery instead.
‘If I were not tied up in the north on business, I would offer to take you back.’
‘Please do not concern yourself with my welfare. I’ll be all right, really,’ she said with more determination than accuracy. ‘I can find my own way.’ A wistful look clouded her eyes and her lips curved in a tremulous smile. ‘It feels strange when I remember that tonight should have been my wedding night. I did not think it would end like this.’ She sighed, meeting his eyes. ‘None of that matters any more. We will not meet again, sir, for I doubt our paths will cross in the different societies in which we move.’
Carrying the Gentleman's Secret Page 4