Compromised Miss

by O'Brien, Anne

  ‘What’s happened?’ Meggie demanded, from whom she apparently could not hide her hurt.

  ‘Nothing.’ She smiled bravely. ‘We are about to leave.’ She tied the strings of her plain straw bonnet with no thought to their neatness.

  ‘Never mind that. Has he hurt you? He has, hasn’t he!’

  ‘No, Meggie. I can have no complaints. How should I? Did I not enter into this marriage with my eyes open?’

  I will make sure that he doesn’t hurt me again, she vowed silently. But of course he already had.

  Despite his denial, Luke could not get Ellerdine’s words out of his mind. A ship lured on to the rocks, all crew lost, the cargo commandeered. And Harriette at the very centre of it.

  Impossible! his instincts insisted.

  For what reason would Ellerdine lie? his mind responded. You already know full well she’s a smuggler!

  There was one source he could tap. Why should he not make every effort to learn the truth? And easy enough to do, as he ran that source to ground in the kitchen, where he was taking a tankard of ale.

  ‘Tell me about the Lion d’Or.’ Luke took a seat opposite George Gadie, poured his own ale. ‘Was it lured on to the rocks at the headland?’

  ‘Couldn’t say, y’r honour.’ Gadie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, squinted round the room as if to ensure no one would hear. ‘Wrecked here for sure. Some years ago now.’

  Luke leaned across the table, fixed him with a stare. ‘Was my wife involved?’

  ‘Well, y’r honour…’ Gadie rubbed his nose. ‘Cap’n Harry launched the cutter to rescue the crew—just a young lass she was then. Not that there was anyone left alive to rescue, mind. Them’s vicious rocks at the headland. But we took up the bodies—buried in the churchyard, they are. And we saved what we could. Silk, it was. Mr Alexander dealt with it.’

  ‘Was the lamp in the Tower lit?’

  The sailor’s eyes slid away. ‘Couldn’t say, y’r honour. Too busy to notice. It shouldn’t have been—not on a night like that.’

  Was the man being honest or was he protecting Harriette? Luke considered, frowning into the ale. He suspected that George Gadie would be loyal to Captain Harry, no matter what the crime. What an appalling picture, of his wife luring unsuspecting sailors to their deaths.

  If he chose to believe it, of course. But the sliver of ice in his belly had become a frozen knot.

  ‘Anything else, y’r honour?’

  Luke could think of nothing. For what else might he learn to cause him grief?

  Luke helped his new wife into the curricle and turned his horses’ heads towards London, conscious throughout of the stiff figure seated beside him, who had not smiled once, nor offered any conversation, since she had taken her seat. It struck him that he had been in some manner a naïve fool. He should have made it his business to discover more about Harriette Lydyard and her disreputable ancestors before embarking on this match. Alexander Ellerdine’s casual remarks continued to play through his consciousness. Luke controlled the power of his hands on the reins with less than his habitual skill, and his fingers tightened, causing the horses to jib and toss their heads until he cursed his heavy-handed lack of skill and forced himself to relax his hold.

  Harriette a member of the Wreckers? He could tolerate smuggling—just—as long as she gave it up. But Wrecking? There could be no justification for such a despicable operation. Bloody murder, luring ships on to the rocks to rob and plunder, the sailors abandoned to their own fate with no thought to their rescue. There was no profit to be gained from rescuing sailors, plenty from saving the bales and barrels. Luke felt his blood run cold. George Gadie’s confirmation—if that’s what it was—had been no help at all in putting his mind at rest.

  Was Harriette capable of such vileness? He slid a glance to the pale, expressionless face of his wife beside him.

  What did he know about Ellerdine—apart from a tendency to dislike him on sight? Cousin. Friend. A possible suitor. Harriette clearly held in some affection. Luke grimaced silently at the man’s slick friendliness that, to him, held the taint of malice. The easy offer of information that would wound, tear. Why should he believe a man he did not know and did not respect above Harriette? She had never been anything but honest with him. Well, almost. She had not told him of her French mother until after the wedding, had she? An unimportant point. Had she hidden other secrets from him, masking them with her feminine charm?

  There was only one remedy. He must ask her outright. He needed to know—but what if she admitted it? How could he reconcile himself to such knowledge? But he could not retreat from the truth.

  ‘Are there many smuggling gangs on the coast?’ he asked Harriette, breaking the silence between them.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied coolly. ‘Enough to keep the Riding Officers busy.’

  ‘And Wreckers. Do they exist here also?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’ He felt her sharp unsmiling glance, but did not turn his head.

  ‘Do you know of any?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Now he looked directly at her, searching her face for any sign of guilt, dreading that he might see it there.

  ‘The smuggling gang in Rottingdean has a reputation,’ she replied, holding his gaze without difficulty. ‘Captain Dunk is their leader, a butcher by day and many would say a butcher by night, too.’

  ‘What about Old Wincomlee? Do your smugglers lure ships on to the rocks?’

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  The slightest hesitation. Then brutally. ‘Would you do it, if the opportunity arose?’ He found himself holding his breath.

  ‘No. I would not.’

  Again he turned his attention from his horses and held her eyes with a hard glitter of emerald. Harriette had denied it, and with some heat. Her gaze was clear and direct.

  ‘Why would you think me guilty of something so reprehensible?’ A little line deepened between her fine brows.

  It went a long way to restoring his composure, and Luke attempted to shrug off his discomfort,relaxing his fingers around the leathers. He had no proof, after all, that Harriette was engaged in anything other than the shipment of contraband and the fooling of the Revenue men. He had known about that before he wed her, and accepted it, so why cavil now?

  Hell and the devil!

  He liked her, admired her, wanted her in the most basic way a man could want a woman. Enjoying the intimacy of her body, the slender elegance of it stretched against his, warm and supple in response to his demands, had been a revelation. The perfume of her hair, the taste of her skin—even now the memory of it could arouse his wayward flesh, he acknowledged in sharp discomfort. She had delighted him. She had stirred some possessive desire within him to rescue her and protect her, apart from the primitive need to bury himself deep within her and claim her for his own. In that one short night he had discovered an exhilarating awareness of her, an overwhelming response to her.

  Could he allow it to disintegrate? Would he change his opinion of Harriette Lydyard on the word of a man who it was his instinct to dislike on sight?

  Dispassionately Luke viewed the bleak future. The marriage was done and she was his wife, and it would be entirely wrong of him to accuse her of crimes of which he had no proof. The best he could do was to end her attachment to smuggling and make what he could of this illmatched marriage. Moving to London, away from Lydyard’s Pride, was the obvious way to achieve that.

  Harriette had never lied to him, had she?

  Yet the fate of the Lion d’Or continued to fill his head with the discordant clamour of church bells.

  Grosvenor Square. Hallaston House, as ostentatious as its address, enough to impress and overawe Harriette with its tiled floor, glittering chandelier and sweeping staircase, and a somber-clad butler, Graves, who ushered Harriette into the library.

  There are secrets in this house, was Harriette’s first impression. Just as Luke keeps secrets from me. Echoes of grief and loss. They hang in the air like c
obwebs. There is no happiness here.

  ‘The Countess of Venmore.’ The astonishment in Graves’s voice was superbly under control as he announced her. ‘My lady—Lord Adam Hallaston.’

  Harriette, exhausted by the strains of the day, stiffened her spine and prepared to meet her new family.

  A pair of Hallaston eyes focused on her in a mixture of shock and disbelief. Adam Hallaston, younger than herself in age, rose slowly to his feet from where he had been lounging in a deep, silk-upholstered chair. The resemblance to Luke was striking, although Adam was fairer, and still growing into the tall Hallaston frame. He sketched a hasty bow, momentarily stuck dumb, yet with the presence to take her hand and bow over it. His greeting was startling.

  ‘So he did it at last!’

  Harriette looked enquiringly. ‘What exactly?’

  ‘Married!’

  ‘Did you not expect him to do so?’

  ‘Of course,’ Lord Adam replied matter of factly. ‘Eventually. But there’ve been a shoal of débutantes casting lures, and he didn’t take the bait, not once.’

  Amused, Harriette decided to speak the truth. ‘I am not a débutante. I am a smuggler.’

  ‘Ah…’ He struggled for a reply.

  ‘Nor did I trap your brother with bait.’

  ‘No…I did not mean to imply…’ Lord Adam’s face flushed in embarrassed fascination. ‘It’s just that we don’t wed young in the Hallaston family.’ An ingenuous explanation. ‘Marcus wasn’t married, either.’

  ‘Who is Marcus?’ Harriette enquired.

  A silence that could be touched, stark and edgy, settled on the opulent book-lined room. A heavy grief stirred Harriette’s senses. But Adam recovered promptly enough.

  ‘Marcus was our brother. He died, almost a year ago now.’

  ‘Forgive me. I didn’t know…’ Harriette found herself at a loss. All the inexplicable tensions of the day to tear at her nerves, and now this. Why had Luke not told her of this?

  ‘Are you really a smuggler?’

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  ‘Why did—?’ Adam stopped short of inexcusable rudeness, although his eyes, greyer, darker than Luke’s, sparkled with interest.

  ‘Why did the Earl wed me?’ Harriette supplied softly.

  ‘Well…’ Vivid colour again rushed into his cheeks.

  ‘You mean, someone so far from the fashionable ladies of the haut ton?’

  ‘Ah…’

  Harriette found explanations deserting her. She would not offer trite explanations that there had been a longstanding attraction, or a sudden irresistible passion. What could she possibly say after the frigid, hurtful silence between them over the past hours? Let Luke perjure himself if he must.

  ‘You must ask your brother that question,’ she said.

  ‘Ask him what?’

  She had not heard the door open, nor the silent step of his feet on the thick carpet, but there he was beside her and immediately her pulse raced simply to be close to him. Awareness became a throb of desire. The proud carriage of his head, the austerely handsome face, the tall, looselimbed grace.

  ‘Luke…at last!’ Adam Hallaston grinned.

  ‘I trust you have welcomed my wife in a suitable manner. Your waistcoat is a thing of wonder, Adam.’

  Painfully fashionable, Adam had the grace to laugh at the reference to the striped magnificence, confirming for Harriette that there was an affection between them. Perhaps after losing one brother they were protective of each other.

  ‘Ask me what?’ Luke repeated.

  He looked weary, Harriette decided, on edge. The lines beside his mouth were deeply scored. The healing scar on his cheek stood out, as if his skin was tautly stretched in some hard-held emotion over the fine bones of his face. He straightened his shoulders as if he carried a heavy burden. Before she could think, compassion touched her sore heart, but exhausted herself beyond belief, Harriette brushed it aside and gave him no quarter. ‘Your brother would ask you why you married me, so distant as I am from the ladies who usually clamour for your attention, but whose bait you have not so far taken. Lord Adam is curious. He informs me that the Hallastons never marry young.’

  ‘Does he now? It’s true. But as for my choice of a bride—there’s no difficulty in explaining that.’ Luke’s level gaze held Harriette’s challenging stare without compunction as he lifted her hand and carried it to his lips. His mouth was as cold as his face. ‘I saw Harriette in a storm, near the sea. She was wet to the skin and her hair drenched and whipped by the wind into a tangle. Apart from her gown, she looked like a mermaid. I felt a need to wed her immediately.’ He did not smile. ‘She saved my life that night, and so I was bound to her, and she to me, irrevocably and for ever.’

  A ridiculously romantic picture to save her from humiliation. A pretty confection, little of which was true except for the proximity of the sea and the danger to his life. And the picture was coldly drawn as if it held no pleasure for him. To her horror, Harriette felt emotional tears threaten to well and fall. She must be more tired than she had thought. She swallowed hard against them and summoned the brightest smile.

  ‘A mermaid?’ Harriette tried to smile. ‘As for saving your brother’s life—’ she kept the smile intact as she addressed Adam ‘—it was merely a matter of rescuing him from a fishy grave.’

  Later, when she climbed the stairs to her new bedchamber, Harriette felt the full weight of that long day in her heart. She might feel bound to Luke, irrevocably and for ever as he had so charmingly put it, but his response to her on their journey from Old Wincomlee made it unbearably clear that he saw her as a burden. A misjudgement on his part. An alliance that was not to his taste.

  What had she done to change his mind?

  But perhaps she had done nothing, perhaps he had always viewed this marriage with regret and she had merely misread his kindness and generosity when he had taken her to bed. He had wed her because he had to and now, returned to his life in London, wished he had not. She could think of nothing she had done or said to make him revise his opinion of her, but he had, so presumably she had misread his opinion in the first place. She could not fault his good manners, but there was a withdrawal, as impenetrable as a physical barrier, between them.

  He had found her unsuitable and had rejected her.

  A shaming thought crept into her mind. Had he also found her not to his taste in bed? How could she judge? His kindness might mask displeasure, disgust. Telling her she was beautiful—they were only words after all.

  And in that moment Harriette made a silent vow. She would play her part in this marriage, conduct herself with appropriate dignity as Countess of Venmore and make no demands whatsoever on the Earl. He had wed her, given her respectability and an entré into society whether she desired it or not. That was as much as she would ask of him. That ridiculous infatuation—it could not possibly be love!—that had been born when had seen him broken and filthy at her feet, that crippling emotion, would be buttoned away within her heart for ever. And if sometimes she wept at the death of her hopes, then it would be entirely in private. Cool. Polite. Reserved. Because that was what he wanted from his wife—or at least from her. She would be grateful, but would preserve a formal distance, never demanding his time or his presence, not expecting him to dance attendance on her. She would never be a burden to him.

  It is not my intention to inconvenience you in any way. She practised her words silently in her head as she accompanied him up the staircase to her new suite of rooms. You have fulfilled your duty towards me. You have given me so much, I cannot ask for your time, as well, can I?

  She would never say, I want you. I love you. Hold me, Luke, kiss me as you did at Lydyard’s Pride! Touch my body with those clever, elegantly skilful hands that make me burn for you. Tell me again that I am beautiful. Make me feel feminine and desired. She would never say that.

  Luke came to her room. No doubt from his well-bred sense of duty and honour, she decided bitterly. Harriette had taken herself to b
ed, dismissing her new maid, staring unseeingly at the pages of a book of poetry that did not hold her attention.

  Luke knocked, entered, walked forwards slowly to stand beside her. After a wordless moment he sat on the edge of her bed. Yes, she had been right, his features fine drawn, but this was no time for sympathy.

  ‘Do you have everything you need?’ he asked courteously.

  ‘Of course. You are most generous.’

  Harriette put the book face-down and looked at him, searched his face, trying to read the thoughts behind the stern expression. What did he want from her? It would be so easy to open her arms, to allow herself to be held and kissed. How easy it would be to slide breathlessly into his embrace, to curl her fingers into the thickness of his midnight hair, to ask no questions. Simply to be and to enjoy. But that was not possible and not in her nature to ignore the distance he had put between them.

  ‘Did you wish to talk to me?’ she asked.

  Reaching out, he lifted her hands and turned them palm up, smoothing his thumbs over them as if he would read the message written in the lines.

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked, all impeccable courtesy.

  He would rather not be here, she thought, even as her heart shivered at his caress. He is magnificently polite, but his heart is not in it.

  ‘No,’ she replied. How hard the words were. How difficult pride was. Her hands stiffened in his loose hold. ‘It was a long journey. I am tired.’

  ‘Of course.’ He dropped her hands as if they scorched him. ‘I should have been more considerate. We will talk when you are rested. It is imperative that we…’

  Luke did not move, or finish his thought, but drew his knuckles gently over her cheekbone, down her cheek, her jaw, down the length of her throat. Harriette felt herself tense. Surely he would feel the pulse beating there under his fingers. Surely he would see the flush of colour as her blood raced.

  Luke leaned and pressed his lips to the satin skin at the base of her throat, the fragile hollow where her heart beat so heavily, whilst Harriette held her breath.