Compromised Miss

by O'Brien, Anne

  Luke’s heart still thundered in his chest, his body still astonishingly hard, desiring her all over again, but he answered her silent signal and lifted himself away, to his knees, washed by a return of that sharp surge of guilt. Never had he wanted a woman as he had wanted this furious girl, and still did. If she had raised one word of rejection he would have left her, but she had not and he had been seduced into an act of uncontrolled, unbridled physical need. Why had she not refused him, pushed him away, as she was doing now? It was as if she had been driven to it as much as he, against her wishes, against all her doubts in him.

  Luke lingered for one moment to wind his hand into her hair, gently, turning her face so that she must look up at him and spoke the one thought in his mind.

  ‘You are mine, Harriette. Whatever is between us, whatever divides us, you are mine.’

  Abruptly he left her, the fine linen of the sheets tumbled beneath her, her hair spread over the pillow. Magnificently naked, still aroused by the sight of her flushed beauty, he stood for a moment at the door between her chamber and his dressing room, sharply aware of the trace of tears in her lovely eyes, tears he had put there. How cruel the words, the accusations between them, and his without foundation. And despite his apology there had been no healing in his possession of her. That, too, must be laid at his door. Could he have not soothed her heart? Self-contempt stabbed hard, so that his tone was more curt than he intended.

  ‘I shall be at Brooks’s tonight, my lady. I will send your maid to you.’ There was no vestige of expression on his face. ‘Tomorrow I shall be away, taking our French guest with me. It will delight you to know that his presence in Grosvenor Square will no longer be on your conscience. You can at least pretend you have no proof for your suspicions over my integrity towards my country.’

  ‘And will you be able to pretend the same, my lord?’ Harriette replied on a sob. ‘Will you pretend that I do not lure men to their death?’

  ‘No. There’s no pretence,’ he murmured softly on a sigh. ‘I don’t believe that. I don’t think you capable of taking a man’s life so indiscriminately. You have too much honour, too much integrity for that. You had the compassion to save my life when many would have thrown me overboard and good riddance to a man with questionable loyalties. No one would have blamed you. Whereas I have treated you with such lack of consideration…I can only ask for your forgiveness. If you cannot, I can hardly blame you, can I?’

  She was unable to reply. With pride springing to her defence, Harriette made no attempt to wipe away the telltale moisture from her cheeks nor to cover her body from his uncaring contemplation. Luke’s words meant nothing to her in her distress. The contrast to the heat of his body, the fire of his kisses shocked her into a bleak reality. Distrust lay heavy between them, and always would, a dangerous shifting sand of suspicion and doubt, waiting to drag them in. It lurked, a third entity in the room. Like a ghost in the shadowed recesses of a ruin.

  Chapter Nine

  Harriette could not sleep. She heard the opening and closing of the front door, a murmur of voices in the hall, later heard Luke’s returning footsteps on the stair. The door of his own room opened and closed softly. Silence fell on the house. And when cool grey began to lap at the edges of her room, Harriette pushed back the covers and opened a small travelling case on her bed, staring hopelessly down into its empty exterior, his words stamped in her memory as if in blood.

  ‘Do you deny that you are a Wrecker?’ Luke had asked her, and disgust had marked his voice, his face. He might have rescinded his allegation, but how had such a suspicion become fixed in his mind in the first place?

  She could not live with such a slight on her honour.

  Her fingers closed on the edge of the little case. It was too difficult to decide what to take with her, her brain refusing to function with its usual clarity, but she was not to be deterred. Faced with what appeared to be proof of Luke’s involvement in something clandestine, she had once believed that her love for him could remain strong despite the conflicting pull of rogue tides between them. Just to be with him could surely be enough. How wrong she had been—it was too painful. Luke turned her bones to water, her blood to fire, but if he could not trust her with the truth, what future did they have together? Perhaps there were ways out of this entanglement, but for the present they eluded her.

  She must put some distance between them. If not, she would either accuse him again with unforgivable words, or she would weep on his chest and tell him she believed everything he said. What a poor creature that would make of her, turning a blind eye to the issues between them. It was not in her nature. No sailor closed his eyes against a fast running tide or storm-lashed shore, but set the course and sail to weather the onslaught. A distance between them might help them to see if there was anything to be salvaged from the wreckage. She could not stay, her heart broken that he should so misjudge her, believing her guilty without evidence.

  Is it not possible that you are misjudging him?

  But there is evidence. Too much of it!

  There was only one place to go where she might find some measure of peace. Once there, she would be able to think. She began to place the necessities for her journey into the case. But first…Harriette opened the door to the adjoining dressing room, entered, walked through and listened, head bent at Luke’s door. She would not leave without seeing him one more time.

  Harriette turned the handle softly, pushed the door ajar, breath held. He was asleep. Abandoned, a book lay face down on the cover. Arm outflung, face turned into the pillow—Luke’s chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm. From her safe distance, Harriette simply stood and looked, swept back to those first days when he had been under her care. Wounded and vulnerable, there had been no cruel burden of secrets between them then. She had been free to love him.

  Harriette slipped off her shoes and walked across the thick carpet, to stand beside the swagged and curtained bed. Her eyes took in every beloved detail of his face, the contours of his shoulders, the elegant hands, the scar on his cheek almost invisible in the soft candlelight. Luke! She loved him still despite the forces that drove him, despite all that tore them apart.

  ‘Luke.’ She framed the word silently, raising her hand as if she might smooth his hair, but in the end dared not. ‘Goodbye, Luke. I loved you no matter what—I still love you. Why could you not love me? Why could we not make a life together without lies and deceit?’

  Her heart ached, a physical pain.

  He stirred a little as if aware of her closeness. It forced Harriette to retreat, with one final glance over her shoulder at the door. If he told her the truth, then she would come home again.

  And if he would not?

  Then she would sever the ties for ever, whatever the cost.

  It had taken two long days of negotiation and the exchange of gold for Luke to dispose of his French prisoner. At last it was done. With a fair wind and a modicum of luck, without a need of Lydyard’s Ghost, Captain Henri would now be on French soil. Luke could only hope that the Captain bring him the vital information.

  But all such concerns were wiped from his mind. He forced his fingers to remain steady as he opened the folded single page he discovered waiting for him on his desk. The definite strokes raced across the page with a furious energy. Much like her, he thought, but could not smile. He read the whole of it at a glance with a peculiar lack of feeling as if its content were of no importance, without emotion, with no suggestion that his life was in the process of falling apart. All his senses were frozen. How could he react, when Harriette’s thoughts, expressed in these few short lines, were of no surprise to him? Had he not anticipated just such a desolate emptiness waiting for him, every minute of his journey home?

  I have written this in case you should worry about me. It would be wrong of me not to tell you.

  Why did those two lines stir his guilt to outrageous pain? Did she think he would care so little? Did she not realise that his memory of his harsh words were a sha
rp pain that gave him no rest?

  I have gone to Lydyard’s Pride. I know that you regretted your cruel words, but they still hurt me more than I can say. Forgive me if you feel that I have returned your generosity with less than gratitude. I know you meant to rescue me from a difficult situation. With so much unresolved between us and no way that I can see of achieving that resolution, I have left you. I had hoped that you might tell me the truth, but I see that you feel unable to trust me. I cannot hope your affairs come to fruition. I fear for them.

  You will always have my thanks—and my sincere affection. I cannot write of that.

  I am not a Wrecker.

  There were the faintest of smears on the final line as if she had caught the wet ink with her sleeve or her hand in an impatient gesture.

  He folded the paper carefully, tucking it into the breast pocket of his coat, somewhere, he thought, in the region of his heart. If he still possessed one. It felt at this moment as if it were turned to stone.

  I have left you.

  The words hammered in his brain.

  I am not a Wrecker.

  She had not accepted his apology. Perhaps in the deluge of emotion she had not understood what he had said, that he had seen his mistake. Perhaps he had not made his regret plain enough. Or perhaps she never could forgive him for doubting her. One fact was clear—he had hurt her beyond measure. So Harriette had returned to her old life, and how could he blame her? Luke recalled with humiliation what he had done, the accusations he had flung at her, the implication that she would take Ellerdine as her lover. It had not been to his credit. And she had answered him, fire with fire, blistering him with her knowledge of his most private affairs. As they had faced each other, damned each other with bitter words, all he could think of was how beautiful she was with temper flashing in her splendid eyes. How desirable she was and how much he had wanted her. So, at the end, he had drawn the sting and he had taken her, loved her with his body. And then, by God! What had he done? Walked away from her, in his own mind before any more wounding words could be said to tear and divide. But Harriette would have thought he had abandoned her.

  I have left you. You will always have my sincere affection.

  Luke stared down into the empty fire grate, forehead resting on his arm, feeling the pain of loss, as strong even as when he had learned of Marcus’s death. For Luke had learned one true fact out of the whole mess of lies and deceit. He loved her, and he should be whipped for causing her distress. It seemed impossible that he could know a woman for so short a time and yet love her as if she were his soul mate. Harriette was, quite simply, essential to his happiness. Somehow, without his realizing it, she had slid beneath his skin, made a place for herself in his mind, in his heart, in the marrow of his bones, so that he was conscious of her presence even when they were apart. Even now he could taste the sweetness of her lips, smell the insistently soft scent of lavender that she used on her hair. How had she done that when a matter of weeks ago he had not even known she existed?

  Perhaps he had always loved her, he thought, from the day that he had discovered she was Harriette Lydyard rather than Captain Harry of Lydyard’s Ghost.

  Had that admiration been love all along?

  What miraculous turn of fortune had brought Harriette to cross his path? She was everything the Hallaston family would have rejected as a bride for the Earl, and yet she was his choice. The only woman he had ever met that he would wish to stand beside him. And he had treated her with callous disrespect, driving her away. He could not blame her.

  Luke took out the note to read it again. She was desolate, despite the calm brevity of her words, and it was his fault. Had she not believed him when he had admitted his fault and exonerated her? He could imagine her courage in writing the note, blotting away the tears, removing herself from a situation that gave her too much pain. Of his own making.

  By God, he had made a mess of it! He slammed his fist into the smooth marble, ignoring the pain in his knuckles, then poured a glass of brandy, drinking it down in one vicious swallow as if the heat in his belly could melt the ice in his heart. So what now? Luke took cold consideration of the facts.

  He could not allow this impasse between them to continue. At least he knew where she was and that she was safe—it was the only comfort in the whole damned business, the only bright light in a murk of cloud and shadow that made it easy to plan, to think clearly. His first thought was to order up the curricle and go straight to Lydyard’s Pride and bring her back. Every bone in his body urged him to go to her and heal her pain. But in his hand, also left on his desk for him to read on his return, was a message even shorter than Harriette’s, a note that demanded his immediate attention. He did not need to read it again.

  Port Les Villets. First Wednesday in August. Twelve Noon.

  Jean-Jacques Noir had replied at last. One week from now. The game of cat and mouse was on again, a game that Luke was determined to win—because he dare not lose it.

  If Harriette had not been so low in spirits, she would have been overjoyed to see Lydyard’s Pride again, its proud tower visible for miles, its stonework gleaming in the clear light from the sea. It should have been a moment of intense joy, returning to a much loved home, but Harriette was forced to acknowledge that her heart was no longer here. Her heart was still in Grosvenor Square—a formal rigid residence for which she had no affection and would not be sorry if she never saw again—but her heart was still there with a difficult, intransigent man who would not open the door in his own heart and let her in.

  Harriette walked up the steps, lifted the latch and pushed, entering the hallway with its cobwebs and dust motes. She opened the door into the library. How quiet and empty it seemed. Then one of the parlours. Why did all the rooms, even though she had rarely used any of them, remind her of the time she had spent here with Luke? Next the shabby withdrawing room. She opened the door.

  And came to a startled halt on the threshold, unable to take in what faced her. The furniture under its holland covers had been pushed back, chairs stacked against the walls, the threadbare carpet rolled before the fireplace. In their place stood a pile of barrels and bales and boxes of what, to her experienced eye, could only be contraband. Spirits and wine. Silk and lace and tea. All stacked in her withdrawing room.

  She advanced to inspect the hoard. The barrels were stained with sea water, but well packed to preserve their delicate contents. Contraband, all openly stored with no attempt to hide or even conceal them under the covers. And what was it doing here, of all places? Removing it would be a whole morning’s work, so that one chance visit from the Excise men would mean instant discovery—and then they would all be in the mire. The whole venture would be closed down by heavy-handed justice to the loss of the whole community, with bars and shackles for those involved.

  Was she to be the first Lydyard to find herself in Newgate?

  What had happened here in her absence? Whose plan was this?

  Harriette lifted her skirts and ran up the stairs with foreboding in her heart, as she climbed to the Tower Room where she discovered signs of recent occupation. The bed was made up. A ruffled shirt flung over the seat of a chair. A candle, well burned down, and a pile of books on the nightstand.

  She knew who was guilty of this encroachment on her property.

  Turning on her heel, Harriette ran back down, to search out George Gadie. Better to get the facts before she started flinging accusations. Puzzlement warred with anger at so careless an organisation. Had they no sense? Using the double cellars at the Pride in an emergency was one thing; filling her withdrawing room with such blatant evidence was dangerously foolhardy. And if there had been an emergency, why not use any number of other secret caches—in the church crypt, in the rafters of the Silver Boat. She stalked round the front of the house. By what right did anyone take up residence in her house in her absence without her consent?

  Harriette marched through the archway into the stable block—to see that she had a visitor. This w
as not what she had wanted, not at this precise moment, but faced with the inevitable she did not flinch. Perhaps it was for the best to accost the leader of the enterprise and discover just what was afoot.

  ‘Alexander!’

  He had his back to her, in the act of dismounting, and turned his head in obvious surprise at her voice. Alexander Ellerdine leaped to the ground, let the reins fall and strode across to her.

  In the seconds it took him to cover the short distance, Harriette watched his face. By the time he reached her his eyes were lit by a warm smile of welcome, his lips curved. Had she imagined the tightening of skin over his jaw, the momentary flash of impatience in his eye?

  He took her hands, holding them wide to appraise her. ‘Harriette! Very fashionable for Old Wincomlee. Fine feathers indeed.’ He flicked his fingertips against the flirtatiously curling feathers of her bonnet. ‘I didn’t expect you quite yet, my lovely cousin.’

  ‘No. So I see.’ She returned neither his smile nor his flattery. ‘What is that in my withdrawing room?’

  ‘Contraband, of course.’ Alexander, kissing her fingers with a broad grin, like a small boy caught out in some mischief, was completely unruffled. Entirely unrepentant. Overwhelmingly charming.

  ‘I know that. And you should know that I would not approve of it stored so openly in my house. I don’t like it. I warned you not to do so when I left.’

  ‘I know you did. And it’s my fault. I can’t deny it.’ He waved it away, now a wicked glint in his eye. ‘A false alarm. We thought the Excise men were about—but it proved not to be the case.’

  Harriette felt her unease growing rather than subsiding under the smooth answers. ‘You shouldn’t have done it, Zan! I don’t want the Pride to become the target of Preventive measures. It is my home, not a smugglers’ den!’

  ‘Soon mended.’ He drew her hand through his arm, turning her to lead her towards the house. ‘Don’t let it disturb you. I have everything in hand.’