“That can’t be true.”
“You think not? I’ve been a disappointment to him. I haven’t measured up to the Sinclair standard. Indeed, according to my father, I’ve squandered everything that’s ever been given me, including my good name. He hasn’t got the facts entirely accurate. Not that that’s ever been a barrier to his casting me as a black-hearted villain. But even if only half of what he believes were true… I won’t deceive you, Miss March. I’ve made the devil of a mess of my life.”
Valentine considered this. “The drinking and the…?”
“The gambling. The brawling. The women. Not but that I haven’t given it all up these past years. God’s truth, I’ve been living like a monk. I haven’t been gaming. And I certainly haven’t been brawling. I rarely even visit my club anymore. And do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a woman? Ah, but we mustn’t discuss that topic, I see. I believe I’ve made you blush.”
“I believe you were trying to make me blush,” she said with a touch of asperity.
“You blush very prettily.”
“What does that say to anything?”
“You need more color in your cheeks. You were too pale at dinner. Indeed, there was a moment or two I feared you’d been turned into a marble statue.” He paused. “What was my father saying to you?”
Valentine flinched. “Nothing.”
“Ah. Now you intrigue me. He was clearly not saying nothing.” St. Ashton turned in his seat. “Was it about me? Was he warning you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Was he telling you that you must stay away from me?”
There was a peculiar edge to his voice. It was all of a piece with his strange demeanor this evening. Was it the drink? A reaction to the altercation with his father? She had no way of knowing for certain, but Valentine sensed that beneath St. Ashton’s veneer of mocking, dry humor lay anger and bitterness and bone deep hurt. She felt a flicker of pity for him. “What an absurd idea, my lord. He didn’t mention you at all.”
St. Ashton raised his brows. “Not even once?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what in the hell was he saying to you?”
Valentine’s lips thinned into a disapproving little line. “Is it a sport for you, my lord?”
“Is what a sport?”
“To repeatedly put me out of countenance? I confess that I don’t find it amusing. And if you persist, then I shall take my leave of you—”
He caught her arm. “Forgive me. It’s not sport. If it were, trust that I wouldn’t speak to you so plainly. Nor so inelegantly. That I do so is only… Good God, Miss March, can’t you see that if I act the brute around you it’s only the unhappy result of your putting me out of countenance.”
She looked up at him, bewildered. “I?”
“Yes, you. Don’t ask me why. I can think of one hundred reasons, most of them bad ones and none of them suitable for repeating.” His fingers loosened on her forearm, his hand sliding down to hers. “If I offend you, it’s not done on purpose. Pray, don’t go.”
Her eyes fell for an instant to where his hand covered her own. “I won’t. Not yet.” And quite against her will, she turned her hand, settling it more comfortably in his.
Some of the tension went out of St. Ashton’s shoulders then. “Thank you.”
Valentine could feel the warmth of her blush as it heated her cheeks and chest. It was impossible to appear composed in such a situation. Nevertheless, she tried. “Your father was asking about me. He asked about the village where I grew up and about my mother and father. That sort of thing.”
“And you answered him.”
So she had—as vaguely as possible. Not that it had put the earl off. He’d seemed to know just what to ask and just how to ask it without seeming rude or intrusive. Valentine had had no defense against such an expert technique. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I answered him.”
“As a result, I suppose he now knows everything about you.”
“Not everything, my lord.”
“He knows more about you than I do. I daresay more than I ever will.”
“There’s nothing worth the knowing. I was a vicar’s daughter. And now I’m a lady’s companion. That’s all.” Her heart was thumping painfully again. “I’m surprised your father would wish to stay here.”
“He doesn’t wish it. He’s only here to prevent me from contracting what he considers to be an unsuitable marriage.”
“With Felicity Brightwell?”
“Who else?”
Any secret hopes Valentine might have cherished promptly withered and died. “Yes. I see.”
“He’s taken it in his head that she’s not good enough for me. In point of fact, he’s strictly forbidden the match. He believes he can stop it somehow. And knowing him as I do, he probably can. Though, I can’t see how. Especially not when he spends all of his time in conversation with you. But then my father’s methods have ever been a mystery to me.”
Valentine listened in numb silence. She’d always been a remarkably good listener. A quality of which Phillip Edgecombe had once taken full advantage. She’d been his friend and confidante. The person he’d come to when his cares had overwhelmed him.
“The name Edgecombe doesn’t mean much around these parts anymore. Not after the way father treated everyone. And the debts! You have no idea the extent of them, Val. Mortgages on the house. Lines of credit with more banks than I can count. I mean to put it right again now he’s gone, but how can I when nobody will lend me a bean?”
“Can’t you just leave, Phil?” she’d asked him. “Go somewhere else? Start over?”
He’d given her an indulgent smile. “And marry you? Leave Hartwood Green and traipse the globe like a pair of penniless beggars?”
“Not beggars,” she’d objected. “Squire Pilcher mentioned a gentleman acquaintance of his with an estate in the West Country. If you were serious about going into the church—about taking orders—perhaps he might be able to arrange a living for you there.”
“It’s the dearest wish of my heart,” Phil had replied with seeming sincerity. “But no. I must find a way to raise some capital, Val. When I’ve paid down my father’s debts and have something more to offer you than my good name, then you and I shall marry. You have my word on it.”
His word. What a fool she’d been.
But that was two months ago. The morning she’d boarded the train in Surrey to the Brightwell’s estate in Hertfordshire and her new life as a lady’s companion, she’d vowed that she’d never again act the fool for any man. And she didn’t intend to break her promise to herself now. No matter how much Lord St. Ashton might need a compassionate ear.
“If that’s so, my lord,” she said, “you must go join the others in the drawing room. I know Miss Brightwell is waiting for you most impatiently and—”
St. Ashton’s fingers closed more firmly over her hand. “Are you so anxious to be rid of me?”
She exhaled a tremulous breath. When she spoke, her voice was equally unsteady. “Please let me go.”
The sardonic humor disappeared from St. Ashton’s face. “What is it? What have I said?”
“Nothing, only I still haven’t found Lady Brightwell’s shawl and—” She tugged at her hand. “Please. Let me find it and you may take it back with you to the drawing room.”
“I’m not going back to the blasted drawing room.”
“But Miss Brightwell—”
“Is that what this is about? Confound it, haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying to you?”
She gave another tug of her hand to no avail.
“I have no interest in Felicity Brightwell, you little idiot. And even if I did, what sort of female do you suppose would marry a penniless viscount and follow him to a moldering heap in Northumberland?”
“I would,” Valentine said. The mortifying words were out before she could recall them. “If I loved someone I would follow him anywhere.”
St. Ashton went still. He
searched her face for a moment, his own expression stark in the glow of the moonlight. “Of course you would. You’re an angel. I recognized it the first time I saw you.”
She shook her head. “Don’t do that. Don’t make a joke of it.”
“I mean it.” He leaned closer to her, closer than he’d ever been before. His voice deepened. “Shall I prove it to you?”
The scent of freshly starched linen, polished leather, and lemon shaving soap rose to her nostrils. It was overwhelming to her senses. He was overwhelming to her sense. “N-no,” she stammered.
One of his hands still retained hers, the other reached to brush a stray lock of hair from her temple. His touch was extraordinarily tender. “Let me kiss you, Valentine.”
Oh, goodness.
But she couldn’t allow it, could she? It would be wanton. Worse than wanton. They’d only just met today. And then there was the matter of his reputation and her own—
“Valentine,” he said again.
Her name sounded wonderful murmured in his low-pitched voice. She scarcely had the heart to chastise him. “I haven’t given you leave to use my Christian name, sir.”
“But I must use it. And I must kiss you.” He curved his hand around the back of her neck. “Just one kiss. Something to take away with me to Northumberland. Will you let me?”
His fingers were tracing a random pattern on the sensitive skin behind her ear, his breath warm against her cheek. When had he moved so close to her? “Tristan,” she whispered.
It was all the encouragement he needed.
Tristan bent his head, his mouth finding hers in a brief, respectful kiss. It was the sort of kiss he had no experience with at all. Chaste. Restrained. Profoundly unsatisfying. It was over before it began.
Were he more of a gentleman he would have adhered to his word. Just one kiss, he’d said. But now, with his lips resting lightly against the voluptuous bow of hers, he couldn’t stop at only one. She was too sweet, too pillow soft. His mouth moved over hers again, a featherlight touch of seductive enquiry that quickly gave way to a gentle, searching pressure. He courted her with his lips, nudging, stroking, tasting. Seeking even a flicker of response from her.
She gave it and more.
Her soft mouth yielded to his, lips parting beneath the heat of the next kiss and the next. How many kisses followed? Tristan couldn’t be sure. It seemed to go on and on, one kiss dissolving into another, until her breath came as heavily as his own did. Until somehow they were no longer holding hands but fiercely embracing each other. Until he was murmuring to her nonsensically, repeating her name in a voice that ached with longing. “Valentine, Valentine.”
Her arms tightened around his neck as he drew hot kisses over her jaw, her cheek, her temple. He could feel her fingers sliding through the thick locks of his hair. Could smell the faint scent of orange blossom perfume on her skin. “Tristan…we must stop.”
“Once more. Please, Valentine. Let me…” He captured her lips again, kissing her as passionately as he’d ever kissed any woman before. As he lost himself in her sweetness, a shrill warning sounded somewhere in the depths of his overheated brain. She was an innocent. He had no right to handle her as he would a lover. He had no right to handle her at all. He willed his hands to remain where they were, clutching the corseted span of her trim waist, stroking the slender expanse of her back. But no power on earth could prevent the inevitable drift down to the swell of her hips and up to the lush curve of her bosom. Stroking, squeezing, caressing, while his mouth hungrily plundered hers.
He whispered something to her then. God knew what. An endearment, perhaps. Or a promise of some kind. She pressed herself against him in answer, molding her body to his chest and returning his searing kisses with a soft murmur of pleasure that set his soul aflame. “Oh God,” he groaned. “Valentine. Let me kiss you. Let me have you. I could die tomorrow if only…”
Later he would wonder how long they’d had an audience. He’d anguish over how many had heard him moaning and begging the innocent little vicar’s daughter to let him have her, as if he were a raw lad with his first woman. But now, all that registered was the sound of a high-pitched female scream, followed closely by an enormous crash as a branch of candles dropped to the floor.
“Mama!” Felicity Brightwell wailed at the top of her lungs.
Valentine’s whole body went stiff. She tried to pull away from him, but he would not let her go. “Easy, love,” he said, using his much larger frame to shield her from view of the door. “It’ll be all right.”
And then Lady Brightwell was there. And Lord Quinton. And—Good God!—the Earl of Lynden himself.
It was then that Tristan knew that, as far as he was concerned, things were never going to be all right again.
An hour later, Tristan leaned against the library mantelpiece, his arms folded. His dark hair was disheveled and his cravat, which had been immaculate at the beginning of the evening, was now in magnificent disarray. He looked, in short, like a man who’d been interrupted in the early stages of tumbling a wench—a fact of which he was grimly aware.
Felicity Brightwell had nearly set the conservatory on fire when she dropped the candelabra held aloft in her hand. Following that, she’d nearly deafened him with her wild shrieks and sobs, all the while accusing Miss March of being a “devious little slut” and a “common harlot.” It had taken her mother the better part of the hour to soothe her and then, with Lady Fairford’s assistance, send her off to bed with a posset.
Now Maria Fairford sat beside Lady Brightwell, one arm around her shoulders as if to console her. Lord Lynden was seated in a chair near the fire, as ominously silent as he’d been since the moment he entered the conservatory. And Valentine…
Tristan felt an overwhelming swell of guilt as his eyes came to rest briefly on her face. She sat, pale and frighteningly white, with her hands clasped on her lap. She’d said not a word in her own defense. He very much feared she was in shock.
“Well, I will say it if no one else will,” Lord Fairford proclaimed from where he stood behind his wife. He was a heavyset gentleman with thinning hair and a perpetual smile of slightly lecherous bonhomie. “If it had to happen anywhere, it’s lucky it was here.”
“Fairford’s right,” Lady Fairford agreed. “Our house parties are—” She glanced anxiously at Lord Lynden. “What I mean to say is that—”
“What m’wife means is that no one here’s going to spread any gossip. Discretion is the byword at our parties. There’ll be no scandal attached to this incident.”
“No scandal?” Lady Brightwell moaned, a handkerchief clutched in one hand. “My daughter walked in on the man she hoped to marry in a sordid embrace with my companion! Do you think she’ll ever forget the sight of it? And can you imagine she’ll ever forgive me for hiring such a person? For bringing her here and allowing—”
“It would seem to me, madam, that your daughter has very little to do with the present situation,” Lord Lynden said.
Tristan looked at his father in mild surprise.
“My daughter is the victim!” Lady Brightwell cried.
“If there is a victim here,” Lord Lynden said, “it’s Miss March.”
“My companion? She’s no victim of anything. She’s an impudent slut who’s no better than she ought to be. And I’ll have her gone tonight. On the night train or the stage or a dogcart if need be. Do you hear me, Miss March? You’re dismissed without reference. And without your wages, too, for you owe me the cost of those spectacles.” Lady Brightwell pressed her crumpled handkerchief to her mouth. “Oh, get her out of here, Maria. I can’t stand to look at her a second longer.”
Tristan had had just about enough of Lady Brightwell’s histrionics. “Miss March is not going anywhere,” he said in a voice of perilous calm. “She’s under my protection now. And anyone else who casts aspersions on her character will answer to me.”
“Under your protection?” Lady Brightwell looked as if she might swoon. “Not even you, St.
Ashton, would be so lost to decency as to make this…this creature your mistress.”
“Enough.” The earl rose from his chair, standing to his full, imposing height. “Fairford, I would have a moment alone with Miss March and my son.”
“I can’t allow that, my lord,” Lady Fairford objected. “We’re largely informal here, to be sure, but to leave Miss March alone with two men without the benefit of a chaperone is passing all bounds.”
Lord Lynden met Valentine’s eyes, and Tristan could have sworn that some silent communication passed between the two of them. “Do you wish for a chaperone?” he asked her.
“No,” she whispered.
“As that may be—” Lady Fairford began, but she was silenced by her husband who moved at once to bustle the two women out of the room.
“Come, ladies,” he said. “Leave them to their negotiations. Gentlemen’s business, you know.” Lady Brightwell declared that she must see to her daughter, and then the library doors shut and Tristan heard no more. When he looked again at Valentine, her cheeks were flaming.
“Gentlemen’s business? The devil!” he swore with sudden violence. In three strides he was at her side, sinking down on his haunches in front of her and possessing himself of her two hands. “Valentine. Valentine, look at me. I have no intention of offering you a carte blanche. I mean to marry you.”
Valentine gave him a look of heart-wrenching anguish. “Do you?”
“If you’ll have me, yes.” He squeezed her hands. “I’m a bad bet. You know that. But if you’ll have me—”
“I can’t marry you.”
“Can’t you? Why not? Because of what happened tonight? Do you fear I’m offering for you only because I’ve compromised you? I assure you—”
“It doesn’t matter why. I can’t marry you. I simply can’t. I’m sorry, my lord, but you mustn’t ask me anymore.”
She tried to withdraw her hands, but he wouldn’t allow it. He was suddenly, and quite unaccountably, angry. Never in his life had he come to the point with any lady. Never had he even considered it. And here he was, as good as on bended knee, in front of a bloody vicar’s daughter and she would not have him? It beggared belief! “Why not?” he asked again. His voice was harsh. “Is it because of the money? Because I confessed to you that I have been cut off?”
The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter: A Victorian Romance Page 6