Nicola Cornick Collection

by Nicola Cornick

  He straightened and squared his shoulders. Sometimes it felt as though he spent his whole life atoning for that failure. He had fought for the causes he had held to be just and he had tried to help those who needed saving. He had almost taken a life and he had given his in return, over and over. For a second his thoughts veered back to Joanna Grant, the only woman he had ever loved. He had saved Joanna from her first husband’s cruelty. He had wanted Joanna herself to be his prize. But fate was tricky like that; it did not always give one what one wished for. Owen smiled ruefully in the darkness. Instead of Joanna, fate had sent him Tess, Tess who was in her own way as fascinating as her sister, Tess who also required protection, Tess who for all her courage and her independence was vulnerable and needed him.

  He had started out seeing Teresa Darent as a deceitful jade without an honest bone in her body, a woman who was both sensuously desirable and dangerously cunning. Yet after only two days he was realising that she was so much more than that: complex, passionate for the causes she believed in, loving. He could not deny that he was enjoying the game of bluff and double bluff between them but he was also starting to want much more. He wanted Teresa Darent. He wanted all of her. He needed to strip away the pretence and uncover the woman beneath, to take her, and keep her and know all her secrets. He, the hunter, was falling prey to the very woman he was intent on capturing. And he did not know how the game would end.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TOM BRADSHAW STOOD ON LONDON Bridge and watched the waters of the Thames slide below, black and smooth, shifting light and dark. It was a bad night to be out, a cold night with a haze of snow on the wind. The sky was impenetrably dark.

  There was a cold feeling in Tom’s heart too and the knowledge that matters were not falling out according to his plans. Twice now he had tried to persuade Emma to take him back and twice she had refused him. He knew she was not going to change her mind. The Lady Emma Brooke he had known a bare year before, the girl he had courted, seduced and married was gone. That Emma had been sheltered and spoiled, a product of her class and her upbringing. Lady Emma Bradshaw was a different matter, her character honed by loss and despair; she was stronger, wiser and all the more desirable for it.

  All his life Tom had had success with women and he had never believed for a moment that he could not persuade Emma to come back to him. They had been two of a kind. They had had an attraction, an affinity that bound them together. Emma was the only woman that Tom had genuinely loved—although he had said the words to plenty of other women, he had never meant them. It was for Emma alone that he had returned to England, wanting to take her with him to start a new life.

  It was not to be. Tom leaned his elbows on the stone parapet of the bridge and watched the water tumbling beneath the arches. The cold cut through his thin jacket like a knife. His fortunes had turned. He had always been lucky in the past but not anymore.

  He had suspected at first that it was his half-brother, Garrick, who had been behind the abduction that had seen him on the ship to the Indies. Now he knew better. Garrick Farne was an honest man who might have Tom arrested for attempted murder but would never act against him in an underhand manner. No, Tom’s enemy was more deceitful than that, slippery and dangerous, a threat to all around him. Justin Brooke. Justin had pledged Emma his love and support whilst ruthlessly, secretly, attempting to rid her of her husband.

  Tom’s fist smashed down onto the parapet. He knew that the Brookes had disapproved of him, of course. Oh, they had made the best of their daughter’s marriage in public in order to avoid a scandal but he suspected that from the first they had been plotting to be rid of him. That was understandable, almost forgivable. What he could not forgive was that in the process they had made Emma suffer too, his beautiful Emma, disgraced and cast out, sacrificed to their pride. And now Justin had the hypocrisy to pretend that he loved his sister and wanted to protect her….

  Emma was not the only one Justin threatened. Teresa Darent, the only person who had helped Emma and shown her kindness when her family had abandoned her, was in jeopardy too. Tom knew that Justin Brooke would sell out his political principles—and his allies—for the sake of gaining power. Brooke had already gone to Lord Sidmouth and promised names in return for a deal.

  Tom shifted. He was assailed by two very unfamiliar emotions. The first was selflessness and it was the impulse that prompted him to keep Emma safe. No matter that she wanted nothing more to do with him, no matter that she could never be his again, Emma’s future was now more important to Tom than his own.

  The second emotion was guilt.

  Tom had never in his life been troubled by guilt. He had done many bad things but had never regretted them. Now, though, Teresa Darent haunted him. He was obsessed by the terrible thing that he had done to her ten years before. He had been much younger, of course, and he had not realised at the time how serious the repercussions of his actions had been, not until he had heard about Melton’s art exhibition. Tom could of course blame Brokeby—Brokeby had been the ringleader, the libertine, a man steeped in dissipation. But where Brokeby had led, Tom had followed. He had not known who Tess was at the time, had not even recognised her when he had met her again eight years later. It was not until he had heard some throwaway remark in a coffee shop about Lady Darent and her previous marriages that he had made the connection. The horror of it had filled his thoughts ever since.

  He owed Tess Darent a double debt. And the one thing he would do, besides protecting Emma, was to ensure that those who wanted to bring Lady Darent down, to frame her for their own crimes, would never succeed. The powers ranged against Tom were substantial but he thought he might have one ally. Lord Rothbury was the Home Secretary’s man but he was also Lady Darent’s betrothed. And he was an honest man. Tom was sure of it. Rothbury was not deep in the conspiracy and double-dealing that reached as high as the Home Secretary himself.

  Tom drove his cold hands into the pockets of his jacket and started to walk back towards the docks, the place he had come from as a child, the warren of backstreets and rookeries that was his home. He had work to do. He would write to Rothbury—anonymously, of course—and warn him to keep Lady Darent safe. It would go a small way to repaying his debt to her and easing the guilt.

  “MY LADY!”

  “Don’t tell me.” Tess rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. “Lord Rothbury is here to disturb my sleep again.” She yawned, forcing her eyes open a crack. “Pray tell him to leave me in peace.”

  “His lordship requests the pleasure of your company on a trip to see the Tower menagerie, my lady,” Margery said. “I have lovely hot water here for you,” she added coaxingly. “And the fire is already lit and the room is warm.”

  “The Tower menagerie?” Tess grumbled, sliding further beneath the covers. “I do not like animals.”

  “Yes, you do, my lady,” Margery, literal as ever, corrected her. She was already warming Tess’s petticoats before the fire. “Do you remember the time you bought that kitten in the market from the man who had it in a cage, and the bird that flew into the window and you fed it milk?”

  Tess gave a sharp sigh. There was no chance of sleep now, not with Margery’s chatter dragging her awake. “I dislike seeing animals in captivity,” she corrected. “That sad leopard at the Tower … One cannot blame it for moulting, trapped in this climate.” She slid out of bed, wincing at the cold that wrapped about her and set her shivering.

  “I really do not know why I am doing this,” she muttered.

  “It’s because you like Lord Rothbury, my lady.” Margery was unanswerable in this mood. “Admit it. You know you do.”

  “It is a marriage of convenience,” Tess said shortly, “though what is convenient about being dragged from one’s bed under cover of darkness is anyone’s guess.”

  Nevertheless she was shocked by the pleasure she felt when she descended to the drawing room—they were so early that no one else but the servants were awake this time—and found Rothbury waiting f
or her. He was standing by the window looking out on the snow that was tumbling from a sky as lumpy and grey as an old mattress. The room looked dull and dark but when he turned and smiled at her, Tess felt a happiness so acute that for a moment it robbed her of speech. She could feel a smile starting and turned it into a severe look.

  “My lord—here again? And so early?”

  Rothbury’s answering smile rocked her heart. “I wanted to see you again,” he said easily.

  “Why?” Tess asked bluntly. Such frankness was not her usual style. She wondered if his candour was contagious.

  “Why not?” He looked puzzled. “I enjoy your company too much to waste the day spending it without you.”

  I enjoy your company …

  Tess could feel a tide of colour flooding her face. It was such a simple statement to make her feel so flustered. She had thought her town bronze burnished to the highest polish. It was extremely disconcerting that Rothbury could agitate her like this. And when he did she was in danger of forgetting everything; forgetting that he was the man who could ruin her, forgetting that she had set out to use him, forgetting everything in the sweet pleasure of knowing him better each day.

  “I really do not like the animals in the Tower menagerie,” she said quickly, seeking to hide her confusion. “It feels unnatural to keep them locked up as well as downright cruel to expect an exotic beast to endure our British winters.”

  “What a soft heart you have under that brittle exterior.” Rothbury had come forwards and taken her hand now. He was rubbing his thumb gently over the back of it, which did nothing to quell the turmoil inside her. “Who would have thought it? Your timekeeping is improving,” he added, glancing at the clock. “I arrived earlier today expecting a long wait, but you only took three-quarters of an hour this time. Not,” he added, with an appraising glance that made her feel a little breathless, “that you are not well worth waiting for.”

  “You flatter me,” Tess said drily, aware that Margery had not had time to curl her hair and that it was plaited into one braid and pinned under her bonnet so haphazardly that strands were already escaping.

  “I never flatter,” Rothbury corrected. Their eyes met. His were such a clear, expressive green, so perceptive, so compelling. “You’ll get no false compliments from me,” he said. “I never learned the art of dissimulation and cannot see a use for it anyway.”

  The hot, giddy, tumbling feeling in Tess’s stomach intensified. “I do believe I need breakfast before we depart this morning,” she said, turning away from him so that she did not give away too much of her feelings.

  Instead of visiting the Tower of London, they went to see the exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

  “Because you like paintings,” Rothbury said smoothly when Tess asked him why. “Often when you talk you use very visual imagery and when we are out I see you looking at things with an artist’s eye.” He smiled. “You have a lot of talent.”

  “I have a little talent,” Tess admitted warily. She thought of the political cartoons she’d recently completed and felt a pang of guilt. The previous afternoon she had taken three of them to the printers in Cheapside and this morning they were on sale on the streets for a penny each. The one depicting the government seated around the cabinet table like a line of fat suet puddings whilst the people outside the window starved was proving particularly popular.

  Rothbury’s smile broadened at her qualified admission. “You are too modest,” he said. He helped her down from the carriage and guided her into the gallery with one hand on the small of her back. Even through the thickness of her pelisse Tess could feel his thumb moving gently along her spine. It was distracting, as was the scent of him. As he moved she caught a hint of it, of cold fresh air and clean linen. She was accustomed to men who were polished and pomaded to within an inch of their lives. They smelled so strongly of cologne that it walked into the room before they did. Rothbury, in contrast, smelled of masculinity and the outdoors, exactly as she would have expected him to do. At the same time there was something knee-weakeningly familiar about his scent. Her body seemed to respond to it and the knowledge made Tess feel hot and aware.

  Fortunately, once they were inside Rothbury released her and so she was able to concentrate on the collection rather than on his proximity. The elegant rooms of the Picture Gallery housed some marvellous Dutch landscapes and English portraits, and Tess was soon engrossed, wandering from room to room, discussing light and style with the curator, who was only too happy to have a knowledgeable visitor. Even so, she was very conscious of Rothbury watching her as she viewed the paintings.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at one point. “I am taking so long and I am sure that you must be bored.” But Rothbury only smiled.

  “It is reward enough for me to see your pleasure,” he said, and Tess blushed as she felt the happiness slide through her in response to his words.

  Eventually she was obliged to admit that her feet were too sore and that she was too tired and hungry to stay a moment longer. It was only when Rothbury commented that the gallery was closing in ten minutes that she realised how late it was.

  “I liked all the collections except the still-life paintings,” she said, as Rothbury handed her up into the carriage.

  “Too many dead pheasant and rabbits?” he said quizzically. He was still holding her hand, looking up at her, the wind disordering his hair and the pale late-afternoon sun striking across his eyes. “I said you had a soft heart,” he said, “though you pretend otherwise.”

  Tess blushed again. It was becoming a bad habit. She felt quite ridiculously gauche.

  “I like being able to put you to the blush,” Rothbury said, swinging up into the carriage beside her. His eyes were warm as they dwelled on her face. “You give the impression of being such a sophisticate, Teresa. It is good to know that there is some vulnerability in you.”

  As far as Tess was concerned she was a mass of vulnerabilities, never more so than now when her hand was resting in his and his touch was insistent and called to something in her that Tess neither recognised nor understood. She withdrew her hand from his with rather more haste than finesse and saw him smile as he recognised her susceptibility. He looked damned pleased with himself, she thought, yet she was powerless to cut that satisfaction down to size.

  Rothbury took her to the Fountain Tavern on the Strand for dinner and they ate mutton pie and drank warm beer.

  “Goodness,” Tess said as she took a seat in a booth tucked at the back of the inn, the table bare wood, the floor stone strewn with sawdust, “you do know how to show a lady a good time, Lord Rothbury.”

  Rothbury grinned. “I think that as we are betrothed, you should start to call me Owen,” he said. “I am not a great one for formality and have no desire for my wife to sound like my butler.”

  “Our mother always called our father Lord Fenner,” Tess said, giggling. “We did not realise he had another name until we were well into our teens.”

  She looked around at the clientele. “I do believe this is a Whig tavern.” She cocked her head. “An interesting choice for one of Lord Sidmouth’s men.”

  “I like to live dangerously,” Owen said. His eyes, brilliant with challenge, mocked her and Tess felt her heart flip.

  “Don’t you?” he added softly.

  Tess almost choked on her beer. She met the dazzling demand in his gaze and felt a strange, heated sliding sensation in her stomach. She did not understand how Owen could tempt her so close to confession. Each day they spent together built the intimacy between them and with it her instinctive desire to trust him. But it was all an illusion. Just as she was using him, so he was trying to entrap her into indiscretion. She knew it. That was the game between them.

  She gave him a cool little smile. “I think,” she said deliberately, “that the real reason you chose to dine here is because you cannot afford better.” She raised the beer glass in ironic toast. “I have not forgotten that your pockets are to let.”

  Ow
en gave a crack of laughter. Tess could see admiration in his eyes for the way she had so skillfully evaded his trap. She smiled demurely.

  “Have you ever been rich?” she asked.

  His eyes were still bright with amusement. “A few times,” he admitted.

  “What happened to the money?”

  “Gambled away or spent.”

  He was certainly spare with the words, Tess thought. But always direct. She found it so attractive. She had to remember it was all part of the armoury he was deploying to make her fall.

  “How odd,” she said, cutting into the pie crust and inhaling the fragrant steam. “You do not strike me as a reckless spendthrift.”

  “When I was younger I did all manner of reckless things,” Owen said. “Violent, even.” There was a shade of something in his voice that Tess could not place. It sounded like regret, or bitterness. She was not sure. Owen was always so considered, so controlled. It made him very hard to read. He paused and for a moment Tess had the conviction that he was about to confide something in her. Then he shrugged. The moment passed. His throat moved as he took a long draught of the beer. “I was careless then,” he said, “and I never thought of the future. I lived for no more than the moment and the next adventure.”

  The idea of a heedless young adventurer appealed to Tess. “Tell me about that,” she said.

  To her surprise, he did tell her, in more detail than his usual terse style. He told her all about his youth in Georgia and his family of two brothers and three sisters, and his father’s business and the way that they had all gone without so that there would be enough money to buy him a commission in the American Navy.

  By the time he was twenty-five he had sold out, bought his own ship and was his own master, and so it had stayed until he had received the letter that changed his life.