Nicola Cornick Collection

by Nicola Cornick

  “The whole concept of inheriting wealth and title is foreign to me,” he confessed. “I never sought to be Viscount Rothbury, never even imagined it.”

  “Yet you did not refuse the title,” Tess said.

  He looked at her, putting down his tankard with slow deliberation. “Can a peer do that? Damnation, I had no idea.”

  Tess burst out laughing. “You would not have done!”

  “And disappoint my mother?” Owen shook his head. “No, you are right, I would not have done.”

  “Not just for your mother’s sake,” Tess said. “You are not a man to abandon your responsibilities or shirk the demands made on him.”

  Owen looked at her for such a long time that she started to feel uncomfortable. Once again she had the strangest feeling that he was about to say something important, something that was not a part of this game of bluff and double bluff between them but was a real insight into his soul. Then he smiled, that long slow smile, and Tess felt hot and giddy, as though she had drunk too much ale. His hand covered hers.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he drawled, and Tess thought she would melt into a puddle right there on the stone floor. She snatched her hand away.

  “Don’t practise that Southern charm on me,” she said. “I’m too old a hand to be seduced like that.”

  Another smile. “Are you sure?” Owen said. There was a light as bright as a flame in his eyes and Tess felt as though she was dissolving in the heat of it. In that moment she was not sure of anything other than the fact that he was at least ten times more dangerous to her than she had imagined.

  She cast around hastily for something else to say to cover her embarrassment. “You cannot be a Yankee if you come from Georgia,” she said.

  His mouth twisted. “The British tend to call all Americans Yankees,” he said. “They are not particular, especially if they mean to be insulting.”

  His tone was mild but Tess sensed something deeper beneath the words, an edge of anger that he had found hard to forget. “I imagine you suffered a great deal of that when you were a prisoner of war,” she said.

  He nodded. His face was shadowed now. “It was no more than I expected.”

  Tess reached out impulsively across the table to touch the back of his hand. “Was it very bad?”

  He stilled for a moment. His gaze was on her slender fingers as they rested against the tanned skin of his wrist. Tess realised with a little shock what she had done; normally she never touched anyone spontaneously. Then Owen looked up and, as their eyes met, she felt dizzy, as though she was falling. She wrenched her gaze away from Owen’s and snatched back her hand.

  It seemed a long time before he spoke.

  “Physically I was well treated,” he said, as though nothing had interrupted their conversation. “But I hated that I was not free. I cannot bear to be confined for long.”

  “Yes,” Tess said. For a man accustomed to the high seas and wild empty spaces, to be penned in a parole town or locked in a gaol would have been near intolerable, his every move watched, all his activities circumscribed.

  “I don’t know how you could bear it,” she said with a little shudder.

  His eyes gleamed with amusement. “I’m a very patient man,” he said. He shifted one booted leg across his knee. “I am always prepared to wait for the things I want.”

  For some reason his words sent another ripple of emotion—anticipation, nervousness—skittering down Tess’s spine. She took a hasty gulp of her beer.

  “I spoke to Corwen last night,” Rothbury continued. “He should not trouble you again. I hear he left early this morning for an extended stay on his Herefordshire estates.”

  Tess looked him in the eye. “What did you do to him?”

  Rothbury shrugged. There was a shadow of a smile about his mouth. “I spoke to him,” he repeated.

  “Is that all?” Tess said. “You spoke to him and he decided to leave London for his estates?”

  The smile deepened. “What else?” Rothbury said. He lounged back in his chair, his body relaxed but his gaze cool and watchful.

  “I don’t know,” Tess said. She felt confused. She had asked for Owen’s help and he had given it freely. She had drawn on his strength and he had not failed her. Suddenly she was deeply ashamed of her deception. More than ever she wanted to trust him, to beg for openness between them. But it was too late. She was too frightened, in too deep. She hated the thought that Owen’s help might have been calculated, nothing more than another step on the path to lead her to trust him. The web of deceit was getting so tangled and she could not bear it.

  She felt the prickle of unexpected tears in her throat.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her face puckered. “I … I am truly grateful.”

  Owen took her hand and kissed the palm. “My pleasure,” he said. His lips were warm against her skin, sending all kinds of ripples of sensation to the core of her. He sounded so sincere.

  “I have the special licence,” he added. “We may marry whenever you choose.”

  Tess jumped, snatching her hand from his. A tremor of disquiet shook her. “Marry?”

  “It tends to follow a betrothal,” Owen pointed out. He was watching her, his green gaze lazy but still very acute.

  “I need time to buy my trousseau,” Tess said quickly. She knew she was prevaricating. The idea of actually marrying Owen still disturbed her and she was not sure why.

  “A week?” Owen suggested.

  “A week to do my clothes shopping?” Tess was horrified. “Certainly not! I need a month at least.”

  “Too long,” Owen said. “Ten days.”

  “Two weeks,” Tess said.

  “Ten days,” Owen repeated.

  This time, Tess did not argue.

  She slept surprisingly well that night and woke the following morning just as Margery was drawing back the curtains. She joined Owen downstairs thirty minutes later. They went to the Monument to the Great Fire of London and climbed up to the top to see all of London spread out below them, the smoke from a thousand chimneys lying across the cold city like a veil.

  “You are such a tourist,” Tess complained, as she tried to catch her breath from the three hundred and eleven steps. She had been appalled to discover that Owen actually expected her to join him on his ascent. “No one who lives in London bothers to climb up here.”

  “Then they are missing a wonderful view,” Owen said, taking her hand and drawing her over to the rail. “Only see how beautiful London looks from here.”

  Tess leaned one hand on the rail, trying not to pant with the exertion. Owen, she noticed, was not even breathing hard, as though the exercise had been no more than a walk in the park to him. The wind was cutting and cold but she had to admit that the view was stunning. The breeze threatened to pull her bonnet right off, teased her hair into knots and stung her cheeks bright pink. She could feel them radiating like beacons.

  “You look lovely,” Owen said, as she put up a hand to catch the wayward bonnet. “Tousled and ruffled and nothing like a lady of fashion.” The expression in his eyes was warm and, despite the coldness of the day, Tess felt as though she were standing near a furnace. This tendency she had to feel heated was starting to worry her. She had wondered the previous day if she had been developing an ague from going out so much in the cold weather.

  “You can descend first,” she said, “so that if I trip you will break my fall.”

  “It would be my pleasure to have you land on top of me,” Owen said very gravely.

  The following day he took her to the British Museum. “All shrunken skulls in boxes,” Tess said, though she found it fascinating. In the evening they joined Alex and Joanna, Garrick and Merryn at Vauxhall Gardens for a winter concert. It felt odd to be part of a couple. Owen paid her the ultimate compliment of focussing his entire attention on her; he did not doze over his wine as Darent would have done, or watch other women like many of the rakes and bucks who ogled her from the boxes opposite whilst their wives sat ignored
. It felt as Tess imagined a proper courtship might feel, though of course she had no real idea, never having had one.

  That night Tess sat in front of her mirror and wondered what it might be like to kiss Owen, to kiss him properly without the shadow of fear that hung over all her thoughts of intimacy. She pressed her fingers to her lips and felt a little sensual quiver run through her and a heat in the pit of her stomach. She was so enrapt that she did not hear Margery come into the room to help her undress and jumped almost out of her skin when the maid spoke to her.

  That night she could not sleep for hours, and when she did, her dreaming was feverish and full of strange images. She was dancing with Owen, waltzing with him, but the music was muted and all she could feel was the heat of his hands on her through the thin silk of her gown and the brush of his thigh against hers as their bodies moved against one another, and all she could hear was the thundering of her heart. Owen’s touch and the slip and slide of the silk on her skin made her feel heavy and lush with a curious sensation of excitement. Then she was running with him out of the ballroom and out into the night, where they tumbled over into a yielding pile of snow as soft as a feather mattress. Then it was a mattress and she sank deeply into it, Owen beside her, and he kissed her and she felt blinding pleasure, a pleasure that dissolved all fear. She had a sense of knowing him down to his soul and a wrenching desire to know him more deeply still.

  In her dream he stripped the clothes from her with sure hands and she felt the tug of his mouth at her breast and her whole body rose to meet his, and she woke up abruptly, hot and panting, to find the sheet wrapped tightly about her. She felt ripe and full with wanting and for a moment she lay unmoving in the darkness, her senses dazzled by such strange and unfamiliar sensations. It was extraordinary to her that in her dreams, in her fantasies of Owen, she could step beyond the painful memories that were an absolute barrier to physical intimacy in real life. She had felt no fear or revulsion. There had been nothing but pleasure and deep, sensual fulfilment, and now she wanted to cry because she reached after that satisfaction only to feel it leach away as the familiar terror took its place, filling all the dark corners of her mind.

  When she woke in the morning the dream was no more than a faded ghost, but even so she wondered if she would blush when she saw Owen and remembered the dreams of what he had done to her. In any event she need not have worried; she waited and waited but Margery did not come to wake her. Owen, it seemed, had not come that morning.

  “You have a face as miserable as a wet Wednesday,” Joanna commented when Tess came down for breakfast at nine, “and since when did you get up at this hour?”

  There was a note from Owen waiting for her in the hall. Tess knew immediately he had written it himself from the brief, blunt style of the wording. He apologised for not calling on her, explaining that he had arranged to see Mr. Churchward about the marriage settlements that afternoon. Tess moped about the house for a few hours, picking up magazines and casting them aside, then decided to go shopping and spent a thoroughly miserable time in Bond Street before going home and drawing some vicious cartoons. She had not meant to do it again but it was the only way to give vent to her feelings.

  When she had agreed to be the pattern card of propriety that society demanded in order to save her reputation, she had intended it all to be for show. But she knew that what she was starting to feel for Owen was not pretence and it scared her. It scared her very much. She had let him get too close to her. She had started to need him. And that could never be allowed to happen.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  OWEN HAD ARRIVED VERY promptly at the offices of Churchward and Churchward, lawyers to the noble and discerning, and was shown into the inner sanctum with commendable speed. The room was beautifully proportioned with a very pleasant aspect over a courtyard at the back, though today it looked out on a leaden sky and a tree with only a few sad leaves left to shiver in the late-November breeze.

  Mr. Churchward stood up to shake Owen’s hand and show him to a chair, subjecting him to a very shrewd look as he did so. Owen had the impression that Mr. Churchward was sizing him up, and reserving judgement for the time being.

  “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Lord Rothbury,” Churchward said, “and even more pleased to have your business.” He waved a hand over the pile of papers stacked neatly on the desk. “Lady Darent has entrusted me to act for her in the matter of the marriage settlements.” Rueful amusement touched his voice. “I fear that financial matters bore Lady Darent.”

  “And yet Lady Darent is nowhere near as featherbrained as she pretends,” Owen said gently.

  A gleam of humour lit Mr. Churchward’s eyes. “If you have ascertained that already, my lord, then it seems you are a most perceptive man.”

  “I hope so,” Owen murmured. “Of course, I am not the only one to admire Lady Darent’s sharp mind. I understand that her late husband made her a joint trustee—with yourself—of his children’s estate?”

  “Ah,” Churchward said. He paused. “Yes. I was going to broach that matter with you later, my lord, but as you raise it …” He leaned his elbows on the vast expanse of mahogany desk and steepled his fingers. “Lady Darent requests that, as her husband, you be appointed as a third trustee to the Darent estates, and I am happy to agree. That is, if you are prepared to take the responsibility, of course.”

  Owen felt surprise, then a rush of warmth and pleasure that shocked him. He had not expected this. It floored him. He knew Tess might be hiding other secrets from him but when it came to Julius and Sybil she was loving and protective. She would never use them, so the fact that she wanted him to share the trusteeship of her stepchildren meant that she must have confidence in him. She was starting to trust him. Owen knew at once that he had to have the matter of the Jupiter Club resolved between them. He must confront Tess and force her to be completely honest with him. To take their relationship any further when it was based on deceit would be a travesty.

  Mr. Churchward was saying, with careful lack of emphasis, “Of course, if you do not care for the idea, my lord—”

  “No.” Owen pulled himself together. “Of course. I should be honoured to accept.”

  Churchward allowed himself a prim smile. “Thank you, my lord.”

  For the next half hour they discussed the details of the marriage settlement. Tess, Owen was shocked to discover, was worth almost two hundred thousand pounds rather than the conservative estimate of one hundred and fifty thousand she had told him. He felt a little winded to think of it. He was also interested to realise that Mr. Churchward, who had a mind like a steel trap and judgement to match, clearly approved of Lady Darent. That made him very curious, for Churchward was no fool, nor a man to be influenced by charm and a pretty face.

  “You mentioned that you administer all of Lady Darent’s financial affairs,” Owen said slowly, “and clearly you have done an excellent job, Churchward—sound investments, judicious expenditure …” He waited. Churchward inclined his head to accept the compliment but did not say anything.

  “I wonder,” Owen said. “Do you also pay Lady Darent’s gambling debts?”

  Mr. Churchward permitted himself a rueful smile. “Lady Darent never loses,” he said. “Or very rarely.”

  Owen narrowed his gaze. “Then these sums here—” He tapped the deficit column on the accounts where small, regular sums were annotated in Churchward’s neat hand. “These payments must be for something other than debts?”

  Just for a second he surprised on the lawyer’s face an expression that could almost be described as shifty. Certainly it was the expression of a man who had nearly allowed himself to be trapped into indiscretion and was thinking very quickly about how he might get himself out of the fix he was in.

  “Mr. Churchward?” Owen prompted smoothly.

  Churchward took off his glasses and polished them a little feverishly on the tails of his coat.

  “I had no notion you would wish to look at the accounts in such detail,
my lord,” he said. He sounded slightly reproachful.

  “No doubt it is bourgeois of me,” Owen agreed pleasantly. “My father was a shopkeeper and—” He shrugged. “Old habits …”

  “Quite,” Churchward said, not budging an inch.

  Owen smiled. “So,” he prompted again. “These sums of money …”

  Churchward huffed. “You would have to ask Lady Darent about that, my lord,” he said.

  “There are regular payments to a variety of different concerns,” Owen pursued. The payments were all numbered but anonymous. He raised his eyes from the columns of figures to see Churchward watching him very closely.

  Owen thought about Tess Darent, of what he had learned of her in the past ten days. He took a guess.

  “These must be charitable donations,” he said. “Gifts to philanthropic causes.”

  Mr. Churchward’s gaze flickered. “My lord,” he said repressively. “I cannot help you. You must speak to Lady Darent.”

  “Or perhaps they are political affiliations,” Owen said ruthlessly, and saw the lawyer’s shoulders tense. “Money given to radical charities and political groups.”

  “My lord.” There was steel in Churchward’s tone now.

  “When Lady Darent and I wed,” Owen said, throwing the papers carelessly down on the desk, “I will be in control of this enormous fortune. Does that affect your discretion in any way, Churchward?”

  Now there was no doubting the lawyer’s ire. “Certainly not, my lord,” he snapped.

  “I thought not,” Owen said. He smiled. “My apologies, Churchward. I was but testing your loyalty. Forgive me. You are the soul of discretion and I would be honoured if you took on my business in future.”

  He watched the tension slide from Churchward’s shoulders. The lawyer, he thought, not only admired Tess Darent but also exhibited a fatherly care for her. It was telling that she could inspire such liking and such loyalty in a man of Churchward’s integrity.

  “Thank you, my lord,” Churchward said. “I am very glad. If I may make so bold, my lord,” he added, as he escorted Owen to the door, “there is something I think you should know.”