by Louise Allen
‘I will take care of you, Celina,’ Ashley said, the deep voice giving the statement the weight of an oath, the faint foreign accent adding a suggestiveness that had her looking up warily, then away as she found he was studying her in return. It was only that hint of an accent that made her uneasy, surely? He was an English gentleman, after all, and she was a guest under his roof.
She should protest that he was too kind, demur at accepting assistance from a complete stranger, but she bit back all the polite responses. What she should do, she decided rather hazily, was to charm him. Why had she not thought of that before? Lina took another mouthful of wine. It was quite delicious and really rather relaxing. Things seemed so much clearer now.
Attempting to charm the baron was dipping her toe into dangerous waters, though—how far was just enough to make him feel chivalrous and responsible, but not amorous towards her?
One stormy winter evening when business had been slack, Katy and Miriam, the closest to her in age and her particular friends amongst The Blue Door’s courtesans, had amused themselves by trying to teach her how to flirt with a man.
‘Don’t think we can’t act like ladies if we have to,’ Katy had said. ‘It isn’t all wiggling your bottom and hanging your boobies out, you know. Lots of gentlemen like to pretend they aren’t paying for it, that they’re just getting very lucky indeed with some well-bred young lady. So Madam drilled us all in genteel flirting. You can’t stay here for ever, can you? You need to find yourself a gentleman and learn how to wind him around your little finger in ever such a nice way.’ Just as Mama did, Lina had thought with a pang of alarm. Was that what she must do to secure her future?
The girls had gone off into peals of laughter, then sobered up enough to spend the evening teaching Lina how to use her eyes, her fan, her voice, to entrap a gentleman.
She had never had reason to use that lesson, but she could try out some of the hints now. The sideways look from under the lashes was supposed to be enchanting. She tried it. ‘Thank you, I am sure you will look after me.’ Gregor made a noise deep in his chest, a laugh perhaps. She felt herself blush and looked down at her plate.
‘Count upon it,’ Ashley said, his voice deepening in a way that had shivers running down her spine, then, in an altogether different voice, ‘Is that by any chance a trifle?’
‘It is,’ Lina said, ready to jump to Mrs Bishop’s defence. ‘I imagine she has added it to the desserts when she realised that there are three of us at table.’ It was not the most sophisticated of confections and, from the way the custard on the top undulated, hinting at lumps lurking below, the poor woman must have been desperate for something to send up. The plates for the earlier courses had all returned downstairs scraped clean, even the beef casserole, which had probably been the footmen’s dinner, had vanished.
‘I haven’t eaten one of these for years,’ Ashley observed, helping himself and Gregor lavishly.
Lina took a rather more dainty almond cream and consumed it in tiny spoonfuls, wishing she had not challenged her nervous stomach with anything sweet. She smiled and nodded and laughed at any minor witticism they made and made play with her lashes until finally the men, having eaten the trifle, lumps and all, and a frangipane tart, appeared sated.
‘I will leave you gentlemen to your cheese and port,’ she said, getting up. The room seemed to shift a little. ‘I trust you have a comfortable night. I will see you in the morning.’ She met Ashley’s eye, then wished she had not. Somehow the atmosphere had become close, intense, loaded with an emotion she did not understand. All she wanted was the sanctuary of her own room and the privacy to worry about whether she had the skills to manipulate a man like Quinn Ashley.
Chapter Three
‘What do you make of the little nun?’ Quinn lounged on his great canopied bed and watched Gregor checking doors, windows and hangings in his usual obsessive search for assassins and escape routes. ‘Do stop that, Gregor. If there’s a fire, I will climb out of the window. I do not expect any other danger in this house except from the hazards created by my late uncle’s collection. And when we get to London it is likely to be pistols at dawn, not knives at midnight.’
‘Nun?’ The other man turned back from the wardrobe he was investigating. He spoke English with a heavy accent, but no reluctance, nor was there any sign of subservience in his manner now. It amused Quinn to observe his friend changing roles as the fancy took him or circumstances demanded. Gregor was enjoying teasing the servants and he was baffled by Quinn’s indifference to his new title. ‘That is no nun.’
‘No?’ Quinn sketched the scraped-back hair, gestured down his body as though to show the plain black gown, then mimed a wimple over his head. ‘What is she, then, because I am damned if I can tell?’
‘Trouble,’ Gregor grunted. Satisfied with his search, he settled into a huge carved chair. ‘A virgin. They are trouble always.’
‘You think she’s an innocent?’ Quinn stirred himself enough to lever his long body up on his elbows and peer down the length of it to look at the other man. He was not so sure. Those sidelong looks from under the heavy lashes, the pretty shows of deference combined with a slight pout—those were not the little tricks of an innocent.
‘She looks at you as though she has no idea what to do with you, but she would be quite interested to find out, if only she dared,’ the big Russian said.
Quinn snorted and flopped back on the pillows. ‘Jupiter and Mars, but I am tired. She is worried I am going to throw her out, that is all. And she is not used to the likes of us, my friend. I should not have fed her wine.’
‘You do not want her? I would like her.’
‘Offer her your protection, then.’ Quinn closed his eyes and told himself that it was too late, and he was too tired, to go downstairs and start rummaging in the library. Those books would still be there tomorrow. As for women, the blonde intrigued him, stirred certain fundamental male responses, but she would still be there tomorrow as well. Women usually were, and this one was not going anywhere.
Now was a good time to enjoy being clean, fed, relaxed. It was a couple of weeks since he had last had a woman, but deferred pleasures were usually sweeter for the contemplation. Like revenge. The urge for that was stronger here, in his great-uncle’s house.
London would give him both.
‘She is frightened of me, although she tried to hide it,’ Gregor’s deep voice observed, cutting through his attempts to doze. ‘Her eyes, they have fear in them when they look at me. I like my women willing.’
‘And she is not afraid of me?’
‘She is aware of you. And what is the word, almost the same?’
‘Wary?’
‘Da. Wary. Puzzled. You are not what she expects a nobleman to be like. And, of course, you are prettier than me, so she looks more at you.’
Quinn reached out a hand, took hold of a pillow and slung it in Gregor’s direction. It was hurled back with considerable accuracy. ‘Go to bed and stop thinking about women,’ he said, catching it. ‘Have they given you a decent room?’
‘A servant’s room, in the attics. It will do.’
‘You are certain?’ Quinn opened one eye and contemplated the motheaten bed canopy above his head. ‘I can ring and have you moved to a luxurious apartment like this one. It would only take an hour or two to clear a path to the bed.’
‘Tomorrow, perhaps. We have worried them enough today,’ Gregor said as he got up and stretched hugely. ‘They do not know what to make of us, they are fearful—or the little nun is fearful—and we shocked them with our bath.’
‘I am not going to splash about in two inches of scummy water in a tin bucket,’ Quinn said. ‘We made certain the women were out of the way, didn’t we?’
‘The women are sad that they did not see us and the men are jealous because we are so magnificently made,’ the Russian said with a wicked chuckle. ‘Like stallions.
Good night, lord.’ He closed the door behind him just as the second pillow hit it.
Quinn lay still for a moment, then heaved himself up with a grunt, stripped off his clothing, tossed it on to a chair, blew out the candles beside the bed and fell back naked on to the covers in one continuous movement.
England. England after ten years, and now the dishonourable Mr Ashley was the fourth Baron Dreycott of Cleybourne in the county of Norfolk. A title he did not want, an estate he did not care about and, no doubt, a list of debts that would make no impression on his personal fortune. But all the hazards and discomforts of two months of travelling, all the squalor of a Channel crossing in the teeth of a late gale, all the grime and chaos of London, were worth it for the treasures in this house. And there was the added savour of the stir he would cause when he set about establishing himself in London.
Revenge. Quinn savoured the thought. Lies, arrogance, cowardice; three things he detested, three sins he intended to punish. It had not mattered so much for himself; he had been away and out of it. But Simon had suffered for his defence of his great-nephew and that was a score to be settled.
But he had waited ten years for vengeance; dreams of that could wait. As he dragged a sheet over himself and let sleep take him, he recalled the other thing he appeared to have inherited along with the title and the estate and the books. The wary little nun was an intriguing puzzle, because whatever else she was, she was not a housekeeper, he would bet his matched Manton duelling pistols on it. No, perhaps not those, he might need them.
Lina was doing her very best impression of a housekeeper the next morning, complete with a large apron that she wore like armour against the two disturbing male intruders.
She avoided them at breakfast, then almost bumped into Lord Dreycott in the hallway as they emerged from the small dining room. ‘My… Ashley. Good morning.’ In the cold light of day she regretted agreeing to use his name and worried about how her untried attempts at cautious flirtation had been received. Even one glass of wine, she concluded as she reviewed the previous evening in the cold light of day, was apparently enough to overset her judgement. Two had been foolish in the extreme. ‘A message has been sent to Mr Havers. I would expect he will be here by ten.’
‘So soon at short notice? What if he had something already in his diary?’
‘You are the most important thing, hereabouts,’ Lina said. It was the simple truth. ‘If he had appointments, he will have cancelled them. Mr Armstrong from the local branch of your uncle’s London bank, Dr Massingbird his physician and the Reverend Perrin will be close on his heels.’
‘You sent for them also?’ Ashley paused by the study door, obviously surprised by this initiative.
‘There was no need to tell anyone,’ she explained. ‘The local grapevine will have already passed on the news last night. The local gentry will leave it until tomorrow when they know your men of business will have all been to see you, then we may expect a great many callers. His late lordship did not welcome visitors, so they will all be agog to introduce themselves.’ Ashley shook his head, so she added, ‘Cook is already baking biscuits and we have ample supplies of tea and coffee left over from the funeral.’
‘I am not a betting man,’ Ashley observed, ‘but I will wager you a guinea against that ridiculous apron of yours that I will receive no social calls.’
‘But why not?’ Lina ignored the remark about her apron. She thought it gave her authority and an air of sobriety that had been sadly missing last night.
‘Because, my dear Miss Haddon, I am not received in polite society.’
‘But Lord Dreycott said that you have hardly been in the country for years,’ she protested. ‘None of them knows you.’
‘However, they will all have heard about me. And some of them will remember me. It was not simply my uncle’s reclusive nature that explained the lack of calls—we are tarred with the same brush. We will have a large number of biscuits to eat up, I assure you.’ His face showed nothing but faintly amused acceptance of this state of affairs.
‘Of course they will call. They have no reason not to—whatever have you done that they should react so?’
‘Being the man who debauched, impregnated and abandoned the Earl of Sheringham’s eldest daughter, is, you must agree, Miss Haddon, adequate cause for social ostracism in an area where Sheringham is the largest landowner,’ Ashley said. ‘The earl carries much weight, hereabouts. His son, Viscount Langdown, carries as much, and a horsewhip.’ Lina stared at him open mouthed and he smiled, went into the study and closed the door behind him.
She watched the panels, half-expecting Ashley to reappear and tell her that it had been a joke in poor taste, but the door remained closed. Behind her there was a discreet cough.
‘Trimble?’ Lina turned to the butler. ‘Surely his lordship is…surely that cannot be correct?’
The butler looked uneasy. ‘Perhaps I had better tell you about it, Miss Haddon.’ He held open the door to the salon. ‘We will not be disturbed in here.’
She followed him and closed the door. ‘He says he expects to be shunned by the neighbourhood,’ she said, her voice low as she joined Trimble in the furthest corner of the room. ‘He said he did something quite dreadful.’
‘Yes, indeed, refusing to marry his pregnant fiancée is not the action of a gentleman and must bring opprobrium upon any man,’ the butler said, his voice flat.
‘He really did such a thing? When?’ Lina stared in horror at the butler, but her mind was full of the picture of Quinn Ashley as she had just seen him. In his deplorably casual version of an English country-gentleman’s riding attire, with his frank speech and his amused smile, it was hard to visualise the new Lord Dreycott as the heartless seducer he freely admitted to being. But of course, to have insinuated himself into the bed of an earl’s daughter, he would hardly look like a ruthless rake.
‘Let us sit down, Trimble,’ she said. This was shocking news to absorb standing up. She had already spent one night under the same roof as a dangerous libertine, it seemed. Her mouth felt dry. Seduced, impregnated, abandoned…
‘The long-established staff here know the story,’ the butler said, perching uncomfortably on the edge of a chair. ‘His late lordship told us the truth of the matter. It seemed that Mr Ashley, as he then was, abandoned his pregnant fiancée ten years ago. Given that her brother was publicly threatening him with a horsewhip followed by castration, it seemed to his great-uncle that the prudent course of action was to send him off abroad with some haste. Once there, it seems, he decided he liked the life of a traveller and has seldom returned.’
Lina swallowed. She had no horsewhip-wielding brother to protect her. She had no one except a man whose promise to take care of her now seemed a cruel jest.
‘But he was not the father of her child,’ Trimble added with haste, no doubt reading her expression with some accuracy. ‘Please be assured I would not have allowed you to remain in the house if that were so, Miss Haddon.’
‘Why did she not marry the man responsible, then?’ she managed, relief making her feel faintly queasy.
‘Mr Ashley in those days was a charming, but somewhat unworldly, perhaps even innocent, young man,’ Trimble continued, not answering the question directly. ‘A studious, rather quiet gentleman, just down from university, his head full of books and dreams of exploration, as I recall him. I was only the first footman in those days, you understand. But, as his late lordship said, why would a beautiful, highly eligible young woman throw herself at the rather dull heir to a minor barony?’
‘Because she needed a gullible husband as fast as possible?’ Lina hazarded, distracted momentarily by the thought that Quinn Ashley could ever have been described as rather dull.
‘Exactly, Miss Haddon. Her parents, when they became aware of her condition, set her to entrap him and, I fear, he was all too willing to fall for her charms and into love. The flaw in their scheme was that they had picked on a romantic, idealistic young man who, when confronted by a passionate young lady positively begging to demonstrate her affection for him by the
sacrifice of her virtue, struck a noble attitude—as he told his uncle afterwards—and refused to dishonour his bride-to-be.’
‘And then he realised what was happening?’
‘Not, so he said, until she ripped all her clothes off and became hysterical. Her father, when subterfuge was obviously impossible, offered Mr Ashley a very substantial dowry to wed her. He refused, broke off the engagement—and so they laid the child at his door and characterised him as a heartless seducer of virtue.’
‘But why?’ Lina thought for a moment. ‘Was the true father utterly impossible? Married, perhaps?’
‘They were unable to establish which of her father’s grooms it was, I regret to say.’ Lina felt her jaw drop. ‘She would still be in terrible disgrace when her condition became known, but the heir to a barony was a better father for her bastard than a choice of three stable hands.’
‘The poor baby,’ Lina murmured. ‘What became of it?’
‘I have no idea,’ Trimble said, his austere face hardening. ‘She, I believe, was married off with a very large dowry to an obscure Irish peer who needed the money.’
‘But Mr Ashley took the blame and did not reveal the worst of her shame,’ Lina said. ‘And that ruined his reputation.’
‘Exactly. He challenged Lord Langdown, who refused to meet him, threatening the whip instead. His late lordship attempted to intervene and was caught up in the scandal, his own name blackened by association. So you see, Miss Haddon, why we cannot expect callers from local society.’
‘They would have forgotten by now, surely?’ She did not like to think of Ashley ostracised for an injustice done to him ten years ago when his only sin had been to refuse to make an honourable sacrifice of himself. How could he have married the girl? There could have been no trust, no respect, in that marriage.
But he was a gentleman and a gentleman must not break off an engagement. Could he not have found some way out of the trap without abandoning her so brutally? Doubt began to gnaw at her strangely instinctive support for him. No, she decided after a moment’s thought, against a powerful earl Ashley would have had no leverage at all unless he had been prepared to tell the truth about his fiancée.