by Regina Darcy
Prudence, stunned by the turn of events, bent down to check her uninvited guest’s pulse. The bottle of brandy that she had grasped in her desperate effort to defend herself had shattered and was in pieces around the recumbent earl who reeked of the contents.
Stepping carefully to avoid cutting herself, she pressed her fingers against his neck. The throb of his pulse told her that, contrary to her apprehensions, the rogue, while he was plainly unconscious, was not dead.
He was alive, at any rate. Reassured on this point, she was free to indulge in the emotion of anger, which suited her nature far better than fear. How dare the man treat her so, as if she were one of his trollops! To kiss her in such a fashion, as if, as if—he was no gentleman! Was it surprising that Papa had chosen a libertine to be his daughters’ guardian, she thought to herself as she ran up the flights of stairs to the third floor where she and her sister had been shown their rooms.
There was no light coming from beneath Phoebe’s door. She must have gone to bed and fallen asleep as soon as she arrived. It had been Prudence’s idea to confront the Earl on what, precisely, he intended to do as their guardian.
Phoebe had shrunk from such a deed, but Prudence wanted answers and she didn’t care how many imitative Greeks she had to encounter before she received her answers. It had been the butler who, in response to her query, had led her to the room she had occupied when Henton entered. He had told her that the Earl would be going through all of the rooms before turning in for the night. She would be able to speak with him then.
Except that speech had not been what he had in mind, the vile blackguard. He had—he had attempted to steal her virtue, that was what he had done. Her suspicions were proven to be correct. He had no intention of being their guardian. It was diabolical, what he intended to do. His stolen kiss had demonstrated that.
Prudence, after quietly testing Phoebe’s door and finding it locked, to her relief, walked to her own room next to Phoebe’s and went inside. Immediately she bolted the door shut. The Earl would not find his way into her bedroom or into Phoebe’s.
Not tonight, anyway.
But what of the nights to come?
She touched her lips.
So searing was his kiss that she could still feel his lips upon hers. If his power over her was so absolute with one encounter, how could she prevent seduction?
The wiles of the serpent were known to be cunning, and it was very plain to Prudence that the Earl of Henton, though he had the golden hair and blue eyes of a saint, was no angel. He was practised in the arts of corruption and now, in his power, were two young, innocent, untried women with no refuge to run to and no family or friends in London who could offer protection.
Trembling, Prudence undressed and got into the bed. But her heightened awareness, awakened by the unprovoked kiss, cast her into a maelstrom of emotions. This was what the poets wrote of, and the bards sang, this was what the evocation of passion released. There was no shield that could defend a woman against the unpredictable response of her own body.
Prudence touched her lips again. They were warm, on fire, burning from his trespass. He was wanton and vile to take from her what she had never given to another.
Vile for having taken what was not his and, by doing so, introducing her in no uncertain terms to the ways of men and women. This was not a lesson that was taught at the girls’ boarding school where she and Phoebe had spent the last fourteen years of their lives. The girls had often speculated at night, in their dormitory, what it would be like to kiss a man, but the teaching staff was mostly female and the few males who were instructors were not likely to inspire speculation. There was M’sieur Callet, the dance instructor, who, although admittedly light on his feet, was rotund and bald and red-faced. Not at all the sort of man one dreamed of kissing or being kissed by.
The gruff man-of-all-work who chopped the wood for the fireplaces, looked after the horses in the stables so that the young ladies learned to ride, and tended to the cattle and hens which provided the students and staff with milk and eggs was middle-aged, married and had a beard which reminded Prudence of a briar-patch, so rough and unkempt was it in appearance.
The girls sneaked novels and read of love matches and daydreamed, but their lips remained untouched. Until now, Prudence had been as ignorant as they of the way a man’s lips felt against a woman’s mouth, or how the texture of his shaven chin was pleasantly rough against her smooth flesh.
She had no way of knowing, before, that there were emotions and feelings that seemed to surge within her body as if she had been sleeping all her life and had only just been awakened.
Was this lust? The Rector—who was, in common with Gaston the handyman and M’sieur Callet the dance instructor, not a man to stir the fantasies of the young girls whose souls were entrusted to his care by his sermons or by the lessons in the Bible that were part of his school duties—spoke with maddening inferences to those women whose wiles had so overpowered the men of the Testaments that they had behaved in quite an irrational manner.
But he had never explained precisely why Samson, who seemed to Prudence to be a great ninny, had failed to understand that Delilah was seeking the secret of his strength. Was it Delilah’s fault that Samson had strength but not wit?
Herodias and her daughter Salome had schemed to get King Herod to have John the Baptist decapitated, but should not a king have had more sense than to deliver an outrageous promise to a girl merely because he liked the way she danced?
And then there was the matter of King David, prying on Bathsheba in her bath. It seemed to Prudence, though of course she dared not say so, that the fault lay not in Bathsheba’s womanly inclination to sin, but in King David’s abuse of his royal power.
Clearly, however, the Rector was correct in his assessment that desire between men and women was the gateway to perdition. She had learned that for herself tonight when she was at the mercy of the Earl of Henton.
Had she not been able to clasp the bottle of brandy and use it to defend herself, very likely she would, by this time, find herself ruined, for it was very apparent that a man of Henton’s knavish sensibilities would have had his way with her and discarded her once she was deprived of her innocence. She would have been consigned to the streets, to ply the trade of the fallen females who had surrendered their maidenhood or, she realised with new insights, had it taken from them.
Prudence sat upright in bed. No! That would not happen. What he had tried to do tonight, he would not do on the morrow with Phoebe, who was too innocent and too guileless to recognise vice in its human form.
Phoebe would never have thought to defend herself with a bottle of brandy; she would have pleaded with the ardent Earl to release her and that sort of vulnerability would only have excited his lust further, Prudence knew.
Madame Alencon was as vigilant against the prevailing power of desire as the Rector, but in her lectures to the young ladies at the school on how they ought to conduct themselves in the presence of gentlemen, she had not been so convinced that all impropriety was initiated by the weaker sex. Men were, she told her students, inclined to conquer and they would take what they wanted, whether or not it was theirs for the taking. A woman must, in the presence of men, remember always that she was as a mouse to a predatory cat, and she needed to prevent herself from getting into circumstances, which would allow the cat to pounce.
Phoebe was the mouse to Henton’s cat, Prudence sadly acknowledged. If he pressed his attentions upon her, she would not know how to protect herself.
Therefore, Prudence resolved, they must find a religious order where they would be safe from the importunate advances of libertines.
When she had been researching locations for a school, she had discovered that there was, in the area, a convent which would be exactly the refuge that she and Phoebe would require in order to plan for a future which did not have them soliciting the attentions of strangers in the streets in order to earn money for food and lodgings. The nuns would understand thei
r plight, even though they were Church of England in their upbringing, they would, she was quite sure, offer them shelter.
Of course, first she would have to design a way in which she and her sister would be able to liberate themselves from this vile den of iniquity. That would take some planning as they had been delivered into the Earl’s guardianship according to the terms of Papa’s will.
So saturated was she with the itinerary of plans to accomplish that she could not prepare her mind for the serenity of slumber. Nor could she purge her thoughts from the memory of what it had felt like when the Earl’s lips explored her mouth as if he were crossing the boundary of an undiscovered country where no one else had ever ventured before his arrival.
There was only one solution. She must pray, Prudence realised, to drive out the devil, for it was plain that the Evil One had found an opening into her soul and was, even now, exploiting her weakness.
Prudence got out of bed and kneeled at the side of the bed, bowing her head and clasping her hands before her.
“Oh, Lord God,” she prayed, “Forgive me for the sin of frailty which I exhibited tonight. Do not let me again be swayed by the weakness that is in me and do not let the Earl, an unclean man with unclean lips, again attempt to seduce me with his blandishments.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, for providing me with the means to protect myself from his repulsive lusts; a better use has surely never been devised for a bottle of spirits, and I am sure that you will sustain me should such a situation arise again. Grant me the rest of the innocent tonight, Lord God, for though I have sinned, I have sought your forgiveness and will, with your strength to sustain me, contrive to remain steadfast in virtue.
Please support your child Phoebe in her weakness and do not let her be preyed upon by the Earl; she is the most innocent of females, as you know, Heavenly Father.
As we are both orphans now, devoid of that protection which some fortunate daughters receive from those fathers who look out for the wellbeing of their offspring, we are entirely dependent upon you. I trust that you will not abandon us in our hour of need.
Amen.”
Fortified by her prayer, Prudence rose and got into bed. The hour was late, much later than the students at the boarding school were accustomed to, but now that she had voiced her worries to God, it would be for Him to devise the means to protect her and Phoebe.
THREE
There was far too much light in the dining room, thanks to an abundance of sunshine, which streamed forth from a profligate sky. It streamed in through the windows that overlooked the orchards.
What sadistic fool had designed the house so that a man with a thundering headache would have his eyesight assaulted by such an excess of illumination?
“Benton,” Henton asked when the butler entered the dining room with a tray upon which was a cup of coffee on a saucer, “will you draw the curtains, please? I should prefer to hold the daylight at bay for a few hours more until my head stops aching. By the way, were you wearing a laurel wreath last night?”
“There was a laurel wreath placed upon my head, my lord,” the butler acknowledged as he pulled the curtains closed, shutting out the brilliant summer sunlight which the Earl found so incommodious to his condition.
Henton was not so lackwit that he failed to perceive the subtle revision of his words.
“Did I put it on you?’
“You did not, my lord.”
“Good. I should loathe losing your services, Benton and I fear that had I been the culprit, you might very well turn in your notice.”
Benton put the coffee in front of Christopher.
“I very well might, my lord. But as it was Lord Beaton, I must overlook it. He was not quite his usual self last night.”
Christopher sighed in relief. Without Benton, his routine would have been rudderless and he knew it. So did Benton.
“The young ladies, my lord. . . ”
“Blast! Yes, I knew I’d forgotten something. Where are they?”
“In their rooms.”
“No doubt they are tired and will sleep in,” Christopher said hopefully. “Did they, er, did anything happen last night which ought not to have?”
“Happen? What level of happening do you mean, my lord?”
Christopher groaned. “Never mind. I shall deal with that later. I cannot think why the Baron named me guardian to his daughters. He owed me money, but that’s hardly a reasonable means of recompense.”
“I should think not, my lord.”
“It’s very complicated, Benton. I can’t think what I shall do with two young ladies about. They’ll have to be put on the marriage market, certainly, and debuted. What a bore!”
Preoccupied with his thoughts, he rubbed his temple, then looked in surprise at his fingers. “I believe I’m bleeding,” he noted in bewilderment.
“My lord, I believe the skin is broken over your temple. If I may, I suggest that it ought to be cleaned and bandaged.”
Christopher touched his temple and winced.
“Blast! I had an encounter with the Oracle of Delphi last night and she broke a bottle of the very best brandy over my head. I can’t think who invited her. Ouch!”
Benton paid no notice to his master’s protestation of pain as he continued to press a cold cloth against the broken skin. “I believe, my lord, that a number of the female guests were not the sort of ladies who are customarily invited, except upon occasions such as these.”
“You mean where there is a surfeit of bachelors in need of loose women,” Christopher said with a grin. “You are correct. I shall likely never see her again—”
He squinted. There, entering the dining room, was a petite young lady with magnificent dark hair and skin which looked as if it ought to be served for dessert, it was so creamy. When she came nearer, looking quite hesitant, he saw that her eyes were green.
“You!” he exploded.
The girl backed away.
“Sir?” she said, her voice trembling.
“The Oracle! It was you! What are you still doing here?”
“Sir, I—”
“This is one of the Miss Connolly, my lord,” Benton explained, unperturbed as he continued to attend to the wound.
“You gave me this!” Christopher pointed to his forehead.
“Indeed, sir, I did not. I have never set eyes upon you until this very moment. You must have seen—”
“I know what I saw, I was not so foxed that I could not trust my eyesight.”
“My lord, if I may interrupt, Miss Connolly is your ward and perhaps, as she will be a member of the household, it would be as well if she were to be invited to breakfast.”
“Very well,” Christopher said, gesturing toward the sideboard upon which breakfast foods were assembled.
“There are no brandy bottles there; I hope that you will not search for a substitute!”
“Sir? My lord?” The young lady was plainly bewildered by his words.
“Miss Connolly,” Benton the butler said, “His Lordship will be most gratified if you will partake of food to break your fast. Mrs Truman ordered a special meal to be prepared for you and your sister to welcome you in her absence.”
“Mrs Truman?”
“My housekeeper,” Christopher said. “She was away last night. She tends to be away on nights when I host my parties. She’ll be back this afternoon and the household will return to its habitual order. Mrs Truman is the most exacting woman. She’ll have no patience with brandy bottles used as weapons, I assure you.”
“Please, Miss Connolly,” urged the butler, “help yourself to the food. I am sure that you are very hungry after your long journey yesterday.”
“I am, rather,” Phoebe Connolly replied faintly, giving Christopher a wide berth as she made her way to the sideboard.
What the devil was going on, Christopher wondered? Where was the sizzling-eyed siren of the night before whose very lips had cast a spell on him? This girl was the image of that delectable bundle, but he had no mad
impulse to plant a kiss upon her lips, be they ever so full and ripe and berry-red.
What sort of Circean enchantment was this, that last night’s vision in black was so alluring that he had not been able to refrain from kissing her, whilst this morning’s version of the enchantress inspired nothing that stirred the blood. What alchemy turned the same features and form from devilish anticipation to disinterest? He turned his head to study the enigma as she stood at the sideboard, her back to him, while Benton filled her plate.
It made no sense, except that he must have drunk entirely too much last night, far more than he had realised. Or else the contents of the broken brandy bottle had somehow seeped into his brain and left him clouded with dullness.
He sipped his coffee as if it were an elixir. Enough of the stuff and he’d surely be restored to his right mind.
The door to the dining room opened as he was lifting the cup to his lips.
He promptly set the cup back down on the saucer.
The Oracle had entered. Dressed exactly as the pallid young woman at the sideboard. But this one arrived with an inexplicable and invisible entourage of stirred-up spirits with her. She had only come halfway into the dining room when he sensed it again, that soaring sense of desire and hunger that once again overtook him.
“Benton,” he said, not taking his eyes away from the moving Oracle, who appeared to be making her way toward him, “has my vision suffered some sort of impairment?”
“My lord—” Benton looked over his shoulder, following Christopher’s gaze. “Oh, good morning, Miss Connolly.”
“But—” Wildly, Christopher looked behind him. “That’s Miss Connolly. You said so.”
“Yes, my lord. They are twins.”
“Twins? They look exactly alike?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Yes, my lord,” Prudence stepped forward and there was no mistaking the note of mockery in her voice. “Have you never encountered the phenomenon?”