Seduced by the Scoundrel Page 15

  ‘And how fortunate that is,’ Averil returned, studying the open space. ‘Markets in India are very different. On the way we moored at Madras and I visited the market to buy Christmas presents with Lady Perdita and Lord Lyndon. There was a mad dog and Dita saved a child from it—and me, too. Then Lord Lyndon saved Dita.’

  The square was warm with evening light and people going about their business. They moved slowly now, at the end of the working day, stopping to talk with neighbours, to wait for a child’s lagging steps.

  ‘How calm and ordered this is. I was so afraid in that market, and I did nothing, just allowed myself to be bundled to safety.’ She shivered, seeing a small boy fetching water from the pump, fair-haired and red-cheeked and laughing with his friends, so unlike the small Indian child who had run screaming in terror.

  ‘And you blame yourself for not being in the right place to act,’ Luc observed. ‘Of course, I have seen how timorous you are, how cowardly, so perhaps you are right.’

  ‘You are teasing me,’ Averil observed. There was a warmth in his look that told her it was more than teasing. He thought her courageous? Thinking about it, perhaps she had not done so very badly in the face of shipwreck and capture and a fight at sea.

  ‘As you say,’ he agreed with a chuckle. ‘Where shall we go now?’

  ‘The church?’ That seemed an innocuous destination. If she had been alone she would have liked to go inside and sit for a while, but she felt awkward asking Luc to wait. ‘Oh. It is very large, is it not? And a tower with those pointed things on the corners. How interesting—this is the first English church I have seen close to.’

  She looked over the wall into the churchyard. ‘And so green! In Calcutta, where I used to live in India, there is a big cemetery for the English with massive tombs and dusty paths and trees that look nothing like these at all. And birds and little squirrels and … Oh, dear, I have become quite homesick. How foolish, I thought I had got over that.’

  ‘Come and sit down.’ Luc led her into the churchyard and found a bench. Waters perched on the edge of a crumbling table tomb and watched Luc with interest.

  She finds him attractive, Averil thought as she caught an errant tear with her handkerchief and straightened her shoulders. And who am I to blame her?

  ‘When my mother and I returned to England my English grandfather, the Earl of Marchwood, thought it was best I go to university and then into the church,’ Luc observed. He took off his cocked hat, leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head, stretched out his long legs and gazed up at the tower.

  ‘Into—you mean, become a clergyman?’ Averil collapsed into unladylike giggles. ‘You?’

  ‘You have a very unflattering opinion of me, by the sound of it,’ Luc remarked. He appeared lazily indifferent to her mockery. ‘Grandpapa was not best pleased to discover that I held the same rationalist beliefs as my father. By the time he had stopped spluttering and threatening me with hellfire and eternal damnation I had joined the navy.’

  ‘You are an atheist?’ She had never met one of those dangerous creatures.

  ‘A sceptic with an open mind,’ he corrected her. ‘I am perfectly comfortable reading services at sea or turning out for church parade. Does that shock you?’

  ‘No,’ she said and heard herself sound as doubtful as she felt. ‘But you wanted to join the navy?’

  ‘Not particularly. I wanted to kill revolutionaries. I wanted to kill the people who had taken my father’s life and my home. It was the navy or the army and I found the Admiralty first.’ He shrugged. ‘It was fortunate, I suspect. The navy is far less snobbish about foreigners without much money than the army is. Now I have the money and it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’ A most improper question, she knew. Ladies did not discuss money.

  ‘Prize money and then an inheritance from my mother’s side of the family,’ Luc said. ‘I will need a great deal when I get my hands on my estates again. But there is enough to finance my pleasures very adequately,’ he added, so blandly that Waters, swinging her heels and watching the verger locking the church, did not seem to notice anything untoward.

  Luc’s fingers curled around hers and he began to make circles in the palm of her hand. As Averil stiffened and tried to pull away he half turned on the bench so his shoulder was to the maid and lifted her hand to his lips. As she tugged he opened his mouth and sucked the length of her index finger right in.

  His mouth was hot and wet and the suction was strong enough to make her gasp and his eyes were sending her the wickedest of messages. Her other fingers were splayed against his face, the evening growth of beard bristling under the sensitive pads. Then she realised what this was mimicking and her cheeks reddened and his lids lowered as if he was in a sensual dream.

  Averil tugged again and he closed his teeth, gently. ‘Let me go,’ she demanded. ‘It is indecent!’

  He released her and smiled. ‘Such a naughty imagination, Averil,’ he murmured and licked his lips. ‘Whatever can you mean?’

  She got to her feet. ‘Waters, come along and stop daydreaming!’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The girl scrambled down from the tomb and Averil felt a stab of guilt for snapping at her.

  ‘We must go back now. We have a long day tomorrow. Thank you, Captain d’Aunay, but I am sure we can find our own way to the inn.’

  ‘You will accept my escort, I hope. My intention is to protect you.’

  ‘Your intention is to seduce me,’ she hissed as she took his arm. It would create a scene, and questions in Waters’s mind, if she made an issue of walking with Luc.

  ‘To protect and seduce,’ he murmured back as he opened the gate out of the churchyard.

  Averil laughed in the hope that the maid would not realise they were arguing. ‘You attempt to reconcile opposites, Captain.’

  ‘Not at all. I believe I know where your best interest lies, Miss Heydon.’

  ‘Then we must agree to disagree. My mind is quite made up on the matter.’

  ‘I had noticed how very stubborn you are, Miss Heydon, and to what lengths you will go to get what you want.’

  ‘What I think is right,’ she corrected him. ‘For you to lecture me for being stubborn is, I venture, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.’

  Luc was silent as they crossed the market square. Averil let herself feel the texture of his uniform jacket under her palm, the rough edge of the gold braid at her fingertips, hear the sound of his boots crunching over the dusty stones.

  It felt right to have him by her side, as though they were a respectable married couple walking back to their comfortable home after a church service. There were unspoken words between them, a sensual tension that left her short of breath as though she had been hurrying, yet there was a comfort in being together. Would it feel as natural to walk with Andrew Bradon? Would it be as easy to stroll in companionable silence without the need to make conversation?

  The words were there, though, even if neither uttered them. Kiss me, touch me, stay with me. They were in the slight pressure of her hand on his arm, in the way he watched her profile, their lagging steps that got slower as they neared the inn.

  It had to stop, she knew that, or they would drift upstairs and then—who knew? And even though she could rely on Luc to save her life, she could not trust him with her virginity. Or perhaps it was herself she did not trust.

  ‘Thank you so much, Captain,’ Averil said in her brightest society voice as they reached the inn yard. ‘I feel better for the fresh air and the exercise.’

  ‘You will set out early tomorrow, I imagine. It is a good twelve hours to London.’ Luc stood, hat in hand, showing no sign of wanting to inveigle his way upstairs. Was it all her imagination and he just wanted to flirt?

  ‘Yes, the postilions said we should leave at half past seven. I shall be very glad to arrive, I must confess.’ The prospect of stopping this endless travelling, of reaching somewhere—anywhere—permanent after four months, was almost
enough to overcome the apprehension about meeting her betrothed.

  ‘Bruton Street, I believe,’ Luc said.

  ‘How—how did you know?’ A cold trickle ran down her spine. He had promised not to speak to Lord Bradon—surely he would not break his word?

  ‘I checked. Don’t look at me like that, I shall not interrupt your arrival with an ill-timed call, believe me, Miss Heydon.’

  ‘Of course. Thank you. It may be a little … strained at first, getting to know each other.’ His silence spoke volumes about how strained he expected it to be. ‘Well, good night, Captain d’Aunay. I wish you well at the Admiralty.’ She held out her hand and he took it, bowed over it and stood aside for her to enter.

  ‘I think the captain’s better looking, now I’m used to that nose,’ Waters remarked as they climbed the stairs.

  ‘Shh! For goodness’ sake, girl, he’ll hear you!’

  ‘He didn’t come in, Miss Heydon.’

  ‘Oh.’ Good. Excellent, in fact. That was that then. She would not see him again, perhaps not for years and when she did she would be Lady Bradon, a respectable society matron and Luc would be a count, or an admiral or ambassador for a royalist France. They would meet and smile and part again and all this agonising would seem pointless.

  Unless Lord Bradon rejected her. The cold shiver came back. He was not going to be pleased, that was certain. But he might be a wonderful, warm, understanding man who would forgive her adventure and she would forget Luc. No, never forget him. He would always be part of her memories: his courage, his pride. His lovemaking.

  ‘Time for bed, I think, Waters. Please ring for the hot water.’ On an impulse, she said, ‘What is your first name? Waters seems so stiff.’ Probably it was how Lady Bradon should address her maid, but it was not comfortable.

  ‘Grace, miss.’

  ‘How pretty. I will call you that if you do not feel it lowers your dignity.’

  ‘My dignity, miss? I think calling me by my surname is because you’ll be a great lady and I’m supposed to be a superior servant.’ She said it with such a comical expression that Averil laughed. ‘Only I don’t think I’m cut out for being a superior abigail.’

  She was rather dumpy and snub-nosed, Averil thought, thinking of her aunt’s descriptions of how a suitable dresser would look and behave. But she was warm and sensible and cheerful. Averil decided she would do her best to keep her—warmth might be in rather short supply at Bruton Street.

  ‘I think you will do admirably, Grace. I cannot promise anything, because Lord Bradon may already have employed someone as dresser, but if he has not, then I hope you will stay with me.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Heydon, thank you.’ Grace beamed. ‘Oh, and, miss, that means I’ll sit with the upper servants, right up at the top!’

  And so she would, Averil thought with an inward smile. Ladies’ maids and valets took their employer’s rank as far as the hierarchy of the servants’ hall was concerned.

  Grace was still bubbling with excitement as they took their seats in the post-chaise at just past seven the next morning. The yard was busy already with two private coaches ready to leave and another post-chaise with the ostlers backing the horses between the shafts.

  Averil made herself as comfortable as possible and wondered if she would be able to sleep, something that she had signally failed to do the night before, except in snatches. Long intervals, marked by the church clock—which might as well have been the church bells tolling—were spent tossing and turning in an effort to stop imagining scenarios for her arrival in Bruton Street.

  What would it be? A warm, understanding welcome, chilly reserve but acceptance or downright anger and rejection? She rehearsed, over and over, what she would say, how she would explain those nights in the company of a gang of condemned men and a half-French officer.

  Then, when she did fall asleep, her dreams were full of Luc who was making love to her, fully. And then he appeared in the Bruton Street drawing room and explained that he had to do it, even though she was so inept and naïve in bed and then, somehow, he and Andrew Bradon were standing facing each other with duelling pistols raised and … And Grace had shaken her awake because she was having a nightmare.

  The breakfast bacon was sitting uneasily in her stomach. It would be best to be very careful what she ate on the journey, she decided as the postilions swung up and the chaise lurched into motion. It would not do to arrive in fashionable Mayfair travel sick as well as crumpled and uneasy.

  As she thought it they passed the other chaise and its occupant who was just settling into his seat. Luc. ‘Goodbye,’ she mouthed and lifted her hand.

  He said something in response and she tried to read his lips. ‘Au revoir.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  March 29th, 1809—Bruton Street, Mayfair, London

  Light flooded out as the front door opened. Luc slowed to a stroll on the corner of Berkeley Square and watched the post-chaise drawn up at the kerb. Averil walked up the steps, paused. There was discussion, too far away for him to hear, then she and the maid went in and a pair of footmen ran down to take their bags.

  She was inside, but he had expected that. How long would she stay? That was the question. If she was determined on being utterly frank with Bradon, then what would the man do? He could ship her straight back to India, he supposed, although that would involve cost and Luc suspected that the family was not given to paying cash on the nail for anything if they could avoid it. He might simply throw her out. Or he might accept her.

  That would be the action of a trusting, forgiving man. Or a man who wanted Averil’s money more than he was concerned about her honour. Luc paced slowly around the periphery of the big square, past Gunther’s, past the huge old plane trees, back up the eastern side to the corner.

  Well, she wasn’t out on the pavement with her bag at her feet so he should take himself off to his chambers in Albany, five minutes’ walk away, and try to be pleased about it. Best not to walk along past the house; she might be looking out and feel pursued.

  Which was exactly what he was doing, although he did not want to distress her by doing so. Somehow he could not keep away. Perhaps Mere had been a mistake, or simply unkind. He had wanted to help her, make the long, fraught, journey easier. But he had also wanted to see her, touch her, steal a kiss if he could. Like an infatuated schoolboy, Luc thought with a wry twist of his mouth as he strode up the slope of Hay Hill and right into Dover Street.

  Bradon would be a fool to spurn Averil. She was rich, lovely, intelligent and patently honest. He would believe her when she told him she was a virgin, surely?

  Luc turned left out of Dover Street into the bustle of Piccadilly, his mood sliding towards grim. Averil was not going to be his, it was not right that she should be, and to wish that she would be forced into that position was selfish.

  All right, I’m selfish. But I didn’t cast her up on the beach at Tubbs’s feet. I didn’t keep her bedridden for days. Yes, but I could have locked the damned door and slept with the men; his conscience riposted. I needn’t have slept in her bed, kissed her, shown her what lovemaking could be like, taught her desire. But I did not take her virginity, he thought. I could have done, and I did not. I could have seduced her.

  It was the same conversation he’d been having with himself since he had left Plymouth. He supposed it was partly mild euphoria to blame for his reckless decision to try to find her on the London road. But the admiral had been enthusiastic about the mission, he was assured of a good reception at the Admiralty; his life, it seemed, was back on course, his honour restored. Porthington, he had been informed by a secretary with a very straight face, would be offered a posting in the West Indies. A long way away, and unhealthy with it, the man had added.

  So now Luc would have more than enough to keep himself occupied until their lordships decided where to post him next. There would be work to be done to tie up the Isles of Scilly leaks, news to catch up on and the Season was in full swing. He could make an effort and start
a serious quest for a wife. And he would wait and watch Averil as she ventured into her new life, his hands outstretched to catch her if she slipped from Bradon’s grasp.

  The image of Averil tumbling into his arms was enough to make his mouth curve into a smile. He walked into the cobbled forecourt of Albany, nodded to the doorman and climbed the stone stairs to his chambers to see what was awaiting him after more than two months away.

  At the door he paused, hand on the knob, as a shiver ran down his spine. He was tempting fate, instinct told him—the same instinct that had saved his life at sea before now. He thought he was stepping back into his old life, but in a better, more purposeful way. But now there was someone else to consider—he was not alone any more.

  She isn’t yours, he told himself and opened the door. You have to let her go. The pain was sharp, just as he knew it would be if he was ever careless enough to care about someone. Too late now …

  ‘Hughes! Send out for a decent supper. I’m back.’

  ‘Miss Heydon. The earl and Lord Bradon are expecting you. Her ladyship also,’ the butler added. His eyes flickered over her travel-stained, borrowed gown, the two small valises, Grace’s dumpy figure. ‘This way, if you please. The family is in the—’

  ‘I would not dream of going to them in my dirt,’ Averil said. ‘Perhaps someone could show me to my room and have hot water sent up. And please tell the family that I will be with them directly.’

  The butler’s gaze sharpened into something like respect. ‘Very good, Miss Heydon. This is your woman?’

  ‘Waters is my dresser, yes. When I have something other than borrowed garments, that is,’ she added. ‘Doubtless there is a room for her?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Heydon. John, show Miss Heydon to the Amber suite. Peters, water at once and have Mrs Gifford send one of the girls up to assist Waters.’