The Notorious Mr. Hurst Read online

  ‘Doggett?’ Maude recalled his lined, cheerful face. Jessica shook her head. ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘He was an elderly man; his heart must have given out.’

  ‘Eden saved me?’ She could remember, as though in a swirling nightmare, his voice, her father’s presence. She could recall the pressure of his mouth, but not a kiss. She could remember his words. Or a dream of his words.

  ‘Yes, he found you, brought you out, breathed air into your lungs until you started breathing again by yourself.’

  ‘Where is Papa?’

  ‘We made him go home, once it was obvious that you were no longer in any danger. He was very much upset and distressed and the doctor said he must rest. Gareth has gone with him.’

  ‘And Eden?’

  Jessica smiled. ‘He is here, outside your door where he has been for the past ten hours. I can’t move him. Do you want to see him?’ Maude could only nod. Her friend got to her feet. ‘I should stay and chaperon you, but I really think even the most notorious rake is safe alone with you at the moment.’ She opened the door. ‘Mr Hurst, Maude is asking for you.’

  Maude struggled up further against the pillows, pushing her tumbled hair back from her face. Eden deserved her thanks, if she could only find the words and then, no doubt, he would go.

  He stopped inside the door and just looked at her. His face was strained and smudged with dirt, he did not look as though he had slept and the expression in his eyes made her breath catch in her raw throat. Maude held out one hand, silent, and he came, not to take it, but to catch her up in his arms, pull her into a fierce embrace. ‘Oh, my God, Maude, I thought I had lost you.’

  She clung, then pulled back, staring at his face. His eyes were red, as though he had wept, and in their darkness was emotion so deep she caught her breath. ‘Eden? I can remember you speaking to me, calling me back. You said—’

  ‘Maude, my love,’ Eden said, with so much sincerity she could not doubt him. ‘My love, my darling, my heart.’ His mouth, taking hers, was gentle; she felt him tremble under her spread hands and her heart soared.

  ‘You love me? Oh, Eden, I knew, I sensed it. I am so sorry I did not seem to trust you—I was afraid. I love you so much, please forgive me.’

  He sat back, taking her hands tight in his. ‘It gave me the excuse I needed. Maude, I had to tell you, last night, tell you that whatever it was between us had to end. That I could not—’ He broke off, closed his eyes and continued. ‘I could not love you.’

  ‘But you do?’ Puzzled, she stared at him, cold apprehension touching the edge of her burgeoning happiness. ‘Do you mean you did not realise you loved me until I almost died?’

  ‘No. I knew I loved you, I have known that for days. But I know I should not, and I must not. Maude, this cannot be. It was bad enough, loving you, but I knew it would be worse if we both knew.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ But she did. Eden did not think he was good enough for her. ‘I am old enough to marry without consent, if that is what it takes. Eden, no one can stop us.’

  ‘I can,’ he said grimly. ‘Do I need to remind you that I am illegitimate, in trade and I have a shocking reputation?’

  ‘And most of the men whom I know had a shocking reputation, until they were married,’ she protested hotly. ‘I love you Eden; if that means I have to put up with some snubs and a shorter list of invitations, well, to hell with them! They aren’t people I want to know in any case.’ She looked at his face, set in stubborn lines of absolute determination. ‘Eden, kiss me and then tell me you don’t want to marry me.’

  ‘Of course I want to marry you,’ he retorted. ‘I want to live the rest of my life with you. Damn it, Maude. Don’t look at me like that. I am trying to do the right thing, not drag you down, cut you off from your friends.’

  His kiss was hard, fierce, angry. It made no concession to the fact that she was ill or frail and it spoke more strongly than he ever could of just how he felt for her.

  Maude pulled him down to lie with her on the big bed, opening her mouth to him, inciting him to deepen the kiss. His tongue slipped into the moist warmth of her mouth, taking, claiming, and she groaned against the impact, scrabbling to push away the bedclothes so she could feel the length of his body against hers.

  She could feel him trying to resist and yet he helped her, his big hand coming up to cup her breast through the thin nightgown, his thumb fretting at the nipple until she writhed against him. The heat was pooling deep in her belly, wanton, excited, and Maude pushed her hips against the hardness of his pelvis. And then he rolled away from her to sit on the edge of the bed, his head bowed, his hands raking into his hair.

  ‘No! Maude, let me retain what glimmerings of honour I possess, what pride I can salvage from this. It would be wrong of me to seek to wed you, I would be blamed, and rightly, for taking you away from everything that is your life and your birthright.’

  Shaken, Maude pulled her nightgown into some kind of order. She had lost him and she should be sobbing her heart out, but oddly she was angry, furiously angry.

  ‘Your pride?’ she demanded. ‘You would stand on your pride and break my heart? You would sacrifice what we are and what we could have because of your damned pride? You would end the lives of the children we would have together before they are even conceived? For pride? Where is the honour in that—or do you truly not have any? You had a hard start in life and you rose above it to become the man I admire and love, but you wear your bitterness like a badge to warn people away in case they hurt you. You did not disbelieve in love—you are afraid of it.’

  Eden swung round, his face stark. ‘Maude—’

  ‘Go away. I don’t want you here. You saved my life and I thank you for it. I will love you until I die, but I never want to see you again if you can throw that away for pride.’

  He got to his feet, slowly, as though it hurt him to move. ‘Maude, I want only to do what is best for you.’

  ‘What you, in your arrogance, think is best,’ she retorted. ‘You admired my intelligence, I thought. Well, you do not admire it enough to allow me to use it, or my independence, it seems. Goodbye, Eden.’

  The door slammed behind him, every iota of his cold control gone, taking her hopes and dreams and future with him.

  Eden spent the next twenty-four hours in a sort of blind fury of shock. By sheer will he got the Unicorn functioning again, Doggett’s funeral arranged and his widow and family cared for and then, alone in his bedchamber, he let himself recall Maude’s words.

  Pride and honour. He had thought them the same thing, but it seemed she did not. She loved him, wanted to marry him, to have his children. He did not deserve her, he knew that, listening again and again to her words in his head.

  Gradually something like hope began to penetrate the darkness. If he could marry her without making her give up everything that made her life what it was—her loves, her loyalties—then he could marry her with honour. Doggedly Eden set himself to work out exactly what Maude would need if she were to marry him and to keep everything of her present life that she valued.

  First, he must believe what she told him—a few snubs would not hurt her. But her friends meant a great deal to her and the closest of those, the dearest, were the Ravenhursts. If he married Maude, then the hope of keeping his parentage secret would vanish under the pressure of society’s intense curiosity. The Ravenhursts would hate the revelations about their aunt and Maude would know she had contributed to that. And they, surely, would never forgive him for the blow to their family and what he was doing to Maude.

  And she adored her father. To give Maude what she wanted, what she deserved, he was going to have to sacrifice his pride and lay himself open to the risk of hurt and rejection, the loss of the dream of friends and family he had not ever dared to acknowledge he needed. And he had to learn to forgive. Hope, and her words, must be enough to make this work. He had thought himself able to organise anything—well, now was the time to prove it. Eden pulled paper and pen towards
him and began to write.

  Promptly at eleven the next morning he walked up the steps to the Earl of Pangbourne’s front door. Maude, he knew, was still at the Standons’ house. Jessica, bless her, was keeping him up to date with little notes reporting that Maude was physically stronger and was out of bed. But she is so quiet, Jessica wrote that morning. So very still.

  ‘Mr Hurst, to see his lordship. He is expecting me.’ The Templeton’s butler bowed him in, took his hat and gloves and then hesitated.

  ‘My name is Rainbow, sir. We are all very fond of Lady Maude,’ he said stiffly. ‘His lordship tells me that you saved her life.’

  ‘Yes, but it was my fault she was in danger in the first place,’ Eden confessed, wondering at a butler of this superiority unbending to make personal comments.

  ‘I’m sure it will not happen again,’ Rainbow remarked, taking Eden aback. ‘His lordship is in the study, if you will follow me, sir.’

  The earl stood up as Eden entered and offered his hand. ‘Come, sit down.’

  ‘You are recovered, my lord?’ Two nights ago he and this man had clung together, shed tears together, over Maude. Now he was shaken to find how much he was concerned about someone he hardly knew, how much he felt for him. It was as though Maude had ripped open a locked compartment in his heart, leaving him vulnerable to not just her, but to everyone he met.

  ‘Yes, thank you. My doctor said it was shock and overexertion, nothing more serious. You said in your letter that you want to talk to me about Maude, hmm? You’ll take a glass of brandy?’

  ‘Thank you.’ It was early for him to be drinking, but Eden could only feel grateful for a little Dutch courage. He took the glass, sipped, waited for the older man to sit. ‘I love Maude and I want to marry her.’ The earl nodded, his face giving nothing away. ‘She says she wants to marry me. But I cannot take advantage of that, not unless I know we will have your blessing and not unless I am certain that such a match will not compromise Maude’s position in society and her relationship with her dearest friends.’

  ‘As the daughter of an earl, there is not a lot that can compromise her standing,’ Lord Pangbourne remarked, swirling his brandy.

  ‘Marriage to a bastard half-Italian theatre manager might,’ Eden said bluntly. ‘Constant whispering, gossip, cuts will hurt her.’

  ‘Very true. I will be frank with you, Hurst. I had you investigated before I allowed Maude to associate with you. I know who your parents are, I know the names of the society women you have slept with, I know as much about your finances as you do yourself.’ Eden felt his anger burn, then subside as quickly as it had flared. Of course her father would do anything to protect Maude—so would he in his shoes. ‘You’re a rake, but you don’t seduce virgins, you’re a hard man at business, but you don’t cheat, and you’ve a brain in your head.’

  He took a swallow of brandy and regarded Eden over the rim of the glass. ‘I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to pick an illegitimate half-Italian in the theatre business for her though, I’ll be frank.’

  ‘Who would?’ Eden enquired bitterly, provoking a bark of laughter.

  ‘I’ll tell you something about her mother, my Marietta. She was a wild girl—beautiful, intelligent, impossible to handle. She fell in love with an actor, tried to elope, but they were caught and separated. He died in an accident. I loved my wife, Mr Hurst, and she loved me, but I knew that her heart had been broken and it would never be whole again.

  ‘I gave Maude as much freedom as her mother had been denied because that was what her mother would have wanted. I thought I saw something in her eyes when she mentioned you, so I set her boundaries, which I know she’s kept to—even if she’s bent them as far as they’ll go, I’ll be bound.’ Eden felt a twinge in his newly found conscience, more, perhaps than a twinge, for the older man smiled. ‘I see you have the grace to blush, sir! If you love her, and I believe you do, after seeing you the other night, then you have my blessing.’

  Eden stared into the golden brown liquid in his glass. He had come prepared to beg, if that was what it took, and this extraordinary man had given his permission without hesitation. He found it difficult to make his voice work. ‘I see you set more importance on your daughter’s happiness than on society’s strictures, my lord. I give you my word, Maude will never have cause to regret marrying me.’

  Eden raised the knocker on the Henrietta Street house, aware that Madame would have finally drifted out of her boudoir and would be pecking at a little light luncheon by now.

  He was shown through without ceremony and stood for a moment to admire dispassionately the picture his leading lady made. His mother. Coiffed, subtly tinted, dressed in the most feminine of gowns, she was posing even though she thought herself alone, finger at her chin, head tilted as she studied a fashion journal.

  ‘Eden, darling.’ She pouted as she became aware of him. ‘Has all the fuss subsided at the Unicorn? I cannot be expected to work in such an atmosphere.’

  ‘You mean the natural distress of the company over Doggett’s death and the anxiety of getting the gas system to work more safely?’ he enquired. ‘Yes, all the fuss is subsiding.’

  He sat and regarded her, wondering, even as he did so, which leading actress he could secure at short notice if what he was about to say sent her off into screaming hysterics. ‘That was not why I called.’

  ‘What then, darling?’

  ‘When I was born, did you register my birth at any of the English embassies?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Yes!’ Marguerite goggled at him, shaken off guard into frankness. ‘Yes, of course I did—in Florence. And the chapel register at the palazzo. But I went to the embassy because I wanted you to be able to get an English passport if you needed one.’ She stared at him. ‘Why on earth are you asking?’

  ‘You never gave me that passport after we arrived in England,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Didn’t I?’ She shrugged. ‘It is around somewhere, I suppose.’

  ‘And what name did you put in the embassy register?’

  Marguerite became flustered. ‘Name? Why, Eden Francesco Tancredi, of course.’

  ‘My surname, Mother.’ He could not recall ever calling her that, not since the day she took him from the palazzo and told him sharply to call her Marguerite, or Madame, never Mother.

  ‘Eden, I do not like you to call me that,’ she began.

  ‘I do not care what you want, Mother.’ He smiled, his voice light, aiming to keep her off balance. ‘What surname did you put?’

  ‘I…Hurst, of course.’

  ‘I suggest you tell me the truth,’ he said. ‘If necessary, I will contact the embassy directly, or tear this place apart until I find those passports.’

  ‘Damn you, then.’ She flung down her napkin and got to her feet, pacing angrily away from him. ‘Ravenhurst. Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that going to make you any more acceptable to that chit of Pangbourne’s? I never speak of my family.’ She said the word as though it were a curse. ‘Never, you know that. Why must you upset me, be so selfish, Eden?’

  Selfish? He was about to throw the word back at her and then something stopped him. It was hard to know what, exactly. The memory of the affectionate concern he had felt for Maude’s father came to him. It had felt good to care about the older man, to receive back his approbation, his trust. This difficult, demanding, selfish woman in front of him was his mother and in the depths of her eyes was, he finally recognised, pain and vulnerability.

  ‘Mother.’ It felt strange to say it like that, as though he meant it, as though it mattered. ‘Tell me what happened, why you defied your family and left home.’

  ‘No.’ But it was half-hearted. Something glittered in her eyes and he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. La Belle Marguerite took it, buried her face in it, exquisite paint notwithstanding, and wept. He sat, silent, not knowing what she would want him to do. Eventually she emerged, smudged, smeared and suddenly a middle-aged woman, no longer a diva.

/>   ‘I fell in love,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t good enough for the daughter of a duke, they said. They told him that and he accepted it, promised not to see me again, promised to go to the family estates in the West Indies. Abandoned me.’ The handkerchief twisted in her hands. ‘I ran away to catch him before he sailed, but I was too late. He had gone, but there in the inn was an acquaintance of his. So kind, so helpful. I couldn’t go back, he told me. I was ruined. By the end of that night, so I was. But still I went home. I thought, you see, that I would tell them the truth and they would let me go after my love, out to Jamaica.’

  ‘But they didn’t?’

  ‘No. They shut me up, presumably to see whether I was going to make things worse by being with child. When it was obvious that I wasn’t, they told me that George’s ship had gone down in a storm with the loss of all hands. So I ran away again, fell in with a travelling troupe at Dover—you can guess the rest.’

  Eden felt sick with an empathy he had never dreamt he could feel. ‘They cut you off?’

  ‘Yes. The old duke made all my brothers and sisters swear they would never speak of me again. I came back to London, a few years later, determined to try to see my mother. Then I saw a report in The Times of a marriage in Jamaica. My George. So they had lied to me about that, all of them. It taught me a lesson, at least.’

  ‘That you cannot trust anyone?’ Eden queried. ‘That you can lock away your heart?’

  In answer she turned to him, put her arms round his neck and sobbed as though the heart he had never believed she possessed, would break.

  ‘Mother,’ he said gently when she recovered herself a little, ‘I love Maude Templeton and she loves me. The Ravenhursts are her best friends, almost her family. If I am to have any hope of marrying her and not destroying everything she holds most dear, then I must tell them who I am and seek their recognition.’ She moved convulsively in his arms. ‘This is not the generation that lied to you and banished you, Mother. These cousins know nothing about that old story. They admire you for what you are now.’