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  As she made her way to the exit she heard the old lady cackle behind her. ‘No stamina, today’s young misses. None at all.’

  Chapter Nine

  Damn it, I’m shaking. Avery summoned up every inch of control he possessed, thanked his hostess for a charming evening and strode out into the lobby. He looked down at his hands and willed them to stillness. He did not know what it was: fury at Laura Campion’s deceit and defiance, the urge to shake the breath out of her or sheer frustrated lust. All three, he supposed.

  Who the devil did he think he was punishing with that kiss? He was the one who was going to spend the night tossing and turning in frustration, not that deceitful, selfish woman.

  ‘Your hat and cloak, my lord. Shall I call your carriage?’ The footman waited impassively, too well trained to show that he found anything unusual about peers of the realm standing in the middle of the lobby eyeing their white-gloved hands and muttering.

  I’ll be a candidate for Bedlam if I carry on like this, Avery thought. ‘Thank you. I’ll walk. Find my driver and tell him to go home, would you?’

  ‘My lord.’ The coins hardly chinked as the footman palmed them. Of course, Avery could stand here threading the contents of the flower arrangement into his hair, provided he tipped well enough. The urge to do something totally mindless, utterly irresponsible, gripped him. Go to a hell off St James’s Street and risk a few thou on the tables. Find a gin house down by the river and get stupid drunk and pick a fight. Or investigate a high-class brothel in Covent Garden and forget the taste of Laura Campion’s mouth and the feel of her skin in a welter of costly, highly skilled flesh.

  The gaming hells were closest, the thought of gin and a fight the most tempting and the brothel, he realised with a fastidious twist of his lips, the most distasteful. He began to walk, his stick casually in his hand, his senses, below the level that was furious and aroused, testing his surroundings for danger. Footpads abounded. Perhaps he could lose himself in violence that way.

  *

  It took him the ten minutes to Berkeley Square to cool down sufficiently to remember that he had a child to go home to. That would be behaviour to justify every one of Lady Laura’s threats if he rolled in bloodied, drunk, stinking of gin and cheap perfume.

  Avery turned around the square towards home and slowed his pace. Every night, whether she was awake or not, he went into Alice’s bedroom and gave her a goodnight kiss. She was probably quite unaware of it—in fact, he suspected the only person gaining any reassurance from it was himself.

  The fierce protective love he felt for the child still shook him to the core. He had taken her out of duty and a nagging sense of responsibility—it was only in the small hours of the morning that he admitted to himself that it might be guilt—for having sent Piers back to Spain. Miss Blackstock had cradled the baby in her arms as they bumped down the rough track away from the remote farm and then, when they turned onto the smoother turnpike road, she had handed him the swaddled bundle without a word.

  Avery had never held a baby in his life. He took her, looked down and was instantly riveted by the blue eyes staring into his. The baby looked at his face as though it was the only thing in the world, as though it was the entirety of her universe. Avery had looked back and discovered he had stopped breathing. Is this love at first sight? He could recall thinking that and then she freed one hand from the blanket, waved it, a tiny questing starfish, and found his finger. The grip was extraordinary. He looked at perfect miniature fingernails, at the smooth baby skin and knew, as his gaze blurred, that it was, indeed, love.

  So much for setting Blackie up with a nursery and staff somewhere hidden away in England. Plans for bringing up the child at a distance in her own well-equipped, carefully staffed establishment went out of the carriage window. ‘You will come with me to Vienna?’ he asked Blackie and she had smiled and nodded, completely unsurprised by his instant infatuation. He supposed his smile must have been uncharacteristically sheepish, because hers had widened. ‘You are sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. A child should be with her father,’ she had responded.

  Her father? He had meant to be Cousin Avery, a remote guardian. He’d had vague thoughts of visits on her birthday and at Christmas, of gifts, selected by Blackie. Eventually a governess, a pony—all taken care of while he dealt with the important matters of international statecraft that filled his days.

  But they did not fill his heart, he realised during that long journey. His new-found adoration survived even the unpleasant realities of travel with a baby and the transformation of a sweet-smelling, endearing little creature into a squalling, irritable tyrant who wanted the wet nurse now, who needed her napkin changing now—regardless of whether his lordship thought it might wait until they reached the next inn. He could get out and stand in the rain while the women dealt with it or he could grit his teeth and put up with it. Human babies, it seemed, were just like any other small mammal: they had their needs and they were quite ruthless about getting them filled.

  Slowly the months had passed, the baby-blue eyes became greener and greener as Avery observed, fascinated, all the stages of growth. Weaning, the first tooth, the first words and steps. And still that wide, intent gaze would find his face and the smile would curve Alice’s lips and he knew he was never going to be Cousin Avery. He was Papa, to Alice and in the eyes of the world.

  Now, when he climbed the stairs to her bedroom, he found her awake and was glad he had resisted the mad urge to bad behaviour. ‘Why are you not asleep?’ he asked, shaking his head in mock reproof.

  Alice blinked up at him, then rubbed her eyes and yawned hugely. ‘I’m excited, Papa.’

  ‘By London? But you are used to big cities.’

  ‘I know.’ She burrowed down, eyes already closing. ‘But something exciting is going to happen, I know it is.’

  ‘I hope not, pet,’ Avery said and smoothed her hair before he bent to drop a kiss on the top of her head.

  It was not until he was in his own chamber, shedding his clothes into the hands of Darke, his valet, that the question struck him. How the blazes had Laura Campion discovered that Alice was her daughter? Had the Brownes decided to make even more money and had contacted Lady Laura to tell her that they had handed over the child? But why had she left it so late? Then he recalled that her father had died the previous year. It must have been, as he had accused, a selfish whim. Now she was alone in the world, she would take a very belated interest in the fate of her daughter.

  Or, he decided cynically, she had ignored Alice all these years, but had finally resolved to take a husband and wanted to make sure her secret was safely buried in that remote dale. It must have been a nasty shock to discover that someone else knew and that the child was not growing up milking cows, baking bread and learning her letters in the village dame school, but was under the protection of someone of influence and power.

  ‘Am I a cynic, Darke?’ Avery enquired, shrugging into the proffered banyan. ‘Am I distrustful?’

  ‘Of course, my lord. And very proper, too, in your position, if I may say so. It doesn’t do to think the best of people. You are a good judge of character, my lord. Very fair. But it is only right to assume the people you do not know well enough to trust will have only their own interests at heart.’

  ‘Indeed. Just leave the hot water, will you? I’ll sit up for a while.’

  The valet effaced himself into the dressing room and eased the door shut. Avery lounged in the deep wing chair and followed his progress from tallboy to clothes press by the soft clicks and rustles until finally the outer door shut.

  What exactly were Lady Laura’s interests? He supposed that she had decided it would be wise to make certain that he would not betray her secret, but sneaking around disguised as someone else entirely would not achieve that—only a direct approach would have assured her of his silence.

  Perhaps she had intended to find out more about him, see if he was the kind of man who would be a threat to her. He r
ecalled her cool distance, the underlying froideur beneath her courtesy. And then she had met Alice and, he guessed, her plans had fallen apart. Unless she was a consummate actress she was deeply fond of the child…now. Too late, madam, he thought with a grim smile. It is six years past the point where you should have discovered your maternal feelings.

  She knew now that he loved the child and would care for her and she had been correct to say that he would do nothing to cause a scandal. Unless she strikes first and then she will be very, very sorry. What he must do was to build the bulwarks up around Alice. He already knew he should marry and father an heir, but a woman who would treat Alice as a daughter, who would give her brothers and sisters and knit her into a normal family life, would benefit Alice as well as himself.

  Avery got to his feet and tossed the banyan on the foot of the bed. Naked, he began to wash in the cooling water and pondered strategy as he worked the soap up into a lather. Picking out some chit from the flocks of them inhabiting every ballroom and park was too haphazard. He needed to study a prospective wife at closer range, assess her at nine in the morning as well as eleven at night, see how she interacted with servants and dealt with everyday setbacks and irritations. Watch her with Alice.

  What he needed, in effect, was a house party. Avery scrubbed at his face with a towel and considered. He needed a hostess and he needed someone to suggest the guests. Which meant, he supposed with a sigh, he must ask his godmother. She was interfering and opinionated and she disapproved of Alice, but she was of impeccable ton, knew everyone and would not allow her disapproval to make her unkind to the child, only to lecture him on his supposed indiscretion. There was nothing for it, he was going to have to throw himself on the mercy of the Dowager Marchioness of Birtwell.

  *

  ‘And where are you going, my lady?’ Mab demanded as Laura came down from her room after breakfast. ‘You’ve got that look in your eye—you’re up to mischief. And that outfit!’

  ‘Really, Mab, any other employer would give you your notice. I am going out and I do not get up to mischief.’

  ‘Then you’ll want me along,’ Mab said, refusing to be snubbed. ‘You’ll not be seen out without either maid or footman.’

  Laura had no intention of being seen at all, hence the drab gown and pelisse that would not have been out of place on a governess, matched with a sensible veiled bonnet and sturdy half-boots. ‘I am going for a stroll and dressed like this I am in no danger of being accosted by gentlemen on the strut.’

  ‘You are going to find Miss Alice, that’s what you’re about.’

  ‘I only want to see her,’ Laura protested as she pulled on her gloves. ‘I will not let her see me. You stay here, Mab.’

  It was a sunny morning and no nurse worth her salt would keep a child indoors on a day like this. Alice would be going out to take the air, Laura would bet her new Norwich shawl on it. The directory had given his lordship’s address and Berkeley Square, only a few minutes’ walk away, had a large central garden that would be perfect to play in.

  It was early, and quiet, without even a single carriage drawn up outside Gunter’s tea shop in the south-east corner of the square. Servants were putting the finishing touches to the brasswork on doors and deliveries were in full swing. A florist’s boy staggered under the weight of a vast bouquet, a dray dripped water outside Gunter’s as men in leather capes unloaded ice, a milkman negotiated his hanging pails through the area gate and down the service steps to the kitchen entrance of politician George Canning’s elegant house and a giggling kitchen maid was flirting with the greengrocer’s delivery man.

  Laura strolled into the garden and pretended an interest in the flower beds as she made her way towards the north-east corner and a secluded bench opposite Lord Wykeham’s fine double-fronted house. She did not have to wait long before the door opened and Alice bounded down the steps. A bag bounced at her side and Miss Blackstock followed her out. Her voice drifted across to Laura. ‘Walk, if you please, Miss Alice!’

  They walked down past Gunter’s, and then past the high wall of the gardens of Lansdowne House into Bolton Row. Laura hung back, matching her pace to theirs, wondering where they were going. In a moment they would be in Curzon Street, walking past her own home. Then Alice scampered into Clarges Street and Laura realised they must be going to Green Park.

  It was not the easiest of the parks to hide in, she reflected as she watched Alice, hand in hand with Blackie as they negotiated the traffic in Piccadilly. The nurse gave her a coin to hand the crossing sweeper herself, then they were through the gate leading to the narrow rectangle of the reservoir. Alice ran to the end nearest Queen’s Walk where a group of ducks were clustered hopefully and dropped her bag on the ground, spilling what must be crusts of stale bread on the grass.

  Laura walked in the opposite direction, to one of the benches at the far end where the ride towards Constitution Hill wound off around the gardens of the lodge-keeper’s cottage. At this distance, veiled, she was safe from recognition, she was certain.

  A few other nursemaids with their charges were walking towards the reservoir, all making for the end where Alice was surrounded by quacking and flapping ducks in the water and a flock of pigeons on land. Her laughter brought a smile to Laura’s lips, even as her heart ached at the distance between them.

  She glanced to the side as hoofbeats signalled the arrival of one of the park’s rare riders, perhaps trotting back from an early morning gallop in Hyde Park. A raking black more suited to the hunting field than London hacking drew level with her and out of the corner of her eye she was aware of immaculate brown boots with tan tops, long legs in buckskin breeches and a gloved hand resting negligently on the left thigh as the rider guided the horse one-handed.

  Her attention was still focused on Alice as she stood, intending to move her position to where a clump of bushed provided a little cover. The horse curvetted away, making her jump and she turned fully to face it as the rider swore. ‘What in damnation are you doing here, Lady Laura?’

  Avery Falconer brought the big animal under control without taking his gaze from her veiled face. How can he recognise me? Her immediate instinct was to bluff, to turn a haughty shoulder and pretend he was just some importunate rake bothering a lone woman in the park, but she realised at once that was futile. Something about her had jolted his memory, now all she could do was brazen it out.

  Laura tossed back her veil and raised one eyebrow in haughty distain. ‘This is a public park, I believe, Lord Wykeham. I do not require your permission to take the air in it.’

  ‘Dressed like a governess and without your maid?’ He brought the gelding sidling forward, so close it took a conscious stiffening of her spine not to back away. ‘You are spying on Alice, you devious jade, and I told you I would not stand for it.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Laura lifted the other brow and sneered at him, as best she could, considering their respective positions. ‘And just what do you intend to do about it, considering that I am nowhere near her and in a public place?’

  ‘Do?’ Avery jammed his riding crop into his boot and smiled. ‘Why, remove you, of course.’

  Before she could realise what he intended he leant out of the saddle, took her by the upper arms and hauled her bodily up in front of him. Laura kicked, twisted and found herself dumped unceremoniously to sit sideways across his thighs. ‘Ouch!’ The pommel jabbed into her. ‘Put me down!’

  ‘In my own good time.’ He turned the horse’s head away from the reservoir and shifted his arms so they caged her and he could take the reins in both hands. The gelding tossed its head as if in protest at the additional load, but walked on meekly enough.

  ‘People will see,’ she protested.

  ‘Then resume your veil,’ Avery said in a voice of sweet reason.

  Laura contemplated wriggling free and dropping to the ground, but the animal was a good sixteen hands high and she risked a broken ankle if she tried that. Besides, the strength with which Avery had hoisted her up indi
cated that he would have little trouble subduing any attempt at escape. She was slender enough, but she was a well-built adult woman and no featherweight to be tossed about like a child. It was, she realised, fuming, rather exciting.

  Crude, animal instinct, she told herself severely. He is big, strong and muscular, any woman would be in a flutter under the circumstances. And he probably knows it, the wretch.

  His chest was broad and steady and it was impossible to lean away from it—in fact, she was squashed so close she could sense his heartbeat, infuriatingly steady. Beneath her buttocks his thighs were hard and, she realised with rising indignation as she worked out what was pommel, what was leg and what was…something else, that he was finding this arousing.

  A middle-aged couple exercising a pair of Italian greyhounds on long leashes stared, mouths open in comic synchronisation. Laura dragged down her veil with something like a snarl.

  ‘That is a truly ghastly gown,’ Avery remarked.

  ‘I did not wish to draw attention to myself.’ Oh, stop bandying words with him!

  ‘Which proves my point. You were spying.’

  Laura firmed her lips over the retort she was about to make and assumed as dignified a silence as a woman being abducted by a peer of the realm in broad daylight within a stone’s throw of two royal residences could.

  Avery guided the horse across the Mall and into St James’s Park. Laura stiffened. This park was full of trees, avenues and groves of them, and at this hour it was even quieter than Green Park had been.

  ‘Where…what are you doing?’ It was shaming that her voice shook.

  ‘I thought I’d take you into that secluded little grove over there and see what effect wrapping my hands around that very lovely white neck of yours would have in persuading you to leave me and mine alone,’ Avery said with a grim edge to his voice that had her twisting round in alarm. His face was set, harsh and every bit as grim as his voice had been.

  Laura opened her mouth to scream and he shifted the reins and clapped one hand over her mouth.