Читать книгу Regency Rogues: A Winter's Night: The Winterley Scandal / The Governess Heiress - Elizabeth Beacon - Страница 14

Miss Winterley looked as if she might agree she was that saintly for a moment just to spite him, then mischief danced in her eyes and an irresistible smile tugged at her temptingly curved mouth. Colm had to struggle with a terrible urge to kiss her breathless, silenced and deliciously responsive—in the middle of Green Park for goodness’ sake. What business had such a controlled and confident lady turning into an enchanting mix of funny, wise and daring when she smiled?

‘I love my finery and attending the opera and theatres and real concerts that are not put on by supposedly musical ladies to show off their airs as much as their talents. I should not see my family and friends anywhere near as often as I do if we could not meet up in town either. My Uncle James has grown so fond of country life I sometimes wonder how Aunt Rowena manages to drag him here as often as she does though, but I can put up with the Lady Derneleys and Mr Carters of this world in order to keep in contact with the friends and relatives who truly matter to me.’

Thanks to his Brighton landlady even Colm knew of James Winterley’s transformation from idle London rake to country squire and father of a ready-made family. Then there was the Winterleys’ close connection to the Marquis of Mantaigne and his mixed bag of a family by marriage—oh, and Sir Gideon Laughraine and his lady. Here was the truth of things: Miss Winterley was at the heart of a group of impressive and powerful aristocrats and he was only even a secretary thanks to his Uncle Horace’s bad conscience.

‘Then I hope you enjoy your latest visit, Miss Winterley,’ he said with a stiff bow and half raised his humble and unfashionable hat.

‘Thank you, Mr Carter,’ she replied with an ironic lift of her fine dark brows and a regal nod. ‘How very kind of you to wish me well.’

‘Good day, Miss Winterley,’ he said repressively and got ready to limp back to his books and papers and packing crates.

‘And a very good day to you too, sir,’ he heard her reply lightly by way of dismissal from a lady to the upper servant he really was nowadays.

The thought of how much clear water lay between him and Miss Winterley mocked him all the way back to Derneley House and made him limp more heavily than usual for some strange reason. ‘Even a lunatic wouldn’t be fool enough to yearn for that particular moon, Colm Hancourt,’ he murmured under his breath as he went.

He was fairly sure he was still sane, but that was about all he had to offer any woman deluded enough to want him. He was scarred and limping and about as penniless as a man could be without actually living in the gutter. Before he met Miss Winterley he had still been able to convince himself he only wanted his lost fortune back for Nell’s sake. Now he had a sneaking suspicion he’d lied. Was there any hope Miss Winterley might ever look on him as a possible lover if he wasn’t who he was? Of course not. The idea was ridiculous and he must put it from his mind right now.

So that left him with his sister Nell still to save from a life of genteel poverty or a rich man’s bed and no wedding ring. The very thought of either fate for his bright, brave sister horrified him enough to make him put aside air dreams and concentrate on her future instead. There was one elusive possibility he’d been turning over in his mind since he read the last entry in Pamela’s diary last night. He shrugged off the idea it had been wrong to read them before he passed them over to their rightful owner as ordered. He had as much right to know the wretched female’s thoughts during the time she was with his father as anyone still alive. The woman was annoyingly evasive about the Lambury Jewels after that crow about the rubies, at least until the end of her diary when she must have left for that last wild adventure with her lover. Before she went she railed at her lover’s refusal to hand over the last of his wife’s jewellery: the magnificent diamond set Joseph Lambury had made up for his daughter after Colm was born. So when his father left England with his inamorata they should have been in the bank vault his uncle had sworn was bare as a pauper’s pocket when Colm plucked up the courage to ask before he left for the army.

A slender thread of hope dangled in front of Colm’s eyes as he speculated how much the diamond set might be worth. He vaguely recalled seeing his mother wear them when she was dressed up for a ball grand enough to warrant such splendour. There had been a tiara and a magnificent tumble of diamonds round her neck that sparkled fascinatingly in the candlelight when she came to bid him goodnight. Heavy bracelets weighed down her slender wrists and they laughed together as he playfully moved her hands so they would make rainbows from her rings even with the nursery night lights. A coachman shouted at a carter and their loud exchange of insults jolted Colm out of the past and into a very different world. For a moment he had been back there with her, sharing a careless moment of loving intimacy with his mother and remembering so much about her he thought he’d forgotten.

He felt almost sorry he had that memory to cherish when Nell was too young to remember much more about their mother than a vague impression of pale hair and warm arms. They had talked about their parents one night this summer in Brussels, when the pain of his wounds kept him awake and she insisted on waking with him. It taught him a lot, that time when even he wasn’t quite sure if he was going to live or die. The most important thing he had found out was he and his sister still shared a strong bond, despite all the efforts two of their uncles and aunts made to keep them apart. All those years of pretending the Hancourt-Winterley scandal died with their brother and not even the last Duke and their Uncle Maurice could make Colm and Nell strangers to one another.

Which brought him back to the diamonds; the last Duke of Linaire must have had them broken up and sold, he supposed. Colm thought about the hard-eyed man who informed him his father was dead as if he ought to be glad. That man was capable of it, but could he have got away with it? That was less certain and whispers of what he’d done would have haunted the cold-hearted devil to his grave. Nothing Colm had heard since he came back to England said any of those whispers existed. The diamonds might still be hiding somewhere, waiting to be found and claimed by him. A beat of wild hope thundered in his heart as he thought what that would mean for Nell’s future happiness. A real dowry, a secure home and perhaps living under the same roof as her brother for a while before she wed a man who deserved her, if such a paragon existed. Colm almost smiled, then changed his mind as he realised how unlikely his latest daydream sounded. If he could find diamonds nobody had seen for fifteen years; if he could prove they were his; if he could sell them for the fortune needed to buy a modest home and a farm to support it; if Nell would leave her noble orphans and join him there…

So many ifs made a fantasy, but if there was some trace of his mother’s diamonds, Uncle Horace might help him find them. Colm knew his uncle and aunt felt they had let his little brother’s children down by staying away when their father died. Now they were back in England the duchy wasn’t the rich inheritance it was before the last Duke and Colm’s grandfather spent money like water. The current Duke couldn’t afford to dower his niece and establish his nephew as the gentleman his birth argued, because Uncle Maurice would be watching his future inheritance like a hawk. The new Duchess was unlikely to produce a child after a quarter of a century of marriage, so Lord Maurice would insist on an allowance as his brother’s heir before Lord Chris’s children got a penny of Hancourt money beyond the twenty pounds a year already settled on them by the last Duke. Those diamonds might be a false hope, Colm mused as he made his way down the back steps of Derneley house, but sometimes it was better to have one of those than none at all.

The work of getting the Derneley Collection listed and packed up ready for its new home, so he could get out of this house, felt more urgent today. As Colm went about it he couldn’t stop thinking of his latest meeting with Miss Winterley. He didn’t number many fine ladies among his acquaintance, but something told him she was an unusual one. This morning she seemed as relaxed as if he was a fashionable gentleman in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour, instead of an almost servant in Green Park at some unlikely hour of the morning for a lady who had been at a party late into the night. He let his hands slow for a moment as he thought of her in the clear light of a fine autumn morning. Her skin was flawless, he recalled, and she was still young enough for a late night and early morning not to be written under her eyes. Her bonnet was modest by the standards of the current fashion for vast pokes that hid the wearer from view if there was any danger of shadows. So now he knew that her eyes truly were a rare shade of blue-green and could haunt a man to his grave if he wasn’t careful. Add a slender but womanly figure and the smile that made her unique and he had best think about diamonds again and forget Miss Winterley as best he could.

Anything more than a stiff acquaintance between that lady and Mr Carter was clearly impossible, so he thought about that passage he had copied out last night in his room and with the door safely shut behind him. He took out the paper he kept in his jacket pocket lest some servant find it and scanned Pamela’s words for anything that passed him by last night. He was bone weary at the time and his head so full of Eve Winterley and her icy father he couldn’t think straight. There might be a stray word he’d missed the sense of as he wrote it down. The last page of her diary seemed to sum the woman up perfectly.

Knowing the full power of my own beauty at last and feeling men lust for me so deeply they can’t fight it is wonderful, but jewels never fade. I don’t intend to be deprived of a single stone, and they will never make me feel less than beautiful, however old I get.

So had written the woman who would never get much older than she had been when she’d made that last entry in the diary.

Colm’s mouth twisted in distaste as he re-read her self-centred ramblings, but he felt a spark of regret for a vivid life cut short all the same. He was sorry Lord Farenze would have to read his late wife’s words and wonder what made her as she was. Colm had no idea how it felt to walk in the Viscount’s expensive shoes, but he didn’t envy him the memory of a wife no one man could satisfy. Her words told him enough about Pamela to know she would have left Colm’s father for another lover, however deeply Lord Chris adored her. Colm was almost glad Lord Chris hadn’t lived to watch the woman who cost him so dearly walk away without a backward look.

Emotions he didn’t want to imagine underlay the dark fascination of a duke’s youngest son and the runaway wife of a very young peer. If he let himself dwell on such wild passions he might feel an echo of them for some unsuspecting female. A picture of Miss Winterley looking horrified as he poured out his insatiable desire for her made him flinch, then smile at the next image of her speechless with shocked surprise that he could feel anything at all, let alone that. She was so unlike her dam, Colm felt guilty for misjudging her last night and uneasy about the thunder of passionate need in his own veins as he watched her ghost into his temporary lair breathless and far too desirable for her own good before they had even spoken to each other.

Eve had given her father time to read all Pamela’s letters and diaries before confronting him the day after she met Mr Carter in Green Park. It must make painful reading for him and she doubted her mother’s self-centred outpourings shone much light on what had made her long for a succession of ever wilder lovers.

‘You really won’t let me read a word of my mother’s papers, will you?’ Eve challenged as she followed him into his study after breakfast.

‘I wish I could burn the lot right now, so there would be no risk of you or anyone else ever reading a word of her selfish drivel,’ her father said with a preoccupied frown at the locked drawer of his desk where she guessed the diaries were sitting like a row of fat little grenades that could be so destructive in the wrong hands she shuddered at the thought of it.

‘Then why don’t you?’ she asked with a nod at the fire burning steadily in the grate on this fine but chilly morning.

‘Because it isn’t right to deprive that boy of a chance,’ he murmured as if he was fighting the urge to do it anyway.

‘What boy? Oh, you mean Lord Christopher Hancourt’s son, I suppose. I thought he was dead; nobody has heard of him for years and his family never talk about him or the little girl I remember someone mentioning once.’

‘Their father spent the lad’s rightful inheritance on your mother and I can’t believe that fool was besotted enough to simply hand over all those jewels to her. She knew the Lambury Jewels weren’t even his to give, but she seduced and sulked as only she knew how until she got them out of him. There isn’t a single word of remorse about the boy and his sister in the books and papers Carter handed over.’

‘It would be beneath him to hold back a single letter of hers once he made you that promise,’ Eve argued against Mr Carter holding something over them. Her father’s acute gaze focused on her as if he was trying to read her thoughts and feelings about a man she didn’t even like. Of course she didn’t feel anything for the stiff-necked idiot, how could she? She still felt the need to affirm his honesty for some reason. ‘He wouldn’t keep anything that didn’t belong to him,’ she added.

‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ her father murmured so low she wondered if she was mistaken. ‘Nothing Pamela did should shame you, love,’ he said out loud and with such sadness and concern in his eyes Eve felt guilty about reminding him of those dark days in both their lives, not that she could remember them.

‘Nor you, Papa,’ she said. ‘She did enough damage when she was alive. Please don’t agonise over her sins now she’s dead. The memory of them kept you and darling Chloe apart for years, so don’t fret about things she never felt a second’s worth of unease about now.’

‘Yet if I burn these books I might deprive that boy of the better life and we Winterleys have done enough damage in that quarter already. If there’s any chance those jewels she writes about so gleefully can be found and I destroy a clue to where they are, then I shall be the one in need of a few scruples and not Pamela.’

‘We must find the man Lord Chris’s son must be by now and help him as best we can then. If that’s what it takes to make you forget all the evil Lord Chris and Pamela did between them, we have no choice.’

‘Any gossip now sleeping safely might wake up and bite you if he or his sister come forward, love,’ he warned with a brooding look Eve couldn’t quite read.

‘Don’t you think I’m strong enough to ignore such poisonous gossip by now?’

‘Sometimes I wonder if you’re not too strong, Eve. If I had only worked my way past Pamela and caught your stepmother ten years before I did, you and Verity would have had easier childhoods. I was a fool not to seize the day and your stepmother a lot sooner than I did.’

‘Well, there’s no denying Chloe is perfect for you in every way my mother never was, but Verity and I did very well with one of you each for the ten years you two spent apart. We do even better now you’re together and happy, instead of apart and secretly miserable, but there’s no need to mourn what we didn’t have because you were stubborn as a rock, Papa. We were both very much loved and cared for even before you and Chloe let yourselves be happy together.’

‘I’m glad you know we love you, but are you sure you’re prepared for the old gossip to be stirred up if I find Hancourt and help him search for any remnants of his inheritance that might be lying around unattended?’

Eve had had to prove over and over again how unlike her mother she was when she made her debut in society. The idea of facing that ordeal again was daunting and made her pause for a moment. No, peace wasn’t worth having if it came from playing the coward, she decided. She would have to be more cautious than ever about dark corridors and deserted ladies’ withdrawing rooms, but the sneaky thought that meeting an intriguing and gruff young gentleman at the end of her last adventure made it almost worthwhile was nonsensical, wasn’t it?

‘Even the whisper of a lost fortune could do that anyway, but I don’t see how we can stand in his way, if he’s still alive, of course.’

‘And I suspect he is,’ her father muttered with that odd look on his face again and Eve was tempted to stamp her feet and demand he tell her everything he was keeping back. She was a young lady now and not a harum-scarum miss, so she could not and she knew that look of old. He wouldn’t even tell Chloe what was in his thoughts until he was ready and a show of temper certainly wouldn’t help.

‘Your Mr Carter might be in the Duke of Linaire’s confidence, Eve. You could always ask him to find out what happened to Lord Christopher’s children next time you meet him in Green Park.’

‘How did you know about that?’

‘Luckily Verity doesn’t know it was meant to be a secret.’

‘But it wasn’t. I met the man there by pure chance. I suppose he was taking the air on his way back from delivering my mother’s papers to you.’

‘And yet you spoke with him at length in the sight of all those nursemaids and governesses. Don’t deny it, Eve; I had the tale from more than one source.’

‘I didn’t think you listened to gossip, Papa.’

‘I do when it concerns my daughter. Have a care, my Eve. Carter might be a wounded hero of however many battles of Wellington’s he is old enough to have fought in, but he clearly hasn’t a feather to fly with. He wouldn’t be sorting dusty old books for Linaire at Derneley House if he had.’

‘I never took you for a snob, Papa, and I only met the man two days ago. I am hardly likely to fall in love with such a rude and stiff-necked idiot anyway, even if I had known him since we were in our nurseries.’

‘It doesn’t take long to do that,’ he warned her ruefully. ‘Love can come without an invitation and when we’re least expecting it. Be careful it doesn’t creep up on you in the worst possible circumstances and bludgeon you over the head like it did your unwary papa.’

‘It won’t. I don’t intend to succumb to passion. If I wed at all it will be to a gentleman I have learnt to know and respect after months, if not years, of friendship.’

‘What of mutual attraction and downright lust? I know you’re my daughter and I should be glad you are going to be so sensible about picking a husband, but I don’t want you to miss out the crucial parts of a happy marriage.’

‘Not many fathers encourage their daughters to become besotted with a gentleman they have not even met.’

‘How do you know that if you only intend to wed a not-very-exciting friend? And I only want you to form a passion for the man if he is right for you.’

‘Logic will tell me that, I have no need for the sort of insane urges that ruled my mother’s life.’

‘No, but you should think a little more about your own before you marry a block, love.’

‘If I was really looking for one of those, Mr Carter would fill the bill very nicely.’

‘Believe that and you’ll believe anything,’ her father said darkly and Eve wished she’d picked a better example than the Duke of Linaire’s whatever he was: secretary, librarian, man of business? Possibly only the Duke and Mr Carter knew the answer to that question.

She remembered how it felt to have Mr Carter’s gold-brown eyes focus intently on her when he forgot his false humility. No, he wasn’t a wooden soldier at all. Papa was quite right; there was a sharply intelligent and sensitive man under that quiet exterior and she would do well to remember it if they ever met again, which seemed very unlikely as he was the Duke of Linaire’s clerk and not part of the ton.

‘My one-day marriage and Mr Carter aside, what do you mean to do about the Hancourts, Papa?’

‘When I track them down, I shall make sure they know all I do. I don’t know if that will help much, since I don’t properly understand it myself.’

‘What does she say, then, Papa? You can’t hint at something that might be a clue, then refuse to tell me any more lest you offend my delicate sensibilities.’

Eventually he handed her a list he had copied out, and censored, from entries in Pamela’s diaries where she gloated over the fabulous jewels she had coaxed out of her lover one by one. Eve could hardly believe any woman could lust after cold gemstones so ruthlessly and it left her with an unpleasant taste in her mouth, despite all her assurances to her father that Pamela had done her worst as far as her daughter was concerned.