Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 13
ОглавлениеLost for words again, Chloe nodded, then burrowed her face into the pillows and drew the bedclothes over her chilled shoulders. At least pretending to be fuzzy with sleep would give her time to pull wanton Chloe into line and forget he’d been here as best she could. If she proved as obedient to the curb as his rampant side, she had nothing to worry about.
‘Bah!’ she muttered crossly into the pillow, ‘just bah, my Lord Farenze!’
No danger he might hear her. He was back through the door and nearly closing it again before she could slide down the bed and cover her now-shivering body. Nobody else would ever know he’d found her here, heavy-eyed with sleep and wanton desire.
She heard Miss Winterley express surprise at her father’s presence in an over-loud voice meant to warn Chloe not to start awake and betray herself and felt a hard flush of shame burn her cheeks at the thought she knew of Luke Winterley’s presence all too well. She felt it in every fibre of her being and the man was Miss Winterley’s father, for goodness’ sake.
‘You took my book,’ he replied and if his excuse sounded lame and defensive, it might explain what he was doing here better than a smoother lie, designed to cover something clandestine and shocking.
‘And there are none downstairs in the famously well-stocked library Aunt Virginia and Uncle Virgil amassed between them?’ Eve asked, as if she knew very well her father had really stumbled on the housekeeper enjoying a nap in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time, but how could she?
‘Not the one I was reading before you stole it,’ he said grumpily.
‘And now I am reading it, so you would be stealing it from me. I can’t believe you to need distraction so badly, especially in the midst of a house party you must play host to, that you need to barge into my bedchamber when I am not there and try to repossess part of your library, Papa. I’m not even going to think about the list of tasks awaiting you here that you reeled off as an excuse for not being able to spend much time greeting neighbours who call to express their condolences.’
‘I didn’t know then how much distraction I’d need,’ he muttered darkly.
Chloe’s eyes stung at the sound of him so gruffly sheepish it opened up a host of new temptations inside her. She didn’t want to love him and screwed her eyes shut in denial of any tears tempted to come further.
‘Don’t be such a cross old bear, Papa,’ Eve told him and Chloe could hear the rustle of her skirts as she marched up and hugged her father.
Wrong to envy Eve such ease with her father, that ability to breach the chilly touch-me-not air he normally carried about with him like a shield.
‘I’ll try not to be, my she-cub, but there will be reasons aplenty for me to growl over the next few days.’
‘Aye,’ Brandy Brown added from what sounded like a position just inside the room, ‘you’ll need the patience of a saint before the vultures fly off at last.’
‘They’re not all vultures, Bran,’ Eve chided.
‘We don’t know them well enough to judge what they are yet, my lamb,’ her maid said cynically and Chloe decided there was no need to worry about Eve Winterley with such a formidable protector at her side, as well as a father who would clearly walk through fire to keep his beloved daughter safe.
‘I know Lord Mantaigne and Great-Uncle Giles perfectly well and even Uncle James isn’t as savage and sarcastic as he used to be. Aunt Virginia was always trying to persuade him to live a steadier life, so perhaps he will turn over a new leaf in her honour.’
‘And I’m a Dutchman,’ Chloe thought she heard Lord Farenze mutter darkly and wondered what divided the half-brothers so deeply, so alike in colouring and stature as they were, yet as sharply distant with each other as two siblings could be without openly declaring war.
‘No, what you are is a curmudgeon, Papa, so I can’t imagine why you’re worrying about reading a book you seem very familiar with when you have your brother nearby to argue with once more. I dare say if you start now you could have Uncle James simmering nicely by dinner and ready to call you out the moment Aunt Virginia’s funeral is over.’
‘Thank you, minx, the gossips have plenty to say already, without a brotherly feud or a family riot breaking out. I’m not sure I should have let you read Tom Jones after all, it seems to have given you some odd ideas.’
‘There’s a copy in the study, if you truly want to take up where you left off,’ Eve called after the sound of her father’s retreating footsteps and surely it was wrong of Chloe to wish he wouldn’t go at the same time as she longed to be up and away and pretend he hardly impinged on her thoughts, let alone her wildest dreams? ‘Virginia told me where all her warm novels were in the event of my ever having to be bored here in her absence. It’s all right, Papa, she told me anything she and Uncle Virgil locked away was far too warm for a young lady to read and I really can’t think why the tabbies make such a fuss about Mr Fielding’s splendid book.’
‘Don’t get caught with it, then, and it’s probably best if you don’t admit to reading it in polite company. I won’t have you labelled fast before you’re even out.’
‘Of course not and stop being such a worrywart, I’ll be so painfully good over the next few weeks you will hardly recognise me.’
The only reply Chloe heard was a distant masculine humph then Eve ordered her maid to shut the outer door before hastily pushing open the one to the bedroom where Chloe was sitting up in bed, feeling flustered and confused.
‘That was close,’ Eve confided with an impish smile.
‘We should have locked the door,’ Bran told them. ‘Imagine if his lordship had opened it and found you lying here asleep, Mrs Wheaton.’
‘Yes, only imagine,’ Chloe echoed hollowly and used her artistic shudder as an excuse to spring out of bed and start setting herself to rights.
‘I’ll help,’ Bran said as Chloe then tried to struggle into her gown and wrestle with her rebellious curls at the same time. ‘Button yourself up and I’ll comb out your hair and dress it for you, although it seems a crying shame to screw it into a knot and hide it under that thing when it’s so beautiful. There’s many a fine lady as would give her eye teeth for hair half as thick and full of life.’
‘It’s wild and unruly and people get entirely the wrong impression of me if I allow it to show. Anyway, I’m nearly thirty years of age and a respectable widow, not a dewy-eyed débutante.’
‘You don’t look much older than one right now,’ Bran observed as her eyes met Chloe’s in the square of mirror above the diminutive washstand.
‘I can’t afford dreams,’ Chloe murmured.
‘Neither of us can, but it don’t stop us ’avin’ ’em, do it?’
‘What do you dream of, Mrs Brown?’
‘A fine man for my girl; one who’ll love her as she is and not try to make her into a society missus without a good word to say to anyone but a lord.’
‘I can’t see him doing that, whoever he might be.’
‘Can’t you, ma’am? Then you’ve been a lucky woman up to now.’
‘Maybe I have at that,’ Chloe admitted and suppressed a shudder at the thought of all the ways in which a man might mould his wife.
‘His lordship now, he’s a man as would let a woman be herself and love her all the more for it, if you know what I mean?’ Bran said as she finished pinning Chloe’s wild mane back in place, then eyed the cap with disfavour before fitting it over her handiwork with a sigh.
‘He doesn’t strike me as a man on the lookout for love,’ Chloe argued.
‘Ah, well, there’s what a man says he wants then there’s what he really does want. They don’t always meet in the middle, until the right woman comes along and changes his mind.’
‘If I understood all that I might argue, but since I don’t and dinner will be served in a little over an hour, neither of us has enough time for riddles,’ Chloe said with a last glance in the mirror to make sure she was correct and subdued again.
‘Just as well, since we’ll never agree about his lordship.’
‘Maybe not,’ Chloe said distractedly and, picking up her keys, clipped them back on her belt and with a word of breathless thanks fled the room.
* * *
Luke stumped back downstairs to the study and cursed as rampant need roiled inside him. This wasn’t some unique enchantment; he was tired and it was too long since he’d visited his mistress. Forcing the pace on a long journey had left him weary and less in control of himself and his masculine appetites than usual. Combine tiredness and grief with Mrs Wheaton’s exhaustion and Eve’s kind heart and trouble looked inevitable with hindsight, but at least it hadn’t led to catastrophe.
He bit out another fearsome curse at his painful arousal over the mere thought of Chloe Wheaton sitting up in that neat little bed, looking at him as if every fantasy he’d ever had of her as his lover was about to come true, before she awoke fully and recalled who they were. Of course he’d wanted her since she was painfully young and hauntingly beautiful, with a tiny dependent child. He felt the familiar dragging heat of frustrated desire, as if his senses were soaked in need of the woman and refused to give her up, however hard he told them they must.
On some level he’d known she was there even when he saw the inner door slightly ajar and Eve’s baggage piled on the Aubusson carpet, as if the footmen had been told to leave it there and depart in order not to disturb Chloe Wheaton while Bran and Eve took a stroll about the Winter Garden. He wished they hadn’t done what he couldn’t and ordered the woman to bed for an hour or so.
Eve had a heart big enough to sacrifice her comfort for a woman she barely knew, because the housekeeper looked so breakable. How could he be anything but proud of such a daughter, even if he wished she’d left well alone? Eve had done the right thing, but now he wanted to run upstairs and throw the pig-headed Mrs Wheaton over his shoulders and tell the world to go hang and do the wrong one.
If he was not to avoid Farenze Lodge as if he hated it for another decade she had to leave , but he must find a place where her skills were valued and her fine figure and spellbinding violet eyes ignored. Did convents have housekeepers? Luke forced his hands to unclench at the idea of her being leered at by her employer’s husband, or some gangling oaf of a son, and decided to keep a stern eye on Mrs Wheaton’s next household from afar.
Yes, he should have trusted his instincts, but curiosity, or something even more dangerous, led him to open that door. Once he had, he could no more bow coolly and leave than stop breathing. Even now the scent of her seemed to linger in the air. It was only the lavender in the big bowls Virginia always insisted on having about to sweeten the air in winter-closed rooms.
He suspected Chloe had lavender water used on the last rinse of her linen and that was why he couldn’t seem to get her out of his head. The rest of that exotic scent he associated with her was probably lingering aroma of a spicy moth bag or two, deployed to stop the industrious creatures chewing through her mourning attire. So it was a mix of simple strewing herbs, cinnamon, orris and perhaps cloves, but the memory fogged his senses, reminding him how tempted he’d been to kiss the fine creamy skin at the base of her elegant throat and find out if she tasted as exotically artless as she smelt.
Confound it, he hadn’t kissed her and could still savour the taste of her on his tongue. He ran it over his lips and the memory of her doing the same took fire and wrenched a tortured groan from him. After a decade of avoidance and abstinence he still wanted her, wanted her more than at first sight and now they were both mature adults and better designed for mischief.
The waif was a woman and he’d been wrong about the figure under that deplorable gown—Chloe the woman was nothing like the skinny girl she’d once been. She was slender, yes, probably too much so after forgetting to eat for grief and worry. What there was of her was sweetly curved, though, and her skin looked so silken and perfect he could imagine the feel of those full high breasts of hers against his palms. He held up his hands as if convicting them of a heinous crime for flexing on thin air as if they knew what they wanted better than the rest of him did. His other senses were betraying him, so why shouldn’t touch join the turncoat army?
Because somehow he had to resist what he and Chloe Wheaton might be to each other, he supposed with a heavy sigh. For a decade he’d done his best to stay away; he’d seen the desperation in her eyes; the hunger for the love Virginia had to offer a pair of homeless waifs. So he’d taken her rebuff to heart.
Easy enough to make a holiday of visits to Brighton so Virginia and Eve could enjoy one another’s company. He had even endured a few weeks in London each spring so they could eat ices at Gunter’s and visit Astley’s Amphitheatre and there was no more noble fatherly sacrifice when Darkmere was the finest place to be in the spring.
He suspected Virginia knew why he avoided the Lodge, but she didn’t say a word because she knew as well as he did that it was as impossible for Lord Farenze to do aught but ruin a housekeeper. The polite world would laugh at him and sneer at her if he tried to make anything of Chloe Wheaton but his mistress.
‘There you are,’ Tom Banburgh remarked from the doorway and he welcomed the interruption, didn’t he?
‘There’s no fooling you, is there?’
‘I can go away again until you’re in a better humour if you like, but I thought misery might like some company.’
‘Devil take it, I’m not miserable.’
‘Face like thunder.’
Luke stopped himself pacing up and down like a general before a crucial battle and took the filled glass Tom was holding out to him for the second time today. He took a sip of the finest cognac Virginia always kept for a favoured few and felt a little better after all.
‘I miss her so much, Tom,’ he finally admitted the lesser of two evils.
‘How could you not? I expect Virginia saved you from the tender mercies of your family when she could. She certainly rescued me from my unloving guardian when I was a scrubby boy nobody else cared enough to worry about.’
‘True, and she was always taking in waifs and strays. Seems a shame she couldn’t give Virgil children when she was born to be a mother.’
‘And this remark is coming from a man who would be a mere mister today if she had? You’re either a saint or a liar, my friend.’
‘I’m neither and you know as well as I do a title can’t change the beat of a man’s heart or make him any happier.’
‘I really wouldn’t know,’ Tom said indifferently and Luke reminded himself his friend had been a marquis since he was five years old.
‘Well, I do,’ he argued, ‘and mine hasn’t bought me any great joy.’
‘That’s because you hadn’t much left in you when you acquired it, Luke,’ Tom said sagely.
Luke wondered if anyone else would get away with saying some of the things Mantaigne came out with so blithely without being called out. ‘And you have no memory of being without one, so are necessarily full of fun and laughter, I suppose?’
‘Going a bit far, but I never saw the point in being gloomy. I’ll go on trying to laugh at the world even now, because Virginia wouldn’t want long faces and a grand carry on over her departure from this vale of tears.’
‘True, and we both know she missed my great-uncle as if someone had lopped off an arm or a leg after Virgil died.’
‘Aye, and if there is a heaven at least they’re in it together again.’
‘Since it clearly wouldn’t be so for one without the other, you must be right.’
‘Makes you wonder though, don’t it?’ Tom said.
‘No, love is still a myth for the rest of us.’
Luke gave his friend a long hard look before deciding he was the one obsessed with love and lovers and in danger of tripping over his own tongue. Not that he felt anything like love for Chloe Wheaton.
‘Thing about myths is a lot of people believe them,’ Tom said with a long look at Luke that left him puzzled and fidgety.
Was he being warned not to lightly charm the object of his desires? He could imagine nobody less likely to fall in love with him than aloof and sceptical Mrs Chloe Wheaton. Then he recalled the sight of her disarmed by sleep and a hundred times more vulnerable and wondered all over again.
‘I don’t,’ he muttered half to himself.
‘You could have been cut straight out of the pages of a Gothic tale and pasted into a young girl’s scrapbook of fantasies you look so close to the little darlings’ ideal of a heroic villain.’
‘What nonsense have you been feeding yourself this afternoon, man—a three-decker novel from the yellow press, perhaps? Or are you already three parts cast away?’ Luke asked incredulously.
‘Neither, but you don’t have the faintest idea, do you?’
‘Faintest idea of what?’
‘That your long and dusky locks, brooding frowns and touch-me-not air are sure to drive the débutantes insane with longing at their first sight of you across a crowded ballroom. The moment you stand among a London rout glaring at any boy brave enough to dance with your Eve, the little darlings will start swooning by rote for the lack of space to do it all at once in comfort.’
Luke felt himself pale at the very idea, so no wonder Tom laughed. ‘Why?’ he asked hollowly. ‘I’ll be old enough to be their father.’
‘As are all those dark and brooding villains out of the Gothic novels they devour by the yard, I suppose. Who knows what flights of the imagination such silly chits are capable of dreaming up between them, but you’ll be a prime target for them and their ambitious mamas if you set foot in London without a viscountess at your side.’
‘I wasn’t going to worry about one of those until Eve is safely wed.’
‘Leave Eve to find her husband when she’s ready, man; you owe her that for enduring life with a hermit like you all these years.’
Luke shook his head, but was Mantaigne right? He couldn’t see much attraction in a beetle-browed countenance and raven’s wing black hair he only kept overlong because he had no patience with constant visits from a barber or his new valet’s fussing and primping. When it came to his features, he’d just been relieved Eve had escaped the Winterley Roman nose and put down the occasional appreciative feminine stare as a penchant for his acres and title. Marriage to Pamela Verdoyne had cured him of vanity and he wondered if she’d done him such a great favour if he was about to blunder into the ballrooms of the ton unprepared.
‘I won’t have Eve endure a stepmother like mine,’ he said with a shudder.
‘That’s in your hands,’ Tom said with a shrug.
‘What is this, some sort of conspiracy to marry me off?’
‘That takes more than one person, my lord, and I’m not a matchmaker.’
‘So Virginia, you and my own dear, sweet scheming Eve don’t make a set?’
‘Not through prior agreement, but all three of us can’t be wrong.’
‘Yes, you can—by Heaven you’re more wrong in triplicate than alone.’
Tom merely raised his eyebrows and looked sceptical before calmly helping himself to another glass of cognac.
‘Did Virginia put you up to this?’ Luke asked suspiciously.
‘Don’t you think I’ve a mind of my own and the sense to see what you won’t yourself? If she wasn’t dead, I could strangle that spoilt witch you wed so hastily, Luke; she married you for your expectations, then rejected you for so-called love, as if it was your fault she was born vain, empty-headed and contrary.’
‘I should never have agreed to marry her,’ Luke said with a shrug, recalling the long and bitter rows of his marriage with a shudder that sent him back to the brandy decanter for a second glass before he’d quite taken in the fact he’d drunk the first.
‘Your father and wicked stepmother should take the blame for pushing such a paltry marriage on an infatuated lad. You’re not a boy now, though, and you badly need a wife, my friend, at least you do if you’re to avoid being ruthlessly pursued through every ballroom in London by a pack of ninnies when Eve makes her début.’
‘Shouldn’t you be more concerned with securing your own succession, since you’re the last of the Banburghs and I have a younger brother?’
‘The Banburghs can go hang as far as I’m concerned, but it’s not good for James to be in limbo, never sure if he’s to be your heir or only the “what if tragedy struck?” spare Winterley male. He’s bored and restless and probably lonely and who knows what he gets up to when our backs are turned?’
‘You know very well he’d never confide in me,’ Luke said and let himself feel how much it hurt that his brother hated him, even if he had cause to hate him back.
‘Left to himself, he would have followed you about like a stray puppy when you were younger.’
Luke gave a snort of derision at the idea of elegant and sophisticated James Winterley following anyone slavishly, let alone his despised elder brother. ‘That particular apple never fell far from the tree,’ he said darkly, even as the laziness of the cliché made him wonder if he wasn’t guilty of prejudice himself.
‘And you think his lot so much better than your own?’ Tom persisted impatiently.
‘Whatever I think, let’s postpone feeling sorry for James because his mother loved him and hated me for another day, shall we?’
‘Don’t leave it too late to remedy,’ Tom warned with a steady look that made Luke wonder if he didn’t know more about James’s dark and tangled affairs than he was letting on. ‘I’m going off to bother my valet and idle away an hour until dinner. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a pleasant and peaceful evening against all the odds,’ his friend said before he sauntered from the room.
‘Slim enough chance of anything of the kind under this roof,’ Luke muttered grumpily and finished his brandy before going upstairs.
