Читать книгу Those Scandalous Ravenhursts Volume Two: The Shocking Lord Standon - Louise Allen - Страница 12

Chapter Six

‘How do you intend teaching me these arts of fascination?’ Jessica rescued her hand from Gareth’s grip and tried to make her voice as businesslike and brisk as possible. He sank back in his chair, recognising her capitulation and, she could only hope, not seeing the churning mix of terror and anticipation behind her question.

‘It will be easier for you once you have your new hairstyle and your new clothes, I imagine. I will send a note around to my cousin Bel and ask her to call tomorrow and take you under her wing.’

‘Will she agree?’ Jessica wondered. ‘It is a scandalous deception. She might well disapprove.’ He had not answered her question, she noted. One faculty life as a governess taught you was to recognise evasion when you saw it. Lord Standon might not be a naughty eight-year-old with a toad in his pocket, but in her opinion all males of whatever age were that boy under the skin.

‘Bel? I suspect not. She was first married to Lord Felsham, who was generally accounted to be the most boring man in the ton. When she was barely out of mourning she encountered Ashe Reynard, Viscount Dereham, who was just back from Waterloo. By all accounts it was a lively courtship. I have no idea of the details, but our highly respectable bluestocking of a cousin Miss Elinor Ravenhurst, who is a great friend of Bel’s, blushes whenever she mentions Reynard.’

‘It would be a relief if she does help us, because I do not feel we should involve Lady Maude in this.’ Jessica waited, trying her best stare to see if Gareth was going to answer her question about her lessons in flirtation.

‘I agree. Tell me, Jessica, why are you regarding me as though I have not finished my Latin exercises?’

‘I am waiting for an answer to my question about how you intend to teach me—and I fear you may be evading one.’

‘Very well. This is not something I have attempted before, believe me, but I will try. May I be frank?’

‘Ye…s,’ she responded, suspicious. His lordship was studying her closely. She felt uncomfortable meeting his gaze, but it was equally unnerving trying to find something innocuous to look at. Her immediate field of view seemed very full of large, disturbing, male. She settled upon his neckcloth and attempted to regard it tranquilly.

‘You are a very contained person, are you not?’ Startled, she nodded, the neckcloth and its intricate folds forgotten. ‘You sit very still, you occupy your own space and do not intrude into that of other people. You communicate with your voice and with the force of your argument, not with touch, or teasing or cajoling.’

‘Yes. That is appropriate to my role in life.’ That stillness and self-control had been hard-won, but necessary.

‘But not to your new one. You are to become a creature of the senses—all five of them. You want to touch silks and skin. You want to taste champagne and kisses. Your eyes will long for luxury, your ears for flattery, you will want to move within clouds of scent from lavish flowers and from exotic perfume. You will talk with your hands, with your eyes, with your laughter. Instinct will appear to dominate over thought.’

‘Appear?’ She felt breathless, her mind reeling from thoughts of silk, skin, kisses, perfume.

‘Underneath you will be thinking very hard indeed, because you will be acting, and the woman you are portraying will be thinking hard too. She is not a heedless flirt, she is a determined adventuress.’ He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. ‘Unless we can release the inner hedonist in you.’

‘I am not sure I have one,’ Jessica confessed. Hedonism required money, time and self-indulgence. The first two she could not afford, the third she dare not permit. Until now.

‘In that case we will take one sense at a time and work on it. Which shall we start with? Not taste, for you have just had your supper, and not smell, because this fire seems intent on smoking. I shall have to think about hearing a little. Sight—or touch, Jessica?’

‘You choose.’ She threw the question back as fast as if this were a ball game and the ball red hot.

‘Oh, no. You must also learn to be demanding and capricious. You will always be the one to choose, whatever the question.’

Sight sounded safest. It was probably the one he expected her to say. ‘Touch,’ she decided, her eyes meeting his defiantly.

* * *

He had been sure she would decide upon sight, an apparently safe sense, although he was having ideas about that. Inwardly Gareth gave Miss Gifford points for courage.

‘Close your eyes.’ She stiffened immediately, her fingers curling tight around the arms of the chair. ‘Do you not trust me, Jessica? We are not going to get very far with this if you do not.’

Clear green eyes looked into his. For long seconds he watched her thinking. ‘Yes,’ she decided finally, her mouth quirking into a rueful smile. ‘Although quite what I trust you to do I am not certain.’ The long lashes that contrasted so piquantly with her tightly bound hair lowered, feathering her cheeks and she waited, blind, outwardly tranquil. Except for her death grip on the leather arms.

‘Stroke the arms of the chair,’ Gareth said, keeping his voice low. A frown line appeared between her brows, then she nodded and relaxed her fingers. ‘Tell me what you feel.’

‘It is smooth, warm from where my hands have been.’ She felt further down. ‘Cool here. It feels strong. Somehow I can tell it is thick.’ He waited while she explored further. ‘It is smoother here, where hands have rubbed; I can feel the grain lower down.’

Gareth felt in his pocket and pulled out the clean linen handkerchief his valet had placed there that morning. On the table beside him was a sample of heavy silk Maude had forgotten last time she had sat in this room. He leaned over and dropped both pieces of fabric into Jessica’s lap. ‘And these?’

She scooped them up in her cupped hands and rubbed with thumb and forefinger, then bent her head to bury her face in them. ‘That is cheating,’ Gareth said mildly and she raised her head and smiled in the direction of his voice.

‘Very well.’ She dropped the silk into her lap and concentrated on touching the linen. ‘Expensive, very fine Irish linen. I imagine one could see through it. But a strong, masculine feel.’ Her fingers found the white-ork monogram in the corner and rubbed gently. ‘Excellent work.’

‘And the other?’ He found he could not take his eyes off her face.

‘The silk? Beautiful. A dress weight, expensive again. I imagine it is coloured, although I have no idea why.’ She ran it through her fingers and sighed. ‘It is alive.’

‘Which would you prefer to wear?’ Gareth asked. Jessica frowned. She was thinking too much still, not feeling. ‘Next to your skin?’ he added outrageously, intent on shocking an instinctive reaction out of her.

Jessica gave a little gasp at his effrontery, but answered, as he had hoped, without reflection. ‘The silk. Utterly impractical, but like bathing in warm oil. See how it slides and slithers.’ Eyes still closed, she held it out to him and he took it, warm from her hands, and let it slip through his fingers. It was no longer possible, for some reason, to sit still. Gareth got to his feet, standing in front of the chair so close their toes nearly touched.

‘Will you stand up, Jessica?’

Obedient, she did as he asked. ‘You are standing very near.’ It was a matter-of-fact observation but he could sense the reserve behind it.

‘How can you tell?’

‘Your voice. And I can feel your—’ She swallowed, making the chaste muslin fichu veiling her throat move. ‘Your heat.’

Heat? Gareth felt suddenly as though he was burning up, the colour in his cheeks as high as that on Jessica’s. He dragged air down into his lungs and kept his voice steady. ‘Touch me.’ It might have been steady—he could do nothing about the huskiness.

‘What!’ Her eyes flew open and she took a half-step back until the edge of the chair hit the back of her knees.

‘Jessica, I am not asking you to make love to me…’

‘Good!’ She looked deliciously flustered.

‘But the new you is going to touch men all the time,’ Gareth explained, in haste before one of Miss Gifford’s clenched hands found his ear. ‘It will be part of your charm, one of your weapons. The slightest, fleeting touches. A caress with your fingertips on a sleeve, a flick to remove an imaginary piece of lint from a lapel, a handshake held just a fraction too long. You must be completely relaxed touching a man.’

‘I see.’ She narrowed her eyes at him, still suspicious. ‘I think.’

‘You think too much Jessica, just feel.’

‘Hmm.’ She put her head on one side, reminding him irresistibly of an inquisitive robin who has just spotted a worm. ‘Like this?’ She reached up and brushed her fingertips across his lapel, her movement wafting a faint scent of Castile soap and warm woman to his nostrils.

‘Yes. Just like that. Now, find some other ways.’

There was a glint of mischief in her eyes now and she caught her lower lip in her teeth for a moment. The heat flooded Gareth again, this time sharply focused in his groin. If his reaction to an inexpert touch from Miss Gifford, dressed like a governess, was this, what effect was she going to have in her new guise?

‘I need to find excuses to touch, and they should be so brief that the man concerned will not know if they are an accident, an impulse—or a message. An invitation, even.’ She nodded to herself, then, smiling, raised her hand and brought it up to pat her fichu into order, managing as she did so to brush the back of her fingers against his. The tingle reached right up his arm. ‘Like that?’

‘Perfect, Jessica.’

‘But I need to hold your eyes as I do it, I think, to make you even more unsure of my intentions. You must not know whether I meant to touch you or not.’ The limpid green gaze held nothing but the faintest question and then she was smiling again, a polite social smile.

‘Excellent,’ Gareth managed, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. True, he had spent a decidedly fraught twenty-four hours, but that was no excuse for feeling like a randy eighteen-year-old simply because he was toe to toe with a buttoned-up governess.

‘Oh!’ She was peering up at him now. ‘My lord, I do believe there is a money spider in your hair.’ Jessica stood on tiptoe, reached and flicked lightly at the side of his head, her fingers just skimming his temple before they ruffled into his hair. This time the tingle went straight down to the base of his spine with predictable results. ‘There.’ She held up slender fingers for him to see the tiny red dot that was swinging from them. ‘What luck for me.’

There was a faint ink mark on her forefinger. It would need work with a pumice stone—seductresses did not have ink blots. Jessica blew softly and the red dot landed on his lapel and vanished into his neck cloth. This one does… ‘You gave it back.’

‘We can share it—I expect we are going to need all the luck we can get to pull this off.’

‘You have not changed your mind?’

The half-hidden seductress vanished to be replaced with the governess, her expression severe. ‘I said I would do it—I do not go back on my word.’

‘No.’ Gareth studied her straight back, raised chin, determined expression. ‘I can see that.’

‘My lord. Her Ser…’ There was a muffled exchange from the hall. ‘I beg your pardon, Lady Sebastian Ravenhurst and Lady Dereham are here. I explained that you were at breakfast, my lord, but—’

‘Show them in, Jordan, bring more cups.’ Resigned to yet another turbulent breakfast Gareth pushed back his chair and got to his feet as his cousin Bel and her sister-in-law Eva, Grand Duchess of Maubourg, swept into the room in a flurry of flounces. At the other end of the table Jessica stood too, schooling her knees not to knock together. These two elegant, assured, sophisticated matrons would take one look at her and laugh Gareth’s plan to scorn.

‘Gareth, we came at once, Maude said things have reached a crisis.’

‘Thank you, Bel.’

So that would be his cousin, Lady Dereham. A tall brunette, she kissed him on the cheek, and stood aside to make room for an equally tall, rather more statuesque brunette whose deportment could have been used as a model of perfection. The Grand Duchess.

‘Gareth, you poor man. Lord Pangbourne appears to have become quite irrational, even allowing for Maude’s tendency for the dramatic.’ Her English accent was perfect, her gaze direct. ‘Your message was cryptic, but we will do our very best to help.’

‘Then allow me to introduce Miss Gifford, who has agreed to play the critical role in this scheme.’ Both ladies turned and Jessica sank down into her best court curtsy. She knew how to do it in theory, but she had never had to do it in practice. It was murder on the thigh muscles, she discovered, rising with relief as the Grand Duchess stepped forward and caught her hand in her own kid-encased one.

‘Your Serene Highness…’

‘Lady Sebastian, please. Except for court appearances, I do not use my title outside the Duchy. Miss Gifford…’ she looked at her, a smile lighting up her face, ‘…you poor thing—what theatricals have Maude and Gareth prevailed upon you to join?’

‘Good morning Miss Gifford.’ Lady Dereham came to shake hands, then sank down on a dining chair and peeled off her gloves. ‘Yes, we insist upon knowing all the details at once.’ She lifted the silver pot before her. ‘I fear we will need sustaining with considerably more coffee.’

‘Templeton has become fixed in his intention to carry out the exceedingly mawkish scheme he cooked up with my esteemed parent and marry off Maude and myself.’

‘Not so mawkish if you consider the land holdings,’ Lady Dereham observed, stirring sugar into her cup. ‘Templeton’s no fool—he is dangling an estate almost the size of your own before you.’

‘Quite. How can I refuse? That is the problem. He has decided I am perfect for Maude—but it is obvious that even he would draw the line at marrying her off to a libertine. Or, at least, to one who created a public scandal. He has a strange way of showing it, but he is fond of Maude and would not want her to be hurt by her husband’s public infidelities.’

‘His private ones would, no doubt, be of no account,’ Lady Sebastian remarked wryly. A flicker of memory came back to Jessica—Lady Sebastian’s first husband, the Grand Duke, had been a notorious rake, leaving a trail of highly visible liaisons across Europe.

‘Exactly. I, therefore, must become not just a rake, but a very public philanderer.’ Gareth reapplied himself to his sirloin, then looked up to find three pairs of eyes fixed upon him, sighed and put down his knife and fork. ‘Our intention is that Jessica, who is the widow of a gentleman who performed some service for the Duchy…’ he raised an eyebrow at Lady Sebastian, who nodded ‘…has returned to London to re-establish her life. Bel has leased her the Half Moon Street house as a favour to Eva and will introduce her to society at Maude’s charity ball. Jessica, it will soon become apparent, is an adventuress at whose feet any number of gentlemen are about to prostrate themselves.’

Jessica could almost feel the effort it took the two ladies not to turn and look at her in disbelief. ‘I,’ Gareth concluded, ‘will make a complete cake of myself over her, conduct a flaming affaire in the full glare of the Season and Templeton will cast me off.’

‘I see,’ Lady Dereham said with what Jessica regarded as almost supernatural calm. Suddenly she could see the family relationship between them—Lady Belinda was exhibiting the same calm as she had seen in Gareth in the brothel. A sort of watchful stillness. ‘And our role—other than providing an entrée for Miss Gifford—is to be what exactly?’

‘I am very much afraid that Lord Standon expects you to transform me into a dashing adventuress,’ Jessica said, bracing herself for the polite laughter that must surely follow. ‘A glamorous siren,’ she added, heaping on the improbabilities.

Both ladies did turn at that, fine dark eyes under arched brows and amused grey ones regarded her. Neither woman laughed. They must feel it was past a joke to achieve such a task.

‘Oh, yes,’ Lady Dereham said. ‘Hair first, don’t you agree, Eva? And then see what suggests itself once we know what colour we are working with?’

‘MonsieurAntoine.’ Lady Sebastian nodded. ‘Gareth, would you be so good as to ring for Jordan, I must send a note immediately.’

‘You think it is not impossible?’ Jessica shook her head. Not only did she have to appear stylish enough to be seen with leaders of the ton such as these, but in addition she must seem alluring and dangerous.

‘I think Gareth is showing remarkable insight,’ his cousin said with a mocking smile in his direction. ‘Lord Fellingham was saying to me just the other day that Gareth seemed jaded; one can only be relieved that he is not so bored that he missed this opportunity.’

‘Fellingham is an ass,’ Gareth retorted, pushing his plate away and reaching for the toast. ‘Bored? I have estates to run, a speech to write for the House, that damned orphans’ charity Maude nagged me into chairing…’

‘You enjoy it, you know you do. If you did not, why did you invite them all down to Hetherington in the summer and teach the boys to play cricket?’

Gareth grimaced. ‘Smashed half the glass in the succession houses, young hellions.’

‘So did you when you and Sebastian were boys,’ Lady Dereham retorted. ‘You don’t fool me, Gareth Morant—you are working hard for those orphans, and you enjoy it. But being busy does not preclude becoming jaded; this will do you a power of good.’

‘We are doing this to rescue Maude from an impossible situation, not me from the ennui of my duties. Ah, Jordan, Lady Sebastian wishes to have a message delivered.’ The butler bowed his way out with instructions to deliver the hairdresser on Lady Sebastian’s doorstep in an hour equipped with sufficient tools of his trade to create a transformation. What if he is not free? Jessica wondered, then smiled at her naïvety. Not free for a Grand Duchess, the sister-in-law of a duke?

Jessica sat, eating her breakfast in the unobtrusively quiet manner life as a paid dependent in numerous households had taught her, and watched with the focus she would have applied to learning a new instrument.

She watched the unselfconscious grace and command of the two women, she listened to the freedom with which they conversed and the lightness with which they teased Gareth. And she allowed her eyes to feast on their clothes, on carriage dresses in the very latest stare, crafted from fabrics of quiet luxury, trimmed with exquisite detail. She looked longingly at the smart gloves, tossed carelessly to one side, the thickness of the grosgrain bonnet ribbons, the pretty clasps on the reticules. How could she even learn to treat such luxury with nonchalance, let alone seduce men to her side while she did it?

‘What name will you be using?’ Lady Dereham asked, cutting across her increasingly alarming thoughts.

‘Name?’ On top of everything else she had to lose her identity as well, it seemed. Her mind went blank.

‘Francesca Carleton,’ Gareth said. Three women looked at him in enquiry. He shrugged. ‘It just came to me.’

‘Well…’ Lady Sebastian got to her feet, gathering up her possessions ‘…in that case it is time for Mrs Carleton to come with us.’ She paused on the threshold, waiting while Gareth came round the table to open the door for her. ‘Be prepared for a surprise, Gareth.’ As she looked at Jessica her eyes twinkled in a smile of pure naughtiness. ‘We are going to have so much fun.’