Читать книгу A Most Unconventional Courtship - Louise Allen - Страница 7

Lord Blakeney was sitting up, only now the pillows were at the other end of the couch from the way she had left him. Now he faced the body of the room. ‘Have you been out of bed?’ Alessa asked sharply, good intentions forgotten, her eyes skimming round the room to see what else he had been up to.

‘Of course,’ he drawled, watching her face. ‘I read your diary, I found your money hidden behind the loose brick in the hearth and I left dirty fingerprints all over the pretty bits of nonsense in the soaking pails.’

Ignoring the first part of his sarcastic retort—she kept no diary and her savings were woven into strings of garlic hanging from the ceiling beams—Alessa latched on to the final remark. ‘And what were you doing with the laundry?’ she demanded.

‘Looking for my stockings.’

‘You can have them when they are clean and not before,’ she said briskly, in much the same tone as she would use to Demetri when he tried to wheedle something from her. ‘And how did you get as far as that across the room?’

‘I hopped.’

It must have hurt. Alessa felt a grudging flicker of admiration at his single-mindedness. ‘Is there anything you need?’ She set down her marketing basket and remembered she should be making her peace with him, not lecturing. ‘I am sorry if I was…short this morning, my lord. I was angry that you had led such men to my doorstep.’

‘I am sorry too. You were quite correct to scold me for it. I should have known better, as you said. My only excuse is tiredness, the pleasure of being on land again after several days at sea and, ridiculous as it probably seems, the warmth of the evening.’

‘Warmth, my lord?’ Alessa untied her flat straw hat and hung it behind the door before reaching for her apron.

‘I wish you would call me Chance.’ Dark brown eyes watched her, a smile lurking behind apparent seriousness.

You, my lord, are a charmer and you know it. I should refuse. ‘Very well, Chance.’ She reached behind her to tie the apron strings and saw his glance flick to her breasts as the movement strained them against her embroidered lawn shirt. The glance was momentary and not accompanied by the knowing leer that she had come to expect from so many of the Englishmen who had passed through the town in the wake of the French retreat. She poured a little of the heavily resinated red wine from the north of the island into two beakers, watered both generously, then passed him one. ‘You were explaining how the warm evening made you careless?’

He took the beaker with a murmur of thanks and sipped. To her secret amusement his eyebrows shot up as he tasted it, but he made no comment. His second sip was far more circumspect. ‘I was behaving like a tourist,’he admitted. ‘A picturesque scene, friendly, smiling faces, intriguing little streets, a balmy evening made for strolling, the stars like diamonds on black velvet. Who could have expected danger?’

Alessa raised a quizzical eyebrow and was rewarded by a self-mocking grin.

‘Any idiot, of course, as you are obviously too polite to remind me. If it had been Marseilles or Naples, I would have been on my guard. As it was, I took a risk and paid for it, but not as much as I deserved, thanks to you.’

Alessa hefted the cauldron on to the fire and poured in water. Then she began to lift the individual items from the soaking pails, checking each for marks that would require further treatment. ‘Is your nickname because you take risks? Or gamble, perhaps?’

‘Chance?’ He smiled. ‘No, just a convenient shortening from when I was a child. I am really quite painfully respectable and sensible.’

Alessa felt her eyebrows rising again and hastily straightened her face. He was too good to be true: handsome, nice to children and respectable to boot.

‘I can see you do not believe me.’

‘If that is so, you most certainly do not fit into the mould of most of the English gentlemen of my experience.’ Alessa reached down a bottle of liquefied soap and measured some out into the cauldron. He was very easy to talk to. ‘No gambling?’

‘Well, merely to be sociable.’ That sounded almost convincing.

‘No carousing late into the night?’

‘I do not carouse, merely enjoy fine wines and spirits in moderation.’ That was positively sanctimonious, if difficult to believe.

‘No ladies of the night, glamorous mistresses, orgies?’ Aha, that had produced a faint flush of colour on Chance’s admirably sculpted cheekbones.

‘Absolutely no orgies.’

Alessa shot him a slanting look, but did not comment. After all, one did not expect a man to be a saint—or one would be severely disappointed for most, if not all, of the time, in her opinion. A gentleman who did not squander all his money at play, drink himself into a stupor and pursue the female servants with lecherous intent was, as Chance said, positively respectable.

Was he also very conventional? He was standing up surprisingly well to her frank interrogation. What would he make of her story, if she were rash enough to tell him? She took a paring knife and began to flake off slivers from a block of greenish-grey olive oil soap; the last bottle she had prepared was almost empty.

‘Is there nothing useful I can do? I cannot feel comfortable lying here while you are working so hard.’

Alessa shook her head, then realised that he might as well carry on with the soap so that she could be dealing with the more soiled items while the water heated. ‘Thank you. Perhaps you can do this.’ She perched on the edge of the couch and handed Chance a bowl, the knife and the soap. ‘I need fine slivers so it will dissolve well in water, then I bottle it up concentrated and use it with the washing. It is better with the fine fabrics than scrubbing the soap directly into them.’ She realised she was explaining, as though to the children. ‘I am sorry, you could not possibly want to know all that. I get into the habit of teaching.’

He took the knife and began to whittle at the block. ‘Like this?’

‘Perfect.’ She smiled stiffly at him, suddenly self-conscious at their close proximity. She could feel the firm length of his thigh against her hip and made rather a business of standing up and twitching the cover straight. It did not help that she knew precisely what lay under that blanket.

He was so approachable that it was almost like chatting with Fred Court, or Spiro the baker, and she had fallen into the Greek habit of openly expressed curiosity about strangers. Her neighbours would think nothing of a close interrogation about family, occupation, views, interests and wealth, but she must not allow herself to fall into the trap of undue familiarity with someone from the Lord High Commissioner’s circles.

As she massaged soap directly into the dirty marks on Chance’s stockings, Alessa reflected that she had allowed herself to swing from irritable suspicion to liking, and, if she was honest, attraction, in the space of barely twelve hours. And all because of a handsome profile, a pair of thoughtful brown eyes and an open manner. Careful, she admonished herself, tossing the stockings into the cauldron, this man is serious temptation.

It did not matter in the least that a man in his position was obviously not going to be interested in a laundress for anything other than dalliance. Her instincts told her he would not take advantage of her in that way; she was quite safe from Lord Blakeney. But was she safe from herself? She needed to guard her heart as carefully as she hoarded her money, if she were to remain strong and single-minded for herself and the children.

They worked in companionable silence. As the bowl of shavings grew fuller and the items of clothing followed each other into the hot water, Alessa pushed the damp hair back from her forehead and forgot to worry about her involuntary guest.

The church clock striking eleven brought her back to herself. She straightened up and looked across at Chance. There was a full bowl of soap shavings on the floor beside him and he was intently whittling the remains of the soap into some kind of animal. He looked up, caught her eye and grinned. ‘Pathetic, is it not?’

Alessa scrutinised the stunted creature, called on all her tact learned from praising juvenile attempts at art, and said encouragingly, ‘It is a very nice pig.’ Probably it should have one more leg, but one should not be over-critical.

‘Thank you. Honesty, however, leads me to confess it is supposed to be a horse.’

‘Oh, dear!’ His rueful laughter was infectious and Alessa was still chuckling as she pulled out the screen from the wall and arranged it around the couch. ‘I am expecting…clients. Your presence might embarrass them. Would you mind…?’

‘Pretending I am not here? No, not at all.’

Alessa smiled her gratitude and hurried to set the bedroom to rights. It had only just occurred to her that, as the couch which she normally used was occupied, she would have to retreat to the rather more intimate setting of the bedroom. All her visitors would be known to her, but even so, it felt like an intrusion, and she wanted to make certain no personal items were visible.

Chance lay back against the pillows, tried to get comfortable and contemplated taking a nap. That felt like a good idea—unless he snored, which would most certainly draw attention to his presence. Presumably Alessa was expecting ladies with intimate items of apparel for laundering, or perhaps she did dressmaking alterations. A strange man would most definitely not be welcome in the midst of that feminine activity.

No one had ever complained about him snoring; perhaps he could risk dropping off. The knock at the door cut across that train of thought and he listened to Alessa’s hurrying feet as she went to open it.

‘Kalíméra, Alessa.’

‘Kalíméra, Spiro. Ti kánis?’

Chance sat up abruptly. A man? He made himself lie back, wondering at his own reaction; presumably there were men without wives or servants who needed laundry and mending services. Alessa was speaking in rapid, colloquial Greek that he could not follow beyond the initial greeting, but something about the tone, intimate and concerned, disturbed him. And they were going towards the bedroom. The door opened, shut, and the sound of their voices became a murmur.

Chance sat up again, now unashamedly listening. The conversation had stopped and all he could hear from the bedroom was a sort of rhythmic thumping. Visions of bed heads knocking against walls, and what might cause that, came to mind only too vividly. She is…no! His instinctive revulsion startled him. What was the matter with him? She had every right to earn her living as she pleased. Who was he to judge? And yet he was. Which made him a hypocrite.

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps this Spiro had come to mend a broken bed frame. And perhaps I’m the Duke of York, Chance thought grimly, waiting for the thumping to stop, which it did after a few minutes. The murmur of voices reached him again and after an interval the bedroom door opened.

By twisting painfully Chance could catch a glimpse of the room through the join in the screen. Spiro was a stocky middle-aged man, just now rather flushed in the face. No tool bag. Whatever he had been doing in there, he had not been mending the furniture.

Alessa was a trifle pink in the face as well. He watched grimly through his spy hole as she smoothed back her hair. There was another knock at the door. This time it was a younger man, favouring his left leg with a slight limp. Again the greeting, the rapid flow of conversation, the firm click of the bedroom door latch.

This time there was silence from the room. Chance realised he was straining to hear and shook his head sharply in self-condemnation. He was furious with himself for listening, furious with Alessa for putting him in this position—furious that she had shattered his illusion of the hard-working, virtuous young widow.

A tap on the door was followed by it opening. Chance missed being able to see who had entered beyond a glimpse of a man’s coat, but the creak of a chair seat told him that the new visitor was waiting.

How many more, for heaven’s sake? The sound of a man’s voice raised in a gasping cry penetrated from the bedroom. Chance lay down, put a pillow over his head and waited grimly for it all to be over.

He was roused from his uncomfortable doze by the sound of the screen being pulled back. Alessa was regarding him, hands on hips, an expression of amusement on her face. ‘Whatever are you doing?’

‘Attempting not to eavesdrop.’ Chance hauled himself up into a sitting position.

‘Eavesdrop?’ Now she looked thoroughly confused. Just how brazen was this woman?

‘Yes, on your business transactions.’

They stared at each other for a long moment, then Alessa asked slowly, ‘Just what, exactly, do you think I was doing in there?’

Chance said nothing, but she could read the message in those expressive brown eyes as though he had written her a placard. He thought she was prostituting herself and he was struggling to find a way to avoid answering her direct challenge.

Alessa felt sick. Then angry, both with herself and with him. She should have realised how it would look and said something first. But why should I have to explain myself in my own home? I did not invite him here.

‘You think I was having sex with them? For money?’

Silence. Her frank speaking must have shocked him even more. The gentry did not like to call things by their true, ugly, names. Then something seemed to change in the atmosphere of the room.

‘No. I do not think that. I do not know why I do not, in the face of what I have just seen and heard. I would be a hypocrite to condemn you for it in any case. But I do not believe it, and I am glad.’ Chance’s mouth twisted. ‘There’s a jumble of muddled thinking for you.’

‘Indeed.’ She stared at him, fighting her way through her own muddle of emotions. What did she feel? Embarrassment, anger, disappointment that he should have thought such a thing of her, pleasure that he rejected the evidence, complete confusion over why his opinion should matter. ‘Why?’ she demanded, before she could stop herself. ‘Why do you not believe it?’

That direct question had taken him aback. What were the women of his acquaintance like, that he was so surprised by direct questions, a willingness to argue? ‘Because I think I know you, even after so short a time. Because I do not think you would use your own children’s bedroom. Because, if it were so, I would be jealous.’

The last words were soft, as though he was speaking only to himself. Her eyes, which had been watching his hands, powerful and elegant on the homespun blanket, flew to his face. He had taken himself by surprise as much as he had her.

‘Jealous—?’

The knock on the door cut off what would have been an impossible question. Alessa tore her eyes from Chance’s and went to open it. ‘Mr Williams! Please come in. I had not expected you until this afternoon, but Lord Blakeney will be delighted to see you so early, I am sure.’

The Lord High Commissioner’s steward stepped into the room with the polite half-bow he always favoured Alessa with. It amused her, and puzzled her too, that he should treat one of the Commission tradespeople with such courtesy, but he was unfailingly punctilious where she was concerned. She managed an answering smile and bobbed a curtsy.

‘Sir Thomas was most concerned when he received the message, Kyria Alessa. Although, with your skills, we knew his lordship could not be in better hands.’ Alessa could almost feel the waves of curiosity emanating from the couch as the steward turned towards it. ‘How do you find yourself, my lord? We are all appalled that you should have encountered such violence and criminality in a town under English governance.’

‘I am justly punished for my recklessness in wandering around alone at night in an unknown town, Mr Williams, but I will recover soon enough, thanks to Kyria Alessa.’ His smile was warm, even though she was conscious of a certain constraint in it. The things that had passed between them were too recent and too strangely intimate to leave either of them comfortable.

The two stalwart footmen who had followed Mr Williams were waiting just inside the door. ‘Have you brought a change of linen for his lordship?’

Roberts, the one she knew best, hefted a portmanteau. ‘All in here, Kyria, just like young Demetri said.’

‘Perhaps you can assist his lordship to dress, in that case.’ Alessa indicated the screen and drew the steward to the other end of the room, leaving Chance to the mercy of his helpers. She caught Mr Williams’s eye with a smile as a grunt of pain and a hasty apology from one of the men marked his lordship’s progress with his clothes. ‘He is not seriously hurt,’ she assured the steward. ‘But I imagine both his hip and ankle are extremely painful and it would be best if you can see that he rests for several days. He will be guided by Sir Thomas’s own doctor, of course.’

‘Doctor Pyke will not venture to contradict your diagnosis in such matters.’ Mr Williams took out his pocket book and handed Alessa a list. ‘He asked if you had any of these salves in stock. If not, he would like to order them.’

Alessa opened the big press and began to lift pots down. ‘All except the lemon balm ointment, which I am potting up today, and the sage wash. I will have some of that ready by the end of the week—it is still infusing. Here, it will all go in this rush bag with his lordship’s clothes. His linen is still in the wash; I will bring it with the rest of the Residency laundry.’

Further muffled curses heralded Chance’s emergence from behind the screen. He was hopping on one foot, the other unshod, his hand gripping Robert’s shoulder. ‘We can carry you, my lord,’ the footman was protesting. ‘Make a seat with our hands. You’ll not manage the stairs otherwise.’

‘I am not drunk and I am not dead,’ Chance retorted grimly. ‘I can manage a flight of stairs.’ The look he shot Alessa was defiant, but she refused to gratify him with feminine flutterings and protestations that he take care, despite the fact that his lips were set in a thin line and he had gone white under his tan. He was a grown man, and he could take the consequences of being too proud to be carried in front of a woman.

‘Kyria, I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for me. I apologise that you have been put to such inconvenience by my actions, and, if in my…confusion, I blundered.’

Do not go, not until you explain what you meant…The words were so clear in her mind that for one awful moment Alessa thought she had spoken them out loud. ‘There is nothing to apologise for, my lord,’ she said calmly. ‘Xenia, hospitality to strangers, is important to us. You may best repay it by taking care of yourself. And, Roberts…’ the footman turned ‘…be careful with that arm.’

‘I will, Kyria.’ The man grinned. ‘But it’s all healed up now.’

Alessa let them all out on to the landing, but went straight back inside, leaving the door a little ajar, and waited, braced for a crash. None came, but the muttered curses rising up the stairwell added a little to her vocabulary. With a smile she closed the door and went to look out of the window down into the courtyard below. Chance was resting, one hip hitched on the edge of the fountain, apparently engaged in questioning Roberts. The footman, who was wearing a sleeveless waistcoat, unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and began to roll up the sleeve, just as Spiro wandered out of the bakery door to see what was going on. Alessa’s eyebrows rose—this was going to be interesting.

‘Kyria Alessa’s a wonder with salves,’ Roberts explained in answer to Chance’s enquiry as they had hopped slowly down the stairs. He bared a forearm for inspection. In the bright sunlight the tanned skin was puckered with a pink scar. ‘The cook splashed me with boiling water three weeks ago—and look how she’s got it to heal. Hey, Spiro, you see Kyria Alessa for your back, don’t you?’

‘Ne.’ The stocky man nodded politely to Chance, subjecting him to the intense stare he was beginning to expect from the local people. He had seen him somewhere before. ‘She fixes it good now.’ The man rolled a shoulder experimentally, sending flour off his coat like snow. ‘She is a tough one, Alessa. She bangs my back hard where it is all knotted and she rubs in the ointment that stings, and she tells me not to be a baby when I shout. It makes it much better.’Of course—this was Spiro of the thumping bed head.

Chance regarded his clasped hands thoughtfully. He had managed to put his foot in it comprehensively. Both feet, in fact. Alessa had probably saved his life, she had dressed his wounds with a skill that ought to have told him something, if only he’d stopped to think beyond embarrassment at the knowledge that she had stripped him to do it—and what had he done? Leapt to the worst possible conclusion about her.

And why did you do that, you bloody fool? he asked himself savagely as the footman and the baker topped each other’s stories of how wonderful the Kyria was. Because you want her, that’s why. The first thing that enters your head when you think of her is sex.

Mr Williams strode back into the courtyard. ‘The carriage has managed to get through to the next street. Just a few more yards, my lord, if you are rested.’

‘Of course, thank you.’ Chance got upright, his hand on Roberts’ shoulder, and looked up. Far above them Alessa was leaning out of the window, framed with scarlet flowers in pots. She was watching them, her weight on her crossed arms. He thought she was smiling. Chance lifted a hand in salute and wondered if he was going to receive a plant pot in return. Instead she lifted a hand in response and he thought he glimpsed a flash of white teeth.

A forgiving woman then, or perhaps she was just enjoying the sight of his undignified exit from the courtyard and out of her life.