Читать книгу The Outrageous Belle Marchmain - Lucy Ashford, Lucy Ashford - Страница 10

Adam Davenant was astounded and annoyed. As if Jarvis wasn’t enough—the damned man caused trouble wherever he went—she was here.

A footman had warned Adam that a rather odd lady had come to call and within moments of first seeing her in the hall it had all fallen into place. She was the woman who’d emerged from that dreadful old carriage.

And who’d stirred memories of that sunlit March afternoon in Somerset.

Stirred more than memories, in fact. She was clad outrageously in a clinging outfit of turquoise and pink with a loud bonnet trailing ribbons everywhere. Her eyes were emerald, her raven-black curls set off the perfect creaminess of her skin, her lips were full and rosy.

And he steadily reminded himself that just a few weeks ago she’d heaped such insults on the name of Adam Davenant that they were etched like acid on his memory. Even more ominously—she knew Jarvis.

‘You’re very quiet, Mrs Marchmain,’ he drawled. ‘Surely you aren’t trying to conjure up more insults to hurl at me? Or have you exhausted yourself being rude to Jarvis?’

Belle swallowed on the dryness in her throat and lifted her chin. ‘He was treating that young serving maid abominably. You will perhaps remark, Mr Davenant, that I had no right to interfere, but I could not stand by!’

He was watching her with something unreadable in his eyes. ‘You do tend to say what you think, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You have a neat way with put-downs. You told me, for instance, that I wasn’t born to wealth and it showed.’

Oh, Lord, thought Belle rather faintly. He hadn’t forgotten or forgiven a single word. Something shook inside her, seeing him like this, no longer wearing the garb of a rough quarry worker, but dressed as the rich, powerful man he was, here in his mansion. And how well he fitted the part. To say he was handsome wasn’t enough. His strong features and formidable stature implied power and dominance. Edward had described him as a boor. No one else in their right mind would.

But she was damned if she would grovel. ‘How was I supposed to know who you were? How could I have guessed, when you were—you were—’

‘Dressed like a labourer?’ he cut in. ‘That was because I’d been inspecting my quarry. I judge people by their words and actions, Mrs Marchmain, not their attire; a lesson you might try learning. Now it’s my turn for questions, the most obvious being—why exactly are you here?’ His voice licked somehow at her senses, soft and dangerous. Dear God, her errand was doomed before it had even begun.

But she had to try. ‘I have business with you, Mr Davenant, which concerns my brother. I wrote to you, but you did not deign to reply!’

‘I leave begging letters to my secretary, Lowell.’

Begging letters. ‘How dare—?’

‘Mrs Marchmain,’ he interrupted, ‘I’m an extremely busy man. And your brother—Hathersleigh—has taken up too much of my time already.’

Heat surged through her veins. ‘You could at least give this matter your attention!’

‘Why? Because you’re members of the once-illustrious Hathersleigh family?’

She bit her lip. ‘We are not without influence still.’

He sighed heavily. ‘Please don’t remind me that you have a great-uncle who is a duke, as your brother once did.’ She visibly flinched. ‘I really don’t care,’ he went on, ‘if you can trace your ancestry all the way back to William the Conqueror. Why should I waste my time on you, when your family is reduced to sheep-stealing?’

Oh, Lord.

She remembered how at Sawle Down the dust had clung to this man’s breeches and boots and perspiration had gleamed on his hard cheekbones. Today, he could have claimed to be a duke himself and no one would have doubted it. His clothes were exceedingly plain, yes, but that coat of his had clearly been cut by a master to fit those broad shoulders so perfectly. Sleek buckskins clung to his powerfully muscular thighs and his polished top boots were exquisite. His thick dark hair was cropped short, his pristine neckcloth was quite perfect.

He made no effort to clamour for attention. He didn’t need to. And as his slate-grey eyes rested on hers, she felt a sharp jolt of awareness implode quietly yet devastatingly inside her. Awareness of what, precisely? Of his sheer maleness, that was what. It was impossible to look at him without thinking: here was a man of power, with a man’s desires, and all that implied.

And he was her family’s enemy. Her enemy.

She said, her head lifted high, but her pulse rate in tumult, ‘I hope you will accept, Mr Davenant, that I spoke in the heat of the moment that afternoon on Sawle Down.’

‘It gave you a wonderful opportunity to reveal your true thoughts, though, didn’t it?’ he observed caustically. ‘So please don’t lower yourself in my estimation by trying to take back what you said.’

The smouldering look she gave him said, Don’t worry. I won’t.

Inside Adam was rigid with tension. The witch. The insolent little green-eyed witch.

What Jarvis had said to him just before he left was still ringing in his ears.

I don’t know why that woman’s visiting you, Davenant, but you’d be a fool to believe a word she says. She’s a greedy little widow angling for money—some time ago I made the mistake of not offering her enough.

She’d come here to plead with Adam for mercy for her brother, no doubt. And she must realise her mission was already doomed—because Adam knew exactly what she thought of him.

‘I’m in the middle of a meeting,’ he told her curtly. ‘I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.’ He was leading the way along a corridor. ‘You can wait here, in my library.’ One big hand pushed open a panelled door.

She swung round on him, head held high. ‘You expect me to wait? Again?’

‘You are uninvited,’ he pointed out. ‘Be glad that I see you at all, Mrs Marchmain.’ He turned to go, closing the library door on her. She could cool down in there. And so, damn it, could he.

Adam was a highly physical man and his lifestyle usually accommodated a mistress, kept in enviable style in return for companionship in bed and out of it. He’d recently ended just such an arrangement with an elegant widow, Lady Farnsworth—mainly because she was starting to hint a little too often about marriage.

Marriage was one big mistake as far as Adam was concerned. But it was also an error on his part, he now decided grimly, to be without a mistress. It made him think hungry thoughts about a raven-haired termagant dressed in turquoise and pink who quite simply detested him.

Belle just stood there when he’d gone, sunk before she’d even begun. I really don’t care if you can trace your ancestry all the way back to William the Conqueror, he’d said. Why should I waste my time on you, when your family is reduced to sheep-stealing?

She cringed anew. The ducal connection came through their mother, who’d died shortly after giving birth to Edward when Belle was only two. It was Belle’s father who used to point out to his children that their mother’s uncle was the Duke of Sutherland, but as far as Belle knew the Duke wasn’t even aware of their existence. Either that or he’d heard of their dwindling fortunes and kept well away.

Belle’s father had died when Belle was just thirteen, and that was when the estate had to be put in the care of stern Uncle Philip and his wife. Edward, at twenty-one, had come into his inheritance with considerable joy, hence the youthful gambling spree. But Belle had already grasped the reality—that her family was in actuality impoverished.

Since Belle’s widowhood her dressmaking business had given her independence; but it did not give her the deference or protection she might once have expected in society. She’d met Lord Jarvis two years ago, when he’d expressed an interest in investing in her shop and invited her to his big London house for a business meeting with his lawyer.

The lawyer never arrived. Lord Jarvis had locked the door to his study and had proceeded to make her an offer which had left her breathless and shaking.

‘Let’s really get down to business, shall we?’ he’d smirked, sidling closer. ‘How do you fancy a change of profession?’

He was, in effect, bluntly suggesting that she be his mistress. He’d silkily gone on to tell her that if he didn’t appeal to her tastes, he had a choice of stalwart grooms from whom she could have her pick. ‘As a young widow you must be quite desperate for male companionship. I’ll enjoy watching.’ He’d smiled. ‘I’ll pay handsomely, of course. One hundred pounds a month, Mrs Marchmain—I promise you won’t be bored.’

She’d struck him hard on the cheek. His smile had vanished at the same time as the red mark appeared on his pale skin.

‘So you want more money, do you?’ he’d whispered. ‘A greedy little slut, are you, Mrs Marchmain?’

‘Let me out,’ she’d breathed. She’d run to the door and was struggling frantically to open it. ‘Damn you, let me out of here!’

He’d unlocked the door with an ugly look on his smooth features. ‘Don’t even think of telling anyone about what’s passed between us today,’ he’d rasped. ‘Or I’ll have you damned well ruined.’

Now she walked round this opulent book-lined room in utter agony of spirit. With a huge effort she tried to steady her racing pulse. She had dealt with Jarvis and she would deal with Davenant, though how, God only knew.

It was scarcely four, but outside the sky was growing overcast. On a nearby table some papers were scattered and, if only to distract herself from her dismaying thoughts, she went across to look. There were maps of Somerset, along with some geological sketches—to do with quarries, she guessed. Towards the back of the table was a tray of mineral samples together with a brass model of some kind of engine about a foot high, beautifully crafted.

Even though Adam Davenant’s family fortune had been made in mining and quarrying, it was unusual for anyone to display such an obvious interest in the practicalities of money-grubbing. ‘Showing his base blood,’ Edward and his friends would sneer.

Yet in spite of herself Belle’s attention was caught. She remembered how Davenant had defended the quarries to her that day on Sawle Down—they provide work and wages for many men and food for their families.

She remembered her inner acknowledgement that he was right. That sudden, instinctive feeling that he was a man of integrity …

A terrible mistake. An illusion.

She turned the model of the engine by its base, finding that the cold precision of it somehow soothed her roiling mind. A steam engine, she guessed; Uncle Philip Marchmain used to tell them both that steam was the future, and that the end of the world of the horse was in sight.

Well, the end of her world was in sight if she didn’t find some way of extricating herself from this appalling mess.

She put the model down and sank into a chair. What would Davenant say—what would he do—if he knew that almost every night since that fateful encounter she’d been haunted by dreams of him?

When she’d fallen from her horse that afternoon and opened her eyes to see him towering above her—dust-covered, muscular, roughly clad—she’d felt something tight impeding her breathing. He’d offered to help her to her feet and she’d rejected him, so rudely.

But she’d never forgotten the strength of his hands on her waist as he’d lifted her on to her horse. Never forgotten the sense of sheer male power that emanated from his body, the gleam of the sun on his hard cheekbones; the glimpse of his naked chest revealed by that open-necked shirt …

Her pulse thudded at the memory. She was turning the ring on her finger in nervous agitation when suddenly the door opened. Adam Davenant—Lord Jarvis’s friend and her enemy—was here again.

She jumped up from the chair as if it burned her. He pushed the door shut, folded his arms and studied her. Belle in turn acknowledged the spectacular lines of his tall, broad-shouldered figure with bitter eyes. Handsome. So handsome.

And trying so very hard to be a gentleman, she’d heard people say. But she didn’t think anyone would dare to say that to his face. Whatever his origins, this man was formidable. And most women would simply—melt.

‘Ah, Mrs Marchmain,’ he said. ‘Still here, I see.’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but, yes, I am.’

He looked at his watch. ‘I can spare you ten minutes,’ he said.

Outside the afternoon sun had vanished behind dark clouds. She thought she heard the ominous rumble of thunder in the distance—which was apt, since Thor the thunder god, in the person of Mr Adam Davenant, had her in his lair. Oh, Lord …

Belle took a deep breath and began. She explained how Edward had been heir to a much-diminished estate but was working so hard to hold his inheritance together. ‘And then there were the new taxes on landowners,’ she went on, ‘and the weather was truly dreadful …’

She saw Davenant’s dark eyebrows rise in faint contempt. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So these iniquitous taxes and the unkind weather landed solely on your brother’s portion of Somerset, did they?’

She coloured hotly. ‘I see it pleases you to mock me, Mr Davenant. But I haven’t finished yet! A year ago, as you well know, Edward sold some of his land to you because of pressing debts. And you paid him a truly pitiful amount for that land …’

Something happened then. The previously impassive features of his chiselled face had become hard as granite.

‘I paid him two thousand guineas,’ said Davenant.

Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Two thousand?’

‘Yes.’ His narrowed eyes never left her face. ‘You see, I guessed that the old quarry there might benefit from reinvestment. I told him this and also offered him some shares. He turned down my offer and told me I was wrong. Nevertheless I paid him the two thousand—far more than he’d have got from anyone else.’

‘Because you knew you could make that amount many times over from the stone!’

‘Have you any idea,’ he countered grimly, ‘how much it costs to invest in equipment and labour for a re-opened quarry? It will be years before I start to see a profit; certainly no one else would have paid your brother so much. But fool that I was, I felt sorry for the young idiot.’

Outside thunder rumbled again. Davenant went to light the lamp on the table where the model engine was; his movements were lithe, almost graceful for such a powerfully built man …

Stop it. Stop it, you fool.

Two thousand guineas. Belle sank into the nearest chair. Now Davenant was saying with lethal politeness, ‘I take it there’s some discrepancy over figures. Am I right?’

Belle thrust aside a long bonnet ribbon that trailed down her cheek. ‘I don’t know—I might have misunderstood—’

‘I doubt it,’ he cut in crisply. ‘Try asking your brother again. On this occasion you might find that he remembers the truth.’ His expression was glacial. ‘You could ask him, at the same time, why he stole my livestock.’

Belle was truly floundering now. ‘It must appear to you as theft, I know. But that was all a mistake.’

‘I suppose he told you that my sheep had strayed on to his lands,’ he drawled icily. ‘Told you that it was my fault, for not maintaining my fences.’

The hot blush rose to Belle’s cheeks. That was exactly what Edward had said.

‘I maintain my fences very carefully, Mrs Marchmain,’ went on Davenant. ‘In fact, every detail of my life is conducted with the utmost rigour. Now, I’m a busy man …’ he glanced again at his watch ‘… it’s gone four, and I’m sincerely hoping you’ve come here with some concise suggestions as to how your younger brother intends to pay back the not inconsiderable sum he owes me for selling off my sheep. Which is a criminal act, incidentally.’

Adam Davenant usually kept his emotions on a tight rein, but by now he was deeply angry. Somehow this woman had got under his guard and he shouldn’t have let her. Turquoise and pink, for God’s sake—he had to blink every time he looked at her! He should have abided by his first instinct and ordered her off his premises.

‘Mr Davenant,’ she was saying, that pointed chin still tilted defiantly, ‘you must realise that it has been extremely difficult for my brother to see our heritage so diminished.’

She wasn’t giving up yet, registered Adam. ‘Ah,’ he answered. ‘The precious notion of blue blood and entitlement. Spare me, Mrs Marchmain. The Hathersleigh estate has been lurching towards ruin for generations, thanks to a fatal mixture of greed, complacency and sheer carelessness. Have you observed the way in which your brother conducts his business? Have you seen the great piles of unsorted paperwork that litter his so-called study?’

‘He is busy,’ Belle faltered. ‘His wife is not well …’

‘And so he sends his older sister to make his excuses for him. I repeat, I bought that land at an excessive price from your brother—not out of generosity, nor out of greed, but because I simply had no desire to have a bankrupt neighbour in Somerset. It’s not good for appearances.’

Belle gazed at him whitely. This man was surely as cold and hard as the rock his men hewed from the ground. She rose to her feet. ‘Exactly how much does my brother owe you for the sheep?’

‘I don’t see how you can hope to pay me off. You must have even less money to spare than he does.’

‘I run a successful dressmaking business!’

‘Not successful enough.’

She sat down again. Adam watched the turquoise ribbons, ridiculously flippant, fluttering from her straw bonnet and reflected that her brother was a goddamned weakling. Adam had rashly hoped to help young Hathersleigh by buying that land, but the fellow was a fool, and a liar, too—he’d not even equipped his rather pluckier older sister with the truth.

And the fact that she was still assuming her goddamned superiority, and laboured under the misapprehension that he, Adam, was somehow under obligation to show leniency, sent bitterness surging through Adam’s blood.

He knew that people like her despised and feared men of Adam’s mould, who were a symbol of things to come, of old values passing. She thoroughly deserved humiliation at his hands. Yet even while she glared up at him as if he was the devil incarnate, he felt something simmer, damn it, that was very like lust in his traitorous loins. Felt the longing to take her very firmly in his arms and plunder that sweet, rose-pink mouth with his lips and tongue …

Jarvis had clearly tried to make her his at some point in the past. Jarvis had failed.

Adam could see her hands trembling now. Yet still she faced him with that damned defiance, still she came up with fresh excuses for her sibling.

‘My brother does not deserve prison, Mr Dave na nt.’

‘Really?’

‘Indeed. You see, he has a wife who is expecting their first baby very soon—’

‘He’ll have that in common with many of his fellow-prisoners in Newgate gaol, then.’

She tightened her fists. Then: ‘You are despicable,’ she said quietly. Her voice was steady, yet he noted how her small, high breasts heaved with distress beneath that tightly buttoned little pink jacket. ‘Despicable,’ she repeated. ‘Both in your behaviour to me now, and your deliberately not telling me who you were that afternoon on Sawle Down. Your deception was truly dishonourable.’

Dishonourable? Damn it! She’s a greedy little widow, angling for money. Adam went in with all guns blazing.

‘Your kind talk always of honour and status,’ he retorted harshly. ‘Would you say your brother was showing honour, in sending his sister to me to plead his cause? There are names for that kind of behaviour.’

She recoiled as if he’d struck her. ‘It was my decision to come here! If you think that Edward intended—’

‘I think,’ he cut in, ‘that your cowardly brother told you about his plight in the hope that your feminine charms would soften my steely peasant heart. If that’s an example of blue-blooded behaviour, you can keep it. In my world, we call it pimping.’

‘Oh! I think—my brother did not mean—’ She was stammering now, and backing away; somehow her dangling sleeve caught the little steam model and it went crashing to the floor.

She let out a cry of dismay and bent to start picking the pieces up.

‘Leave it,’ he commanded harshly. ‘A footman will see to it.’

‘No!’ She was still flurrying around the floor. ‘No, I will pick it all up and then I am going, you hateful, hateful man! Edward was right to say you are a boor and a tyrant. And—and I will see Edward and I in gaol together before I grovel any more to you!’

With that she bobbed down again, to pick up more pieces of the ill-fated model. As she did so she was presenting that very pert, very rounded derrière to Adam’s narrowed eyes. Hell. He did try to look away. He despised himself for registering even the slightest flicker of interest. But a picture of her unclad appeared rather tantalisingly in his mind, and his body responded accordingly.

Adam had decided long ago that marriage was not for him. He had neither the time nor the inclination to play the games of courtship, flattery and lies that a permanent commitment would involve. God knew he was offered enough suitable brides; they were pushed before him at every opportunity, thanks to his wealth.

But the example of his parents’ marriage had put him off for good. Miner Tom’s only son, Charles, had been so rich he was able to choose a bride from the aristocracy, but his well-born wife—pushed into the marriage by her parents—had thoroughly despised her low-born husband and after producing two male heirs she’d embarked on a string of affairs.

Adam had spent a good deal of his childhood trying to protect his young brother, Freddy, from their mother’s promiscuity and their weak father’s rages. Both parents had died years ago, and Adam felt not the slightest desire to emulate their unhappiness; hence his custom of keeping suitable mistresses to satisfy his own male desires.

He treated them generously, but always Adam made the terms quite clear: ‘This ends when I say it ends. Afterwards, if we happen across each other in society, we will acknowledge each other civilly. No more and no less.’

Most of his former mistresses knew better than to cause him any trouble; Lady Farnsworth, his latest, had been an exception. Adam had quickly wearied of the elegant widow’s clinging possessiveness and her withering contempt for any suspected rivals.

The trouble was, he hadn’t yet chosen himself another woman for his bed. Usually they were either widows or amicably separated from their husbands and the choice was plentiful. But no one had tempted him to make an offer, since …

Since he collided with this little minx, who’d insulted his name to high heaven one March afternoon on Sawle Down.

The realisation struck him like a thunderbolt. No. He couldn’t have held back from singling out a new chère amie because he was thinking of Belle Marchmain. It was damned impossible! But …

She’d come here to ask him a very big favour, but her plans—so far—had come crashing round her pretty ears. Now he looked at her again as she furiously picked up the last bits of his model from the floor.

Her straw bonnet had fallen off and her glossy raven curls were tumbling around the slender column of her neck. ‘There! That’s all of it!’ she breathed, putting two more pieces defiantly on the table. Her face had become a little flushed. ‘Whatever you call it,’ she added rather darkly, her hands on her hips.

Mrs Belle Marchmain looked delectable. Her pink silk jacket had fallen apart, and the brightly patterned gown that fitted so snugly to her bosom and tiny waist almost made him smile.

What would she be like in bed? If she was, as Jarvis suggested, well practised in the erotic arts and open to offers, it might be interesting to find out …

‘And—and you can stop looking at me like that!’

Her rebuke shocked him out of his reverie and Adam stopped smiling. ‘You were asking about the model you almost destroyed,’ he said. ‘It’s a miniature of a Newcomen steam engine. And that’s not quite it, Mrs Marchmain. You came to me with a problem. And I think I might have the solution.’ He’d propped his lean hips against the sideboard and watched her with cool, assessing eyes.

Belle suddenly felt that the room was too small. Either that or this formidable man was too close. Something tight was squeezing her lungs. ‘Let me tell you now that Edward will never sell more of the estate to you and I wouldn’t ask him to. It’s his heritage!’

‘But of course,’ answered Adam imperturbably. ‘And your brother shouldn’t be expected to dirty his hands for a living as so many men—and women—do.’ She swallowed. ‘I also imagine,’ he went on in the same calm voice, ‘that most of the rest of his estate is entailed. You want me to drop charges against your brother for stealing my livestock, don’t you? Well, I certainly require payment. And as to what that payment shall be, I have the perfect answer. I think you do as well.’

What? Belle paled. ‘I—I thought perhaps we could come to some arrangement, for Edward to pay his debts off gradually …’

His lip curled. ‘Impossible, I’m afraid. But I still see no reason, Mrs Marchmain, to dismiss the obvious solution.’

So frozen did she look that her lips could clearly scarcely frame the words. ‘What exactly are you suggesting, Mr Davenant?’

‘Let’s be clear. You surely realise you have only one thing you can offer in payment of your brother’s debts,’ Adam said softly. ‘Yourself. Be my mistress.’