Regency Rumours/A Scandalous Mistress/Dishonour And Desire Page 12

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said at last. ‘Why are you doing this? There must be easier ways of getting a woman to partner you.’

  ‘A woman like you, my lady? I think not. Perhaps I’ve had it all my own way till now. Perhaps I need to work harder at it. Perhaps my other relationships were so brief because there was no incentive to make them last. I’ve certainly never offered to take a seventeen-year-old in tow before.’

  ‘Then I should be flattered, my lord, as well as grateful.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. But I do know one thing—that no man who sees you with me will be surprised by my haste and, although they may wonder how I managed it, I shall be the envy of them all. If that comes near to answering my question about why I’m keeping a hold on you, then so be it. Call it pride, if you will. A search for the best and pride in having found a way to hold it.’

  She had stood with head bowed and cheeks flushed as his somehow left-handed tributes were delivered quietly across the elegant saloon, their sincerity all the more believable for their unexpectedness.

  ‘Captured, or bought?’ she whispered, testing him. ‘It doesn’t seem to me that you have had too exhausting a time of it in this search and capture. I seem to think it all fell into your lap rather easily, my lord.’

  His stroll towards her was deceptively languid, but his hands caught her in a grip that bit through her sleeves. ‘I was not referring to the pursuit, my lady, as you well know, but to the holding of the prize. And I intend to keep you by my side for the foreseeable future. Make no mistake about it.’

  ‘Until all the skeletons in my cupboard are let loose upon the world. That’s what you mean, of course.’

  His eyes searched lazily over her features. ‘You are telling me something, I believe. More skeletons? Hurst? Was he your lover?’

  In a sudden blaze of anger barely hidden beneath the surface, she squirmed in his hold. ‘I might have known you’d not believe me,’ she said angrily. ‘Let me spell it out for you. I have never had a lover. There, now take it or leave it.’

  ‘Very well. So since we’re spelling things out, hear this. With or without skeletons, I want you in my bed and at my board, and the sooner we put that to the test the better it will be for both of us. And if you had it in mind to delay the pleasure, think again. I agreed to take it slowly, but I am not inclined to wait for the first frosts of winter.’

  The words and the cynical use of the term ‘pleasure’ seemed to find no warm response in her eyes, for his expression was anything but lover-like. ‘You’re squeezing my arms,’ she whispered.

  ‘Forgive me.’ Taking one of the hands that moved up to comfort the crushed velvet, he raised it to his lips, palm upwards, to place there the lightest of kisses and to close her fingers over it. ‘I do not mean to shock you, Amelie. Are you shocked?’

  ‘Today,’ she said, ‘you have dispelled a trouble from my mind that has been with me since I arrived here. That is a great relief to me, my lord. If only my other concerns could be dealt with so efficiently. What is the hearing of a few down-to-earth manly intentions compared to that? No, I am not shocked, but nor am I prepared to gallop up to your bed so that you can notch up the score on your side of the board. I never wanted to be in your debt, I did not choose the stakes, and I won’t pay out what is still mine just because you are not inclined to wait. I’m sorry, my lord, but you may as well know how it is.’

  ‘Brava, my beauty,’ he said, smiling. ‘I would have thought you in very queer stirrups if you’d not fought back on that one. Well done.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, moving away from his laughing eyes, ‘it will be evening dress, I take it?’ Unthinking, she placed a cool hand to her cheeks.

  ‘Yes, but not too grand. We shall bring the coach round at five. My sister dines quite late these days.’

  Amelie nodded, all replies used up.

  Taking his gloves from the table, he came back to her and lifted her chin with one finger, touching her lips with his in a soft salute. ‘Go up and take a rest, my lady,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a rough day.’

  She did not, of course, take a rest and, even if she had, she would not have been able to prevent so many conflicting thoughts from tangling into the most complex of knots. Apart from that, those heartrending moments of melting bliss when she had held the infant in her arms had left such a deep and aching void inside her that she felt drained and quite unable to pull herself back into shape. Lord Elyot had said he understood, but no one could share that all-consuming blinding passion to bear a child except those women like her whose need had never been satisfied. Was it not ironic, she asked herself, that the circumstance in which that need might now be filled was the very problem she had striven so hard to rectify? She would never find herself in the workhouse, but nor had he put her mind to rest about his share in the responsibility, should there be one, of accepting a fatherless child. Throughout the mantua-maker’s visit, the enormity of what she had agreed continued to disturb her, and it was Caterina who conducted the dress fitting with confidence, despite the woman’s grumbling apologies for the continued absence of her young assistant and the inevitable lateness of the new gowns. When questioned about Millie’s illness, the mantua-maker had to admit that she had not had time to make enquires about her.

  Later that afternoon, the appearance of the recovered but pale Millie disturbed Amelie’s conscience less than it might have done, her newest act of charity far outweighing the furtive transfer from the girl’s former employer to a bedroom of her own, warm clothes, good food and sensible hours of work. The grateful lass was speechless at the offer of six guineas a year, and the unfamiliar smiles she received from Mrs Braithwaite quite overcame her. In lieu of words, she kissed Amelie’s hands.

  Millie was familiar with the new gowns that had just arrived, and it was soon clear that her knowledge of how they should be worn as well as how they had been constructed would make her an ideal dresser for Caterina. After a bath, a change of clothing and some food, Millie was suggesting adjustments like a true professional, trying out combinations of ribbons, draping lace and fur while the names of hairstyles tripped off her tongue and wove through her nimble fingers.

  Upstairs in her workroom, Amelie propped an array of calling cards across her writing table and gazed at them. Most were from the best-known families in Richmond who could, with a little less natural caution, have left cards weeks ago. One or two with the corners turned down had been left in person by gentlemen she had danced with at the Castle Inn ball, and some were from strangers who apparently wanted to know her. It was most gratifying, she thought, pushing the Oglethorpes’ card behind the rest.

  Pulling out the lid of the writing-desk, she took paper and quill and began to write: Dearest and Most Esteemed Brother, I fear that, since receiving your last letter, so much has happened that I hardly know where to begin with my reply. Nevertheless …

  Nevertheless, once started, she was able to form a tolerably coherent summary of the events that had suddenly overtaken her tidy life, leaving out little except Lord Elyot’s indecent proposal, his intimacies, and her own confused reaction to it all. Stephen Chester, Caterina’s widowed father, had been a true, though not impartial, tower of strength, and any hint that Amelie had agreed to a physical relationship with Lord Elyot in return for his support and discretion was not allowed to colour her account. Not even between the lines.

  For Caterina’s sake, I have accepted the brothers’ offers of escort … Caterina and he get on so well together … to their sister’s dinner party … a concert at Ham House where she will meet … so many calling-cards already … quite spoilt for choice … and so on.

  Amelie had never been good at deception; on the few occasions she had tried it, she had come woefully unstuck. Consequently, she found it easier to tell her brother-in-law of Hurst’s passing visit while painting Lord Elyot as the knight in shining white armour whose support she had accepted just as she had accepted his in Buxton. She hoped that this would n
ot offend his feelings, for she knew how he had hoped for an affection of a deeper kind after his brother’s death. For him, it would have been the ideal solution. But not for Amelie, who had two genuine objections to the connection, one of which was that she did not love him. Nor did she believe she ever would.

  The village of Mortlake lay on the other side of the royal park on a loop of the River Thames to the northeast of Richmond, making a triangle with Kew. Amelie had driven through it once or twice and thought that, had she known of its existence earlier, its prettiness and clean lines might have suited her well.

  ‘We’ll come by boat one day,’ said Lord Elyot as the coach turned through the gates of Elwick Lodge. ‘It’ll take longer, but the approach is spectacular from the river steps.’

  But Caterina’s description of the house as ‘white and enormous’ had not done justice to the groups of limes and elms, the green sloping lawns, rose-covered walls and the sparkling boat-studded river beyond. And it was enormous, three-tiered and grand with wide steps leading up to a porticoed entrance even now swarming with liveried men and a bouncing rash of black labrador puppies followed by two small children dragging their nurse behind them.

  It was as if the house had suddenly had its cork drawn, spilling its contents around the coach and fizzing with welcomes. If Amelie had had any reservations about her acceptance, they were dispelled at once by the extended Elwick family who absorbed her like a sponge into their continuous embrace as if she had always been one of them. Caterina was greeted like a long-lost cousin, narrowly rescued from four eager hands by nurse and paternal grandmother. With hardly a coherent introduction to penetrate the general hub-bub, the frothy company then reversed its flow through the double doors into a cavernous hall, marble-floored, columned, and spiralling upwards in a coil of delicate ironwork from which coloured paper streamers fluttered in the breeze.

  ‘Mama’s birfday,’ the fair-haired little angel lisped, pointing upwards. ‘Look … steamers … look, Unca Nick!’

  Having conserved a kind of distance until now, Amelie was obliged to revise her assumptions about Lord Elyot’s judge-mental relatives, for this scene certainly did not fit her previous images of them. Whether Adorna Elwick was used to receiving her brothers’ current partners or whether Amelie was an exception, there was no way of knowing, but her smiles seemed as genuine as the children’s. ‘You must call me Dorna as everyone else does,’ she said. ‘Our names go back for generations. We can’t escape them.’

  ‘Dorna, may I wish you a happy birthday?’ said Amelie.

  ‘Certainly you may. Thank you.’ She eyed the large box that one of the footmen had carried in. ‘If that’s from you two,’ she said to her brothers, ‘it will be the first ever to have arrived on the right day.’ There was laughter and warmth in her cultured voice, and a sisterly tenderness in her blue-grey eyes that made her sparkling smile even more remarkable. Unlike her siblings, she was fair-haired and fair-skinned, still girlishly slender and so modish that she could wear with self-confidence an unlined white-spotted muslin of such fineness that no detail of her dainty breasts inside the minuscule bodice was left to the imagination. Tied beneath with a wide pale-blue satin ribbon, the long ends were left to trail over her train, which the black puppies were convinced was one of the latest games and which concerned the wearer not at all.

  For her part, Amelie saw an appealing insouciance in her hostess’s manner that would be able to take an ugly tea urn in its stride, even to flaunt it before her friends as good for a laugh. All the same, Amelie wished now that she had not taken her anger out on Dorna, of all people, for she was sure she was going to like her.

  There was nothing not to like about the Elwick family or their spacious lived-in house by the river, or easy-going Sir Chad and his gentle parents, or Dorna’s aged godparents and her various brothers and sisters-in-law.

  However, Colonel Tate, an old family friend and neighbour, fell into rather a different category. He had an annoying habit of saying whatever came into his head, often causing laughter, but sometimes irritation. Nudging his old-fashioned powdered wig into position, he lifted his quizzing-glass to examine the single row of pearls around Amelie’s neck and, convinced of their value, dropped it with a squeak of surprise. ‘Well, m’boy,’ he said, swivelling round to fix Lord Rayne with his bloodshot eyes, ‘you’ve found yourself a flush mort here and no mistake. What’s she worth, eh? This one’ll put you back in funds, if you can keep her, eh, m’lad? What?’

  ‘You’ve got it wrong, Colonel,’ said Lord Rayne, wincing visibly. ‘Unfortunately, Lady Chester is engaged to my brother, not to me.’

  ‘To Elyot? Eh?’ The quizzing-glass was picked up again to find the elder brother. ‘What does Elyot want with that kind of money? He’s not in queer streets too, is he? Looking for a golden dolly, m’boy? When I was your age—’

  ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Lord Elyot, taking Amelie’s hand and threading it through his arm, ‘for your advice on our financial affairs, but I can assure you it isn’t in the least necessary. Lady Chester’s financial affairs are of no one’s concern but her own. Shall we go through? Lord, Dorna,’ he whispered to his embarrassed sister, ‘why the devil did you invite that garrulous old turnip? You know what he’s like.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ she replied. ‘He invited himself. Please …’ she leaned towards Amelie ‘… take no notice of him, will you? He means no offence.’

  Amelie smiled. She had met the Colonel’s type before. ‘I am not in the least offended,’ she said. ‘One could be called worse names than a golden dolly.’ She felt the quick squeeze of the arm over her wrist, but what had concerned her more than the old man’s indiscretion was Lord Rayne’s use of the word ‘unfortunately’. Could it mean that he did not approve?’

  She looked to see if Caterina had heard, but her attention was being held by a tall good-looking dandy with shirt-points up to his ears and a curly mop of light brown hair worn in fashionable disarray.

  ‘That’s Tam,’ said Lord Elyot. ‘Short for Tamworth. Sir Chad’s younger brother. He and his sister live with their parents next door. That’s Hannah over there.’ Looking across the room, he indicated a petite lady of about Amelie’s own age, quietly attractive but not conventionally pretty. ‘She’s the sedate one,’ he said. ‘Not a bit like her brother.’

  ‘I’d like to meet her.’

  But there were other more pressing introductions, first to Lord and Lady Appleton, another of Sir Chad’s sisters and her supercilious husband for whom the whole event was a tedium to be endured with a minimum of effort. Kitty, his chattery wife, was happy to hear that her brother-in-law had begun to think more seriously about his relationships, but her intrusive queries were too much for Amelie, who was glad to leave all explanations to the man himself. Listening to him, she realised that there was no incident or remark that he could not deal with politely while giving away very little real information. She need not have been concerned about anything, not then or during dinner.

  The giving of gifts, to which Amelie had not been looking forward, passed off with the same noisy good humour as the greetings. The controversial tea urn was exclaimed over and, after various impertinent suggestions as to its role in laundry or cellar, a place was found for it in a mirrored alcove where its ugliness, to Dorna’s delight, was doubled. ‘Pride of place,’ she exclaimed, ‘to show that my brothers do remember!’

  Lord Elyot’s shapely brows lifted a notch as he caught Amelie’s sheepish expression across the table, and she was reminded that he had understood. But her eyes had wandered towards the lady who sat on his left, to Hannah, his sister-in-law, who was looking at him with such poorly concealed adoration that Amelie could see how her heart was aching with the pain of love.

  Like Amelie, Hannah was no longer a young girl. She was fair haired and possessed of a serene expression that bluff Colonel Tate mistook for an un-natural lack of animation, and the remarks he made from the opposite side of the table brought flames to her
pale cheeks. Amelie’s heart went out to her, but she held back the invitation that was on the tip of her tongue until she’d had a chance to talk with her. If she was as in love with Lord Elyot as Amelie believed, an invitation to stay at Richmond might make matters more complicated than they were already.

  To Amelie’s relief, Caterina had accepted the new situation with remarkably little surprise, as if she had foreseen the event and was pleased to have her own future placed on a surer footing. Her only disappointment was that, as yet, there was no ring to show for it, and no celebrations planned.

  More gifts were unwrapped between courses and passed round the table to be admired, amongst them Amelie’s painting of purple irises, which even she believed to be one of her most successful.

  ‘Good gracious me,’ said Kitty’s patronising husband, ‘you can paint! I believe this is quite beyond the usual for an amateur, my dear.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were an authority on watercolours, Appleton,’ said Lord Elyot drily from across the table. ‘You’re viewing it upside-down, by the way.’

  Hurriedly, Lord Appleton turned the painting round, frowning at it as if it should have known better. ‘Er … well, no old man. I suppose fishing’s more my line.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I should stick to it, if I were you. That piece was exhibited at the Royal Academy last year.’

  ‘Eh? Oh … really! Good lord!’ said Lord Appleton, sinking a little into his cravat. He passed the painting on, taking another longer look at Amelie.

  Every other remark was complimentary, but the one whose look held all the approval Amelie needed had again shielded her from the merest hint of disdain, even that provoked by ignorance. As at the ball, she felt the warmth of his protection and, while talking to her table-partners, watched how his dark handsome head bent towards Hannah, giving her all his attention while caressing the neck of a dessert-spoon with long fingers and nodding at some serious point she was making. No wonder, Amelie thought, that Hannah was in love with him and how changed he was from the hard-bitten cynic she had first met in the London goldsmith’s shop. How could the two counterparts ever be reconciled?