Innocent Courtesan to Adventurer's Bride

At last, the sound of hooves on the carriage drive. Paul, the second footman, swayed back on his heels to keep an unobtrusive watch out of the narrow slit of glass beside the front door then, as the sound of male voices penetrated the thick panels, he swung it open with a flourish. The new Lord Dreycott had arrived.

‘My lord.’ Trimble stepped through on to the arcaded entrance and bowed. ‘Welcome to Dreycott Park.’

Staring past the butler’s narrow shoulders, Lina could see only glimpses of the horses—a curving dappled grey rump and a long white tail, the arch of a black neck, the bulk of oilskin-wrapped cases piled on a pack saddle. Then the grey shifted and she saw its rider fleetingly. A dust-coloured coat draped over the horse’s rump; long soft boots without spurs sagged softly at the ankles; hair the colour of polished mahogany showed over-long beneath a wide-brimmed hat. He swung down out of the saddle and, even with the narrow view between butler and pillar, she saw the ease and suppleness of a fit man.

As he turned she dropped her gaze and Trimble backed into the hall to allow his new master entrance. Lina focused on where Lord Dreycott’s mouth would be. That felt a safe place to look. It was becoming easier now, but ever since that night she had to make herself meet a man’s eyes directly.

The male servants were deferential, trained never to stare, and she felt comfortable with them. Old Lord Dreycott’s rheumy, long-sighted gaze had held no terrors for her, but when any other man met her eyes for more than a moment she felt the panic building, her heart pattered in alarm and her hands clenched with the need to control her urge to run. She must overcome it, she knew, especially with the new baron, lest he guessed she had something to hide.

The swirling skirts of his riding coat filled the doorway and the booted feet stopped just inside, set apart with a confident stance that seemed to come naturally, rather than as a deliberate statement of ownership. Lina found herself staring, not at his mouth as she had expected, but at the carelessly tied neckcloth at his throat. This was a tall man. Her eyes shifted cautiously up to his jaw, darkened with several days’ stubble. When he pulled off the heavy leather gauntlets and slapped them against his coat it became apparent that it was dust-coloured because it was covered in dust.

‘My lord.’ Trimble coughed slightly as he took gloves and hat. ‘On behalf of the staff, may I offer our condolences at the loss of your great-uncle? I am Trimble, my lord.’

‘But I remember you,’ Lord Dreycott said with a wide smile of recognition, his teeth very white in his tanned face. ‘It is good to see you again, Trimble. Many years, is it not?’

‘It is indeed, my lord. And this…’ he turned as he spoke ‘…is Miss Haddon, his late lordship’s guest.’

Lina dropped into a curtsy. ‘My lord.’

‘Miss Haddon. I was not aware that there were any Haddons in the family.’ His voice was deep and flexible with a faint touch of a foreign intonation and more than a hint of enquiry.

‘I am not a relative, my lord.’ The stubble on his chin was darker than his hair, except for a thin slash of silver that must trace a scar that had just missed his mouth. Be persuasive and open, an inner voice urged. He must believe that you will be no trouble to him and might be useful. ‘Lord Dreycott was an old friend of the aunt with whom I used to live. When I had nowhere to go he was kind enough to take me in. I have been acting as housekeeper and companion for the past seven weeks, my lord.’

‘I see. I am sorry to put you to inconvenience so soon after the funeral, Miss Haddon. The date of my arrival in the country was uncertain, but fortunately I called on my agent at once. He had received the news, but it was, I regret to say, the day of the service. We simply rode on.’

‘All the way from London, my lord?’ That was more than one hundred and forty miles. She remembered the interminably long stagecoach only too vividly.

‘Yes.’ He seemed surprised at the question, as though it was normal for the aristocracy to take to the high roads on horseback rather than in a post-chaise or private carriage. ‘The horses were fresh enough and they are used to long distances.’

There was a bustle outside as the grooms arrived and led the animals away, Lord Dreycott’s man striding behind them. The baron half-turned to see them go and Lina risked a rapid upwards glance. Overlong hair, deeply tanned skin, and, from the sharp angle of his jaw, not a spare ounce of flesh on him. He was tall, but not bulky: a thoroughbred, not a Shire horse, she thought, the sudden whimsy breaking through her anxiety. He radiated a kind of relaxed natural energy as though something wild and free had been brought into the house. Lina felt oddly fidgety and unsettled as though that quality had reached her, too.

‘You will wish to retire to your rooms, I have no doubt, my lord. Your, er…valet?’ Trimble eased the dust-thick coat from his lordship’s shoulders.

‘Gregor is my travelling companion,’ Lord Dreycott said and turned back. ‘I assume one of the footmen can look after my clothes.’

Lina contemplated his boots. It should have been a safe place to look if it were not for the fact that the swirling pattern of stitching that spiralled round them took the eye upwards, leading inexorably to legs that were long and well muscled. The boots did not look like English work.

Where had Lord Dreycott been? She tried to recall what his great-uncle had said about his heir. A traveller, like I used to be. Only one of the family with any backbone, the old man had grunted. Only one with an original thought in his head. Scandalous rogue, of course. Shocking! He had chuckled indulgently. Never see the boy. He writes, but he’s the decency not to come sniffing round for his inheritance.

But this was not a boy. This was a man. Her stomach clenched as he moved to stand in front of her. Lina forced herself to look into his face for a second and wondered how gullible he was likely to be. Green eyes, cool and watchful in contrast to the easy smile he wore. Not blue eyes, not bulging, not filled with the need to use and take. The fear subsided to wary tension. But his scrutiny of her face was not indifferent, either, it was searching and intelligent and masculine and she glanced away to focus on his left ear before he could read the emotion in her own eyes. No, not gullible at all.

‘I hope the rooms we have made up will be acceptable, my lord,’ Lina managed, doing her best to sound like a housekeeper. That seemed the safest role for now. ‘We…I cleared as much as possible into the baroness’s suite, but the room is still very cluttered. The late Lord Dreycott’s idea of comfort was a trifle, um, eccentric.’

She had tried to tidy up after the funeral, but soon abandoned the attempt to create anything like a conventional bedchamber. There were piles of books on every surface, rolls of maps, a stuffed bear, a human skull and pots of every kind. Papers spilled from files and from boxes that she felt they should not touch until the heir and his solicitor could inspect them; half-unpacked cases of antiquities and the desiccated remains of an enthusiasm for chemical experiments, perhaps five years old, cluttered every flat surface and half the floor.

The adjoining chambers, last occupied by the late Lady Dreycott until her death forty years past, now held motheaten examples of the taxidermist’s art, vases with erotic scenes and dangerous-looking bottles of chemicals.

‘My idea of comfort is also eccentric. I can sleep on a plank, Miss Haddon, and frequently have,’ the amused voice drawled. ‘You will join me for dinner this evening?’

‘My lord, I am the housekeeper. It is hardly suitable—’

‘You were my great-uncle’s guest, were you not, Miss Haddon? And now you are mine. That appears to make it eminently suitable.’ He was quite clearly not used to being gainsaid.

‘Thank you, my lord.’ What else was there to say? And now you are mine. Was it her imagination that shaded that statement with a possessive edge? She needed him, needed his tolerance, his acceptance of her presence in the house until she heard from Aunt Clara that it was safe to return. And there had been no word, even though the announcement of Lord Dreycott’s death must have been in all the London news sheets days before. She dare not write herself; if Makepeace intercepted the letter, he would know where she was from the post-office stamps.

Soon she must establish herself as something more than a housekeeper, to be dismissed or kept at his whim, Lina realised. But as what? Somehow she must make the new Lord Dreycott decide to continue to shelter her as though he had an obligation to his great-uncle’s guest, and this invitation to dine was a step along that path.

Her conscience pricked her; he would be harbouring a fugitive from the law, however unwittingly. The old baron had at least a sentimental attachment to her aunt to motivate him to offer his protection—and he had known the truth. This man had no reason to allow her so much as a bed in the hayloft and every incentive to call the local magistrate if he discovered who she was.

But the alternatives were to give herself up to imprisonment, trial and probable hanging or to flee into the unknown with no way of her aunt contacting her and only a few guineas to live on. Set against those choices a troubled conscience seemed a small price to pay for tenuous safety.

Quinn studied the young woman’s averted face with a stirring of interest. What was his great-uncle doing housing this little nun? Her hair was scraped back into a tight knot at her nape and her body was shrouded in dull black from throat to toes. Old Simon was not known for his acts of charity; he had a well-earned reputation for scandal and he had kept a string of expensive birds of paradise well into his seventies. Was this girl his daughter, the product of his last fling before he returned to scholarly isolation in the country?

Surely not. No Ashley had anything but the arrogant nose that he saw in the glass whenever he bothered to look in one. No child of Simon’s would have a straight little nose like this young woman’s. The firm chin might be his, but not the blue eyes and blonde hair. This was not Simon’s natural daughter. ‘I look forward to dinner, Miss Haddon,’ he said.

In answer she dropped a bob of a curtsy, her eyes fixed firmly on his collarbone. It was a perfectly ordinary collarbone as far as he was concerned, certainly not one to attract such careful study. ‘At what hour would you care to dine, my lord?’

‘Seven, if that is convenient, Miss Haddon.’ Something rustled seductively as she moved and he frowned. He had just spent a year in the Near East, a region where silk was a commodity that all understood. That had been the whisper of expensive fine fabric and, now that he looked at the drab black gown with its dove-grey collar and cuffs, he saw the unmistakable gleam of pure silk. The modest gown was cut with elegance and made out of cloth more suited to a ballroom than a country-house hallway.

Quinn sharpened his focus on the smooth sweep of hair the colour of honey in the sun, the long lashes veiling the startling blue eyes. She moved again and a complex hint of spice and oranges flirted with his senses, subtle yet insistent. No nun, this, and no conventional housekeeper either. She was nervous of him, fearful almost. He could read her wariness as easily as he could that of a half-broken filly. It was puzzling—and arousing.

‘My lord?’ Trimble stood waiting for him. Quinn turned on his heel and strode across the polished marble to the staircase. At the foot of the stairs he turned and looked back. Miss Haddon was walking through an open doorway and he realised that the gown was not the dull garment he had thought it, not when its wearer was in motion. She swayed as she walked, her movements as subtle as her scent, and the silken skirts clung for a tantalising moment to the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist. This enforced return to England was going to be more interesting than he had expected, Quinn decided as he took the stairs two at a time in the wake of the butler.

Chapter Two

‘That heathen servant has been in here, sniffing around.’ Mrs Bishop, the cook, pounced on Lina the moment she appeared in the kitchen at half past six to make sure everything was going smoothly.

‘I am sure he is not a heathen,’ Lina soothed. ‘Gregor sounds like an Eastern European name to me. Perhaps he is of the Orthodox faith, but a Christian nevertheless.’

Mrs Bishop had perforce been acting as housekeeper for eighteen months, ever since the last one had been driven out by the late Lord Dreycott’s robust language, and she had welcomed Lina with open arms. Now she settled down to unload her worries.

‘I can hardly understand a word he says,’ she complained, not at all mollified. ‘Accent that thick you could cut it with a knife.’ As she had a north Norfolk accent that had taken Lina a week to comprehend, some mutual misunderstanding with the newcomer was only to be expected.

‘Perhaps he just wanted some supper,’ Lina suggested. ‘Where has Trimble lodged him? I do not think he is a servant, precisely. Lord Dreycott called him a travelling companion.’

‘Well, Mr Trimble’s given him a room in the attic, but he looked at it a bit sideways, so Michael says.’ Cook’s nephew was first footman and an unfailing source of backstairs information on everything.

‘It is the best he’s going to get at the moment if he does not want to live in a lumber room,’ Lina said. ‘It is uncluttered, which is more than can be said for the family and guest chambers in this house. Was hot water sent up?’

‘Hot water!’ Cook went red in the face and banged down her ladle. ‘Don’t talk to me about hot water, Miss Lina. They’ve drained the copper! His lordship saw that sarco-whatsit in my late lord’s chamber and said it would do as a bath and had the whole thing filled up with hot water, would you believe? And they both got in it, so Michael says—after they’d stripped off, mother naked, and got under the pump in the stable yard!’

‘That is outside of enough!’ Lina stared at the other woman. ‘What if one of the maids had seen them? Or you or I?’ The thought of Lord Dreycott, stripped naked and dripping with water, was outrageous. Yes, that was the word. She was…shocked.

‘All the footmen were up and down stairs with water cans for an age. They told Trimble to keep the female staff out of the way and then traipsed through the house dripping and got into the sarco-whatsit.’

‘Sarcophagus,’ Lina murmured. Trust his late lordship to keep a vast marble coffin in his bedchamber. It was a miracle he had not insisted on being buried in it. ‘Both of them together?’ It was certainly big enough to bathe two large men in.

‘Yes. Funny way to go on if you ask me,’ Cook said darkly. ‘You don’t think he’s one of them, you know—mollies—do you?’

‘No,’ Lina said, the memory of those green eyes running over her all too clear for comfort. ‘Whatever else the new Lord Dreycott might be, I do not think he is attracted to men.’ Cook still looked disapproving. Lina had been startled herself when the girls had explained that particular variation in sexual preference to her, but on reflection it seemed no stranger than many of the things that the customers at The Blue Door asked of the girls.

‘They travel together all the time, no doubt they are simply used to sharing bathing facilities,’ she suggested. ‘And I think they have been in the East, so perhaps bathing is different there.’

‘Fine behaviour for Lord Dreycott, I must say. Foreign.’ Cook returned to garnishing a dish of whitebait with a sniff that dismissed everything from beyond her home parish as outlandish and uncivilised.

‘I am sure he will become a conventional member of the aristocracy soon enough,’ Lina said. And after all, if the staff could learn to adapt to the old baron’s eccentricities, this one could hardly be worse. Although, dripping through the house stark naked…No, she was not even going to think about it.

Those long, muscled legs, those shoulders…No. It was surprising to discover that however dreadful the experience with Sir Humphrey had been, and however alarming it still was when a man stared at her, her response when confronted by a young, handsome and intelligent man was attraction and curiosity. There had not been many men like that in her life, which no doubt explained it.

‘He wants to know if we’ve got an ice house.’ Michael appeared in the kitchen, clutching an armful of bottles wrapped in straw. ‘I told him, of course we’ve got an ice house. Wants this putting in it and leaving.’ He held up one bottle. ‘And this one is for before dinner. They both look like water to me.’

‘I am certain we will soon adapt to his lordship’s little ways,’ Lina said. Men in her, albeit limited, experience, were demanding creatures, but most of them were at least predictable once one had sorted out their preferences.

The sound of the dinner gong reverberated through the house and set Lina’s heart rate accelerating with it. ‘I had better go up.’

The clock struck seven. Lina gave Cook a reassuring smile—although which of them actually needed the reassurance was moot—and hurried up the backstairs. Trimble held the dining room door open for her. ‘His lordship has just come down, Miss Celina.’ He permitted himself an infinitesimal lifting of his eyebrows.

It did not take more than a moment to see why. Lord Dreycott was studying the portrait of his great-uncle over the fireplace, his hands on his hips, his head tipped back. It was as though the two men confronted each other, the impression made more vivid because the portrait must have been painted when Simon Ashley was about the same age as his great-nephew.

The figure in the painting wore a powdered wig and a full-skirted suit of spectacular figured silk in powder blue. Ruffles and lace foamed under his chin, rings flashed on his fingers. But all the ruffles and silk in the world could not disguise the arrogant masculinity of the stance or the intelligence in the piercing green eyes that stared down at the room. Lina had looked at it many times over the past weeks and wondered what that dashing rake had been like before extreme old age had dimmed everything but his spirit.

Now she could see, for his heir’s resemblance to the young Simon was startling and, in his own way, he was dressed in as spectacular a fashion. Full black trousers were tucked into soft crimson suede boots, and a knee-length over-tunic of dark green figured silk was open over a white lawn shirt with an embroidered, slashed neck. His thick tawny hair was tied back at his nape and his pose made that determined chin and the long muscles and tendons in his neck even more obvious.

Lina could have sworn she made no sound, but she had only a moment to recover from the shock before Lord Dreycott turned. She dropped her eyes immediately, startled by a movement in the shadows at the back of the room. The man Gregor had also turned to look at her, his face impassive. He was dressed like the baron, except that he was all in plain dark blue save for his white shirt, and his hair was cropped short.

‘Miss Haddon.’ Lord Dreycott came forwards. ‘You will forgive my costume; I have no European clothing suitable for evening wear as yet.’

‘Of course, my lord.’ Who could object to sitting down to dinner with an exotic creature from the Arabian Nights or Childe Harold? She felt like a drab little peahen against his peacock magnificence.

‘Will you sit here?’ He pulled out the chair to the right of the head of the table, then took his own, which Gregor held. The man stepped back, folded his arms and gazed impassively over their heads as the footmen began to serve soup.

‘I have explained to Gregor that as it is highly unlikely that you intend to poison my food there is no need for him to taste it first,’ Lord Dreycott remarked.

‘Indeed, my lord?’ Lina said, so taken aback that she spoke without thinking, ‘As none of us knows you yet, we would have no reason to, would we?’ He raised his eyebrows at her forthright tone and she realised what she had said. ‘Forgive me, but do you have many attempts made upon your life?’

‘Enough to make me wary,’ he said. ‘It is hard to get out of the habit of precautions. Gregor, as you see, will watch my back whatever the setting.’

Lina choked back a laugh, the picture of the silent Gregor padding after Lord Dreycott at some society function tickling her imagination. The old baron had been outrageous, but he had never provoked her into almost giving way to giggles with her mouth full of soup. She could barely even recall the last time she had felt amused.

‘Must you call me my lord, Miss Haddon? I keep wondering to whom you are speaking.’

‘I am sure you will soon become accustomed to the title, and there is nothing else I may properly call you, my lord.’ Lina took a bread roll and tried not to stare at the richly embroidered shirt cuff so close to her left hand. Certainly she did not want to contemplate the tanned hand with a heavy gold ring on one long finger.

‘We could dispense with propriety,’ he suggested. ‘My name is Jonathan Quinn Ashley. No one calls me Jonathan and I suppose you will not accept Quinn as proper.’ She heard the amusement in his voice at the word. She doubted he often gave much thought to propriety. ‘You must call me Ashley, which is my surname. What is your given name?’

‘Celina, my…Ashley. But really, I cannot, it would be most unsuitable in my position.’

‘What position? You are a guest. And who are we going to scandalise?’ Quinn Ashley enquired. ‘Gregor is unshockable, I assure you. And after years in my great-uncle’s service I imagine Trimble and the staff are hardened to far worse behaviour than a little informality. Is that not so, Trimble?’ He pitched his voice to the butler, who was standing by the sideboard, supervising.

‘Indeed, my lord. My lips are, however, sealed on the subject.’

‘Very proper. Now, Celina, are we to dispense with the bowing and scraping?’

She looked up through her lashes and found he was watching her steadily. He did not appear to be flirting; his manner was friendly and neither encroaching nor suggestive. Her severe hairstyle and modest evening gown must be working, she decided. She doubtless looked the perfect plain housekeeper and was not in the slightest danger of any attempts at gallantry on his part.

‘If that is what you wish, Ashley.’ He nodded, satisfied, and went back to his soup. Lina took advantage of his focus on his food to study the strong profile. He looked intelligent and sensitive, she decided. How sad if he was the fifth son and all his brothers had predeceased him, as they must for him to inherit. ‘Did you have many older siblings?’ she enquired sympathetically.

He caught her meaning immediately. ‘No, no brothers or sisters. Quinn is for my mother’s maiden name, not short for Quintus.’ They sat back while the soup plates were cleared and the fish brought in. The steady green eyes came back to her face and she dropped her gaze immediately. Sensitive and intelligent, certainly, but also disturbing. When she caught that look she felt very aware that she was female. ‘Have you brothers and sisters?’

‘I had two sisters, Margaret and Arabella,’ Lina admitted. ‘But Meg left the country with her husband, who is a soldier in the Peninsula, and I do not know where Bella is now.’

‘So you are quite alone? What about this aunt?’ He did not appear shocked by her absence of family. Of course, an interrogation about her antecedents was only to be expected.

‘She fell ill and can no longer give me a home.’ Ashley poured white wine into her glass as the whitebait were served and she took a sip, surprised to find it tasting quite light and flowery in her mouth. It was positively refreshing and she took another swallow. She was unused to wine, but one glass could not be harmful, surely?

‘I see.’ For a moment she wondered if he was going to ask what she intended doing once he employed a proper housekeeper, a question to which the only answer was I have not the slightest idea, but Ashley simply nodded and reapplied himself to his food, which was disappearing at a considerable rate.