Those Scandalous Ravenhursts Volume Two: The Shocking Lord Standon

Furious and horrified at herself, Jessica shut her mouth with a snap as Gareth got slowly to his feet. ‘A masquerade, Jessica. I am asking you to pretend to be my mistress.’ His voice was steady, but there was a trace of colour across his cheekbones. ‘I would not insult you by proposing anything else.’

‘I… You… No, you would not. You made that clear last night. I beg your pardon; I seem to be more tired and less rational than I thought.’ Jessica walked back to her chair and sat, her legs suddenly stiff and awkward. She knew why she had reacted with such vehemence: Mama, of course. But mostly it was because of her own guilty desires. Self-knowledge, an admirable trait she had always thought, did nothing to improve her mood.

‘You must be tired.’ Gareth sat again too, making the silver boot tassels swing as he crossed his long legs. Jessica found herself staring at them and dragged her eyes up to meet his somewhat rueful gaze. ‘It is the shock of yesterday’s experiences; you should not underestimate the effect such trauma has on the body and mind. And then you have spent the day without proper refreshment or rest. Not very sensible of you, Miss Gifford.’

‘Then let us be sensible at all costs,’ she retorted, taking a grip on her emotions. ‘What, exactly, are you proposing, my…Gareth?’

He steepled his fingers and bent his head to touch the tips to his mouth as if collecting his thoughts, then he raised his head and looked at her steadily. How changeable his eyes are. From the light grey of a cloudy sky to hard steel from moment to moment.

‘I believe the course of shocking Lord Pangbourne is the only way to reach a speedy resolution of this problem. But I am reluctant to involve a professional—actress or Cyprian—in our personal affairs. One places too much trust in their discretion and too much power in their hands should they choose to make mischief later: I cannot risk that with Maude. Nor, I find, can I contemplate some vulgar piece of play-acting.’

Gareth paused, marshalling his thoughts. ‘I believe this wants more than simply my apparent misbehaviour with one of the demi-monde. A man of Pangbourne’s generation considers that almost routine. The scenario I believe would be most effective is a flagrant dalliance with a lady on the thin edge between scandal and respectability. To have the maximum impact my liaison must be conducted under the noses of the ton, not merely observed at the theatre or in the park.’

‘But who, then, do you want me to be?’

‘A wicked widow.’ Gareth smiled suddenly, and she found her own lips curving in response. She caught herself and pressed them tight together. ‘A lady returned from abroad where her husband died. A lady on the fringes of respectability, yet with an entrée into London society as she searches for her next protector. And I am going to fall head over heels in my blatant pursuit of her favours.’

‘I can see that that would, indeed, cause talk and scandalise Lord Pangbourne, especially if you insultingly ignored Lady Maude in the process,’ Jessica agreed. ‘But firstly you will need to secure an entrée for this impostor and secondly—look at me! Do I look like a glamorous and dangerous adventuress?’

As she spoke she gestured at the overmantel mirror that reflected the upper parts of their bodies as they sat before the fire. Her blonde hair was still neatly in its governess’s braids and bands, its colour pretty, but, in its tight confinement, quite ordinary. Her gown was high at the neck, shrouding her figure that, while brisk walks and healthy eating might have kept neat, was by no means the voluptuous form she assumed such a siren as Gareth was describing would possess. And her deportment was that of a respectable professional woman—contained, controlled, immaculate, designed to be the very opposite of obvious.

‘Not at the moment, I must agree.’ That smile again, turning a well-looking man into one of dangerous appeal. ‘You look charming and eminently respectable. But you forget, I know exactly what you look like without that drab gown and those neat braids.’ He ignored her inarticulate sound of protest and her reddening cheeks and added, ‘And you could look spectacular, Jessica. No, do not shake your head at me—it will take two things, the transformation of your wardrobe and your coiffure and for you to think like an adventuress, a woman on the edge, a dangerous, predatory, beautiful huntress.’

Despite everything Jessica’s sense of humour got the better of her. She laughed at him, ‘You think the church mouse can turn into the hunting cat, Gareth?’

‘No, I think the fireside tabby can arch her back and flex her claws and become a tigress.’

She shook her head, unconvinced. There was no need to panic over his scandalous scheme—it would fall at the first hurdle, her inability to be the woman he was describing. She would humour him a little.

‘And who are you going to prevail upon to let this dangerous female loose in a respectable setting?’

‘My cousin Bel, who has recently remarried. She and Maude are both deeply involved in a charity to secure employment for soldiers returning from the wars. One of Maude’s schemes to raise money for this cause is to hold a subscription ball, but as she is an unmarried girl the hostess issuing the invitations will be Bel, now Lady Dereham. Everyone who is anyone will be there, for they plan to make it one of the grand opening events of the Season—and that will include Lord Pangbourne.’

‘And how, exactly, am I going to prevail upon the respectable Lady Dereham to invite me?’

‘She would do it as a favour to me, but for the public explanation of the acquaintance we depend upon another cousin of mine, Bel’s brother, Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst. He is married to Eva, the Grand Duchess of Maubourg.’

‘But I read about that in the newspapers—it was a most romantic affair by all accounts!’ The dashing Lord Sebastian had snatched the Grand Duchess from the claws of French agents and had smuggled her across France to arrive in Brussels on the day of the Battle of Waterloo. The Grand Duchess had been reunited with her son in London and returned to Maubourg with the young Grand Duke and the man she had fallen in love with on their perilous journey.

‘It was, and there was considerably more romance to it than you would guess, even reading between the lines. However, for now I think we can agree that your late husband was employed in some manner by the Duchy. As an economic adviser perhaps? I will ask Eva’s advice.’

‘She is in England?’ A few days ago Jessica had been attempting to instil the basics of Italian conversation and Mozart sonatas into the daughter of a baronet. Since then she had been kidnapped, flung herself naked into the arms of a man, escaped from a brothel and been kissed for the first time. Now, it appeared, she was to be thrust into proximity with minor royalty.

‘She and Sebastian divide their time between his estates here—where she is Lady Sebastian Ravenhurst, a private citizen—and Maubourg where she is the Grand Duchess and Sebastian seems to have taken over as Minister for Agriculture, although I am not sure I entirely believe that. Fréderic, her son, is at school at Eton. Eva has decided she would like to do the London Season for a change, so they arrived last week and the Duke of Allington, Sebastian’s brother, has loaned them the town house.’

And now dukes, Jessica thought faintly, then pulled herself together. She was never going to be the sultry temptress Gareth was deluded enough to imagine, but at least she could continue to apply common sense to this madcap scheme.

‘And where am I going to live whilst I am scandalising London?’

‘In Bel’s house in Half Moon Street, which is currently empty while she decides whether to sell it, keep it or lease it out. You will appear to have purchased it.’

‘Or perhaps the Grand Duchess has done so in recognition of my late husband’s contribution to the Duchy?’ She had meant to be faintly sarcastic, but Gareth nodded.

‘Good idea.’

Jessica sat and regarded him, trying to convince herself she was not dreaming. Although whether this was a dream or a nightmare was debatable. ‘I arrive, transformed by some miracle into a femme fatale. We conduct a very public, flagrant liaison, Lady Maude goes into a shocked decline, Lord Pangbourne cuts your acquaintance—and then what?’

‘We keep it up for the Season.’ Three months of flirting—or worse—with Gareth? Oh, my God…’ And then you vanish off to Maubourg, seduced by one of Eva’s court, perhaps, and I am left a sadder and wiser man. One who is, most obviously, unworthy of Templeton’s ewe lamb.’

‘And I return to seeking work as a governess, with no doubt some good explanation of what I have been doing for three months?’

Gareth dropped his hands and clasped them together, his eyes on her, searching, it seemed, for some insight into her thoughts. Jessica felt they should be more than obvious.

‘Do you enjoy being a governess? No, let me rephrase that—do you have a dedication to education?’ She shrugged. ‘Why then do you seek employment in that way?’

‘Because I wish to eat! And I find I am a good teacher.’

‘You have no relatives?’ he asked, frowning at her snappish tone.

‘Yes—an aunt, cousins.’ Jessica began to see the drift of his questions and produced her usual prevarication—it was not so very far from the truth in some ways. ‘You wonder why I do not live with them? I do not chose to be beholden to anyone and dwindle into an unpaid companion, dependent on family charity for my very existence. I wish to be independent and to provide for my old age. I have no aptitude as a milliner or a dressmaker. There is very little money or security as a paid companion. But I do have skills that I can teach and I have chosen my employers with great care to enhance my references and my reputation.’

Gareth nodded as though she was confirming his own thoughts. ‘So your long-term aim is for financial security and respectable independence?’

‘Exactly.’ It seemed she was getting through to him at last. ‘And I can think of few things more damaging to that ambition than flaunting myself in London society as your mistress!’

‘Certainly if you wish for further employment, I can quite see that.’ He appeared unconscious of Jessica’s frowning regard. ‘Would I be accurate if I said that you would hope to reach the point one day where you could afford a small house in a charming village or market town with adequate funds to employ a small staff and perhaps own a gig? To be in the position where you had no need to work, but might, if you wished, take the occasional pupil for individual tuition in an instrument or a language?’

‘You have painted a picture of my exact ambition.’ The image of roses round the door, a cheerful maidservant bringing in a tea tray, an earnest child happily learning the piano, flickered before Jessica’s gaze. ‘And to achieve the half of that I need to work. Work hard for years,’ she added.

‘I am offering you work.’ Gareth stood up and walked round the chair to lean his folded arms on its padded back while he watched her. ‘I am asking you to take on an onerous acting job for three months and then I will give you the house and an annuity that will allow you to do just as you please.’

‘But—’

‘You think I am offering too high a price? I can assure you—’

‘I think you are offering a very fair price for such an outrageous request,’ she retorted robustly. ‘Gareth—look at me. Do I look like a seductress? Do I seem to you to have any wiles, any aptitude for casting out lures? I have never flirted in my life, not even mildly. How do you expect me to learn?’

‘I will teach you,’ he said and the smile he sent her was pure, wicked, promise. ‘I will teach you so well, Miss Gifford, that half the men in London will be at your feet and every lady in society will wish to scratch your eyes out.’

‘No…I could not.’ She had to be strong. It was impossible, she could never do this.

Gareth walked round and picked up her hand as it clasped the arm of her chair. His fingers were warm and his thumb brushed gently against the soft mound of flesh at the base of her thumb.

‘What colour are the roses round the door in your dream house?’ he asked her, his eyes intent and dark onher face.

‘Red,’ she murmured. And was lost.

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.