The Regency Season: Scandalous Awakening

Chapter Seven

That was it then; the frustrated desire of ten years finally said and in the open. Luke waited for Chloe’s reply, resigned to the fact she mattered to him more than either of them wanted to admit—except he just had.

‘I’ve had nightmares night after night since Virginia died,’ she admitted as if living with them was better than feeling something unique for him.

‘Why?’

The story behind her arrival must be even more painful than he’d thought. Luke willed his hands not to fist when he thought of the rogue who got a child on her, then left her to cope alone. Back then he’d told himself it was best not to know her story when he felt so damned guilty she was trying to build a respectable life and he wanted to ruin her more thoroughly than the rake who found her first.

‘Do you think you’re the only one to see love as a disaster?’ she demanded, but he knew a diversionary tactic when he heard one.

‘I thought you adored your reckless, headlong husband and regretted every minute of your life you must live without him? That’s what you told me when you whistled my dishonourable proposals down the wind.’

‘And you believed me?’

‘You were very convincing.’

‘Of course I was; it was a dishonourable proposal.’

‘Surely you didn’t expect me to offer marriage?’ he demanded unwarily.

She stiffened as if about to jump up and glare at him with her usual armed disapproval. ‘No,’ she admitted with a sigh instead. She must be too comfortable or too much in need of human comfort to push him away, but she sat up in his arms and stared into the fire instead. ‘I learnt not to expect much of anyone the day Verity was born. There was nobody left to care what became of us.’

‘Then she was truly a posthumous child?’ he asked gently, wanting to know about the man who left her with child, but feeling he was intruding on girlish dreams that might feel very private even if they’d rapidly turned into nightmares.

‘Yes, Verity only had me.’

The admission was bleak and he bit back his frustration at having to prise information out of her like a miner hewing coal. ‘Could neither family help you?’

‘No,’ she denied as if it hurt even now.

Luke felt she had a storm of emotions behind the calm she was forcing herself to hold as if her life depended on it. They seemed so much nearer the surface now he wanted to take the heavy weight off her shoulders, then put her world right. He wanted to protect her so badly, yet she insisted on shutting him out. This contrary, complicated woman was making him a stranger to himself.

‘Did you ask them?’

‘Not then,’ she bit out and somehow he managed to stifle a curse that she still wouldn’t let him into her true past or trust him with her real self.

‘Had they refused earlier?’

‘It was a runaway match,’ she said so blankly he suspected she was telling him a well-rehearsed version of what might be the truth, but didn’t feel like it.

‘They might be glad to meet their grandchild now.’

‘I’d walk barefoot across Britain or beg in the streets before I let them near her.’

It sounded as if unforgivable things had been said or done when she was so painfully young, alone and vulnerable. Fury burnt in his gut that anyone could treat a young girl so harshly that she never wanted to see them again. Conscience whispered he’d treated her pretty appallingly himself by offering carte blanche to such a youthful widow with a tiny child to consider.

Shame joined fury then; it wasn’t Chloe’s fault his wife smashed a young man’s dreams to powder, or that he was too wrapped up in not hurting to risk having any more. The revelation that he truly cared for this woman as he never had for Pamela, even before they married and hurt each other so much, overtook him with the force of a natural disaster. It felt as if the real Luke Winterley had woken from hibernation. He flexed powerful muscles against an almost physical ache and wished he’d go back to sleep.

‘I’m not saying you should,’ he managed to say as he gathered up the threads of their not-quite conversation and reminded himself he was rated a very fine whip by the sporting set and ought to be able to do this a lot better.

‘I wouldn’t do it if you did,’ she said scornfully.

‘And I couldn’t ask you to do something that went so strongly against the grain. We mean too much to each other for that; like it or not.’

‘I’m sure you underestimate our will-power, Lord Farenze,’ she said icily, as if not ready to make a similar leap into the dark.

‘Maybe I do. I still intend to find out why you were driven to take this job to keep yourself and your daughter out of the poor house.’

‘Then how dared you use me as entertainment for an idle moment?’

Luke felt oddly wounded she thought so little of him, but he couldn’t leave her to lie sleepless or tumble back into night terrors.

‘I would not dream of it and we’re talking about you and your daughter, not my many and varied shortcomings.’

‘No, we’re not. Please go to bed and leave me to watch by Virginia one last time, my lord. You must sleep if you’re going to be chief mourner at your great-aunt’s funeral. I have had my fill of sleeping for now and really don’t want to experience that nightmare again tonight.’

Luke opened his mouth to deny he felt the least need to rest, but a huge yawn stopped him. ‘I’m not a nodding infant,’ he insisted brusquely afterwards.

‘No, you’re a stubborn man who rode here as fast as coach and horses could go in order to be in time for your great-aunt’s funeral. What good you will be for that if you’re nodding over your duties is beyond me, but I’m only the housekeeper, so who am I to tell you not to be a fool?’

‘It never stopped you in the past,’ he muttered crossly.

‘Oh, just go to bed, my lord. As a mere woman, I’m not required to put in an appearance until after you return from church tomorrow, so I can sleep in the morning. You owe it to Lady Virginia to be properly awake and aware for her last rites.’

Luke saw the logic of her words, but couldn’t let go his duty to care for all those who lived under one of his roofs. His housekeeper would be heavy eyed and weary tomorrow if he did as she suggested. The idea of her keeping watch when he should be the one to hold his loved ones safe also made him feel as if he was less of a man, foolish though that might be.

Still, it seemed as if she preferred waking to sleeping and didn’t that betray how haunted and disturbing her nightmares truly were? He longed to offer her simple comfort and scout her demons, so she might sleep sweetly and wake without the shadows under her remarkable eyes. Folly to find it touching that she appeared to care he was tired, despite the dagger-look she shot him, as if he’d made her another dishonourable offer.

‘How can I let you take on a duty rightly belonging to me?’ he said clumsily.

‘Mere servant as I am?’ she bit out furiously.

Luke wondered if he’d imagined her burrowing so desperately into his arms when he came to this room to find out why she was shouting in her sleep and why his tongue always tied itself in knots when he was with her.

‘No, because you have done more for my great-aunt than anyone had a right to ask you; not that I’m suggesting you can’t withstand every tempest life throws at you, so don’t bite my nose off,’ he argued and wondered why his temper wasn’t rising to her barbed comments this time.

He was weary to his very bones, but he knew she was trying to get him out of here before heat and awareness flared back to life. In some ways he knew her so well it hurt, in others she felt as much of a mystery to him as she was the first day he laid eyes on his great-aunt’s new companion–housekeeper and felt his world tilt on its axis for a terrifying moment.

‘If you watch for an hour or so, I will lie on the bed in the Lord’s Chamber with the connecting door open. It’s been locked since Virgil died and nobody will recall it’s there at a time like this. That way you won’t be alone and I’ll feel more of a man.’

She looked unconvinced, but eventually nodded and seemed prepared to accept a compromise to end this uncomfortable intimacy. ‘I loved Lady Virginia too much in life to be frightened now she’s with her Virgil again at last. I’ll miss her all my days, but she wouldn’t want to live without him any longer than she had to. So please take yourself off whilst I dress, my lord.’

‘Very well, my lady,’ he said with a bow he might give to the equal in rank she suddenly sounded.

‘Exasperating man,’ she muttered as he left the room to wait in the cramped little corridor over the nobly proportioned room below.

Out in the dark, Luke fought a battle between physical tiredness and feelings he didn’t want to examine. He’d wanted to stay in that neglected room and feel her sleep in his arms. It shocked him to feel so much for the contrary mixture of a woman Chloe had grown into. He’d tried to convince himself for years only his daughter was allowed under his guard and into his heart, but right now it looked like a battle lost.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded in a fierce whisper as she came out of her room and nearly cannoned into him in the gloom.

‘Waiting for you,’ he managed suavely.

He saw something in the depths of her dark eyes when her candle wavered in her shaking hands that said he wasn’t the only one fighting his feelings tonight. He forced himself not to grin like a triumphant boy.

‘Well, don’t,’ she said crossly.

He raised his eyebrows and let some of the passion he felt for her show as their eyes met.

‘Verity is ten years old, my lord, and has a right to all I am. I won’t accept a lover when my daughter would be harmed by association, so waiting for me to do so will only waste your time and energy you need for the obligations ahead of you.’

‘I’m here to escort you to Virginia’s bedchamber.’

‘Where I don’t belong,’ she said to herself as much as him.

‘Where you will be doing me a favour I should not permit, considering you’re so tired yourself,’ he corrected.

‘I didn’t ride all the way from Northumberland in the depths of winter.’

‘And I wasn’t here to nurse Virginia through her last illness, but if we’re not to be caught in a tryst and forced into wedlock, Mrs Wheaton, it’s about time we quit this draughty corridor and got on with all that needs doing.’

Chloe sniffed a very expressive sniff of reproach, yet something else lurked behind her coolly composed look. The thought of what Virginia would make of them standing here like a pair of star-crossed lovers unwilling to say goodnight hung unspoken in the air between them and made him flinch.

His beloved but infuriating great-aunt would be planning their wedding before one more late and reluctant January dawn had passed. Virginia usually opposed misalliances and a viscount and a housekeeper were one of those many times over, but something told him she would have been delighted if they ever found the courage to defy convention and wed. So what did Virginia know about the woman he didn’t?

‘I am going to sit with my beloved late employer and friend and you are going to sleep, my lord, and that is all,’ Chloe said sternly and he let her lead the way while he struggled with puzzlement and weariness and did as he was bid for once in his life.

* * *

The next morning was bright and frosty with a sky as clear and delicate a blue as the flower of a mountain harebell. Chloe finished drying her hair by the fire Lord Farenze had ordered to be lit in her room and told herself she hadn’t really needed the bath he ordered after she spent half the night nodding in a comfortable chair in the late viscountess’s bedchamber. Even so, it felt good to be clean and new vitality sparked through her along with the crackle of electricity in her heavy auburn hair. She really ought to have it cut, but it had been easier and cheaper to let it grow so ridiculously long she could sit on it when it hung down her back.

It seemed wrong she should feel vital and alive, today of all days, and she looked at the frosty scene outside the window and let herself be sad Virginia wasn’t here to see the rolling hillsides wrapped in sparkling crystal, or the dark bare branches of the trees in the wood that couldn’t quite hide the brave snowdrops flowering in the sheltered hollows. She almost heard the words as if Virginia put them straight in her heart.

Don’t mourn me, Chloe; after sixteen years without my love we’ll never be apart again.

If she took that last piece of advice she could glory in the morning and forget the future until the funeral was over and the will read. Impatient of the last damp strand of hair, she wound it into the heavy knot she usually confined it to, but left out some of the pins that would have screwed it back from her face and made it possible to wear the all-enveloping housekeeper’s bonnet she’d bought herself behind Virginia’s back.

Today she’d restricted herself to the frivolous piece of lawn and lace her late mistress had reluctantly allowed became a companion and let herself be the girl who shared Virginia’s lonelier years again. She recalled her employer saying she wanted bright faces about her, not a death’s head got up to fright babies when Verity took one look at her mama in her first all-enveloping cap and burst into tears.

Mrs Winterley would send her a hard-eyed glare for being a housekeeper got up as a lady today, but Chloe owed Virginia one last glimpse of the light-hearted girl she would have had her be, if she could spoil her and Verity as she wanted. There would be little enough cause to be anyone but her mature and sensible self once she took a post in another household.

She tiptoed down the secondary staircase the architect ordered for less important visitors lodged in her corridor of this grand house and wondered who she was being quiet for. Lord Farenze was up and being his usual lordly self, Miss Eve Winterley was downstairs and Verity had begged to be allowed an early morning ride with the grooms, before anyone else was awake to forbid it on this solemn day.

‘Mr Filkin says horses need exercise whatever the day brings and I might as well help with the ponies as lie a-bed fretting,’ she reported when she came in to ask if she could go and change into her habit.

‘Be sure to come back by the nursery stairs though, love. I doubt his lordship’s stepmama would approve of you careering about the countryside today.’

‘She’s an old misery and his lordship won’t listen to her,’ Verity claimed confidently and Chloe wondered how Luke Winterley had made such a favourable impression on her daughter in such a short time.

She felt beleaguered; the indoor staff adored him; the stable boys and grooms were always full of tales about his horsemanship and now Verity appeared very ready to admire him as well. He sounded as if he’d been reckless and outrageously lucky to live through most of the incidents she’d heard related and she frowned and wondered what manner of man he’d be now if he hadn’t made such a disastrous early marriage. A happy one, she decided gloomily.

She snatched up the old cloak she kept in the flower room and stepped out into the winter sunshine to escape the house and her duties for a few precious moments. How unworthy of her to find the idea of Lord Farenze happily wed and content with his wife depressing, rather than wishing him better luck next time.

‘Dratted man,’ she muttered under her breath as she marched towards the Winter Garden. ‘Why does he have to disturb me so deeply?’ she asked the statue of some god among the frost-rimed box and the few brave winter flowers hiding their heads under frozen leaves this morning. ‘For years he pretends I don’t exist, now he’s back and I’m wasting time dreaming about him all over again.’

The statue stared into the parkland as if silently slumbering winter trees made more sense than she did and Chloe suppressed a childish urge to kick him.

‘Men!’ she informed it, glad nobody could hear her. ‘You vex women with your ridiculous arguments, pretend logic and stupid longings, then you swat us aside like annoying insects and walk away. How the devil does the contrary great idiot expect me to carry on as if nothing happened now? Does he think we can act as if he never saw me sitting in that bed staring at him like a besotted schoolgirl or came to rescue me from my nightmares? Oh, I’m sorry, you’re a man, aren’t you? Or at least you would be if you were real. Then you’d huff and puff like the rest of them and drive us all mad before you stamped off to roam about the country shooting innocent animals or riding your poor horses into the ground until you felt better.’

‘He might do, if he wasn’t made of stone,’ Luke Winterley’s deep voice said from far too close for comfort and Chloe refused to turn round and blush at being caught talking to a piece of stone. ‘Otherwise you would probably be quite right, of course.’

‘You should still be asleep,’ she told him crossly.

‘Lucky I’m not then, for this would be the oddest dream I’ve ever had,’ he told her with a lazy grin.

She wanted to walk into his arms and kiss him good morning so badly she had to swing away and march down the nearest path away from him to stop herself doing exactly that.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, following and putting out a hand to prevent her walking straight into a sacking-shrouded potted plant the gardeners had wrapped up for winter.

‘I’m counting to a hundred,’ she told him between clenched teeth.

‘Isn’t it supposed to be ten?’

‘With you ten is never enough.’

‘Oh dear, that bad, am I?’

‘Worse,’ she bit out.

She would not turn round at the warm rumble of his laughter; refused to feel warmed and soothed into good humour because she’d amused him at this saddest of times. Half of her might want to be in his arms so badly she could almost feel his warmth and strength wrapping her up again; more than half if she was honest, but dishonesty was safer.

‘Leave me be, my lord.’

‘No, you spend far too much time alone already,’ he said impatiently, as if it was her fault her role in his household demanded a certain aloofness of her.

‘And you shut yourself up in that northern fortress of yours years ago and did your best to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist, so you have no room to talk.’