Regency Scandals: High Seas To High Society / Masquerading Mistress

Lucinda paled noticeably. ‘Married with four children?’

She gawped. ‘But he hardly looked old enough.’

‘Oh, people are always saying that to him. Are they not, Aunt?’ Desperation lent her voice credence and she was pleased to see Miriam nod vigorously. ‘Perhaps in the dark you did not see him properly.’

The Duke of Carisbrook’s face was inscrutable, though his sister insisted on some recompense. ‘We are going to Falder next week, Asher. Could we not invite the Countess and her niece? As a means of saying thank you.’

Emerald’s heartbeat accelerated at the question.

‘Indeed.’ His reply could hardly have held less of a welcome, but, seeing the glimmer of opportunity, she seized upon it.

‘We would be delighted to visit your home, Lady Lucinda. Why, I could hardly think of anywhere I should rather go.’

A way into Falder. A first unexpected providence. And although Emerald wished that he could have shown more enthusiasm for the promise of their company, she was not daunted. One night. That was all it would take.

‘And your cousin, Liam Kingston, would be most welcome,’ Lucinda added, ‘for I should deem it an honour to thank him for his assistance in person.’ She gripped her brother’s arm in entreaty and Asher Wellingham inclined his head in response.

‘Bring him along by all means, Lady Emma, for a man who can dispose so summarily of the Earl of Westleigh and deliver my sister home without recompense is to be much admired.’

The thought did cross Emerald’s mind that his voice had an odd edge of question to it but she couldn’t be certain, for he did not look at her again before gathering his sister’s hand into his own and politely bidding them goodbye.

As they heard his carriage pull away, Miriam began to smile. ‘I would say that went very well, would you not, my dear? Aye, very well indeed.’

Emerald crossed to the window and looked out.

Very well?

She wondered if her aunt needed new glasses and smiled at the thought before gingerly touching her own throbbing cheekbone.

‘What do you know about the Countess of Haversham, Jack?’ Asher leaned back in a chair in his library and drew on his cigar. He’d barely managed an hour of sleep last night but, with his body mellow with brandy, the peace here was pleasant. For just a moment the familiar anger that haunted him was quieter.

‘Her husband, Matthew, died from heart failure five years back and it was said that his gambling debts were substantial.’

‘So the Countess sold off the furniture to pay her creditors?’

‘She what?’

‘Sold off the furniture. I was at the Haversham town house in Park Street this morning and there were three chairs and a table in one room and little else in any of the others.’

Jack leant forward, intrigued. ‘That explains the gowns they wear then. And the niece’s hairstyle. Home-done, I would wager, and by her very own hand, though there was something Tony Formison told me yesterday that did not ring true. He said that Lady Emma had not come down from the country at all, but had arrived a few months ago aboard one of his father’s ships with two black servants and a number of very heavy-looking chests.’

Asher began to laugh. The books he had seen in the drawing room? They were hers? ‘Formison was on the docks when she arrived?’

‘Aye, and he said that he could have sworn her hair was longer.’

‘Longer?’

‘To her waist according to Tony, and looking nothing like it appears to now.’ He stood and retrieved his hat from the table beside him, bending to look at the label on the bottle as he did so. ‘It’s late and long past the time that I should have been home, but you always have such fine brandy, Asher. Where’s this one from?’

‘From the Charente in France.’

‘A boon from your last trip?’

Asher nodded. ‘I’ll have some sent to you, but in return I want you to find out from Formison exactly where the boat that brought Emma Seaton to London came in from. Which port and which month.’

Jack’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Ask discreetly and in the name of precaution, for I don’t want problems resulting from this information.’

‘Problems for Emma Seaton or problems for yourself? I thought you seemed rather taken by her at my ball.’

‘You misinterpret things, Jack. I put my arms out and caught her as she threw herself against me. Hard, I might add, and with none of the wiles that I am more used to. Before she had even hit the floor she had her eyes open; there was a calculation there that might be construed as unnerving.’

Jack began to laugh. ‘You’re saying she may have done it on purpose?’

‘I doubt I’ll ever know, though a betting man would have to say that the odds were more than even.’ The humour faded quickly from his eyes as he continued. ‘Besides, I am too old to fall for the tricks of a green and simpering country miss.’

‘You’re thirty-one and hardly over the hill and Lady Emma is … different from the others … less readable. If you are not interested in her, then I sure as hell am.’

‘No!’ Asher was as surprised by the emotion in the word as Jack was, and to hide it he collected the remains of the brandy and corked the top. ‘For the road,’ he muttered as he handed the bottle to him, swearing quietly as the door shut behind his departing friend.

Emma Seaton.

Who exactly was she? For the first time in a very long while a sense of interest welled to banish the ennui that had overcome him after Melanie’s death.

Melanie.

His wife.

He fingered the ring that he wore on his little finger, the sapphires wrought in gold the exact shade of eyes he would never see again. Her wedding ring. His glance automatically went to the missing digits of his other hand. With good came bad.

He frowned and remembered his return to England after a good fourteen months of captivity. Any innocence he might have been left with had been easily stripped away. He was different. Harder. He could see it reflected in the face of his brother and in the eyes of his mother and aunt. Even his impetuous sister was afraid, sometimes, of him.

Running his hand through his hair, he frowned. Brandy made him introspective. And Emma Seaton touched him in places that he had long thought of as dead.

It was the look in her eyes, he decided, and the husky timbre of her voice when she forgot the higher whine. She gave the impression of a frail and fragile woman, yet when she had fallen against him at the ball he had felt an athletic and toned strength. The sort of strength that only came with exercise or hard work.

He was certain that the mishap had been deliberate and he tried to remember who else had been standing beside him. Lance Armitage and Jack’s father John Derrick, older men with years of responsibility and solid morality behind them. Nay, it was him she had targeted and now he had asked her to Falder.

On cue?

No, that could not possibly be. He was seeing problems where none existed. The woman was scared of her own shadow, for God’s sake, and unusually clumsy. She was also threadbare poor. A wilder thought surfaced. Was she after the Carisbrook fortune? A gold digger with a new and novel way of bagging her quarry? He remembered the countless women who had tried to snare him since Melanie’s death.

Lord, he thought and lifted a candlestick from the mantelpiece before opening the door and striking out for the music room. Melanie’s piano stood in a raft of moonlight, the black and white keys strangely juxtaposed between shadows. Leaning against the mahogany, he pressed a single note and it sounded out against the silence, a mellow echo of vibration lost in darkness.

Like he was lost, he thought suddenly, before dismissing the notion altogether. He was the head of the Carisbrook family and everybody depended on him. If he faltered …? No, he could not even think of the notion of faltering. Carefully he replaced the lid of the piano across the keys. Dust had collected upon the hinges and had bedded into the intricate inlaid walnut that spelled out his wife’s initials.

Ash unto ash, dust unto dust.

Tomorrow he would inform his housekeeper to instruct the staff to clean the music room again. It had been too long since he had forbidden its use to anyone save himself. And his wife would have abhorred the fact that her prized piano had sat unplayed for all these years.

Still, he could not quite leave the room, an essence of something elusive on the very edges of his logic.

Something to do with Emma Seaton. Her turquoise eyes. The scar. The sound of laughter against the sea.

The sea?

Was he going mad? He crossed to the window. Outside the night was still. Dark. Cold. And the cloud that covered the moon made his leg ache, shattered bone healed badly into fragments.

Fragments.

They were all that was left of him sometimes, a shaky mosaic of loss and regret.

‘God,’ he whispered into the night. ‘I am becoming as maudlin as my mother.’ Blowing out the candle, he resolved to find some solace in his library. At least till the dawn when he could sleep.

Azziz returned to the house in Park Street just before midnight, and Emerald hoped that this time he had been careful to scour the neighbouring roads to make certain he was unobserved.

‘I have heard word on the docks that McIlverray is on his way to London, Emmie.’

‘Then he knows about the cane—why else would he come?’ She frowned; this news put a whole different perspective on everything. Karl McIlverray, her father’s first mate, was as corrupt as he was clever and had a band of loyal men who followed him blindly. Any intelligence circulating the docks of Kingston Town usually ended up in his ears and Karl McIlverray had been with her father long enough to put two and two together. He would know exactly what was inside the cane.

Damn, it was getting more and more complicated and she wished for the thousandth time that her father had kept the treasure in the vault of a bank or in a safe where it could have been more easily accessed.

Time. It was slipping away from her.

How long before he arrives?’

‘A week or even ten days—the storms out in the Atlantic might slow them down, if we are lucky. I’ll leave a man in place to make certain we see them before they see us.’

‘And you?’

‘Toro and I will come to Falder. We can camp somewhere close and keep an eye on things.’

Emerald was not certain as to the merits of the plan for they would be easily seen in the English countryside around the house. But if McIlverray came, she would need to be able to summon help, and quickly. She imagined the aristocratic Carisbrook family coming face to face with any of them and her heart pounded. And if someone innocent got hurt because of her …! She could not finish.

She had to be in and out of Falder quickly and on a boat back to Jamaica, making sure in the interim that Karl McIlverray had word of her movements. Another more worrying thought occurred to her.

‘What if the cane is back here in London?’

Azziz frowned. ‘It wasn’t in the house a month ago when Toro and I searched it.’

‘But he may have brought it with him this time. The limp still troubles him.’

‘Have you seen him use a cane at all in public?’

‘No.’ She began to smile. ‘And I do not think that he would. Each time I have been in his company he is careful that others may not notice the ailment. A cane would only draw their attention to what he seeks to hide.’

Privacy. Sanctuary. She sensed these things were important to the enigmatic Duke of Carisbrook and her spirits lifted.

‘Miriam and I are due to leave for Falder soon and I can search the house easily under the cover of night.’

‘The Duke of Carisbrook does not strike me as a man who could be easily fooled.’

‘How does he strike you then?’

‘Tough. Dangerous. Ruthless. A man who would have little time for lies.’

‘Then I must be out of Falder before he knows them as such.’

‘Do not underestimate him, Emmie.’

‘You are beginning to sound like Miriam.’ She smiled and laid her hand on his arm, her fingers tightening as she remembered all the other times in her life she had depended on Azziz. If she lost him too …? If anything went terribly wrong …? As she tried to banish fear she was consumed by sadness. When was the last time that she had taken a breath in joy and let all of it out again?

She could barely remember.

Her father’s death, Miriam’s agedness, and a debt that was increasing with each and every passing day. She could go neither backwards nor forwards and the options of anything else were fast shrinking. What happened to people who ran out of money in London? She shook her head in fright.

The poorhouse took them.

The place of liars and cheats.

A liar. It was who she had become. If she could find the map, she could fashion a home. Not a grand one, but a for-ever place. A place to stay and grow and be. A place like St Clair. She closed her eyes against the pure thread of desperation that snaked itself around her heart, because she knew that the old house was gone, up in flames, the living embodiment of the McIlverray hatred for her father. And grounded perhaps on a sense of justice, for Beau had promised Karl McIlverray far more than he had ever delivered.

She let out her breath. Beau had promised everyone more than he had ever delivered and she needed to make it right.

Right?

If she hadn’t been so worried, she might have smiled at the thought. Right? Wrong? Good? Bad? She remembered Beau’s interpretation of law and doubted that Asher Wellingham’s would be even remotely similar. Enormous wealth and righteous morals were easy when you were not staring down the barrel of a gun and saying what you thought the bearer would most like to hear.

Lies and deception.

It was all that she was left with as truth withered under the harsher face of reality.

Azziz pulled his blade from the leather sheath at his shin and wiped it with an oiled rag from his pocket. The movement caught her attention.

The sheer danger of it all was no longer as exhilarating as it had once been. Now, instead of seeing the adventure in everything she saw the pitfalls, and an encounter with McIlverray worried her a lot more than she allowed Azziz to see that it did.

Was she growing old?

Twenty-one … twenty-two in six months. Sometimes now she caught herself looking across at other women her age as they walked the streets with husbands and children at their side.

She tried to remember what her own mother had looked like, tried to remember the touch of her hand or the cadence of her voice and came up with nothing.

Nothing. The emptiness of memory caught at her with a surprising melancholy. To distract herself, she began to speak of the entertainment for the following night.

‘There is a party at the Bishop of Kingseat’s that I am indebted to attend. Lady Flora has been generous in her friendship …’ She faltered.

‘Will Carisbrook be there?’

‘I think so.’

‘Miriam said he seemed interested in you. If he should find out even a little—’

‘I know,’ she interrupted Azziz before he went further and was glad when he left the room for the kitchens on the ground floor to find his supper.

Chapter Four

At a gathering at the home of the Bishop of Kingseat the following evening, Asher again met Emma Seaton. The result, he suspected, of their encounter at Jack’s ball and the host’s wife’s penchant for matchmaking. If he had liked the Learys less he might have left on some simple pretence, but George had been a good friend to his father and Flora was a woman of uncommon sensitivity.

Today, as Flora Leary turned to attend to a question another guest had asked of her, Emma Seaton looked rather nervous. Asher saw that the lace on the top of one of her gloves had been badly mended and that the gown she wore was at least a size too big. The colour was odd too. Off-brown and faded in patches. None of this seemed to faze her, though, and her confidence in a room full of well-dressed ladies was endearing. The bruise on her cheek was barely visible today.

‘Lady Emma. You look well.’

‘Thank you, your Grace.’ Folding down the sleeve of her gown to cover the torn lace, she took a sip of the orgeat she was drinking. ‘I was certain that Lady Flora had mentioned just a small gathering?’

He looked up. Only forty or fifty people milled around the salon.

‘At Falder a little supper would constitute thrice this number,’ he remarked and she coloured. But it was not embarrassment that he saw in her eyes when she met his glance, but irritation.

Sea blue.

Her eyes were turquoise and outlined with a clear sea blue. Here in the light it was easy to see today that which he had missed yesterday.

‘My family was a quiet and modest one. My father was religious, you see. Very religious. And time spent in the company of others was time that he could not spend in prayer.’

‘A devout man, then?’

She nodded and fiddled with the fan she held. ‘With an equally devout family.’

‘You are Catholic?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Catholic? The persuasion of your beliefs?’

‘Oh, indeed.’

‘And which church do you attend in London?’

The fan dropped out of her hands and onto the floor, surprising them both. As he leaned down to fetch it for her, she did the same and her bodice dipped in the middle.

She wore nothing beneath. No stays. No chemise. No bindings. Two beautifully formed breasts topped with rosy nipples fell into his sight and were gone again as she righted herself.

He felt his body jolt in a way he had not felt for years and shifted his position to better accommodate the hardening between his thighs. God, he was at the house of a bishop and the woman next to him was completely naked under her ill-fitting dress. He could barely believe it. Heat and lust made the cravat he wore feel tight and he was annoyed when Charlotte Withers, a woman whose company he had once enjoyed, came over to him.

‘It has been an age, your Grace, since I have seen you in London. I had heard that you were here and I suppose on reflection you were down for Henshaws’ ball. The evening before last, was it not, and all the gossip of how the Duke of Carisbrook was cajoled into falling for the wiles of a green and fainting country miss.’

‘Not a faint, but a fall,’ he returned and moved forward, pleased to see a blush mark Charlotte’s cheeks when she saw who stood next to him.

‘Lady Emma! I did not realise you were here and I apologise for any hurt you may have suffered from my careless remarks. Are you quite recovered from your mishap?’

‘I am and I thank you for your concern.’ Emma Seaton’s reply contained no little amount of irony.

‘Your accent eludes me,’ Charlotte remarked as she recovered her equilibrium. ‘Where exactly are you from?’

‘My mother was French.’

Asher frowned. She had answered another question without telling anyone anything.

‘So it is your father who is related to the Countess of Haversham?

‘Was. He died last year from the influenza. A wicked case it was, too, according to the doctor; it took him a long time to succumb to the effects of the infection. One moment hot and the next cold. Why, I pray nightly to the Lord above that I should not see another soul die in such a way.’

‘Yes. Quite.’ Charlotte looked away to the riper pickings of Percy Davies who had come to her other side and Asher, while silently applauding Emma Seaton’s skilful evasion, decided to up the stakes a little.

‘Charlotte Withers is a notorious gossip and an inveterate meddler. If you were to entrust any secrets to her I am certain that they should be all over town by the morning.’

As the colour drained out of Emerald’s cheeks, the smile he gave her was guarded.

Could he be warning her? For just a second she wanted to fold her fingers around his and pretend that he offered protection. Here. In London, where each battle was carried out with words and sly innuendos. Where the people said one thing and meant another. She didn’t understand them. That was the trouble. She had come to England woefully unprepared and desperately different. It showed in her accent, in her clothes, in the way she walked and moved and sat.

Pity.

She had seen it written all over his handsome face as his glance had brushed over the torn lace on her glove and the generous fitting of her gown. Pity for a woman who, when compared with the other refined beauties, personified by the likes of Lady Charlotte, fared very badly. Gathering her scattered wits, she tried to regroup.

‘Secrets?’

‘My sources say you arrived in England not from the country, but from Jamaica?’

She laughed, congratulating herself on the inconsequential and tinkling sound. ‘And they would be right. I came back to England after sorting out my father’s possessions when he died, and setting his affairs into order.’

‘Your father was a scholar?’

A scholar? Oh God, what was he referring to now? And just who were his sources? She was pleased when Lord Henshaw caught her attention.

‘Lady Emma. Are you feeling better?’

‘Yes. Very much better, thank you.’ Such a polite society, Emerald thought, as she gave him her answer. Such a lot unsaid beneath every question. She pulled her fingers away and laid her hands against the voluminous skirt of her gown.

‘Did you hear of Stephen Eaton’s problem the other night, Asher? He met with footpads by the dockside and has a wicked lump on his head. The local constabulary are out in force to try to find the culprits. Word is that it’s a shocking state of affairs when a gentleman cannot even ride around London without being robbed and beaten.’

‘He is saying he was robbed?’

‘Yes, though I cannot work out for the life of me what he was doing at that time and in that part of London, given he had left my ball only an hour or so earlier. His watch and pistol were taken and a ring he wore upon his hand that was a family heirloom. Diamonds, I think. He plans to spend the next few months abroad to recover from the assault, his mother says. I saw her this morning.’

‘A fine scheme. I hope he takes his time to make a full recuperation. If you see his parents, do acquaint them with my sentiments, and say that I was asking after him.’ Pure steel coated his words.

‘I will do just that. Does your sister know of his mishap?’

‘My sister?’

‘Lucinda. She has danced with him at several parties and I thought perhaps there was a special friendship …’

Jack’s voice tailed off. Emerald was certain that he had just put it all together and also deduced that this was neither the time nor the place to discuss such things. She saw him chance a quick look at Charlotte Withers behind him before he changed the subject entirely.

‘My oldest sister was hoping to visit Annabelle Graveson next month, Asher. How is she keeping.’

‘Very well.’ His tone was amused as he finished off his drink. ‘You will meet the Gravesons this weekend at Falder, Lady Emma.’

‘Are they relatives, your Grace?’

‘No. Annabelle Graveson was married to my father’s friend. When he died, he asked me to watch over the affairs of his wife and son.’

Jack Henshaw joined in the conversation. ‘The old Duke was a philanthropist and Asher has inherited his own bevy of needy folk.’

Asher said nothing, but Emerald could tell that he was not happy at his friend’s summation of duty. Interesting, she thought, for a man who professed to caring for little as he held the world at bay.

Looking around, she noticed an attractive dark-haired woman whose eyes were fastened on the Duke of Carisbrook, but if he felt her regard he gave no indication of it as he leant towards her as if to shelter his words from the others around them.