Regency Scandals: High Seas To High Society / Masquerading Mistress

To set foot on a ship again. To ride in the winds of a wide-open sea with the smell of salt and adventure close to the bone. To climb up the rigging of an eighty-foot mast and hang suspended against the blueness of a horizon that stretched for ever.

A voice calling to them brought her from her thoughts and she looked around to see a man hurrying forward.

‘I had hoped to see you here today, your Grace,’ he said when he was upon them. ‘There was a break-in on the Nautilus last night, though from what I can gather nothing was taken. But the lock on the main cabin door was forced and a few papers shifted.’

‘Did anyone see anything untoward?’

‘No, nothing. Davis heard noises after midnight and thought it was me checking on the ropes.’

‘Set a double shift tonight, then,’ Asher ordered, ‘and have Silas bring his dog back on board.’

Emerald stiffened as his eyes raked across her and again she felt some sense of complicity and an uncertainty that was hard to pin down. Had Azziz and Toro frisked the ship already? It could well be possible. She had determined to contact them tonight and let them know of the new plans Asher Wellingham had set in place to guard his ship when the arrival of a beautifully dressed woman in her forties made her turn. At her side there walked a boy, his eyes firmly fixed on Lucinda.

‘I didn’t realise that you would be up for the week, Asher.’ The woman smiled, looking at Emerald and waiting for an introduction.

‘Lady Emma Seaton, meet Lady Annabelle Graveson and her son, Rodney. Emma is newly come to London to stay with her aunt, the Countess of Haversham.’

‘Miriam of Haversham?’ Her glance sharpened on the locket around Emerald’s neck; if she had been pale before, now she was even more so.

‘You are her niece?’ Her fingers pulled at the lace around her collar before her eyes rolled up and she fell into the arms of Asher Wellingham.

Again, Emerald thought.

How tiring it must be to for ever have collapsing women swoon around you. This faint, however, hardly looked like the one she had pretended in the Henshaw ballroom. It was obvious that Annabelle Graveson was truly ill for her face had taken on a greenish-grey pallor and sweat covered her brow.

Asher Wellingham hardly seemed fazed as he lifted the woman up effortlessly and led the small contingent into the inn, where a space was cleared on a cushioned seat.

‘Fetch some water and give us some room,’ he ordered and the innkeeper wasted no time in doing as he was bid.

Rodney stood at the foot of his mother’s makeshift bed. ‘She said that she felt ill this morning, but I didn’t think she meant this ill.’ Emerald noticed Lucy’s hand resting on his shoulder, trying to give him comfort and almost laughed.

This ill?

The woman was probably just hot or the stays binding her stick-thin waist were too tight. Already she was coming to. She thought back to the aftermath of battles aboard the Mariposa when sailors had sat in silence against the bulwarks and nursed broken bones. Or worse.

But this was England, she reminded herself, where a faint still retained an important place in the whole scheme of things. A vivid reminder of the place of fragile women.

She watched as the woman sat herself up and wiped her brow and upper lip with a delicate hanky she had extracted from the sleeve at her wrist.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said, repeating it over again as she looked around the group. ‘I said to Rodney this morning that I was not feeling up to a jaunt into the village. My stomach, you understand. It is rather unpredictable and yesterday the cook served a strong soup that I can only surmise was badly made. Old meat, if I were to hazard a guess, or fungi plucked from a place it should not have been. Rodney, where are you?’

‘I am here, Mama.’ He did not move and Emerald looked away when she perceived that both Annabelle Graveson and her son were watching her, their blue eyes a mirror copy of each other’s.

Asher, as usual, had taken charge, ordering large platters of food and wine and making certain that Taris was aware of the fare that was placed before him. Glancing across the room, she saw a group of young men looking her way, but the scorching glance of the Duke of Carisbrook discouraged them.

She almost smiled. How easy it must be to slip into the role of a protected woman.

How simply easy.

Lucinda. Annabelle Graveson. They let him take charge without even noticing what they had given up.

‘Are you at Falder for long, Lady Emma?’ Rodney Graveson was sitting on her left side, next to Lucinda.

‘For a week. My aunt, the Countess of Haversham, is here, too, but she has been laid low by a cough and has taken to her bed. Perhaps you know of her—your mother seems to.’

‘Mama seldom travels outside of Thornfield these days, but I have heard her mention that name.’

He blushed, his fair hair standing out against the colour, but he did not look away and Emerald liked him for it. Once, years ago, she too had been cursed with such shyness and Rodney Graveson seemed like a kindred spirit and in desperate need of friendship. Looking up, she caught Annabelle Graveson watching her.

‘What is it you are speaking of with Lady Emma, Rodney?’ Her voice was high and the colour in her cheeks was better.

‘He was just asking me how long I planned to be here for, Lady Annabelle.’

‘Oh, I see. And your answer?’

‘Seven days, I think.’

‘Then we shall have you over to Longacres for dinner next Sunday. Asher will bring you. About six.’

She did not ask the others at the table, which struck Emerald as both odd and rather impolite, and the Duke of Carisbrook’s perfunctory nod was such that she wondered if he meant to honour the invitation at all, but as she felt the squeeze of Rodney Graveson’s hand against her own beneath the table she was touched by his gesture and hoped that it would be possible to go.

Two hours later, after saying goodbye to the others Emerald sat on Hercules and picked her way down the incline behind Asher Wellingham on his tall black stallion. Lucy had stayed in Thornfield with the Gravesons and Taris had met a friend at the tavern and had decided to embark on a game of chess. Emerald wondered whether the whole thing had been a set-up, for Asher Wellingham seemed very keen on riding back with her and left as soon as the first opportunity presented itself. She also wondered as to the propriety of being alone with him, but dismissed that notion with indifference. Her reputation here was unimportant—she would be gone from England as soon as she found the cane.

The sea lay before them and, licking her lips, she could taste the salt. Here the sand was not fine and white, but grey and coarse, the pebbles mulched by the movement of this lonely, lovely coast. The sea. Her heart sang at the joy of being beside it again. If this was my home, she thought, I should never leave it.

After the warning at breakfast Asher Wellingham had seemed withdrawn and quiet. He did not tarry or offer her any explanation of beaches, cliffs or field.

His land, she thought.

If he loved Falder, it was not obvious.

‘What is the peninsula in the distance?’ she asked as the sun lit up a long low tongue of land to their left.

‘The Eddington Finger,’ he said promptly. ‘Though my great-great-grandfather always called it “Return Home Bay.” The last sight of Falder lands as he left the coast, I suppose. He was a sailor with a love for adventure.’

He stopped as they cantered down on to the sand and dismounted and the image of an old duke naming the place made Emerald laugh.

‘What was his name? Your great-great-grandfather’s name,’ she qualified when he looked puzzled.

‘Ashland. My father was Ashborne and his father Ashton, all derivatives of the original family name of Ashalan. It is tradition.’

‘Tradition.’ Longing welled on her face. She was certain he must have seen it and was surprised when he smiled. It made him look younger, as young as he had looked on his ship off Turks Island with the sea winds at his back. As young as the man staring out from the portrait in the small salon with a loving wife on his arm.

Desire snaked through caution and she was shocked by the heavy hammering of her heart. She, who had been around men all her life. Handsome men. Dangerous men. But none like this one. None who had haunted her dreams for five long years with his velvet eyes and night-black hair. None who spoke of a family name that they could trace back through the generations and whose ancestral seat rivalled that of any lord of the realm.

Responsibility and place.

A combination that became all the more appealing with the land of his birth at his back and the full blue day upon his face. Her own shifting lifestyle completed the equation. What must it be like to have your children run in the same fields as their children and their children’s children? Oh, tradition was sweet when you had never had it.

The silence between them stretched in an endless vacuum as he helped her dismount and she felt a breathless shiver of wonder. Did he feel it too? How could he not? She was shocked at her thoughts, shocked at the sheer bald desire for his touch. Schooling herself to wait as he tethered the horses to a branch, she was surprised at his first question.

‘What were you doing in the blue salon last night, Lady Emma?’

‘Last night?’ She hoped the slight catch in her voice would be interpreted as chagrin rather than the bone-deep fear she was suddenly consumed with.

‘Last night when you slipped through the rooms of my house in the guise of one suspiciously similar to the description my sister gave of Liam Kingston.’ He was very still.

‘I am not certain what you mean.’ With her back against the wall she couldn’t afford to give an inch.

He changed tack, easily. Distrust coated his words and was seen in the hard planes of his face. ‘What is it you want from me?’

‘Want from you? Nothing, your Grace. And there is a simple explanation for last night. I have never slept well since my father’s passing. Sometimes in the dead of night I wander …’

‘Dressed as a boy and moving in and out of the house like a shadow. I think not.’

One hand encircled her wrist and she felt the same bolt of awareness that she was almost becoming used to in his company.

‘Are you a thief?’ he asked quietly, his thumb caressing the sensitive skin at her wrist.

‘No.’ The touch of his breath across the sensitive folds of her neck nearly undid her.

‘A spy, then? Who sent you here?’ His fingers tightened. Not a harsh hold, but a tempered one. She knew he must feel the hammering pulse beneath his fingers.

‘No one.’ She could barely get the words out.

‘I do not believe you, but if you are in trouble I could help.’

It was the last thing she had expected him to say.

He hardly knew her and yet here he was offering his assistance. Another responsibility. Another needy supplicant. Another duty on top of all his other duties. Pride made her shake her head and she saw a distinct flicker of relief.

‘You are a guest here at Falder and my sister would be disappointed, no doubt, if I packed you off before your due date of departure. But if you sleepwalk again, Lady Emma, take warning, for I shall not be as lenient as I have been this time. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Then I’m glad of it.’ Again, his thumb traced the blue veins on the thin skin of her wrist and she felt her world throb. When she looked up, there was muted calculation in his eyes and a worm of worry niggled.

Had he used the caress as a means to an end by underlining his threat with a promise? Admiration surfaced in equal proportions with ire. Such cunning would not be out of place on board the Mariposa, for with it he had gained exactly what he wanted.

And all without raising a finger. She was too much her father’s daughter not to applaud his craftiness.

Taking her reins when he offered them back, she walked her horse down towards the water, the mist of salt enveloping the beach with an opaque whiteness. A wilder bay than she was used to, and colder. Shivering, she bent to pick up a shell and the sound inside as she raised it to her ear was exactly the same as it was at home.

For a second she felt displaced, uncertain, lost in the pull of what had been taken from her, and drawn to the man who now came to stand beside her, his cheeks lightly spattered with the mist of ocean. If she had been braver, she might have leant forward and touched the wetness, felt the swell of cheek beneath her fingers, and understood what it was that she could now only guess at. But she was not brave. Not like that. Not here with the wide brim of her hat tugging in the wind and the fullness of her riding skirt unfamiliar around her legs.

Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

She recited the word over again and again beneath her breath, trying to incite some sort of sense in her actions. Trying to make herself step back from him, out of reach, out of harm, out of temptation. But when his thumb came up to caress the sensitive skin on her bottom lip, she closed her eyes and just felt.

For once.

For this once.

For the time it took to run her tongue across the length of skin and bring his flesh into her mouth.

‘Lord, what you do to me.’ The darkness in his eyes was bottomless as his lips slanted down across her own, the hunger in them easily definable in the afternoon grey. Just the two of them with the damp rivulets of water running beneath her feet, and the green lands of England all around. Just the two of them coming together along the full lines of their bodies and pressing hard.

And then there was nothing.

No today or yesterday, or tomorrow with its sharp uncertainty.

Just him. Just the warmth of skin against the cool of the rain and the burning fiery want that consumed her. She did not notice when he cast aside her hat, loosening the curls to his touch. All she knew was urgency and want and need.

A man’s touch. On her woman’s body. The living reality of her countless dreams. She felt the puckering of her nipples and the clench of an almost-pain between her legs.

More. More.

Everything, she longed to whisper, everything, and when he drew away she tried to hold on, tried to take his mouth in the same way that he had taken hers, but he stopped her simply by pulling her against him, head firm beneath his chin, fitting well into the spaces of his body.

‘Emma.’ Whispered. Barely there.

The frantic beat of his heart against his throat told her that he was as affected as she was. Not all onesided, then, not all her fault. She could not find it in herself to raise her eyes to his.

‘I’m sorry. That should not have happened.’ His voice was husky. ‘There is no excuse at all. I should not have—’ He stopped and the shrill cry of a gull could be heard over the silence.

He was sorry? She stiffened. An apology. For this?

Every man she had ever known in her life would have taken what it was she had just offered and be damned with what happened next. But not Asher Wellingham. No, not him. Confusion ripped through guilt and sheer embarrassment chased hard on the heels of that.

Lord. What now? When she felt his hands slacken she stepped back and reached for the bridle, angry at the help she needed to mount and pleased when he did not speak again as he handed her her hat. Did not explain. Did not even try to draw level with her as they cantered along the beach and up into the valley that led to Falder Castle.

Gaining her room she laid her head back against the solidness of the portal and tried to catch her breath, lost in the run up from the stables. Her breathing was closer to normal when she opened the connecting door to see Miriam sitting in a chair by her window, reading a book.

‘Whatever has happened? You look like you have come across a ghost.’

Emerald’s smile was laboured. Hardly a ghost. Asher’s lips still burnt into the recesses of her memory and raised the temperature of everything.

Hot. Scorching. Torrid.

She poured herself some water, watching the drips run jagged against the side of the glass before drinking it all.

‘You seem better, Aunt.’

‘If you could find the cane, Emerald, I’d be better still.’ The sentence was finished on a bout of coughing and Emerald’s worry grew. After her behaviour today, she was uncertain whether the Duke of Carisbrook would even want her to stay till the end of the week and here was her aunt plagued with illness.

Lord, could things get any worse? She shook her head and made herself concentrate on what Miriam was saying.

‘Carisbrook has a map room at the back of the eastern wing. I saw it today when I attempted a walk round the rose garden. Perhaps he has already found the map, and keeps it there.’

Emerald’s interest was piqued. ‘Near the rose garden you say?’

‘Yes. The Wellingham family mausoleum sits further over to one side. The footman I walked with said that the garden has been laid out in memory of the Duchess of Carisbrook.’

‘Melanie Wellingham is dead and buried at Falder?’

‘She is indeed. The tomb of their son is there too.’

‘A son?’

‘Stillborn at full term three years before she died.’

Death and loss and waste.

The enormity of Miriam’s revelations changed everything. The Duke of Carisbrook had loved his wife. He still loved his wife. The sapphire ring on his finger, the picture in the library and the flower garden, and his self-confessed resistance to being plunged again into the state of holy matrimony—suddenly everything added up, made sense.

She was a small detour in the course of his life. That was all. He was a duke with lands stretching hundreds of miles in every direction and a shipping fleet that plied the world.

He was not for her.

Would never be for her.

She reached into her pocket for the shell she had collected and wished that she could find the map and just go home.

Chapter Seven

He was drunk.

He knew he was by the way the portrait of Melanie that he sat in front of swam in and out of focus. He hated this painting. Hated the sheer memory of it. A brutal reminder of all that he had lost.

He should not have kissed Emma Seaton. Not like that. Not with the raging want in his blood and the sure damned knowledge of duplicity in his head. She was not as she said she was. She was a liar and a would-be thief. She was dangerous to his family. To him. To the world he had spun around himself ever since he had returned home, a slim wedge against chaos. He should kick her out, right now, before the calmer shifts of reason took hold and her turquoise eyes reeled him in like the sirens of Circe, haunting, familiar and undeniably false.

And yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He sighed and leant his head back against the wall wondering just why it was that he couldn’t. Not just the warm willingness of her body or the sharp raw hit of lust that had floored him when her lips had met his. No, there was something else too. Something he had felt unexpectedly as he had held her on the beach against him. Something close and safe and right. Something that took away the cold for ever etched into his very bones and left a question of possibility.

‘I thought that I might find you here. And drinking.’ The heavy censure in Taris’s words jarred his thoughts and Asher closed his eyes against it. Tonight his more usual reserve was lost under the fiery belly of too much whisky.

‘When I was with Emma Seaton today … I forgot Melanie. For just one moment … I forgot her.’

He felt the stillness of his brother rather than saw it, but he was strangely relieved by the confession. Saying the words lessened the strength of them. Tonight he needed absolution.

‘She is a beautiful woman, Asher, and Melanie has been dead for over three years. Why should you not admire her?’

‘Because she’s a liar. Because she was here the other night. Right here. Dressed as a boy. And because I think she and Liam Kingston are one and the same.’

‘Lucinda’s knight in shining armour? The one who bested Stephen Eaton? Lady Emma?’

‘She has a tattoo on the soft skin of her right breast.’

‘A tattoo?’ Intrigue was plain in his brother’s question.

‘Of a butterfly. Done in blue.’

Taris began to laugh.

‘I want her to stay here. At Falder. I want to protect her …’

The laughter abruptly stopped.

‘Someone has hurt her,’ Asher continued and stood, tripping over a low stool in front of him as he did so and veering towards the wall. Leaning against it, he was pleased to regain his balance. ‘And she’s frightened. I can see it in her eyes … sometimes … often … and I can hear it in her voice.’

A clock chimed in the next room and Asher counted the hours. Three o’clock. Two more hours till the dawn and the promise of sleep. Tonight it was all he could do to keep from closing his eyes and let slumber overtake him.

But he mustn’t.

He knew he mustn’t. Not until the dawn when the voices were softer and memory did not cut his equilibrium to the quick.

He slid down the wall, his knees drawn up before him. In defeat. The stubs of his severed fingers rested against his knee and he brought them up into his vision as if seeing them for the first time.

‘Sometimes I can feel these fingers … ghost fingers touching things, feeling things. I used to think they’d gone to the place where Melanie was, a little part of me waiting with her till the rest could follow … and now … I don’t want to follow them.’ As he leant his head back, his eyes went to the uncurtained window, where he could see only an unbroken darkness and he hated the lack of control he could hear in his voice.

‘Melanie would have wanted you to be happy again. Laugh again. Feel again.’

‘Would she?’ He stroked his finger down the thin crystal stem of his glass and almost laughed. ‘I remember once in Scotland when she nearly fell into a raging river and I caught her and pulled her back. She said that if anything ever happened to me, she would be sad for ever. For ever. Such a long time … for ever.’

Taris was quiet. Asher noticed he had removed his glasses and put them into his pocket. Seeing with memory. All that his brother was left with now. Sometimes he hated Beau Sandford with such a passion that it worried him. The smarting scars across his back. Taris’s loss of sight. Even in death the pirate haunted him.

‘Go to sleep, Taris. I will be all right.’

‘I could stay …’

‘No.’

He was pleased when his brother left him to his familiar demons.

Emerald strolled back towards Falder after an early morning walk, and caught sight of a light burning low in the little salon off the library as she mounted the front steps. If Asher Wellingham was already up, she would speak with him about yesterday. She should not have kissed him, should not have been alone with him, could not believe what she had done. She, who had always been so circumspect in dealing with the opposite sex. Well, it needed to stop before she did something she knew she would regret and she meant to tell him so right now.

The Duke of Carisbrook was slumped on the floor when she pushed open the door, his back against the wall and an empty bottle beside him. Taris sat asleep in an armchair. Like a sentinel.

Turning back to Asher, she saw that he watched her, the intensity of his gaze startling. He made no move to stand up; with his cravat askew and with the stubble of a twelve-hour beard upon his face, he looked like some dark and dissolute angel.

‘I am sorry,’ she managed. ‘I saw the light from outside and thought I might speak with you. About yesterday.’

‘Perhaps another time would be better,’ he returned softly, and she was relieved to hear a hint of something akin to humour in his voice.