Seduced by the Scoundrel (14 page)

‘Good evening, ma’am. Would you be requiring a room?’

‘Indeed, and with a private parlour if you have one available.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s just the one bedchamber left—quiet, though on the small side. But all the parlours are taken.’

That would mean dining in the common room. Averil bit her lip—was it better to stay here where the host seemed respectable and she was sure of a room at least, or carry on and risk another inn?

‘The lady may have my rooms,’ a voice said. ‘I have no pressing need for a parlour.’

She was tired and imagining things. Averil turned. A tall naval officer, his cocked hat under his arm exposing his neatly barbered black head, bowed. ‘Your servant,
ma’am. Landlord, please have my traps shifted at once. The bed—’ the amused grey eyes lifted to Averil’s face ‘—has not been slept in.’

‘Captain d’Aunay.’ There was no breath left in her lungs for questions.

‘My pleasure, ma’am.’ He bowed again and walked away without a second glance. The perfect gentleman.

‘Well, that’s all right then,’ the landlord said, his delight at being able to satisfy both customers apparent. ‘I’ll show you up at once, ma’am.’

My pleasure … The bed has not been slept in.
Yet.

‘This was fortunate, miss, the captain being here.’ Waters looked with approval at the meal the servant had set out on the round table in the parlour. ‘Nice rooms, and quiet, too.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ They were ideal, Averil told herself. A trundle bed for Waters to sleep on in the same chamber as herself and no way to the bedchamber except through the parlour door, which had a stout lock on the inside. What did she think was going to happen? That Luc would stroll in, evict her maid and ravish her? Or that she would lose all self-control and go and seek him out? Either was unthinkable.

Averil eyed the door again, wishing she could lock it now, but the servant would be in and out while they were eating and afterwards to clear the table. She would think Averil had run mad if she had to have the door unlocked every time.

‘I didn’t recognise Captain d’Aunay for a moment, miss. Scrubs up well, doesn’t he?’ Waters chatted away. ‘Not that he’ll ever be handsome, exactly, not with that
nose and that stubborn chin. Wasn’t it a coincidence, him being here?’

The girl was not making snide remarks, Averil decided, it was simply her own conscience nagging, telling her that this could not possibly be chance.

‘He is a fighting man, not a courtier,’ she said. ‘Doubtless a prominent nose is no handicap at sea. Eat up, Waters, before your dinner gets cold.’

‘Yes, miss.’ Waters attacked the steak-and-oyster pie with relish. ‘What sort of house has Lord Bradon got, miss?’ she asked after a few minutes.

‘He is the heir, so the properties actually belong to his father, the earl,’ Averil explained, trying to recall the details. ‘There is a large town house in Mayfair and then Kingsbury, the country seat in Buckinghamshire. And I believe there is a shooting box somewhere as well.’

‘And one day you’ll be the countess.’ Waters pursued a piece of carrot round the plate. ‘That’s wonderful, miss.’

‘Yes.’ Indeed it was. Her great-grandfather had sold fruit and vegetables, her grandfather had opened a shop selling tea and coffee and her father had built on that start and become a wealthy merchant with a knighthood. Now he wanted connections and influence in England for his sons, her brothers. Mark and John were not expected to soil their hands with commerce but to become English landed gentry. With her help they would make good marriages, buy estates, become part of the establishment.

Averil had never had to do a hand’s turn of work in her life, only to live in the lap of luxury and become a lady. Now it was her duty to make her contribution to
the family fortunes. But she could not take marriage vows and deceive her new husband.

A tap on the door heralded the servant who cleared the plates and dishes and left an apple tart and a jug of cream in their place. Averil ate, absently listening to Waters’s wistful hopes that Lord Bradon might have a place for her in his establishment.

The door behind creaked open. ‘Thank you, we have finished. You may clear now and bring a pot of tea in about an hour,’ Averil said as she folded her napkin and stood up.

There was no sign of the servant. Luc stood in the open doorway, filling it.

‘C
aptain d’Aunay. Is there something you wish to say to me?’ How calm she sounded. It was as though someone else entirely was speaking, not the woman whose pulse was racing and whose mouth had suddenly lost all moisture.

He smiled and the maid jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll go and—’

‘Stay here, Waters.’ Averil gestured to a chair on one side of the empty fireplace. ‘Sit there, if you please.’

‘Yes, miss.’ Eyes wide, Waters obeyed.

‘I merely wished to see whether you are comfortable, Miss Heydon.’ Uninvited, Luc strolled into the room and let the door swing to behind him. He filled the cosy, slightly shabby, space just as he had dominated the old hospital hut.

‘Perfectly, thank you, Captain. I was on the point of saying to Waters how pleasant it was to have a room to ourselves where we could lock the door.’

‘Indeed, that is why I thought you would like this one.’

‘You would have me believe you selected this especially for me?’ She wished she could sit down, but she would have to invite him to as well and then how would she get him out?

‘Of course. Sir George’s secretary showed me the inns he had noted for the postilions. I thought, given how busy the roads to London from the ports are, that it would be as well to keep an eye on you if I could.’ Luc propped one shoulder against the window frame, quite as comfortable as he would have been in a chair, leaving Averil standing stiffly in the middle of the room.

She sat down and fixed him with a chilly smile. ‘Most kind, but I would hardly wish for your assistance when you have your duties to perform.’

‘How fortunate that pleasure and duty do not conflict,’ Luc said, so smoothly that her fingers itched to wipe the assurance off his face. ‘We made good time to Plymouth, I spoke to the senior officer there and was ordered up to London to report to the Admiralty.’

‘Then should you not be on your way?’

‘I was not required to gallop,’ he said. ‘Merely to present myself with due despatch to their lordships. Would you care for a stroll to take the evening air, Miss Heydon?’

It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse him, but the room was stuffy, she was stiff with sitting and she had a maid with her. A walk would be very welcome. But if Luc thought she would consent to vanish into the woods with him for further, highly educational, dalliance that
would shake her tenuous composure even more, he was much mistaken.

‘Thank you, Captain. That would be delightful.’

Oh, yes, that was precisely what he had thought she would say. It was incredible how those cool grey eyes could heat into sensual invitation.

‘Come along, Waters, fetch your bonnet. And my bonnet and shawl, please.’

‘You think you need protection from me?’ Luc asked softly as the maid went into the bedchamber, leaving them alone.

‘From the moment my feet touched the mainland I think I have re-entered reality. And my reality is one of respectability, Captain.’

‘I see. And you think Lord Bradon will appreciate these geographical boundaries on behaviour?’

‘I have no idea, but I will not insult him by risking being seen behaving in any way that is not proper—not here, where I might be recognised later by one of his acquaintance.’

‘One hopes Lord Bradon appreciates the sensitive honour displayed by his betrothed,’ Luc said as Waters emerged with Averil’s bonnet in her hand, the shawl over her arm. Gloves were one thing that she had not been loaned. It was most unladylike to go out without them, but it could not be helped.

‘Indeed. Honour is such a very subtle subject for gentlemen—so difficult for a lady to decipher.’ She tied her bonnet strings while she spoke and Luc took the shawl from the maid and arranged it around her shoulders, his fingers carefully touching fabric, not skin. The shiver could only come from her imagination.
The ache, as she knew well by now, was sheer wantonness.

When they reached the yard he offered his arm. She placed the tips of her ungloved fingers on it and they strolled towards the street, Waters close on their heels. She was within earshot and Averil intended that she stayed there.

It was an effort not to let her mind run round and round their last encounter, like a squirrel in a cage. ‘This is the first English town I have seen properly,’ she said, determined to pretend it had not happened and this man had not caressed her intimately, brought her wicked delight, seduced her into sin. ‘I did not feel I could walk out in Penzance or Okehampton without an escort. Is it usual for so many buildings to be of stone?’

‘In parts of the country with good building stone, yes,’ Luc said. ‘It is the same in France. Otherwise there are brick or timber-framed houses, like that one. It can change within a few miles, depending on the underlying rock.’ They strolled on a few more paces. ‘The market square,’ Luc observed. ‘An historic feature, I have no doubt. How genteel we sound. I had no idea a small town could provide such innocuous subjects for conversation.’

‘And how fortunate that is,’ Averil returned, studying the open space. ‘Markets in India are very different. On the way we moored at Madras and I visited the market to buy Christmas presents with Lady Perdita and Lord Lyndon. There was a mad dog and Dita saved a child from it—and me, too. Then Lord Lyndon saved Dita.’

The square was warm with evening light and people going about their business. They moved slowly now,
at the end of the working day, stopping to talk with neighbours, to wait for a child’s lagging steps.

‘How calm and ordered this is. I was so afraid in that market, and I did nothing, just allowed myself to be bundled to safety.’ She shivered, seeing a small boy fetching water from the pump, fair-haired and red-cheeked and laughing with his friends, so unlike the small Indian child who had run screaming in terror.

‘And you blame yourself for not being in the right place to act,’ Luc observed. ‘Of course, I have seen how timorous you are, how cowardly, so perhaps you are right.’

‘You are teasing me,’ Averil observed. There was a warmth in his look that told her it was more than teasing. He thought her courageous? Thinking about it, perhaps she had not done so very badly in the face of shipwreck and capture and a fight at sea.

‘As you say,’ he agreed with a chuckle. ‘Where shall we go now?’

‘The church?’ That seemed an innocuous destination. If she had been alone she would have liked to go inside and sit for a while, but she felt awkward asking Luc to wait. ‘Oh. It is very large, is it not? And a tower with those pointed things on the corners. How interesting—this is the first English church I have seen close to.’

She looked over the wall into the churchyard. ‘And so green! In Calcutta, where I used to live in India, there is a big cemetery for the English with massive tombs and dusty paths and trees that look nothing like these at all. And birds and little squirrels and … Oh, dear, I have become quite homesick. How foolish, I thought I had got over that.’

‘Come and sit down.’ Luc led her into the churchyard and found a bench. Waters perched on the edge of a crumbling table tomb and watched Luc with interest.

She finds him attractive,
Averil thought as she caught an errant tear with her handkerchief and straightened her shoulders.
And who am I to blame her?

‘When my mother and I returned to England my English grandfather, the Earl of Marchwood, thought it was best I go to university and then into the church,’ Luc observed. He took off his cocked hat, leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head, stretched out his long legs and gazed up at the tower.

‘Into—you mean, become a clergyman?’ Averil collapsed into unladylike giggles. ‘You?’

‘You have a very unflattering opinion of me, by the sound of it,’ Luc remarked. He appeared lazily indifferent to her mockery. ‘Grandpapa was not best pleased to discover that I held the same rationalist beliefs as my father. By the time he had stopped spluttering and threatening me with hellfire and eternal damnation I had joined the navy.’

‘You are an atheist?’ She had never met one of those dangerous creatures.

‘A sceptic with an open mind,’ he corrected her. ‘I am perfectly comfortable reading services at sea or turning out for church parade. Does that shock you?’

‘No,’ she said and heard herself sound as doubtful as she felt. ‘But you wanted to join the navy?’

‘Not particularly. I wanted to kill revolutionaries. I wanted to kill the people who had taken my father’s life and my home. It was the navy or the army and I found the Admiralty first.’ He shrugged. ‘It was fortunate, I suspect. The navy is far less snobbish about foreigners
without much money than the army is. Now I have the money and it doesn’t matter.’

‘Where did you get it from?’ A most improper question, she knew. Ladies did not discuss money.

‘Prize money and then an inheritance from my mother’s side of the family,’ Luc said. ‘I will need a great deal when I get my hands on my estates again. But there is enough to finance my pleasures very adequately,’ he added, so blandly that Waters, swinging her heels and watching the verger locking the church, did not seem to notice anything untoward.

Luc’s fingers curled around hers and he began to make circles in the palm of her hand. As Averil stiffened and tried to pull away he half turned on the bench so his shoulder was to the maid and lifted her hand to his lips. As she tugged he opened his mouth and sucked the length of her index finger right in.

His mouth was hot and wet and the suction was strong enough to make her gasp and his eyes were sending her the wickedest of messages. Her other fingers were splayed against his face, the evening growth of beard bristling under the sensitive pads. Then she realised what this was mimicking and her cheeks reddened and his lids lowered as if he was in a sensual dream.

Averil tugged again and he closed his teeth, gently. ‘Let me go,’ she demanded. ‘It is indecent!’

He released her and smiled. ‘Such a naughty imagination, Averil,’ he murmured and licked his lips. ‘Whatever can you mean?’

She got to her feet. ‘Waters, come along and stop daydreaming!’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ The girl scrambled down from the tomb and Averil felt a stab of guilt for snapping at her.

‘We must go back now. We have a long day tomorrow. Thank you, Captain d’Aunay, but I am sure we can find our own way to the inn.’

‘You will accept my escort, I hope. My intention is to protect you.’

‘Your intention is to seduce me,’ she hissed as she took his arm. It would create a scene, and questions in Waters’s mind, if she made an issue of walking with Luc.

‘To protect and seduce,’ he murmured back as he opened the gate out of the churchyard.

Averil laughed in the hope that the maid would not realise they were arguing. ‘You attempt to reconcile opposites, Captain.’

‘Not at all. I believe I know where your best interest lies, Miss Heydon.’

‘Then we must agree to disagree. My mind is quite made up on the matter.’

‘I had noticed how very stubborn you are, Miss Heydon, and to what lengths you will go to get what you want.’

‘What I think is right,’ she corrected him. ‘For you to lecture me for being stubborn is, I venture, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.’

Luc was silent as they crossed the market square. Averil let herself feel the texture of his uniform jacket under her palm, the rough edge of the gold braid at her fingertips, hear the sound of his boots crunching over the dusty stones.

It felt right to have him by her side, as though they were a respectable married couple walking back to their
comfortable home after a church service. There were unspoken words between them, a sensual tension that left her short of breath as though she had been hurrying, yet there was a comfort in being together. Would it feel as natural to walk with Andrew Bradon? Would it be as easy to stroll in companionable silence without the need to make conversation?

The words were there, though, even if neither uttered them.
Kiss me, touch me, stay with me.
They were in the slight pressure of her hand on his arm, in the way he watched her profile, their lagging steps that got slower as they neared the inn.

It had to stop, she knew that, or they would drift upstairs and then—who knew? And even though she could rely on Luc to save her life, she could not trust him with her virginity. Or perhaps it was herself she did not trust.

‘Thank you so much, Captain,’ Averil said in her brightest society voice as they reached the inn yard. ‘I feel better for the fresh air and the exercise.’

‘You will set out early tomorrow, I imagine. It is a good twelve hours to London.’ Luc stood, hat in hand, showing no sign of wanting to inveigle his way upstairs. Was it all her imagination and he just wanted to flirt?

‘Yes, the postilions said we should leave at half past seven. I shall be very glad to arrive, I must confess.’ The prospect of stopping this endless travelling, of reaching somewhere—anywhere—permanent after four months, was almost enough to overcome the apprehension about meeting her betrothed.

‘Bruton Street, I believe,’ Luc said.

‘How—how did you know?’ A cold trickle ran
down her spine. He had promised not to speak to Lord Bradon—surely he would not break his word?

‘I checked. Don’t look at me like that, I shall not interrupt your arrival with an ill-timed call, believe me, Miss Heydon.’

‘Of course. Thank you. It may be a little … strained at first, getting to know each other.’ His silence spoke volumes about how strained he expected it to be. ‘Well, good night, Captain d’Aunay. I wish you well at the Admiralty.’ She held out her hand and he took it, bowed over it and stood aside for her to enter.

‘I think the captain’s better looking, now I’m used to that nose,’ Waters remarked as they climbed the stairs.

‘Shh! For goodness’ sake, girl, he’ll hear you!’

‘He didn’t come in, Miss Heydon.’

‘Oh.’ Good. Excellent, in fact. That was that then. She would not see him again, perhaps not for years and when she did she would be Lady Bradon, a respectable society matron and Luc would be a count, or an admiral or ambassador for a royalist France. They would meet and smile and part again and all this agonising would seem pointless.