Chapter Fourteen
Laura insisted on going down for dinner. She sent Mab in search of a cane and, by dint of leaning on her maidservant’s arm, hobbled downstairs, muttering unladylike curses under her breath every time she had to put weight on her injured foot.
‘Why you insisted on this gown, I’ll never know,’ Mab grumbled as they paused for breath on the first landing. ‘Thought we were saving it for the big dinner before the musical performance in two days’ time.’
‘I am trying to counteract the impression that I am a hoyden without an outfit in the latest mode to my name.’
‘Hmm. One doesn’t follow from the other. That Lady Amelia been poking at you, has she?’
‘Yes,’ Laura admitted.
‘Pads her bodice, she does,’ Mab confided. ‘Saw her woman adjusting one of her gowns in the sewing room.’
It shouldn’t have made any difference to her mood, but, reprehensibly, it did. ‘Thank you, Mab.’ Now, every time the witch batted her eyelashes at Avery, Laura could imagine a handful of wadding escaping to peep above her neckline.
Everyone was very kind when she limped into the drawing room and several gentlemen offered her their arm to go in to dinner. Laura made light of the accident and forced a smile when Lady Amelia studied her gown and then smirked. She had risen to the bait and her opponent knew it. It would have been better not to have shown she cared and to have worn a less fashionable outfit.
* * *
Avery came over after dinner and enquired politely about her ankle, Laura replied with equal courtesy and he strolled away to discuss carriage horses with some of the other gentlemen.
‘Oh, this will not do! We are all so quiet this evening after our energetic day in the fresh air.’ Lady Amelia clapped her hands and laughed. ‘We should play a game, do you not think, Lady Birtwell? Charades, perhaps or, no, I have it—Truth or Forfeit!’
Immediately her bosom friends joined in, urging that they play the game. Lady Birtwell beamed approval. ‘An excellent idea. Now, all you young people bring your chairs into a circle, and, yes, I do mean you bachelors skulking in that corner.’
She organised them with jovial ruthlessness. The elderly and the married remained seated on the sofas, the unmarried were chivvied into the middle of the room. ‘You begin, Miss Gladman. Chose your victim.’
Miss Gladman went pink, but turned readily enough to Mr Steading on her right. ‘What is your worst nightmare, sir?’
‘Playing round games where pretty young ladies put me to the blush,’ he said without hesitation.
‘That is a fib, sir,’ Miss Gladman said severely. ‘What forfeit shall I impose?’
The unfortunate Mr Steading was forced to stand in the middle of the circle and sing all the verses of God Save the King in his wavering tenor, but he was greeted with loud applause when he sat down.
‘My turn again,’ Miss Gladman announced, looking to her other side. ‘Lord Hastings, what was your childhood nickname?’
‘Podger,’ the reed-thin viscount replied. ‘Believe it or not, I was a fat child.’ That was accepted as being so unflattering it had to be the truth and Lord Hastings chose the next person to question. ‘Lady Amelia, what characteristic do you admire most in a man?’
She swept the room with her wide blue gaze, lingering for a moment on Avery’s face. ‘Why, integrity, of course.’
Laura would have liked to challenge that. Wealth and status would have been nearer to the mark, but there was no way of disputing the answer.
‘Now, who shall I...? Lady Laura, what do you desire most in the world?’
Taken off guard, Laura realised she did not have a believable, safe answer. What do I want, most of all? Why, Alice, of course. And she would do anything to have her, she realised. Anything. A murmuring in the room jerked her attention back and she found that she was staring at Avery and that everyone was staring at her.
‘Something that was stolen from me years ago,’ she answered directly to Amelia.
‘Whatever was it?’ Amelia demanded. Laura realised she must have hoped the answer was a gentleman, and, probably, Avery, which would have produced blushing confusion and no answer.
‘I will not say.’
‘Forfeit, forfeit!’ one of Amelia’s friends called. ‘What shall it be?’
‘A poem,’ Avery said. ‘We cannot expect Lady Laura to exert herself, not with an injury to her ankle.’
Amelia pouted. I expect she hoped for something embarrassing, Laura thought. ‘I will recite a verse a young friend of mine wrote,’ she said. ‘I wish I was a little star, Right up in the sky very far. I would twinkle with all my might, And make everybody’s dreams come right.’ She finished off the piece of doggerel with a flourish, amidst general laughter and applause. From across the room Avery’s mouth curved into a smile. Alice had written that out in her very best handwriting and drawn stars at the top and a sleeping figure of her papa at the bottom and Laura had helped her paint it.
‘How charming,’ Lady Amelia murmured.
I shall have to be careful, Laura thought. She is so suspicious of Avery and me. The slightest indiscretion and she will make a scandal.
Make a scandal... What do I desire most in all the world? Alice. And how can I have her without any scandal that would risk hurting her? By marrying Avery, of course.
The thought was so shocking she almost gasped aloud. The game continued, but she heard none of it, laughing and clapping when the others did, joining in the choruses of disbelief like an automaton. Avery desired her physically, but that was all. For some reason she could not fathom, he held her in implacable dislike. Yet he had liked her when she had been Mrs Jordan. If she was living with him, surely she could convince him that his prejudice against Laura Campion was misguided and that he could find again what he had enjoyed in the company of Caroline Jordan?
Could she simply ask him to marry her? No, he had made it clear that the only union he could imagine with her was an irregular connection, so she would have to entrap him. Laura shifted uncomfortably on her seat at the thought. It was an unpleasant word, entrap. It was an unscrupulous thing to do.
But she was not contemplating it for material gain, to secure a title or wealth. There were three people in this: herself, Alice and Avery. She would be happy if she had Alice. Alice would be happy with a stepmama she liked and Avery, surely, would be content when he saw Alice was well looked after and flourishing. And Laura would make him a good wife. She had social poise, languages, experience in running both a large household and a country estate. She had given birth once, so there was a good chance she would give him an heir.
He was not in love with anyone else, for his feelings for Lady Amelia were surely only the result of a practical assessment of her suitability. But can I make him happy? She wanted to, she realised. She wanted Avery to be happy. She wanted him to love her and to feel loved in return. And I can do that. I can love him. I am more than halfway there already if I could only get beyond the fear for Alice and my anger at his mistrust of me.
Yes, Laura concluded, trying to put aside that tantalising fantasy of love, marriage to her would be at least as satisfactory for Avery as marriage to any of the other women assembled here for his choosing. He would be angry with her, any red-blooded man would be, but he would simply have to get over it for Alice’s sake, she told her conscience firmly. It was still making uneasy sounds, but she tried to ignore them. The discomforting thought intruded that the last time she had ignored her conscience she had ended up in bed with Piers and, ultimately, become pregnant.
She glanced across at Avery, her resolution shaken. She had liked him, admired him. He was, for all his faults, a good man and she was thinking about seducing him into matrimony. Then she saw Lady Amelia watching him and thought about her plans for Alice. I want and need him, she admitted to herself. Alice needs a mother who will love her without condition, without reservation.
‘Are you cold, Lady Laura? Or in pain?’ Lord Mellham was at her elbow. ‘You shivered.’
‘I am a trifle tired, that is all. Would you be very kind and ask a footman to fetch my maidservant so she can help me to my room?’
‘I could carry you,’ he offered with a grin.
‘I think I have been carried enough for one day, thank you, Lord Mellham.’
* * *
Even so, when Mab came in he helped Laura to her feet and supported her across the room to the door, watched with sympathetic interest by the company and by Avery, whose thoughts might have been a complete blank, judging by the absence of expression on his face.
Avery watched Laura limping from the room on Mellham’s arm, smiling up at him, leaning so that when he looked down it was at her white shoulders and the lace that scarcely veiled the swell of her breasts. She had made the man blush over dinner last night, although he was showing no discomfort in her company now. After that she had been whispering with that fribble Bishopstoke, as thick as inkle-weavers, the pair of them. And later she’d been giving Hillinger the benefit of that other low-cut gown at close quarters, the hussy.
It seemed that Scandal’s Virgin had decided to retire from the field on the arm of an eligible husband. The bachelors that Godmama had invited to give some cover for his search for a bride were providing Laura with an excellent choice of gentlemen, although she was going to have to find one who was so blinded by love or lust that he either did not notice, or did not care, that she had borne a child.
She’d tell some tale, he supposed, as the game broke up with the arrival of the tea tray. A youthful betrayal that ended with the child dying. Or perhaps she would not trouble with arousing sympathy, perhaps her wealth and her name would be enough for someone like Bishopstoke.
Or I could marry her. The thought hit like a thunderbolt.
Avery drank a cup of tea that he did not taste, excused himself and went upstairs to the nursery wing. Alice had a small room off the main nursery where a nursemaid slept, one ear alert for the charges in her care in the rooms on either side and in the cots around her.
As he expected, Alice was fast asleep, one hand tucked under her cheek, her hair in its bedtime braids, her favourite doll on the pillow. He watched her in the dim light of the glass-covered nightlight, marvelling at the perfection of her skin, the curl of her lashes, the pout of her lips. Perfection, until one saw the scratch on her hand where she had been teasing the stable cat, the tiny smudge of mud under one ear that bath time had not dealt with, the stubborn tilt of her chin, even in sleep. She was a real person, not a doll, and he found her endlessly fascinating.
She was his world. He had taken her out of duty and out of guilt and she had rewarded him with unconditional love and trust and all she had asked in return was the love he felt for her. And all that was missing from her life was her mother and an end to the fear that he knew she had buried deep inside her, that somehow it was her fault that her mother had left.
Unable to resist, Avery stroked her hair, so soft under his hand. He could give her that mother, although how they could ever explain the circumstances of her birth and Laura’s rejection of her, he did not know.
He tried to think it through logically, assess the facts as though they were terms in a treaty. Laura had behaved shockingly, thoughtlessly, with Piers and she had turned on him when he had returned to war and his duty. She had sent her daughter away, as she was bound to do or face ruin. But instead of finding her a home close by, one of ease and elegance, one where she could watch over her, she had sent her to a remote dale and a life far removed from her rightful place.
And she had simply forgotten her for six long years while she lived a life of pleasure and reckless enjoyment. But, he struggled to be fair, she had been very young. She loves Alice now. Can I take the risk that she will be a faithful wife and a good mother? Can I take the risk that she will not steal Alice’s love from me and then hurt the child?
Selfish, he castigated himself. This is not about you, this is about Alice. She will not stop loving you. Will she...?
He stood there, wrestling with his demons, watching the child. The prickling sensation at the nape of his neck came on gradually, then the unease crystallised into the sound of another person breathing in the room. Someone was behind him.
Avery turned, swift and silent on the balls of his feet, and saw Laura sitting quite still on a low chair in the shadowed corner. ‘What are you doing here?’ he hissed.
‘Watching her, as you watch her. Loving her while I can.’ The breathy whisper was quite clear in the still room.
‘You cannot stay here.’
‘No,’ she agreed softly, a ghost in pale ivory and dark shadows. ‘Will you help me to my chamber?’
Avery bent to drop a kiss on Alice’s cheek, then turned and lifted Laura out of the chair and into his arms. She gasped and clung and he murmured, ‘Quieter this way, there is less chance of you stumbling.’ That was true. So, too, was his need to have her in his arms again, soft and fragrant and dangerous. Desirable and vulnerable. Yes, he would ask her to marry him. And pray he was right to trust her.
She did not struggle, only curled her arms around his neck and was silent as he nudged the door closed with elbow and hip and strode to the top of the stairs. Her room, and his, were on the floor below. He had taken the precaution of discovering which was hers—why he was not certain, unless it was to help him sleep more easily at night, knowing she was not close.
The stairs were dimly lit and the froth of her skirts and petticoats were enough to stop him seeing where he was putting his feet. ‘Keep still.’
‘I am,’ she murmured, and he realised that she had not moved. Only his body was reacting as if she writhed against him, his skin sensitive as though every nerve was exposed, the fret of linen against flesh almost intolerable. There was a tightness, a weight in his groin, and he set his teeth to ignore it and to ignore the whisper of her breath, warm against his shirt front, the tickle of her hair against his chin, the subtle assault of some expensive, elusive perfume in his nostrils.
It seemed to take an age to negotiate the stairs. He was two from the bottom when she murmured, ‘I am sorry, Avery. I wish...’
He stopped. ‘Sorry for what?’
‘For this antagonism between us.’ Her voice was husky with something that his body recognised at a visceral level. Desire. For me, or simply for physical pleasure? ‘I wish...’ She twisted in his arms and lifted her face. Her lips grazed his chin and then his throat, and fire shot through him. ‘Please, Avery.’ He felt the words more than heard them. Then she tipped back her head. ‘You are right, I tease. But I am not teasing now.’
Avery did not speak. This was no time for words. Nor place, not here. He had decided to offer her marriage, now it was as though the Fates had been listening to his mind. He took the final steps to the floor, then turned left to his bedchamber, not right, to her door. In his arms Laura gave a little sigh and curled herself closer.
He held her one-handed as he turned the knob, then froze at a faint sound. It was as though something had fallen. But there was nothing to be seen and he shouldered open the door.
Darke had gone, as usual, leaving a lamp turned down low on the dresser. Avery disliked being attended at the end of the day. He preferred to undress himself and wash slowly in cool water, taking his time, thinking over what had passed and what the morrow would bring, shrugging on a banyan and taking a book to the fireside chair until his eyes were heavy with sleep.
Now he carried Laura to the bed and set her carefully on her feet beside it before returning to the door. His hand hovered over the key. ‘I will lock the world out, not you in.’
‘Leave it, I trust you.’ She smiled faintly at his raised eyebrow. ‘In this, at least.’
‘Why, Laura? Why have you come to me?’ Propose to her now, or afterwards? Afterwards, instinct told him. Do not complicate this moment. In passion, in the aftermath of passion, surely he would see the truth in her.
She half-turned from him and ran her fingers pensively over the old chintz bedcover, tracing the twining flowers and stems that some long-dead lady of the house had embroidered. The curve of her neck, the elegant line from bare shoulder to ear, was exposed to him, pearl-pale in the lamplight. Between her breasts was a shadowy, mysterious valley where a gold chain glinted.
‘It has been a long time,’ she said finally, without looking up. ‘You think me loose, but there has not been anyone since...since before Alice was born. And there is this thing between us. This desire. I feel cold inside almost all the time. Flirting and laughing is no longer enough. And with you there is heat, even if there is nothing else but dislike and suspicion.’
Avery had not expected this frankness, this simple confession of need. His body stirred, eager, but he did not move. She spoke of nothing but desire, dislike, mistrust. Could he ever replace that with even the basic tolerance marriage would require? He probed a little, testing how open she would be. ‘You know you are fertile. Why take such a risk again?’
Laura did look up then. The brown eyes that could look so cold seemed pansy-soft in the lamplight. ‘We were young and foolish. We were to marry, so what did it matter? And Piers was inexperienced. You, I think, are both experienced and not inclined to be careless.’
Avery could argue that all the care in the world was sometimes not enough, but somehow his prized self-control was slipping away, sand through his fingers. Tomorrow he would take that huge risk with his life and his heart and with Alice’s love. Tomorrow he would disregard all the lessons of his own parents’ disastrous marriage.
Tonight he would lie with this woman who was ruining his sleep, haunting those dreams he could snatch from a few hours of slumber. He would not get her with child and he would purge himself of this obsession, replace it with clear-eyed logic. A small, cold voice of common sense told him that neither could be guaranteed by force of will, but he was sick of common sense.
‘You will be missed from your room.’ The handful of sand had almost trickled away.
‘I told my woman to leave me. As you have sent your valet away. It seems we value being alone—that is one thing we have in common, you and I.’
‘Beside Alice there is little else,’ he said as he crossed to her side. ‘Except this.’
She quivered as he trailed one finger down her neck, over her breast to lift out the golden chain, warm from her flesh, but she did not speak, only turned so her back was to him.
Avery lifted the weight of hair and kissed the nape of her neck as he began to unfasten the gown. He was slow because his fingers were not steady and slow because he wanted to prolong this moment, this silent surrender, this unexpected trustfulness. Under his lips the delicate skin over her spine was cool satin vanishing into fragile lawn and lace.
He unfastened the gown and pushed it from her shoulders to pool at her feet, brushing down his legs, covering his evening shoes. The wisp of a camisole was next and he followed it down with his hands, over the hardness of the corset, down to the feminine curve of her hips, then back up to free the laces.
Laura sighed as he loosened the garment, tossed it aside and bent to kiss the red marks it had left on her tender skin. Only then did he allow his hands to circle her waist and then drift up to cup the weight of her breasts, his thumbs sliding over the hardening tips. She murmured something too softly for him to hear and tilted her head back to rest against his shoulder and he closed his eyes while he struggled to find control and finesse and care.
She lifted her hands and pushed down the remaining petticoat, then turned slowly, within his embrace, to stand naked in front of him. There was colour on her cheeks and her eyes were lowered and it came to him that, for all her directness and bravado, Laura was shy. It has been a long time, she said. Six years for a sensual, beautiful woman who had known physical passion was indeed a long time. Time to ache—and time to grow reticent.
‘Would you like me to put out the light?’ he asked.
She looked up at that, eyes wide. ‘Oh, no! I want... I want to see you.’ A smile trembled on her lips. ‘I want to be very bold and I fear to shock you.’
‘Shock me?’ Avery tugged his neckcloth free and stripped off coat and waistcoat. ‘I would love you to shock me, Laura.’ He finished undressing, arousal stoked by her unwavering gaze. When she ran her tongue along her lower lip he almost lost control like a callow youth. He dragged a deep, steadying breath down into his lungs. ‘Show me. Let me show you.’