Chapter Six
What could he tell from Caroline’s stillness? The downcast lids did not lift, nor the dark lashes move. Perhaps he had imagined that shiver, perhaps she had no notion he was talking about her. ‘Not all widows are middle-aged,’ she pointed out after a moment.
‘No, indeed. Such as yourself.’ Avery wondered just how old she was. The ageing effect of her black clothes, and the paleness of her skin, made it difficult to tell, but he doubted she could be much over twenty-five. ‘I was just wondering if someone with more experience of children would be better.’
‘And not all widows have had children,’ Caroline said, her voice so lacking in expression it might as well have been a scream.
Hell and damnation. She told you she had lost a child. Get your great boot out of your mouth, Falconer, and stop daydreaming. It had been a nice little fantasy about Caroline Jordan as Alice’s governess, but what did that make him, lusting after his daughter’s teacher, a woman who would be under his protection in his house? A lecher, that’s what, Avery told himself. He despised men who took advantage of their female dependants.
‘You see how much I need you to stop me wandering off at tangents,’ he said.
‘It seems strange that a man who can steer the fate of nations at the conference table finds it hard to advertise for a governess.’ Caroline sounded faintly amused, thank heavens.
‘The devil’s in the details,’ he said, snatching at a cliché in desperation. He had told the Duke of Wellington to stop interfering before now. He had faced down the most powerful of the Emperor Alexander’s ministers and he could negotiate in five languages, but this one woman, with her emotional buttons done up so tightly over whatever was going on in her bosom, had him in knots.
And that’s because when you are dealing with Wellington you aren’t thinking with the parts of your anatomy that are giving you hell now. Although it isn’t simply desire.
‘Papa! Aunt Caroline! Luncheon is ready and I am starving.’
‘Coming, Alice.’ Avery lowered his voice as he took the paper from Caroline. ‘Do you suppose a governess will be able to stop her stampeding about like a herd of goats and shouting at the top of her voice?’
‘Oh, I hope not.’ Mrs Jordan’s smile was curiously tender. ‘Not all the time.’
* * *
Avery watched Caroline during the meal and Caroline watched Alice. Not him. Which meant he had either so comprehensively embarrassed her that she did not dare risk catching his eye or that she was completely indifferent to him. And yet his reckless remark about desire had discomforted her to the extent that she had challenged him about it this morning. She had neither screamed, nor slapped his face when he had kissed her, but she had given him no encouragement either.
So...not a merry window or even one sophisticated enough to contemplate an irregular liaison. He suspected she was not mourning her husband in anything but the outward show of black clothing and quiet living. There was a mystery there.
‘Was your husband a landowner, Mrs Jordan?’
‘In a small way. He was a military man.’ She prepared an apple for Alice, scarcely glancing at him as she controlled the peel that curled from her knife.
‘From this part of the world?’
‘We lived in London when we were together.’ Her hand was quite steady with the sharp blade. ‘There, Alice. Now, I was careful to get it all off in one piece, which is very important for this magic to work. If you hold up the peel, very high, and drop it, it will make the initial of your husband-to-be.’
Alice giggled. ‘That can’t be right, Aunt Caroline. You peeled it, so you will have to drop it.’
‘I have no intention of marrying again.’
‘Please?’
Avery watched, amused that the wide-eyed green stare, combined with the faint tremble of the lower lip, worked just as well on Mrs Jordan as it did on him. He shuddered to think of the impact on young men when Alice was old enough to make her come-out. He would have to carry a shotgun at all times.
‘Oh, very well. It will come out with a Z or an X or something improbable.’ Caroline held up the peel and dropped it. She and Alice studied it with all the care of scientists with a lens. ‘I cannot make anything of it,’ she said at last. ‘The magic obviously works and it knows I will not marry again.’
Avery leaned across the table. ‘It is a lower-case a,’ he said. ‘It is facing me, that is why you cannot read it. See, the round shape and the little tail.’
‘A is for Avery,’ Alice exclaimed.
There was a deadly little silence, then Caroline said, ‘Your papa will be marrying a titled lady, Alice. She is probably dropping her apple peel at just this moment and it is coming out as a capital A, the right way up.’
‘You have the makings of a diplomat,’ Avery remarked softly as Alice became engrossed in making letters with pieces of peel while she nibbled on her apple segments. ‘I am sorry if we have embarrassed you between us this morning.’
‘I am not embarrassed,’ Caroline said and returned her attention to the piece of fruit on her own plate.
And she was not, he realised. But she was distressed. He was learning to read her emotions behind the calm facade and her eyes were sparkling as if with unshed tears and her hand shook, just a little, as she wielded the sharp little knife. What the devil had her husband done to her to make her so fragile on the subject of marriage?
* * *
He is going to marry some day and Alice will have a stepmother. She will call her Mama and she will love her. They will be a family in some glamorous European capital while Avery is a diplomat and then they will host great house parties at Wykeham Hall when they return to England. Alice will grow up and another woman will help her choose her gowns and will share her secrets and those first tears over a flirtation. Another woman will... Stop it!
It was self-indulgent and as foolish as prodding a bruise to see if it hurt. Of course it hurt, but her heartbreak was not important. Alice was what mattered. Only Alice. Laura glanced up and saw Avery was watching her. He knew she was upset and his face was grave. Strange how she was beginning to be able to read his face, the thoughts behind the skilful diplomatic mask. Would there have been as much subtlety and intelligence in Piers’s face as he matured to the age this man was now?
He smiled at her, a little rueful, the expression of a friend who wants to help, but is not quite sure how. He would not look like that if he knew she was deceiving him or who she was, she thought with a kick of conscience.
‘May I get down, Papa?’
‘Ask Mrs Jordan’s permission.’
‘Certainly. Go and play, Alice.’ Inevitably the door banged behind her. Then they were alone and she could say the thing her conscience was prodding her to say. ‘I apologise.’
‘Whatever for?’ Avery was leaning back in his chair, but he sat up at that.
‘I thought you arrogant and I made judgements about how well a single man could raise a child. It was wrong of me. Prejudiced.’
‘And I apologise for making assumptions about how a widow might wish to flirt.’
‘That is what it was? You must forgive me if I am a trifle innocent about these things.’ She was not, of course, but she wanted to maintain the fiction that her world was not that of the haut ton. But while he was being so frank, she could seize the opportunity to remove a small worry about Alice’s welfare. ‘Do you not keep a mistress?’
The look he gave her was forbidding, but he answered without hesitation. ‘I have done. Not very recently and not in this country. And I would never allow a future mistress anywhere near Alice, if that is what is worrying you.’
‘So, when you were hinting just now that I might take the position of governess, that negated any chance you might offer me a very different position?’
‘That is frankness if ever I heard it!’ That question jolted him out of his composure, which was interesting. When he recovered his countenance, with a speed that spoke volumes for his self-control, she thought he might be faintly amused under the surprise. ‘Allow me to be equally frank in return. I thought about that for a moment. And I am ashamed of myself, I own it, so you have no cause to look at me like that from those wide brown eyes.’
‘Like what?’ She had thought her emotions were well hidden.
‘As though you are disappointed in me. Although perhaps I should welcome some heat in your regard after your usual Arctic chill.’
‘You talk nonsense, my lord. I must leave now.’ Before this becomes any more complicated.
‘You will come tomorrow?’ he asked as she retrieved her bonnet, reticule and shawl from the hall stand.
The servants had made themselves scarce. Perhaps they know better than to intrude when their master is with a woman. No, that is unfair, I trust him when he says he would never expose Alice to one of his chères amies.
‘No,’ Laura said crisply. ‘It is not convenient tomorrow. Please say goodbye to Alice for me.’
Avery opened the door for her without speaking and she walked briskly down the drive, feeling his eyes on her back for every step. That had been remarkably like a tantrum, she told herself as she turned left into the lane in the direction of the village. Or a lovers’ quarrel. Only we are not lovers and he did no quarrelling.
It was not difficult to work out what was upsetting her, only to know how to cope with it. The situation with Alice was clear enough, if painful. At least she had a clear conscience and the comfort of knowing she was doing what was best for her daughter, however much it hurt.
But Avery Falconer was tying her in knots. They had shockingly frank conversations about desire and yet she could be open with him about nothing else. She wanted him with a directness that was unmistakable, but she did not know why. Was it because he looked so much like Piers, but mature and reliable? Or was it that he was a devastatingly attractive man who was open about his attraction to her? Perhaps it was simply that she could not forgive him for stealing Alice, however well meant his actions, and therefore everything about him, good and bad, was exaggerated.
Whatever she thought of him, and however much he loved Alice now, she could not forget that love and concern for an unknown baby could not have motivated him to buy the child. Pride, arrogance and the certainty that he knew best for anyone who might be connected with the lofty Earl of Wykeham was what had driven him then and it was pure chance that good had come of it.
Oh, but she ached for him.
* * *
‘Cutting off your nose to spite your face, are you?’ Mab demanded over the breakfast table the next morning.
‘Probably.’ Laura bit into a slice of toast, chewed, thought, swallowed. ‘Do sit down, Mab, you make my head ache stomping about. I have so few days left with Alice and I’m a fool to allow one mystifying man to stop me spending them with her.’
‘Mystifying, is he?’ Mab poured herself some tea and planted herself on the chair across the kitchen table. ‘Not the word I’d use, myself. Downright—’ She broke off and was lost in thought, searching for the word. ‘Edible. I could think of other ways to describe him, but none of them decent.’ She buttered a slice of toast and applied plum preserve with a lavish hand. ‘Saw him riding past yesterday morning, first thing. Got a handsome pair of shoulders on him. And thighs,’ she added. ‘You’d know you’d got something in your bed with that one, right enough.’
‘Mab!’
‘Well, I’m female with eyes in my head and I’ve got a pulse, haven’t I? Good-sized nose and feet...’
‘Mab!’ Piers had big feet, too... Oh, stop it, you are as bad as she is. ‘All right, I am not dead either. Avery Falconer is very attractive. And intelligent. And he is good to Alice. And I like him. I just cannot forgive him.’
‘Worse things to forgive a man for than giving a child a loving home.’ Mab demolished the toast and picked up her tea. ‘You and Mr Piers made a right hash of things between you, thinking with your...well, not thinking at all, if you ask me. You should have insisted he marry you before you got into bed with him and he ought to have cared enough about you not to have risked it. And don’t look at me like that, you know it is true.’
It was like being slapped in the face. No, it was like having a bucket of cold water poured over a fragile sugar tower of illusion. Young love, passion, an undying, innocent romance—or two young people being thoughtless? She had built a castle in the air and inhabited it with her perfect knight, her gallant soldier, and hadn’t the wit to think through the likely consequences of sleeping with a man off to a battlefield in the near future. And Piers had not fought hard enough to behave like a gentleman and not a randy young soldier.
More than time to let go of girlish fantasies. There was no such thing as undying love or she wouldn’t feel so much as a twinge of desire for Avery Falconer. And Avery was guilty of nothing more than a strong sense of family duty and an honourable obligation to the child of a cousin he was probably very fond of. He had taken Alice for Piers’s sake.
Mab eyed her warily, braced, no doubt, for a blistering retort about the impudence of maidservants daring to speak their mind, or floods of tears. ‘Thank you, Mab. You are quite right.’ Not that it didn’t hurt or was shaming to have the truth pointed out so bluntly, but it was probably like lancing a boil, she’d be glad later when the agony subsided.
‘And you are quite right about today, too. I’ll walk up to the Manor now. It is foolish to waste a minute with Alice.’
* * *
I will be pleasant and friendly and make it quite clear I want neither flirtation nor kisses, she resolved half an hour later as she negotiated the steps up the ha-ha and tackled the sloping lawn. Halfway she met Jackson, the footman, his hands full of a dew-wet hoop and ball.
‘Miss Alice forgets her toys, ma’am,’ he said with his friendly grin. ‘Were you coming to see her? Only Miss Blackstock’s taken her off to Hemel Hempstead in the gig to buy new shoes. You’ve just missed them.’
The disappointment was ridiculously sharp, not less for it being her own fault. If she hadn’t been sulking over Avery she might have been in time to have joined the shopping expedition. ‘I will just say good morning to Lord Wykeham, in that case,’ she said, summoning a smile.
‘He’s in the Blue Sitting Room, ma’am. The window’s open if you can manage the step.’ He pointed. ‘Or I can go in and announce you?’
‘No, you continue your search for the contents of the toy box, Jackson. I can find my own way.’
Her footsteps were silent on the smooth flagstones. Laura stooped to look into the unfamiliar room and saw Avery. He was half-seated on the edge of a desk, his long legs out in front crossed at the ankles, his hands behind, bracing him. His head was down as though he was deep in thought. Laura hesitated, her hand on the window frame for balance, then caught her breath as he looked up, his face stark and naked as she had never seen it.
He must have heard her involuntary gasp, for he turned, his expression under control so fast she wondered if she had imagined the pain. ‘Caroline. I was not expecting you today.’
‘I know. I have missed Alice, haven’t I?’ She stepped down into the room. ‘Avery, what is wrong?’ The shadow of that inner agony was still on his face, now she knew to look for it. ‘My dear man...’ She went towards him, her hands held out and he stood, pushed away from the table and she was in his arms.
He said nothing before he kissed her, his mouth urgent and demanding, his tongue tangling with hers as she responded, opened to him as though they were old lovers who knew each other’s bodies with utter familiarity. She knew how he would taste, how he would feel in her arms. She knew, as she kissed him back, how he would angle his head, how he would explore her mouth, how she would melt into him. He was everything her restless night-time imaginings had promised he would be and more. And he is this man, not another, not Piers.
He had turned as he kissed her and she felt the hard edge of the table press into her buttocks, the hard ridge of his arousal press into her belly. Desperate for air so that she could kiss him again, Laura dragged her mouth free. His eyes were dark and fierce and wild, the eyes of a man whose control was always perfect—until now.
‘Caroline.’ It was a growl, a statement, not a question.
Caroline? Who? Laura froze. Caroline was not her. Caroline was a lie and she could not be like this with a man she was lying to. ‘Avery.’ She slid her hands down so they rested on his chest. Under her palms his heartbeat thudded. He stared down at her and slowly the darkness of passion faded out of his eyes.
‘Avery,’ she said again. ‘I cannot—’
‘Hell. No, of course you cannot.’ She blinked, confused. How could he know what she was going to say? ‘I apologise. That was outrageous. I had no right to touch you. I’ll leave.’
‘No.’ Of course, he thought she was saying she could not make love to him. He was not a mind reader. But thank goodness he had stopped before things had gone any further. ‘You do not need to do that. It takes two to be as imprudent as we have just been. I take responsibility for my actions. And reactions,’ she added with a smile in the hope of easing the tension that showed in his jaw and clenched hands. Yes, this time, I will take responsibility and I will think of the consequences.
‘Thank you.’ Avery turned and ran one hand through his hair. ‘I was feeling a trifle blue devilled, not that it is any excuse for attempting to ravish you on the desk.’
She was never sure afterwards what she had intended to say to him. Laura looked up and saw the portrait on the wall behind him and the words simply dried in her mouth. Piers.