A Most Unladylike Adventure (13 page)

‘I was so furious, so hurt and ashamed that
I couldn’t satisfy my own wife, Louisa,’ he whispered at last. ‘Ariadne needed men, not just one man; she had to have their attention as much as food and water and air to breathe. I hated what she made herself, hated what she’d done to me, but most of all I hated the way my brother watched her with contempt and a hint of lust while she preened and flirted with them all. After months at sea, brooding over the idea that my brother might be tupping my wife in my absence, I was already half-mad with jealousy and grief even before I got home and my father accused me of being a cruel husband, who drove his innocent wife into the arms of other men with his harsh temper and unnatural coldness.’

‘More fool him, then,’ she told him with a rather wicked smile that said he was certainly not cold or harsh with her. ‘And, as you were proven to be laid out insensible a few miles away at the time of their deaths, how can you be so stupid and arrogant as to believe you hurt them in the face of the evidence? You would sooner have shot yourself in the back than your brother, whatever disgraceful state you were in at the time,’ she told him as he gave up on distance and held her more tightly than he probably realised.

Louisa felt him struggle with his emotions and wished he’d just let go of them and trust her. Some instinct told her that he was too damaged by what had happened that awful night and afterwards, to fully confide in a woman he was marrying only because the world would consider he’d ruined her if he didn’t. This was no time to worry about her own abraded emotions, though; he needed comfort and she needed to offer it to him.

‘I couldn’t fight my father’s accusations,’ he admitted tersely. ‘The idea I could have killed Marcus while out of my senses on brandy and fury seemed to blast my very soul black and deprive me of speech. My wife didn’t love me, but that was nothing compared to remembering how jealous I’d been of her and my own brother. I let her infidelities make me a drunken fool lost in a brandy bottle and if only I’d been stronger, Louisa, if only I had bothered to insist on a legal separation, both of them would probably still be alive today. I couldn’t admit so finally that I’d failed my wife and my family and look what happened to them because I was a coward.’

‘She was the one who failed, you stubborn idiot of a man. If Kit and I have to catch the murderer behind your brother’s death to make
you realise none of it is your fault, then we’ll do it just to prove ourselves right, you know? It’s a family failing.’

‘I have noticed,’ he admitted with a faint smile.

Louisa hated the venal coward who’d let this good man suffer for his own crimes, but she had to be infuriated with him as well, in case she broke down and cried for him instead. ‘You think you should have guarded your wife and brother from harm instead of getting drunk, don’t you? You’re not omnipotent, Captain Kenton, and I wouldn’t want you for my husband if you were,’ she told him sternly.

She felt him chuckle against her skin and some of the terrible tension seep out of his powerful body, felt the breath in her lungs freeze, then gasp out as the feel of him breathing so close to her made her knees weaken. He seemed to note the intimacy at the same moment and pressed a heated kiss to the accelerated pulse in the hollow at the base of her throat. Fire shot through her in a white-hot flash and she felt him harden in instant response. How totally he wanted her, she thought wonderingly, then he groaned and drew in a deep breath, before exerting his iron
will over his need and hers, so he could hold her at arm’s length and eye her reproachfully, as if she was Eloise again, a blatant seductress who was wilfully over-eager to be ravished by his passionate attentions.

‘I can and will keep my hands off you for two more days, Louisa Alstone,’ he informed her sternly, as if she was the one who’d recklessly turned comfort into passion and not him. ‘It might nigh kill me, but I swear I’ll do it,’ he told her and met the challenge in her eyes with a laugh in his own. ‘At least I will if you’ll only help me by resisting this fever between us, rather than conspiring with my dratted body to make me a liar.’

‘If we are really going to marry, then we share it all, Hugh,’ she said seriously.

‘We certainly share that,’ he responded, his eyes not quite meeting hers.

‘Not just the nights, but the days as well,’ she informed him calmly, although her accelerated heartbeat told her how important it was that he understand her, even when he didn’t want to.

‘Are you planning to shadow my every move in future, then? It will certainly make for an unusual marriage; if not necessarily one I like the sound of.’

‘I plan to share your problems, as you will mine,’ she made herself say calmly, knowing he was trying to use her temper against her.

‘You’ll probably cause most of them.’

‘Don’t push me away, Hugh,’ she pleaded, although pride urged her to do exactly what he wanted and walk away from him and their marriage even now.

‘I have to try, don’t you see? A murderer’s possessions are forfeit, woman.’

‘But you’re not a murderer, Hugh.’

‘If that fragile alibi fails, then I’ll be tried as one and, guilty or not, I’ll probably hang as one.’

L
ouisa shrugged, trying not to let Hugh see that the very idea of losing him made her feel as if she was suddenly made of ice after all, and might shatter into a million icicles if he so much as breathed on her the wrong way.

‘Would you have me walk away from you, then?’ she asked painfully.

‘Yes,’ he said, face set like a stone mask as his eyes didn’t quite meet hers again and she knew he was lying.

A small splinter of warmth thawed the absolute chill afflicting her and threatened to thaw her into a supplicant, begging for something she didn’t quite understand wanting in the first place. Whatever it was, she couldn’t let it slip away.

‘Liar,’ she whispered softly.

His eyes turned from hers completely as he glared across the room as if he wanted to go back to his pacing in peace and fool them both he was better left to deal with this alone. Suddenly his strong mouth twisted as if in agony and his silver-shot blue eyes were full on hers as he stopped shielding himself from her at last.

‘Guilty,’ he ground out. ‘I’m a liar and a thief. I fly under false colours and take what they value most from those I love. Pray not to love me; fight not to marry me, Louisa Alstone. Go to the ends of the earth to avoid me, but for God’s sake don’t let me destroy you as everyone else in my life has been destroyed.’

‘Do I look like some silly little martyr looking for a cause, Hugh Kenton?’ she demanded furiously. ‘No, I damned well don’t and if I’d grown up sighing over heroes in storybooks, or longing to be rescued by the knight out of a fairy tale it might be fair enough of you to try to warn me off like this. If you don’t realise how well I know my own mind by now, then perhaps time will teach you better, but I won’t walk away from you that easily. I refuse to deprive our child of a father who’d fight the devil himself for its safety and well-being, even if
you can’t seem to stomach the idea of me as its mother.’

‘It’s certainly not that, but there may not be a child,’ he said as if driven to point out all the drawbacks of becoming his wife to her once again.

‘And if there is, I’m certainly not running after you in a few months’ time when it’s obvious I’m your discarded lover. It’s now or never if you intend to wed me.’

‘Do you think I don’t want to marry you, woman?’ he growled as if she was doing her best to torture him.

‘All the signs seem to point that way.’

‘Then they’re wrong. I want you as I never wanted another woman in my life before, Louisa Alstone. I think about you when I should be busy with so many other things that I marvel Kit’s empire didn’t collapse in his absence for want of attention. I wake up in the morning wanting you and go to bed at night racked with longing for you in my bed and at my board.’

‘You’ve only known me for two days.’

‘Two minutes were enough for me, and it’s all of three weeks since I first set eyes on you, you impossible, stubborn, naggy-tempered witch,’ he told her with such disgust that she
felt obscurely pleased he considered her so irresistible he’d longed for her since that day in Kit’s office as well.

‘Me, too,’ she admitted.

‘You too what?’ he said, running an impatient hand through his already wildly disordered dark hair.

‘I wanted you from the first moment I set eyes on you,’ she told him boldly.

‘Ah, Louisa, how the devil am I going to get through the next two days without going completely insane with needing you?’ he asked as if he thought it a very real possibility.

‘You don’t have to,’ she offered shamelessly, refusing to drop her eyes and pretend to be a shrinking maiden when she was neither.

‘You don’t know your brother as well as you think if you’re not aware that he’ll tear me apart if I lay a hand on you again before I wed you.’

‘This isn’t the only roof in London.’

‘It is for the next two days—now stop tempting me, woman. I need to marshal my senses, not have them scattered to the four winds.’

‘Well, if we’re not allowed to do that, we might as well put our energies into catching your enemy while we still have them,’ she
said with a steady look she hoped told him she wasn’t going to be sitting at home embroidering wedding garters for the next two days.

‘I suppose there is no point in me forbidding you to set foot outside this house on anything less frivolous than a trip to the dressmaker?’

‘Absolutely none,’ she confirmed smugly.

‘I don’t think you were a neglected child at all, Louisa Alstone,’ he accused her crossly. ‘You were obviously so spoilt that none of your unfortunate family dared to cross you in any way. I’d have been beaten and locked in my room for a quarter of the exploits you seem to have got away with without so much as a blink from those who should have stopped you.’

‘They’d have had to tie me to my bed, but never mind,’ she consoled him unrepentantly. ‘Think how useful it will be when we have children,’ she said virtuously. ‘Between your sins and mine, they’ll never be able to hoodwink either of us that they’re all sweetness and light, while behaving like little demons as soon as our backs are turned.’

‘Alluring though the prospect might be, I think it’s time to talk about something else,’ he said huskily and Louisa had to believe he found the idea of those little dark-haired devils
of theirs as seductive and downright wonderful as she did.

‘Very well, then, it’s probably high time we called Kit back in to pool our knowledge and considered what to do next.’

He groaned as if he didn’t like that alternative much either, but tucked her hand within the crook of his elbow all the same and they went to find her brother.

‘Stubborn, ungovernable woman,’ he said as they strolled towards Kit’s sitting room.

‘Arrogant, intractable man,’ she replied placidly.

‘Still minded to wed each other, despite all the quarrelling, then?’ Kit asked absently, as they invaded his privacy once again.

‘Yes, planning to drive each other demented for the next fifty years or so,’ Hugh said with such smugness that Louisa’s heart warmed and her smile softened.

‘On the understanding it would be a shame to inflict such glaring defects of character elsewhere when we can nag each other to death instead,’ she countered with a challenging look for her brother and her husband-to-be.

‘I can hardly wait for you to begin a lifetime of annoying each other and leave me in peace, then,’ Kit said with a relieved and surprisingly
boyish grin as he rang for the finest burgundy in his cellar to celebrate.

They drank a toast to their astonishing new future and sipped the fine vintage as the full significance of it all began to sink in. One day, probably all too soon, Louisa realised, she was going to be a lady after all—a real one, with a title she couldn’t ignore if she tried. It was enough to make her have second thoughts, until she looked at Hugh and realised he needed someone brassy and unconventional and badly behaved to stand beside him.

None of the sweet little maids he must have grown up with would outstare and outmanoeuvre those intent on throwing Hugh’s past sins and other dark deeds at his head. It occurred to her that if he’d been the heroic gentleman of breeding and repute he must once have been, she would probably have refused him, however compromised she might be. He was the only gentleman she could marry; out of all those deluded enough to ask her, he was the only one she could risk being her true self with, she realised, as she watched him stare into the subtle depths of the fine wine in his glass as if it might be able to tell him how all this came about.

‘We have to get Lord Rarebridge alone,’ she announced to distract him.

‘We?’ Kit said mildly enough.

‘I’m as deep in this as either of you,’ she said, knowing the only way to fight her brother’s protective instincts was to remind him how little she needed protecting, then perhaps he could convince Hugh.

‘I know you’ll stick your nose in and ruin everything if we don’t include you, little sister, but I won’t admit this is any of your business even so,’ Kit argued.

‘If the end result is what I want, I don’t much care, and his lordship will rush to help a lady in distress, whatever her reputation,’ she said to think up an alternative scheme before they crept off without her to catch Lord Rarebridge at his club or some other harebrained scheme that would result in one of them being hurt.

‘Dearest Uncle William and the insect-worm have been silent on that subject; they went to ground as soon as your escape was discovered and are no doubt cowering in fear of my fury,’ Kit said so impassively Louisa knew they were right to be terrified.

‘I believe husbands take precedence over brothers,’ Hugh growled unhelpfully and
Louisa was tempted to throw something at one of them or stamp her feet.

‘So what about Lord Rarebridge?’ she asked stonily.

‘First the lord and then the lackeys,’ Hugh drawled in quite the grand manner and she only just managed not to scream with frustration and count to ten, because she had got her way, hadn’t she?

*

‘You say the lady is injured?’ Viscount Rarebridge asked the bewigged and liveried footman who had just rushed down the quiet path he’d taken to haunting in Hyde Park, whenever his father’s town house seemed too full of his elder sister’s enormous brood of children. Now this dratted manservant was bothering him instead, he wished he’d stayed home and endured the racket, but he reluctantly agreed to help the man assist a lady to a more populous area and summon help.

‘She’ll likely be dead by the time we gets there,’ the fellow muttered with the sort of insolence he’d expect of a servant hired for the Season.

‘And why should I believe there is a lady at all, my man?’ he asked in a supercilious
tone that made Kit Alstone itch to plant him a facer.

‘Since she were wailing about her poor ankle fit to make a statue cry, I certainly ain’t imagined her, mister,’ he said, tempted to be done with all this play-acting and just scurry the popinjay along in his wake.

‘There’s something devilish familiar about you. Have I seen you before?’

‘Not like this you ain’t,’ the footman assured him gruffly, ‘and young Miss needs ‘elp some time this week, my lord.’

‘You’re an impudent knave, and I’ve half a mind not to take another step with you,’ Lord Rarebridge blustered.

Luckily Louisa let out a very convincing wail of distress from where she was no doubt sprawled impatiently on the ground as if she dared not get up, and Kit thrust the viscount in front of him and into the quiet corner of Hyde Park where his sister had insisted they would not be disturbed. Glad his friend would soon be responsible for his sister’s wilder starts, and very sure Hugh would protect her far more fiercely than he could when he was busy on the other side of the world far too often, he nevertheless had to admire his sister’s acting abilities as she allowed his lordship to assist
her to get to her good foot and hop to a nearby seat, where she subsided in convincing agony to rub her perfectly sound ankle.

His lordship just hovered in front of her, looking acutely uncomfortable, and Kit’s estimate of the man’s intelligence went even lower when Hugh appeared at his side and the idiot just gaped at him as if he’d seen some sort of ghostly apparition.

‘Good Gad, Kenton?’ he gasped.

‘As you say,’ Hugh drawled.

‘Don’t blame me, Rarebridge, I was quite ready to call you out first and ask questions later,’ Kit assured the reedy little peacock menacingly, when he’d removed the wig and tucked it into his pocket before running his hand through his hair and wondering aloud how any man put up with such an abomination for long.

‘We mean you no harm, your lordship,’ Louisa said as she rose from her seat on two perfectly sound ankles and Lord Rarebridge looked more hunted than ever.

‘Then why contrive such a scandalous meeting, ma’am?’ he asked sharply.

‘Because you have been plotting against mine, if not against me,’ she said softly and suddenly his lordship found himself wondering
if females were as weak and in need of protection as he had always considered them to be.

‘I think she means me, Rory,’ Hugh informed him laconically.

‘Never thought I’d hear you admit to being any woman’s lapdog,’ his lordship did his best to sneer, but seemed to know it was a poor attempt and Hugh merely stared at his erstwhile friend as if he didn’t quite know who he was any more.

‘But this lady isn’t just any woman, as I’m sure you will agree,’ Hugh argued very softly and the very mildness of his manner made Lord Rarebridge shudder.

‘My apologies, Miss Alstone,’ he said with a coldly correct bow in Louisa’s direction as he finally recalled who she was, and that she had once turned down his half-hearted offer of marriage.

‘Accepted, my lord, so long as you tell me exactly why you had my affianced husband followed halfway across London yesterday.’

‘Good heavens, ma’am, how could you possibly know about that?’ he asked without stopping to think how incriminating his words were.

‘I tracked you and your very dangerous
tools down myself, my lord,’ she replied as coolly as if admitting she was due to attend Almack’s tonight to endure dry bread and butter and lemonade with this year’s crop of débutantes.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he ordered impatiently.

‘I’m not, but you certainly are,’ she assured him, then felt as much as saw Hugh move to dominate his lordship’s bemused attention without having to do anything so crass as push her aside or talk over her.

‘Never mind the how, Rory, I want the why,’ he said bluntly.

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you,’ he said rather spitefully. ‘The wider world thinks of you as a murderer, even if they can’t seem to get on and prove it.’

‘So you set yourself the task of doing it for them?’

‘I decided to discover the truth,’ he said so virtuously that Louisa itched to be a man for a minute or two so she could vent her rising temper on this prancing fool without Hugh and her brother being able to stop her.

‘I doubt you’ll find it by looking in places like that, but if you’re so convinced of my guilt
a simple denial won’t stop you,’ Hugh said as if discussing the weather.