An Escapade and an Engagement (21 page)

Mindful of her dignity, he pulled the edges of his shirt
together over her breasts, then grabbed the coverlet, draping it over the pale
length of her legs.

Then Lady Jayne set the seal on things by looking at them in a
bewildered fashion, and asking, ‘What are you all doing in my room? And where is
Milly?’ She frowned up at Richard. ‘Did you find her?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘You mean you could not stop her? Oh, no!’

‘Oh, I stopped her all right,’ he said grimly. ‘But I don’t
think this is the time to be talking about
her.
’

‘Well, you are right about that much!’ said his grandfather,
giving Lady Penrose a shove between the shoulder blades that sent her tottering
farther into the room, before turning and slamming the door shut.

‘Put. Her. Down,’ said Lady Penrose indignantly. ‘Take your
hands off her and put her down. This instant!’

‘Just one moment,’ said his grandfather. He strode across the
room and into the bedroom. He did not stay in there long.

Richard groaned, knowing what he would see there. Tousled
sheets. A torn, bloodstained nightdress lying on the floor. More bloodstains on
the sheets. Which, he had noted when he picked her up, meant he ought to have
taken care of that cut on her knee and her poor little abused feet before he
went out. But which his grandfather was bound to take as evidence of a night of
wild debauchery.

‘You damned fool!’ Lord Lavenham stood framed in the bedroom
doorway, his face now mottled with purple.

‘This is worse than mere foolishness,’ said Lady Penrose,
pointing at the overturned glass on the floor.

‘You got her drunk?’ Lord Lavenham bellowed. ‘And then seduced
her?’

He had thought it could not get any worse, but Lady Jayne set
her hand to her head.

‘Oh, please stop shouting,’ she moaned. ‘It goes right through
my head.’

‘Lady Penrose,’ said Lord Lavenham, turning to her with a grim
expression. ‘You have my abject apologies. I did not believe that this one of my
grandsons was as much a libertine as the others.’

‘He is not a libertine,’ Lady Jayne protested. ‘He has not done
anything that I did not ask of him…’

‘That is quite enough!’ Lady Penrose screeched, grabbing her
hand and tugging her off Lord Ledbury’s lap.

She stumbled on the mound of blankets strewn around the
chair.

‘I accept your apology, my lord,’ Lady Penrose said stiffly to
Lord Lavenham, whilst deftly rearranging the folds of the coverlet she’d
snatched up with the expertise of one well used to ordering the demi-train of an
evening gown. ‘I could not believe it at first, either, when my maid came to me
with the tale which she claimed is titillating the entire servants’ hall. It was
only when I discovered that my charge was not in her room that I gave it any
credence. In the same way, you needed to see the evidence with your own
eyes.’

‘What evidence?’ Lady Jayne was blinking from one of them to
the other. ‘Why is everyone so cross?’

‘The only thing to do is announce their engagement at once,’
put in Lord Lavenham.

‘Engagement? Why? We were only…’

‘Be quiet, you foolish girl,’ snapped Lady Penrose. ‘There is
no excuse for such carryings-on, even if the pair of you do wish to marry.
Unheard of!’

‘No…’ protested Lady Jayne again. ‘You have got it all
wrong….’

She felt as though she was emerging from a lovely, vivid dream
into a viciously muddled nightmare, where everyone was accusing Richard of the
most vile behaviour. They seemed to think he had got her drunk and deliberately
seduced her.

‘Richard, tell them…’ She turned to look at him. And her blood
ran cold. If anything had the power to sober her up it was the sight of him,
sitting on the chair, his head in his hands, his shoulders bowed.

The picture of despair.

As Lady Penrose seized her wrist and dragged her from the room
she realized that she’d ruined his life.

Snatches of things that had happened flashed through her mind
as she stumbled along the corridors in her chaperone’s outraged wake. The look
of shock on his face when he’d found her naked in his bed. The harshness of his
voice as he’d ordered her to cover herself up. It had all been a bit hazy, but
the next thing she knew he’d been grimly wrestling her into one of his shirts.
And then he’d picked her up and forcibly carried her from his bedroom. Her
cheeks flamed red as she recalled her wanton behaviour over the next few
minutes. Having all that naked chest within reach had been more temptation than
she could resist. She had rubbed herself up against it like a cat. Almost
purring with pleasure.

And then she’d begged him to kiss her.

Well, he need not have complied quite so enthusiastically, the
voice of reason reminded her. But then her love for him surged back with the
excuse that
any
red-blooded male, propositioned by a
naked woman who was running her greedy little hands all over his naked torso,
might have succumbed to a momentary lapse of judgement.

But, oh, how badly he was regretting that lapse now! She only
had to think of the way she had left him, sitting with his head in his hands,
after learning that he was going to have to pay for what he’d said at the time
was madness with a lifetime of wedlock to her!

The moment they reached her rooms she whirled round and said,
‘Oh, please, you must not think Richard could possibly have done what his
grandfather accused him of. None of what happened was his fault. It was all
mine!’

Lady Penrose sat down upon a chair by the window that
overlooked the
porte-cochère,
her back to the
window.

‘Indeed? Would you care to tell me what really happened?’

Lady Jayne sank onto the sofa and, pausing only once or twice
to take sips of water to ease her parched throat, haltingly recounted the events
of the previous night.

When she had finished, Lady Penrose made a gesture of
annoyance.

‘What on earth possessed you to drink so much brandy?’

‘It—it was only the two glasses,’ replied Lady Jayne, slightly
mystified. She had done so many dreadful things during the course of the night
that it seemed very odd that her duenna should take her to task for her
consumption of alcohol. ‘I have often seen gentlemen drink far more without it
affecting them in the slightest.’

‘They are well used to it, though. And before last night, to my
knowledge, you have never been allowed to taste more than just a few sips of
champagne.’

‘That is so, but…’

‘And it was Lord Ledbury who gave you that first glass. Did he
make you drink it all?’

‘No! No…’ She frowned, trying to recall the exact sequence of
events. ‘In fact he did not give me a drink at all! I helped myself while he was
getting dressed to go after Milly.’

‘And I suppose you filled the glass to the top and drank it
down as though it were a nice cup of tea? Now I can quite see how you came to
think it was perfectly logical to remove every stitch of your clothing and get
into Lord Ledbury’s bed,’ said Lady Penrose acidly.

Put like that, it did sound terribly wicked. Shamefaced, she
nodded her head.

‘Where you promptly fell asleep. And spent the rest of the
night. Alone.’

She nodded again.

‘And you still maintain that the bloodstains on the sheets must
have come from the cut you sustained to your knee sliding down the roof.’

‘Yes.’ She drew aside the coverlet to reveal her grubby grazed
knees.

‘I have to say that your explanation is the only one that makes
complete sense. The others completely failed to account for the rope, and the
fact that your room was locked from the outside.’

‘The rope? It is still there?’

‘Yes.’

For some reason the knowledge that the rope had not
disintegrated completely was strangely comforting. Even if it was only in that
one tiny detail, she had not made a
complete
mull of
the whole affair.

‘Your Josie came to my room in a dreadful state first thing,
before I had even had my chocolate, with some wild tale about you eloping with a
mysterious lover by knotting the curtain ties together to form a rope. Well,
naturally I discounted that story straight off. If you had eloped you would have
locked the door from the inside, to prevent your disappearance from being
discovered as long as possible.’

‘Wait a minute… How did Josie get into my room? I tried to
return last night and the key was not in the door.’

‘No, it was lying on top of the dresser next to it.’

‘Of course! Why did I not think to look there?’

‘Because you had already had one large glass of brandy,’
snapped Lady Penrose. ‘It was enough to dull your intellect to the point where
all the subsequent choices you made were the wrong ones. Though for the life of
me I cannot see what possessed you to climb out of your window by means of a
makeshift rope in the first place. Why on earth did you not simply ring the bell
for Josie to come and let you out?’

‘I was trying to be discreet.’

Lady Penrose winced and closed her eyes. ‘God help us all if
one day you actually
try
to cause a scandal.’

Lady Jayne felt about two inches tall.

Lady Penrose’s eyes flicked open and bored into her as she
said, ‘And then, of course, my own maid came in with my chocolate, full of the
gossip that was raging below stairs about how you had been found, dead drunk, in
Lord Ledbury’s bed, following a night of torrid passion. Which was another story
I could not credit, knowing the pair of you as I do. Besides there being no
reason for it.’

A maid had seen her? ‘Oh, no…’ she moaned, burying her face in
her hands. Gone was any hope of trying to persuade Lord Lavenham and Lady
Penrose to keep the whole incident between themselves. ‘I have been such a fool.
And Lord Ledbury is going to have to pay the price….’

‘Do not for one moment succumb to any sympathy for that young
man! His behaviour has been disgraceful!’

Lady Jayne looked up, bewildered. ‘But I thought you said you
believed me…’

‘I do believe you. And I therefore acquit Lord Ledbury of
deliberately getting you drunk and seducing you. But do not forget the scene
which met my eyes when I came in and found you together was very far from
innocent. You were sprawled across his lap half-naked—both of you. And he was
taking full advantage of your helpless condition. Had we not arrived when we
did, I have no doubt he
would
have accomplished your
seduction.’

‘No. Not Lord Ledbury. He wouldn’t…’

‘Of course he would. He’s a man. And they are all governed by
the basest of urges. No matter how cunningly they conceal the fact.’

She pulled herself up with what looked like a considerable
effort.

‘But that is all beside the point. You were caught in his room,
half-naked, having clearly been there all night. You will have to marry him. And
that is that.’

Defeat washed over her.
He
would
have to marry
her.
That was what Lady Penrose meant.
He was going to have to pay a terrible price for an incident that was entirely
her fault.

‘You will get dressed now, if you please, and we shall go
downstairs for breakfast, where we shall announce your betrothal. You will
not
behave as though you have done anything to be
ashamed of. And let anyone make any conjectures about what happened last night
if they dare!’

Chapter Fourteen

I
t was too much to hope that even
one
of Lord Lavenham’s house guests might be unaware
of the gossip.

But they were all at the breakfast table when she went down.
And all looking far more alert than she felt.

The shock of realising she had trapped Lord Ledbury into a
betrothal he didn’t want had dispersed the haziness left over from the brandy.
But she still had a pounding headache. And her knee and shoulders hurt like the
very devil. When she lowered herself into a place beside Lady Penrose at the
table she did so gingerly, trying hard not to jar any of the myriad scrapes and
bruises she had sustained from her barely controlled descent from the roof.

Lady Susan smirked and made a comment behind her hand to Miss
Twining, who was sitting next to her, which made Miss Twining blush and stare
very hard at her plate.

And Lady Jayne realied that to any onlooker the stiffness of
her movements as she took her place at table must have made her look exactly
like a young woman who had just spent the night being thoroughly ravished.

While she was still thinking about how close Lady Penrose
considered she had come to that, the door opened and Richard walked in. There
was a distinct air of expectancy around the breakfast table, rather like that in
a theatre on the opening night of a new performance. Everyone was either looking
at her, or at him, or from one to the other. And, in spite of Lady Penrose’s
warning not to look as though she’d done anything to be ashamed of, she felt her
cheeks heat. It didn’t help when Lord Lavenham stalked in, not two paces behind
Richard, with a face like thunder. She couldn’t believe how angry he still was.
That he could have condemned Richard’s behaviour without even giving him a fair
hearing in the first place. Why, Lady Penrose, whom she had known for only a few
months, had been willing to hear
her
side of the
story—yes, and had believed her, no matter how unlikely it must all have
sounded.

But Richard behaved as though he didn’t care what anyone in the
room might be thinking of him. With a breezy smile he walked straight to her,
and wished her a cheery good morning.

She could not hold his gaze for more than a split second. One
look at him was all it took to remind her that not two hours since he’d had his
hands all over her. That smiling mouth had suckled at her breast. How could he
just saunter in, looking all cool and collected, when she was so flustered she
hardly knew what to do with herself?

When he took her hand and planted a kiss on her knuckles, like
a practised lover, it struck her that this was the difference between them. He
almost certainly
was
a practised lover. He’d likely
had his hands all over lots of other women in his time.

The image that conjured up didn’t help at all.

‘May I get you some toast?’

‘Toast?’ She was almost dying with mortification, and he was
talking about toast?

‘Or eggs, perhaps?’ He summoned a footman. ‘Peters, why have
you not poured Lady Jayne a cup of tea?’

‘I was just about to my lord,’ said the footman, hastening to
fetch a teapot.

He had not let go of her hand. And he did not look as though he
was the least bit cross with her. From the ease of his manner, anyone would
think that marrying her was his fondest wish.

It was so…
decent
of him to shield
her from public censure by putting on this show. He didn’t seem to bear her any
ill will at all now that he’d recovered from the initial shock of finding
himself forcibly engaged to her. But then he knew she hadn’t meant to bring all
this down on his head. That she’d just been trying to help and, being the idiot
she was, made a total hash of things.

She returned the pressure of his hand, finally finding the
courage to look into his eyes. He smiled, pulled up the chair next to hers and
sat down.

‘I expect we should tell everyone our news. Though it looks as
though they all suspect something anyway.’

He gave a devil-may-care grin that sent a pang straight to her
heart. Perhaps he really didn’t care. He had already accepted he was going to
have to marry for duty. She could just imagine him shrugging fatalistically as
he shaved and deciding that, after all, she was no worse than Lady Susan or Lucy
Beresford.

‘I have the privilege,’ he said, looking round the table with a
glint of challenge in his eyes, ‘of being able to announce that Lady Jayne and I
are to be married. Is that not so?’ He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘My love?’

It was her cue to back him up.

She opened her mouth to agree. But the power of speech seemed
to have deserted her. She had never been at such a loss. Normally she had no
trouble maintaining a cool facade. Where was it now that she so desperately
needed it?

She looked at him and nodded. It was the best she could do. But
it seemed enough for Richard, who smiled at her with all the tenderness anyone
could expect from a newly engaged man.

She wanted to weep for him.

‘Well, then, congratulations, I suppose,’ said Berry, a little
doubtfully.

Lucy stayed silent, but the spark of jealousy in her eyes said
it all.

And Lord Lavenham made an angry sort of growling noise as he
took his seat at the head of the table.

Lady Jayne bristled. She knew he had never liked her. And now
he probably thought she was some kind of a drunken…slut, who could only get a
proposal by creeping into a man’s bed at night. And the glower on his face as
Watkins hurried over to pour his coffee would only confirm everyone’s suspicions
about what had gone on the night before. And tell them that he thoroughly
disapproved.

It was the outside of enough. If Richard did not care, then
neither would she give a fig for what any of them thought. Anger gave her the
strength to lift her chin and freeze them all out.

Richard watched her pulling on her public armour with
disappointment. He much preferred her all flustered and shy.

But he had seen pain flit across her face, too. She hated the
thought of having to marry him. He only had to think of how many times she had
protested when both her chaperone and his grandfather had insisted it was the
only way out of the mess.

He might be getting his heart’s desire, but it was coming at a
very great cost to her.

Being discovered together like that had solved the problem of
how he was going to get her to marry him. But he had wanted to win her heart,
not force her compliance. He wanted her to be thrilled at the prospect of
marrying him. Not looking haunted. Ashamed.

He glared at the other occupants of the breakfast table, who
were adding to her distress with their mixture of avid curiosity and blatant
disapproval.

For two pins he would throw the whole pack of them out of the
house!

But there were another two days to go of this house party. And
the matter between Berry and Miss Twining was not quite settled. Besides, if he
turned them out in anger they would all go straight back to Town and start
spreading the kind of malicious gossip about Lady Jayne that would taint their
marriage for years to come. It would be better to carry on as normal.

‘Do we have anything in particular planned for our guests’
entertainment today?’ he asked his grandfather.

Lord Lavenham glowered at him for a moment, before replying,
‘With the weather being so unpredictable, I thought to have some targets set up
on the lower lawn for some archery. Not too far for the ladies to run back to
the house if it rains.’

Under cover of a muted chorus of approval, Richard leaned and
whispered in Lady Jayne’s ear.

‘Since nobody else is likely to want to brave the weather, I
think we should go out for a ride together. I need to talk to you privately.
Will you meet me at the stables?’

It was so different from the way he’d ordered her to meet him
clandestinely before. And her feelings about doing so had completely changed.
She
needed
to speak to him. If they put their heads
together, surely they could come up with some way to extricate themselves from
this unholy mess.

‘Of course,’ she said.

If nothing else, she owed him an apology.

Several apologies.

* * *

‘You look lovely,’ he said, when she walked into the
stable yard an hour later, wearing the same riding habit he’d admired so much
before. The military style of it reminded him, again, that she would have made a
wonderful soldier’s wife. Though if he had still been a serving soldier—a pang
shot through him—he might never have met her. He thanked God, for the first
time, that he had been obliged to sell his commission. What would his life have
been like had she never come into it? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Lady Jayne was eyeing Ajax with a troubled expression as his
groom led him to a mounting block.

‘Is he safe for you to ride?’ she asked, as the beast flung its
head up and down, then skittered sideways on the cobbles in his delight at
getting out of his stall.

‘Oh, yes. He’s just eager to get going. He will enjoy our
gallop as much as we shall.’

‘Gallop? Are you sure? Richard, last time we went out you were
on that awful slug of a horse…’

‘Last time
I
went out,’ he
corrected her, ‘Ajax and I came to an understanding.’ He clapped the horse on
the neck. ‘Didn’t we, old boy?’

‘You rode Ajax last night? When you went after…?’

Richard shot her a look, warning her not to discuss last
night’s events in front of the grooms. Then he swung himself up into the saddle
with an athletic grace that almost made her gasp.

A groom helped her mount, and they had hardly passed out of the
stable yard before Richard turned to her with a grin and said, ‘Race you?’

‘Do you mean it?’ She had never had anyone willing to race with
her before.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, because…’ She nibbled at her lower lip. When she had
gone to live with her grandfather he had decreed it was unlady-like to go
careering all over the place astride her pony, and had set a groom to teach her
the technique of riding side-saddle. It had been one of the worst restrictions
he had enforced upon her behaviour.

But Richard wanted to race?

‘Where to?’

‘The Workings,’ he said, and dug his heels into Ajax’s
flanks.

‘That is not fair!’ she cried as he set off.

And Mischief seemed to agree. For the next few minutes both she
and her horse were equally determined to catch up with the males of the party.
By the time she reined in at The Workings she was so exhilarated she scarcely
felt any of the aches and pains that had so plagued her at breakfast.

‘Oh, you beast!’ she said, laughing down at Richard, who had
already dismounted and was unlocking the door to the pavilion. ‘You
cheated.’

He came and helped her to dismount.

‘You would surely not wish me to
let
you win a race, would you?’ He took Mischief’s reins and led her
to the iron ring set in the wall to which he’d already tethered Ajax.

‘No, but neither do I think you should take unfair advantage. I
was riding side-saddle, you know, which is very far from easy.’

‘But I have a wounded leg, which cancels out the disadvantage
of your awkward saddle.’ Having securely tethered both horses he turned and made
his way back to her.

‘But you still set off without giving me due warning,’ she
protested. ‘And anyway, you said your leg was not that bad.’

‘I do not think riding side-saddle is that bad, either. I have
seen ladies riding side-saddle leading the hunting field. Looking quite
magnificent.’

He ran his eyes over her figure in a way that made her acutely
aware of the fact that he’d already seen most of it naked. She felt herself
blushing with pleasure at his blatant appreciation. Not only had that statement
indicated he didn’t object to behaviour her grandfather decried as hoydenish,
but Richard also seemed to have pleasant memories of that morning’s
interlude.

Pleasant enough that he was not dreading consummating their
marriage, anyway.

‘I think you are getting away from the whole purpose of coming
out here,’ she said, before his kindness went to her head and she started to
entertain the misapprehension that he actually
wanted
to marry her.

‘The purpose?’

The whole purpose of coming out here had been to get her alone
and hopefully persuade her that marrying him was not such a bad idea. The way
she’d run straight to him when she’d been so frantic about Milly proved she
trusted him. And the fact that some of her concern was for his feelings also
indicated that she cared for him to some extent. For a while there, last night,
he had begun to hope she was beginning to feel physically attracted to him, too…
But then, when she had looked so appalled at the prospect of marrying him, he
had worked out what must really have been going on in her head. Alcohol often
had the effect of making people feel amorous. And half-asleep, and probably
waking from a dream about the man she
did
love…

The guilt he’d felt then had all but crushed him. How could he
have taken advantage of her trusting nature? How could he have deceived himself
into thinking she was truly responding to
him
when
she had been so sleepy, so befuddled…?

‘Is this a dream? Are you going to kiss
me?’

He had only to recall the shock on her face when she’d fully
woken—the number of times she had said
no!

She had not really been aware of what she was doing. Or, more
importantly,
with whom.

‘You must tell me what has become of Milly,’ said Lady Jayne
earnestly. There was a tension in the air between them she did not know how to
deal with. A look on his face she wanted to dispel. ‘She has not come back. And
neither has Lord Halstead. Yet nobody seems to have got wind of the fact they
ran away together.’