Desired (14 page)

Tess’s auburn curls were brushing Brooke’s shoulder. His dark head was close to hers as he spoke to her.
Owen could not hear the words but sensed the urgency and the intimacy. Brooke had a hand on Tess’s arm and as Owen watched he slid that hand down to take hers and press it between both of his in a heartfelt gesture. Tess smiled up at him. Brooke drew her closer and kissed her cheek, his lips lingering as though he wanted to do a great deal more.

Shock and anger punched Owen in the gut. Tess showed none of the physical reticence with Brooke that she had done with him, no reluctance for his touch. What a fool he had been to believe her when she had told him that she and Brooke were not lovers. He had imagined them no more than political allies. He had been more than a fool, in fact, since he had been utterly duped into providing not only security for Tess against Sidmouth’s investigation but also cover for her
affaire
. He had sought her out tonight, anxious to have the truth out between them, prepared to offer her his protection because he despised what Sidmouth was doing to entrap her and he admired her for her loyalty to her cause and he had thought her sincere. Yet instead of binding her closer to him he had found her with her lover. And of course Brooke would never betray her to Sidmouth. She was his mistress and whatever political advancement he received, he would take Tess with him.

Owen saw Brooke gesture slightly with his head towards the garden door. He went out. A few seconds later Tess came back down the corridor and passed Owen so closely that he could smell her jasmine scent.
Her scarlet skirts brushed the statue of Apollo he was hiding behind. She went through into the hallway and headed for the ladies’ withdrawing room. A second later she emerged, cloaked and hooded, and slipped away out of the front door and into the street. There was a clatter of hooves on the cobbles as a hackney carriage pulled away. Brooke evidently had had one waiting.

“Rothbury! Capital stuff!” Rupert Montmorency accosted Owen as he was hurrying towards the door. “Already paid my compliments to the lovely Lady Darent.” Rupert winked. “She seemed to be leaving in a hurry—”

“Not now, Rupert,” Owen said. “I have to go—”

“Frightfully bad
ton
to interrupt your future wife with her lover,” Rupert said. “Give them an hour. Or perhaps two to be on the safe side,” he added thoughtfully.

“Thank you, Rupert,” Owen said tightly. He was aware that a number of people had emerged from the ballroom and were watching him, eyes avid and scandal tripping from their tongues. Tess’s departure had not gone unnoticed, then. The gossip was already starting to filter through the ball, rippling around the edges of the room and sweeping inwards like the tide.

There was a light touch on his arm. “I imagine you are thanking God now that you are such a cool hand at cards,” Alex Grant said, in his ear. “I assure you, no one looking at you would realise you wish to break Brooke’s neck and I only realise it because I know you so well.”

“I’m not sure that his is the neck I wish to break,” Owen said grimly. He was remembering again Tess’s claim:
Justin Brooke is not my lover….

What sort of fool had he been to believe her?

“Are you going to let her get away with it?” Alex asked, with an expressive lift of his brows.

“What do you think?” Owen beckoned to the footman. “The carriage for Lady Darent,” he said. “Where did it take her?”

The man’s face was completely blank. “I’m sorry, my lord—”

Owen swallowed a curse. “Lady Darent and Mr. Brooke,” he clarified. “Where did they go?”

The man’s face cleared. He looked inordinately relieved to be able to help. Owen realised that such was his anger the man probably thought he would strangle him if he could not answer the question. He strove to bank down that anger and moderate his tone.

“It was an address in Hampstead Wells, my lord. Belsize Terrace,” the footman stuttered.

“Thank you,” Owen said, and the man shot away as though his life depended on it.

“That’ll take you the best part of an hour,” Alex said.

“I don’t have anything better to do,” Owen said drily. “Hampstead Wells,” he added. “Where is that?”

“North of town, very genteel, very respectable,” Alex said, a little grimly. “Good luck, old fellow.”

Luck, Owen reflected, was not precisely what he needed. Better judgement when it came to women
might serve him well in future. Nevertheless he would see Tess Darent and have the truth out with her before he broke their engagement and abandoned her to her sensual excesses with her young lover.

The journey out of town did indeed seem interminable, endless ill-lit streets giving way to darkened roads along which the carriage jerked and jolted. Finally Owen alighted in front of a small row of cottages. The footman had only heard a partial address. Impossible to tell which of these houses held his errant fiancée, but perhaps he could start with the one that still had candlelight showing behind the shutters.

His knock brought a housemaid scurrying. She looked terrified. No wonder. Owen was not at all sure what was showing on his face now that he did not have to conceal his feelings and since he had had the best part of an hour to dwell on them. He had never been a possessive man, or so he had thought, but now he felt every drop of the white-hot fury a man would feel when he caught his woman with a lover. He felt as though he cared. It angered him that he had been deceived; it angered him that his name had been dishonoured and, more than anything, it angered him that it mattered.

“Is Lady Darent here?” he demanded, when the door opened to his peremptory knock.

The housemaid, mute, eyes wide as dinner plates, nodded.

“I’ll announce myself,” Owen said, pushing the door wide and striding into the hall. The house was tiny, the
corridor so narrow he felt as though the walls were closing in on him. His fury needed more space than this. He felt hemmed in and could feel the anger boiling up in him. He exerted absolute control to keep it down. No point in frightening the maid. She was already trembling and her face was pale as milk.

He strode down the passageway. The house was very simple; plainly decorated, a couple of good quality paintings on the wall and a thin strip of carpet woven in bright colours. He would have expected that Tess would wish for a great deal more luxury from her love nest than this. Surely she would want a deep feather bed and plump pillows, and smooth satin against her naked skin?

The image was unexpectedly erotic and did nothing to sooth his temper. Devil take it, Tess Darent was
his
betrothed, not Brooke’s, and he had treated her with absolute respect. He had not even kissed her yet. More than once in the past week he had wondered why not. His desire for her had not diminished. If anything it had become keener because he had started to know her and to like her very much. He had no longer lusted after Tess simply because she was beautiful, a physical embodiment of some sinful fantasy. The real Tess Darent had seemed quite different from the dream, sharp and sweet, strong yet vulnerable, a woman of decided opinions and determined will. He had admired her very much. He had wanted her very much.

Owen was not a man accustomed to delayed grati
fication where women were concerned. Generally he took his pleasure as he saw it. His liaisons had been enjoyable but in the past they had lacked the depth to hold him. With Tess it had been different—or so he had thought.

He could hear voices from a room to the left. At least if they were talking he would not catch them in the act of making love, though it was not going to be pretty. He could imagine it all: Tess in a state of undress perhaps, her bodice undone to give a glimpse of the curve of her breasts beneath, her hair unbound in all that glorious red-gold profusion. Brooke would be lying back against the pillows with that curst youthful arrogance of his and beckoning her to come to his bed…?.

Owen opened the door.

And realised that he had made a monumental mistake.

The first thing that he noticed was that there were three people in the tiny parlour and they were all fully clothed. Furthermore they were drinking tea from bone china and could not have looked more respectable had they been at a vicarage garden party.

Tess was seated in an elegant old wing chair before the fire. There was a sketching pad with pencil drawings open on the table beside her. Opposite her was a young lady of strikingly pretty appearance who over-set her cup when Owen burst in and sent tea cascading onto the worn rug in front of her. A fair proportion of
it showered Justin Brooke, who had been kneeling in front of the fire toasting crumpets.

Toasting crumpets…
Owen had rushed in expecting to find his fiancée
in flagrante
and instead found her alleged lover toasting crumpets. A faint sense of the ridiculous possessed him. He could not help himself.

Tess got to her feet with exquisite, unruffled calm. Or perhaps she was not so calm, Owen thought. Certainly she was very careful to surreptitiously cover the sheets of sketches as she moved forwards to greet him.

“Good evening, my lord,” she said, as though Owen’s precipitate appearance was both expected and extremely welcome. “I am so happy that you could join us.” Owen doubted that, but Tess was already turning to the young lady. “May I introduce Lady Emma Bradshaw?” she said. “I believe you are already acquainted with her brother, Mr. Brooke.”

Brooke gave Owen the very slightest and most awkward of bows. “Rothbury,” he said.

“Brooke,” Owen said coldly. Whatever the situation here—and clearly he had misjudged it somewhat—this was a man for whom he had absolutely no respect and he did not trouble to pretend otherwise.

Brooke’s face took on a deep flush. Sensing Owen’s blatant hostility, Tess once again threw herself into the breach.

“Lady Emma,” she said, drawing the girl forwards. “This is my fiancé, Viscount Rothbury.”

Owen found himself the subject of a very frank gaze
from Lady Emma’s enormous blue eyes. It was evident from a single glance, he thought, who had inherited the strength of character in the Brooke family.

“I hope,” Emma said, “that you are good enough for Lady Darent, my lord.”

It was not a concept that Owen had ever considered before. He cast a glance at Tess and saw her lips twitch as she tried to hide a smile.

“I am not certain that that is the thought uppermost in Lord Rothbury’s mind at present, Emma,” she murmured.

“Well, it should be!” Lady Emma took Owen’s hands in a firm clasp and drew him down to sit beside her on the settle. “You should know, my lord,” she confided, “that when my husband deserted me last year and my family disowned me, it was Lady Darent who took me in and persuaded the Duke of Farne to provide for me—” Her gesture encompassed the little parlour and all that was in it. “She has been the best and most generous of friends to me.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Owen saw Tess shift uncomfortably in her chair. He could see that Lady Emma’s words, however well intentioned, disturbed her.

“Not only that, but Lady Darent has enabled Justin to visit me, my lord,” Emma was saying. “When my family cast me off, my parents forbade him to see me ever again. They threatened to cut him off without a penny but he was determined not to abandon me.”

It was Brooke who shifted this time and Owen hoped it was with guilt to be given so much credit for so little. The pieces of the picture were beginning to move into place in his mind. He could see precisely how Tess had enabled Justin Brooke to continue to visit his sister. Their supposed affair was the most perfect cover for his clandestine visits, not to a mistress but to a sister he could no longer publicly acknowledge. Owen deplored the craven way in which Justin had used Tess and he could not understand why she had permitted it. He had been right before when he had sensed that there was not one iota of sexual attraction between them. The idea was absurd. He felt an enormous relief, but it was still edged with anger for Tess’s indiscretion in publicly dishonouring his name and the protection he offered her, as well as ruining her own reputation so carelessly.

“There must have been a very important reason that led you to ask Lady Darent to come here tonight, Lady Emma,” he said softly. “What was it?”

He felt Tess stir. She took a step towards him.

“My lord—” she began.

Owen turned his head and looked at her. “Do you wish to tell me,” he said coolly, “or permit Lady Emma to do so?”

Tess looked across at Justin Brooke, and Owen felt his temper soar dangerously again. No, Tess and Brooke were not lovers, but there was something very strong that drew them together. He could sense it. They were political allies but it was more than that. He remem
bered the payments on Churchward’s balance sheet. If Tess had been funding Brooke, perhaps in the manner Sir Francis Burdett had funded her first husband’s political ambitions, it might explain why she had taken both of the Brooke siblings under her wing in different ways. She was Justin Brooke’s benefactor. Owen felt an even greater contempt for the man then, thinking of his clandestine meetings with Sidmouth and his pledges to change allegiance and give up the names of his radical allies.

Brooke made an instinctive move towards Tess, quickly checked when Owen turned sharply on him. Brooke was running a finger around the collar of his shirt as though it were so tight it was cutting off his breath. Which would be no bad thing, Owen thought. He wondered when—or if—Justin Brooke would develop a spine and not only stand up for himself but also openly defend those he claimed to love. The man was weak through and through.

“Do you have anything to say, Mr Brooke?” he asked with immaculate courtesy.

“No, my lord,” Brooke mumbled. He did not meet Owen’s eyes. “This is my sister’s business, not mine.”

“Tom has come back,” Emma said in a rush. “Tom Bradshaw. My husband.” Her fair, open face was flushed and troubled, her blue eyes pleading. “I didn’t know what to do.” She wrung her hands in a gesture of unconscious distress. “I was fearful, upset, so I sent to Justin to ask Lady Darent to help me.” She stopped.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she repeated, more softly. “I love Tom and I don’t want to see him arrested, but I cannot trust him and I know he has done some terrible things.” She stopped. The misery was palpable in her voice. “I thought that Lady Darent would know what to do,” she said, turning towards Tess. “She always helps me.”