Harlequin Historical February 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Major's Wife\To Tempt a Viking\Mistress Masquerade (55 page)

‘Oh dear. Have I not managed to convince you, Cecily?'

‘You have not quite managed, my love, to pull the wool down far enough over my eyes. And somehow I doubt that Verne will be as gullible either.'

‘The shoe is on the other foot. His interest in me goes only as far as those letters. After that, I shall cease to be of the slightest concern to him and I'm not in the least flattered that he thinks I don't know it.'

‘So you intend to take him for a ride. Is that it?'

‘Yes, if you must know, it is.'

The uncompromising words cut no ice with Cecily, being no stranger to the confused emotions of young women, or to the conflicts that tear apart otherwise loving families. ‘Mmm,' she said. ‘You wouldn't want any advice from me, then, concerning the dangers.'

‘I've thought of the dangers, love. I know what I'm doing. How soon can you visit Lady Hamilton?'

‘I'll go tomorrow while you're out with Oriel. Will that do?'

Annemarie pulled out a handful of banknotes from her reticule. ‘This is what I was going to use for the journey,' she said, handing it to Cecily. ‘Will you give it to her with my regards?'

‘That's a lot,' Cecily said, taking it with obvious reluctance.

‘It won't be a lot to her. Now, shall I go up? Keep a close eye on the bag, won't you? Put it somewhere
very
safe while we're out this evening.'

‘You can be sure I will, m'dear. You'll find everything you need in the Chinese Room. I'll order the carriage for just before seven, shall I?'

Well done, my lord, she said to herself as Annemarie disappeared upstairs. You certainly don't let the grass grow under
your
feet, do you? Opening her hand, she smiled at the key upon her palm before closing her fingers gently round it.

* * *

Upon her return to Montague Street, Oriel discovered that her fiancé was with her father, deep into a discussion about a collection of antiquities that the British Museum had bought in 1805, which was now thought to be less valuable than the £20,000 they had paid for it. ‘Mine is far superior, in fact,' Lord Benistone was saying in a voice that bounced off the statue-lined corridor. ‘Ah...Oriel, m'dear,' he said, catching sight of his eldest daughter, ‘we should ask Colonel Harrow to have dinner with us.'

‘We already have done, Father,' she said, smiling sideways at her handsome William. ‘And I have a surprise for you. Annemarie and Cecily will be dining with us, too.'

Lord Benistone's pale eyes wrinkled tightly round the edges like an old envelope, fixing his eldest daughter with a look of deep suspicion that she found more amusing than alarming. ‘Why isn't she at Brighton? What's going on?'

‘Lord Verne brought her back. There's been a...a development.' Oriel drew off her gloves and pulled at the ribbons of her poke bonnet, still smiling.

‘Oh! Has there indeed? Well, come along, miss. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?'

‘No, Father. We should allow Annemarie to do that herself, I think.'

‘In which case, Verne ought to be here when she does it, since I expect it concerns him, too. Invite him to dine, then we'll get the story from both sides.'

The smile wavered, finding no support in William's mischievous silence. ‘Wouldn't it be better if she could tell you without—?'

‘No. If this is another of Annemarie's impulsive decisions, I'd better be knowing about it before it's too late.'

‘Too late to what, Father?'

‘To stop it. Where is she?'

‘Staying with Cecily. She thought—'

‘Hah! She thought I'd ask too many questions. She's right. I shall.'

‘Father, Annemarie is a widow, you know.'

‘Exactly! Ought to know better.' Crooking a finger at the footman who stood discreetly at one end of the hall, he scribbled a hasty message on one of the cards from the table and placed it in the man's white-gloved hand. ‘Lord Verne. Bedford Square,' he said.

‘Do you think you might find time to dress, Father, since we shall be having guests?' Oriel enquired, with little hope of agreement.

Lord Benistone peered over the top of his spectacles with a frown. Catching the merest hint of a nod from his future son-in-law, he gave a non-commital grunt. ‘If there's time,' he said.

‘I'm glad Verne's coming to dine,' said Colonel Harrow. ‘I met him a few times. Quite a reputation he had in Spain. Remarkable chap, you know. It'll be good to see him again.'

‘If he's managed to interest Annemarie, he certainly is,' she said. ‘I'd better go and talk to cook, dearest. I'll join you in the conservatory.'

* * *

Knowing Lord Benistone as well as they did, Annemarie, Oriel and Cecily were not entirely taken in by his assumed concern about the new arrangement which, although it must have come as a surprise to him, he appeared to accept after some close questioning to which he must already have known the answers. Or most of them, anyway. There was no one else, he admitted rather grudgingly, he would have considered for the role as Annemarie's escort, although he did not explain how he might have prevented it when her last one had been such a disaster. If he had any reservations about the unconventional nature of the relationship, he supposed they were both old enough to know what they were doing, by which he meant, they all understood, that he was hardly the one to protest when he had done the same himself.

But the ladies' scepticism remained; Father would have shown less interest in the details had not Colonel Harrow been there as an interested observer. The answer he gave to the question of how much help Annemarie would be expected to give to showing his visitors round the collection, however, surprised them all.

‘Oh, no need to bother about that,' he said, airily. ‘That's been attended to.'

Cecily looked up, sharply. ‘Has it, Elmer?' she said. ‘How?'

‘I've enlisted some help, dear,' he said with an impish grin. ‘And before you ask where from, they're from across the road. British Museum. They're sending in three men on each of our open days to help with the extra visitors and with the cataloguing. I've had visitors here in droves, lately.' Beaming mildly at his two daughters, he continued, ‘So you won't be needed, either of you. Oriel dear, you're free of duties. I've got some of their cleaners, too. How does that sound?'

It sounded, after a moment of stunned silence, too good to be true. ‘Are you expanding then, Papa?' Oriel wanted to know, thinking of the new head.

‘Mmm, not exactly, m'dear. Now, isn't it time for pudding?'

Unable to elicit anything more on the subject, their natural assumption was that, partly through their own devices and partly through his, they were being squeezed out of Number Fourteen Montague Street in favour of the collection. And while Annemarie was relieved by her father's acceptance of her own plan to begin socialising, her feelings about being relieved of duties at home were ambivalent, to put it mildly.

* * *

‘It's not that I
wanted
to be here three times a week,' she told Lord Verne as he prepared to escort her and Cecily back to Park Lane, ‘but it does begin to look as if he was just waiting for me to disappear before getting in all this help. Why could he not have done it sooner? Why the sudden cataloguing? And cleaning. What would have happened if I'd not decided to...to live...somewhere else?'

‘To be my mistress? You'd have come back from Brighton to find a life-size marble statue of Adonis in your bed,' he said, taking her hand in his. ‘Or worse, one of those leery centaurs. Just as a hint to move out.'

She struggled not to laugh, but failed. ‘Now you're being vulgar,' she said.

He grinned. ‘So you know about centaurs, do you? Ah!'

‘Enough, thank you. It was good of you to come at such short notice. Papa wanted you to meet Colonel Harrow again. He was glad to see you.'

Verne had been a few minutes late, delayed by his visit to his Royal Highness at Carlton House, but quite unaware that, while they waited, his exploits with Wellington's army in Spain last year were being revealed in detail. Colonel Harrow's 14th Light Dragoons and the 10th Hussars had joined forces for the Battle of Vitoria exactly one year ago when Jacques Verne's bravery and daring had been the talk of the officers' tents for months. Viscount Wellington himself had visited him in the field hospital and had commended his fierce attempts to save a crowd of French women who were fleeing with the Emperor Joseph from certain atrocities by uncontrollable men from his own side. The Emperor's wagon train of over three thousand carriages had been over twelve miles long, full of priceless art and antiquities, taken from Valladolid by Napoleon's brother, the Spanish king, accompanied by families, court officials and terrified women. Once intercepted, the carnage was indescribable, the looting a disgrace to the British army, the loss of the five-and-a-half million gold francs, countless treasures, jewellery, furniture and libraries, grabbed, torn, destroyed and stolen. Badly wounded, Verne had personally fought off the rampaging foot soldiers of his own side to protect the women dragged from the carriages. Ultimately, Vitoria had been a success, but at a terrible cost, including Wellington's fury. Verne had been sent home to recover, returning to the capital only after months of nursing at his parents' country home.

Sitting open-mouthed with astonishment, Annemarie had noted the admiration dawn upon the faces of her family as Colonel Harrow praised the courage of the man she was planning to bring to his knees. He had protected a crowd of helpless women, French, not English, from a howling mob of soldiers who would have torn them apart to get at the valuables they wore, a mob for whom a single jewel represented more than they could earn in a lifetime. Unlike her late husband, whose death had been his only injury, Verne had said not one word to her about his exploits, while she had casually labelled him with the usual anecdotal misconducts attached to his elite regiment. Apart from suggesting that he might be an exception, which she had chosen not to believe, he was allowing her to find out for herself what kind of man he was. The discovery did nothing to commend her programme of revenge and, when he eventually arrived with profuse apologies for lateness, Annemarie had already begun to see him more as a protector than a predator.

‘I was glad to see Harrow, too,' he said. ‘He's a good man. Perfect for your sister. They should be our first guests, with Mrs Cardew. D'ye think?'

‘We'll give a dinner party. All your friends and mine.'

His white smile broadened into a laugh. ‘That's my girl,' he whispered. ‘Already you're entering into the spirit of the thing. Shall we invite your father?'

‘If he dresses as he did tonight, then certainly,' she said. Lord Benistone had risen to the occasion, giving his valet more to do than he'd had for years, as well as a shock that earned him a brandy after his master's departure from the untidy clothes-scattered bedroom.

‘Last time I kissed you goodnight in this hall,' Verne said, looking around him, ‘we were watched by a row of erotic nymphs on pedestals. Do you think we might have some more privacy, this time, before the others appear?'

Earlier that day, Annemarie would have made excuses not to, but with his hand pressing hers and a whole evening of his closeness, his talk and graceful mannerisms, his staggering good looks, the cold core of hardness in her heart, so long nurtured, had begun to soften round the edges enough to let him in. To her own surprise as well as his, she drew him towards the door of the morning room where they had first talked at cross-purposes and, once in the dark overcrowded space, turned to him as he closed the door softly.

‘No David's hand this time,' he said.

‘So mind the priceless Attic vase,' she replied, lifting her arms to enclose him.

For a woman whose interest was flawed, Annemarie's surrender to his kisses must surely have been convincing to anyone less astute than Verne. He had noticed the difference in her demeanour during the evening which, although by no means effusive, had been warmer than that first chilling experience, but not for one moment did he believe that the change had come about naturally. Not in a woman of her sort. Not so fast. Not so easy. So when her body bowed into his, her arms linked around his neck, he felt the apprehension as well as the curiosity and would liked to have known more about the change and the reasons for it. So hurt and vulnerable, yet prepared to sell herself for some cause or other.

This time, she was neither exhausted nor mellowed by wine, but fully aware of every part of him pressing against her from knee to nose, the strong hands across her back and grasping her shoulder, the intoxicating taste of his lips covering hers, warm and persuasive, enticing her to stay and respond. She could easily have pulled away when he took her head between his hands, holding her for a soft shower of kisses falling upon her eyelids, cheeks, chin and mouth. But she did not, smiling instead at the tender caress of a man who, with his sabre, could put to flight a rabble of blood-lusting men. That, while he was wounded.

‘That's new to you, isn't it, my beauty?' he whispered, still holding her.

Huffing with laughter, she agreed, ‘Mmm. Everything is.'

‘Then I shall have the pleasure of teaching you.'

‘Have you had a great deal of experience, my lord?' she said, holding his wrists.

‘That is a question mistresses and wives may not ask. If one says no, that implies a certain restraint which may not be entirely true. And if one says yes...'

‘That implies a certain intemperance that may not...'

‘Quite. Does it matter much to you?'

‘No, my lord. I knew the answer before I asked.'

She could not see his smile before his next kiss, but felt the sudden surge of energy behind it, as if her answer had pleased him. But instead of thinking him arrogant, her thoughts veered towards the lessons that awaited her in his arms and the pleasure she would have in learning from him. For how long they remained locked together in the darkness she could never remember, only that by the time they emerged into the hall, her legs had turned to water and a strange unfamiliar ache of longing had begun to suffuse her thighs, making her gasp at its sweetness.