Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Unwed and Unrepentant\Return of the Prodigal Gilvry\A Traitor's Touch (14 page)

* * *

It was after six when Cordelia left Cavendish Square, her mind awhirl with Bella's various confidences. She felt as if she barely knew the woman revealed to her today. Subversive, selfish, insightful, with her own particular brand of morality that was in its own way every bit as wayward as Cordelia's own, this Bella was, shockingly, a much more
interesting
person than the one Cordelia had known previously. Aunt Sophia would condemn Bella for not protecting Cressie, but Bella's deliberate neglect had allowed Cressie the freedom to pursue her true love. And Bella's adultery had given her the daughter she craved. A lovely child Isabella was too, her mother was quite transformed in her company. Bella had done her duty, and now she was pleasing herself.

‘Good for Bella,' Cordelia said under her breath, ‘though it would not be me.'

She paused on the corner of Margaret Street. The sensible thing would be to go back to Milvert's and send Iain a note asking him to call on her in the morning, by which time she would have had plenty of time to think matters over. But she didn't feel like being sensible and she had already spent one tortuous, self-castigating night with her mind going round and round in circles, so she turned her steps impulsively towards Regent Street. It was absolutely not the done thing for a lady to call at a gentleman's lodgings, or indeed for a lady to walk alone at this time of the evening down St James's, but Cordelia was not in the mood for convention. She wanted to know where she stood, and she didn't want to take a chance on due reflection imbuing sense or cowardice.

Last night— Oh, God, last night. She came to an abrupt halt at Conduit Street.
Had
she been thinking of Gideon when Iain was kissing her, touching her, taking her clothes off? Not at first, she was certain of that. But he had been there, in the back of her mind, all the same. Confronted with the flesh-and-blood man she had once desired, whose body was once as familiar to her as her own, had been such a shock. She did not recognise the woman he had tried to recall as herself—or did not want to, more likely. No, she had not been thinking of Gideon when she was with Iain, but she had been using Iain to blot Gideon out.

It had never happened to her before, that—that failure. Her body had betrayed her. And Iain—was it worse for him? She suspected so, from his reaction. That had never happened to her either. Was it her fault, or perhaps Gideon's fault—which was the same thing, in a way? It was ironic and rather dreadful that something she wanted so much had been such a catastrophe. They could not ignore it, no matter how wretched she felt at the thought of discussing it, for it would taint everything.
Gideon
would taint everything.

Bella had said that Iain had pushed Cordelia towards Gideon as some sort of test. She had also said that men like Iain didn't play games. Cordelia had not precisely been playing games, but she had most decidedly been cautious with the truth. All very well to tell herself it didn't matter, that her past was none of Iain's business, that if she were a man it would not be an issue. The fact was, she was a woman. The fact was, it mattered to her what Iain thought, and it was making her uncomfortable because she was not being honest with the one man in the world she had ever wanted to be honest with.

Which was such a disconcerting thought that Cordelia cut it off immediately, taking off again along Regent Street apace, arriving at Jermyn Street slightly out of breath and so caught up in her inner lecture, to speak the truth and damn the devil, that she was fortunately quite oblivious to the increasing amount of attention she was attracting from the gentlemen she passed.

The lodging-house was situated next door to a tavern— At least, Cordelia hoped it was the right lodging-house, suddenly aware of the fading light and the extreme masculinity of her environment as she waited for her knock to be answered. A suggestion put to her from a very drunk man standing outside the inn made her laugh. She was about to tell him that she doubted any woman capable of such contortions, when a very severe-looking man answered the door. In reply to her query as to the whereabouts of Mr Hunter, his expression turned positively disapproving, but he allowed her to wait—in the narrow hallway—while he ascertained whether Mr Hunter would receive her.

Which meant that Mr Hunter was at home. Cordelia's heart began to bump uncomfortably. The creatures which had been resident in her stomach during that first interview with her father returned. Cicadas, she thought distractedly, that's what she had decided they were. All scales and big eyes and spindly legs and fluttering wings. Revolting things.

‘Cordelia. What the hell!' Iain was in his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat unfastened, his shirt open at the neck. ‘You shouldn't be here,' he said as she moved towards the stairs.

‘
You
have called on
me
several times at Milvert's. Besides, I rather think we are beyond worrying about the proprieties.' She looked up at him from the bottom step. She liked him better dishevelled. He needed to shave. His hair needed brushing. There was a spot of ink on his cheek. Shadows under his eyes. A golden fuzz of hair on his forearms. The cicadas began to disperse, their leaping and fluttering giving way to a different kind of tension.

‘I would have called on you in the morning if you'd sent me a note,' Iain said.

‘I did not want to wait until the morning,' Cordelia replied. ‘I did not want to have to spend the night wondering if you would come.'

His smile was a little twist of his mouth, the faintest lift of his brow. ‘I wouldn't have, this morning.'

‘Well, I've saved you the bother this evening. Can we go up?'

He stood back to allow her to precede him. Her skirts brushed against him as she passed. His rooms were practical, simply but comfortably furnished. A fire burned in a small grate. A lamp sat on a table strewn with papers. Through a half-open door she could see a bed, a chest of drawers. She sat down on a worn leather chair by the hearth and pulled off her bonnet, stripped off her gloves. Iain took the seat opposite her, sitting up straight in the chair, his legs curled under it.

Silence. He stared not at her but into the fire. Waiting. The cicadas were back. He looked forbidding, distant. Not a man to accept second-best, Bella had said. Not a man to play games. Cordelia squared her shoulders, physically and metaphorically, and launched in.

‘We made a deal, you and I. Our betrothal has nothing to do with this other thing between us. You said yourself that regardless of what happened on—on that front, you would still honour our contract.'

She spoke carefully, clearly, without a tremor. Businesslike, was what she was aiming for. Man to man. Man to woman? Correct, but not right. Iain was looking at her and not the fire now, but still he said nothing. ‘The circumstances which necessitated our contract have not changed,' Cordelia continued. ‘I am most eager to meet my sisters in Arabia. I presume you are similarly eager to build your steamships?'

He nodded.

‘So when you suggested—last night, when you suggested that our contract be terminated— No, that's not what you said.' Cordelia tugged at a pin which was sticking into her scalp and pulled it free. At a loss as to what to do with it, she stuck it into the arm of the chair. There was a faint tearing sound. ‘What you suggested was that I might wish to end it,' she continued. ‘But why would I wish to do that, Iain, when it will not get me to Arabia?'

He looked quite nonplussed by this, Cordelia was pleased to see. ‘That's not what I meant,' he said.

‘I know. You were confusing our—let us call it the business side or our relationship —with the other, personal aspect of it.'

He gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Aye, you're right, but I wasn't the only one.'

‘No, you were not. We were both overwrought last night.'

‘Overwrought,' Iain said heavily. ‘That's one way of describing it.'

Cordelia frowned down at her hands, tightly laced in her lap. ‘We made a deal. As far as I am concerned, it stands. We are, for the moment, betrothed, and we are going to Arabia.' She met his gaze unwaveringly. His eyes were very blue. Every time she saw him, it gave her a little shock, the blueness of them. Which was entirely beside the point. ‘So unless you have changed your mind?'

Iain ran his hand through his already ruffled hair. ‘But this isn't just business, is it? It's not about whether I've changed my mind or not, it's about your future.'

‘Which, beyond the duration of our contract, is none of your business,' Cordelia replied tartly. ‘And even while we are betrothed—faux betrothed—I do not recall that there was anything in our agreement about meddling in each other's lives. I would not dream of interfering in your matrimonial plans.'

‘I don't have any. I've no intentions of getting married.'

‘What, never?'

‘What, no interest, Lady Cordelia?'

She bit back her angry retort with difficulty. ‘Touché,' she said instead. In the silence which followed, the fire crackled. The conversation seemed to be going around in circles. Because despite her resolution, Cordelia realised, she was dancing around the issue. She gave a frustrated little sigh, which came out sounding like a strangled kitten, not that she'd ever actually heard a kitten being strangled, but...

Cordelia got to her feet and paced the short distance to the window. When she got there, when she turned around, then she would speak up. She got there. She turned around. Iain's expression was unreadable. She turned back to the window. Why didn't he say something!

She turned back to face the room and took a deep breath. ‘Two things,' she said. ‘I came here to get two things cleared up. First of all, I want to go to Arabia. It is what I want more than anything. I want to be on that ship out of Plymouth in three days' time. So I need to understand once and for all whether you're prepared to go through with our betrothal—faux betrothal?'

Iain shook his head, but his expression had softened considerably. ‘Of course I'm prepared to go through with it if you are, that was never in doubt—at least if it was, then I'm sorry. I would have called on you tomorrow to say as much. I was— Last night, we were both, as you said, overwrought. But it's the other matter that still bothers me, Cordelia, for if you are thinking that you and D'Amery have a future together, I don't think sailing off to Arabia with me is very wise.'

‘My future plans don't involve Gideon.'

‘Are you sure about that?'

‘Iain, I couldn't be more sure. Actually, I thought I couldn't be more sure until last night. Now I'm very, very sure indeed.'

‘Then it's a deal.'

‘Good.' Cordelia took a quick turn to the window and back again. ‘Which brings me to the second thing I wanted to clear up.'

‘If it's about last night, I don't want to talk about it.'

‘It's not exactly a subject I relish either, but—frankly, Iain, I don't want Gideon's ghost following us on to that boat.'

‘You admit it was your fault then.'

She could argue with him, but where would that get her? ‘I'm not trying to apportion blame, I'm trying to— Look, you were right, for what it's worth. Gideon was there with us, in the room. And I wasn't thinking about him, but I knew you were, and I— So it— I couldn't. And so— But that is not what I— Oh, why is this so confusing!'

It had all seemed so clear when she was hurrying here, but now it was all jumbled in her head. She had his agreement on the betrothal. She would sail with him to Plymouth in just a few days. She could forget about this other thing between them, pretend last night never happened, quit now while she was ahead. Then she remembered Bella, complacently telling her that she had chosen too difficult a path. Maybe so, but it was
her
path.

The cicadas in Cordelia's stomach had multiplied. Bred? She shuddered at the image she had inadvertently conjured up. She clasped her hands behind her back, very tightly. She wished fervently she had a glass of wine. She imagined taking a steadying sip and felt her resolve return.

* * *

‘Iain.'

The change in her tone alerted him. She wasn't going to let this go. He couldn't help admiring her for that. As he watched her take another turn to the window and back, a total of eight steps, he was almost relieved to have the topic which had kept him awake the entire night forced on him.

‘Iain.' Cordelia took another deep breath. ‘Last night, I was wrong. I didn't realise it at the time, but I was using you. I was trying to—to reclaim the night, I think, to make it ours, to push Gideon away from—from centre stage. I'm sorry.'

Guilt and admiration made him feel about six inches high. ‘It wasn't just you. There were two of us there in—in the bedchamber. You were right, I did
go
on and on.
I just couldn't let it go.'

‘And there, as the Bard would say, is the rub.' Cordelia managed a faint smile. ‘I won't lie, Iain, I won't rewrite my history in order to make things easier between us. That's what I was trying to do, I think—not lying so much as failing to tell the whole truth. It's what Bella does now. Do you know, her daughter is not my father's child?'

‘You seem remarkably sanguine about that fact.'

‘I'm shocked, of course I am, but when she told me the circumstances...'

Cordelia related them. Iain listened with growing astonishment tinged, it had to be admitted, with a sense of satisfaction that Armstrong was getting his just desserts, though the satisfaction waned when he realised that he was applying standards that were more than double when condoning Lady Armstrong for something far worse than he was condemning her stepdaughter.

‘Bella blackmailed my father into acknowledging Isabella as his own, and my father allowed himself to be blackmailed. She threatened to expose him as a cuckold, but he could just as easily have labelled her an adulteress. He chose not to, because—I think because he felt he owed it to her. She had done her duty in giving him the sons he craved. It was due payment, not bribery. That's how Bella sees it anyway. I'm pretty certain my father does too. He would not play along with it elsewise.' Cordelia was frowning. ‘I'm not like that, Iain. Unorthodox, Bella called me. I suppose I am, though as you know, I prefer to call it independent. Bella thinks that she is making her own terms with her life, but she's not, she's— I don't know, playing within someone else's set of rules. Paying lip service. Lying. Whatever you want to call it, I won't do it. I won't pretend. I thought you had no right to know about Gideon, I thought it was history, but maybe the Scots have a point.'