Rogue's Reward (27 page)

Any delay to her nuptials with Lord Ranking would be welcome, of course.

And finally, it would remove her from London when Leander Campbell came home.

Helena, Lady Lenwood, was enormous. She came out to greet Eleanor with a huge smile.

“I am all belly!” she said gaily. “I did see an elephant last year, but that was before I found myself in such an interesting condition. Do you think that the impression could have lingered so long that I am about to give birth to one?”

Her happiness was so contagious that Eleanor found herself able to bury at least part of her own misery.

Acton Mead was beautiful. A riot of white roses grew over a little bower outside of Helena’s own blue drawing room, and the ladies determined to spend the July days sitting in the shade of the flowers sewing dainty little clothes for the expected heir. A cool breeze funneled around the house from the river and brought the scents of all the flower borders.

Richard was with them often, but he had an estate to run and constant business with his tenants. He was also overseeing innumerable improvement schemes, some involving his land and some in various political organizations dedicated to saving children from intolerable working conditions.

“I should think my brother would drop all this work to be with you,” Eleanor said idly one day. “Every time he goes out, it’s as if he tears out part of himself and leaves it behind.”

“Then I hope whatever he leaves in my care is returned complete and whole when he returns,” Helena said seriously. “Being apart doesn’t threaten us, you know, and marriage doesn’t diminish the fact that you’re still two separate people. Yet I suppose we carry each other’s souls in the palms of our hands, so love must allow absolute trust.”

“Which you have always shared.”

Helena gave her sister-in-law a look of genuine surprise. Then she laughed.

“Not at all, I assure you! Richard trusted me so little when we were first wed that he thought I conspired to bring about his death. No, falling in love is all very well, but real love and trust must be earned every day. I have never thought that anyone could maintain love very long in the face of unkindness or neglect, whatever passion may be shared.”

Eleanor looked down. Helena wasn’t so much older than she was, yet she seemed so calm and sure of herself.

Then she gathered her own brand of courage. “Oh, well,” she replied lightly. “With Lord Ranking, all it will take will be a mustard plaster and elderberry elixir, and he’ll be faithful for life.”

“Helena?” Richard appeared at the door to the blue room and smiled at them. “I have need of your ear for a private word. You will excuse us, sister mine?”

Eleanor offered her help as Lady Lenwood rose heavily to her feet.

As Helena entered the house, Richard put his arm around his wife’s waist and they disappeared.

Bees were buzzing in the roses above her head. Eleanor lay back and watched them. It was very ignoble to be jealous of your own brother’s wife, wasn’t it?

“Good God!” an amused voice said in her ear. “My flowers would seem to be redundant. I had no idea that you would be sitting in a veritable bower of blossom.”

Eleanor jerked upright.

He was standing under the arbor, his arms full of roses of every conceivable shade. He was unscathed, whole, and smiling, his dark hair mottled with broken sunlight, his blue eyes brilliant against his tanned skin.

The new Earl of Hawksley seemed unchanged by Waterloo, that worst of battles. How long had he been back in England? It was less than a month since Napoleon’s defeat. The Allies had only reached Paris the previous Friday. Richard had received the news that very morning, only five days later.

Had Lee come straight from France to Acton Mead?

Eleanor knew a sudden rush of hope. She could not allow herself to feel it.

He bowed and dropped the flowers over her lap and around her feet, until their fragrant beauty surrounded her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, calling on sarcasm for protection. “Is this the equivalent of Jove visiting Danaë in a shower of gold?”

Then she blushed scarlet as she realized the implication of what she had said.

He grinned. “An odd choice of comparison, brown hen. Perseus was the happy result of Jove’s visit, of course. And Danaë was willing only because it broke the monotony of her imprisonment in the brazen tower. Surely you aren’t an imprisoned princess here at Acton Mead?”

“No, a veritable gooseberry. Merely an unnecessary witness to my brother and his wife’s enchantment with each other. I thought you were in Paris, welcoming the return of King Louis. Do you visit Richard? What are the flowers for?”

He took up a dark red rose and held it to his nostrils, inhaling the heady perfume.

“I thought I was visiting you.”

“Me? Why?”

“To begin a proper courtship, of course.”

Her heart raced. “With roses?”

“Why not? The Sultan of Persia slept on a mattress stuffed with their petals. In Kashmir, roses were scattered on the water to welcome the return of the Moghul emperor. Heliogabalus rained them onto his guests from the ceiling. Fashioned out of the body of a nymph by Chloris with the aid of Aphrodite and the three Graces, aren’t they the traditional messengers of contrition, apology, and depth of emotion? I bring red roses for true love, while you sit here beneath white ones for purity.”

“I might do better with columbines,” Eleanor said shakily.

“For folly? Whose, I wonder? Yours or mine? No, red roses will do just fine, perhaps with a sprinkling of bluebells.”

“Bluebells for constancy? Rather a red carnation.”

“Sweet gillyflowers? ‘Alas for my poor heart.’ That is their meaning, isn’t it? ‘The fairest flowers o’ the season / Are our Carnation and streak’d Gillyvors / Which some call nature’s bastards.’ Don’t make it difficult for me, brown hen. I am humbly trying to start afresh.”

“Lee, don’t, I pray!”

“Don’t what?”

He brushed petals from the seat and sat down next to her, then leaned back and closed his eyes. A sharp awareness of all that masculine strength and grace flooded Eleanor’s senses.

“I spent only two hours in London,” he continued. “But I have your father’s permission to pay you my addresses, and your mother was so bold as to wish me Godspeed. Everything is in order for a gentle and respectful courtship. However, I shan’t blame you if you spurn me without a backward thought. I have behaved with total recklessness, haven’t I?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. “I have felt positively trampled, and I’m not sure that either wine or perfume has resulted. If this is a wooing, it might take more than armloads of roses.”

He sighed. “I feared as much. Very well then, what will it take?”

Dappled light played over his face. His lashes cast broken shadows onto his cheekbones. A hint of darkness lingered on his jaw where his beard had been less closely shaved than usual. Her gaze moved to the clean line of his lips. She had the most immodest desire to press her mouth onto his.

“Well, it could start with an apology for your ungracious behavior at the Three Feathers,” she said.

“No, you shan’t get it. I don’t regret kissing you. I didn’t then and I don’t now. I can’t change, brown hen. I’m a shameless fellow, even if I do have the misfortune to be an earl.”

“I don’t mean for the kiss, sir. I mean for not telling me you had fought in the Peninsula with Richard and for thinking I could possibly know anything about blackmail. You were not at all honest with me.”

He opened his eyes to gaze up at the white roses. “We were strangers, and I was unforgivably foxed. But my kiss at least was honest.”

“As was mine,” Eleanor said desperately. “You must know that I’ve been in love with you ever since. For God’s sake! If you have been careless enough to arouse unsuitable passions in the breast of a schoolgirl, pray enjoy your amusement in secret. Don’t come here to compound it with more idle flirtation.”

He turned to face her. His fingertips gently stroked her cheek. “No, I didn’t know. But if you mean it, you offer me a depth of happiness I surely don’t deserve. But who said anything about idle flirtation? This is a very serious flirtation, I assure you.”

She rubbed like a kitten against his knuckles. “It can’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Because you have barely hidden your condescension and intolerance from the beginning.”

“Oh, Lord! What I have barely hidden, my dear, is that I conceived an equally unsuitable passion for you. A bastard, whatever his secret feelings, could never in honor declare himself to Lady Eleanor Acton. So for these past months, I have been fighting the strongest desire to carry you off and imprison you myself. It was only the tattered shreds of my honor that made me desist. In fact, I would very much like to ravish you here on the spot, but I am prepared to marry you first.”

“Really?” she said. “Surely not! Not when I am about to accept Lord Ranking.”

“For God’s sake, brown hen, can’t you believe that I love you?”

“Why would you? Now you’re Lord Hawksley, you can choose any lady you like.”

“Well, so I could. However, I would like to share the consequences of that happy accident with the lady of my heart, who—if I remember correctly—just declared herself to me. So pray allow me the honor to begin a simple courtship.”

“I’m not too much of a virago?”

He looked puzzled for a moment, then he laughed. “I intend to teach you in exquisite detail exactly why I had to say that, because it has everything to do with the most absolute desire I ever felt in my life—and still feel, to my shame.” He picked up her fingers and idly stroked them. “I was protecting myself at your cost and humbly beg your forgiveness.”

“If you will forgive me,” she said. “I was mad with fear—”

“As was I—”

“But I was more at fault than you.”

“No, no! And you are most certainly not a virago. As it happens, I love your spirit and your determination. Nor do I find you plain, brown hen. I find you irresistible.”

“I think this courtship is still very odd.”

“Indeed, it is backward, isn’t it? It should begin with a dance.”

“I won’t dance with you out here on the patio. There’s no music.”

“Very well. Then it must proceed with a walk in the park, or perhaps a drive in my gig.”

“Do you have a gig?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t. And we have done enough private walking together, don’t you think?”

Eleanor laughed. “As I recall, at times without exchanging two words.”

“I was struck dumb by your beauty.”

“So the next stage is compliments?”

“Of course, to be followed by flowers.”

“I have enough of those,” she said, catching up some of the roses that lay scattered over her skirt.

“And then I must kiss you.”

“Must you?” Eleanor looked up at him. She couldn’t disguise her longing. “But we’ve already passed that stage, too.”

“No, we haven’t. For it lasts forever. Please say you will marry me, brown hen. I believe I have loved you since you first tried to light the candles at the Three Feathers, and then so bravely faced me down over your locket. I still beg your forgiveness for every word I ever said since that was intended to drive you away. But for every careless word, I offer you a lifetime of caring ones, though I admit that it won’t do either of us harm to clash upon occasion. There is no one in the world, however, that I would rather argue with than you.”

“You’re not going to India?”

“Nor Timbuktu, unfortunately. I shall be very much in evidence at Hawksley Park. You cannot avoid me, Eleanor, and I shall continue to seek your hand until you give in.”

“Have you resigned your commission?” she asked faintly.

A subtle shudder moved over his spine. She knew with sudden insight that it would be the only acknowledgment she would ever get of what he had just been through.

“Forever,” he said firmly. “Now, do you think we have covered all the necessary stages of courtship, for I can’t wait much longer. I love you with a depth of feeling that scares me. Sweet brown hen, will you do me the honor to become Lady Hawksley?”

“I’d have married plain Mr. Campbell,” Eleanor said simply. “If he’d thought to ask me.”

* * *

Richard and Helena walked together through the blue room, then stopped by the French windows. He held his arm around his wife’s generous waist and she laid her head on his shoulder.

“It would seem that your friend is having his way with your sister,” Helena said with a smile.

He pulled his wife gently back into the room, then caught her to him and kissed her with passionate hunger on the lips.

“I don’t suppose she’d be kissing him like this, if they hadn’t just agreed to marry,” he said at last.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” Helena leaned back into the circle of his arm. “I thought the man was a notorious rake?”

“He is,” Richard said. “So I thank God I’m so sure they will wed. Otherwise I’d have to call him out for so abusing my sister, and the man’s not only a rogue, he’s a devilishly good shot.”

Rogue’s Reward
is the third book in my series involving Wellington’s intelligence officers, a group of men the Iron Duke claimed were invaluable in his fight against Napoleon. Charles de Dagonet, hero of
Scandal’s Reward
, and Richard Acton, hero of V
irtue’s Reward
, each returned from the Peninsula with a problem to solve. Dagonet must clear his name of scandal. Richard carries a dangerous secret that leads him to marry a stranger. Lee’s dilemma, of course, has its roots in his childhood, but the men are all friends, and they reappear upon occasion in future books.

The sentences that Eleanor’s little sister Milly must learn about the Malays and Patagonia are exact quotes from a Regency geography text, published in 1816. The ‘Pearl of Brittany’ refers to Princess Eleanor Plantagenet, granddaughter of Henry II, imprisoned for life in 1202. She had committed no crime, but her imprisonment negated her claim to various titles—as well as to the throne of England.