The Improper Wife (9 page)

Home.

Home, where Summerton’s fields would be fragrant with spring planting. A breeze would rustle through the trees lining the lane winding through the estate. Around a bend in the lane, the house would rise majestically, its white stone glistening in the sunlight.

Gray rubbed his face and made his eyes focus on the white caps formed by the ship cutting through the waves. There would be no family homecoming for him. He would not be welcome at Summerton Hall. His father had made that very clear eight years ago. Eight long, life- altering years.

Gray was no longer the same young man who had first set foot on the shores of Portugal, his head filled with the adventure and glory of the cavalry. He’d had enough of war. Waterloo destroyed any lingering illusions Gray had of glory, its victory spoiled by the memory of waves of dead soldiers, one body after the other, covering the Belgian farmland.

Gray blinked rapidly against the sea air. The army in peacetime was not a prospect to gladly anticipate either. During the brief peace before Napoleon escaped from Elba, Gray had been posted in Ireland, policing the same Irishmen with whom he’d fought side by side in the Peninsula, an abhorrent task. Where else might he be posted? The West Indies? Few escaped death in that fever-ridden place.

No, he had made his decision. He would sell out. He would purchase a small property somewhere and try to build something solid and enduring. Someplace he might call home.

“There you are,” a voice said behind him.

Gray turned to see Leonard Lansing advancing upon him, a crooked smile on his face. Damn the man. The last person he wished to see.

“Lansing,” he responded in his most uninviting voice.

Lansing had rejoined the regiment for the glories of Napoleon’s final defeat. In the eleven months since that battle, Gray had made a practice of avoiding him. It was difficult to believe Lansing had once been his constant companion and fast friend.

“I had hoped for a chance to speak with you, Gray.”

Gray made a noncommittal grunt.

Lansing took a place next to him, resting his forearms on the rail, bending one leg, mimicking Gray’s position. If it were not for Lansing’s fair hair, they might appear as bookends. He gave Lansing the briefest of glances, and saw the man’s boyishly handsome features schooled into an affable expression.

“It will be pleasant to see England again, will it not?” Lansing asked.

It seemed a statement not requiring an answer, which suited Gray very well. He continued to stare out at sea.

“Ah, yes,” Lansing went on. “It is time we returned home. The peace is secure. Napoleon won’t be escaping from St. Helena.”

Lansing spoke as if he had personally vanquished the emperor. Truth to tell, when the 13th charged the French Imperial Guard at Waterloo, Lansing had not been in the fray. Gray learned later he’d suffered a minor injury before the attack and had retreated to the safety of a surgeon’s tent, unfit to ride the rest of the day.

When they served together in the Peninsula more than two years ago, Gray had defended Lansing when their fellow officers mumbled about how he always managed to avoid the thick of battle. Gray had chalked it up to his friend’s ill luck. That is, until his eyes were opened to Lansing’s true character.

“Are you bound for Summerton Hall, then?” Lansing continued, as if his conversation had been welcome.

Gray gave him a sideways glance. “Why do you ask?”

Lansing shrugged. “No reason. I merely supposed you would be visiting your father.”

Many a night over the warmth of a campfire, with a bottle passed back and forth between them, Gray had filled Lansing’s ear with talk of his difficult relationship with his father, the Earl of Summerton. Lansing well knew of their estrangement.

“You might recall I am banished from there,” Gray responded.

Lansing turned, and Gray felt the man’s eyes fixed upon him. He suspected they were kindled with interest, an interest he now knew was feigned.

“Still?” Lansing’s brows rose. “I would have supposed you reconciled with your father before this.”

Gray pushed himself away from the ship’s railing. “I fail to see why any of this is your concern.”

Lansing let out a low whistle. “I say. I perceive some animosity, old fellow. How disappointing when we have been such friends. Have I done something to deserve this? You have avoided my company these past months—”

“And I wish to avoid you still,” Gray shot back.

Lansing gave him a crooked smile, the kind that was supposed to charm any potential adversary or any available female. “Why, Gray. You astonish me. Whatever have I done to deserve such anger?”

Gray felt his face grow hot. “What have you done? What have you not done? I need not mention all the scrapes in which you embroiled me when we were in Portugal and Spain. Those pale in comparison. Think, if you please, of those two Spanish girls you found for us, right before you left for the militia.”

Lansing grinned lasciviously. “With great pleasure.”

Gray glared at him. “You knew who they were. You knew they were respectable daughters, with an equally respectable aristocratic father. How could you have used them so ill?”

“I’d hardly call them respectable. They were mad for English officers. I merely obliged them.” Lansing chuckled. “But what of it? We had a gay night, did we not?”

Gray dug his fingers into the ship’s rail. “You failed to inform me of who they were.”

Lansing’s eyes momentarily flickered with malice. “Well, you failed to ask, old fellow.”

The barb stung. Gray had not sought any information about the pretty girls, though he’d recognized their youth and seen their fine clothes. No, he’d not been blameless in that escapade and he—and Lansing—knew it.

Gray spoke through gritted teeth. “Do you wish to know what happened to the unfortunate girl you paired me with?”

Lansing sighed. “I suppose I cannot avoid you telling me.”

Gray gave Lansing a piercing stare. “When I returned to Spain, she was with child. There was nothing for it but to marry her.” He paused. “She followed me to Orthes and was killed.”

Lansing laughed. “What a sorry jest! Well, of course,
you
would assume if she named you the father, it must be so and you must marry her.” He smiled patronizingly. “But regard the situation in this manner, old fellow. You slipped the leg-shackle in the end and no harm done. Your luck holds.”

Lansing’s words were so near to the words spoken in Gray’s dream, it was as if the old nightmare had returned to plague him.

Gray grabbed the lapel of Lansing’s jacket and brought his face within an inch of Lansing’s. “If I spend a moment longer in your presence, I might kill you. Do not approach me again.”

Gray released him suddenly, slamming Lansing against the rail with such force the man landed in a heap on the deck. Gray spun away and strode off, eager to put as much distance between him and Lansing as the small ship would allow.

Lansing pulled himself back to his feet, straightened his jacket, and watched Gray round the corner, disappearing behind some barrels lashed to the deck.

He shrugged and leaned against the railing again, gazing out to sea, in much the same position as he’d found Gray.

Well, that had gone badly.

Who could have guessed one night with those Spanish girls would cause so much fuss? They’d been a mere diversion, a refreshing change from seasoned prostitutes or well-used widows. A fitting adieu to that horrid peasant-filled country.

Gray’s misguided sense of honor created his problems. There was no reason Gray should have accepted responsibility for the the Spanish girl when the tryst had been her idea at the outset. It was foolish of Gray to assume he’d gotten the girl with child, when she’d probably gone on to bed plenty of other men.

Lansing sighed. That one escapade had thoroughly dashed any hope of renewing Gray’s friendship. As an earl’s son, Gray would have been useful in giving Lansing an entrée into polite society and its money and influence.

Lansing glanced over his shoulder in the direction Gray had disappeared. He scowled, swallowing the sour taste that rose in his mouth. As an earl’s son, Gray was welcomed everywhere, trusted, respected. In the regiment, Gray’s men regarded him with respect, obeying him without delay. When women met him, their eyes widened and their smiles grew brighter. All because Gray was a member of the
ton
, the son of a peer.

Lansing had as much aristocratic blood flowing through his veins, though he was not precisely sure which of his mother’s titled gentlemen had fathered him. Dorothea Lansing, famed courtesan, would never say. Possibly she did not know. For countless years she’d been all the rage, and several men vied for her favors, paying huge sums for the privilege of sharing her bed.

Ironically, Lansing once fancied it had been the Earl of Summerton, Gray’s father, who sired him. He remembered the tall, distinguished earl visiting his mother and condescending to be friendly to her young son. But then his mother explained that she’d not met the earl until after Lansing was born, so he’d been forced to give up that illusion.

Imagine Lansing’s surprise when John Grayson, the Earl of Summerton’s younger son, turned up in the 13th Light Dragoons, the same regiment as he. Lansing’s mother had twisted some influential arms to get him into the prestigious cavalry regiment, but the earl’s son had not met with such difficulty. His commission had been easily procured.

In the officers’ mess, all the men immediately took to Gray, while Lansing’s presence had been politely tolerated. Until he courted and won Gray’s friendship, that is. That had been a stroke of genius on Lansing’s part, even if it meant pretending to celebrate while Gray rose easily in esteem and rank.

It had been foolish of Lansing to transfer to the militia, a move designed mainly to preserve his life—a man could be killed in battle, after all. If he’d stayed in the Peninsula with Gray, he might have extricated Gray from the difficulty with the Spanish chit, and then he would not have lost the borrowed esteem of being Gray’s friend. Rejoining the regiment for that last ghastly battle had also not worked. Until this day, Gray had pointedly avoided conversation with him.

Well, the devil with Gray. Lansing would find some other way to insinuate himself into society. He’d decided a rich, aristocratic wife would suit him very well.

Lansing laughed into the sea air. Thinking of wives, somewhere in Gloucestershire lived a lady’s companion who thought herself married to Captain John Grayson. Was that not a lark?

That trick had afforded Lansing much entertainment. Until she pushed him into the river, the little shrew. Why, he nearly drowned.

His luck had held, as it nearly always did, and he’d had a nice long recovery at a distant vicarage with a very obliging vicar’s daughter to tend to his every need.

He laughed again, the wind blowing the sound back to his ears. His luck would hold this time, as well. He did not need Gray to secure his future. Lansing would triumph, and no trifling earl’s son would keep him from it.

After the ship docked at Dover, Gray recovered his horse and rode to London, putting Lansing completely out of his mind. He found a place to stable the horse and took a room at Stephen’s Hotel on Bond Street, a cut above the dingy rooms that had satisfied him two years previous.

His first order of business was to visit the regimental offices to take the initial steps to sell out. His next was to go to Scott’s to be fitted for proper civilian clothes. He must adapt to being Mr. John Grayson, rather than Captain John Grayson of the 13th Light Dragoons. The loss of that rank and regiment would cause some pangs of regret.

Amazed at how quickly Scott could outfit him, not even a fortnight had passed before Gray approached his cousin’s townhouse door, both dreading the obligatory visit and eager to see the familiar faces of Harry and Tess. They would be delighted to see him, he knew. It gratified him that someone would welcome his return to English soil.

He adjusted the cuffs of his new morning coat made of the best blue superfine. The buff pantaloons and salmon waistcoat completing his outfit were, he was assured, the very height of fashion. He might as well be wearing a domino in a masquerade for how foreign the clothes felt. Would they ever feel a part of him, like his uniform had felt?

His presence was announced to Lord and Lady Caufield. As he stepped into their parlor, his cousin rushed forward.

“Welcome home, Gray.” Harry gripped his hand in an enthusiastic handshake.

Tess skipped to his side and hugged him, presenting her cheek for him to kiss. “We are so glad to see you! When did you arrive? Look at you! My how fine you look! So very handsome, is he not, Harry?”

“Indeed, you look splendid, Gray. Come sit. Tell us how you go on. Do your fine clothes signify some change for you?”

Gray smiled at his cousin’s attempt to be diplomatic.

“Oh, he’s sold out, Harry! That must be it! It is, isn’t it, Gray? You have sold out.” Tess had no qualms about direct speaking.

“You almost have the right of it, Tess.” Gray laughed. “I have set the wheels in motion to sell out. Do I not look like a gentleman farmer? For that is what I aspire to be.”

Tess regarded him again, her hands resting on her hips. “No,” she said with a serious expression. “You look very much like a town gentleman.”

“You must sit, Gray.” Harry put an arm around his shoulders and led him to a chair. “Tess, ring for refreshments, if you please. I believe I have some port here somewhere.”

Tess summoned the butler standing outside the room. Harry poured two glasses of port, handing one of them to Gray, who took a sip and let the liquid warm his throat the way his cousin’s welcome had warmed his heart.

“But, Gray”—Tess perched on the settee near him—“how long have you been in London? You ought to have come to us earlier, you know. Where are you staying? You ought to stay with us. Is that not so, Harry?”

“I’m very comfortable at Stephen’s Hotel,” Gray protested. “No need to put yourselves out. I’m not in town for long, just until I can line up some property to look at.”