The Regency Season Collection: Part Two

Chapter Three

Luke waited until his valet accompanied a footman upstairs, his luggage borne along as carefully as the crown jewels, before quitting his private sitting room with an exasperated sigh. He wondered why he’d employed such an exacting valet; he was old enough to dress himself and could tie a necktie that wouldn’t scare the horses. In a year or so he’d have to present a neat appearance for Eve’s début and his wife-hunting campaign, though, and it had seemed a sensible enough idea at the time. Right now he’d welcome a tramp across the countryside, or a long ride on a swift horse to banish his blue devils, but wealth, power and a title came at a cost so he ignored the urge to escape.

Hearing his stepmother’s sharp voice in the drawing room and the rumble of male ones from the billiard room, Luke tried to find some peace in the library. Virginia’s godson, the Marquis of Mantaigne, was ensconced in a comfortable chair by the fire, but Luke gave a sigh of relief. The air of world-weary cynicism Tom wore like a suit of armour drove women wild with desire for some odd reason, but he was good company and a loyal friend.

‘Tom, you rascal,’ he said, managing a genuine smile and a sincere manly handshake even on this sad day. ‘When did you get here?’

‘This morning—you must have travelled in my dust.’

‘You only had to come from Derbyshire and there was more mud than dust.’

‘How unobservant of me,’ Tom drawled.

‘Don’t try to hoodwink me that you’re too idle to take an interest in what’s about you, Tom. I know you too well to be taken in by the air of cynicism you use to keep the world at bay. Just tell me who has come here to gladden our heavy hearts and your estimate of how long I’ll be forced to house them for, there’s a good fellow.’

‘Whoever told you I’m a good fellow clearly needs disillusioning.’

‘I don’t pay much heed to the opinions of others when it comes to my real friends, my lord Marquis,’ Luke said and accepted the glass of fine burgundy his friend poured out of the decanter at his side with an almost smile.

Feeling more relaxed after the mellowing effect of the very finest wine and a shrewd and succinct summary of his assembled guests from Tom Banburgh, Luke left him to his solitude and the burgundy and avoided the groups in the billiard room and drawing room to go up and reassure himself Eve and Bran were settling in after the trials and discomfort of their long journey.

* * *

Chloe felt weighed down by sleep when she managed to blink her heavy eyes open and tried to gauge how long she’d been lost to the world. For a moment she had no idea where she was and had to force her eyes open to stop herself sinking under the weight of sleep beckoning her back like a siren. Virginia would probably be the first to order her to get up and face the world, so she blinked several times and did her best to banish the huge waves of sleep trying to drag her under again.

Even an upper servant could enjoy the luxury of a long stretch, so she yawned and extended her legs fully against the fine cotton sheets of Brandy Brown’s narrow bed, then reached her hands high above her head so her arms could feel the pull and strength of youth in them. She shook her head so the auburn locks tumbled down in a tangle it would take far too long to tease out when she’d already wasted goodness knew how long asleep when she should be up and doing.

‘Bran?’ a deep masculine voice questioned from the other side of the slightly open door and Chloe felt her heartbeat speed up like a greyhound after a rabbit. ‘You can’t be asleep because I saw you in the garden not five minutes ago. Where’s Eve and why is her luggage still cluttering up her bedroom?’

If she wasn’t in her shift with her hair falling down her back, she could call out a brusque answer and he would go away. Would that serve anyway? If she sounded assured and awake enough, he might go away rather than risk being discovered here with a female servant in the middle of a winter afternoon?

‘Mrs Brown is taking the air with your daughter, Lord Farenze,’ she managed to call out as if she was busy and didn’t have time for answering questions.

A stiff moment of shocked silence and she could almost feel him flinch at the sound of her voice a room and a half away. Unfortunately, she didn’t hear him walking away though. Yet did she really want him to? As usual her inner Chloe chose the worst moment to stage a revolution. She told her to be quiet and get back in her cage and stop there. She did want him to leave and sat up in the neat little tent bed, holding every muscle and sinew tense and still in the hope he would go. Something about the silence on the other side of the door told her he was still there, but a woman could always hope.

‘Why the devil are you unpacking Eve’s things when one of the maids could do it if Bran is busy?’

‘I...’ She ground to a halt and told herself if she hadn’t slept so deeply and so stupidly in the middle of a working day she might be able to find an answer that would satisfy him somewhere in her befuddled brain.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ he growled and was that really a thread of laughter in his deep voice?

Impossible—Lord Farenze and Mrs Wheaton had nothing to laugh about. There was no level of intimacy to put a hint of smoky amusement in his voice. She’d imagined it and now her inner Chloe was busy imagining more than she ought to all over again. Such as how it might feel to wake up in his bed with her mind misted with sleep and loving, then share the closeness of lovers with him as he teased her back to full awareness of where she was, and who she was with, in his own unique fashion.

‘No, it’s still in perfect working order,’ she managed to reply as if she was merely too busy to argue with him.

‘Then come out here and talk to me face to face; I refuse to hold a conversation through inches of fine mahogany.’

‘I can’t, I’m far too busy today, my lord,’ she managed and heard the note of panic in her voice as she sensed him stepping closer to the door in question and about to discover her sitting here in a state of scandalous disarray.

‘No doubt but, since I’m master here now, you must deal with me sooner or later. Far better to get the plans we must make for the next few days out of the way as soon as possible and rub along as best we can, rather than skirt round the subject all week and send the staff spinning about in opposite directions between us.’

He sounded as reluctant to have that discussion as she was, so why couldn’t he put it off until he was rested from his journey and she was back in her buttoned-up gown with her wretched hair wound safely under a neat cap and hidden away with feral Chloe, who so badly wanted to respond to him in every way a woman could?

‘Very well, my lord, I will meet you downstairs as soon as I have finished here,’ she said and heard the waver of uncertainty in her own voice.

Her reluctance to confront him with the memory of sitting here half-naked and all he could have been to her, if everything was different, wobbled in her too breathy voice. She didn’t dare stir in case he heard the rustle of crisply laundered sheets and realised she was in bed. Sitting frozen and speechless, she gasped in horror when he finally lost patience and thrust the door open.

Time seemed to stretch and waver as he strode into the little room then stopped dead, as if a wicked witch’s spell had frozen him in his tracks. He stood staring hungrily back at her and how could she fool herself everything that could have been between them was dead now?

He should turn and walk away of course; leave her to blush and squirm and be furious with herself for giving in to exhaustion and his daughter’s urgings to rest. He didn’t, though, and it was there in his eyes, the might be. Not a never, but a might be; a dangerous chance of more between master and servant than there ought to be.

A detached part of her seemed to be looking down on them; speculating how two rational human beings could look so much like codfish and still stare rapt into each other’s eyes as if they’d longed for the sight of the other all unguarded for the years they’d been apart. The rest couldn’t even find the presence of mind to squirm down in her bed and hide her disarray.

Now he looked like all the robber barons who founded his mighty dynasty rolled into one as he stood stock still, so vividly present he seemed to suck the air out of the room along with her common sense. Like a very well-dressed statue of a warrior prince, that annoying wanton Chloe remarked, would he was a little less still and a lot less well dressed. ‘Be quiet!’ she whispered, then covered her mouth. She couldn’t believe she was arguing with her wicked inner self with him in the room. Perhaps she really was going mad?

A wistful hope she might wake up and find she’d dreamt him made the tension drain out of her muscles for all of half a minute. Nobody could dream muscular, powerful, intimidating Lord Farenze when he was all too present. He was a living, breathing human being, staring at her as if being torn by a raging tumult of contrary emotions as well. There just wasn’t enough dreaming in the world to conjure up a man like him, here, locked in this particular moment with her.

‘I didn’t say a word,’ he managed in a rusty voice that sounded forced out.

‘Not you.’

‘You have a lover hidden under the bed?’ he barked as if he thought her everything a woman shouldn’t be if she wanted to retain her self-respect.

His hot eyes dwelt on her wildly flushed cheeks, shocked and hazy eyes and the tumble of hot gold curls she knew were in nearly as big a tangle as her tongue.

‘No room,’ he mused more softly and let his gaze explore the little room as if he’d never seen one like it before and saw the exposed space under the high little bed with what looked suspiciously like satisfaction, ‘nor a second door for a coward to escape through if he was in danger of being found and the closet’s not big enough.’

‘I don’t have a lover.’

Now she sounded like an outraged stage heroine and Chloe thought it as well he couldn’t see her toes curling under the bedclothes. His black brows rose and a smile of cynical appreciation she assured herself she would like to slap off his face kicked up his mouth and made him look nigh irresistible for a breathless moment.

‘Any man who saw you thus would be your slave as soon as he could persuade you into his eager arms. Say the word and we’ll adjourn to my own lonely and echoing suite along the hallway,’ he offered half-seriously.

‘Never, never, never,’ she shot back at him, spine rigid and chin high.

He couldn’t know she burned for his touch. Even the tips of her toes seared her with a need to be kissed and seduced that made a lie of her conviction there could never be anything between them, after she’d angrily informed him she would rather die than become his mistress ten years ago.

And he just stood there; let his complex grey gaze play over her as if she had been arranged here especially for his pleasure. He wanted her, the need in his complicated eyes was as real as the hot rush of heat between her legs. She clamped them together under the sheets then instantly regretted it as the movement drew his attention to the fact her breasts had rounded and peaked under the inadequate fine lawn chemise.

‘Oh, come now, ma’am,’ he gritted, as if her denial made him angry as finding her half-naked in Bran’s bed when she should be working had not. ‘We have a decade worth of wanting on the slate between us. Sooner or later we’ll have an accounting.’

‘No, there isn’t and, no, we won’t,’ she informed him as furiously as she could when sitting here nearly naked.

She could hardly thrust the bedclothes aside and run away when her legs would refuse to carry her and where would she run to without scandalising half the household and any guests who happened to be standing about with their mouths open?

‘I may be a fool, Mrs Wheaton, but not such a one I’m prepared to pretend to you that passion couldn’t break us, if we let it. It might do us both less harm if we admit its existence,’ he said sombrely and their eyes met.

Chloe almost said the words in her head—Why not try it and see? There it was again, her wicked inner self, whispering sinfully in her ears and offering lures she thought she’d cut off in their heady prime a decade ago. She squirmed and made herself be glad even the sleep still clouding her brain hadn’t let her speak that impossible invitation aloud.

Wasn’t it exactly the sort of rash remark that landed her and her twin sister Daphne in the suds in their younger days? Chloe clamped cold fetters on her wilder self at the reminder how it came about she was sitting here glaring at her new employer like a hungry she-wolf. If she was careful enough, they could go back to stiffly avoiding each other until she left.

‘It might not do that much harm to you,’ she muttered crossly and folded her bare arms across her chest; because she couldn’t endure him standing there knowing how much she wanted him.

‘I shouldn’t be too sure about that,’ he rasped as his hot gaze now dwelt on the exposed upper slopes of her breasts, Chloe looked down to see she’d only made them look fuller and even more rounded by seeking to hide her tight, need-peaked nipples from his fascinated gaze. ‘I’ve always known you could be my ruin,’ he murmured, looking ready to resign himself to it if he could climb into this narrow bed and make use of every tight inch of space it would leave him to seduce her until she screamed for him with a sombre house party of guests a mere misplaced call away.

‘No, never!’ she croaked and almost gave in to the urge to scissor her legs together to deny the hot need and frustration grinding at the heart of her.

He was here; not some fevered fantasy she had woken up with, as she so often had in the first days, weeks and years after he left Farenze Lodge as if the devil himself was riding on his shoulders. Until today she thought she’d banished that folly to outer darkness along with him and now she knew better.

‘If things were different, I could make you eat those words with one kiss and you know it,’ he said grimly.

‘They’re not though, are they?’ she whispered and almost sobbed at the years of regret she’d betrayed with those stark words. ‘Please leave me be, my lord. I should never have slept when there is so much to do and it won’t happen again, I assure you.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said gruffly. ‘When I first laid eyes on you today I thought you looked as if you might break if you didn’t bend soon. You’re too thin and look as if you haven’t slept or eaten properly in weeks.’

‘I can’t sleep and food seems to choke me at times,’ she admitted reluctantly.

‘Go on like this and you’ll make yourself ill. Do that to yourself if you must, but how can you risk shocking your daughter with your wan appearance when she sees you? She must be struggling to come to terms with losing Virginia, close as I know they had become to each other while she was growing up.’

‘Yes, she was heartbroken,’ Chloe said heavily, remembering how it felt to hold her sobbing daughter whilst she cried as if her poor heart might break the day Chloe had Lady Virginia’s coachman drive her to Bath so she could tell Verity Lady Virginia was dead.

‘So eat something,’ he demanded.

‘I have, at regular intervals.’

‘Then eat more and go to bed and sleep properly tonight, instead of pacing the corridors like a ghost and making the night watchman think he’s being haunted.’

His voice was brusque, but there was what looked like genuine concern in his eyes as he inspected her face. His well-hidden kindness touched her as she couldn’t let herself be touched by her employer. She rubbed her eyes self-consciously, pushed an annoying curl behind her ear and tried not to gaze back at him as if she might adore him, if things were different.

‘I must look like something the cat brought in,’ she muttered unwarily.

The wretched man stared at her with a glint of humour and something they’d both declared forbidden in the depths of those grey-, gold-and green-rayed eyes of his. She wanted to fall into them and never land on solid ground again for a long moment.

‘You must know you’re beautiful,’ he said wryly, almost as if talking to himself and being overheard by the wide-eyed sceptic in front of him.

She shook her head in hasty denial and tried not to love the fact he thought so.

‘But you’re still too thin,’ he insisted, ‘and you have shadows under your eyes a Gothic heroine would envy.’

‘Well, she’d be welcome to them,’ she said unwarily and the quirk of humour kicking up his fascinating mouth became a true smile.

There was all the warmth and hope and unwary fellow feeling in them that had nearly carried them over the precipice a decade ago. Chloe felt them both balance on the edge of the inevitable again. It felt terrible and utterly desirable, as if even their thoughts were cursed to curl up together and purr with delight at being reunited.

He reached out a long finger, as if he wanted to physically brush the shadows away from her eyes. She felt the whisper of his almost touch on her skin and gasped with hope and fear at how much she wanted it. She slicked parched lips with her tongue and watched him hesitate, had the sense of a strong man fighting what he knew was wrong, yet he was still drawn on by what felt so strong between them it could overrule everything, if they let it. There was curiosity and impatience in his eyes, before he blanked them and my Lord Farenze was himself again; remote, self-assured and cynical and as distant from the housekeeper of Farenze Lodge as ever.

‘Eve and Bran are coming,’ he warned her huskily.

Chloe strained her senses to catch a hint of whatever sound or instinct told him they were about to be rescued from folly, whether they wanted to be or not.

‘Pretend I never came in here. Act as if you woke up the moment they asked what I’m doing here,’ he whispered.

Chapter Four

Lost for words again, Chloe nodded, then burrowed her face into the pillows and drew the bedclothes over her chilled shoulders. At least pretending to be fuzzy with sleep would give her time to pull wanton Chloe into line and forget he’d been here as best she could. If she proved as obedient to the curb as his rampant side, she had nothing to worry about.

‘Bah!’ she muttered crossly into the pillow, ‘just bah, my Lord Farenze!’

No danger he might hear her. He was back through the door and nearly closing it again before she could slide down the bed and cover her now-shivering body. Nobody else would ever know he’d found her here, heavy-eyed with sleep and wanton desire.

She heard Miss Winterley express surprise at her father’s presence in an over-loud voice meant to warn Chloe not to start awake and betray herself and felt a hard flush of shame burn her cheeks at the thought she knew of Luke Winterley’s presence all too well. She felt it in every fibre of her being and the man was Miss Winterley’s father, for goodness’ sake.

‘You took my book,’ he replied and if his excuse sounded lame and defensive, it might explain what he was doing here better than a smoother lie, designed to cover something clandestine and shocking.

‘And there are none downstairs in the famously well-stocked library Aunt Virginia and Uncle Virgil amassed between them?’ Eve asked, as if she knew very well her father had really stumbled on the housekeeper enjoying a nap in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time, but how could she?

‘Not the one I was reading before you stole it,’ he said grumpily.

‘And now I am reading it, so you would be stealing it from me. I can’t believe you to need distraction so badly, especially in the midst of a house party you must play host to, that you need to barge into my bedchamber when I am not there and try to repossess part of your library, Papa. I’m not even going to think about the list of tasks awaiting you here that you reeled off as an excuse for not being able to spend much time greeting neighbours who call to express their condolences.’

‘I didn’t know then how much distraction I’d need,’ he muttered darkly.

Chloe’s eyes stung at the sound of him so gruffly sheepish it opened up a host of new temptations inside her. She didn’t want to love him and screwed her eyes shut in denial of any tears tempted to come further.

‘Don’t be such a cross old bear, Papa,’ Eve told him and Chloe could hear the rustle of her skirts as she marched up and hugged her father.

Wrong to envy Eve such ease with her father, that ability to breach the chilly touch-me-not air he normally carried about with him like a shield.

‘I’ll try not to be, my she-cub, but there will be reasons aplenty for me to growl over the next few days.’

‘Aye,’ Brandy Brown added from what sounded like a position just inside the room, ‘you’ll need the patience of a saint before the vultures fly off at last.’

‘They’re not all vultures, Bran,’ Eve chided.

‘We don’t know them well enough to judge what they are yet, my lamb,’ her maid said cynically and Chloe decided there was no need to worry about Eve Winterley with such a formidable protector at her side, as well as a father who would clearly walk through fire to keep his beloved daughter safe.

‘I know Lord Mantaigne and Great-Uncle Giles perfectly well and even Uncle James isn’t as savage and sarcastic as he used to be. Aunt Virginia was always trying to persuade him to live a steadier life, so perhaps he will turn over a new leaf in her honour.’

‘And I’m a Dutchman,’ Chloe thought she heard Lord Farenze mutter darkly and wondered what divided the half-brothers so deeply, so alike in colouring and stature as they were, yet as sharply distant with each other as two siblings could be without openly declaring war.

‘No, what you are is a curmudgeon, Papa, so I can’t imagine why you’re worrying about reading a book you seem very familiar with when you have your brother nearby to argue with once more. I dare say if you start now you could have Uncle James simmering nicely by dinner and ready to call you out the moment Aunt Virginia’s funeral is over.’

‘Thank you, minx, the gossips have plenty to say already, without a brotherly feud or a family riot breaking out. I’m not sure I should have let you read Tom Jones after all, it seems to have given you some odd ideas.’

‘There’s a copy in the study, if you truly want to take up where you left off,’ Eve called after the sound of her father’s retreating footsteps and surely it was wrong of Chloe to wish he wouldn’t go at the same time as she longed to be up and away and pretend he hardly impinged on her thoughts, let alone her wildest dreams? ‘Virginia told me where all her warm novels were in the event of my ever having to be bored here in her absence. It’s all right, Papa, she told me anything she and Uncle Virgil locked away was far too warm for a young lady to read and I really can’t think why the tabbies make such a fuss about Mr Fielding’s splendid book.’

‘Don’t get caught with it, then, and it’s probably best if you don’t admit to reading it in polite company. I won’t have you labelled fast before you’re even out.’

‘Of course not and stop being such a worrywart, I’ll be so painfully good over the next few weeks you will hardly recognise me.’

The only reply Chloe heard was a distant masculine humph then Eve ordered her maid to shut the outer door before hastily pushing open the one to the bedroom where Chloe was sitting up in bed, feeling flustered and confused.

‘That was close,’ Eve confided with an impish smile.

‘We should have locked the door,’ Bran told them. ‘Imagine if his lordship had opened it and found you lying here asleep, Mrs Wheaton.’

‘Yes, only imagine,’ Chloe echoed hollowly and used her artistic shudder as an excuse to spring out of bed and start setting herself to rights.

‘I’ll help,’ Bran said as Chloe then tried to struggle into her gown and wrestle with her rebellious curls at the same time. ‘Button yourself up and I’ll comb out your hair and dress it for you, although it seems a crying shame to screw it into a knot and hide it under that thing when it’s so beautiful. There’s many a fine lady as would give her eye teeth for hair half as thick and full of life.’

‘It’s wild and unruly and people get entirely the wrong impression of me if I allow it to show. Anyway, I’m nearly thirty years of age and a respectable widow, not a dewy-eyed débutante.’

‘You don’t look much older than one right now,’ Bran observed as her eyes met Chloe’s in the square of mirror above the diminutive washstand.

‘I can’t afford dreams,’ Chloe murmured.

‘Neither of us can, but it don’t stop us ’avin’ ’em, do it?’

‘What do you dream of, Mrs Brown?’

‘A fine man for my girl; one who’ll love her as she is and not try to make her into a society missus without a good word to say to anyone but a lord.’

‘I can’t see him doing that, whoever he might be.’

‘Can’t you, ma’am? Then you’ve been a lucky woman up to now.’

‘Maybe I have at that,’ Chloe admitted and suppressed a shudder at the thought of all the ways in which a man might mould his wife.

‘His lordship now, he’s a man as would let a woman be herself and love her all the more for it, if you know what I mean?’ Bran said as she finished pinning Chloe’s wild mane back in place, then eyed the cap with disfavour before fitting it over her handiwork with a sigh.

‘He doesn’t strike me as a man on the lookout for love,’ Chloe argued.

‘Ah, well, there’s what a man says he wants then there’s what he really does want. They don’t always meet in the middle, until the right woman comes along and changes his mind.’

‘If I understood all that I might argue, but since I don’t and dinner will be served in a little over an hour, neither of us has enough time for riddles,’ Chloe said with a last glance in the mirror to make sure she was correct and subdued again.

‘Just as well, since we’ll never agree about his lordship.’

‘Maybe not,’ Chloe said distractedly and, picking up her keys, clipped them back on her belt and with a word of breathless thanks fled the room.

* * *

Luke stumped back downstairs to the study and cursed as rampant need roiled inside him. This wasn’t some unique enchantment; he was tired and it was too long since he’d visited his mistress. Forcing the pace on a long journey had left him weary and less in control of himself and his masculine appetites than usual. Combine tiredness and grief with Mrs Wheaton’s exhaustion and Eve’s kind heart and trouble looked inevitable with hindsight, but at least it hadn’t led to catastrophe.

He bit out another fearsome curse at his painful arousal over the mere thought of Chloe Wheaton sitting up in that neat little bed, looking at him as if every fantasy he’d ever had of her as his lover was about to come true, before she awoke fully and recalled who they were. Of course he’d wanted her since she was painfully young and hauntingly beautiful, with a tiny dependent child. He felt the familiar dragging heat of frustrated desire, as if his senses were soaked in need of the woman and refused to give her up, however hard he told them they must.

On some level he’d known she was there even when he saw the inner door slightly ajar and Eve’s baggage piled on the Aubusson carpet, as if the footmen had been told to leave it there and depart in order not to disturb Chloe Wheaton while Bran and Eve took a stroll about the Winter Garden. He wished they hadn’t done what he couldn’t and ordered the woman to bed for an hour or so.

Eve had a heart big enough to sacrifice her comfort for a woman she barely knew, because the housekeeper looked so breakable. How could he be anything but proud of such a daughter, even if he wished she’d left well alone? Eve had done the right thing, but now he wanted to run upstairs and throw the pig-headed Mrs Wheaton over his shoulders and tell the world to go hang and do the wrong one.

If he was not to avoid Farenze Lodge as if he hated it for another decade she had to leave , but he must find a place where her skills were valued and her fine figure and spellbinding violet eyes ignored. Did convents have housekeepers? Luke forced his hands to unclench at the idea of her being leered at by her employer’s husband, or some gangling oaf of a son, and decided to keep a stern eye on Mrs Wheaton’s next household from afar.

Yes, he should have trusted his instincts, but curiosity, or something even more dangerous, led him to open that door. Once he had, he could no more bow coolly and leave than stop breathing. Even now the scent of her seemed to linger in the air. It was only the lavender in the big bowls Virginia always insisted on having about to sweeten the air in winter-closed rooms.

He suspected Chloe had lavender water used on the last rinse of her linen and that was why he couldn’t seem to get her out of his head. The rest of that exotic scent he associated with her was probably lingering aroma of a spicy moth bag or two, deployed to stop the industrious creatures chewing through her mourning attire. So it was a mix of simple strewing herbs, cinnamon, orris and perhaps cloves, but the memory fogged his senses, reminding him how tempted he’d been to kiss the fine creamy skin at the base of her elegant throat and find out if she tasted as exotically artless as she smelt.

Confound it, he hadn’t kissed her and could still savour the taste of her on his tongue. He ran it over his lips and the memory of her doing the same took fire and wrenched a tortured groan from him. After a decade of avoidance and abstinence he still wanted her, wanted her more than at first sight and now they were both mature adults and better designed for mischief.