A Most Unladylike Adventure (10 page)

‘Perhaps you consider I’m not a good enough match for Hugo Kenton, then?’ she asked as coolly as she could, contrarily feeling as if the promise of their shared future was being withdrawn, just when she’d almost got used to having it there.

‘Of course you were bound to work out who I really am,’ he said bitterly. ‘How many men are openly cuckolded by their wife, then accused of murdering her as well as their own brother? I should have known you’d soon pin me down, Miss Alstone, moving in the circles you do.’

‘Yes, you should,’ she said impatiently, ‘and you’re still innocent.’

‘Only until I’m proven guilty, and no doubt Rarebridge is congratulating himself on getting one step nearer to doing that right now.
He probably wants to examine me properly and disprove Dickon’s evidence.’

‘You believe every man your wife slept with to be innocent apart from yourself then, Captain? I’m not as sanguine about his purpose as you appear to be and it must be very convenient for the real murderer that you took the blame for his crimes on your own shoulders as if you deserved it. The men he set on you are not poor and simple souls, intent on making a little money by tracking down a renegade for a man with more gold than sense. They come from a gang who will do anything for money, up to and including murder.’

‘Believe her, Kenton, my sister used to amuse herself by following the worst and most suspicious villains she could find, for the sheer daredevil challenge of staying on their tails without them knowing about it,’ Kit said grimly and Louisa was surprised he’d known what she got up to when he wasn’t there to check her wilder starts. ‘I had to get her out of the stews for more reasons than the obvious one of not leaving my sisters in such a place once they began to mature.’

‘At least physically,’ Hugh said sceptically, his gaze hard on her as he realised what dangers she’d run, now and then.

‘Never mind that—do you believe me about the nature of the company his lordship is keeping?’

‘I believe what you say is worth a clearheaded investigation.’

‘How very flattering of you, Captain, I’m almost overwhelmed.’

‘It is, if you did but know,’ he said with a rather weary smile. ‘I promised myself when Ariadne died that I would never listen to another woman swearing she was telling me only the truth, when my wife lied as compulsively as she breathed. Now I’m considering a man I once called my friend could want me dead or be willing to let me hang in his stead, all on the say-so of a lady.’

‘How very remarkable of me to persuade you of anything so vexatious, being a woman and all,’ she drawled, hanging on to her temper by a hair’s breadth.

‘Clumsy of you, Hugo,’ Kit observed. ‘And loathe though I am to part you two lovebirds, it really is high time my sister went to bed. Climbing out of windows, scaling three-storey buildings, carousing with rogues like you and tramping about half of London at a dizzying height must take it out of a woman, even if
she is my intrepid sister. Are you sure you can match her, Kenton?’

‘Quite sure you’ll insist I do, whether I want to or not,’ he replied with a withdrawal of all emotion that made Louisa feel very weary indeed, and resolved not to wed the man, child or no, if he couldn’t make a better fist of wanting her.

‘We’ll see,’ she told them both, with a militant nod as she quit the room with a cold look for Hugh and a warning one for her brother ordering him not to follow her.

*

‘That certainly told us,’ Kit said ruefully as the door snapped to behind her.

‘Little firebrand,’ Hugh replied with a wry smile.

‘And if you ever manage to persuade her to marry you, my sister will be as true to you as honed steel for the rest of your mutual lives. She doesn’t know how to be anything but loyal to those she loves, confoundedly restless little minx though she is.’

‘Who said anything about love?’ Hugh argued, although the very notion of gaining Louisa Alstone’s suddenly seemed infinitely desirable, rather than the cursed trap it ought to be to a man with his history.

‘If you don’t propose even trying to love my sister, I might have to kill you after all, Kenton,’ Kit warned him, with none of the drama and fuss a lesser man might put into such a threat, and all the cold purpose it would lack on such blustering tongues.

‘What man lucky enough to have even a chance of winning your sister wouldn’t fight his best friend for her? If he had aught to offer but a filthy scandal and a sword of Damocles hanging over his head, of course,’ Hugh made himself answer just as coldly, feeling as if he was bidding farewell to an impossible dream he would regret losing for the rest of his life.

‘Then it’s high time we got on and cleared your name, Hugo. This limbo can’t continue much longer, under the circumstances.’

‘And do you think I haven’t tried to do just that?’ Hugh responded gruffly.

‘Not hard enough, or those damned rumours would have died a natural death the day you were declared innocent by the magistrates. Louisa is right—while you half-believe you could have done it, there’s no reason to probe the matter more deeply. Are you going to honour her belief in you and do what you should have done three years ago, man? It would help the rest of us if you weren’t more
interested in finding oblivion in the bottom of the nearest bottle while you’re about it, but if you insist on turning aside from your obligations, no doubt my redoubtable sister will continue her crusade to clear your name anyway.’

‘God forbid!’ Hugh said with a shudder, easily picturing Louisa Alstone doing exactly that. His frown softened into a silly grin as he considered the extraordinary outcome of his latest attempt at losing himself in a brandy bottle.

‘When I found you drunk and disorderly in the gutter all those years ago, you hadn’t shared too much with my sister,’ Christopher Alstone warned him austerely. ‘You’ll fight your demons this time, Hugh Kenton, or you’ll fight me.’

‘How did you know?’ Hugh asked unwarily, his thoughts on the extraordinary intimacy he’d shared with the so-called Ice Diamond, which proved what a pack of witless fools the beaux who misnamed her so in their cups truly were.

‘Don’t be ridiculous; even if it wasn’t written all over your faces when I arrived, I recognised you two were lovers the instant I saw you alone together. Why else do you think I sent the
Kindly Maid
on her way in such a
hurry, before the crew got the slightest drift of what the two of you had been doing while my back was turned?’

What could he say to the man who took him in and gave him work when the rest of the world turned their backs? God, but Kit Alstone must be regretting his kindness now, and how could he blame him?

‘I’m sorry, Alstone, there’s no excuse for what I did. It was the act of a villain and a braggart and all they say of me under both my names I have just proved all too true. I can’t seem to keep my hands off your sister and the devil’s driven me from the instant I laid eyes on her, and I’ll confess to you that I’ve dreamt about her night after night, like some mawkish youth, until I tried to drown the very thought of her in brandy and still failed. She only made it worse by materialising out of the night when I was several sheets to the wind, looking like a pirate queen and the embodiment of every idiotic fantasy I ever had about her. I’ve no excuse for how I behaved, not even when the very sight of her makes me forget every last scrap of honour and integrity I thought I still had.’

‘When
did
you first lay eyes on her?’ Kit asked, suspicion sharp in his dark eyes once
more, and Hugh could hardly blame him, since he’d made it sound as if they’d been carrying on a clandestine affair for weeks while his back was turned.

If anyone laid his greedy hands on his sister, he’d take him apart with his bare hands. So why was Kit Alstone watching him so keenly, instead of slamming his fists into his face and making him regret the day he was born? He’d not be able to offer any resistance when his employer had every right to beat him to a bloody pulp for taking his sister’s maidenhead, then threatening to walk away and leave her to deal with any consequences of their heated, hasty coupling alone.

‘When I docked three weeks ago. I found Miss Alstone alone in your office, glaring at me with those extraordinary indigo eyes of hers and looking like every unattainable fantasy I ever dreamt after too long at sea, and she was quite evidently there to see you and not me.’

‘And she encouraged you to think she was my lightskirt, I dare say?’

‘How could you know that?’ Hugh was surprised into asking before he realised he’d just confirmed Kit’s suspicions about his wayward sister, when he’d been doing his shabby best
to protect her from the worst of her brother’s wrath as well.

‘She’s my sister, don’t forget. Louisa has been a delight and a challenge to the rest of us from the day she was born and has more steely determination in her little finger than you’d find in half a legion of proper young ladies in pursuit of a peer’s coronet. My sister hates to be thwarted, nearly as much as she dislikes being left out of any mad adventure that’s brewing. It’s only because I know what devious schemes and tall tales she’s capable of thinking up that I’m not dismembering you slowly and painfully at this very moment.’

‘That’s something for me to be grateful for then,’ Hugh said solemnly.

‘Did you still think she was this mysterious Eloise when you…?’ Kit’s voice trailed off and Hugh saw a tinge of hot colour on his cheeks that matched the one he could feel burning across his own at the very thought of what they were discussing. For a moment he was tempted to lie and say yes, but he owed Louisa more honesty.

‘No, I’d smoked her out shortly before that.’

‘Then why the hell did you do it, man? You knew very well she was not only a lady, but my little sister by then, so even if she somehow
misled you about her virginity, which is the kind of ridiculous lie I wouldn’t put past her if it suited her, you must have known I’d flay you alive, then use your worthless hide for a waistcoat if you didn’t marry her very soon after being fool enough to take her at her word.’

‘I couldn’t
not
touch her,’ Hugh finally admitted in a rush of baffled emotion, as if the very words had been racked out of him along with the inexplicable feelings behind them. ‘I can’t keep my hands off her, or my mouth or…No, you don’t want to know. I admit that I lose control of my senses and my mind and my very self when I’m alone in the dark with your sister and let’s leave it at that, shall we?’

‘Yes, let’s,’ Kit said with suspicious geniality. ‘Which will give us so much more time for planning your wedding, don’t you think?’

‘I’m a nothing, who can’t even use the name I was born with. Do you really think your sister would be better off wed to a potential murderer than bearing a bastard alone, Alstone? I’m not sure I do, especially when I could be taken up for murder and hung if Dickon and the villagers recant their story, or someone manages to cast enough doubt on it in order to justify a trial. Better if Louisa went
off somewhere anonymous to have my child in secret, if there is one, then later adopt it as some obscure little orphan cousin, rather than marry a dangerous brute like me.’

‘When are you going to explain all this self-pitying drivel to her then, Hugo? Just so I can quit the scene and leave you to take the furious edge of her tongue because, by God, you’ll richly deserve it. I don’t say it’s what I wanted for her; I won’t even lie and tell you the idea that you might prove the ideal man for my feisty little sister had ever occurred to me before you made it a
fait accompli
, but now your marriage is imperative, at least I’m more hopeful about it than either of you seem to be.’

‘She deserves a better husband.’

‘True, so make yourself better, unless you want to be slowly dismembered after all?’

‘If only it were as easy as merely wanting to deserve her,’ Hugo said, sadly shaking his head over how very far from the ideal husband he would always be.

‘It could be simple enough, if you’d only get on and fight for your reputation and the life you should have led these past three years, rather than lying down for everyone to trample over as if that’s all you deserve.’

‘And that’s supposed to be easy?’

‘When you consider the alternative of telling my sister you’re not going to marry her, even though you might have got her with child, I think you’ll find that it is. You are innocent of murdering your wife and brother, Hugo, but clearly you lack the courage to prove it—so what exactly do you expect Louisa to say when you explain to her why you can’t marry her after all?’

‘Put like that, the whole business appears much simpler,’ Hugh admitted.

‘Because you fear the rough side of Louisa’s tongue?’ Kit asked coolly.

‘No, because I hate the way she squares up to take the next blow on her stubborn chin without letting anyone see how much it hurts her. I don’t know why you thrust her into society when she clearly didn’t want to be there, Alstone, but the
ton
doesn’t seem to have done her any more good than it ever did me.’

Somehow Hugh sensed that he’d said something right, purely by accident, and some of the tension left his friend’s lean frame and the atmosphere in this now-stuffy room seemed a little easier all of a sudden. Perhaps he could make a success of himself after all, or at least enough of a success to give Louisa the sort
of life she richly deserved, if not the husband he would have wished for such a fiery, loyal, misjudged lady as his Eloise had proved herself to be.

‘That’s because neither of you ever learnt how to handle them, Kenton,’ his future brother-in-law was telling him and it behoved Hugh to listen if he really wanted that unlikely future with an equally unlikely bride. ‘My sister is far too proud to admit she needs anyone’s approval, let alone that of a pack of finicky strangers inclined to look down their long noses at Bevis Alstone’s brood, and it strikes me you’re not a sight different to her. I know you were lionised as a hero even before Trafalgar and your captaincy came along to make you even more bigheaded, so falling from such dizzy heights was harder for you than a man like me who never had much grace to lose in the first place. Now you’re so wrapped up in living down to your dark and desperate reputation that you can’t see there are good people among the
ton
. I’d probably include you in those honourable exceptions, by the way, if you hadn’t sunk to being one of my ship’s masters through your own inaction.’