A Most Unladylike Adventure (12 page)

‘Because I have hopes?’ she asked, rather hurt that she’d come so far from her resolution
never to marry to meet him with those hopes for something more, only to have them thrown back in her face.

‘Because of who I am,’ he said starkly, pain in his eyes now and such sharp distaste for himself in his deep voice that it somehow made her want to cry.

She blinked very hard, knowing he would see it as pity when it was a far more complex emotion than sympathy for a wronged man. ‘It’s only because of who you are that I’m even considering marrying you, Hugo Kenton,’ she said, putting enough distance between them to look him fully in the face while she admitted it.

‘When who I am should send you screaming to your brother for any alternative he can come up with to save your good name?’ he replied, as if he’d like to be cold and almost amused enough to put her off him, but somehow couldn’t quite bring the lie on to his tongue or into his eyes.

‘No, because who you are is an honourable man who cares about others and would die protecting someone he loves if he had to. If I am ever to be a mother, and it’s a great surprise for me to find out how very much I want that status after all now you’ve put the idea in
my head, then I want that man as father of my children, Hugh,’ she countered as strongly as she could.

She stood back and saw him battle between hope and dread and opened her eyes a little wider to stem the heat of tears that really threatened this time and would probably ruin everything. No doubt he’d seen enough tears to flood the Nile from his unfaithful wife and she refused to use such a weapon to win even the shallowest argument between them, because of that wretched woman’s counterfeit sorrow and an innate sense of fair play.

For the same reason, she told herself, she kept a tender smile off her mouth by biting her lips, because no doubt he’d seen enough of those to distrust even the gentlest of curves on a female mouth. At this rate she would end up pretending to be emotionless and suddenly she knew that fighting not to be like Ariadne Kenton would ruin their marriage, if they made one, as surely as floods of tears and a constant parade of lovers. If Hugh married her, he would get Louisa Alstone: stubborn, difficult and as disobliging as the
ton
and almost everyone else seemed to find her. Giving a sharp nod to confirm her determination never to lie
about her emotions, either way, she met his eyes with a challenge in her own.

‘We began this argument last night, while you still had the scorch of how we were together biting at your conscience. Now we are arguing backwards and I’m sick of it, Mr Kenton. So, do you want to marry me or don’t you?’

‘If I were any other man but the one I am, then, yes, I do.’

She clicked her tongue with impatience at such a leaden declaration. ‘Doesn’t sound like it to me,’ she informed him shortly.

‘Then will you marry me, Miss Louisa Alstone?’

‘What about all your ifs and buts, Captain?’

‘To the devil with them, as long as you know I may never be exonerated from the scandal hanging over me and can accept it?’

‘I can,’ she said, knowing he had the might of Kit and Ben’s stubborn wills behind his case as well as her own whether he liked it or not now, and that, whether they ended up married or not, that backing would continue.

‘Then will you wed me, woman?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed on a sigh even she didn’t understand.

‘Good, then perhaps we should inform your
brother of our decision, so it may be got on with as soon as possible,’ he agreed and she felt as if she was back to being that item on his agenda of things to do today.

‘Perhaps we should,’ she agreed rather listlessly.

‘I promise not to be a drunkard with you, Louisa,’ he said stiffly, when she’d thought the topic of their marriage closed off and done with for now.

‘I asked you for no promises,’ she replied as her memory dragged up all the abject ones her father had made her mother, then broken as easily as if they’d never been spoken as soon as he went out of the front door.

‘Forget your father. I will never take more than three glasses of anything in any one day again, for my own sake if you don’t want it to be for yours, Eloise. It’s high time I stopped hiding in a brandy bottle; it had got vastly tedious, even when I wasn’t getting myself into trouble with outrageously behaved female pirates.’

‘Rake,’ she accused obligingly.

‘Not any more,’ he argued with a would-be saintly smile.

‘Eloise would be highly disappointed to hear that,’ she murmured in a throaty purr as
she brushed against him with a provocative, stray-cat rub that she hoped left him as instantly aroused as she was herself.

‘Then perhaps we could make an exception for Mademoiselle La Rochelle?’

‘And Captain Darke?’

‘He can play, too, if you think we can find room enough in our marriage bed for both the rogues.’

‘Somehow we’ll find it, Captain,’ she assured him with a mock-innocent smile and felt reassured by the wicked glint in his eyes at that intriguing idea.

*

‘Are you intending to be happy then, little sister?’ Kit asked when they eventually ran him down in the stables, checking on his restless team as well as the swift riding horses he kept for both necessity and pleasure.

‘Yes, we think so, don’t we, Hugh?’ Louisa smiled, turning to look into silver-shot blue eyes.

‘I’m going to be, so I dare say your brother and his best friend will take it in turns to beat me to a pulp if I fail to make you so too, my lovely,’ he said and she was so glad he didn’t quite call her ‘love’ that she smiled and did her
best to look as dazzled and sweetly happy as any newly made fiancée.

‘St Margaret’s in three days,’ Kit told them implacably and that was that.

‘S
o besides arranging my wedding for me, what else have you been about?’ Hugh asked his employer as soon as Louisa had been dragged off to discuss wedding finery by a surprisingly enthusiastic Mrs Calhoun and he’d run Kit to earth in his book-room.

‘Business,’ Kit said uninformatively.

‘Personal business?’

‘Very,’ Kit told him with a bland look that would put most men at a distance.

‘So whose personal business have you been engaged on?’ Hugh persisted.

‘Yours, since you’re about to become part of my family.’

‘Damn it, Kit, don’t you think I can deal with it myself then?’ Hugh said, knowing very
well what business it was and how he wished the whole dirty affair was dead and done with, along with his old life.

‘You have had three years to do so and now it’s become urgent.’

‘Why? By some miracle your sister believes me innocent, you and Ben would never have given me one of your precious ships if you thought I was going to murder the first man who crossed me, so why the sudden haste?’

‘Because your father is dying,’ Kit told him sombrely and Hugh had to turn away and pace over to the window to stare bleakly out and hide his feelings.

‘I wouldn’t have thought I’d care after he ordered me to go to the devil alone, but oddly enough I seem to all the same.’

‘We all have that conundrum to deal with, my friend,’ Kit said gently.

Hugh turned to meet his steady gaze, recalling what Louisa had told him of her father’s death. ‘I was luckier than you. He was a good parent to all three of us, once upon a time.’

‘Yet at least I knew what to expect of my sire.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Precisely, but we digress, Hugh. My demons
are for me to fight, as and when I choose to do so; yours won’t wait any longer.’

‘The lawyers will certainly scratch their heads over the succession, given the estrangement that had existed between us for so long, but surely nothing has changed? I still didn’t murder my wife, or my brother, and nobody can prove that I did, any more than I can shake off these rumours that I’m guilty.’

‘It might stir them up and make the magistrates take notice, whether they want to or not. There are whispers about calling in the Runners to ask you and your friend the innkeeper sharper questions than you faced at the time.’

‘Who puts them about, Kit? Who the devil is doing this? My second cousin, Arthur Kenton, is the only other heir and he’s eighty if he’s a day. Unless he’s wed his housekeeper in the last three years and produced a legitimate brat in his old age, he can’t have any real interest in the Gracemont estate or the title.’

‘No, he’s perfectly happy for you to succeed, so long as you don’t wed another empty-headed demi-rep.’

Hugh gave a gruff bark of surprised laughter as he could imagine old Arthur saying those very words. ‘You’ve seen him, then?’

‘Him and most of your other living relatives,’
Kit admitted and when Hugh considered his mother had been the youngest daughter of a family of eight, it suddenly seemed no wonder his employer had been away for so long. ‘Including your father, of course—you will find him very much changed, I suspect.’

‘I might, if I had the slightest intention of going anywhere near Gracemont Priory while he’s still inhabiting it. He ordered me never to “befoul any of my roofs with your presence while I still have breath in my body” the last time I saw him and I fully intend to obey him, in that if in nothing else.’

‘I never met a man more sorry for what he did in the heat of his grief for your brother, if that’s any consolation to you?’ Kit said.

Hugh stared bleakly back at him as he struggled with the full horror of the moment when his father had made it clear he thought his younger son guilty of murdering his elder one, even if the rest of the world had been forced to absolve him and must now rely on rumours to damn him with.

‘Maybe I didn’t do it, Kit, but I still married Ariadne Lockstone and brought her into his house, so that her latest lover could strangle her, then shoot my brother in the back one dark night.’

‘And you did that deliberately, did you? Wed a gently-bred whore, just so you could destroy your brother and your father’s peace into the bargain?’

‘No, of course not. I wed her because I was a big-headed, besotted fool who thought he’d captured the sweet-natured little beauty all the other men in the
ton
wanted. I had no idea half the rakes on the town had already been in her bed and the other half would very shortly follow in their footsteps. No wonder she latched on to the only fool with money and a convenient career overseas who was still fool enough to beg her to marry him.’

‘Not your father’s fault either, Hugh. Maybe he should have thrown her out of his house when he found out the woman took lovers like most women change their clothing, but perhaps he’d decided to wait until you applied for a legal separation through the proper channels.’

‘He was the one who forbade me to do so. That would have been far too public an admission of failure and Marcus would provide him with legitimate heirs, so any by-blows my wife chose to inflict on the family must be tolerated rather than leave his precious name tarnished by such a scandal,’ Hugh said bitterly.

‘You can never know if he would have decided to endure that humiliation or not now, for all he was wrong to try to dictate your life. All he cares about now is having you home again, if only so you can care for your sister and the people on his estates when he quits this world.’

‘That sounds like him, too. You’ve been very busy on my behalf.’

‘He sent for me,’ his friend explained dispassionately.

‘He sent for you? No word to his own son, but he must send for my friend and employer? Was it to tell you what an unsatisfactory heir he has to put up with and how heavily it presses on his soul and his conscience to leave all he’s ever cared for in such unworthy hands?’

‘No, he spoke to me of his bitter regret at being so lost in grief and shame that he pushed you away and let you think he believed you guilty of a crime it just isn’t in your nature to commit.’

‘That would be because he did believe it—my father told me to get out of his house and never come back, my friend. Don’t make me doubt my ears and eyes as well as everything else. To hell with him and Gracemont—if it
tumbles down tomorrow I won’t give a tinker’s damn,’ Hugh lied.

‘Soon it will be yours; you can demolish it if you hate it so much.’

‘To hell with that! I’ll not see my sister homeless and our people left to starve,’ Hugh raged in a fine passion, until he realised what he’d just said and plumped down in one of the comfortable armchairs by the fireplace and glared at the makings of a fire laid there as if it held all the answers he wished he had.

‘Here, drink this,’ Kit demanded, setting a glass of fine brandy at his elbow, then ghosting out of the room.

‘Hugh?’ Louisa asked softly as she met his frowning eyes with puzzlement in her own, so at least Kit hadn’t told him what an idiot he was before sending her to soothe his savage brow, now his so-called friend had forced him to face his true feelings for his old home and the inheritance it sounded as if he’d be receiving all too soon.

‘A promise no sooner given than broken,’ he told her bitterly, raising the brandy glass at her in a mock toast before downing the contents in one swallow.

‘Only if you intend to consume the rest of
Kit’s decanter as well, and I told you I didn’t want that promise.’

‘Nor any of the other ones I have to give,’ he said gloomily.

‘No, I want them, Hugh, but first it would be good if you could learn to mean them before you make them.’

‘Why not?’ he said recklessly. ‘No doubt I’ll argue black’s white soon after, as your confounded brother tricked me into doing before he sent you to calm the beast.’

‘He’s my confounded brother and it’s my privilege to misname him, not yours. Anyway, Kit can only manipulate you into saying whatever it was you didn’t want to say if you allow him to. You should know by now how sly and slippery he can be when he’s intent on doing good to those who don’t want to be done good to,’ she said unsympathetically.

‘How can I agree with the second part of that without breaching your prohibition from the first?’ he asked with a fleeting smile that acknowledged how difficult and stubborn he was probably being. ‘My father is dying, Louisa,’ he told her in a rush, saw pity in her deep-cobalt gaze and rose impatiently to his feet so he could pace restlessly and not meet them again until it had gone.

‘Ah, Hugh?’ she asked softly, as if she wanted to find a way of comforting him, but didn’t know how, and something seemed to break inside him as he fought back what he considered unmanly tears at the loss of a man who’d once looked him coldly in the eyes and sworn his second son was as dead to him as his first.

‘He ordered me out of his house, told me he was ashamed to own me as his son and ordered me never to try to contact him or my little sister again, and now he’s dying, Louisa.’

‘And you love him, despite all he’s said and done?’

‘Yes,’ he managed between gritted teeth as he strode up and down Kit’s fine Turkey carpet, fighting the full effects of that admission with the only action available to him.

‘Which makes you a better man than he ever was,’ she said gently, halting his restless pacing by simply standing in his path.

‘I don’t think it’s a competition,’ he said on a shaken laugh and walked straight into her arms and felt them close about him as if it was exactly where he’d needed to be since the moment Kit told him Sir Horace Kenton had finally hit an obstacle he couldn’t wilfully ignore or order out of his way.

‘It’s not, of course, but did you and your brother never have a friendly one between you? I know that we all did for our mother’s approval,’ she said gently and he smiled, grateful for the reminder of how much he and his brother and sister had loved each another, once upon a time.

‘Now you mention it, I believe we did. It was scattered to the four winds as soon as I entered the Navy, of course. Hard to keep up a rivalry about who had the most sugar plums and the least number of stern lectures on our heathen ways with a few thousand leagues of ocean parting us.’

‘And you loved him dearly as well, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but I could still have harmed him, Louisa. You know all too well how savagely a drunkard can lash out in his cups and I was very drunk the night my wife and brother died, and remembered very little about it the next morning.’

‘From my experience you’re not a violent drunk, Hugh,’ she said softly, raising a hand to gently frame the side of his face. ‘A man’s true character comes out when he’s in his cups and you were certainly in yours the night I encountered Captain Darke for the second time.’

Merely feeling her slender fingers against his skin sent a shiver of awareness through him and reminded him exactly how he’d felt when she appeared out of the night. ‘You were lucky I didn’t fall on you like a savage right there and then, given the ridiculous state I was in about you. I’d dreamt about you every night, cursed you every day when I woke up rampant and unsatisfied and wanting you like some sort of satyr. I’d only got myself so inebriated in the first place in order to forget you for an hour or two, and there you were, standing there like the answer to my wildest fantasies and making me forget I was at least raised a gentleman.’

‘Did you really dream about me?’ she asked, as if the idea trumped everything else and was almost wonderful to her.

He groaned and managed a rueful smile even as he put some very necessary distance between them to keep himself from showing her exactly what he’d dreamt about her all over again. ‘You really don’t have any idea how enchanting you actually are to the opposite sex, do you, Miss Alstone? Which is almost unbelievable, given that you’ve been the toast of St James’s since you made your début in society.’

‘Oh, I don’t give a fig for all that,’ she said dismissively, as if she didn’t even like to be reminded of it, and Hugh decided he’d never met a woman with less natural vanity. ‘All it takes to please those gentlemen is for a female to have a moderate fortune and all the usual appendages in the right place, plus a set of features that might look well on their daughters, should the lady breed such inconvenient creatures in the quest for an heir. It’s all about bloodstock and very little to do with hopes and dreams, Hugh.’

‘True, but what about those hopes and dreams, Louisa?’ he said seriously; his appalling lack of self-control meant she had little choice but to marry him now, and he should at least have known about them before he spoilt them.

‘I didn’t know I had any until yesterday,’ she said.

Fighting the feeling that it would be both wondrous and awesome to be the source and solution of Louisa Alstone’s dreams, he raised an eyebrow in a silent question he couldn’t bring himself to ask out loud.

‘Then I found out that I wanted your fire and passion and consideration as well as your strength and integrity, Hugh, and that I’d been
fooling myself all those years in thinking that I couldn’t make a family with a man who could offer me all that.’

‘Along with a name almost as black as Lucifer’s to go with it?’ he made himself ask bleakly.

‘If the world is stupid enough to give you one, then, yes,’ she assured him steadily, meeting his eyes as if she believed in his innocence absolutely. It was heady and flattering and he fought down an unworthy sense of triumph that this astonishing, brave and truly beautiful woman believed in him, despite all the horror and spite talked about him.

‘The world has a way of intruding on life, Louisa, and I’m a guilty man in the eyes of most of it,’ he warned.

‘Then we’ll have to make them see you as you really are.’

‘Don’t work me up me into some sort of damaged hero, Louisa. I’m not the stuff martyrs are made of, or heroes for that matter.’

‘Of course you’re not, but nor are you capable of murdering your wife or your brother, and I don’t care what the rest of the world says. I don’t even care if you doubt yourself, Hugh, because I know you didn’t do it.’