A Most Unladylike Adventure (16 page)

‘Sixteen,’ Kit agreed and she could see how hard the news had hit him.

‘His poor parents,’ she said with a shake of her head for the appalling grief they must be suffering.

‘They were killed in an accident eight or nine years ago,’ Hugh volunteered. ‘I believe the boy has sisters, but they can’t inherit an earldom and as the eldest of them ran off with some unsuitable rogue a twelvemonth ago it’s probably as well.’

‘Aye,’ Kit agreed abstractedly and went back to staring at nothing in particular while he brooded on the unexpected turn his life had taken.

‘Then I shall have to work on Lord Rarebridge’s uneasy conscience instead,’ Louisa announced and could have sworn she heard a silent moan of dread.

*

It had been an unexpectedly magical day, Louisa decided as she ascended the steps of Kinsham House just as the sun was setting and the birds in the trees in the gardens around the square were singing themselves to sleep, if the
ton
allowed them peace enough to
do so. She let the whispering silk skirts of her wedding gown fall to skim her slender ankles and embroidered satin slippers, then turned to smile at her new husband. Despite their enemy still being at large, Hugh seemed as happy and relaxed as he had been all day and she had just married the man she loved, so even with the vague unease she would always feel until Charlton Hawberry was apprehended, she still felt like dancing for joy.

‘You look like the perfect model for a newlywed gentleman,’ she teased her husband of half a day, and who would have thought Louisa Alstone, as was, would ever lay claim to one of those?

‘And I daren’t even look at you, madam wife, in case I ruin my gentlemanly façade by falling on you like a ravening beast,’ he muttered in her ear before turning to smile benignly as Lord Kinsham’s butler wished them both very happy on behalf of his lordship’s London staff.

Hugh thanked him sincerely, but his smile for Viscount Rarebridge, standing behind his father’s butler to receive them inside the generous marble hall, held much less warmth. Louisa soon saw that Lord Kinsham’s elegant saloon was crammed with curious guests,
despite the scant notice they’d received, and blessed the curiosity of Hugh’s former friends and neighbours as she reminded herself she wasn’t here to rehabilitate him in their eyes; that would have to come later.

‘Am I allowed to kiss the bride?’ Rory asked jovially, then backed hastily away when he saw the warning in Hugh’s suddenly feral gaze. ‘Only asking, old fellow,’ he excused himself mildly and Louisa sensed her husband putting the beast very carefully back in his cage and shivered with delighted anticipation of later tonight, when this charade was over and their wedding night could begin in earnest.

‘My dear Mrs Kenton,’ Lady Calliope Hibiscombe gushed as she stepped forwards to fill the silence her brother’s question left. ‘You are both very welcome, and may I congratulate you on your marriage?’ Lord Rarebridge’s sister asked and turned to raise her eyebrows at the butler in her role as hostess for the evening, so he could usher in the champagne the world was not supposed to know Kit had sent round earlier for his lordship and his guests to toast the bride and groom.

‘Thank you, Lady Calliope, I am very happy to be married to such a wonderful husband
and it is indeed kind of you and your brother to throw a lavish party for us at such very short notice,’ Louisa managed in return and they smiled at each other, while Hugh’s one-time friends and neighbours looked on as if at a play.

‘I believe you know my brother, Mr Christopher Alstone?’ she asked as she motioned Kit forwards to take his share of the attention.

‘Indeed I do,’ Lady Calliope said much more warmly as she welcomed the Earl of Carnwood’s new heir and Louisa suspected she was calculating how to marry him off to her best advantage.

Deciding that, of the two, she preferred Lord Rarebridge’s amiable vacuity to his sister’s calculated insincerity, Louisa gave a sparkling smile to the assembled company and clung to Hugh’s arm as if she never intended letting go.

She was introduced to a succession of guests and had to fight hard not to glare at each one and ask why they’d been such false friends to Hugh when he stood so much in need of them. He kept up a blandly smiling appearance at her side and seemed charmed to be reacquainted with them all and, if he could act so superbly in the face of their hypocrisy,
she could stand at his side and pretend to be as naïve as the majority of the guests clearly thought she must be to have wed him in the first place.

‘Such a shame that Sir Horace and Miss Kenton could not be here to share your joy, is it not?’ one of the more openly curious ladies asked her once most of Hugh’s attention had been engaged by her downtrodden husband.

‘Indeed, when you consider how ill the poor gentleman is, no doubt you understand why we wed with such haste? I simply had to be at my husband’s side over the next difficult months to provide as much comfort and support as can be had in such circumstances,’ she said with modestly lowered eyes.

‘It does you credit, my child, but what a shame you lack the guiding hand of a steady parent at such a time, for his situation could become very difficult indeed,’ the lady said spitefully and if this was the sort of unspoken malice Hugh had to contend with, Louisa decided it really was no wonder he’d preferred the gutter, then the sea.

‘You have observed my brother, I believe, ma’am?’ Louisa asked sweetly.

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ the woman replied
with a sidelong glance at Kit that said she had observed and relished the sight of him, as a still-handsome married woman who felt free to attract such dangerous gentlemen must, once her husband had his heir and a spare as hers apparently did.

‘If I need guidance through shark-infested waters, I shall be able to call on him for any help I need. Although I doubt I’ll require it, considering my husband is such an expert on sharks.’

‘Quite,’ the lady said sourly and went off to inform her fellow scandalmongers that the bride was a harridan in the making, and probably deserved to marry a man with the shadow of murder lurking so persistently over his head that no true lady would agree to have him.

‘Fighting dragons for me again, Louisa mine?’ Hugh asked softly as he clinked his champagne glass against hers and smiled down at her in an intimate toast that momentarily excluded everyone else.

‘I can’t help it, Hugh,’ she murmured in reply, ‘they are so very brazen.’

‘Which is why they became dragons in the first place,’ he said gently and she was tempted to forget all about rooting out their villain to
lure her new husband out of this room and find one a lot more private.

‘Has anything jogged your memory?’ she whispered as if exchanging sweet nothings with her bridegroom.

‘Not until now,’ he told her distractedly and she tried to shift round to see who he was looking at so intently, but he confounded her by moving to block her view.

‘Now who’s the dragon slayer?’ she muttered crossly.

‘I am,’ he said unrepentantly and she could tell he’d just sent her brother some sort of signal because Kit suddenly materialised at their side. ‘Did you see?’ he asked brusquely.

‘Before he slipped upstairs and no doubt developed a sick headache? I certainly did, but we can’t scotch that particular snake tonight unless he slithers back into view, given his position in the household.’

‘No, indeed, the height of bad manners,’ Hugh agreed with a satirical look at the assembled company that said he had a very poor opinion of the polite world just at the moment.

‘And deeply unfair on the man’s unlucky family,’ Kit confirmed and Louisa stamped her foot and glared at both of them.

‘Talking about bad manners, neither of
yours would stand up to scrutiny tonight,’ she said haughtily.

‘Will you accept what I say and carry on with this charade as if all we have on our minds tonight is rehabilitating my reputation, love?’ Hugh asked and Louisa felt her anger subside far too easily.

‘Very well,’ she agreed with a heavy sigh. ‘Don’t expect me to become a pattern card of wifely obedience though, will you?’

‘Perish the thought,’ he said with a smile that did strange things to her insides.

‘I think we could all dance, don’t you?’ Lady Calliope was cleverly appealing to the older matrons who might disapprove. ‘I know dear Hugh and his bride begged us not to throw an impromptu ball to celebrate their nuptials, but I see no harm in a few elegant measures between old friends.’

‘Excellent notion, Cal,’ Viscount Rarebridge agreed and a pair of superannuated ladies agreed to provide the music, so the butler supervised the rolling back of the fine Aubusson carpet and one of the ladies struck up a merry tune, then pronounced herself satisfied with both music and instrument.

‘The bride and groom must begin the first dance,’ Lady Calliope announced as Hugh and
Louisa walked on to the floor hand in hand and a ripple of applause and nervous laughter ran round the room.

‘T
hey really don’t know what to make of us, do they?’ Louisa asked as she and Hugh went through the formalities and waited for the other couples to take the floor in their wake.

‘Not fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring are we, my Eloise?’ he asked with a wry look that made her want to walk into his strong arms and stop there.

‘I’m not, but you were their neighbour and playmate once upon a time. No doubt you set daughters’ and sisters’ hearts aflutter when you came home from the sea a hero of Trafalgar and all those other dreadful battles you were engaged in. They must have known you as a fine and honourable young gentleman, sure to go far on your chosen path
to glory, but now they pretend they barely know you.’

‘Not everyone is courageous as you,’ he told her philosophically. ‘We arranged this farce for our own purposes, so we can hardly complain if they’re here to satisfy their rampant curiosity, rather than be reconciled with a rogue like me.’

‘You’re not a rogue,’ she defended him against his own strictures as they began the measure and passed down the line of waiting ladies and gentlemen.

‘Oh, come now, my dear, you know perfectly well that I am,’ he said wickedly and gave her a blazing look before he solemnly bowed to the next lady in line and whisked her off to perform the figure with elegant aplomb.

‘You’re right,’ she whispered as they passed each other in the dance.

‘I know,’ he murmured back and was off again with another fascinated lady.

‘Just as well I’m an adventuress, then,’ she told him at the next opportunity and gave her partner a fascinating smile before flitting off down the line with him.

‘He just told me I’m a lucky dog,’ Hugh muttered dourly next time they met.

‘Well, you are,’ she replied and smiled even more enchantingly at the next gentleman in line.

‘All right, you can stop now. I’m more than jealous enough to punch the next man you smile at in the mouth, in the midst of the dance or not,’ he informed her more than half-seriously as they settled back into their pairing for the weave to be taken over by the next pair.

‘Well, that really would provide fodder for the gossips,’ she said demurely and settled back into the blissful state of only seeing her new husband for the rest of the dance, then happily consented to move among the spectators at his side during the next one.

‘Feeling better now?’ she whispered as they drifted from one middle-aged couple to another.

‘What do you think?’ he demanded with a message in his silver-shot blue eyes that made her shiver with sensuous anticipation.

‘How much longer do we have to stay, do you think?’ she asked as they halted between acquaintances to look only at each other.

‘It is our party,’ he demurred.

‘Then surely we should be able to leave it whenever we choose?’

‘With your vengeful purposes still unsatisfied,
my Louisa, are you sure you’re feeling quite well?’

‘I might not be,’ she trailed suggestively. ‘I could be overwrought and even a little bit overawed by the solemnity of the occasion, if you would like me to be.’

‘Not when you’re glowing like the happy dawn, my love. Have I told you that you look breathtakingly beautiful in that gown, with your hair so perfectly right for you and that sapphire set Kit gave you the same glorious shade as your eyes? I wish I’d thought of buying you something half as lovely, but I suspect I wouldn’t have found anything to equal them in London.’

‘He said they came from a very shady gem merchant he met on his travels, and he wouldn’t tell me exactly where he acquired them. I can’t help wondering if they were really intended for me when he bought them though, Hugh, for there was such a faraway look in his eyes when he gave them to me it was almost as if he was saying farewell to a dream.’

‘Whereas I’ve got my dream here in my arms,’ he told her so unexpectedly she really was almost overcome, if more by a surge of
lust and love and anticipation of tonight than by the occasion.

‘You say such lovely things to me,’ she murmured, not caring that his father’s neighbours and most of his former acquaintance was watching them, either openly or under cover of making conversation with each other.

‘And you don’t believe a word of them, do you?’ he said as if her lack of faith in him jarred on his newfound contentment.

‘I can’t accustom myself to being anyone’s dream, Hugh,’ she said seriously.

‘And no doubt I’m more like your nightmare than
your
dream,’ he parried bitterly, as if he had to defend the sensitive man she now knew he was, behind all that to-the-devil-with-you air of his, from being trampled on once more.

‘You are so much more than a dream to me, my love,’ she finally declared, because she wouldn’t see him hurt ever again if she could prevent it, even if she was the one doing the hurting. ‘You’re my hope, where I only had loneliness and isolation before I met you, and my warmth and laughter, when I expected to go alone to my grave. I want you rather urgently as well, which surprises me even if it doesn’t seem to shock you. After all, I was perfectly content to be called the Ice Diamond
before I encountered Captain Darke one fine day and began to melt on the spot. So you
are
the dream I never dared even dream before I met you, Hugh, and I still don’t quite know what I did to deserve you, or that I ever did, in fact, and now I’ve got you I can’t wait to be your wife in every sense of the word.’

‘Oh Louisa mine, I love you so dearly I swear that I never even knew the meaning of the word until now,’ he said on a long sigh of relief and acceptance that made her heart sing, ‘but please let’s go home and put it all into practice as soon as we can get out of here without insulting someone irretrievably, as they’re probably going to be our neighbours all too soon,’ he added and she looked up at him with love and laughter and complicity in her eyes and agreed without another word.

*

‘I’ll have my maid find your cloak and anything else your woman left here ready for your homeward journey, my dear,’ Lady Calliope assured Louisa as she shepherded her into the ladies’ withdrawing room and did her best to pretend she believed her glowing guest of honour was truly overcome by the heat and the strain of marrying a rake earlier today, in the teeth of all the evidence.

‘Thank you, Lady Calliope,’ she said meekly and subsided onto a conveniently placed chair to wait and dream of her own particular rogue in peace.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like another of the maids to attend you, as you seem to lack one of your own at the moment?’

‘Quite sure, I thank you, it has been a lovely evening, your ladyship, but I should like a little quiet to recover my senses before we leave,’ she said truthfully enough, for she wanted to sit and treasure the incredible fact that in a few minutes she would be going home with the man she loved and he loved her in return.

Lady Calliope nodded as if quite content to let the lie Louisa was in the least bit overcome stand, so she could get back to gossiping about her with her friends. Louisa hardly noticed her hostess go as she hugged such a wonderful revelation to her heart. It was such an unexpected delight that she’d somehow discovered her one real love, and he her, that she begrudged sharing it with a group of people who had failed to appreciate his wonderful qualities so appallingly in the past.

‘At last, my dear, I thought I should never find the chance to get you to myself once more,’ a voice that truly came out of her worst
nightmares told her silkily, before she’d hardly even got started on dreaming about her husband and lover and deliciously anticipating the night to come.

She gasped and sprang to her feet at the sight of the man she knew as Charlton Hawberry, standing just inside the door opposite the one she and Lady Calliope had used, looking as if he’d had all his dreams come true as well tonight, and certain that she wouldn’t like any of them.

‘Nothing to say, oh-so-intrepid Miss Alstone?’ he sneered.

‘Mrs Kenton,’ she corrected before she could stop the words on her tongue.

‘Ah, yes, how satisfying it will be to take his second wife as well as his first one from him. I dare say the loss of the famous Ice Diamond in his marriage bed will break him and this time he really won’t care if he lives or dies. What a good joke that the first Mrs Kenton took lovers with a little less thought than she changed her gowns and the second is as frigid as an icicle. I’m probably doing the man a favour by depriving him of a fine case of frostbite when he tries to bed you.’

This time she refused to rise to his sneers or his revolting words and just stared at him
for a moment, then looked away as if from something repulsive. All the time she was trying to find a way to escape him. If she could just keep him boasting about his cleverness for long enough the maid would come in with her splendid new evening cloak, and surely she’d scream for help when she saw the lady she came to help being held at the point of this vile little man’s pistol.

‘You wouldn’t dare shoot me here,’ she challenged as she mentally searched the room for a weapon to defend herself with, because she’d never wanted to die less than she did tonight.

‘I was thinking of something more subtle,’ he said as he removed a white-silk stocking from his pocket that looked very similar to the ones she’d donned earlier, with a rush of joyous anticipation at the thought of Hugh taking them off again, very slowly and sensuously. ‘Courtesy of my wife, you understand,’ he informed her as if she would want to know whose stocking he wanted to strangle her with.

‘You’re Mr Hibiscombe?’ she asked and suddenly knew she was right. No wonder he’d known exactly how to play on his brother-in-law’s weaknesses, no great surprise that he’d
hidden his guilt for so long with such powerful connections and a seat in the House of Commons to help him do so either.

‘Yes,’ he said flatly. ‘I am
Mr
Hibiscombe and very shortly even your undeserving husband will be a baronet. My wife has a title, her idiot brother has a better one and my very noble father-in-law had to be blackmailed and bought to accept me as his son-in-law, but
I
do not have a title, madam, and I intend to get one very soon, although unfortunately you won’t live to see it.’

‘Why on earth would you want one?’ she couldn’t help but ask, picturing Kit’s grim face when he told them he’d become heir to an earldom.

‘You are a very stupid woman—of course I want to distinguish myself from my inferiors and take up my seat in the House of Lords at long last. Do you think being a mere Member of Parliament is enough for a man like me? Staying a mere mister will not do for any gentleman with ambition and drive and I’ve had enough of being no more than tolerated by my aristocratic relatives by marriage.’

‘And you’ll never receive a peerage of any sort if you’re in Newgate awaiting hanging.
No, I quite see your dilemma now,’ she said as blandly as she could.

She could see with hindsight why he could afford to attend her uncle and aunt’s At Homes because they had no political bent and moved in very different circles to the ones he clearly aspired to. The vanity of the creature astonished her; perhaps if she encouraged him to trumpet his cleverness over the rest of the world, she might stand a chance of getting away from him unscathed after all.

‘Why on earth did you kidnap me if you were already married?’ she asked casually, as if his answer hardly mattered.

‘I suppose there’s no harm telling you,’ he mused as if unable to resist the chance to preen at his own superiority. ‘I had no interest in marrying the Ice Diamond—what could you bring me, especially once I learnt a little more about your colourful past? No, your disappearance was merely to ensure your oh-so-clever brother was occupied while I rid myself of the problem caused by Hugo Kenton’s inconvenient reappearance.’ With his back to the door he’d come in by, he hadn’t seen it open a mere crack as the maid heard voices within and decided to find out if it was safe to
enter without breaking up some unimaginable tête-à-tête.

‘How extraordinary of you, Mr Hibiscombe, but I don’t understand how the first Mrs Kenton fitted into your grand scheme of things?’ She trailed the question in the hope the maid was quick on the uptake and would realise her mistress’s husband was a murderer, so she could fetch help before he did it again.

‘My wife is boring,’ he said coldly and she wondered how Lady Calliope tolerated him on even a day-to-day basis, let alone taking him to her bed often enough to give rise to the brood of children Lord Rarebridge complained about at every opportunity. ‘She would never have agreed to wed me if she wasn’t,’ he added with a shrug. ‘The late Mrs Kenton was exciting and forbidden and I enjoyed cuckolding that idiot you just married without anyone knowing I was doing it. All the others were as lacking in subtlety as the woman herself and, eventually, I found out that she was quite incapable of discretion. She laughed at me and then she threatened me,’ he added, astonishment in his reedy voice as if he was almost talking to himself and marvelling at the temerity of Ariadne Kenton for daring to mock him.

There was silence from outside the room and Louisa could only hope that the maid had either gone to get help, or was listening to the vain little peacock damn himself further. She had no intention of dying to oblige this cardboard monster, but it would be such a relief if she didn’t have to fight him for her life, tonight of all nights.

‘What did she threaten you with?’ she managed to ask.

‘Exposure,’ he said with a prim shudder. ‘She said she would go to my father-in-law the Earl and tell him what sort of man his precious daughter had married and then she would confront Calliope and make sure she knew as well, so nobody could keep it from her for the sake of her peace of mind.’

‘I can see your problem,’ she lied.

‘It was very vexing; obviously government ministers have mistresses and expect their juniors to have them too, but such women should know their place and at least keep a still tongue in their heads. That strumpet Kenton married went about in the same circles as I, as if she was fit company for gentlemen; she even suggested she was quite happy to let him sue me for criminal conversation with
her. She actually wanted to be divorced by the blundering idiot, she told me so.’