A Most Unladylike Adventure (8 page)

‘You did nothing wrong, you idiotic woman. I can understand a grieving child taking on a terrible burden of guilt, but surely not even you are stubborn enough to cling to it now, in the face of all logic and mature consideration?’

She shrugged, knowing he couldn’t see her, but they were so close she could feel the frustration come off him. It was both unexpected and kind of him to try to absolve her of guilt. It also confirmed he had all the instincts, as
well as the upbringing, of the gentleman she now knew him to be.

‘If I had only stayed at home as I should have done that day, Mama and Peter would probably still be alive today,’ she said sadly.

‘And if any number of things in history had happened in a different order we might not be standing here tonight, futilely discussing ifs and maybes. You know as well as I do that disease is rife in the slums of this city, especially in the summer, and anyone could have given them that illness. Would you expect the butcher or baker or candlestick-maker to carry a burden of guilt for the rest of their lives if they had carried it into your home?’

‘No, but they would have spread it in innocence, not after disobeying every rule my mother tried to lay down for my safety and well-being and probably worrying her sleepless all night as well.’

‘So you were headstrong and difficult—what’s new about that, Louisa?’ he asked impatiently and for some reason that made her consider his words more seriously than sympathy might have done.

‘Not much,’ she finally admitted as if it came as a shock.

He chuckled and she kicked herself silently
for feeling a warm glow threaten to run through her at the deep, masculine sound of it. ‘I doubt very much those who love you would have you any other than as you are, despite your many faults,’ he told her almost gently.

‘But Peter’s dead,’ she told him tragically and if he couldn’t hear the tears in her voice at the very thought of her loving little brother, now six years in his grave, she certainly could and bit her lip to try to hold them back.

‘And just how do you think your brother Kit and Ben Shaw would have felt if they came home to find you or your sister gone as well? Such epidemics are no respecters of what is fair and unfair, Louisa. None of you deserved to die or to bear blame for deaths that happened because the poor live in little better than open sewers at the heart of this fair city. Blame the aldermen and government ministers who allow such abject poverty to thrive in what’s supposed to be the most advanced nation in the world, but don’t be arrogant enough to take the blame yourself. And don’t you think your mother would hate to hear you now? It sounds to me as if she loved her children very much, so she’d certainly not want to hear you talk like a fool and refuse to bear children yourself, just because she’s not here any more and your
little brother couldn’t fight a desperate and dangerous illness that can just as easily take strong men in the prime of their lives.’

‘I still shouldn’t have gone.’

‘No, but all the other times you climbed out of your window and ran wild through the streets you probably should have been sewing samplers or minding your books. It sounds like the natural reaction of a spirited girl, denied the pleasures and luxuries of the life you should have had, if your father wasn’t selfish and shallow and self-obsessed. Taking the burden of guilt for what happened when it clearly belongs elsewhere is arrogant, Louisa. All you were guilty of was a childish rebellion that you would have grown out of, once your brother was able to provide you and your family with the sort of life you should have lived from the outset.’

‘He was so sad, Hugh,’ she confided with a sniff to hold back her tears that he somehow found deeply touching. ‘At night when he thought Maria and I were in bed and asleep I would hear him weep for them. Then Papa came home one night, drunk as usual, and they argued and raged at each other until Papa stormed off into the night and swore not to come home again until Kit was back at sea.
They found his body floating in the Thames two days later and only my sister was ever soft-hearted enough to think he’d drowned himself out of grief for my mother, when he was so drunk he probably couldn’t tell the difference between high water and dry land. Yet it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t argued with Kit and I hadn’t done what I did.’

‘And no doubt Kit feels guilty about that as well, being made in the same stubborn, ridiculous mould as you and the rest of the Earl of Carnwood’s rackety family. There’s no need for you to take on his regrets as well as your own, since I never met a man more able to own his sins and omissions than Christopher Alstone.’

‘I suppose you could be right.’

‘Of course I am. Now, kindly inform me what you were planning to do to me once you had me guyed up in that ridiculous disguise and let’s have done with your imagined sins.’

‘That’s it? I am to consider myself absolved? You should have been a priest.’

‘Maybe not,’ he said with a laugh that would have been self-mocking if he wasn’t so busy mocking her. ‘But nothing you did or didn’t do in the past has made you unfit to be a mother, Louisa. Probably just as well, since we’re
going to be wed and will doubtless bed each other at regular intervals, very likely before we get to the altar as well if you keep glaring at me like that,’ he threatened half-seriously.

‘How do you know I’m glaring at you?’ she asked haughtily.

‘Instinct,’ he told her succinctly. ‘I can’t promise you much, but I will promise not to treat you as shabbily as your father did your mother,’ he added gruffly.

‘That would be nice of you, if I had the least intention of marrying you.’

‘You will have to, my girl, since I refuse to spend the next three months or so not meeting your brother’s eyes or hiding from Ben Shaw’s mighty wrath while we wait for you to decide if I’ve just got you pregnant or not. Consider it the wages of sin and take that guilt on your shoulders if you must, but at least let’s have no more Cheltenham tragedies while you wait it out as my wife instead.’

‘So far I hear only what you want and nothing about me, but the answer to your question about the disguise is that I don’t really know. I can’t go back to Kit’s house because my enemies will be looking for me by now, and I wanted to get you away from the man who’s trying to trap you until we could defeat him
somehow, which was all very stupid of me, I suppose.’

‘Undoubtedly it was,’ he agreed gruffly.

‘You could probably go back there safely yourself,’ she encouraged him and felt his suspicion on the heavy air as clearly as if she could actually see his frown.

‘While you do what in the meantime?’

‘I have plenty of plans for my future. It’s you I don’t know what to do with.’

‘I think we just demonstrated that you know
exactly
what to do with me,’ he said, sounding as silkily lethal as he must when examining any of his crew brought in front of him to explain their sins.

‘And you dislike being thought fit for only one purpose as much as I do?’

‘When did I imply any such thing, woman?’

‘With every word you drawl at me as if you’re right and everything I say proves how bird-witted I am.’

‘Only when you’re talking rubbish,’ he muttered impatiently, as if driven to the edge of reason by addle-pated arguments, when she ought to accept his words as proven fact, then do as she was bid.

‘It’s hardly rubbish to say we’re both unsuited
to marriage and even more so to marrying one another.’

‘Yes, it is. We’ll do very well in our marriage bed, something we just proved to each other beyond all reasonable doubt.’

‘So my doubts are unreasonable and that’s all there is to marriage?’ she asked with a theatrical wave at the coffee stacks she was quite glad he couldn’t see. The very thought of them made her blush now they were discussing seduction and his peculiar idea that it automatically led to marriage.

‘Ah, now I can see why you were truly so unsuited to the
ton
nish ideals of marriage
à la mode
. You, Miss Alstone, destined as you are not to be a miss for very much longer, are a romantic.’

Stung by the accusation, when she’d always thought herself such a cynic, Louisa was about to loudly dispute such a slur when she made the mistake of wondering if he could be right.

‘I
have never felt the slightest need to sigh and yearn over a man,’ Louisa lied defensively, ‘and least of all over you, Captain Darke.’

‘Good, because I’m not worth wasting a moment’s peace on,’ he said curtly and a fierce desire to argue that statement shook her, but she fought it with an effort she must think about later.

‘I’m not going to marry you,’ she said as definitely as she could.

‘You’re such an odd mix of cynicism and vulnerability, my dear. I’ll probably spend a lifetime trying to understand you,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard.

‘It will be a lifetime separate from mine,’ she insisted for the sake of it more than out of
any passionate certainty. She was so busy feeling hollow inside at the idea that the sounds she was waiting for from outside hardly seemed important any more.

‘Why the devil is a ship docking hard by, Louisa?’ he barked at her and she felt his frustration as he gripped her as if he’d like to shake her.

‘It’s come for me, of course—what’s the point of having a brother with his own shipping empire if I can’t call on it when I need to?’ she replied coolly.

‘You don’t trust me to keep you safe, then?’

‘It’s not a matter of trust,’ she argued uncomfortably.

‘Now there you’re so very wrong, Miss Alstone.’ His voice was so low she did her best not to hear it as he turned to the master of the coastal brig she’d summoned here once the tide was right. ‘What the devil do you want?’ he barked when a shadowy figure unlocked the riverside door and stood outlined against the night.

‘My sister,’ Christopher Alstone replied grimly, opening his dark lantern and making Louisa blink. ‘So what in Hades are you doing here?’ he demanded.

‘Kit!’ Louisa exclaimed on a huge sigh of
relief and confusion as she ran into his arms. ‘I missed you so much,’ she told him fervently.

‘It’s mutual, you confounded nuisance of a female,’ he informed her abruptly, even as she felt at least half of his attention slide to Hugh Darke and his muscles stiffen like a fighting dog scenting a challenge. ‘What have you done to my sister?’ he ground out, as if he knew exactly what they’d been doing, but surely even her powerful brother couldn’t see through walls?

‘Nothing,’ she said impatiently. ‘And what are you doing here?’ she asked, standing away from him to examine his deeply shadowed face.

‘I asked first,’ he said silkily, his eyes not moving from Hugh and she wondered if these two warriors were about to try to kill each other over her.

‘And you’re clearly as annoying as ever,’ she sparked back, determined not to be sidelined and silent while they decided her future between them.

‘Clearly,’ he agreed with that flinty lack of temper she knew from experience was his most effective weapon in an argument. ‘An answer, if you please?’ he demanded starkly
and Hugh Darke moved Louisa aside to confront her brother.

‘I was trying to persuade her to marry me, until you interrupted us,’ he said, as arrogantly challenging as if he’d just thrown down a knightly gauntlet and fully expected to have it thrown back in his face.

‘Oh, good,’ Kit said mildly and Louisa felt her rage soar almost out of control at the exact moment his seemed to deflate.

‘Good? Do you really want this idiot to marry me?’ she raged.

‘Why not? Lots of other idiots have asked you to do so and they only mildly annoyed you. At least this one seems to have found a way of holding your full attention while he puts the question, even if I don’t like anything else about him being shut in here alone with my little sister.’

Drat him, but why did her brother have to be so uncannily perceptive? Because he was Kit Stone, she supposed: precociously successful, driven and even more stubborn than she was.

‘Speaking as the idiot in question, I don’t care about your ruffled pride and your reputation for icy detachment, Miss Alstone. I just want you to agree to marry me, so your
brother doesn’t have to beat me to a bloody pulp and we can all go home, before eating our dinner and getting on with our interrupted lives with no more of your infernal melodramas,’ Hugh told her impatiently.

‘Which is exactly why we should
not
marry, since your dinner clearly matters to you a lot more than I do,’ she said, rounding on him now that Kit seemed more an amused bystander than her avenging guardian.

If she let herself think about the volumes that detachment spoke about her brother’s belief in Captain Darke’s bone-deep sense of honour, she might start respecting the devilish rogue herself and she knew precisely where that would get her—marched up the aisle before she came back to her right senses again.

‘On the contrary, I’m exactly the right husband to deal with your wrongheaded ideas and headstrong ways. Any other man would be driven demented by your starts inside a sennight.’

‘He could be right,’ Kit observed traitorously.

‘And I’ll be flying to the moon any moment now,’ she scorned, but the idea of arguing with Hugh Darke for the rest of their born days suddenly seemed a little bit too promising.

‘I’ll take you there, Eloise,’ he whispered in her ear and she wondered how he’d managed to creep so close behind her that she was all but in his arms once more, and in front of her brother as well.

She shuddered with what she told herself was revulsion, but he’d reminded her how it felt to soar in his arms, to strive for the very moon and stars, and she sighed in besotted anticipation of doing it all again.

‘Not until you’ve put a wedding ring on her finger, you won’t,’ Kit warned as he eyed them very suspiciously once more. ‘And what’s all this Eloise business?’

‘You really don’t want to know,’ Hugh said with a return to his austerely apart, piratical-captain look as he withdrew his warmth and strength from her.

Louisa shivered at no longer feeling him next to her—how could she know if her scent and sound and touch were as deeply imprinted on his senses as his were on hers? He was so detached all of a sudden it was as if she’d dreamt that feverish interlude in his arms when neither of them seemed able to hold anything back from the other. She was almost glad when Kit decided this was neither the time nor the place for such an important
discussion and put aside that comment to pick over later and eyed her pale face with brotherly concern.

‘I probably don’t either, but let’s get Louisa out of here. We can deal with Eloise and the details of your wedding in the morning.’

‘No, I can’t go home with you, I need to get away,’ Louisa argued, an illogical sense that she needed to escape nagging at her even now she had two powerful protectors instead of just the one.

‘Why?’ her brother asked.

‘Because Uncle William has been scheming to marry me off to a worm of a man, who probably offered to share my dowry with him, and both of them will be hot on my trail by now.’

‘He’ll answer to me for it, then, but why would that mean we can’t go home?’

‘The insect abducted me and kept me in his bedchamber for a night and a day and made sure my uncle and aunt saw me there, so they could exclaim loudly about my wickedness and their scandalised feelings. They forbade me their roof, unless I instantly married the repulsive toad, which I refused to do needless to say.’

‘That need not worry you, Miss Alstone. He
won’t pollute the world for very much longer,’ Hugh Darke gritted between his strong white teeth and, given the fierce look in his eyes, she believed him.

‘How would your killing him help me? You would have to flee the country and I would still be the centre of a fine scandal, all the more so if I was stupid enough to have married you in the meantime. It would seem as if I ran off with you after growing bored with him.’

‘She’s right, Hugh,’ Kit intervened as Hugh Darke rounded on her with his best master-of-all-I-survey glare. ‘You need to leave the worm to me,’ Kit added, offering that caveat to soothe the devil of temper so very evident in Hugh’s furious gaze and stirring hers instead.

‘No, he’ll only dirty your hands,’ Hugh gritted furiously, quite lost to reason, even if her brother only had more masculine folly to offer. ‘What’s his name, this insect-worm?’ he asked fiercely.

‘Do you think I’m fool enough to tell you that, when you will only add to the scandal already surrounding me by calling him out?’

His hands closed about her arms, as if he wanted to shake some sense into her and she
condemned her senses for leaping to attention, even at his angry touch through her second-hand jacket and gown. For a betraying moment she swayed towards him, as if her body and her senses were begging for a kiss despite her growing fury.

‘He must not get away with it, Louisa, I can’t let him,’ he gritted as if her lost reputation mattered to him more than it ever could to her. As surely as she knew Charlton would walk away if she was teetering on the edge of a cliff, she knew this man would plunge off it himself, if that was what it took to save her.

‘Don’t you think me capable of making him sorry he was even born, then, Hugo?’ Kit said almost gently.

‘I do, but it should be my job. No, make that my pleasure.’

‘It can’t be and you know why,’ Kit said obscurely and Louisa’s ears pricked up at the veiled curb in that short sentence. Then she felt the reminder bite into the man still holding her arms as if he didn’t know quite what to do with her.

Hugh jerked away from her, seeming horrified that he’d ever laid hands on her in the first place and watched those very hands with revulsion, like a very masculine Lady Macbeth,
after she’d driven herself mad with murder and ambition and couldn’t wash the imaginary blood off them.

‘I know, so how can I wed your sister? I forgot what I am in the heat of the moment,’ he whispered and it was as if he and Kit were talking about something deeply important she wasn’t going to be told.

‘Whilst I suspect I don’t want to know about the heat of that particular moment, we both know there’s nothing to stop you marrying. The rub will come if you fail to make my sister happy afterwards and I’m forced to kill you,’ Kit told him implacably, and any illusion she’d suffered that he was resigned to what had taken place between herself and Hugh tonight melted away like mist in the July sun.

‘That would go quite badly with me, either way,’ she muttered mutinously.

‘Not as badly as you knowing the truth about me would,’ Hugh said, looking glum about her predicted unhappiness and softening her heart, if he did but know it.

‘I told you my tale,’ she challenged him, and if Kit chose to think it was the one about her abduction and lost reputation, then so be it.

‘And you think mine is that simple—just a
few words and a rueful smile at how easy that was to get out of the way and go on?’

‘As mine was?’ she demanded, furious with him for brushing aside her fears and peculiarities as if they didn’t matter.

‘I didn’t mean…’ he blundered on.

‘Never mind what you meant, never mind your secrets. I haven’t got all night to spare for arguing with you. I’m tired and hungry and downright weary of rescuing ungrateful, lying, mistrustful idiots from their enemies. If neither of you intends to take me somewhere safe and warm and feed me, pray give me a hand up on to that brig of yours, brother mine, and I’ll get the master to drop me off at the nearest port downriver where I can buy myself a bedchamber for the night and a decent meal.’

‘Not in a hundred years, sister dear, and he’s long gone. I thought half of London must know he was casting off and none too happy to be going in the middle of the night, given the amount of noise he made about it.’

‘I didn’t hear him,’ she said stiffly and actually caught herself out in a flounce as she spun round to glare at her would-be bridegroom and dare him to comment.

‘Neither did I,’ he admitted meekly.

‘Lovebirds,’ Kit added sarcastically and
Louisa wondered if she ought to kick one of them, even if it was just because they were men and couldn’t help being infuriating any more than they could voluntarily stop breathing.

‘What are we going to do, then?’ she demanded.

‘Go home,’ Kit told her implacably and, since there was nowhere she’d rather be, she allowed him to bustle her out of the warehouse and along narrow streets and alleys he knew even better than she did in the dark, then out on to wider and marginally more respectable streets where he hailed a cab, then sat back to watch the night-time streets roll past as if they fascinated him.

‘Where have you been, then?’ Louisa finally asked her brother, remembering she ought to be furious with him for disappearing as he had.

‘Here and there,’ he told her shortly.

Simmering with temper because it was better than letting her tiredness and uncertainty take over, she put her mind to Hugh Darke’s many mysteries as the little house in Chelsea and a degree of physical comfort beckoned at last.

‘Just as well you didn’t get back last night,’
she muttered as they arrived and her brother helped her down while Hugh paid the jarvey.

‘I’m not going to ask why not until I’ve had my dinner and a soothing shot of brandy,’ he said as he ushered her up the steps and rapped sharply on the door.

‘Hah! That’s a lot less likely than you think,’ she observed with a sidelong glance at Hugh that made Kit frown as Coste cautiously opened the door.

‘Let us in, you idiot,’ Kit ordered sharply.

‘Didn’t know it was you, now, did I?’ Coste mumbled as he stood back to do so.

‘You would have done if you actually made use of the Judas hole I had put in for once,’ his employer informed him as he used Coste’s candle to light those in the sconces round the cosy dining parlour they had got nowhere near last night. ‘Is there anything edible in the house?’ he demanded and put a taper to the fire laid ready in the hearth for good measure.

‘Aye, sir. Miss Louisa gave me money for food and a couple of cleaning women. We’ve a good pork pie and a ham and all sorts of fancy bits of this and that. There’s treacle tart, apple pie and gingerbread, too, but not so much of the treacle tart as there might be,’ Coste said with a reminiscent grin.

‘And you two somehow managed until now without my housekeeper and a kitchenmaid?’ Kit asked mildly enough.