Swept Away By a Kiss (18 page)

He raised his golden gaze to her eyes again, and Valerie’s throat closed. He filled the silence.

“I am delighted to see, Godmother, that you keep company with ladies whose beauty complements your own so admirably,” he said in playful tones, holding Valerie’s gaze now with unveiled appreciation. “It says so much for your generosity, not to mention your most suitable self-confidence.” He turned to the countess.

Confusion flooded Valerie.
It simply could not be
. This teasing English nobleman could not possibly be the same man whose strong, tranquil gaze had borne her through the worst moments of her life.

Lady March laughed. “Come now, Steven, you will not turn my head with pretty phrases, no matter how successfully you make the young ladies blush.” She took Valerie’s arm and moved toward the passageway to the drawing room. “Do not pay any attention to him, dear girl. He always had an angel’s tongue, and he still insists upon plaguing me with it though he knows I am too old and wise to succumb to his flattery.”

“La, Godmother,” he said lightly. “You cannot depress my spirits with your chastisements today. I am home in time for Christmas. I have been storing up my pretty words and good humor for months, and I fully expect to apply them all before this season of joy is over, whether you approve of it or not.”

A pair of liveried footmen pulled the drawing room doors open. Lady March turned to her godson, poised to respond, but he bowed, grasped her hand, and raised it to his lips. From beneath snow-sparkled lashes, a mischievous glint lit his golden eyes.

“Of course, I would much rather have your approval,” he murmured.

A grin curled the countess’s mouth and she pulled her hand away. He released it with an airy sigh.

“Scamp,” she said, and turned her attention to making introductions.

Valerie stood frozen in place, her mind awhirl and heart twisting as she watched the man she had dreamed of for six months move about the chamber greeting the other guests. He prettily complimented each young lady, deferred to the older gentlemen, presented a casually comfortable manner to his peers, and gently cosseted the elderly females, while to the matrons he was pleasingly attentive and ever so subtly flattering. Each person he spoke to seemed captivated by the attractive combination of easy manners and excellent breeding he radiated.

He made no effort to speak with Valerie.

By the end of an hour, her stomach burned like a pit of fire, and she did not remember anything anyone said to her. Her mouth was dry, her mind blank with incomprehension.

Cursing herself for weakness, and him for the confusion that tortured her each time she stole a glance at his beautifully unique profile, she finally set down her untasted cup of mulled wine and made her way out into the hall. Cold tingled upon her cheeks. She touched them and her fingers came away damp with tears.

Anger engulfed her, hot and painful. She fled to her bedchamber.

Sitting upon the edge of her bed, tearless, Valerie did not shrug off her anger. She turned it upon herself. She should never have dreamed of him, made him in her imagination some kind of hero. Long ago she had learned no man was that, but still she allowed herself to be a fool for this one.

And what a fool she had been! She believed him to be a Catholic priest, for pity’s sake. She even dreamed of returning to America, of searching him out, and—

It did not bear thinking on now.

Of course, he hadn’t given her any cause to believe he was not actually a French priest. But some natural feeling should have warned her. She should have known, listened to her desire for him, not to his lies.

But perhaps he was a priest, and a Frenchman as she had thought, his skills at dissembling so accomplished he was able to pass himself off as an English lord. Perhaps he was a spy, and she was the only one clever enough to discern it.

Despite her black humor, the idea made Valerie laugh, but the sound came from her mouth like a consumptive cough. Of course he could not fabricate his relationship with Margaret March. That lady was above reproach. Whoever else he might be, he was undoubtedly the countess’s godson.

Whoever else
.

Valerie wanted to convince herself he was a double, a twin lost at birth, one raised by English parents, the other by French. A romantic tale, but certainly common enough in lending-library novels.

But his eyes were unique. No other gaze could fill her with such profound yearning. She longed to believe that for even a fraction of a moment in the great hall she had seen something familiar in them. Even masked in his efforts to charm the Countess of March and her guests, his eyes were the same.

He had lied to her, and his behavior in the hall and later did not encourage Valerie to think he intended to tell her the truth now. He lied to his godmother too. Valerie had seen him riding up behind the house toward the village earlier that morning. She felt him. But he allowed Lady March to believe he had arrived from town just this afternoon.

She released a groan, clutching the bed linens in her fists. Somewhere in the house the others were now busily decorating in holiday spirit. Valerie did not feel a spark of interest in the project. But she took a deep breath, smoothed out the creases in her gown, and walked to the door.

Her maid appeared from the dressing room.

“Miss?” the girl’s voice tested. “Won’t you have a bite of these biscuits the cook sent up? I am sure they’re very tasty, and I expect you haven’t eaten a thing since breakfast.”

Valerie pasted a smile onto her lips.

“Don’t concern yourself with my fidgets, Mabel. I am feeling much better now that I have rested. I see you have fetched tea too. You should enjoy it instead, and the biscuits, if you wish.”

“Milady, I’ve news to tell you. If this is not a good minute for it—”

“Now is as well as any time, Mabel.” No news could surprise her now. Or ever again.

“It’s probably nothing, milady. While you were out in the woods this morning, I went below to press the silk you’ll be wearing this evening. Lady Cassandra’s girl was already using the iron, so I came back up in a trice, and there was someone here.”

“Oh? Who?”

“I wouldn’t trouble you with this if it were the coal maid. But it were Lady March’s companion, that Miss Brown. I thought it a little peculiar and all, knowing as upper servants don’t usually do little chores about guests’ rooms.”

“Yes, it is odd that Miss Brown would be here, but I daresay she had some reasonable explanation for it.”

The girl nodded. She had clearly given the matter considerable thought, no dull-witted Harriet, this lady’s maid.

“I tried to ask her what business she had in your bedchamber, but she stuck up her pointed nose and glided out of here like she was the Duchess of Devonshire. Wouldn’t say a plumb word to me.”

“I appreciate your concern, but you mustn’t speak of Lady March’s servant in such a manner.” She should reprimand her maid, or at least take interest in Amelia Brown’s intrusion into her chamber, but her mind was far too preoccupied. “Thank you for telling me about this, but no doubt Miss Brown was here by accident, or perhaps seeking me out for Lady March.” Hollow nausea roiled in her stomach and she pressed a palm to it.

“Please, milady. Have a sippa tea before you go.”

A hard smile thinned Valerie’s lips.

“I had begun to think, Mabel, that we were well suited for one another. But if you continue to pester me I will be forced to admit that we will not get along, after all.”

Valerie left the bedchamber before her smile faded. She would search out the decorating party and distraction. Distraction. Always distraction. And now more than ever, with her head so clouded with confusion she could barely think.

She came to the end of the east wing and passed the library’s closed door. The innocent enjoyment of her early morning hour reading seemed to mock her from within. Resolving to regain that feeling of calm before seeing him again, she reached for the door handle.

A gentleman stood across the chamber facing the window. His stance was rigid, hands clasped behind him. His broad shoulders, narrow hips, and long, muscular legs made a silhouette against the white of the falling snow outside.

Valerie’s heart lurched. The shape of his body was as achingly familiar to her as his voice and eyes.

He turned.

“I expected you would find me sooner or later,” he said, “although I thought sooner, truth be told. You do have a tenacious nature.” He barely glanced at her before turning back to contemplate the curtain of white. His voice was as frosty as the winter scene without, at odds with the charming nonpareil he had played in the drawing room, and at odds with the heat sluicing through Valerie’s blood.

She stared at him, openmouthed.

“You expected that I would find you here? You must know that I left the drawing room to escape you.”

“Really? How gratifying.” He pivoted fully around. “Still, it’s not quite the thing for an unmarried lady to be alone with a man like this, and with the door closed.” He gestured carelessly.

“Then why did you wait for me here?”

He shrugged, a negligent shift of his elegantly clad shoulders.

“It is your reputation at stake, not mine.” He moved toward the fireplace. A blaze threw heat into the chamber, but Valerie did not feel it. Her body had grown numb beneath his cold stare.

“Who are you
?
” She barely mouthed the words, but he heard. He bent his graceful form in a deep bow, indolence flowing from the gesture.

“Steven Frederick Ashford, Eighth Viscount Ashford, ma’am. It is a great pleasure to see you again. If I were wearing a hat right now, I would doff it for sure.”

He might as well have hit her, in her belly, her chest, her face. She felt as though someone were shaking her awake, but the nightmare would not release her.

“How dare you—”

“Oh, I dare very well, thank you,
mademoiselle. That
is the whole idea.” He spoke with silken assurance.

“Why are you speaking to me this way, and to the others as you did before?” she choked out. “What are you doing here?” Her voice halted, sudden clarity skittering through her. With it came memory like a knife’s stab.

Steven. Just before he kissed her upon the ship that terrible day, he told her to call him Steven. Mind whirling with confusion, she stared into his mocking eyes, struggling to make sense of what she knew.

“The alias you used . . . Marque,” she said, seizing upon the safer thread of memory. “It means brand. Like a slave brand. But why—” She halted, tensing. Without allowing herself to quail, she moved quickly across the chamber. He stood perfectly still as she neared, grasped his wrist, and wrenched back his coat sleeve.

That night when she had awoken to discover him bathing in their cabin prison, she had glimpsed the black mark. Clearly visible now, it slanted across his forearm, burnt into his golden skin. A
fleur-de-lys
.

Shock paralyzed her. Everyone in America knew how French colonial royalists persisted in marking criminals with King Louis’s symbol, even years after the Revolution overthrew him. But for an English peer to bear the sign was scandalous.

“Marque,” she said, looking up at him. “Like a criminal’s brand.”

Eyes dark and inscrutable, he drew his arm from her grasp. He stepped away with languid ease.

“Yes, well, you are very clever. Congratulations.” He slanted her a derisive look. “But then, you are not the first woman to discover my little secret. Merely the most naïve.”

Valerie’s hands trembled again as frigid emptiness invaded her. In the months since her return to England, she had believed that her experience aboard the corsair prepared her for any cruelty she might encounter from the
ton
. But the Jesuit’s steady, peaceful confidence had been essential to her sense of strength even long after she left America behind. She hadn’t known that until now.

Betrayal spiraled through her. She took a step back and breathed in sharply, trying to steady herself. She could play his game. She had played games her entire life with an opponent just as formidable as this man. The difference was that Steven Ashford did not have any control over her life.