The Rules of Seduction (27 page)

She gazed at him. And she would have learned if he loved her or merely toyed with her. She would never have become Caroline’s governess and Hen’s companion, would never have been seduced by and married to Hayden Rothwell.

Hayden. She wished he were here. Looking at Benjamin, she missed Hayden terribly. It was an odd reaction, as if her heart feared the years with Ben dead had been a dream in which Hayden had merely appeared at the end.

No, not a dream. Real events had occurred, and real memories had formed. Events that had affected her and those she loved, and memories that stirred her even now as she looked at Ben.

“I am not alone in coming to Bristol,” she said. “I think Timothy is in the town too.”

His eyes snapped open. “Tim? Why?”

“He knows that you were sending money to Bristol.” How long? How long had that money been sent? Jumping from that ship had not been an impulse at all if Ben was feathering his nest in this city. “He left your sisters, and Rose thinks he came looking for that money. He needs it badly, you see.”

“Why? I left plenty, and there was the bank.”

“He had to sell out his partnership when the bank faced failure during the January crisis. The debts he incurred to Darfield and others ruined him. They are living in Oxfordshire now, and Rose counts every penny and makes it do double work.”

He pushed off the tree and walked deeper into the woods, as if wanting to put distance between himself and this news. She hurried after him, snagging her hem on a bush that she rushed past. She glanced down at the ruined cloth and thought how devastating that would have been mere months ago.

She caught him by the arm, stopping him. “You must help them. Even if you cannot let them know you are here, you must send them some money.”

“How could the bank almost fail? It was solid a few years ago. More than solid, and Darfield would never allow the reserves to fall so low as to jeopardize his own fortune. No, Tim must have gambled or spent his way to ruin.”

“It was the bank, I assure you. Hayden Rothwell abandoned it and removed all his family’s accounts.”

His brow furrowed. He stared at the ground. He shook his head. “Rothwell did this? He was my good friend and…I can’t believe he did this to my family.”

“Well, he did. And even if Tim had brought it on himself, your sisters should not suffer.”

He linked her arm in his and coaxed her to stroll beside him. “Tell me everything, Alexia. Tell me exactly what happened and when. I am shocked by what you have told me about Rothwell.” He laughed bitterly. “That bastard has an odd way of honoring his debts and friendships, it seems.”

She swallowed hard. “Ben, the first thing I must tell you is this: I am now married to the man you insult as a bastard.”

“Lady Hayden is staying with us, but she is not here now. She left in her carriage at noon and has not yet returned.”

Mr. Alfred offered the information without hesitation once Hayden explained that the lady was his wife. Hayden turned and instructed his coachman to bring in his valises.

Mr. Alfred grimaced. “Lord Hayden, I regret to say that we do not have any vacant chambers. If we had known you intended to honor us with your patronage, of course we would have ensured—”

“I will use my wife’s chamber, under the circumstances. I trust you gave her a comfortable one.”

“One of our best.”

“Then we will manage.”

A servant took the valises. The coachman left to deal with the equipage. Hayden made his way up the stairs to Alexia’s room.

It had not taken long to find the hotel Alexia used. He merely sought out the middling respectable ones in good neighborhoods. Alexia was too ingrained with practicality to stay at luxurious lodgings, and too much a lady to reside in a humble inn. All the same, the afternoon was waning before he lit upon Alfred’s Hotel. He expected Alexia to return very soon.

While a hotel servant unpacked his garments, Hayden sat at the writing desk and jotted notes to several business associates in Bristol, requesting some information. He sent them off with his coachman, banished the servant from the room, and settled into a chair to wait for his disobedient wife.

He had not thought about her plans very much the day she left. She had made very sure he would not think about much of anything for a long while. The truth had only inched into his mind when her absence the next night had left him awake and hungry again. He then realized that practical, sensible Alexia had deliberately used her feminine wiles on him.

She had succeeded magnificently. The reason why had been obvious once he asked the question. She was not only going to Rose, as announced. She would make her journey to Bristol.

Night began to fall. A servant arrived with some food and to build up the fire and light the lamps. Hayden opened the window and gazed down on the darkening town. If she was searching for Timothy, she might find herself in unsavory areas. The coachman was with her, and she should be safe, but a touch of worry started to compromise the crisp annoyance that he had harbored all the way across England. Time began to tick past very slowly.

He had just convinced himself to go looking for her when the sounds of a carriage arrested his attention. He watched the familiar horses trot down the street and stop beneath his window.

A hotel servant hurried out to help with the carriage door. Alexia stepped down. She paused as the man said something to her. She tilted her head and looked up at the building’s facade, to the window where he stood.

The golden light of the carriage lamp washed over her, muting her expression but not hiding it. He had anticipated resentment when she discovered he followed her. That or fear. Instead, her countenance expressed exhaustion. Her shoulders sagged. Her physical sigh said the husband waiting above was an unwelcome nuisance to be tolerated as best she could manage.

He moved away from the window. It took him a moment to conquer the hollow reaction that opened inside him. He had not expected her to be pleased by his pursuit, although a small, romantic fantasy had emerged in which she expressed so much delight in his arrival that he could not find the heart to scold. He knew better than to anticipate a joyful reunion, however, and knew a good row was the more likely result when he found her. That would have been preferable to what he had just seen. He did not like the visible evidence of just how indifferent she truly was.

He reassembled the self-possession that she had demolished with that long sigh. By the time the door latch moved, he had buried boyish anticipation where it would not make a fool of him.

She did not enter the chamber cowed or afraid. She merely walked in, closed the door, and began to unpin her hat.

“You followed me.”

“I went down to Aylesbury Abbey to join you and found you had departed. I knew where you must have gone.”

She bent to check her hair in the looking glass propped on the dressing table. “You were not surprised, were you? You guessed while still in London, I think.”

“I guessed.”

She straightened and faced him. “It appears I am not a very effective seductress.”

She was a superb seductress, but he’d be damned before he admitted what she did to him. “It took a few hours before I guessed.”

He called up the words to the solid scold he intended to give her. He would not tolerate such disobedience. He could not allow her to travel about at will without informing him. He needed to know for her protection, but he also demanded to know as his right, etc. etc.

“You have every cause to be angry with me,” she said, cornering his indignation before he had a chance to voice it. “I deliberately deceived you and took advantage of your attempts to avoid commands. I do not plan to make a habit of it, I want you to know. This one time, however, it was important to me to come here, and so I did it. I can only ask that you forgive me.”

Checkmate. He had not even had a chance to make a move.

“You are very clever, Alexia. If I chastise you now, I am an unreasonable, hard man.”

Her expression fell. Suddenly the fields of her eyes turned deep and dark. Her posture sagged much as it had outside. “You are correct, and it is not fair of me.” She sounded distant. Distracted. “Nor do I have the strength to maintain the pose. Scold all you want, Hayden. I am thinking it was a mistake for me to do this in any case.”

He no longer wanted to scold. There would be no point anyway. In the years ahead, if she ever again thought it important to disobey him, she would.

“Did you find Timothy?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I know a man here who should be able to direct me to the sorts of places where a young man flush with money might find diversion,” he said. “I have written to him. I will find Longworth for you if he is in this city.”

She half-emerged out of her daze. “That is very good of you.”

“It would not do for you to harrow the gaming hells and bordellos, Alexia.”

“I suppose not.” She watched him intently now. So intently, so seriously, that she might have never seen him before.

Her outward calm hid a disturbing inner disquiet that trembled out of her. It affected the air and kept her miles away, even though she stood within reach. Far away and…sad.

“Where did you go today?” he asked.

“I dealt with the letters.”

“Did you find that woman?”

She nodded.

The hollowness opened in him again. Anger tried to fill it. He clenched his teeth to control both reactions. She had spent the afternoon with Benjamin’s lover. They had talked for hours. She was still there, her mind still with that woman. And with Ben. The day had all been about another man.

He walked to the window and gazed out so she would not see his reaction.

“Lucinda Morrison is very beautiful,” she said. “Exquisitely so. I do not think there is a man alive who would not fall in love with her on sight.”

“I would not.”

“No, maybe not. That is too poetic, too illogical for you. You might want her on sight, and you might take her, but you would not fall in love with her.”

He closed his eyes. She merely described the man she saw. The man that he was. So why did it sound like an insult? A year ago he would have nodded in agreement.

I fell in love with you, damn it. I wanted you on sight, I took you, and then I fell in love with YOU.

“What did Miss Morrison have to say?”

When she did not respond, he turned back to her. She stood, arms crossed over her chest, thinking hard. Her mind was miles away.

Her attention returned to the room, and to him. She unwound herself and came to him. “It was much as I thought and as the letters implied. There was a romantic entanglement, and he sent her some money.”

Figures loomed in his head, of thousands of pounds going to Bristol. “How much?”

“I would like to speak of it later, if we could. Maybe tomorrow. There is much to tell you, but I do not want to do it now.” She looked around the chamber, and her gaze lit on his personal articles. She finally noticed them, and their meaning surprised her. “You will be staying here with me? Using this chamber?”

“There were no others to be had.”

“I am glad.”

It was not the response he expected. It flattered him to a ridiculous extent, God help him.

She moved very close to him. The fields still stretched far and dark, the disquiet still trembled, but she was more herself now.

She placed her palm on his chest. “Can we talk later, Hayden? I only want you to kiss me now and take me to bed. I need you to, very much.”

She did not have to ask twice.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

S
he clutched him to her body, tightly. She wrapped her body around his so he stayed near her, his breath entering her and his skin touching hers as much as possible.

She was so grateful he had followed her. So relieved. She needed him here, physical and real, reminding her that this was not a dream, not a memory, but her life now.

She had stayed too long with Benjamin. Talked too intimately. By the time their walk was over, her anger had receded and her heart had softened. For a brief while, too long, too dangerously long, the dam had broken and the old emotions had flowed. They were only poignant memories now, but she had been helpless to stop them.

Lucinda had understood her shock better than Ben had. She insisted Alexia remain for dinner. She had spoken of discretion regarding Ben and how no one else must know. She had wanted to send the coachman for Alexia’s belongings and have Alexia visit at Sunley Manor.

Alexia did not want to stay at that house. She had resisted their efforts to convince her to do so. She could not think clearly while Ben smiled at her, could not escape the unreal cast of the entire day. They had delayed her departure past sundown, but she had finally taken her leave.

It all seemed like a peculiar, disquieting dream. She pressed her face against Hayden’s arm and inhaled, hoping his scent would banish the confusion that waited like a gargoyle crouched on the edges of her passion. She urged him toward his completion, knowing she would not find her own. Too much of her mind raced elsewhere.

He tried to wait for her but finally could no longer. His power at the end eclipsed everything else. For a few perfect moments he filled her so totally that she had no separateness. She reclaimed the intensity of their passion where he was the only other person in the world.

There was peace then, and afterward for a while. She kept her eyes closed, holding on to it, pretending she had never left London and they were in her bed there.

He braced his weight on his forearms. A gentle touch skimmed her face. “What troubles you, Alexia? Tell me now.”

She opened her eyes. He gazed down at her through strands of mussed hair. She wondered if his concern would turn to anger if she told him. Maybe the warmth would disappear behind the cool arrogance that so effectively masked the inner man.

“Did her beauty pain you, is that it? Do you assume he loved her more, now that you have seen her face? It does not always work that way. That kind of love is a shallow, brief emotion if there is no character to hold a man’s interest.”

She almost wept at his attempt to comfort her. He even broached the subject of her old love to do so. He thought it was childishly romantic to hold on to those memories, but now he tried to preserve them for her.

She did not deserve such kindness. And he deserved more honesty. He was her husband. She should not lie to him. She could not, even though Benjamin and Lucy had requested her silence. The thought of maintaining such a deception had saddened her when she learned who was waiting in this chamber.

She hesitated, painfully aware that she was making a choice between an old loyalty and a new one, between two men who had claims on her, each in his own way. Her heart whispered that there was no choice, not really. Hayden was her husband, and she wanted desperately to confide in him. Still, she could not escape the fear that she balanced on a precipice and any step would be irrevocable.

“Hayden, it is not her face that distresses me, nor even his love for her,” she said. “She does not live alone with his memory like I did. He is there with her, truly and physically. Ben is not dead as we believed. I saw him today and spoke to him.”

He stared down, incredulous. As belief sank in, his expression darkened. His embrace tightened. “He cannot have you now. It is too late. You are my wife.”

It was an odd thing to say on hearing that a dead friend actually lived. It was the last reaction she expected.

“And she is his. He is married to her. Are you so stunned that you cannot think straight? I said he is
alive.
He jumped off that ship, but not to his death. It was all planned, I am sure of it.”

He moved off her and flipped onto his back by her side. His shock filled the air, darkly.

“That scoundrel,” he muttered. “That bastard.”

Ben had said the same thing about him. One good friendship would not survive this resurrection.

“Tell me all of it, Alexia.”

She described their conversation but not the smiles and touches or the way he kissed her hand or walked close by. She explained the big debt and the ruin Ben had faced and his decision to fake his death to save his family. Hayden listened, not commenting even when she admitted she had told Ben about Timothy’s fall in fortune and Hayden’s own role in it.

“He wanted me to swear to tell no one what I had discovered, but I left without doing so,” she said. “I wanted to think about that before I gave my word. His sisters should know he is alive, don’t you think? It was very wrong of him to allow us all to grieve. I do not care why he did it or whom he protected, it was cruel all the same.”

“He protected himself,” he said. “Tell me about this property where he lives.”

She described Sunley Manor. “They appeared comfortable. I told him he must find a way to send his sisters some money.”

“Oh, I am sure he is comfortable. More than passing so.” He turned on his side and cupped her chin in his hand. “You are not to return there. Not alone, at least, and not at all until I say.”

“I told them that tomorrow—”

“No. I forbid it. Do not get willful on me, Alexia. Do not disobey this time. You will not return tomorrow.”

She did not mind this command. She was not sure she wanted to return to Sunley Manor ever again. She was joyed Ben was alive, but she did not like how the day had confused and saddened her. The entire experience had left her stomach in knots.

He leaned over and gutted the lamp. She snuggled closer to him in the dark, relieved she had entrusted him with the secret, hoping she had done the right thing. “He is not happy. He called it a devil’s bargain.”

“That is a fitting name for such a scheme. Go to sleep now. Tomorrow I will find Timothy if he is in Bristol, and I will decide what to do about Benjamin.”

She had begun to doze when a thought occurred to her. “Hayden, he said he is not known by his name here but by another one. Not Mr. Morrison either, I don’t think. I do not know what name it is. I never asked.”

“I think I know the name. I will be sure soon enough. I will know everything in a day or two.”

She looked at his profile in the dark. She could tell his eyes were open. He had told her to sleep, but she wondered if he would.

She nestled in. His warmth comforted her. He would know what to do now. After all, he already had guessed Ben’s new name. As she drifted into sleep, she vaguely wondered how.

The bloody rogue.

Hayden heaped silent insults on Benjamin Longworth while he stared into the night. He did not like being played for a fool, no matter what the reason, and Ben had been ruthless in doing so.

It had all been a feint. The melancholy. The feigned drunkenness. Had Ben guessed that Hayden would suspect suicide? Had that been part of the plan or a miscalculation?

The bastard. The
idiot.
He could have died trying to swim to shore. Of all the reckless, crazy things Ben had ever done, this had been the worst.

Only it had worked. He had escaped Suttonly’s squeeze and been able to enjoy the fruits of his crimes. His mind’s eye saw the dispersals from the Bank of England again. The ones to Bristol had begun long before those to Suttonly. This whole plan was an old one, then, started very early, probably when the forgeries first began. Ben might have intended all along to disappear. Suttonly had only made that move imperative.

Pennilot. That was the name on the Bristol account, and it was not an old debt of his father’s that he repaid with that money. He pictured Benjamin grinning boyishly as he chose it, amused by his own cleverness. Pennilot. A lot of pennies. A man with a lot of pennies was worth a lot. Longworth. Knowing Ben, the whole plan, from the forgeries to hiding the money to jumping off that ship, had been one big adventure, a grand game in which one impulse followed another.

Except people had been grievously injured. Darfield and the victims of the forgeries. His own sisters and brother. And a dependent cousin who believed his lies of love.

He felt Alexia’s breath on his shoulder and her warmth lining his body. He understood her mood tonight now. For the first time, they had not been alone in bed. Another had intruded. He had sensed the preoccupation that prevented her completion, the desperation of her embrace. Seeing Benjamin again had called forth the old love. It was not just a memory now.

He took comfort in the fact she had confided in him. She had not kept Ben’s secret. She had told him as her husband and as Ben’s friend. She slept peacefully now, as if her revelation settled everything. He doubted it did. Ben could not allow Alexia to return to London knowing what she knew.

She turned in her sleep. He moved behind her and formed his body along hers. He embraced her, careful not to wake her.

He did not know what lure Ben might hold out to her, but one thing was certain. She would not go to Sunley Manor alone again. It was a wonder they had allowed her to leave today.

He did not want to think Ben would harm Alexia, or any innocent person, but then, he would have never guessed Ben would commit the crime of utterance or steal a fortune. He would have never suspected Ben would let his sisters grieve over his death while he took his pleasure in Bristol. And this woman Ben had married might prove capable of worse than her husband.

A lot was at stake, after all. Right now in Sunley Manor, Benjamin was calculating just how much.

Alexia obeyed Hayden this time. She did not go to Sunley Manor the next day. She stayed at Alfred’s Hotel while Hayden left to learn what he could about Timothy.

Morning waned and the sun rose high while she awaited his return. Hopefully Tim could be found before he wasted all the money from the Bank of England. No doubt he spent his days looking for secret accounts in Benjamin’s name, but he might well be spending his nights in gaming hells.

Hayden had been very careful with her this morning. Careful and quiet but also firm in his commands. She was not to leave the hotel. She was not to travel to Sunley Manor. He told her coachman to refuse to take her, she suspected, just in case she chose to be willful again. She had not missed the lack of trust in the way he exercised his rights. She did not think it was her last disobedience that caused it.

He assumed she would want to see Ben again. He thought the memories held a power over her.

Did they? She tried to look beneath the shock and confusion and hear what her heart said about that. Bracing herself, she faced those memories squarely.

She could not deny that seeing Ben had freed the girl whom she kept imprisoned in her heart. A giggle had wanted to bubble through her too often yesterday. Ben could still evoke that in her, but it was a mere echo of a silly excitement from the past.

She looked over at the bed. There was nothing silly about what happened there. Nothing shallow about the power of that passion. Benjamin had tickled her heart like a light spring breeze. Hayden lured her essence into the deep mysteries of a hot summer night.

She closed her eyes and thought about her last night in London. She could not picture herself doing those things with Ben. Ben was all about laughs and kisses and flattery, not the soul-stirring unity that she experienced with Hayden. Hayden’s inner man was a wonder to know and a mystery to be explored. She did not think Ben had any inner man at all.

She wished Hayden would return. She wanted him with her now, solid and real. She wanted him to soothe away all her distress and confusion as he had last night.

“Alexia.”

She opened her eyes. A man stood just inside her room. It was not the man she wanted.

Benjamin smiled at her. Did she only imagine that his expression appeared cautious? It was hard to tell, because he wore a hat low on his brow. Its brim cast a shadow over his face.

“Mr. Alfred allowed you up here? Did he tell you which room was mine?”

He removed the hat. “I slipped up, and I saw you sitting by the window when I was down in the street. Please forgive me, but I had to see you. When you did not return to Sunley Manor, I decided to come to you.”

“I thought you never came into town.”

“Very rarely. A high collar and a low hat go far in hiding a passing face, however.” He advanced on her. “Why did you not come back this morning as you promised?”

“I needed to think about my discovery. I wanted to recover from the shock of it before I spoke with you again.”

“Is that what you were doing there, thinking and recovering? You appeared so serious.”

“I am a rather serious person now. It was always in me, but circumstances have made it more significant.”