The Seduction (27 page)

"You have a nice laugh, Maggie," he said quietly. "I can see I'll have to be as amusing as possible, so I can hear it more often."

Words, just words. She didn't want to hear him say things like that. It was foolish to think there might be tenderness or love in him, foolish to think that a plain and chubby girl could inspire such feelings in a rake.

She fumbled with the knot of his handkerchief, untying it to find four small partridges wrapped inside. They were rather thin due to the hard mountain winter, but they were plucked, dressed, and ready to roast.

"You didn't shoot these birds with that rifle," she commented, feeling a desperate need to break the silence with trivial talk.

He removed his greatcoat, shook it free of snow, and spread it out to dry beside hers, then he sank down on the blanket beside her. "If I had, I doubt they'd be any good for roasting, since there'd probably be nothing left of them to fit on a skewer. Speaking of which, I'd better start them cooking, or we'll be having them for breakfast."

"I'll do it." She reached for two long twigs from the pile of firewood nearby. Using his knife, she began stripping the twigs of their side branches and asked, "So, if you didn't use the rifle, how did you catch them?"

"It's amazing what can be accomplished with a fishnet. When I came across a whole flock of them sitting in the snow with their heads under their wings, I just tossed the net over all of them and snared four at once."

Margaret put each of the partridges on a spit and rested them on the rocks that surrounded the fire. "There," she said. "We'll have to remember to turn them."

Trevor didn't answer, and she turned her head to look at him. He was staring at the mouth of the cave, but when she glanced in that direction, she saw nothing but the blazing fire and the falling snow beyond it. She asked, "What are you looking at?"

"It's been a long time since I've watched snow falling. We didn't get much of the stuff in Egypt."

"I've always wanted to go to Egypt. It seems like an exotic and exciting place. What is it really like?"

"Not very romantic," he said, laughing. "Hot as the devil. Dry. Full of cobras and scorpions. There was sand everywhere. In everything. In your food, in your clothes, in your eyes."

"Still, you must have liked it there. Ten years is a long time."

"Do you know what I liked?" He looked at her, his expression thoughtful. "I liked the freedom of it. I can remember that, as a little boy, I always felt caged, restricted. My nanny, Mrs. Mullen, was always saying, 'Don't play in the dirt, Trevor. You'll get dirty,' or, 'Don't go near the water. You'll fall in and spoil your new suit.' I think, by the time I was seven years old, I hated that woman. It was a relief to go to boarding school."

She smiled at him. "So, going to Egypt and digging up antiquities was nothing more than a way of playing in the dirt and getting revenge on your nanny?"

"In a way. Sometimes, when I was out on a dig with the men, we wouldn't bathe or shave for days, and I used to think, 'If only Mrs. Mullen could see me now, she'd die of shame because she failed to bring me up properly.' I always rather liked that idea."

"I know what you mean. When I was little, my nanny was Mrs.
Stubbins
. She had this thin, pinched face that always made her look as if she were eating persimmons. And she was always trying to make me learn to embroider, which I detested. I can remember sitting in the parlor on summer afternoons as a little girl, stitching these horrible samplers."

"A fate worse than death."

"It was. Satin stitches and French knots. Yuck." Margaret pushed aside thoughts of sour Mrs.
Stubbins
. "Tell me more about Egypt."

"What would you like to know? Did I find any mummies? Did I really steal gold and fabulous jewels out of the tombs of kings?"

"Well, yes," she admitted, laughing.

"Actually, gold and jewels are rare finds, mainly because over the centuries most of the tombs have already been raided, so unless you stumble across an undisturbed one, you aren't likely to find any valuables like that. And when you do find gold, it comes expensive. You have to pay the workman who finds it the weight of the object in gold."

"Good heavens, why?"

"It's a custom, for one thing, and if you didn't, you wouldn't find any workmen willing to dig for you. For another, it prevents the men from stealing. You see, if they did steal, it wouldn't be for the archeological value of the object, but for the intrinsic value of the gold itself, because they could melt it down. So you have to make it easy for them to be honest."

"What about mummies?"

"Oh, mummies are a dime a dozen. The trick is finding the entombed bodies of the important people. These days, no museum or collector wants to pay for the mummified body of
Rameses
the scribe or Nefertiti the maid."

"No, I suppose not," she said, laughing. "But isn't it illegal to do all this digging?"

"Technically, yes, although it depends." He grinned at her, and the firelight cast his face in amber glow and black shadow, making him seem more wicked than ever. "If you bribe the proper officials, you can get away with anything."

"Really, Trevor," she said, "it's all right to steal, if the bureaucrats are on your side?"

"If I didn't do it, someone else would." His grin faded, and he looked away, idly poking the fire. "I suspect your father would understand that. He grew up in poverty. But I don't suppose that sort of logic would cut any ice with someone like you."

"What do you mean, someone like me?"

"Have you ever been without money, Maggie? Have you ever known what it was like to live hand- to-mouth? To be completely on your own with no money and not many ways to earn it? Well, I have, and I can tell you it's no summer picnic on the Thames. It's no exciting adventure. It's just hell, pure and simple."

She frowned suspiciously. "How would an earl's son come to be in such circumstances?"

"Maybe because his father died and left his fate in his older brother's greedy hands," he suggested. "Or maybe because said brother hated his guts, refused to buy him a commission in the army, refused to use his influence to launch him in politics, and refused to loan him any capital to earn his own living. Then he cut off his brother's rightful allowance and forbid him to ever set foot in his own home again. And when he left England he was too bloody proud to go scrounging lodgings, meals, and loans off old schoolmates. Perhaps that is what happened."

She imagined him as a young man without means trying to make his way in the world on his own, and she felt her heart softening. But then she remembered he was a rake, a detrimental, and a better liar than anyone she'd ever met. "Or perhaps because he slept with his brother's wife," she shot back.

He stiffened. "So, that delightful rumor is still in circulation, is it? How reassuring to know some things never change."

"Rumor? Are you saying it isn't true?"

"Would you believe me if I said it isn't?"

"Probably not."

"Well, then, I won't bother to deny it. Denying rumors never makes them go away, in any case."

She frowned, finding such a reply highly unsatisfactory. "So you did sleep with her."

"It would be more accurate to say she slept with me."

The man could twist lies into truth like a Madison Avenue street vendor could twist dough into pretzels. "I don't understand."

"I came home one night after a long drinking bout with some of my wilder friends and I went straight to bed. I'm perfectly aware that, when I fell asleep, I was alone, but when I woke up, there she was, naked in my bed. She must have sneaked in without waking me, which isn't surprising since I was quite drunk that night. I refused, of course, but—"

"You did?"

"Believe it or not, Maggie, I do have some discernment about the women I bed. Elizabeth is a beautiful woman, but she's as cold and hard as a marble statue. Not at all my type."

"You expect me to believe Lady Ashton crawled into your bed and offered herself to you like, like some prostitute off the street?"

He shook his head. "You really are amazing. No other well-bred young lady would even know about prostitutes, much less refer to them in conversation."

"Don't try to get around me. I can't believe Lady Ashton capable of such a thing."

"Why not? Prostitution isn't a matter of geography, Maggie. Some of the world's best whores have been queens."

"Why would she do such a thing?"

He gave an abrupt shout of laughter. "I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you around to keep me humble. Thank you."

"I didn't mean it that way. It's just that I, well, I . . ." Words failed her, and she could only stare at him.

He stared back at her. "I do believe I've finally shocked you."

"You have. I can hardly credit that a woman would do such a thing. She must have been very much in love with you."

"God! Maggie, I hate to shatter your romantic illusions, but love had nothing to do with it. She wasn't so enamored with me that she just couldn't help herself, I assure you. Elizabeth is far too cold-blooded and logical to let passion for any man dictate her actions. She wanted an heir, and Geoffrey certainly wasn't capable of giving it to her."

"He wasn't? Why not?"

"I can't believe we're having this conversation," he said, looking almost uncomfortable. "Why talk about the weather when there are such delightful topics as this?"

She said nothing, but simply waited. Finally, he sighed and said, "Geoffrey was virtually impotent. He couldn't, ah, perform his husbandly duties, if you take my meaning."

She did, and blushed to the roots of her hair.

"I'd known about his little problem for years, ever since his friends at Cambridge took him to the local brothel. One of the girls there was a special friend of mine, and she told me all about it. At the time, I thought it quite amusing. Anyway, Geoffrey and Elizabeth had been married for nigh on five years, but she still had not produced the required heir, and she was getting rather desperate about it. An heir is everything to a woman in her position."

Margaret forced herself to look at him. "How did your brother find out?"

"He found us there, in my room. He must have gone to Elizabeth's room, discovered she wasn't in her own bed, and assumed the worst. I'd just woken up and found her there when he walked in. Both of us were naked."

"That must have been a horrible moment for him."

"He was rather put out about it, yes."

"Didn't you try to explain?" she asked.

"Of course. But, as much as it may surprise you, my explanations didn't cut any ice with him. I wasn't exactly a man of staunch morals, and my brother was inclined to believe me capable of any sort of debauchery. He stopped my income and banished me from the estate. I was cast out of the family. What he thought of Elizabeth's part in the whole thing, I have no idea. During the ten years I've been away, I received no correspondence from my brother at all, and only one letter from my mother—the letter informing me of Geoffrey's suicide. My mother never was a very compassionate or loving woman, and like Geoffrey, she was inclined to believe the worst about me. Probably because it was so often true." He leaned back, resting his weight on his hands. "So there you have it, the whole sordid story of how an earl's son found himself stone broke and desperate enough that he didn't really care if digging up antiquities is technically illegal."

Margaret frowned, uncertain about whether to believe him or not. "You don't look as if life has been so very hard for you."

"Only because it's been ten years, and I learned how to bend the rules. I've managed to make a life for myself and earn a decent living. No thanks to anyone else."