Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Sophia James

  Inigo had asked the hard questions. Why did she want this? Why had she come to him? Could he trust her? That was what he’d really been asking when he’d insisted she tell him the truth.

  It would be hard not to, with those irresistible blue eyes boring into her. She nodded and smiled at something her current partner said. It was no challenge to keep up with his conversation even when she wasn’t really listening. She could just nod and smile and let her mind wander back to Inigo. His eyes had always mesmerised her, so impenetrable, even as they sought out her own secrets. One never knew what he was really thinking. Unlike Collin, whose thoughts she’d always been able to read. There’d been charm in Collin’s openness, but there was a depth of mystery in Inigo that could keep a girl up all night with questions.

  She knew. She’d spent more than a few nights wondering what thoughts lay behind those eyes. It hadn’t been well done of her, thinking about her fiancé’s friend, but she consoled herself with the possibility it was just the natural curiosity of a young girl in the throes of her first taste of courtship. It was easier to think the latter and she might have convinced herself it was true if she hadn’t seen him again, hadn’t danced with him, hadn’t felt his hand at her back or the force of his gaze. All the curiosity came surging back, only this time she had more specific words for it, words like longing. Those words were far less innocuous.

  Her mind was curious about other things now, too. Had she gone to Inigo strictly because she believed he could get the job done? Or were there other more secret motives that had driven her decision? She needed to tread carefully and be honest with herself on that score. She was attracted to Inigo. She’d rather not be, not when he could so easily be her enemy, nor when the liking would all be one-sided.

  If she’d learned one thing from her father’s victims, it was never to mix business with pleasure. The only thing that mattered tonight was that Inigo had agreed to help her. She’d come here with the intent to gain an ally and she had. Still, she couldn’t resist scanning the ballroom one more time for Inigo as her partner led her back to the sidelines, but he wasn’t to be found. He’d already gone. She remembered that. He never stayed long at any party. Funny, how one could go five years without seeing someone, training oneself not to think about that person, then one encounter was all it took to break that carefully constructed dam and everything came flooding back. Audevere touched her gloved fingertips to her lips. Everything.

  * * *

  She dreamt that night of Collin, of all of them together that halcyon summer that had been filled with a young girl’s every fantasy: her debut, her whirlwind engagement to a charming young man.

  They were picnicking in the Richmond woods, having gone down the Thames on a barge. They were a rather large group as they strolled beneath the leafy canopy of the trees.

  She slowed her pace, steadily falling behind the group and taking Inigo with her. She wanted to tease him; he was too serious by far.

  ‘You were watching us,’ she accused playfully when the group was out of earshot.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Boscastle’s heir was all starch.

  Audevere gave a merry laugh and twirled her parasol. She slanted him a coy look. That should have done the trick: the laugh, the look. ‘You act as if I’ve accused you of high treason!’ Many gentlemen in London found the combination irresistible, but not Inigo. He was not enchanted in the least. It only made her more determined to crack him.

  ‘You’ve accused me of something nearly as bad. You make me out to be a voyeur, which many would call a rather sordid hobby.’ He arched a slim, immaculate brow as she tapped him with her fan.

  ‘A voyeur! La! You are a wicked man. Such dark thoughts lurking in your head. It’s always the quiet ones,’ she flirted. Any other young beau would have risen to the bait and argued the point teasingly. But from Inigo there was nothing.

  She made an exasperated pout, a practised, pretty one she’d worked on in the mirror, one that took advantage of the fine shape of her mouth. ‘Don’t you ever smile?’

  ‘When I have something to smile about,’ he informed her with all seriousness.

  ‘Collin smiles all the time.’ Perhaps some friendly competition would spur him to engage more fully in the conversation—or at the very least he’d take the hint she’d so broadly implied and offer her the compliment for which she was fishing.

  ‘His is a charmed life,’ came the polite, oblique reply.

  ‘Is yours not?’ she probed with another coy glance meant to invite confidences.

  ‘My life is quite satisfactory.’ Another oblique, useless reply.

  ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re a difficult conversationalist?’ She slipped her free hand through his arm and felt him stiffen at her bold overture. ‘Do I make you uncomfortable?’

  ‘You should be walking up front with Collin.’ He ignored her question altogether, the maddening man. It was all she could do not to stamp her foot, cross her arms, pout for real and demand his attention.

  ‘I always walk with Collin. Besides, he is surrounded by admirers, as usual,’ She gave an airy wave of her hand. If there was one thing she would have changed about today’s picnic it would have been the number of revellers and more specifically the number of pretty, well-born girls.

  ‘You needn’t worry. Collin admires you the most,’ Inigo offered.

  ‘I would thank you for the reassurance, should I have needed it.’ She adjusted her parasol, pretending he’d paid her a compliment.

  ‘It’s not reassurance; it’s the truth. And you do need it, pardon my opinion. You worry all the time about whether or not you’re good enough for him. I can tell you most assuredly that you aren’t.’

  He was right. She did worry. One day Collin would wake up and realise he could do better, that aside from her expensive gowns and her good looks, she was nothing, just the daughter of a merchant ship’s captain. Inigo Vellanoweth had already seen it because he wasn’t momentarily blinded by love. Audevere’s temper rose; she hated being exposed and especially by this man who plainly did not care for her. ‘Should I take my clothes off and dance naked in the grass? You seem to have stripped me bare.’

  ‘I’d rather you not,’ came his dry reply.

  ‘Why don’t you like me?’ She persisted in confronting him. If she pushed him far enough, she could make him pay for that remark.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s that I don’t like you for him. For Collin.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so blatantly insulted twice in such a short amount of time. You have a rare gift,’ Audevere snapped. Dear Lord, did this man never stop? Such unpleasantness beneath his austerely handsome face.

  ‘I am sorry if you find honesty insulting.’

  She chose to ignore the barb and swung the conversation back to his previous comment. ‘Is that why you stare? I catch you at it all the time. Are you imagining who I might suit better?’ He said nothing and she gave a sly smile, pressing on. ‘You are imagining me with someone else. I’ll take that as a challenge. Who might that someone be?’ She scanned the group walking ahead of them. ‘One of your friends? Lynford, maybe? Or…’ her gaze swivelled back to him pointedly ‘…maybe the someone is you.’ It was an outrageously shocking thought to voice, to accuse an honourable man of coveting his friend’s fiancée. She knew she’d gone beyond the limits of propriety in her temper, but she wanted payback for his cutting remarks.

  She tapped her fingers on his sleeve in feigned congeniality. ‘Is it you? Do you fancy that you are man enough for me? Better than Collin? That’s hardly a flattering thing to think about a friend. Are you sure you wouldn’t be slumming?’

  ‘Stop it! This conversation has gone far enough. You are speaking nonsense.’ He disengaged her hand from his sleeve, her arm from his arm.

  She smiled, widely, with laughter in her eyes on purpose. He wanted her to be asha
med. She would be anything but. ‘Ha!’ she wanted to say. ‘I got a rise out of you, after all.’ But Collin was cutting through the group, making his way to where they lingered in the rear.

  ‘Ah, this is sweetness itself, my best friend and my future wife, chatting away, already friends.’ Collin slipped his arms through theirs, putting himself in the middle. ‘What scintillating things have you two been discussing back here while I’ve been missing all the fun?’

  Audevere answered his smile with one of her own, deliberately sunny to prove a point. ‘You, of course. Always you. I was telling Tintagel he should take his cue from you and smile more.’

  Collin flashed her one of his dazzling grins. ‘But, my dear, he can’t possibly smile as much as I do; he hasn’t as much as I have to be happy about. After all, I have you, the most beautiful girl of the Season—or any Season, if you ask me.’ Collin brightened further, if that was possible. He tugged at her arm. ‘Have you seen the strawberry patch in the glen? You must come, Aud.’ He was already leading her away and she let him. She wondered if there really were any strawberries this late in the summer, or if it was merely an excuse to get her alone and steal kisses. She didn’t mind. She liked Collin’s kisses. Even if she hadn’t, she would have let him kiss her anyway—anything to hold his attention. Her father would kill her if she lost Collin, second son of a duke. She wondered if she should ask her father to have the wedding moved up. A nine-month engagement suddenly seemed like an eternity. She couldn’t lose him.

  But she felt Inigo’s eyes burning into her back as Collin led her away…

  * * *

  Audevere sat up in bed, her nightgown clinging to her body, sticky with sweat and remembrances. The past had bled into the present, despite her best efforts to wall it off, to forget those glorious months when she’d been one of them, accepted in the inner circle of the group known to London as the Cornish Dukes. She’d been innocent of much in those days, unaware of the full extent of her father’s corruption. She’d been happy, her days filled with Collin’s smile and Inigo’s sharp sparring, her evenings spent dancing beneath glittering chandeliers in Collin’s arms. But those weren’t the dances that lingered in her mind now, nor the arms. She could hardly remember how Collin’s arms felt. It was Inigo’s waltz and Inigo’s arms that haunted her now.

  She shook her head. It was disloyal of her to forget Collin, to have his memory pushed aside by his friend. Maybe she was disloyal? She’d always denied this, but perhaps she was wrong. Her father’s words rang in her ears. ‘Blood will tell.’ Perhaps he and Inigo were right. Perhaps there was no good in her, after all.

  * * *

  Audevere was up to no good, he could sense it. Brenley tapped his fingers on the polished surface of his desk, thinking as the sun came up. It was his wont to start the day a step ahead of everyone else. He was seldom abed after dawn. In fact, he hadn’t gone to bed since returning from the Bradford ball. His mind was too active, too suspicious. Audevere had been far too biddable. Everything had gone far too well. Last night, Tremblay had invited her to an equestrian exhibit at Prince Baklanov’s riding school in Leicester Square. She’d done as he’d asked, making conspicuous efforts to win back Tremblay’s attentions.

  All this, after she’d voiced some reticence towards the match. He knew his daughter. She was stubborn like him. There was more to her caginess than he could presently identify. It had been too easy to persuade her to re-engage Tremblay’s attentions. Perhaps he was supposed to believe she wanted to be a viscountess after all, or that his arguments were every bit as persuasive as they ought to be. Once, he might have believed those reasons easily. Once, she’d been a malleable young girl who’d done his bidding. She’d not questioned him when he’d told her to be nice to certain gentlemen invited to dinner; she’d not questioned him when he’d told her to break off the engagement to Collin Truscott, because she knew the consequences if she did not.

  Was that fear enough now? He used fear as a tactic rather liberally. Blackmail was based on it. But fear had a shelf life, its potency short-lived. What if she no longer feared the secrets he held about her? Brenley rose and strode to the console to pour himself a drink, choosing to forget it was morning now and not night. He forced himself to think. Why would she no longer fear the airing of those secrets? Surely she understood Tremblay couldn’t protect her from them? Did she think Inigo Vellanoweth could? Had that dance been about more than creating competition to motivate Tremblay? And there’d been those unexplained moments outside on the veranda. He’d not asked about those. If she was planning something, he didn’t want to tip his hand and alert her.

  He smiled into his drink. What did she think she could do to him? It was intriguing to think about. He owned her body and soul, just as he’d owned her mother. There was little she could do, but it would be interesting to watch her try. If that should allow him to bring down Inigo Vellanoweth in the process, all the better. That man had it coming to him after stealing the Blaxford mines from his control.

  Brenley finished his drink and rang for two footmen, tall, skilled men he’d hired for more than their ability to look impressive in livery. ‘I want the watch on Miss Brenley intensified,’ he told them. ‘I have reason to believe there might be an attempt to compromise her safety.’ The men nodded. He went to his desk and pulled out two small bags of coins. ‘Please keep a careful watch on her for me. I want to know where she goes and who she sees at all times. But, of course, I don’t want her to know. It would unnerve her and cause her undue anxiety. I will expect full reports daily.’ Now, he would wait and see what would come of this. He’d let out the leash on Audevere—but only allowed her just enough rope to see if she hung herself.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘No good will come of this.’ Vennor Penlerick, the blond, tousled, and too recently roused from sleep Duke of Newlyn, rubbed his temples over breakfast.

  Inigo poured him a cup of coffee and mixed in a generous splash of whisky. ‘Late night?’ he commiserated, handing Vennor the steaming cup. Ever since Vennor’s father had died it seemed it was always a late night for Vennor.

  Vennor grunted something that approximated ‘thank you’ and cracked open an eye. ‘Not for the reasons you think.’

  So, he could cross that hypothesis off his list, that Vennor had been out getting bosky. ‘A woman, then? Is she still upstairs?’ Inigo pressed. He’d thought to see Vennor at the Bradford ball, but his friend had been conspicuously absent. At this point in the year, London was empty. It wasn’t like during the Season where an eligible bachelor had four or five balls a night to choose from. Bradford’s was the only place to be, but Vennor had declined to show.

  Vennor grimaced his disapproval both at the idea and the fact that Inigo had suggested it. ‘If it were, I’d never bring her here. You know me better than that.’

  ‘Do I?’ Inigo sat back in his chair, hands steepled contemplatively. It seemed these days he hardly knew Vennor at all. ‘You’ve changed. You weren’t at the Bradfords’ last night.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I’ve changed. It means I chose not to attend.’

  ‘You’ve gone nowhere since Marianne Treleven went home. Or at least, nowhere that I know of.’ Which meant nowhere decent—balls, autumn musicales, card parties with those few MPs still in town on government business.

  Vennor brushed back a swoop of unruly golden hair that had fallen in his face and swallowed his coffee. ‘Much to my regret, if the result is that you’ve taken up with the Brenleys.’

  ‘Much to my regret,’ Inigo countered, ‘You are never where you are supposed to be these days.’ He met his friend with a steely, cool gaze. ‘Where are you spending your time?’

  ‘No, you do not get to show up at my breakfast table, roust me from bed, drop the news that you’re helping Audevere Brenley run away from home and then interrogate me. If anyone needs interrogating, it’s you. Have you lost your mind? How do you know this isn’t a
double cross, that her father put her up to it to expose your hand? Or to trap you into a marriage with his daughter?’

  ‘Because I asked her last night. I had those same thoughts as well.’

  Vennor snorted. ‘Let me guess—she denied them. And you believed her?’

  ‘She does not wish to be her father’s pawn any longer. He will continue to use her until he marries her off and perhaps even beyond that.’ If she stayed, it wouldn’t end, ever. As he explained it to Vennor now, he saw more clearly the desperation that drove her rather rash decision.

  Vennor arched a doubting blond brow. ‘His pawn? Are you sure she didn’t mean his accomplice?’ Inigo would have been more upset at Vennor’s cynicism if it hadn’t so closely mirrored his own at one time. But Vennor could be forgiven. He hadn’t seen the fear in her eyes, or heard the desperation in her voice that she had tried so hard to hide.

  ‘Why now? Why hasn’t she come forward sooner?’ Vennor pressed.

  ‘Collin’s death was an epiphany for her,’ Inigo explained patiently, using her own arguments from the night before. ‘His death made her aware of the full extent of her father’s corruption and its consequences.’

  ‘So aware and so conflicted that she’s waited five years to run away?’ Vennor didn’t try to hide his disbelief. Sarcasm dripped from his tongue.

  ‘She admits to being something of an ostrich with her head in the sand, trying to believe it wouldn’t happen again, helped along by mourning Collin and then the mine scandal. Those events bought her some time off the Marriage Mart. And in truth, Vennor, what was she to do? What power did she have? Where could she have gone?’

  ‘And she’s chosen you to help her, a man who is willing to do her bidding and even make excuses for her. How convenient. I am sorry, but it smacks of a set-up, dear friend. I would be doing you a disservice not to say it. She is manipulating you.’

  ‘It isn’t like that. There were intangibles, you didn’t see her, hear her.’ How could he explain to Vennor what he had felt in her presence?