Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Sophia James

  * * *

  He wanted something from her, more than a story of her mother. It was a thought that left her both warm and wary at the prospect.

  Go carefully with this one, her mind whispered. Men always want something. That’s how men work.

  Even Inigo? It was a question today, not a statement as it might have been a few weeks ago, a testament to how much things had changed between them, how her own feelings had changed regarding him. He was something far more personal to her now than just someone who might help her. She’d not gone to him looking for this level of attachment, yet there was no denying it was there or that it was growing. It wasn’t merely attachment any more, it was affection, trust. She felt safe with him, as she’d felt with no other man.

  ‘Tell me a story, Aud,’ Inigo cajoled. ‘We’ve hours to go before evening.’ The slow drawl of the request coupled with the full attention of his Boscastle blue eyes was irresistible.

  ‘It might not be as exciting as you think,’ she teased. But she’d already decided. She would tell him of her childhood in Truro. She would bring her mother to life for him. Surely she could do that without exposing too much of herself, secrets and all.

  Audevere drew a deep breath, sorting through her thoughts. Where to start? Not at the very beginning. That was the secret she wanted to hide the most. ‘As you know, my father was a sea captain before he was knighted. He wasn’t in the Navy. He was a private captain, merchant and cargo ships mostly. He was gone most of my childhood. It was just me and my mother at our home outside Truro,’ She stopped. ‘You know this already. See, I told you the story would be boring.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Inigo assured her. ‘Besides, I’m a patient man. And I’m reasonably assured it will get more interesting.’ He offered her a wry smile that made her swat at his boots in a playful scold before she continued.

  ‘My father would visit when he was home. He’d sail up the estuary to the cottage and bring us presents, but we always held our breath until he left again. Thankfully, he was restless. He never stayed long. Just long enough to leave a little money and make sure we were well and quiet. He wanted us to live quietly. He was very explicit about that.’ She hadn’t understood the reasons for that until years later. ‘Living quietly suited us. We walked to Truro for church on Sunday and whenever we needed to visit the market, but other than that we kept to ourselves.’ She smiled at the look on Inigo’s face. ‘I see I’ve surprised you. You cannot imagine me as a hermit…’ she paused ‘…or that I had a decent childhood? I did.’ Very decent. Even now, she could conjure in her mind the little limestone cottage with its thatched roof, the small garden set to the side where her mother grew carrots and beans and a row of corn. What riches they’d had in the summers when their little crops were ready to eat.

  ‘Life was very different before 1814, Inigo. I had a mother. She taught me herself how to read, how to write, how to think. We took long walks, picked wildflowers, we bird-watched in the estuary. She taught me all the names of the plants and herbs and what they were good for. I was content. My father was a temperamental man, never happy, always wanting more, always plotting to get more, but I gave him no heed. He was a black cloud that seldom sailed through my life and was quickly gone.’

  ‘I never knew Lady Brenley,’ Inigo prompted gently. ‘She sounds like a good mother.’

  She was, more than Inigo could ever know, but Audevere would not share that part of the story. ‘I miss her every day,’ Audevere said softly. There were countless nights she wished for her mother’s counsel, her strength. She fell silent. Outside, the raindrops pattered against the windows. ‘I’ve often wondered what she saw in my father, to marry him. They were such opposites,’ she offered idly. ‘Perhaps she saw what many women see in a husband: security, shelter, someone to care for their needs.’ She looked at Inigo. ‘I don’t think he loved her. And I don’t think she loved him.’

  ‘They had you; there must have been some affection at some time,’ Inigo offered.

  After a fashion…they’d had her. But she’d not planned on telling that part of the story. Instead, Audevere said, ‘She died right after my father received his knighthood for his heroic services in the Peninsular War. My father made his money in the wars, you know, running arms, supplying the troops, smuggling. I didn’t understand all that until much later. All I knew was that after the war, we had money, a title and a town house in London. ‘My mother never saw it.’ She gave a little laugh to lighten the mood, her happy story having become maudlin. ‘Perhaps that was best. My father has expensive but gaudy taste.’

  But Inigo wouldn’t let her stray from the story line. His tone was soft beneath the raindrop patter. ‘How did she die?’ Did Inigo realise she never discussed this with anyone? Or that no one ever asked? Her mother had simply been erased. It was a kind of blessing that someone wanted to know now and a double blessing that the person who wanted to know was Inigo, a man who knew deep loss of his own, who would know without the necessity of words what that loss had meant to her.

  Her own voice was as quiet as the road and rain allowed. ‘Suddenly. A fever, an illness that took her in two nights. She’d been fine one day and ill the next. We’d played cards the night before.’ Audevere swallowed against a surge of emotion before adding, ‘For the last time. She let me win.’

  ‘I was right,’ Inigo said quietly. ‘She was wonderful. Far more wonderful than I. I would never just let you win.’ He grinned and his soft humour was exactly what she required to get over the thickness in her throat, this man who always seemed to know what she needed. He gave her a moment before asking, ‘Then you came up to London?’ This was more than she’d planned on telling. This was a different story.

  ‘Yes. Conveniently, with our new wealth, my father didn’t have to go to sea any longer to make his living and I needed a guardian.’ The sweetness of her life had vanished overnight. ‘I was fourteen and becoming a beauty, in my father’s opinion—and in the opinion of his friends as well.’ She watched Inigo’s body go on alert. She’d alluded to some of this earlier.

  This part was harder to tell: how she’d gone from reclusive country girl to budding London beauty, how her father had not hesitated to exploit that, how he would have her sit at his table to act as his hostess when he held business suppers. If anyone questioned the propriety of such an arrangement, he excused it with a wave of his hand and an easy laugh, saying a sea captain didn’t know any better; besides, he had no wife to play the hostess and wasn’t his daughter pretty decked out in her frocks?

  He’d loved dressing her as if she were already a woman: gowns no girl not yet out would wear, hair piled up as if for a night at the opera, pearl earrings in her ears, sometimes even diamond studs. Audevere’s chin went up in a flash of defensiveness. ‘And I liked it.’ There was the guilt, the shame, the familiar self-loathing. She gave Inigo a tremulous, apologetic smile. She had only herself to blame. She’d allowed so much, not knowing any better.

  ‘Of course you did,’ Inigo offered something akin to absolution in his words and it warmed her. ‘What young girl doesn’t like dressing up? My sisters beg to wear fine gowns and jewels. My mother has the devil’s own time curbing their tendencies towards grandeur.’ He had sisters. What a lovely thought, one she would tuck away for later when she was alone and missing him. She would imagine him with his family, his sisters, laughing together, loving each other. A normal family.

  ‘Perhaps I liked it too much, though.’ She hesitated to accept his absolution. ‘I was glad to make my father happy. He blustered less, yelled less, complained less. I was pleased to play at being hostess and imagining myself the grand lady. I didn’t see any reason to protest. I was naive and I was having fun.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘His friends liked me, too. They saw nothing wrong with a fifteen-year-old dressed beyond her years acting as a hostess. They encouraged it. They brought me presents—ribbons, hairpins, small pieces of jewellery or a box of
bon-bons—and I encouraged that. I loved the gifts and the attention. Growing up alone, never having any friends, I was intoxicated by this new life full of luxuries where I was the centre of so much attention. I didn’t see the danger in it. The men were so kind, so interested in me, and their interest pleased my father, a man who’d been a stranger to me all my life and who was the only family I had left.’

  She stopped there and held Inigo’s gaze. She wanted to warn him. The story turned dark here. ‘But I learned quickly that no man gives anything without expecting something in return.’ She watched the realisation take him. Inigo’s eyes froze, his body tensed as if to do battle.

  ‘You don’t mean to say they…’ He groped for a word. Even as frank as he usually was, he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He was looking for a polite word, but there were no polite words for what she implied.

  ‘That they importuned me? Oh, yes. But it was my fault. I encouraged them through my efforts to engage their attention.’ Even now, she wondered if there’d been something she should have done differently. If there’d been something she should have known? If it would have happened that way if her mother had lived? If she’d had her mother’s guidance? But she’d had no one to tell her how to go on. ‘At first, they felt entitled to stolen kisses, but later they felt entitled to more.’ Over-friendly touches, indiscreetly long glimpses down the front of her dress, that had escalated to fondling—even a few requests that she be the one doing the touching and fondling. Sometimes in an alcove while conversations carried on beyond the thin curtain.

  ‘Surely your father wouldn’t allow such behaviour,’ Inigo broke in. ‘Even Gismond Brenley is a father first, whatever his business ethics are.’ Inigo’s rarefied world was showing itself in his assumptions.

  ‘You would be wrong there. My father encouraged it. If needed, he’d say, we could blackmail someone with it later. No upstanding gentleman wanted to be labelled a debaucher of young girls.’

  She saw Inigo’s throat work as he swallowed. She’d managed to startle him. ‘No one should grow up like that, Aud, to be made a whore by one’s own father.’

  ‘Not a whore in truth. I never lay with anyone,’ she was quick to counter. She’d lain awake nights repeating that to herself. It had been her solace, that a part of her still remained clean and untouched. At least her father had understood the value of a maidenhead for the type of marriage he wanted to acquire for her.

  Inigo reached for her hand where it lay in her lap. ‘You will never have to do such a thing again, Aud.’

  ‘I know, Inigo. That’s why I came to you.’ They were nearly to their evening stopping point. Signs of civilisation were visible in the rain outside the carriage windows. Good. She needed fresh air and some distance following her admission.

  An afternoon of disclosures had left her emotionally exposed, her feelings raw and dangerous. She’d not meant to tell Inigo so much, but once she’d started, she couldn’t seem to stop. She’d wanted him to know. Perhaps now he would understand better her reasons for making a clean break of things. But watching his face, feeling the press of his hand on hers in solidarity, conjured up a host of other feelings that transcended the tenuous friendship they’d begun. Yesterday, he’d been her hero. Today, he’d been her confidant and her confessor. Would he be more if she asked? A lover? A man she could trust not only with her secrets, but with her body as well? How wondrous it would be to have such a man, such an experience, if only once. It would be something to take into the void with her when she disappeared to hold against years of lonely freedom.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She was alone and unprotected in the world. And she was counting on him. Inigo’s mind kept going back to this over dinner. She was looking to him to protect her, at least until she could protect herself. Her story this afternoon had tugged at every notion of honour and chivalry he possessed. That a child should be treated as she’d been treated, manipulated to offer favours to men so that her father could benefit financially… It was a horrible evil, insidious in nature because she blamed herself for it. Even now, in the peace of the private parlour, Inigo wanted to run a rapier through Gismond Brenley for what he’d done to his daughter.

  This afternoon had changed things between them. His anger at Brenley was now on Audevere’s behalf. He wanted to fight for her. This was no longer about wanting justice for a dead friend or for those who’d been wronged by Brenley. It was intensely personal now in a way it hadn’t been before. He wanted justice for a living, breathing woman who could still be saved, unlike Collin.

  Inigo sliced the remainder of the bread. ‘More?’ He offered Audevere the plate. The firelight of the private parlour did her all kinds of favours, casting her features in soft light, catching the gold streaks in her blonde hair. The intimacy between them in the carriage lingered here over dinner. Did she feel it, too? That they were becoming something more than they had been? Two people hurtling towards some as yet undefined conclusion.

  She shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I’ve had enough. The stew was very good.’ She drew a breath, a little nervous. ‘We had a good first day. Do you think we were followed?’

  They’d not talked of the journey itself, but perhaps it was time they did. He only had a few days to win her over. ‘I don’t think we were followed. The servants would have sent word by now to your father in Dover. He won’t be back in London until tomorrow at the earliest. That will give us a two-day head start on him. If he decides to pursue directly.’ Inigo thought that would not be the case. The threat posed by his letter would keep Brenley from rushing after them.

  ‘A head start to where? I don’t think we’ve established yet where we’re going.’ Audevere poured the remainder of the wine into his glass with a little smile that sent a shot of desire through him, his mind imagining her making that wifely gesture at their own dinner table, imagining her as his always. How could he not imagine such things after this afternoon? After listening to her story, after acknowledging how alone she was, how much she was depending on him whether she wanted to or not? The knight in him was left wanting to protect her while the primal man in him wanted to possess her, to claim her for all time so that no one could hurt her again. What would she say to that?

  ‘To Boscastle, Aud. If you won’t let me take you to Devonshire, then I will take you where you can be safe. I am taking you home.’ Home, where she’d be surrounded by the love of his family. Home, where his strength lay: his father, Eaton and Eliza, the Trelevens and the Kittos. They would all rally around him—and her—once they understood the situation. And if he should fall, they would fight in his place to see Audevere safe.

  The answer did not bring her the same peace it brought him. ‘You cannot take me there,’ she scolded, two bright spots of colour flushing her cheeks. ‘They blame me for Collin’s death. They will think I am beneath them, as you once did. Besides, I doubt your family would welcome the girl who jilted Collin Truscott. That is how the Cornish Dukes function, isn’t it? All for one?’

  ‘They will understand. We will explain everything,’ Inigo assured her. He would make certain of it. ‘I can think of nowhere better to go.’

  ‘My father will know we’re there. It’s the first place he will look. He will come after us. It will make running away pointless,’ she argued. ‘The whole idea was to disappear and now, with that letter, he’ll know exactly where I am and who I am with. There is no secrecy left, no escape.’

  ‘That letter means we can end this. You won’t have to live in fear of discovery the rest of your days. I do not want that for you if it can be avoided. Have you thought of what looking over your shoulder the rest of your life means?’ She could not entangle a husband or children in that web of worry. Discovery would tear a family apart. No country squire, no village merchant or gentleman farmer would want to find out his wife had lied to him. Nor would they be up to the task of defending her—or themselves—against Brenley when he came. Fleeing
, leaving her children behind, would destroy her.

  ‘Never to know love? To have a family? Friends? Yes. I have thought of that, Inigo. I can have nothing but freedom and anonymity. It is the only choice I have if I want to be away from him.’

  Inigo’s frustration lifted its head. ‘You’re being stubborn, Aud. If you would give my plan a chance to work, you could have a real life.’ They were starting to quarrel, giving their quiet new intimacy a sharp edge reminiscent of who they used to be. Perhaps they were both doing it on purpose. There was less temptation that way. He didn’t want to want her, yet after today the want was more intense than ever.

  * * *

  ‘A real life? What do you suppose that is?’ her reply softly mocked. Inigo’s idea of a real life was a fairy tale. She could not allow that fantasy to take root for either of them. Perhaps most of all for herself. How much easier it would be to believe him, that such freedom and choice were possible, that she could have a man, love a man, like Inigo Vellanoweth and not ruin him, not rain down destruction on everyone and everything he held dear. If she gave in even a little to such a vision, they would both be lost. It took all her courage to meet his gaze, blue and intense across the little table. The earlier thought from the carriage played through her mind. She wanted him, this man who would defy the world for her. But there was risk in the wanting.

  In this cosy, firelit room, the realisation both thrilled her and frightened her. He would become her lover if she asked, she was sure of it. Temptation flickered in his blue depths and it thrilled her. But claiming that thrill would mean something entirely different to him than it did to her. He would never let her leave and, in doing so, he would drag himself down, weighted by her secrets. Secrets that only had the power to hurt if she stayed, if she remained Audevere Brenley. Secrets that Inigo’s letter to the King couldn’t stop or change.