“I told you before, Fan, that they don’t matter,” he said firmly. “The only ones we must please are each other. Now forget about those harpies and the wines to be uncorked and every other infernal nuisance that is plaguing you, love, and bring your sweet self back here where you belong.”
He patted the bed beside him, making his desire so abundantly clear that she had to look away before she could speak. She was such a hopeless coward, even in this!
“Do you love me enough that you would ignore whatever scandal you heard whispered about me?” she said hurriedly, before she lost her nerve. “Would you trust me and listen to my reasons, no matter how wicked or wrongful the tale might seem? Do you love me enough for that?”
“Tales of an innocent like you, Fan?” he asked incredulously, grinning as if she were making a jest. “What in blazes could anyone say of you, sweetheart?”
“I didn’t say there were any such tales,” she said in a rush, hedging against the truth that she still couldn’t bring herself to tell. “I only asked that if there were any, then would you take my side?”
“Ah, so that is it, a test to prove my love.” He relaxed visibly, his smile warmly inviting as he drew her back against his chest and into his arms. “Consider my challenge passed, then, sweetheart. No matter how vile the gossip or scandal, I vow to turn away my ears and not listen to a word of it against my own dear Fan.”
Troubled, she closed her eyes and listened to the steady beat of his heart. She should confess everything now, and not let him hear of her past from another. If he truly loved her as he claimed, then she could tell him the truth, and he would forgive her. For her sake, just this once, he’d have to put aside all his scruples and allegiances and his life’s devotion to doing what was honorable. If she promised that there’d be only one more run and then she’d be done with the Company forever, then he’d understand, wouldn’t he?
Wouldn’t he?
But if she truly loved him as she said, how could she ever ask him to make such a sacrifice for her worthless sake?
“Oh, George,” she whispered unhappily. “I love you so much—so much!—but it’s not as simple as that.”
“But it is,” he said, brushing her hair back to kiss her forehead. “And I’ll make it so for you if it isn’t. All you must remember is that I love you, and you love me. That will be enough, Fan. For us, that will always be enough.”
Yet as he tipped her back into the crook of his arm to kiss her, Fan could only pray that he was right.
The vagaries of life had made George leery of declaring anything a certainty, but on this morning he was absolutely sure that his brother would seek him out. The only variable would be how long it would take Brant to find his way to George’s rooms after Fan had left.
“Good day, Your Grace,” murmured Leggett, bowing with George’s razor in his hand.
George twisted in his chair to find Brant, his brother’s expression exceedingly grim. Twenty minutes was all it had taken, then, scarce time for George to be shaven. He’d never known Brant to be so prompt.
“Leggett, leave us,” he said, wiping the last of the soap from his face with a towel as he rose from his chair. “His Grace and I wish to speak alone.”
Pointedly Brant stayed silent, watching the servant bow himself from the room, hardly a fortuitous sign. Brant was seldom silent, and even without a word spoken, the tension between them was thick as a Channel fog.
“So,” said Brant at last, every word clipped. “I suppose I must congratulate you on taking another prize, even if swiving your housekeeper is not quite of the same order as seizing Spanish treasure ships. Or perhaps it is. Was she worth the wait, George?”
“No more, Brant,” said George, determined to keep his temper because Fan would wish it. “I won’t have you speak of Fan as if she were one of your own tawdry harlots.”
“Why the devil shouldn’t I?” demanded Brant. “Clearly you have. This room smells like a Chelsea whorehouse on a Sunday morning.”
“Damnation, Brant, I said no more!” George forced himself to take a deep breath, then another. “I love Fan Winslow, and I won’t listen to her slandered like this. I love her, mind?”
“Love.” Brant’s chuckle was remarkably unsym-pathetic. “Did you ask her where she goes at night, George? Did you ask her who she sees, what she does, that’s such a great bloody secret?”
“I asked,” said George, “and I was satisfied with her answer.”
That wasn’t exactly true, for George had found her answer about where she went in Tunford as cloudy and roundabout as that nonsense about loving her despite her past. But as long as he had her heart, he’d be willing to grant her a secret or two. God knows he’d a few of his own.
“Regardless of Fan’s station,” he continued, “she is the most honorable woman I have ever met, and while it may be impossible for you to understand, Brant, because I love her, I trust her as well.”
But Brant had stopped listening. “You had her first, didn’t you?” he asked, his expression full of fascinated disbelief. “That’s what all this idiocy really means, George, isn’t it? You took her maidenhead, and in return you’ve made her a saint.”
“I respect her, Brant, and if you can’t see how—”
“How can you say you respect her when you’ve done this?” Brant shook his head. “I’ll grant you Fan Winslow is a good woman, George, and likely far better than any Claremont male deserves. But consider how thoroughly you have ruined her. Every last person through your door this night will realize that she is your mistress. You couldn’t have chosen a more ostentatious way to proclaim her fall to the world. You won’t be able to hide it, and neither will she.”
“Why the devil would I want to?” demanded George. “I told you I loved Fan. Would you rather I were ashamed of her?”
“Oh, hardly,” said Brant. “But what comes next? Shall you set Fan up in keeping here at Feversham, Captain Claremont’s infamous harlot? She’ll be scorned wherever she goes in Kent, that much is certain. She’ll simply have to make do with your short-tempered company. But what will become of her when you sail away again, or worse, sail away and don’t return? Do you intend to settle a handsome amount upon her to ease her way? You should provide for a bastard, too. Brats can prove costly, yet a gentleman must always be prepared for the possibility.”
“Blast you, Brant,” muttered George, turning away from his brother and towards the long window overlooking the sea.
He couldn’t face his brother, not now, because his brother was right, speaking from experience that George didn’t have and didn’t want. Brant knew what was expected for gentlemen of their rank regarding women, while George had been so busy basking in the heat of his lovemaking with Fan that he’d completely forgotten this chilly, unromantic side of the same coin.
Yet as sober and realistic as George now tried to be, he still couldn’t picture Fan as an outcast here at Feversham with an ill-founded reputation for sin. He couldn’t regard what they’d shared as no more than a financial obligation for the solicitors, or dismiss any child they’d conceived together as a mere costly inconvenience.
Why the devil did it have to be like that? He stared out at the sea over the tops of the windswept trees, thinking of Fan. He’d always scoffed at the mournful, sentimental ballads that the sailors sang between decks, but here he was living one himself, having found the one woman put on this earth for him.
He’d made his name and fortune by seizing what the fates had dangled before him. How, then, could he hesitate now, when the greatest prize of all was within his reach?
“I’ll give you the address of my solicitor,” Brant was saying. “The man’s as clever as they come with contriving arrangements that both please the gentlemen without offending the women.”
“Thank you, no, Brant,” he said without turning. “I believe I’ll see to my own contriving.”
“Don’t ruin yourself over this,” warned Brant. “There’s scant pleasure to be found in letting a woma
n make a fool of you.”
But George knew it was far too late for that, and as the smile spread slowly over his face, he knew that he’d never wish it any other way.
“You look most lovely, mistress,” said the lady’s maid, hired by George to help Fan dress for the evening, as she gave one final pat to Fan’s gown. “You’ll make Captain Lord Claremont so proud the buttons will burst from his chest, see if they don’t.”
“I should hope not,” murmured Fan with dismay, staring at her reflection in the looking glass with wary disbelief. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d worn anything other than black, let alone a peacock-green gown as elegant and fashionable as this one. She did look lovely, as the woman said, but she also didn’t look like herself, not with so much bare arm and bosom and her hair piled high into glossy, thick curls.
She didn’t feel like herself, either, without the familiar support of her stays, and as she tentatively turned and twirled before the glass, the glistening silk seemed to spill like liquid over the curves of her hips and breasts, accentuating her womanliness in a blatantly seductive way. Madame Duvall had assured her that this was the most modest gown imaginable by London standards, and entirely appropriate to her position as housekeeper, but as the moment neared for Fan to join George and the others downstairs, she felt a rush of panic.
“I can’t wear this,” she confessed to the maid as she tried to tug her bodice higher over her breasts. “It may be a lovely gown, true, but it doesn’t seem proper for—”
“Mistress Winslow!” called a young woman shrilly from the hall as she knocked frantically on the door. “It’s Mr. Small, Mistress! Oh, please, please, come!”
At once Fan forgot the gown and hurried to open the door. The young woman was one of the Tunford girls brought in to help in the kitchen, her round face flushed with excitement and her hands twisting in her apron.
“Beg pardon, mistress,” she said, “but Mr. Small says he’s nigh ready to bust his scuppers if’n you don’t come an’ show him where the damned—beg pardon, but that be what he said—fish platter’s stowed.”
“Oh, he knows exactly where it’s stored, the great baby,” scoffed Fan, already heading towards the stairs with the girl scurrying after her. “He just wants me to share his confusion.”
“Wait, Mistress Winslow, your shawl!” The lady’s maid followed, the luxurious cashmere shawl fluttering in her outstretched hands.
With an impatient sigh, Fan flung the shawl around her shoulders and wrapped it modestly over her bodice. That, at least, would solve one problem with Small, for there was no way under heaven she could speak to him with so much of herself on display. He’d likely have expired from apoplexy there in the middle of the kitchen, and so much for George’s grand evening.
“Come now, Polly,” she said to the girl as they marched down the stairs. “We must find that fish platter directly, before the kitchen’s filled with Mr. Small’s busted scuppers.”
In his full dress uniform with his medals on his chest, George stood on the landing of the front stairs, his hands clasped behind his waist and his face as grim as if preparing for battle. Behind him the last candles were being lit in the ballroom and the musicians were finally bringing their squeaking fiddles into tune, while in the hall below servants ran back and forth with a frenzy that only served to irritate him more. He himself was always prompt, even early, and as the tall clock solemnly began chiming the hour, he expected his guests to being arriving before the last chime was done.
“Where the devil is Fan?” he demanded as Brant sauntered up the steps to join him. “She should be here by now.”
“Why?” asked Brant, smoothing the ruffles on his shirt’s cuffs. “You know that even here in the benighted country, no one will have the audacity to arrive for at least another half an hour.”
“Damnation, I know nothing of the sort.” Restlessly George drummed his fingers on the rail. He hadn’t seen Fan for hours, and he missed her. “I need her, Brant. I’ll be a helpless, babbling nincompoop without her to guide me. She should be here by now, shouldn’t she? Fan? Fan!”
Below them, one of the startled servants looked up. “Miss Winslow be in the kitchen, Captain My Lord,” she said, bobbing a quick curtsey. “She be with Mr. Small.”
“A pox on Small and his infernal interference,” he grumbled as he raced down the stairs towards the kitchen, leaving bowing and curtseying servants in his wake. “Fan! Where in blazes are you when I—Fan?”
The kitchen was chaos, filled with smoke and steam and shouting and clanking and swearing and kettles being lifted up and platters being set down, and in the very center, standing on a small stool to reach into a cupboard, stood Fan, like the green-silk eye of a furious hurricane. At the sound of George’s voice, she turned towards the door, a small silver charger still in her hands and an instant smile of purest joy on her face for him. He grinned back, unable to help it, and amazed by the intensity of the happiness that her smile alone could bring to him. How could Brant warn him against the falseness of women if he’d ever experienced such a feeling for himself?
But then she lowered her hands with the charger and the paisley shawl slid from her shoulder, uncovering the front of her gown and considerably more of the front of her.
He gulped, too stunned for much else. He’d always known she was a beauty, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight of her this way, in this gown, with her skin glowing against the green silk and her barely covered breasts fair begging for his touch. It was only an instant, a glorious, frustrating instant before she realized and pulled the shawl back into place, but as instants went, he’d remember it forever.
“Fan,” he said hoarsely, tongue-tied and bumbling like the greenest midshipman while everyone stopped to gawk at him. “Ah, that is, Miss Winslow.”
“Captain Lord Claremont,” she answered, her eyes twinkling impishly as she handed the charger to a waiting maidservant. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting.”
“Not at all,” he mumbled, watching her hop down from the stool, the green silk doing all manner of interesting, shimmering things that accentuated the curves of her hips and legs as she walked towards him. Only when she passed him and left the kitchen did he recall that he was supposed to be walking with her, too, as well as looking at her face like a sensible man instead of staring like an obsessed idiot at the undulation of her silk-draped bottom.
“Fan, wait,” he said, catching her arm and drawing her into one of Feversham’s window alcoves. The shadows filled the narrow space, with the moonlight fragmented by the old-fashioned diamond-shaped panes in the window.
She smiled up at him from beneath the unfamiliar curls in her hair. “You’re not supposed to be calling me that tonight, at least not before the others.”
“Hang the others.” They’d only a minute or two at most before someone would come this way, and he wanted to make the most of even that. “Will I muss you too much if I kiss you?”
“No,” she whispered, chuckling as she rested her hands on his chest, “nor would I care if you did.”
He kissed her then, fast and hard, in equal measures of desire and love. Hang the others, and the whole party with them; he’d much rather take her upstairs to bed this moment and not come down again for a week.
She chuckled again, a sound that promised so much that he almost did take her upstairs. “We can’t stay here, George,” she murmured, “though I would wish it.”
“No,” he said. “Yes. That is, I don’t wish to leave, either.”
He took a deep breath, striving to calm himself, especially the part of himself that was inconveniently large in his breeches. He reached into his coat, finding the two little leather-covered boxes he’d tucked inside when he’d dressed: one for now, one for later.
“Here,” he said as he drew out the first box. “Rigged out as fine as you are tonight, I should be draping you in pearls and diamonds. These, I fear, will have to do for now, to show that I love you.”
“I lo
ve you, too, even without pearls and diamonds.” She grinned shyly as she took the box. She flipped open the lid, and her grin melted away.
“Oh, George,” she whispered, tears in her eyes as she lifted out the first of the garnet earrings, the same ones she’d admired that first day in Tunford, the ones he’d tried to give her and she’d refused. “You remembered.”
“I didn’t have to remember,” he admitted sheepishly. “I saw how much you liked them, and I bought them then, hoping you’d, ah, change your mind about keeping them.”
He hadn’t expected tears, not over gimcrack jewels like these. What would she do later when she opened the second box and saw the Brazilian emerald ring he’d claimed from the treasure ship, a ring once meant for a Spanish princess, and now destined for his lady wife?
“They are so beautiful,” she said, hooking the earrings into her ears and giving her head a quick toss to make them bob against her cheeks. “And you, my dearest George, you are—oh, my, listen, George, the first guests are here! Hurry, hurry, we must go!”
With the same pleasant half smile on her face that she’d employed all evening, Fan stood slightly apart from George while he listened to an ancient local squire describing an equally ancient foxhunt. The half smile came naturally, for the evening was going far, far better than she’d ever dreamed possible. The food, the music, the dancing, the conversation, even the candles had all been declared perfection itself, and the company had been so determined to behave with a duke and his brother in their midst that there’d been not a single indignity, outrage, or shed tear, at least not that Fan had witnessed.
To be sure, she and George together had drawn their share of curious glances, but no one had dared comment in her hearing, not even when he’d claimed her hand for three of the country dances. The gossip was certain to begin later, in the home-bound carriages and chaises, but by then, she and George would be dropping their own polite facades as well. Fan’s smile widened with anticipation, and she lifted her head to feel the swing of the garnet earrings he’d given her earlier.
The Silver Lord Page 19
