She could hear a whole wealth of meaning behind the bitterness to his words, but she would deal with that later. For now, it was enough to know that not only was this Burslem place nowhere near London, but also that it was not one of those places where she would be constantly worrying she might come face to face with any of the men who had connived at her ruin.
With a sigh of relief, she knelt back, inadvertently letting go of her corner of the map. It sprang shut on his fingers.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said, bending forwards to unroll it again. For a moment, their fingers tangled as they sought to control the springy piece of parchment. Then he caught her hand and stayed it, letting the map furl itself into a roll. He could feel her trembling. She was still afraid of him. And no wonder.
‘It does not matter,’ he said, taking the risk of raising her hand to his mouth, and brushing his lips across it swiftly. ‘We have finished with the map.’
‘Oh?’ For a moment or two, her gaze was trapped by his. His breath fanned the back of her hand. The fire crackled in the grate. She felt as though the whole room was holding its breath.
His blood pounded through his veins. All he would have to do was sweep her down on to the rug, lift the hem of her nightgown and he could have her. Right here, right now. But the way she was looking at him, wide-eyed with confusion, made her seem so very young. And vulnerable. He had sworn he would not let anyone do her any harm. And that included himself.
He dropped his gaze and let go of her hand. She had not seemed too disappointed to learn that their new home was not going to be in a more fashionable location. But the fact that she had asked at all was telling. He had no intention of gadding off to London until he had got his estates in better order. But there was no reason why he could not give her a bit of a treat to tide her over.
‘We will make a stay of a few days in Harrogate,’ he said gruffly, picking up the map to give his hands something to do, ‘and fit you up with a new wardrobe.’
‘Oh, no …’ she began. Her father had mentioned Harrogate in some respect. She frowned, trying to remember what it was he had said.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, getting to his feet and tossing the map on to the litter of papers scattered across the surface of his desk. ‘You will not want to meet the ladies currently in occupation without being properly armed with the latest fashions.’
Just then she finally recalled what her father had said. That the place might be worth considering, but only as a last resort. Only elderly invalids went there, people who could not afford the more fashionable places, such as Bath. The pickings would be slim.
She relaxed. And then admitted, ‘In truth, I would not want your family to see me only in the garb which I deemed suitable for the life of a governess.’
She did not want to let him down, she realised with a sense of shock. He had taken a gamble, marrying her on such short acquaintance. The least she could do was look the part.
‘You will be more than a match for them, Aimée,’ he said, with a smile that made him look devilishly piratical. ‘I have every confidence that you will make a very able lieutenant in this enterprise.’
His words sent a shiver of foreboding skating down her spine. He had promised her that he was not planning anything illegal, or immoral. But, judging by the sinister smile that was playing round his lips, and the terminology he had just used, he was planning something.
She picked up the drawing of Bowdon Manor, scrambled to her feet and followed him across the room until she stood before his desk.
‘What enterprise?’
Damn him, if he had double-crossed her, vows or no vows, she would rather strike out on her own again!
Chapter Seven
He took the picture from her hands and stared at it moodily for so long that she began to wonder if he was ever going to tell her anything.
But at length he sighed, tossed the paper into a drawer and said, ‘The enterprise in question … well, in a nutshell, it is becoming the Earl of Bowdon.’
Aimée felt the tension drain from her. She was so quick to suspect him, but every time it turned out that he had a perfectly good reason for acting as he did. She wrapped her arms round her waist, rubbing at her arms abstractedly. He had told her he needed a wife to fulfil his new role as Earl of Bowdon. But, given the way he had recruited her, like a new member of his crew, was it any wonder he referred to her as his lieutenant?
‘I told you, did I not, that my new family have a very inflated opinion of themselves? It was quite a shock to them to discover a rough tar was the next in line for the title. Almost as much of a shock as it was to me.’
‘A shock to you? What do you mean?’
‘It is hard,’ he said, strolling round the table and returning to the hearth, ‘to know quite where to start. The tangle goes right back to my childhood, and beyond.’
He beckoned to her. ‘You had better make yourself comfortable. This is going to be a long story.’
She joined him on the hearthrug, curling her legs up so that her feet were tucked up under the hem of her nightgown.
‘I grew up in obscurity,’ he said, ‘in a pleasant little town where my father was the doctor. My mother was the daughter of a quite prosperous tradesman. I always expected to work for my living at some trade. For various reasons, my parents decided to send me to sea as soon as they could find a ship to take me on.’
He wondered how she would react if he were to stroke her hair. It looked so soft, flowing round her shoulders, reflecting the colours of the flames as they leapt up the chimney. But if she recoiled, then all the ground he had so far gained would be lost. Better to just talk to her. Let her know she had nothing to fear from him. Let her grow accustomed to her new status as his wife.
‘I assumed,’ he said, ‘that I would stay in the navy for the rest of my life. I showed some aptitude, which meant my promotions came with pleasing regularity. And, of course, with the war raging so fiercely, there were perhaps more opportunities than in peacetime. Do you know much about prize money?’
‘No,’ she admitted, stifling a yawn. The day’s events must be catching up with her. Or perhaps it was the brandy. It was the only thing that could account for her peculiar urge to tell him she was sorry for misjudging him again, snuggle up against him and lay her head on his shoulder while he told her all about his childhood. She did not think Septimus was the kind of man one snuggled up to!
‘When an enemy ship is captured,’ he was saying, ‘a financial reward is given to the captain and crew, the captain taking the lion’s share. Though it can augment a junior officer’s income considerably, too, should he be fortunate enough to serve under an able captain, and be stationed where there is likely to be plenty of action. Which was the case for me. Later, when I got my own command, I was lucky enough to secure one or two prizes large enough to make me quite a rich man. Made a bit of a name for myself.’
There, she reflected, she had been correct. Her husband was not the kind of man to cuddle in front of a fire. Even as a young officer, his superiors had seen that he was the very man to station wherever the action was likely to be the hottest. By the sound of it, he’d spent the majority of his life roaring from one battle to another, and killing anyone who got in his way. She eyed his stern profile assessingly. There was nothing soft or yielding about him at all.
‘I no longer had to rely so heavily on my pay, just to survive. I continued to go to sea, though, because I knew that able captains were still needed to scupper that upstart Corsican’s ambitions. And also, because there was nothing in particular to keep me ashore. Not once my wife … died.’
It was ironic, he mused, that she had run off with a wealthy man only just before all that prize money started coming in. Would she have stayed with him, had she known it was within her grasp? Or would his injuries have still proved too much for her to stomach?
‘So what changed?’ she prompted him, after he had been brooding in silence for quite some time. There was nothing to stop him pur
suing his career at sea, even if he had inherited such a grand title. It would probably just hasten his rise to the rank of Admiral.
‘Oh, I received a letter,’ he frowned, as though brought back to the present with a jolt. ‘It informed me, in that sort of incomparable legal jargon that is particularly hard to grasp in one reading, that I had become the Earl of Bowdon. A title of which I had never heard.’
All of a sudden, she felt wide awake again.
‘How is that … I mean, you must have known …?’
He shook his head. ‘At first, I really believed it to be some kind of elaborate hoax, though who would have set such a thing up I was at a loss to comprehend. But eventually, investigations proved to my satisfaction that I was, indeed, descended from a noble line. My father, who was dead by then, had never spoken much about his family, except to mention there had been some unpleasantness that had resulted in a breach. It turned out that he was the younger son of a son who had been cut off from the main branch for marrying beneath him.’
Oh! thought Aimée. What a coincidence! She was the result of such an unequal liaison, though it had been her mother’s family who had cut her out of their lives.
‘I had known nothing of my titled relations, nor they of me, until the lawyers winkled me out of their genealogical charts. On my next spell of leave, I went to meet them, thinking.’ He shook his head.
‘The family did not welcome me with open arms,’ he said with a grimace. ‘My grandfather might have married beneath him, but my own father made an even worse match. A tradesman’s daughter! And as for my own wife—a wharf rat’s daughter, a woman who thought marrying a junior naval officer was a step up—well, there was absolutely no way she would be fit to become the next Countess.’
‘I thought she had died?’ Aimée was beginning to wonder if the brandy was still fogging her mind. ‘And was she really the daughter of a wharf rat?’
‘No, of course she was not the daughter of a wharf rat. That was just the way the Dowager Countess chose to refer to her. And, though Miranda was dead by then, I was so angry already, after the way they had denigrated my mother and my grandmother, both of whom I was extremely fond, that I saw no reason to stoop to explain myself to that—’ He bit off whatever he had been going to say.
The fog cleared. Aimée could easily imagine how angry he must have been. She had seen him lose his temper with far less provocation.
‘Sadly for the family, they have no choice but to acknowledge me. I am the rightful heir. You see,’ he said with a wry twist to his mouth, ‘whilst my grandfather produced a healthy son, who in his turn fathered me, the more selectively bred, proper family members managed only to rear girls to adulthood. The last Earl’s widow assumed that a young nephew of a cousin of hers would inherit. She had her own daughter all lined up to marry him and replace her as mistress of Bowdon Manor. She could barely manage to contain her fury on learning that my claim took precedence. Especially when I did not rush to take up my place at Bowdon Manor, but continued with my naval duties until such time as it was convenient for me to pay them a visit. Had I gone there, cap in hand, suitably grateful for the immense honour of being allowed back into the bosom of such an elevated family, things might have gone differently, I suppose.
‘But the way they received me …’ He shook his head.
He did not need to say any more. He had been grossly insulted. And even on such short acquaintance, she could see that his pride would have made it absolutely impossible for him to attempt to placate his newly discovered relatives.
‘Matters went from bad to worse once I began to look about my new estates. I told you, did I not, that my predecessor was a spendthrift? Well, by the time I arrived on the scene, the Dowager Countess and her daughter were in severe difficulties. And the Dowager chose to lay the blame at my door, for not rushing straight there and taking up the administrative reins the moment her husband died. I admit,’ he said grudgingly, ‘that my long absence compounded their misfortunes, because the steward used the absence of a firm hand at the tiller to do as little as possible.
‘So, there you have it,’ he said, turning to her with a wry smile. ‘My family despise me for my blunt manners and lowly origins, whilst I, in my turn, have been shocked at the neglect and maladministration they had permitted to go on, right under their noses. Some of my tenants are living in conditions not fit for swine!’
‘Oh dear,’ said Aimée faintly. He was a man who took his duties very seriously. Not just to his work, but also to his subordinates. And Jenks had said that even though he was a pressed man, he soon found life on board tolerable, because he was serving under ‘Cap’n Corky'. He would not sympathise with anyone who turned a blind eye to the sufferings of their dependants, to say the least.
‘But when I remonstrated with them, they tried to tell me I had no right to criticise them, that the estate coffers were not deep enough to make any of the improvements I insisted needed to be set in train at once.’ He smiled again in that rather sinister way, which made her think his humour did not stem from a very pleasant source. ‘It was amazing how much less unsuitable to hold the position I became, once they discovered I was not only willing, but more than able, to dig into my own pockets. And about the same time they discovered exactly how deep my pockets are, the Dowager Countess of Bowdon began to ask a lot of searching questions about my wife. And then subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, throwing her daughter into my path.’
Aimée frowned. ‘Do you think she discovered your wife had died?’
‘It crossed my mind,’ he admitted, ‘that she might have put some kind of investigators on her trail, when she did not put in an appearance in person. Though it would not have been easy to uncover the facts. Miranda … was not living under her married name when she died.’
His mind flew back to that uncomfortable scene when her wretched father had come to him and explained she had thought it for the best. That she had not wanted to cause him more embarrassment than necessary.
Embarrassment? It was not embarrassment he had felt when she upped and left him for the lover who had sworn he could keep her in the lap of luxury.
‘And there had been an epidemic in that town,’ he forced himself to go on. ‘The record-keeping would have been patchy, at best, I would think. Anyway, it seemed quite clear that should the Dowager discover the truth, nothing would stop her from going into full matchmaking mode.’
‘Do you really think so?’ She could not imagine anyone daring to attempt to manipulate this autocratic man.
‘Oh, yes. She was already thrusting her poor daughter at me, as I have told you. In a sly sort of way. Leaving us alone together, that sort of thing.’
Aimée frowned. ‘What did she hope to achieve by that?’
‘Oh, I think she thought Lady Fenella might manage to smooth down some of my rough edges. Teach me how to go on. And at the very least, the next generation would stem from what she considered a proper blood line.’
‘That’s … outrageous! That is … if she really meant …’
‘… to somehow have her own daughter set up as mistress in her place, by hook or by crook.’ He made a disparaging noise in the back of his throat. ‘Yes, I thought so too. Anyway, before she found out that I had no wife, and that I was actually free to marry that jellyfish of a daughter of hers, I set matters in train to equip myself with the kind of wife I would not object to having at my side.’ He looked at her with such a proprietorial air she suddenly found it hard to breathe.
‘An intelligent, pretty woman,’ he said softly, ‘with enough backbone to cope with that dreadful woman.’
She had thought having backbone was a requisite to dealing with him. Aimée felt a shiver run down her spine. What on earth must this Dowager be like?
‘So you see, do you not, why I was reluctant to advertise openly for a wife, apart from bringing all the worst type of women crawling out of the woodwork? If poor Lady Fenella had heard that, rather than marry her, I had gone out and advertised for
another female, she would have been devastated.’
A stab of something that felt remarkably like jealousy pierced Aimée to the core. He had seen nothing wrong with deceiving, bullying and coercing her into compliance. But in the acquisition of his convenient wife, he had done what he could to spare this Lady Fenella’s blushes.
She lowered her head, twisting the material of her nightgown between agitated fingers.
He was not a cruel man. He had not set out to hurt her.
But, oh, how she wished she was the woman whose feelings he took into account—instead of being just a means to an end.
‘Is something amiss?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘Thank you for telling me all this,’ she said stiffly. ‘But I think I had better go back to bed now.’
She got to her feet and practically ran to the door. Damn! Things had been going so well. He did not know what he had said or done to make her jump like a scalded cat and run back to the sanctuary of her room.
But perhaps it was just as well. If she had stayed for much longer, he might not have been able to keep his hands off her. It was hard to forget this was his wedding night. And that, by rights, he should be in her bed by now. In her arms.
In her.
Muttering an oath, he got up, went to his desk and reached for the brandy. At least there was no embargo on that.
Aimée pushed herself up the stairs slowly, the slow throb of pain in her ankle pulsing in time with the dull ache in her heart.
Septimus regarded her only as a means to an end. She had always known that. And did she not regard him in the same light?
Well, she had to begin with. But for some reason, and, against all the odds, he was beginning to inspire a great deal of admiration in her breast. As well as rousing all sorts of feelings that, were she not married to him, she would think entirely inappropriate.
The moment she reached her room she got into bed and pulled the quilt up to her ears.
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