by Louise Allen
Marguerite sat up, her face with its ruined make-up stripped bare of artifice. ‘Then tell them.’ She managed a smile. ‘Will having a daughter make me look old, do you think?’
Eden’s third appointment of the day was at the very superior town house that Eva, Grand Duchess of Maubourg, and Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst kept for their regular visits to London. He wished, as he was ushered through into the salon, that he was wearing his stage costume, the diamonds in his ears, the ironic disguise he had used all these years to hide behind.
All he had now was his real name, the counterfeit appearance of a gentleman and the love of a woman he would walk over burning coals for. This, as the double doors swung open on to the eight people ranged around the room, felt rather more dangerous.
‘Good afternoon.’ Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst greeted him from his position by the fireplace. Under the portrait of his father, the third Duke of Allington, he watched Eden with sombre, assessing eyes. ‘You wrote to me and asked that we Ravenhursts who are Maude’s friends gather here to meet you. Perhaps you would care to explain why, Mr Hurst?’
‘Because that is not my name,’ Eden said. ‘My name is Ravenhurst and I am your cousin. Acknowledging me will bring you scandal and pain. You owe me nothing, certainly not recognition; by our grandfather’s decree my mother, your Aunt Margery, forfeited that years ago. But you all, I believe, love Maude Templeton and I am here to beg you, on my knees if I have to, for her happiness.’ He looked round, meeting eight pairs of serious, steady eyes in turn and waited on their judgement.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘I am not going.’ Maude sat defiantly in her dressing room in an old afternoon dress and frowned at Jessica and Elinor in their full glory of ballgowns, diamonds and plumes. ‘I told Bel I was not going.’
‘You said that when you were still feeling so poorly after the gas,’ Elinor pointed out. ‘You can’t mean to miss Bel’s ball, surely?’
‘I still feel poorly,’ Maude said stubbornly, feeling not unwell, but harassed. She did not want to go anywhere where she might be expected to smile and flirt and behave as though her heart was not broken. Soon, she would make the effort. Soon, she would do her duty and go and find herself an eligible and suitable husband in cold blood and give her father the grandchildren she knew he longed for. But not yet. Not while there was the slightest danger that she might simply sit down and weep as the sadness and despair swept over her. It felt like a bereavement, not the end of a love affair, and she wanted time to mourn.
‘You are perfectly well,’ Jessica said briskly. ‘It is not like you to be a coward, Maude.’
‘I am not,’ she retorted, stung. ‘I am unhappy. Do you expect me to plaster on a smile and go and cavort at Bel’s ball as though nothing was wrong?’
‘Yes.’ Jessica sat down with care for her silver net skirts and wagged her fan at Maude. ‘It is the big event in the Season for Bel, and you owe it to her to turn up and look as though you are enjoying yourself. Your father is going.’
‘I haven’t got anything to wear,’ Maude said, feeling cornered and guilty and miserable all at once.
‘Poppycock.’ Elinor jumped up and pulled the bell cord. Anna came in with a speed that showed she must have been waiting outside the door. Was everyone in the plot to harass her? ‘Anna, your mistress is complaining she has nothing to wear, which means she is feeling well enough to go. Now, show us her wardrobe.’
Resigned, Maude got to her feet. To resist any further was perilously like sulking and she never sulked. It would hurt, but she supposed it was like getting back into the saddle after a fall. ‘Very well. The new yellow gown, Anna.’
‘Now that,’ Jessica approved, ‘is lovely, like autumn leaves. So clever, all those layers and the different colours and the way the hems are cut so it flutters. Your amethyst-and-diamond set with it, I imagine?’
‘Yes,’ Maude agreed, trying to get into the mood. She had bought this gown expecting that Eden would see her in it, the thought lending pleasure to the choice of every detail. Now it was just another gown.
But she dressed and let Anna pile her hair up into an elaborate knot within the tiara and pretended that she cared enough to make a decision on which side the one long curl should drop to touch her shoulder. She put on her new bronze kid slippers and slid the fine cream gloves up over her elbows and hurried so as not to keep her friends waiting.
Her reward was her father’s face when she followed Jessica down the stairs to where he was waiting. ‘Papa, I thought you were gone by now.’
‘Lady Standon convinced me she could persuade you.’ He smiled down at her ‘How lovely you look, my dear.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
‘I know.’ From somewhere Maude found a smile and saw him relax a little. ‘Now, shall we go and dance all night?’
It seemed to Maude, emerging from the end of the receiving line and hearing her name announced, that it would be some time before any of them reached the dance floor. Eva had attracted her usual crowd of admirers and friends and was holding court in the first reception room, Sebastian, Theo and Gareth at her side and a collection of some of the most notable guests, including four of the Patronesses, drinking champagne with them.
‘Honestly,’ Maude remarked with the first genuine feeling of amusement she had experienced in days, ‘trust Eva to pick up all the best-looking men in the room.’
‘Well, she can put mine down, for a start,’ Jessica said with a laugh, watching Gareth responding gallantly to one of Eva’s outrageous sallies. ‘Here, let me help you with your dance card—and if you try to tell me you intend to sit a single one out, I will set Eva on you.’
‘Yes, Jessica.’ Maude submitted to having the ribbon tied round her wrist. They had been late, almost past the point of fashionable lateness, and behind them the flow of new arrivals had subsided to a trickle. Maude accepted a glass of champagne from a passing footman, having no difficulty ignoring the more conventional choice, for an unmarried lady, of ratafia.
‘Lord and Lady Langford! The Marquis of Gadebridge!’ the footman announced. ‘Mr Ravenhurst!’
‘Who?’ Maude frowned at Elinor. ‘Theo’s over there.’
‘There’s more than one Mr Ravenhurst,’ Elinor said, smiling. ‘See?’
As she spoke the crowd parted, heads were turning, a buzz of comment swept through the room, overriding the gossip and laughter. And there, in the middle—tall, immaculate and looking exactly like Jessica’s description of the dark angel from the chillier regions of Hell—stood Eden. The whispering fell silent; his expression was enough to make anyone think twice about any speculation within his hearing.
Then, just at the point where the silence became excruciating, Bel left her position at the head of the stairs and linked her hand through Eden’s arm. ‘Well, I think I might safely desert my post now, Cousin.’ There was an audible gasp from all around. ‘Have you met the Grand Duchess and your Cousin Sebastian? There are so many of us, I quite lose track of who has met who.’
Ashe beside them, she bore down on Eva. It seemed the crowd were holding their breath, then Sebastian stepped forward, his hand held out. ‘Cousin.’ Eden shook it, bowed to Eva, then was swallowed up in the knot of Ravenhurst men.
‘Come on.’ Jessica tugged at Maude’s arm.
‘No.’ Her head was spinning. ‘No, you go, I am going to sit down.’ She waved her hand vaguely towards the ballroom and slipped away into the crowd before Jessica could catch her.
Inside the ballroom, people were unaware of the stir outside. The orchestra was playing a spirited tune for a set of country dances and Maude was stopped several times by friends eager to talk and gentlemen asking for the honour of a dance.
‘No, thank you,’ she kept repeating. ‘I have been a little unwell, I am just going to watch.’
At last she reached the alcove near the end of the long room and parted the heavy swagged curtains that gave a fragile privacy to the space and its gilded sofa and chai
rs. Later, couples would sit out there to cool off, flirt a little, but now it was empty. Maude sat down and tried to make sense of that had just happened.
Her pulse was racing, her breath came short as though she had been running and she felt dizzy. It was the shock of seeing him, of course, she told herself. She could—she must—regain some control. But what was he doing here, calling himself Ravenhurst, and why had the family accepted him, without any sign of shock or rejection? And what did it mean for her?
The curtains parted, the heavy fringing rustling a warning and Maude plied her fan, trying to look as though she was just sitting out in the cool.
‘Ah, there you are.’ It was Eden. He let the green velvet close behind him and stood looking at her while she got to her feet without any of her usual grace.
‘Eden?’ Then he held out his arms and she was in them, uncaring what had gone before, only that he was here, now, and she could hold him. ‘Eden.’ Her face was pressed into his shoulder, the edges of his waistcoat digging into her bosom, his fob chain pressing against her ribcage, his heart beating as hard as hers.
‘Maude.’ He set her back away from him. ‘My darling, I can’t kiss you with that damned tiara on, I’ll put my eye out.’
She gave a little gasp of laughter. ‘That is not the most romantic thing you could have said, Eden.’
‘No.’ He was smiling at her and hope began to grow in her breast, like a snowdrop pushing up through the snow towards the sun. ‘No, but I hope this may be.’ Before she could move, he was on one knee before her, lifting her hand to his lips.
‘You accused me—rightly—of letting my pride stand before our love. I have the consent of your father to address you, I have the support of the Ravenhursts, your friends, in using my real name—their name—despite the fact that it is my mother’s also. And I have her blessing to go and find her a daughter to love. I believe that if you will do me the honour of becoming my wife, you can do so without losing any of the friends that you value or the life that you are used to.
‘Maude, you have taught me how to feel, how to love and I love you, with all my heart, with my life, with my soul.’ He raised his eyes to hers and what she saw in them stopped the breath in her throat. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘Yes.’ Maude tugged his hand. ‘Oh, yes. Eden, I love you so much, stand up and kiss me—I don’t think I can bear it for a moment longer if you do not!’
He got to his feet. ‘There is going to be a hellish amount of gossip until people get used to me being a Ravenhurst. You are certain?’
‘For an intelligent man, Eden Ravenhurst,’ Maude said, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling his head down to hers, ‘you sometimes worry about the most foolish things. People have been gossiping about me since I put my hair up for the first time.’
The touch of his mouth was everything she had been pining for and she opened to him, parched for his love, aching for his touch. The heat of desire flowed through her like licking flames and yet it was this embrace she craved, the gentle question in his caress, the question she could answer with the trust of her kiss, the completeness of her yielding.
Eden overwhelmed her, and this, she knew, was just the beginning of their journey. Maude abandoned herself to the taste of him, the heat and the hardness, the scent of him. Her love, her husband, her—
‘Thank goodness!’ Bel’s voice jerked them both back to reality. Eden swung round defensively, Maude tight to his side. ‘We’d lost you,’ Bel explained, ‘And we didn’t know if Eden had found you or what you had said and your father is about to—oh, he’s started!’
She held back the curtain and they stepped out to find the orchestra had fallen silent, and so had the guests, all facing towards the podium where Lord Pangbourne was speaking.
‘…so I am delighted to announce, with all their friends here together, the betrothal of my daughter Maude to Mr Eden Ravenhurst.’ Gasps, cheers, a babble of voices rose. He cut them off with a lift of his hand. ‘Maude? Where are you?’
Holding tight to Eden’s hand, Maude let herself be led down the length of the ballroom, the crowd parting in front of them, smiling and reaching out to pat Eden on the back, or touch her hand, or simply stare in amazement until they reached the podium.
‘Papa.’
‘Come up here, both of you.’ Eden lifted her up, then came to stand beside her. ‘I hope you’ve asked her,’ her father said anxiously to him, provoking laughter from everyone close enough to hear.
‘Yes, sir,’ Eden said, smiling and lifting Maude’s hand to kiss it. ‘And she said yes.’
‘Well, Lady Maude Ravenhurst, are you quite exhausted by your wedding day?’ Eden put his arm around her, pulling her close as they looked out from her bedroom window across the darkness of the parkland towards the lights of Knight’s Fee, where the wedding guests were still celebrating, late into the night.
‘A little,’ Maude said, running the tip of her tongue along her lower lip and watching with interest the effect that had on her husband. ‘I might have to lie down in a minute.’ Eden had amused her and touched her, in equal parts, by the propriety of his behaviour towards her in the two months since their betrothal was announced. It had not been easy for her. For him, knowing what to expect from lovemaking, it must have been a strain. But she rather thought they were going to reap the benefit tonight.
‘Hmm, yes, of course you must lie down,’ he said now, deeply serious. ‘After all, you should try out this handsome new bed.’ To Maude’s vast relief Eden had been delighted with Lord Pangbourne’s suggestion that they use the Dower House as their own country home and decorating and furnishing it had kept her jittery nerves under control. It could not do much for them now as he took her hand and led her towards the elegant canopied bed with its rose pink hangings and silken coverlet.
‘I should leave you,’ he added, managing to look concerned. ‘You’ll want to sleep. At what hour do you like to take breakfast, my love?’
‘Eden Ravenhurst,’ Maude said, taking a firm hold of his lapels. ‘If you do not take all your clothes off, this minute, and then mine, and then make love to me, I am going to scream.’
‘I think,’ he said, his trained breath control suddenly all over the place, ‘that it might be faster if we both undress together.’
It was not faster, but it was, Maude discovered, both fun and intensely arousing. She had not expected to find herself giggling helplessly as Eden hopped from one foot to the other as he dragged off his stockings or that taking off her corset would be such a ticklish endeavour or that they would find themselves suddenly still, the laughter dying out of their faces as they just looked at each other.
It was like learning a language with a complex grammar and vocabulary, Maude thought hazily, as she let her hands wander over Eden’s long, naked body. There was what he looked like, how he felt, the textures of his skin, the contours of hard muscle and arching bone, the crisp friction of hair. There was the way he reacted to touch, to the caress of her breath, the tentative sweep of her tongue, the brave explorations of her hands.
He lay there, exotic and golden and beautiful, letting her touch and caress and wonder, doing nothing to alarm her, watching her with dark, heavy-lidded eyes while the pattern of his breathing changed and while his body stirred into rigid arousal.
‘May I touch?’ she asked, hand reaching a fraction of an inch above the heat of him.
‘Yes.’ He sounded as though he was gritting his teeth.
‘Oh,’ she murmured, fascinated by the soft skin over iron hardness, the movement, the…reaction.
‘Maude?’ She whipped her hand away. It sounded as though he was in pain. ‘Oh, my God, Maude.’ And he rolled her over on to her back, the silk slithering beneath her and his weight came down so that her body shifted, instinctively cradling him and his mouth found hers as she sighed and arched. He slipped a hand between their bodies to where she ached, where the heat and the moisture and the need focused in all their intensity, and stroked as he had
that night that seemed so long ago.
Muted against his mouth, her pleas and sobs were answered, not as before with his wicked, skilful fingers, but the thrust of his hips. He stopped just inside her and lifted his head. ‘Maude, look at me.’
She focused her eyes on his face, and saw every muscle strained with the effort of control, saw the love in his eyes, saw the question, and smiled. ‘Oh, yes, Eden, love me.’
Her cry as he entered her was soft and the smile became a gasp of pleasure as he filled her, completed her, thrust long and hard and inexorable into her core until she shattered, sobbing in his embrace and heard his cry, muffled against her breast.
A while later, when she stirred against his shoulder, he shifted her gently on to the pillow and propped himself up on one elbow to look down at her. His hair fell over his shoulder and she reached up to play with it. ‘Well, wife?’
‘Very well.’ She should, she supposed, be feeling shy, but all she felt was wonderful. ‘I had understood it was not very…that it took getting used to, at first.’
‘So did I,’ Eden said, thoughtful. ‘Do you suppose we have a natural talent for making love to each other?’
‘That must be the case,’ Maude agreed, letting go of his hair and using the end of a lock of hers to stoke his nipple experimentally. ‘Oh, look.’
‘I believe everything is in working order,’ Eden said. ‘But we had better check again.’ He dropped his head to nuzzle into the curve of her neck, and she could feel his mouth smiling. ‘How long is it since I told you I loved you?’ he asked, his voice muffled.
‘Several minutes, I feel quite neglected.’
‘Do you?’ He sat up, frowning at her.
‘No.’ Maude shook her head. ‘I feel very much loved. Eden, did I ever say how much I admire you for what you did—going to my father, confronting the Ravenhursts, making peace with your mother? I should never have lectured you about pride, I have too much myself, and yet you took my rejection and you forgave my lack of trust and you gave me—this.’
