Harlequin Historical July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Virginia Heath

  ‘Unchristian!’ The anger came swift and hot. ‘It was criminal, Abigail.’ To put it mildly. ‘She had been doing well for years.’ He remembered that halcyon decade with bittersweet fondness because he had believed she was finally cured. She laughed. She went out and she had embraced and enjoyed life, until the cruelty of his brother had sent her to the fetid inner circle of damnation of Mill House. ‘There was no moral justification for him to have done what he did. There was barely a legal justification either!’

  His brother too, had found a loophole in the law, and had got one of her original London physicians, a man who hadn’t treated her in fifteen years, to sign the certificate condemning her. And with a certificate from one of the most respected doctors in Harley Street attesting to her madness, he had then legally hired people to use brute force to have her committed within hours of their father’s funeral and while Luke was conveniently two hundred miles from home attending it. The location had been deliberate too, when he could have found any number of similar cesspits in Devon or Cornwall, Cassius had chosen one on the plains of Wiltshire, over a hundred and fifty miles inland from Tregally, and had given them strict instructions not to allow her any visitors. A cruel stipulation, but because it was his money which paid them, Cassius’s hired gaolers stuck to it like glue.

  ‘I sincerely hope he rots in hell for it!’ The senseless, brutal damage of those three hideous years still lingered and likely always would.

  Abigail wiped a fat tear away, nodding. ‘I cannot say that I blame you. In your shoes I would hate him too, though there was no love lost between him and me either...by the end.’

  Behind them, the five-minute call rang out, reminding everyone to return to their seats and he sensed Hope was watching before he saw that she was hanging back waiting for him and wished he were callous enough to abandon his sister-in-law to her tears. Instead, while she wept and blew her nose, he reluctantly shook his head, mouthing the words ‘two minutes’ to his friend and praying this wouldn’t take that long. Hope smiled in sympathy and followed the crowd and he wished with all his heart he could have gone with her.

  Lord, she looked lovely tonight.

  Green was certainly her colour and the conservative drape of her plain silk gown did splendid things for her figure, turning the demure garment into a temptress’s gown which set off her fiery hair to perfection and unintentionally rendering her the most striking woman in the room. Luke would have complimented her when he first saw her this evening, because she fair stole his breath away with her unique beauty but knew she wouldn’t appreciate it. Hope didn’t trust flattery, and as he had repeatedly watched gentleman after gentleman turn to stare covetously tonight, he understood why.

  Most of those gentlemen only saw the sinful face and figure, but only the truly privileged ever got to peek at the complex and alluring woman who inhabited it. Luke was obviously beguiled by her fine figure, to be frank what hot-blooded male wouldn’t be? But he was thoroughly seduced by her mind more. She was sharp. She was smart, she was tough and she made him smile. Especially when they were alone on the balcony and they dissected their day.

  ‘I am so alone, Lucius. Husbandless. Childless... Rudderless.’ He had to stifle the groan which threatened to escape, reminding himself that, like it or not, Abigail was still his responsibility. ‘I have spent the last decade being every inch the Marchioness of Thundersley, trying to please him. I ran his household. Planned meticulous meals which he frequently missed. Organised all the endless parties and dinners at his behest purely so that Cassius could impress his associates. Answered all his correspondence. Dealt with all the unsavoury issues he created as best I could. Kept his secrets. Protected his reputation. And now I do not even have that purpose to keep me sane.’

  She stared down at the ruined handkerchief twisted in her fingers. ‘I am mortified by the awful things I did last week. But I wasn’t quite myself that day and the world seemed...a very dark place indeed...’ The raw nerve vibrated as she plucked it again. ‘And look at me now. Blubbering in a theatre. Sometimes, I think I would make a ripe candidate for the lunatic asylum.’ He had always loathed both of those words—lunatic and asylum—so filled with condemnation and hopelessness. ‘Because my rash behaviour lately is so out of character and irrational that it scares me, especially as now I have managed to drive you away with it too.’

  ‘Things will get better.’

  She risked peeking up at him again and he was sure he saw genuine fear in her eyes, even though his head cautioned it was all a little too convenient.

  ‘Will they?’

  He knew better than most how change could play with the mind. His mother’s illness sometimes swung wildly, negatively and irrationally at the smallest deviation from her routine and until he had understood that, responding with forbearance rather than frustration, she had made slow progress—or none. Abigail had no one in that soulless mausoleum to show her the same care, except the servants now that he had abandoned her.

  ‘Time heals all wounds Abigail.’ Not strictly true as it was time, combined with patience, compassion and a great deal of money which had eventually helped his mother. She would likely never fully heal. He knew that now and accepted it. The damage done to her by first his neglectful father and then after his vengeful brother had broken her spirit had been too great.

  ‘Will you help me?’

  More storm clouds gathered ominously around his head. ‘As much as I am able.’

  ‘Thank you. You have no idea how much that means. You are the only family I have left here in London. That is if I still have a place here in London...’ She forced a smile and something about her wide-eyed and innocent expression instantly seemed fake. ‘Do I still have my beloved home which Cassius never thought to leave me?’

  In his haste to escape her that fateful night, Luke had completely forgotten about his offer. While he was glad to leave Berkeley Square and all its bad memories behind, that she had reminded him he had gifted it, so soon after apparently bearing her tortured soul to him, reminded him that leopards rarely changed their spots and that his gut was rarely wrong. ‘It is still yours.’

  ‘Oh, thank goodness.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I was dreading you would have me shipped back to my father in Wiltshire a hundred miles away from everything I hold dear, like your brother did your poor mother.’

  ‘I am not Cassius. That house is yours for as long as you choose to live in it, Abigail.’

  ‘I should like it if you weren’t a stranger to it... Brother.’

  His canny gut clenched in warning some more, while his mind whirred. She was desperately lonely and lost. He knew how that felt and, whether he liked it or not, they were family and she was still his responsibility.

  Dear god, he hoped that wouldn’t be for ever.

  ‘I won’t be.’

  She smiled, her bottom lip still dangerously quivering a little. ‘Then how about dinner tomorrow? Nothing formal. Just a nice, cosy family supper? It would give me something to look forward to...’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Theatre Royal saw Mrs Roberta Brookes

  accept, not one, but five standing ovations for her final performance in Così fan Tutte last night. However, while nobody doubts her virtuosa performance was a triumph, it was her daughter Miss Charity Brookes who stole the show after she hastily stepped into the role of Despina at the last moment when the original actress was indisposed. The audience sat transfixed at the sheer beauty of her voice, many declaring she sang like an angel—which, regular readers of this column will doubtless appreciate, is gloriously ironic, considering her less than angelic reputation...

  Whispers from Behind the Fan

  June 1814

  Twenty-One Bedford Place was packed to the rafters and she had lost sight of Luke in the melee over an hour ago. Obviously, with Charity watching the pair of them like a hawk for any signs of partiality, and because Hope was suprem
ely conscious of the fact that she was rather partial to him despite her legendary pessimism regarding men, she had made no effort to seek him out even though she wanted to.

  She had barely seen hide nor hair of him for three days since the opera, and in the brief exchanges they had managed when they had twice collided in the street, she had not had the opportunity to ask him what his sister-in-law had said to sour his mood. Because there had been no denying that during the second half, after he finally returned to his seat a full ten minutes after the performance had started, the newly minted Marquess of Thundersley had had a face like thunder itself and, for reasons she wasn’t prepared to decipher, that had worried her.

  It wasn’t like Luke to be so dour and occupied, and with him imminently leaving Bloomsbury for at least the next two weeks, she was eager to get to the bottom of it before he left for Cornwall to fetch his mother and she worried the entire time he was gone.

  ‘Are you sure you would not appreciate the fresh air on the terrace?’ Lord Ealing was like an irritating insect. Or perhaps, with his lipless mouth and short, stick-thin body, an eel lurking in the reeds waiting to pounce on an insect. ‘Only it is rather stuffy in here and you do look a bit flushed, Miss Hope.’ The darting eyes flicked back and forth between her apparently hot face and her décolleté as if he had no control over them. If she had had the common sense to grab a shawl before the party started, she would be making a point of tightening it around her to let him know she found his gawping both rude and offensive.

  ‘If I look anything, my lord, it is bored.’ She never should have listened to Charity and worn this particular gown or allowed herself to be talked into eschewing the gauzy fichu she had laid out to pair with it. The single inch and a half of cleavage it revealed was proving to be problematic as it drew male stares like a magnet. Before Lord Ealing’s bulbous eyeballs had latched on to her, it had been Horace Strickland the renowned painter of horses and purveyor of profusive perspiration, and before him it had been the husband of a well-known actress who had now sunk so irredeemably in her estimation that she would never be able to be civil to him again.

  And they were only an hour in.

  ‘Haven’t you got someone else you can bother?’

  ‘You know my tender heart only beats for you, my flame-haired and fulsome Aphrodite.’ Those eyes fixed to her chest as the tip of his tongue moistened his non-existent lips, making her feel dirty and exposed.

  As usual, she covered those unpleasant internal sensations with outward disdain. ‘Then I fear your tender heart is doomed for ever to be disappointed, my lord, as mine barely notices you exist.’ To prove that inescapable fact, Hope glanced wistfully towards the hallway, wondering if anybody would notice if she slipped upstairs to continue meticulously copying out her finally finished manuscript. Or change her stupid gown. She most definitely had to change this gown. ‘In fact, at this precise moment, I wish with all my heart that you didn’t.’

  Like the idiot he was, Lord Ealing was delighted by her insult. ‘If your continued uninterest is a calculated feminine tactic to pique my interest further, you should know it is working for I am charmed completely by you, Miss Hope. Utterly and hopelessly charmed.’

  ‘Oh, good grief! How unoriginal and tedious.’ Luke suddenly appeared out of nowhere at her elbow like a giant henchman, the seams of his coat straining across the pickaxe-honed muscles of his belligerently folded arms. ‘You have my solemn pledge I will never make a pun out of your name again, Hope.’ Then he seemed to increase in height as he loomed menacingly over Lord Ealing, pinning him with his icy glare as he forced him to look up at him. ‘Why are you still stood here when the lady clearly told you to go and bother somebody else?’

  ‘Well... I... Um...’

  Her wild-looking knight swatted the intimidated gnat away with a dismissive brush of both hands. ‘Be gone, fool, before you annoy me too and then you will be sorry.’

  And miraculously, just like that, he was.

  Luke smugly watched the odious lord scurry across the drawing room as if his breeches were on fire, then grinned, thoroughly pleased with himself. ‘Well who knew? Intimidation is as effective a deterrent to an unwanted suitor as a romantic tryst is? Although I still prefer my method and, I suspect, so do you.’ He winked then, making no attempt to stifle his amusement at bringing up that kiss again simply because he enjoyed reminding her of it as often as possible to vex her.

  Not that she needed his reminder. Her wayward thoughts revisited the dratted thing much too often of their own accord.

  ‘I can assure you there was nothing romantic about your drunken slobbering, Lord Trouble.’ As she shuddered in mock disgust, because the wretch hadn’t slobbered in the slightest and knew it, she fought the urge to smile back at him. She allowed only the corners of her mouth to curve upward because she was pleased with her quick response now that she had finally conquered the flustered blush which always accompanied his constant reminders. ‘But I thank you for your timely interference in my predicament all the same. Lord Ealing’s pitiful attempts at seduction were starting to grate and I promised my parents faithfully that I wouldn’t make a scene. They still haven’t forgiven me for tipping an entire decanter of port over Lord Ogilvy’s head in the middle of their last soirée, though to be fair more because they had the devil of a job getting the stain out of the Persian than because I punished Lord Ogilvy for excessive ogling.’

  ‘Sadly, I suspect I have only granted you a temporary reprieve from the ogling tonight.’ He inclined his head to where the eel-like Ealing sulked as he glared at them. ‘As your sunny, welcoming character has clearly made a lasting impression on him. Alongside a few others, I notice.’

  If he had noticed, he should have rescued her sooner.

  ‘We both know it isn’t my character which attracts them like flies to the dung heap.’ Curse this stupid gown! She had only donned it because she had wanted to look pretty, and she had only wanted to look pretty because of... Instinctively she narrowed her eyes at Luke, peeved that this was actually all his fault and more peeved that it really wasn’t. ‘Why are men so reliably shallow?’

  ‘To be fair to my sex, it is a base animal instinct we have no control over and, as much as it might pain you to be so, you are rather...beautiful. Exceptionally so tonight.’ It galled her that she was thrilled with the compliment, when such nonsense from other gentlemen was usually met with short shrift. But Luke wasn’t most men and he had never stared at her in the lascivious way most men did. He frowned as his dark eyes swept her up and down then focused resolutely on her face. ‘Perhaps a sack might disguise the problem? Something baggy enough and thick enough that it conceals all that overt and striking femininity you were cursed with.’

  ‘Are you suggesting their ungentlemanly behaviour is somehow my fault?’

  He laughed as she bristled, holding his palms up in surrender. ‘Not in the slightest, I wouldn’t dare say anything of the sort, so don’t you dare reach for the port and douse me with it. Those men are crass, ill-mannered brutes, ruled entirely by their urges and who should be heartily ashamed of themselves for their unseemly leering and panting. I am merely suggesting a way that you might mitigate against all the unwanted attention which you so obviously loathe as that gown is, frankly, temptation personified and it requires a strong male constitution to admire it with restraint.’

  His fingers dispassionately tugged at the lace of her short, capped sleeve. ‘And the damnedest thing is that I know on any other woman, this same frock would look positively demure, plain even, as it is neither too low nor too tight and not the least bit showy. Yet...’ He sighed as he let go and shook his head as if it was all an unfathomable conundrum. ‘On you, it is a deadly weapon. So much so, you outshine every other woman in this room. And without even trying to.’

  He did compliments so well and that one in particular warmed her, so she schooled her features into her blandest mask in case it sho
wed. He was much too self-assured already, he really didn’t need any more encouragement. Not that she had any plans of encouraging him. ‘Sackcloth is notoriously itchy.’

  ‘It is and it’s bound to chafe. But if sackcloth is not to your taste, a nun’s habit would likely have a similar effect on all the collective lusty males in the vicinity. Or then again, maybe it wouldn’t, as there is something devilishly attractive about the forbidden and you are bound to look positively sinful in a habit too. Because you look positively sinful in everything without trying to too, don’t you—my flame-haired and fulsome Aphrodite.’

  He was insufferable. ‘Clearly you could have rescued me ten minutes earlier, couldn’t you? But you were having too much fun at my expense.’

  ‘That I was.’

  ‘And you wonder why no woman has rushed you up the aisle?’

  ‘It’s a mystery to be sure.’ He raised his arm. ‘Care to take a turn around the terrace for some fresh air with me instead, and we can discuss it further?’

  ‘Only on the understanding that I am taking a turn purely for the fresh air and most definitely not your dull company.’

  ‘I assumed that was a given, Aphrodite.’

  After a quick check to confirm Charity was nowhere in sight, Hope happily threaded her hand through his elbow and allowed him to lead her to the open French doors on to the terrace and freedom. They weren’t the only people escaping the crush inside, so when they couldn’t find any peace to discuss anything properly beyond small talk, in silent tacit agreement they edged towards the gate in the back hedge and escaped out into the communal garden beyond when nobody was looking. Unsurprisingly, for ten o’clock in the evening, it was deserted. Certainly quiet enough that she could finally ask about his sister-in-law.

  ‘What got your dander up the other night at the theatre?’