The Disgraceful Mr. Ravenhurst

by Louise Allen

  ‘Following you, Teó, all the way from Picardie. You did not make it easy. You have sold the object back to the new count?’

  ‘I have not got it, and if I had, it is not, as you very well know, mine to sell.’ They were talking in riddles, but this must have something to do with Theo’s secretive behaviour and his wish to stay at the Chateau de Beaumartin. Elinor kept her eyes on the woman. ‘You are telling me you do not have it?’

  ‘But, no, I do not! You thought I had? This is enchanting.’ She laughed, a throaty chuckle. Elinor’s fingers curled into her palms. ‘So someone has taken it from you, my poor Teó. By force, one assumes? Were you hurt, mi amor?’

  ‘My skull is thick and has recovered. I thank you for your concern.’ His cold voice sounded anything but grateful.

  ‘Do, please, introduce me, Theo,’ Elinor asked, flicking a glance over her shoulder and managing to sound as though they had all just met in Green Park.

  ‘Yes, please do.’ The other woman smiled, plainly relishing the awkwardness of the situation. Elinor moved slightly so the sun was no longer behind the horse and she could see her more plainly. Tall, whip-cord slim, with honey-gold hair coiled elegantly under a broad-brimmed hat. And older than she, older than Theo. Thirty-five? More? She found she was shocked, which was ridiculous. Men took lovers and wives ten years their junior—why should women not have younger lovers?

  ‘Marquesa, may I introduce my cousin, Miss Ravenhurst. Elinor, this is the Marquesa Ana de Cordovilla.’

  ‘Marquesa.’ Although it seemed bizarre in the middle of a dusty French village street, Elinor produced a curtsy fit for the wife of an English marquis, which she assumed was correct. The Marquesa inclined her head graciously.

  ‘Charming. A family party, in effect.’

  ‘You have just missed my mother, Lady James Ravenhurst,’ Elinor said politely. She was damned if she was going to be goaded into discourtesy, although she rather thought that by introducing her as his cousin, Theo had surprised the Marquesa. Doubtless she had thought she was embarrassing him in front of a new lover. ‘We are staying in Vezelay.’ After a moment she added, ‘With our household.’ The fact that the household consisted of one maid was neither here nor there. This woman appeared, shockingly, to be travelling quite alone.

  The comment did not provoke her into any form of explanation; she was obviously far too self-assured for that. ‘And where are you staying, Teó?’

  ‘Why, in Vezelay, with my aunt,’ he lied easily. ‘In fact, we must be getting back as Elinor’s dressmaker does not seem to be at home.’ He took Elinor’s arm. For a moment she tensed, unsettled by his touch, which sent strange ripples of sensation down her arm. She wanted to free herself, then thought better of it. ‘And you, Ana?’

  ‘Why, at Beaumartin, of course.’

  ‘You have been invited, too?’ Elinor said, then caught herself up before she could blurt out anything more.

  ‘Not yet.’ The Marquesa produced that throaty chuckle again. ‘But I will be. I have letters of introduction. So, we will meet again.’ She looked down at Elinor. ‘And you will be another relative of Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst, of course. Such an interesting man.’ She touched her spurs to her horse’s flanks. ‘Hasta luego.’

  ‘Well!’ Momentarily distracted from her own preoccupations, Elinor watched the horse and rider vanish round the bend. ‘Do you think she and Sebastian—’

  ‘Probably. He had a…lively life before he met Eva. She never mentioned him when we were—I mean, she has never mentioned him before.’

  ‘She is a good ten years older than you.’ Elinor tried to sort out her emotions—anger over that kiss, curiosity about the Marquesa, her need to find out exactly what Theo was up to. She could hardly remonstrate over the kiss, not in the middle of the village street, but somehow that woman was tangled up with the way she felt about it: shaken, angry and very confused.

  ‘So?’ He raised one eyebrow.

  ‘It’s disgusting!’

  ‘Nonsense.’ He appeared amused by her reaction, not shamed as she had expected. ‘What a little prude you are, Elinor.’

  ‘I am not.’ Did he also think her a prude because she would not let him kiss her like that? If that was prudish, then the cap fitted indeed. He was strolling towards the stable and she followed. ‘But you said she was dangerous, did you not? And she appears to have been Sebastian’s lover once, and she is mixed up with whatever is going on between you and the Count.’ He pulled out the gig and began to harness the horse, his movements practised and economical. The stable smells of straw and hay and warm horse were oddly soothing. ‘You cannot tell me you loved her?’ she asked.

  ‘Love is not why one has affairs, Elinor.’

  ‘So it was just sex, then?’

  ‘Elinor!’

  ‘You cannot accuse me of being a prude and then come all over mealy-mouthed yourself.’

  He gave a snort of amusement. ‘Let us just say that it was an exciting experience. You have heard about female spiders who eat their mates? One does not remain the lady’s lover for long, not if one has any sense.’ He backed the horse into the shafts, fastened the traces and led it out. ‘Come on. We need to talk.’

  ‘Indeed we do. About all sorts of things,’ she added crossly to the broad shoulders in front of her. It was not until she was sitting next to Theo that it occurred to Elinor that she should be having the vapours and refusing to have anything more to do with him.

  She wondered if she had been to blame for him kissing her. Had he sensed the way she had looked at him, fooling herself into believing it was simply aesthetic appreciation of his long, fit body? Surely not? Surely they had just been friends and now…Now they weren’t. Obviously she was completely lacking in sensibility, because all she wanted to do was understand. Understand why he had kissed her, why it had been so horrid and disappointing and why, despite that, she felt so disturbingly, pleasantly, confused inside.

  Damn, damn, double—no, make that triple damn. Theo let the horse find its own way. Beside him Elinor was almost radiating emotion. The trouble was, he was not certain he could read it. She must be furious with him about that kiss. Upset as well—she was a virgin, he reminded himself, rubbing salt in the wounds. But he was not ready to discuss that kiss yet—not until he worked out why he had done it. On the other hand, that left very little else to safely talk about. The fact that he had lost his temper and kissed her was like having an elephant in the gig with them—it somewhat dominated both their thoughts.

  There was a flush on Elinor’s cheeks and her lower lip looked swollen. Hell, did I do that? Probably. He had kissed her with temper, not gentleness, for God knows what reason other than that to see her responding to the count was more than he could stand.

  And it was not, he admitted to himself with painful honesty, simply because he did not trust de Beaumartin. His bluestocking Cousin Elinor was getting under his skin in a way he did not recognise and was very sure he did not like. It was not lust, exactly. He knew what that felt like perfectly well. This was different.

  He shot her another glance, less obviously this time. She was sitting, apparently composed, but with a faint frown line between her brows. Then it came to him, like a blow to the solar plexus: that had probably been her first kiss.

  It was not that she had retired to sit on the shelf and be a comfort to her mother because after three lively Seasons she had failed to secure an offer. No, Elinor had never come out, not in the way his sisters had, with parties and all the expectation that they would secure husbands. The whole extended Ravenhurst clan appeared to accept from the start the fact that ‘poor dear Elinor’ with her red hair and her freckles, her alarming scholarship and intelligence and her inability to pretend she was a brainless butterfly, was destined for spinsterhood amidst the dusty splendour of her mother’s library. Had any man so much as flirted with her before?

  ‘I should not have kissed you,’ he said abruptly as they came into the square that sat on the saddle of land a third
of the way up the Vezelay hill.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that her hands were knotted in her lap, but her face was composed. Was she so used to swallowing insult and neglect then?

  ‘Not like that,’ Theo pushed on in the face of her lack of response. ‘I was angry with him, and frustrated by not being able to see my way through this problem I have concerning him.’ He reined in. From the far side of the square Hythe got up from the wine shop under the lime trees and begin to walk across. ‘That is not an excuse, you understand.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed again, her voice colourless as she began to gather up her skirts in one hand so she could climb down.

  On an impulse Theo shook the reins and the horse moved forwards. He waved Hythe away and they continued across the square and down the hill on the other side. The road turned as it went, so they were out of view of the houses almost immediately, passing between small trees and bushes, the farmland opening out in front of them. Theo turned the gig into a wide, flat opening that must once have been a small quarry, reined in and wrapped the reins around the whip in its stand.

  They were in a small green amphitheatre, quite alone. A skylark was singing overhead. Beside him Elinor sat silent; at least she was not scrambling down in alarm to escape him.

  ‘Had you ever been kissed before?’ Theo asked abruptly, a way of asking tactfully escaping him.

  ‘No, I have not. And if that is a sample of what to expect, I am not sorry.’ The tartness in her voice made him smile, despite his guilty conscience. Elinor was not about to succumb to maidenly hysterics. He rather wished she would, he could deal with those.

  ‘It was an extraordinarily inept performance on my part,’ he apologised. ‘I would like to believe I usually do better than that.’ She was silent, but he could almost hear her mind working. ‘Shall we get down and talk? You aren’t in a hurry to get back, are you?’ That might have been better put, you idiot.

  ‘This is a lovely spot.’ Elinor jumped down without waiting for him—or commenting that she was quite naturally anxious to get out of his company and into her mother’s protection as soon as possible—and went to sit on a grassy bank spangled with daisies. She wrapped her arms round her knees defensively and watched him as he walked across to stand before her. ‘I think I understand. You really wanted to box my ears, didn’t you Theo?’

  ‘Yes, I wanted to box your ears. But I also wanted to kiss you.’ He dug deep for complete honesty. ‘I wanted to do both because I did not want him kissing you. Does that make any sense?’

  ‘Dog in the manger?’ Elinor suggested, untying her bonnet and dropping it on the grass beside her. She tipped back her head and watched him, her expression open and candid and curious. She seemed strangely relieved by that explanation.

  ‘In a way. It was territorial, certainly. I’m afraid men do tend to react that way when women are involved. If you were my sister I could stand over you and frighten off any man showing an interest. But—’

  ‘I am not your sister and so other…instincts come into play?’ She was interested, he realised, intellectually interested in how he and de Beaumartin were interacting. ‘And I was not meekly doing what you wanted, so you did the male equivalent of stamping your foot.’ And now she was laughing at him; he could see it in her eyes despite the puzzlement on her face.

  ‘How very unflattering, the strong light you hold up to my primitive thought processes,’ Theo said wryly. He shouldn’t be feeling better, but he was. Her very lack of feminine wiles was refreshing.

  ‘So, we have come here so you can apologise, or so you can show me what a proper kiss is like?’ Elinor enquired, taking him aback.

  ‘Would you like me to?’ he asked, looking down at her, his hat in his hands.

  ‘I thought you would never ask,’ she said with such startling frankness that he burst out laughing. ‘I am dying of curiosity now. And stop laughing—I am sure you can’t do it properly if you are laughing.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I can.’ He set his tall hat on the grass and dropped down to sit beside her, stripping off his gloves. ‘But laughing while kissing is an advanced lesson.’

  The pupils of her eyes were wide and dark as she watched him, but she did not seem apprehensive. Theo cupped her shoulders with his hands, feeling the fine bones through the cloth, conscious, as he had not been in his anger, of her warmth and the faint, innocent, scent of soap. He wanted to kiss her very much, he realised, pulling her towards him as he bent his head and found her lips, careful, aware that they would be tender.

  Elinor came against him with no resistance, her hands clasping his elbows as if to steady herself. He let their own weight carry them down until she was lying on the turf, eyes closed, mouth still pliant under his. The curves of her body were distracting, sending his own body messages he had no intention of listening to. Theo moved, careful not to let her become aware of his instant state of arousal, and concentrated on making love to her mouth.

  If Elinor had thought about kisses before, she had imagined sensation purely on the lips. A pressure, warmth, possibly distasteful moistness. This, the thing Theo was doing to her, involved her whole body and every sense, even though he was touching only her mouth and her shoulders.

  Distantly she could still hear the birds, almost drowned by the hammering of her heart. Her nostrils were filled with the scents of crushed grass and warm man. Theo smelt of clean linen, of leather, faintly, and not unpleasantly, of hot man and subtly of something she could only guess must be his own, indefinable scent.

  His mouth was certainly moist. She had not expected to find that exciting, nor had she expected the heat and the way his lips moved gently over hers, caressing them. Then she felt his tongue running along the seam of her lips, pressing, and understood that he wanted her to open to him. Why? He was not angry with her as he had been before, when she had perceived the invasion of his tongue as an assault, not a caress.

  Now the intrusion made her gasp with the sensual shock, the sound swallowed up as his tongue probed, found her own, caressed the sensitive flesh. Then he was sucking, nibbling, at her lower lip and the gasps became moans and she found her body was arching, shockingly, against the weight of his chest as he hung, poised, over her.

  And then he had released her, was lying beside her, his weight on one elbow while he stroked the hair back from her flushed face. ‘Now that, Nell,’ he said with a smile that was oddly tender, ‘was a proper kiss.’

  Elinor shut her eyes hastily, unable to meet his. Not yet. From behind closed lids she tried to come to terms with her body, which, alarmingly, was not returning to normal now he had stopped. Her breasts ached, there was heat in her belly and lower. She felt restless and agitated and—

  What did he call me? She opened her eyes on to the bright sunlight and pushed herself up on to her elbows. Theo’s eyes were dark and heavy-lidded and suddenly she did not want to speculate about what he might be feeling.

  She had asked him to kiss her out of curiosity, pure and simple, because she was never going to get the chance to be kissed again and he was, after all, just her friend and the only man she could possibly ask such a thing of. And now…Now she realised she had started something that she could not stop, for herself at least. You could not put that sort of knowledge back in the bottle and forget you did not know what a man’s mouth felt like on yours, how his body felt, so intimately close. How he tasted, smelt. How this man felt. And there, at the back of her mind, was the nagging doubt that it had not been simply curiosity, that she had wanted him to kiss her because…

  ‘That was very interesting.’ Elinor sat up abruptly. It was essential she gave him no clue how this had affected her. If he thought she was a little idiot for naïvely asking him to kiss her, so much the better. ‘I can quite see why young ladies are not supposed to do it.’ She made herself look at him again and was surprised to find that he was still Theo, large and friendly and smiling at her, the dimple appearing in his chin. If she leaned forwards, she
could just reach it with her lips. No! No, this wasn’t the same. He had not changed, but she had.

  ‘Thank you,’ she added, sounding stilted to her own ears. Knowing how she felt, guessing how she must look, Elinor had a sudden recollection of a number of occasions when she had seen Cousin Bel looking just like that. Goodness, that must have been when she was meeting Ashe! Hastily she shut down her imagination and concentrated on smoothing her skirts.

  ‘It was my pleasure, I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ Theo said, as though she had just thanked him for carrying her easel. ‘I did,’ he added, making her blush.

  ‘I said it was interesting,’ Elinor said, speaking sharply in her anxiety least he think she would want him to do it again. ‘I certainly will not allow Count Leon to do any such thing,’ she added.

  ‘I should hope not. Save all your kisses for me,’ Theo teased. At least, she supposed he was teasing—they would not do this again, of course. His expression became suddenly serious. ‘You now know so much about why I am here that it is probably more dangerous, for both of us, not to tell you the whole.’

  Elinor caught her breath. At last he is going to confide. And whatever it was, however dreadful, at least it would be something she could deal with intellectually, not some emotional puzzle she could not understand.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘I told you that I make my living buying and selling antiquities.’ She murmured assent, forcing her scattered wits to focus on this and not on what had just happened. ‘I often work for collectors, on commission. Sometimes for a specific object, sometimes simply to keep my eyes open for whatever it is that interests them—early Italian paintings, small Roman ceramics and so forth. In the case of the late Count de Beaumartin, it was to track down the dispersed furnishings and paintings from his Paris house and the chateau.

  ‘I had some success and gained his confidence. He hinted that he had an object of great worth he wished to sell, but it was for a specialised market. Finally I managed to tease out of him that it was a piece of seventeenth-century metalwork of a highly erotic nature. I need not go into detail—’