A Lady Dares

by Bronwyn Scott

  ‘I’m not as interesting as all that.’ Elise laughed off the compliment. ‘I think you’re being polite.’ They’d been talking of wind and sails. Rather, she’d been talking and Charles had been listening. It had been disappointing to discover that even though Charles’s father had been one of her father’s investors, the interest in boating stopped there. Charles like the social aspect of the yachting season, but didn’t care much for the engineering. In fact, he’d known nothing at all about the differences in ketch or cutter riggings.

  ‘You make it easy to listen,’ Charles offered gallantly with a smile.

  ‘Will you stay for tea?’ Elise asked, removing her bonnet, only to be met with a discreet cough from Evans, who waited to take her things. ‘Is something wrong, Evans?’ She couldn’t imagine what it could be. Evans never interrupted. But even the littlest things could be a crisis in his eyes. Perhaps Mary the cook had burnt the scones, or there weren’t enough tea cakes. It would be her own fault. She’d been encouraging Mary to scale back her food preparation now that there was only one person in the house to feed. Well, two, counting the meals sent down to Dorian.

  ‘Miss Sutton, you have a caller waiting,’ Evans said neutrally.

  ‘More specifically, I am waiting.’ Low, masculine tones drew Elise’s eyes to the doorway of the drawing room. Dorian stood there, leaning negligently against the door frame, but his eyes belied his informality. There was tension behind them and displeasure. ‘I’ve been waiting over an hour.’

  He was scolding her! He’d barged in unannounced and made himself comfortable in her home and then accused her of being unavailable to him. His audacity knew no limits. Elise drew herself up and squared her shoulders. ‘Then you should make an appointment.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware I needed one.’

  Charles was looking decidedly uncomfortable at the interchange. ‘Lord Rowland, I had heard you were back. Welcome home.’ But there was no welcome in Charles’s voice. She heard the coldness, the implication that Lord Rowland was not appropriate company for her. She heard the scold, too, over her disobedience. He’d asked her to dismiss Rowland and she hadn’t. ‘Miss Sutton, might I have a word with you in private before I go? Lord Rowland, if you’ll excuse us?’

  Charles’s face was red with emotion when they stepped into the small music room off the main hall. ‘Will you allow me to stay? Or perhaps you will allow me to escort him from the premises? You cannot be alone with the bounder!’

  Poor Charles, she doubted he’d have any success removing Dorian even if she wanted him to. She’d seen Dorian take on a bully much larger than Charles. Such an action would only serve to embarrass Charles. ‘I appreciate the offer, but I assure you it is unnecessary. Lord Rowland has news of the shipyard, nothing more.’

  Charles’s faced turned even redder. ‘There is another issue, Miss Sutton—Elise, if I may? We’ve been friends for a long time. I feel it is my duty to bring this to your attention. Your conduct is not all it should be. It hurts me to say it and I know this is a difficult time for you. Your family has abandoned you, but you cannot abandon convention. You cannot continue to live alone in this house and you certainly cannot entertain men without a chaperon!’

  He warmed to his subject, his ardour for the topic not in doubt. ‘Elise, you should not have invited even me in for tea. But to have one man invited in and to have another man waiting for you, it is most unseemly. If anyone were to find out, it could be disastrous. We are fortunate town is still deserted and the Season isn’t under way yet.’ He paused to gather his breath after his last rush of words. ‘Let me send someone to you. My aunt, perhaps?’ He looked at her expectantly. ‘I know you are alone. But you don’t need to be.’

  ‘Thank you, Charles. I will think about it.’ She hoped she sounded sincere. She had no wish to hurt his feelings. He was doing what he thought best. But frankly, she was mortified by his outburst. Was he really as prissy as all that? She had not noticed that vein had run so deep before. Of course she’d never stepped so far out of line before, either. There’d been no need for him to preach. Really, that was the only word for it. There was being concerned about propriety and then there was concerned. Charles was of the latter and she had no tolerance for that. She was a grown woman of twenty-three. She was more than capable of looking after herself.

  He gave her a stiff bow, hat in hand, his demeanour slightly colder than when he’d arrived. ‘Good day, Miss Sutton.’

  ‘Are you happy now?’ Elise faced Dorian once the door was shut on Charles’s departing back. ‘You’ve managed to anger one of my dear friends and make me look quite the strumpet.’ Whatever détente they’d experienced last night over tea and a fire had been nothing more than a mirage. Except for the clothes, there was very little of that gentleman about Dorian today.

  ‘He’d like to be more than a friend,’ Dorian scoffed. ‘Is that the sort you prefer? No wonder you’d never been kissed. I can’t imagine he knows the first thing of how to go about it.’

  ‘My preferences are none of your business.’ Elise felt her face heating up as she swept past him into the drawing room. She was not having this conversation where the servants could hear whatever outlandish remark might come out of his mouth.

  ‘You might think differently about what is my business or not after you hear what I have to say.’ Dorian eased the doors to a half-shut position, allowing them some privacy.

  ‘I do not like the look on your face or the tone of your voice,’ Elise replied.

  ‘I assure you, you will like even less what I have come to say.’ Dorian gestured to the sofa and settled into the matching chair across from her. ‘Now that we’re comfortable, why don’t you tell me how you’ve come to know Damien Tyne?’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘I don’t know him at all,’ Elise didn’t even hesitate to answer. The name was nothing to her.

  ‘Did your father?’

  Elise shook her head. ‘No. I kept all the orders and accounts. If we’d had any business with him, I would have known.’

  Dorian looked doubtful and she felt the need to protest her point. ‘I would have known,’ Elise insisted, wanting to wipe that sceptical look off his oh-so-sure face.

  ‘Unless your father had private dealings with him.’

  ‘Is “private” your way of suggesting “secret”?’ Elise bristled at the connotations wrapped in Dorian’s implication that all was not as it seemed. ‘My father was not that sort of man.’

  Dorian remained unfazed by her challenge. ‘I’m not insinuating he was. But Tyne is exactly the sort. Most of his dealings are not public.’ He leaned back in the chair, assuming a pose of relaxed confidence, so certain he had the upper hand, so certain he knew more than she did about her own business’s dealings, and the assumption galled. ‘Let’s assume for the moment that you are correct and you or your father had no knowledge of Tyne. Explain, then, why he sent two men to your shipyard last night.’

  ‘What?’ Elise’s earlier fears that something had happened surged to the fore. ‘The boat? Is it all right?’ She didn’t know what she’d do if the boat was ruined. There was no question of starting over. Until this moment she’d not fully realised how much she was counting on that yacht. It had come to hold all her dreams, her future, her everything.

  ‘The yacht is fine.’ Dorian gave a wry smile. ‘I’m fine, too, thanks for the asking.’

  ‘Of course you are.’ Elise covered her impolite manners hastily. It wasn’t well done of her to think of the boat first. She’d just been so shocked. ‘Otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting here.’ She was rambling now, still trying to digest the implications of armed men coming to her shipyard. Dorian’s comment clearly indicated it hadn’t been a social call or even a business call. ‘If you’d been hurt, I’d have been outraged,’ she protested.

  Dorian laughed. ‘Your concern is touching and almost believable. Maybe next time you should flutter your eyelashes and look a bit pale when you say that. Fortunately, I was more than
a match enough for the two of them, no need to worry.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why I wasn’t,’ Elise replied smartly. Whatever sympathy she’d been mustering on Dorian’s behalf fled at the teasing. The man who’d pressed a knife to an employee’s throat for a simple infraction was more than able to handle two night-time thugs. She could also easily imagine that such men were not as foreign to him as they were to her. It had not escaped her, in all the shock of Dorian’s revelations, that he was worried because he knew this Damien Tyne.

  Elise folded her hands in her lap and looked Dorian squarely in the eye. ‘Let us reverse our roles for a moment. I cannot answer your question, but it seems you can answer mine. Why don’t you tell me how you know Damien Tyne?’

  She noted the tight line of Dorian’s mouth as he answered, ‘He’s a man you don’t want to know.’

  ‘Some say that about you,’ Elise challenged, recalling Charles’s reaction when she’d told him. ‘I’m afraid I’ll need to know more than that before I can decide what is to be done.’ She was tired of men deciding who she should or shouldn’t know. For a moment, she thought Dorian would refuse, but he had none of Charles’s qualms.

  ‘He’s a gun runner. I came across him in the Mediterranean.’

  Elise schooled her features to give nothing away. She’d been prepared for unpleasant news and Dorian was trying to shock her. Still, this was quite unpleasant. ‘How do you know this?’

  Dorian shrugged noncommittally. ‘I was in a position to know, that is all. Tyne is a man with no code, no loyalties, and now he’s come looking for you.’

  ‘Or for you.’ She would not let shock overrule her sensibilities and reason. ‘I had no such trouble until you came along. Forgive me for saying it, Mr Rowland, but this Damien Tyne seems more like your sort.’

  Such words would get a rise out of any man she’d ever known. But he merely sat there, an infuriating grin on his face as he nodded, carrying on some secret discussion in his mind she was not privy to.

  ‘I liked it better when you called me Dorian,’ he drawled. His blue eyes held hers in a most disconcerting fashion reminiscent of spontaneous kisses and the promise of illicit pleasures. ‘For your information, Tyne is more my sort, but he definitely came looking for you. The men last night said explicitly they’d been sent to see what was going on at the shipyard.’ He paused, his tone softer when he spoke again. ‘If it makes you feel better, I’d hoped it might have been me, too.’

  That caught her off guard. It reminded her briefly of the man she’d glimpsed last night in front of the fire, who had for a short period of time seemed almost like a gentleman. Best not to be swayed by the clothes, she scolded herself. Beneath these layers lay the man who swaggered around in low-slung culottes. Still, Elise couldn’t help but be touched that this man she barely knew had wanted to take her place.

  His hand reached out across the short distance between them and covered hers where they lay in her lap, his eyes serious. ‘I might suggest you start thinking about the identity of the rat who would have tipped Tyne off about the boat.’

  ‘I’ve told no one,’ Elise answered truthfully. She’d held her tongue on the one opportunity she’d been tempted to tell Charles.

  ‘Then who did you tell about me? Anyone besides Charles?’

  ‘No.’ There’d been no one else to tell. It was a rather sad realisation. With her brother gone back to university, there’d been no one else to discuss her days with. The house was as empty as her social calendar, not that her acquaintances would have approved of such conversation. The only one of her friends who might, Mercedes Lockhart, was miles away in Brighton and newly married.

  ‘Well, there you go. Charles is your rat.’ Dorian released her hand and sat back with smug satisfaction at a mystery so easily solved. ‘It’s not a huge leap of logic to assume you’ve hired a foreman because there’s actual work to do.’

  No, it wasn’t. She couldn’t argue with that and Charles’s father had been an investor. He’d known there was a yacht left uncompleted. Even the obtuse Charles could put two and two together. ‘I can’t imagine Charles would be acquainted with a man like Tyne.’ Elise rose and walked to the window, looking down into the street.

  ‘And yet, I’m here. I’m sure there are those who’d argue it isn’t likely for a gently bred young lady like yourself to know a man like me. If you could know me, what’s to stop Charles from knowing a man like Tyne?’

  Elise turned from the window. ‘I find it doubtful. Charles is so very proper, as he demonstrated today, so very conscious of his social standing. It makes little sense that he would run to a man such as the one you’ve described and give him that information. And for what reason? Charles doesn’t want to hurt me.’ They hadn’t even begun to address motives for Tyne’s sudden interest in the shipyard.

  Dorian gave one of his disbelieving shrugs. ‘Perhaps it’s more of a question of who does Charles know who might know someone such as Tyne?’

  Elise blew out a breath. His cynicism made her head swim. She just wanted to build her boat and here he was spinning conspiracies. ‘All we know for certain is that two unsavoury individuals sent by another unsavoury individual came to the shipyard last night and suddenly you have Charles selling secrets to gun runners.’

  ‘If a duke’s son can work for the daughter of a knight, anything is possible. The yachting world has always made for strange bedfellows. Just ask the Royal Thames Yacht Club—they were nothing more than a group of citizens with boats until Cumberland came along.’

  She couldn’t entirely discredit him. Just like horse racing, yacht racing had its own culture and underbelly. Races were contested all the time over foul play, sliced rigging and dashed hulls. What would she do if Dorian was right and this was just the tip of some sordid effort to claim her father’s boat? The boat itself had been meant to be revolutionary. What if Tyne had heard about it and wanted the boat for himself for whatever reason? She had to stop those thoughts. Now she was sounding like Dorian. The emptiness of her world must be hitting her hard today.

  Elise sighed. ‘It must be very exhausting living in your world full of informants and dangers lurking around every corner.’

  ‘I prefer to think of it as exciting.’ He was up and moving, crossing the room towards her, his eyes hot and sincere all at once as if he could read the myriad emotions surging through her: the anger, the frustration, the loneliness and the fear that for once she might not be equal to the task, that all it would take would be more than she had.

  Elise liked to think it wasn’t clear who moved first, but in her honest moments she was certain it was her. There was such a small distance between her and Dorian, it had been the merest of motions to turn into his arms, to find her head resting on the strong expanse of his chest, breathing in the clean soapy scent of him, no masking colognes for this one. His arms had welcomed her, folded around her, held her close. When was the last time someone had held her thus?

  ‘All I wanted to do was build my father’s boat,’ she whispered, fighting back the sob that threatened in her throat.

  His voice was muffled against her hair. ‘And we will.’

  Dorian felt an utter fraud in those moments. He would protect her from Tyne, but who would protect her from him? He’d taken this position knowing if he could manage this boat for himself he would. Yet here she was, in his arms, looking to him for protection, for answers. how desperate she must be! She was not the type to seek those things from another, a sure sign of how draining these past months had been on her mental resources. He had stepped into the breach at a most convenient time for his own enterprises, but now that he was here, there were other emotions at work.

  He’d seen the forces arrayed so covertly against her: Tyne and his underworld, Charles and his virtuous pomposity, attempting to bring her back into the bland fold of society. The Charles Bradfords of the world were plentiful and they would make her choose between themselves and the boat. That stirred something else in him—jealousy? Surely
not. Protectiveness? Perhaps, although it seemed irrational on short acquaintance. But he’d travelled this path of hers, too, once upon a time. He’d faced similar choices long ago, albeit for different, less-noble reasons.

  He smiled over her shoulder into space. When he’d jumped into her carriage, he’d been looking for an escape. He’d not thought to find a kindred spirit—not that she’d believe any such thing. She thought him a scoundrel. The idea they had anything in common would be ludicrous to her. But he knew better.

  Dorian’s arms tightened about her. He didn’t want to give this vibrant, intelligent woman over to the cold fish of the aristocracy that would have no use for her skills. Ah, he was being covetous. Being protective was one thing; a decent man was always protective of those in his purvey even if that man was something of a pirate. Being covetous was another, more worrisome, thing altogether. Covetous implied a level of wanting. Dorian tested the statement in his mind. Did he want Elise Sutton beyond a short physical liaison? If so, how had that occurred? At what point had he begun to think with something other than his libido? For his own welfare, the answers to those questions deserved exploration in the near future.

  All he knew for certain right now was that he did not want to give her to the likes of Charles Bradford, who would never be man enough for her. Would she know that? For all her own strength, did she know what she needed? He couldn’t free her, only she could do that, but he could open the door and see what happened, starting tonight. Out of the window, dusk was falling on a crisp, clear night.

  ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  She looked up, green eyes quizzical. ‘Go where?’

  He smiled, unwilling to give up his secret. ‘Just out. You’ll see. You need to get out of the house and away from your troubles.’

  ‘Should I change?’

  ‘Put on something warm and grab a cloak. I want to get a few things from your kitchen. You still owe me a meal for today.’ Dorian released her with a wink. ‘Trust me.’