Compromised Miss

by O'Brien, Anne

  ‘Harriette…’

  ‘I need to ask you something, too,’ Harriette replied before he could continue. And he saw trouble in her eyes, now raised defiantly to his, and suffered a bleak premonition that lodged as a fist of ice in his chest.

  ‘Then ask me.’ Resigned, his fingers tightened around her wrists where her pulse beat so heavily against his palms.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll like it,’ she admitted gruffly.

  ‘Well, ask it anyway.’

  It was not to be. Graves knocked softly and entered.

  ‘My lord. There is a Mr Ellerdine here. To see her ladyship. I’ve put him in the gold parlour.’

  ‘Alexander…!’ He felt her reaction under his hands, saw her instant smile. ‘Why would he be in town?’

  It could not escape Luke’s notice that Harriette instantly pulled free from his clasp. Ellerdine, her cousin, her friend, her partner in despicable crimes. ‘Perhaps you should go and see him,’ Luke advised coolly, evenly, turning from her to pick up the correspondence from the desk again. Refusing to admit to the huge sense of disappointment. Or even more the surge of sheer male jealousy that this man had a place in her life.

  But Harriette did not move. She looked at him, a frown returning. ‘Should I go to him? Or we could tell him to wait—until we are finished here.’

  ‘Why would we do that? I’m sure you wish to see him.’

  ‘Well, yes. But you said you needed to tell me something. And I—’

  ‘It’s not important.’

  ‘Oh.’ A shadow touched her face.

  ‘It can wait, Harriette. Go and speak with your cousin. I’m sure you have things to tell him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Still she did not move.

  ‘We’ll continue this conversation later, Harriette.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Then, with the faintest of sighs, she was gone, leaving Luke shattered by the strength of the emotions she stirred in him. Harriette’s connection with Alexander Ellerdine did not please him at all. It was impossible to deny the bite of jealousy at the smile that lit her eyes when his name was announced. And considering it, it forced him to a decision. He could not tell her about Marie-Claude de la Roche, could he? What an unequivocal mistake that would have been! All he could do now was to sit and wait for further communication from Jean-Jacques Noir, unless his French prisoner of war could discover something of the girl’s present whereabouts. He’d be damned if he’d give in to the rogue Noir—but he might not have any choice in the matter if Mademoiselle de la Roche could not be discovered…And Luke swore as his thoughts came full circle, ending once again with his helplessness and probable failure.

  But he would not think of that now. Nor would he think of the reason for Alexander Ellerdine’s presence in his house. Or the worry in Harriette’s face when she admitted he would not like the question she must ask. And certainly not her pleasure at the prospect of setting eyes on her cousin again.

  Except what else was there to think of?

  Harriette discovered Alexander leaning his shoulders against the wall to gaze out of the window over the smart railed gardens of Grosvenor Square, a glass of port in hand.

  ‘You look flustered.’ His first remark, not particularly friendly.

  ‘Yes,’ she responded, instantly wary. ‘I ran downstairs too quickly.’

  Harriette closed the door carefully at her back and simply stood there, grasping at her composure. Her cheeks felt to be on fire and her fashionable curls were undoubtedly disordered from Luke’s possessive fingers. It even felt that her lips were soft and bruised from the power of his kisses. As for her heart, it leaped and bounded against her muslin bodice, so much that it compromised her breathing.

  She forced herself to take a deep breath. Running her tongue over dry lips, Harriette ordered her thoughts back into line. And failed. How devastating was Luke’s presence. Five minutes in his company, in his arms, and all her self-control was awry. His hard mouth capturing hers, his hand caressing the nape of her neck, his arms pinioning her against his body whilst his tongue plundered her mouth with such urgency, for a brief time she could imagine that nothing could come between them. How weak she was that she could forget the presence of Captain Henri and a box of gold, seduced by strong arms and searing lips that captured her soul from her body.

  And then, given the most trivial of excuses, he had dismissed her, whilst she had escaped from him with ridiculous speed. But it would have been far too dangerous to remain, far too easy to forget to keep her emotions hidden from his searching green gaze. How humiliating for her if Luke should discover that her heart was his, when he had no desire to possess it. Kissing her was one thing; loving her was quite another.

  Whilst his need to talk to her had not been so very urgent after all. He had almost ordered her from the room, as if he had regretted his hot kisses.

  Harriette’s heart hurt.

  ‘Is the enforced leisure of town life robbing you of your energy? I recall the time when you could sail all day without losing breath,’ Alexander remarked.

  Harriette sensed the implied criticism, but merely shook her head.

  ‘Too much pleasure, too much champagne. Too much the Countess of Venmore, I would say. I told you you’d regret it. But you wouldn’t listen, would you? You were always too headstrong for your own good.’

  There was the sharpness again in his words. Harriette’s spine stiffened. ‘I don’t regret it. And I don’t like your implications that I made a mistake, Alexander!’

  But he was close beside her, abandoning the glass of port so that he could lean to kiss her cheek with easy familiarity, gentling his voice. ‘I meant no harm. Perhaps I’ve missed you more than I realised, Harry. You look charming, different.’

  Puffing out a little breath, relieved that there was no ill will between them after all, Harriette smiled in quick forgiveness. ‘Zan—it’s good to see you. What are you doing here?’

  ‘A lucrative little sale that you’ll approve of.’ He took her hand in a companionable hold. ‘A valuable cargo. You’ll soon be seeing some of our silks and laces clothing the backs of the haut ton.’

  ‘So business is good.’

  ‘It is. And I couldn’t resist visiting my pretty cousin to enquire after her good fortune, could I?’

  Harriette felt a comforting warmth blooming in her breast. Unlike her edgy dealings with Luke, here was someone uncomplicated whom she had known for ever. No tensions or difficulties in their relationship, no need for her to hide her thoughts or her feelings, no need to keep up a permanent pretence. No need to question her loyalties for a man whom she loved but dare not love. Zan was a friend, knew her faults and strengths, just as she knew his. There was no deceit in Alexander, no attempt to hide his shadowy dealings outside the law, and she found that she had missed him, the ease of their conversation. To her dismay, her horror, she felt tears gather and begin to track down her cheeks.

  ‘Harriette—what is it?’ Alexander demanded at once. ‘What has happened to make you weep?’

  Before she could wipe away the tears and assemble a suitable answer, she was surrounded by his arms, and faced with such immediate compassion she found herself weeping on his shoulder. Thoroughly embarrassed, she resisted, but his arms were warm and comfortable so that the tightness in her chest eased and the tears continued to flow. Until Alexander drew her to a little gilt-legged sofa and settled her there. Finding a handkerchief in his pocket, he sat beside her and dried her tears with competent strokes.

  ‘Nothing can be so bad as to reduce my brave cousin to tears. Tell me, Harriette.’

  ‘Nothing.’ She took the linen from Alexander and sniffed, mortified, contrite. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know what came over me.’

  His voice was as soothing as a feather eiderdown on a winter’s night, wrapping her round in reassurance. ‘Why should you not lean on my shoulder? Who else would you turn to? Have we not always stood for one another, even as children?’

 
‘I know.’ Her smile was watery.

  She felt Alexander’s fingers tighten on hers. ‘What has he done to you?’

  ‘Luke? Why, nothing. He doesn’t beat me, you know.’ She tried for a gleam of humour. ‘Luke treats me with all consideration and gives me all I could possibly need. I’ve received nothing but kindness here. I have no complaints.’

  ‘No one understands you as I do. You should never have married him, Harriette. As I said, you always were foolishly headstrong.’

  But I love him. I’m just no longer sure that love is enough! Harriette shook her head and could not answer.

  ‘Tell me,’ Alexander repeated.

  How tempting it was, because she was vulnerable, because she could speak of her suspicions to no one in the Hallaston household, and because he was her cousin. How tempting to tell Zan of the Frenchman in the guest room. The box of guineas. The letter and what she knew of a villain called Jean-Jacques Noir. Luke’s visit to the parole town.

  She could not. How could she put into words, even to her cousin, that Luke was in communication with the enemy, perhaps in the pay of France, passing information or gold coin—or both—to Napoleon? Helping French prisoners of war to break their terms of parole so that they might escape to fight again.

  Her words dried on her lips at the enormity of it all.

  Besides, could she believe that Luke had the makings of a traitor? He had rescued her from the consequences of scandal and cruel gossip. Surely then his whole life could not be guided by dishonour. Yet why not? Had he not bargained for the use of the Ghost? How well that would fit with a life of spying and the passing of secrets to England’s enemies.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’ And Harriette sighed.

  ‘When I offered you a means of escape from this, you should have taken it. You should have wed me, Harriette,’ he chided gently.

  ‘Perhaps.’ She found that she could no longer meet his eyes. ‘You are very kind.’

  ‘Not kind. I care about you. I always have.’

  ‘I know.’ But I don’t love you—and you don’t love me. Harriette swallowed against the tears that threatened again, covering her face with her hands.

  With one hand he lifted her chin so that she must look up. ‘We could have lived together at the Pride. Made a life there.’

  She tried a smile. ‘And done what? Seen it fall down around our ears? Neither of us has the money to put it to rights.’

  ‘No, we don’t. Not even with the profits from smuggling.’ He hesitated. ‘Not yet, but one day perhaps…’

  Harriette smiled damply. ‘It’s only dreams, Zan. It would take a fortune.’

  ‘Poor Harriette. So torn by doubts.’ His hand was warm on her cheek, his voice soft in her ear. ‘Leave it all. Come back to Lydyard’s Pride with me. I can’t promise you wealth and luxury but you’ll know all my sins. Venmore will divorce you and you can wed me. As you should have done in the first place.’ His thumb stroked her lips. ‘Just do it, Harry.’

  His seductive tones, his use of her childhood name, destroyed her composure anew and Harriette wept again, until Alexander drew her in his arms. ‘Don’t weep,’ he murmured, his head against the top of her head. ‘He’s not worth it.’ She felt him touch his lips to her hair.

  The door to the parlour opened softly.

  Venmore stood on the threshold.

  Harriette sprang to her feet, cheeks flushed in a wash of guilt, furious she should feel so compromised at receiving comfort from her cousin. She wiped her eyes ineffectually on a scrap of lace and linen. The tensions in the room screamed within her. She lifted her head and faced her husband.

  ‘I see I have interrupted,’ he remarked, cold as a January night. ‘How remiss of me. I should have realised that there were issues between cousins that were not my affair.’

  How to answer that? Harriette quailed before the glacial chill in Luke’s face, the proud arrogance of his stance, even as she resented his entirely wrong conclusions. ‘No…indeed, my lord, there are none.’

  ‘We are cousins, Venmore. There is a lifetime of connection between us. Harriette—I must go.’ Alexander bowed to Harriette, deliberately, as provocative as his words, lifting her hand to his lips, and then to the Earl. ‘Forgive me for trespassing on your time, my lord.’ And he walked to the door before looking back over his shoulder. ‘You know my advice, Harriette. It’s your choice if you act on it.’

  Then Harriette was alone, to face Luke with all the stark suspicion between them, as solid as a newly constructed redoubt between opposing armies. The air between them quivered as taut as a wire. Harriette waited for what he would say. All she could see was the banked fury in his eyes where fire burned and flickered, a tight anger in the lines of his face, under control but only just. Standing rigidly to his full height he looked magnificent, but it was the face of an avenging angel who would strike and wound without compassion.

  Luke kept a fierce hand on his temper. To walk in on Harriette and find her in the arms of her damned cousin—it pulled him up short as a fist to the jaw. Not five minutes after he himself had held her and kissed her and had contemplated the blessed release of laying his insurmountable problems at her feet, he had discovered her in appallingly intimate discussion with Alexander Ellerdine.

  And just what advice had the flamboyant Mr Ellerdine been giving her? Luke bared his teeth in the approximation of a snarl. How could he have been so misguided, so completely taken in by her? She did not seem in any degree contrite. Guilty, of course, springing to her feet with consternation shadowing her beautiful eyes. At least he had had the sense to keep his tongue between his teeth and not rage at her as impulse had prompted. He had not pounced to seize her shoulders and shake her and demand why she could not find comfort in his embrace, from his body. It took a masterly degree of control, of which he was cynically proud.

  And he had been crass enough to consider telling her of the fate of Marie-Claude de la Roche and his own duplicitous attempts to rescue her. He might as well have put a notice in the Morning Post. And if, through Ellerdine and the smuggling fraternity, Jean-Jacques Noir got wind of it…

  How could Harriette have betrayed him in this blatant manner? He supposed it should come as no surprise to him that there was a closeness between Harriette and Alexander Ellerdine. But for her to fall into that man’s arms at the first opportunity…And she had been weeping. If she was in trouble, in distress, then she should have come to him. Wept on his shoulder. Allow him to kiss away her tears, not Alexander Ellerdine.

  Had the man dared to kiss her?

  Which centred his thoughts back to the heart of the problem. The two were close. In blood and in business dealings. Smugglers and Wreckers.

  By God! She had allowed that man to touch her, to kiss her!

  Footsteps and the murmur of servants’ voices beyond the door came to his ears and prompted a decision. ‘We will continue this conversation in the privacy of your room, madam.’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you.’ She faced him, refused to look away.

  ‘But I have much to say to you. And you have much to explain!’

  ‘No. I will explain nothing.’ Harriette took a step in retreat, but with a stride that closed the distance between them Luke grasped her wrist. Ineffectually Harriette tried to wrench free.

  Luke felt her shudder, but she was not afraid of him. Her eyes were wide and fearless on his, and he thought she might just defy him. ‘If you do not come with me, I shall carry you. I would rather you saved us both the humiliation.’

  She stood perfectly still for a moment. ‘Very well.’ Without another word Harriette accompanied him up the stairs, conscious of his fingers hard round her wrist. Once in her room, released, she went to sit at her dressing table with her back to him, but able to watch him in the mirror.

  ‘Well?’ Luke demanded.

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  ‘I don’t care to see you in the arms of another man. Understand me, my lady. I will not have it!’
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br />   Harriette’s fingers had clenched around her ivory comb, anything to give her fingers something to do to prevent them from trembling, as she lifted her chin to return that uncompromising regard in the mirror. If there was to be a confrontation between them, she would not retreat from it. She kept her voice low, even.

  ‘I was not in his arms, in the manner that your words imply, my lord. Alexander is my cousin.’

  ‘As I am aware. Of what importance is that? He is an attractive man.’

  ‘I have known him all my life!’ she retorted.

  ‘That, too, I know. An association of long standing.’

  Distressingly formal, cold as winter but with an undertone of scorching heat beneath the sneer that curled his lips. A heat that might at any moment leap out of control. Meeting those brilliantly furious green eyes now, she shivered. Luke had seen her in Alexander’s arms. She could well guess his thoughts on being faced with that incriminating little tableau. His face had become a mask, his words short and brutal, as if he suspected her of the most shocking of betrayals. Perhaps she was not altogether blameless…But did that give him the right to address her in this peremptory manner? To actually threaten to carry her to her room? She continuted to sit before the mirror, unaware and uncaring of the attractive picture she made, all her good intentions to explain about Alexander draining away.

  ‘My association with Alexander, as you put it, is from the day I was born.’ Harriette took a steadying breath. ‘How would he not comfort me?’

  ‘I am also aware, for it was common knowledge in Old Wincomlee, that you and your cousin would make a match of it.’

  ‘Common knowledge?’ Harriette spun round on the stool to face him, brows raised in disbelief. ‘Who told you that? It is a lie.’

  Luke shrugged aside the denial. ‘I presume you wish you had. The appearance in my parlour would suggest that.’

  ‘I wish no such thing!’ Now she was on her feet, the comb discarded with a clatter. ‘You have misjudged me entirely. How dare you have suspicions of my integrity? How dare you question the sanctity of my marriage vows?’ Anger trickled dangerously through her blood. Conciliation had been abandoned with the comb.