Desired

by Nicola Cornick

  When she woke in the morning the dream was no more than a faded ghost, but even so she wondered if she would blush when she saw Owen and remembered the dreams of what he had done to her. In any event she need not have worried; she waited and waited but Margery did not come to wake her. Owen, it seemed, had not come that morning.

  “You have a face as miserable as a wet Wednesday,” Joanna commented when Tess came down for breakfast at nine, “and since when did you get up at this hour?”

  There was a note from Owen waiting for her in the hall. Tess knew immediately he had written it himself from the brief, blunt style of the wording. He apologised for not calling on her, explaining that he had arranged to see Mr. Churchward about the marriage settlements that afternoon. Tess moped about the house for a few hours, picking up magazines and casting them aside, then decided to go shopping and spent a thoroughly miserable time in Bond Street before going home and drawing some vicious cartoons. She had not meant to do it again but it was the only way to give vent to her feelings.

  When she had agreed to be the pattern card of propriety that society demanded in order to save her reputation, she had intended it all to be for show. But she knew that what she was starting to feel for Owen was not pretence and it scared her. It scared her very much. She had let him get too close to her. She had started to need him. And that could never be allowed to happen.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  OWEN HAD ARRIVED VERY promptly at the offices of Churchward and Churchward, lawyers to the noble and discerning, and was shown into the inner sanctum with commendable speed. The room was beautifully proportioned with a very pleasant aspect over a courtyard at the back, though today it looked out on a leaden sky and a tree with only a few sad leaves left to shiver in the late-November breeze.

  Mr. Churchward stood up to shake Owen’s hand and show him to a chair, subjecting him to a very shrewd look as he did so. Owen had the impression that Mr. Churchward was sizing him up, and reserving judgement for the time being.

  “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Lord Rothbury,” Churchward said, “and even more pleased to have your business.” He waved a hand over the pile of papers stacked neatly on the desk. “Lady Darent has entrusted me to act for her in the matter of the marriage settlements.” Rueful amusement touched his voice. “I fear that financial matters bore Lady Darent.”

  “And yet Lady Darent is nowhere near as featherbrained as she pretends,” Owen said gently.

  A gleam of humour lit Mr. Churchward’s eyes. “If you have ascertained that already, my lord, then it seems you are a most perceptive man.”

  “I hope so,” Owen murmured. “Of course, I am not the only one to admire Lady Darent’s sharp mind. I understand that her late husband made her a joint trustee—with yourself—of his children’s estate?”

  “Ah,” Churchward said. He paused. “Yes. I was going to broach that matter with you later, my lord, but as you raise it…” He leaned his elbows on the vast expanse of mahogany desk and steepled his fingers. “Lady Darent requests that, as her husband, you be appointed as a third trustee to the Darent estates, and I am happy to agree. That is, if you are prepared to take the responsibility, of course.”

  Owen felt surprise, then a rush of warmth and pleasure that shocked him. He had not expected this. It floored him. He knew Tess might be hiding other secrets from him but when it came to Julius and Sybil she was loving and protective. She would never use them, so the fact that she wanted him to share the trusteeship of her stepchildren meant that she must have confidence in him. She was starting to trust him. Owen knew at once that he had to have the matter of the Jupiter Club resolved between them. He must confront Tess and force her to be completely honest with him. To take their relationship any further when it was based on deceit would be a travesty.

  Mr. Churchward was saying, with careful lack of emphasis, “Of course, if you do not care for the idea, my lord—”

  “No.” Owen pulled himself together. “Of course. I should be honoured to accept.”

  Churchward allowed himself a prim smile. “Thank you, my lord.”

  For the next half hour they discussed the details of the marriage settlement. Tess, Owen was shocked to discover, was worth almost two hundred thousand pounds rather than the conservative estimate of one hundred and fifty thousand she had told him. He felt a little winded to think of it. He was also interested to realise that Mr. Churchward, who had a mind like a steel trap and judgement to match, clearly approved of Lady Darent. That made him very curious, for Churchward was no fool, nor a man to be influenced by charm and a pretty face.

  “You mentioned that you administer all of Lady Darent’s financial affairs,” Owen said slowly, “and clearly you have done an excellent job, Churchward—sound investments, judicious expenditure…” He waited. Churchward inclined his head to accept the compliment but did not say anything.

  “I wonder,” Owen said. “Do you also pay Lady Darent’s gambling debts?”

  Mr. Churchward permitted himself a rueful smile. “Lady Darent never loses,” he said. “Or very rarely.”

  Owen narrowed his gaze. “Then these sums here—” He tapped the deficit column on the accounts where small, regular sums were annotated in Churchward’s neat hand. “These payments must be for something other than debts?”

  Just for a second he surprised on the lawyer’s face an expression that could almost be described as shifty. Certainly it was the expression of a man who had nearly allowed himself to be trapped into indiscretion and was thinking very quickly about how he might get himself out of the fix he was in.

  “Mr. Churchward?” Owen prompted smoothly.

  Churchward took off his glasses and polished them a little feverishly on the tails of his coat.

  “I had no notion you would wish to look at the accounts in such detail, my lord,” he said. He sounded slightly reproachful.

  “No doubt it is bourgeois of me,” Owen agreed pleasantly. “My father was a shopkeeper and—” He shrugged. “Old habits…”

  “Quite,” Churchward said, not budging an inch.

  Owen smiled. “So,” he prompted again. “These sums of money…”

  Churchward huffed. “You would have to ask Lady Darent about that, my lord,” he said.

  “There are regular payments to a variety of different concerns,” Owen pursued. The payments were all numbered but anonymous. He raised his eyes from the columns of figures to see Churchward watching him very closely.

  Owen thought about Tess Darent, of what he had learned of her in the past ten days. He took a guess.

  “These must be charitable donations,” he said. “Gifts to philanthropic causes.”

  Mr. Churchward’s gaze flickered. “My lord,” he said repressively. “I cannot help you. You must speak to Lady Darent.”

  “Or perhaps they are political affiliations,” Owen said ruthlessly, and saw the lawyer’s shoulders tense. “Money given to radical charities and political groups.”

  “My lord.” There was steel in Churchward’s tone now.

  “When Lady Darent and I wed,” Owen said, throwing the papers carelessly down on the desk, “I will be in control of this enormous fortune. Does that affect your discretion in any way, Churchward?”

  Now there was no doubting the lawyer’s ire. “Certainly not, my lord,” he snapped.

  “I thought not,” Owen said. He smiled. “My apologies, Churchward. I was but testing your loyalty. Forgive me. You are the soul of discretion and I would be honoured if you took on my business in future.”

  He watched the tension slide from Churchward’s shoulders. The lawyer, he thought, not only admired Tess Darent but also exhibited a fatherly care for her. It was telling that she could inspire such liking and such loyalty in a man of Churchward’s integrity.

  “Thank you, my lord,” Churchward said. “I am very glad. If I may make so bold, my lord,” he added, as he escorted Owen to the door, “there is something I think you should know.”

  Owen wa
ited.

  “Mr. Barstow, Lady Darent’s first husband,” Churchward said, choosing his words very carefully, “was the godson of the noted political reformer Sir Francis Burdett.” His voice was dry. “Just in case you wondered at the origins of her ladyship’s loyalty to the reformers’ cause.”

  “I see,” Owen said slowly. He remembered Tess telling him of Robert Barstow, the childhood friend who had given her security through marriage after the death of her father and brother. For the first time he felt a glimmer of understanding for her political allegiance. Tess was fiercely loyal. He already understood that. Barstow’s cause had become her cause, he thought, and a way of giving her future some meaning when she had lost everything. He was racked with pity for the girl she must have been, widowed at nineteen, losing her father, her brother and her husband within so short a time.

  OWEN WALKED BACK THROUGH the sleet and found a letter waiting for him on his return to Clarges Street. It was anonymous, short and very much to the point:

  Ask Lord Sidmouth who is responsible for violence in the reformist movement. And keep Lady Darent safe. Someone close to her is set to betray her.

  Owen almost threw the letter in the fire. He detested anonymous letters and had no time for their insinuations. As far as he was concerned, Sidmouth worked to protect the rule of law, and in taking the Home Secretary’s commission he had pledged himself to do the same. Yet even as he discarded the letter, it troubled him. The reference to Tess was too specific to ignore. Only a week before he had sworn to entrap her, to play her at her own devious game. Now his ambitions had changed.

  He went out again, this time to the Home Secretary’s office, where Lord Sidmouth kept him waiting a full hour.

  Sidmouth was in a bad temper. There was a crumpled cartoon on his desk, a caricature of the government sitting around a long table like a row of fat suet puddings. Looking from the picture to Sidmouth’s fat jowls, so cruelly and accurately parodied, Owen found himself almost betrayed into a wry smile.

  “Of course I incite the radicals to violence,” Sidmouth said contemptuously, in answer to Owen’s question. “Good God, man, don’t be so naive! I need an excuse to arrest them! The political reformers had been peaceful for years before I planted agents provocateur amongst them.” He brought his fist down on the desk with a crash that made the papers jump and scatter. “We don’t need reform here! Perish the thought!” He glowered at Owen from beneath drawn brows. “Do you want a revolution here like the damned French? Do you want to lose that pretty title of yours already and your head with it?”

  Owen felt as though he had been kicked in the stomach. “Forgive me, my lord,” he said tightly, “but the only danger here seems to come from the violence that you are deliberately stirring up, if I understand you correctly.”

  Sidmouth made a very rude noise. “You are too scrupulous, Rothbury,” he sneered. “A man in my position has to make accommodations and compromises to succeed.”

  Owen felt his temper soaring dangerously at the sheer cynicism of it. “You do it to keep yourself in power,” he said softly. “No better reason.”

  He was furious with Sidmouth for his duplicity and with himself for accepting the Home Secretary’s commission at face value. He should have known better, he thought bitterly. When he had believed he was working for a just cause he had been no more than Sidmouth’s dupe.

  “I do it to keep the peace,” Sidmouth roared. “Damn it, man, we need these repressive measures or we’ll all be murdered in our beds!”

  “By the men you have paid,” Owen said coldly. He picked up the cartoons. “So if you captured Jupiter, you would hang him,” he said slowly.

  “Hang him? I’ll make a bloody exhibition of him,” Sidmouth said viciously. “And once I have bought Justin Brooke’s loyalty, I’ll know exactly who Jupiter is.”

  A cold trickle of apprehension slid down Owen’s spine. Justin Brooke, the man the ton said was Tess’s lover. He remembered the wording of the anonymous letter. Someone close to Lady Darent is set to betray her….

  “Brooke?” he said. “He’s a radical?”

  “He’s one of the leaders of the Jupiter Club,” Sidmouth said with satisfaction. “I can buy him off though. He’d sell his own grandmother for political power and he’ll sell the names of his conspirators for a lot less.”

  Hell. Owen could feel the net closing inexorably on Tess.

  “Your methods make my hands feel dirty, my lord,” he said very politely. “I am afraid I have no choice but to resign your service.”

  “Go, then.” Sidmouth waved a dismissive hand. “Knew you’d turn native. Damned revolutionary! That’s the trouble with you Yankees—don’t know when you should be grateful.”

  “On the contrary, my lord,” Owen said. “I never felt more grateful to be an American than I do now.”

  He went out into the cold afternoon and drew several appreciative breaths of cold winter air. Sidmouth’s cynical manoeuvring left him feeling sick, but Justin Brooke’s potential to betray his colleagues troubled him more. Now more than ever he needed the truth between himself and Tess. There was no one else who could protect her.

  He went directly to Bedford Street, but Tess was not there. Once again she had left him no note and no direction. This time Owen was not remotely amused. Urgency and fear drove his steps; he returned home to throw on his evening clothes and took the carriage to Lady Marriott’s ball.

  Tess was not there. Fortunately Merryn and Garrick Farne were, and it was Merryn who remembered that Lady Dalton was also holding a rout that evening.

  “You may find Tess there,” she said dubiously, “but I cannot be certain. She is something of a law unto herself.”

  “She is indeed,” Owen said, with a touch of grimness. He gritted his teeth as the carriage rattled and pushed its way at a snail’s pace through the busy streets.

  He felt the atmosphere as soon as he walked into Lady Dalton’s ballroom, the flutter of comment as people noticed him, the flash of a fan hiding a smile. The reason for their interest was not far to seek, for across the vast acreage of polished floor Owen could see Tess and, beside her, Justin Brooke. Tess was wearing scarlet tonight; a scarlet gown, scarlet slippers and a scarlet ribbon threaded through her curls. Beside her Brooke looked tall, handsome and arrogant, presumptuous in a manner that Owen found deeply offensive in a youth whose entire life was a testament to privilege. Justin Brooke, Owen thought, had had everything he wanted served up to him on a silver platter.

  Everything, it seemed, including Teresa Darent.

  For as Owen watched, Brooke bent his head and whispered intimately in Tess’s ear and a moment later Tess left his side and slipped out of a door on the opposite wall. Brooke waited only a second before following her.

  It was blatantly, breathtakingly indiscreet. Owen could barely believe it.

  Slowly, carefully, he stalked around the edge of the ballroom, acknowledging the greetings of his acquaintances, pausing to exchange a word here, a smile there, wondering all the time just what these people could read on his face, knowing they thought him a cuckold before the marriage lines were even written. He could feel the fury seething inside but he kept a cool head. There might, of course, be some rational explanation as to why Tess had chosen to behave with such indiscretion when she had promised him only ten days before that she wished to reform her reputation. On the other hand, he could not imagine what it might be.

  He reached the door that Tess had gone through and slipped out of it to find himself in a smaller hallway; from there a passage ran down to a garden door at the end, and halfway down, almost obscured by an arrangement of ferns and foliage, stood Tess and Justin Brooke.

  Tess’s auburn curls were brushing Brooke’s shoulder. His dark head was close to hers as he spoke to her. Owen could not hear the words but sensed the urgency and the intimacy. Brooke had a hand on Tess’s arm and as Owen watched he slid that hand down to take hers and press it between both of his in a heartfelt gesture. Tess smiled up at
him. Brooke drew her closer and kissed her cheek, his lips lingering as though he wanted to do a great deal more.

  Shock and anger punched Owen in the gut. Tess showed none of the physical reticence with Brooke that she had done with him, no reluctance for his touch. What a fool he had been to believe her when she had told him that she and Brooke were not lovers. He had imagined them no more than political allies. He had been more than a fool, in fact, since he had been utterly duped into providing not only security for Tess against Sidmouth’s investigation but also cover for her affaire. He had sought her out tonight, anxious to have the truth out between them, prepared to offer her his protection because he despised what Sidmouth was doing to entrap her and he admired her for her loyalty to her cause and he had thought her sincere. Yet instead of binding her closer to him he had found her with her lover. And of course Brooke would never betray her to Sidmouth. She was his mistress and whatever political advancement he received, he would take Tess with him.

  Owen saw Brooke gesture slightly with his head towards the garden door. He went out. A few seconds later Tess came back down the corridor and passed Owen so closely that he could smell her jasmine scent. Her scarlet skirts brushed the statue of Apollo he was hiding behind. She went through into the hallway and headed for the ladies’ withdrawing room. A second later she emerged, cloaked and hooded, and slipped away out of the front door and into the street. There was a clatter of hooves on the cobbles as a hackney carriage pulled away. Brooke evidently had had one waiting.

  “Rothbury! Capital stuff!” Rupert Montmorency accosted Owen as he was hurrying towards the door. “Already paid my compliments to the lovely Lady Darent.” Rupert winked. “She seemed to be leaving in a hurry—”

  “Not now, Rupert,” Owen said. “I have to go—”

  “Frightfully bad ton to interrupt your future wife with her lover,” Rupert said. “Give them an hour. Or perhaps two to be on the safe side,” he added thoughtfully.