The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst

by Louise Allen

  ‘Where’s Miss Ravenhurst?’ he asked, sidling up to Nathan when attention turned to removing the pond weed from Street and Freddie and sending them back to the house.

  ‘Gone inside.’

  ‘Don’t blame her,’ Melville remarked with feeling. ‘I should imagine the last thing she wants is to see us again, reminding her of the whole bloody nightmare.’

  There was that, of course, Nathan pondered as they walked back to the house. Was he simply being a coxcomb, fancying that Clemence had a tendre for him and was upset on that score, when more likely he was simply the unpleasant reminder to her of terror and danger? Whichever it was, he had no wish to cause her pain. Somehow he had to stay as far from her for this interminable fortnight as he could.

  ‘Is the company complete, ma’am?’ he asked Lady Standon as they passed into the hall to be shown to their rooms.

  ‘Only one party to come—and here they are,’ Jessica said cheerfully as the footman threw open the doors to admit a small, thin man with the air of having a quizzing glass permanently poised and two plain young women.

  ‘Polkington,’ Nathan said. It needed only that—the witness to the tragic and shocking last days of his marriage on Corfu, the man with the sharpest nose for gossip in Europe, here under the same roof as Clemence. And also, if he could just drag his mind away from his emotions and think about his career for a moment, in a position to remind his distinguished superior officer of the scandalous and illegal duel he had fought.

  ‘You know each other?’ Delighted at this serendipitous circumstance Jessica was bringing him forward as she greeted her guests. ‘Mr Polkington! I do trust the journey went well? Here is Captain Stanier, whom I believe you know, just arrived also. Miss Polkington, Miss Jane…’ She abandoned him for the two young women.

  ‘Stanier.’ They exchanged nods. Up came the quizzing glass. ‘You are just back from the West Indies, I believe? My correspondents tell me of the most exciting occurrences taking place—pirates, scandals…’

  ‘Your correspondents are most assiduous. I have scarcely got back myself. Pirates, I have to confess to, in plenty. But scandal?’ he drawled, sounding bored. Surely, he could not have heard anything about Clemence?

  ‘My dear man, do not alarm yourself. I have just had the most titillating letter from my second cousin in the Governor’s staff, but where a lady is concerned my lips are sealed. Especially a lady with such illustrious relatives.’ Polkington seemed to be hugging the delicious secret to himself. Nathan remembered his technique—nothing overt, never that, but hints and teasing and an air of mystery that could blow the slightest glance into a full-scale love affair or one angry word into a blood feud.

  ‘You are wise,’ Nathan remarked. ‘I have never seen a more formidable collection of cousins. I would be most wary of giving offence to any lady in this household.’

  Polkington pursed his lips and produced his high-pitched titter. ‘Oh, yes, indeed. I believe you are not the only gentleman present given to duelling, Captain Stanier.’

  ‘If looks could kill,’ James Melville commented in Nathan’s ear as he watched Polkington being ushered upstairs with his sisters, ‘that man would be writhing on the floor at your feet. I never thought to see him here. An unpleasant reminder of Corfu.’

  ‘He has got wind of some scandal in Jamaica. I have just pointed out to him the likely consequence of distressing any lady under the collective protection of the Ravenhurst menfolk.’

  ‘What? If you didn’t run him through first?’ His friend jerked his head towards one of the panelled doors leading off the hall. ‘Standon has handed over the keys of the library to Hoste. Tompion is setting it up as an office for us. I would go and freshen up, he’s expecting us down here in half an hour—the man’s a glutton for work.’ He grinned. ‘Still, if it’ll stop you getting into a fight…’

  ‘I don’t duel,’ Nathan said harshly. ‘Not any longer.’

  ‘I was thinking of a clenched fist, myself,’ Melville countered. ‘I can’t see you waiting for a Ravenhurst to happen along if Miss Clemence requires your protection.’ He strode off and was through the study door before Nathan could think of an answer. Damn it, he thought, following the footman who was waiting patiently beside his luggage. Am I that transparent?

  Chapter Twenty

  Clemence managed to avoid Nathan for the entire evening. The reception rooms were numerous and interconnecting, so it was as simple matter, by keeping her wits about her, to slip from one to the other, to take refuge behind a bank of hot-house blooms or to dodge out of an open window on to the terrace and in through another, the moment one sighted a golden-brown head of hair or the blue cloth and gold braid of dress uniform.

  She had discovered from Jessica why he was there, had to accept he had had no foreknowledge of it, nor could he have avoided it. It felt as though she was in a nightmare, wanting to go to him, forbidden to do so by every instinct of self-preservation. The rooms were crowded by evening guests come for dinner so she had to concentrate on making conversation with a string of strangers and near-strangers as well as keeping an eye out for Nathan.

  She had found a secluded sofa and was catching her breath when a thin man she had been introduced to earlier appeared holding two glasses of wine. Pollington? No, Polkington. She made an effort, sat up straighter and smiled.

  ‘Miss Ravenhurst. May I join you?’

  ‘Of course. Thank you.’ There was nowhere to put a wine glass, so it seemed churlish to refuse the one he pressed into her hand.

  ‘And how are you finding our English weather after Jamaica?’ he enquired.

  ‘A little chilly, sir. I will soon become accustomed.’

  ‘As will the gallant Captain Stanier.’

  ‘And Captain Melville,’ she added.

  ‘Of course. You knew them both on the island?’

  ‘A little.’ Clemence shrugged negligently and took a sip of wine. ‘I came back on Captain Melville’s frigate, the Orion.’

  ‘So I hear.’ Somehow Mr Polkington gave the impression of hearing a great deal. ‘So very fortunate that that dreadful business on Corfu did not break Captain Stanier. Such a loss to the service that would have been.’

  Don’t ask! ‘Oh? What a charming gown your sister is wearing.’

  ‘And a tragedy, too.’ Mr Polkington sighed. ‘Such a pretty young woman, the late Mrs Stanier.’

  Clemence took a mouthful of wine and fought temptation. ‘I believe so.’ She could feel her will-power slipping away. ‘I know nothing about it, of course.’

  ‘No? Well, it was a whirlwind romance, of course. Lovely young woman—half-Greek, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Clemence murmured.

  ‘Black hair, flashing eyes, figure of Aphrodite. Such a mistake for young officers to marry, I always think. I said so to my friend the Governor at the time, but there—Stanier was swept off his feet, I do believe.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘And such a lively girl, Julietta. No harm in her—I will never believe otherwise—but lively, you know, lively.’

  ‘A flirt?’ Clemence suggested, drawn in despite herself.

  ‘That’s it in a nutshell.’ Polkington smiled benevolently, while his black eyes were fixed on her like a robin that had spotted a worm.

  He is trying to provoke a reaction, she thought, schooling her expression to one of polite interest. He has heard something about us. ‘Oh, Lady Maude is waving to me, will you excuse me, Mr Polkington?’

  Lady Maude was nowhere to be seen, but her’s had been the first name to come into Clemence’s head. She hurried across the room and out into a antechamber, glancing back to make sure Polkington had stayed where he was.

  ‘Ough!’

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry, I wasn’t looking—Nathan!’

  ‘Clemence.’ He glanced over her shoulder back into the main room. ‘Have you been talking to Polkington?’

  ‘He has been talking to me, rather. Odious, insinuating man.’

  ‘He ha
s a cousin in the Governor’s household, it would appear. But he is too wary of the Ravenhursts to do more than poke and pry.’

  It felt so temptingly good to be close to him again. Clemence allowed herself to be drawn into the anteroom and seated on a sofa. ‘A glass of wine?’

  ‘No, thank you. And he hardly mentioned Jamaica to me.’ As soon as she said it his lips tightened and she could have kicked herself for her lack of tact.

  ‘So, he was gossiping about me instead?’

  This was not how she had imagined being with Nathan again. ‘Yes.’

  ‘About Corfu?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I had better tell you the truth.’

  ‘It is none of my business,’ Clemence interjected.

  ‘No?’ Just what did he mean by that cool monosyllable? ‘I will tell you anyway. I prefer my friends to know the facts, not to listen to Polkington’s gossip. What has he said?’

  ‘That your wife’s name was Julietta, that she was half-Greek and very lovely and, er…lively.’

  ‘That is all true, at least.’ Nathan leaned back, his long legs crossed, his arm casually along the back of the sofa as they sat turned to face each other. To an onlooker he must seem entirely relaxed, but Clemence knew him too well to be deceived. There was a tautness about his jaw and the smile on his lips did not reach his eyes.

  ‘I thought I was in love with her—so did half the gentlemen on the island. Her father was a prosperous local merchant married to an Englishwoman of some style and education. I proposed one heady, moonlit evening and she accepted me. Her father—no fool—encouraged a rapid wedding and there we were, two virtual strangers learning to live together.’

  ‘And she was not as you had thought?’ Clemence asked carefully. She had thought that hearing about his lost love would hurt her, but instead all she felt was sorrow for the newlyweds, so evidently heading for disaster.

  ‘Neither of us was what the other had expected. She thought she was getting a doting, fun-loving and indulgent husband. I thought I was gaining domestic bliss and set about reforming myself—doubtless into a stolid prig. She carried on flirting, perfectly harmlessly, I can see now. I became the heavy husband, forbidding her to enjoy herself, in effect. One night she slipped away to a party I had said we were not going to attend. When I arrived, fuming, she was on the balcony with my friend Lieutenant Fellowes.’

  ‘Oh, Lord.’ Clemence realised she had extended a hand to his and drew it back sharply. ‘What were they doing?’

  ‘Nothing so very bad. He had plucked a flower and was fixing it at the bosom of her dress which, Julietta being Julietta, was held up more by will-power than by anything else. I hit Adrian, he accused me of slandering my own wife—and the next thing we knew we were facing each other at dawn in a field with a pair of pistols.’ Nathan’s eyes were unfocused as though he were looking back down the years.

  ‘You didn’t kill him, though? You told me you hadn’t?’

  ‘I had told you I had duelled? I had forgotten that. I obviously told young Clem altogether too much.’ He smiled at her, back from the past, and something warm and vulnerable uncurled inside her and dared to hope for a second. ‘I just caught him on the shoulder, a flesh wound—which you may choose to believe, or not, is what I intended. He missed me. And then we looked at each other and realised what a pair of bloody fools we both were and shook hands and went and had breakfast by way of the doctor’s house.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ Clemence murmured. ‘But wasn’t duelling forbidden?’

  ‘Of course. But Adrian insisted to anyone who would listen that it had all been an accident while we were having a shooting competition to try out his new pistols. The authorities might have taken a harder line—no one really believed a word of it—but by then Julietta was dead.’

  He made to get to his feet as if suddenly he could not manage to tell this story any longer. Clemence reached out again and this time curled her fingers into his hand. ‘No, Nathan, please tell me the rest.’ He sat back again.

  ‘She knew about the duel, of course. Whether she thought I would be killed or whether she feared my anger if I survived, I have no idea. I was not very understanding when I left her that morning. But she rode, by herself, to her father’s estate in the countryside and on the way there was an accident of some kind. They found her in the road, the horse by her side. Her neck was broken.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Clemence breathed. ‘You loved her and you had not even had the chance to say goodbye to her. And to face that in the midst of the scandal after the duel.’ She bit down on her lip to steady the quiver in her voice. ‘It must have been hell.’

  Her hand was still in his. He sat looking down at it for a while in silence, playing with the seams of her glove. ‘No, I didn’t love her, I realised that too late. That was almost the worst thing of all, the knowledge that if I had had more sense, more self-control, I would never have got us into that situation. I should have waited, seen it was just infatuation, and she would have been safe.’

  ‘How old were you?’ she asked abruptly, startling him into looking up at her.

  ‘Twenty-three. She was nineteen.’

  ‘And you blame yourself, with the wisdom of your current age and experience, for the folly of a young man? I am nineteen, like she was—no, I quite forgot it, but I have had a birthday, I am twenty.’ Fancy forgetting a birthday! But she had other things on her mind at the time…‘Women mature more quickly than men in matters of the emotions. She should have known she was not in love with you, too.’

  ‘You think you can tell?’ His blue eyes were hard and bitter.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Clemence said, releasing his hand and getting to her feet in a swirl of skirts. ‘I know perfectly well when I am in love with a man.’ Where the courage to utter the words had come from, she had no idea. They stared at each other as he got slowly to his feet. ‘It was a tragedy. I am so sorry it seems to have convinced you that it would be folly to risk your heart again.’

  ‘There you are, Miss Ravenhurst. I am to take you in to dinner.’ Captain Melville looked from one face to the other. ‘Have I interrupted something?’

  ‘Merely Miss Ravenhurst chiding me for taking lessons from past history,’ Nathan said. He seemed rather white, but perhaps it was simply her own perceptions that were awry. She was certainly feeling somewhat light-headed.

  ‘Learning from history? Why, that is an excellent precept, I would have thought, Miss Ravenhurst.’

  ‘It is,’ Clemence agreed, laying her hand on his proffered forearm. ‘Provided one is certain that the circumstances are exactly the same in both cases.’

  How she was going to eat anything with her heart apparently lodged in her throat, she had no idea, she thought, smiling at the gentleman on her left-hand side as Captain Melville seated her. What had come over her? She had as good as told Nathan that she loved him. It must have been the selfish relief of discovering that he did not love his wife, and never had.

  Her neighbour was addressing her. Clemence struggled to recall his name. Mr…Wallingford, that was it. The lawyer that Cousin Sebastian had summoned from London to help deal with the Naismiths. They were to have a meeting tomorrow, Sebastian had informed her.

  ‘Yes, I am finding it rather cool in England,’ she agreed. It was the standard first question from everyone she met. She could easily manage such a predictable exchange with her mind on something else, and now it was working furiously on the conundrum of Nathan.

  He felt something for her, she was certain, although he was most certainly hiding it well. And that was doubtless because of her relatives and her money. There was nothing she could do about disowning the connection with the Ravenhursts, Clemence thought, nor would she want to. She looked up and down the long table and felt the glow of knowing that these people were her blood kin and had accepted her with warmth and uncritical affection.

  But she could do something about her money. She slid a sidelong glance at the lawyer—he looked like a man of intel
ligence and cunning. Just what she needed if she was going to take a huge risk with her future.

  What the hell was that about? Nathan tried to watch Clemence while maintaining a flow of polite chit-chat with the lady on his right whose name he had already completely forgotten.

  Was he going mad, or had Clemence just as good as told him she was in love with him? What else could she have meant? He spooned soup, laughed at some feeble on-dit and took too deep a swallow of wine while he wrestled with the mystery of Clemence’s feelings.

  He had been so sure that all she had felt for him was a mild tendre, the natural result of having been forced to rely on him for her life and of having been propelled into quite shocking intimacy with him. That they were physically attracted, there could be no doubt, but physical attraction, as he knew only too well, was not the same as love.

  She was too young to know her own mind, to understand her emotions; he had believed that—and she had just thrown the notion back in his face. Could it simply be pique because he had refused to marry her and had told her aunt he was not in love with her? No. Not Clemence. She didn’t sulk, she wasn’t petty and she would not play games like that with him.

  The footmen came forward to clear the soup bowls. Nathan sat back in his chair, looked down the table again and caught her gaze, clear and green and open. He swallowed, hard, against the lump in his throat and realised, shocked, that his eyes were moist. She loved him. She loved him.

  And then he saw Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst, his hooded eyes resting on his cousin’s face, and the lump turned to lead. She could love him until the stars fell, but that did not make him any more suitable a husband for the wealthy Miss Ravenhurst, with the whole of society spread out at the toes of her pretty new slippers for her to explore. They might love, and she might deem the world well lost for it, but it was his duty to do the right thing.

  ‘Mr Theo Ravenhurst thinks we might dance after dinner,’ the plain brunette on his left remarked. ‘Do you dance, Captain Stanier?’