by Lucy Ashford
He put his arm through hers to guide her up the steps and said quietly, ‘You look exquisite, by the way. You will outshine the other women here by far. Now, might I suggest we declare a truce and concentrate on the paintings? They tell me there’s a rather fine new Gainsborough on display.’
She jerked up her head with a slight hiss of indrawn breath and he couldn’t help but notice how her colour had heightened and her eyes blazed lambent. Delicious. And her lips looked as good as they’d felt in that kiss—silky-soft and full, with a slight hint of moisture where she’d just licked them with the very tip of her tongue...
He moved closer to put his hand on her waist, only lightly, but he felt the way her whole body shivered at the contact. Then they were inside the first room and found themselves surrounded by people, dozens of them, thronging the place from wall to wall so you could hardly see the paintings. Half of the ton appeared to be here, particularly the gossiping kind.
‘Keep smiling,’ he ordered in a low voice. ‘Imagine you’re on a theatre stage, putting on an act for the general public. Pretend you’ve decided you were completely mistaken in your previous opinion of me, Lady Serena.’
‘If only,’ he heard her murmur bitterly under her breath.
But she held her head high as they moved through the crowded room, though he guessed she was restraining herself from uttering the words of scorn she longed to utter. The effort was clearly making her as fragile as a piece of fine glass. And as sensitive, he guessed, to the slightest touch. Just briefly he allowed himself the luxurious torment of imagining how she would feel in his arms. In his bed. How she might be as responsive as the finest musical instrument to his every caress...
A crowd had gathered round them now, making no pretence of their interest in London’s most unlikely couple. People were even hurrying in from other rooms to stare and the curator of the gallery was stepping forward. ‘Monsieur le Marquis! Lady Serena! How honoured we are to welcome you both here today!’
Raphael saw her graciously smiling and after the curator had gone he leaned down so he was close enough to inhale her delicate scent. ‘Like it or not, my lady, we look perfect together. Do you realise that?’
He thought he heard the slight intake of her breath. And something—her scent, or maybe a sudden appearance of vulnerability—made him nearly forget that today’s outing was part of a ruthless and necessary strategy to silence a woman who’d made her enmity towards him dangerously clear.
Just as he’d expected, their arrival together was causing far more of a stir than any of the new paintings hanging on the walls. Serena had no need of peacock colours to flaunt her beauty—it was there for all to see. As for his own unorthodox attire, well, he was the Marquis of Montpellier and everyone knew to expect the unexpected. People were gushing openly. ‘How delightful to see the two of you together! And at an art gallery, of all places—dear Lady Serena, are you attempting to civilise our wicked Marquis? What do your friends, Lady Joanna and the others, think of your mission?’
Raphael waited, holding himself very still. Then she tilted her chin in that way he was already familiar with and declared with amusement in her voice, ‘Oh, my friends adore the Marquis. Really, who can help it?’ She half turned so she could gaze up at him. ‘Raphael is such a mischievous creature, isn’t he? Truly, he is impossible to resist!’
‘But how do you explain all the things you’ve said about him?’ A harder voice this time, from a young lordling Raphael had recently clashed with at White’s. ‘Once, my lady, you declared the Revolution in France was inevitable if the country was filled by rich wastrels like him!’
Raphael quickly stepped in. ‘Lady Serena,’ he said, ‘has announced her intention to reform me. In her own, very special way.’
There were more chuckles. Someone called out, ‘And are you happy to be reformed, Monsieur le Marquis?’
He tightened his arm around her waist. ‘By Lady Serena?’ He arched his brows. ‘My friend—who wouldn’t be?’
* * *
Afterwards Serena couldn’t remember any of the paintings. Indeed, she could hardly have named anyone in the crowd that buzzed around them, because all that filled her head was the constant speculation in the air. ‘The Marquis and Lady Serena—together, again! You know they were seen driving in the Park last week and they attended the Duke of Hamilton’s ball, too. How astounding, when we thought they were sworn enemies!’
But most of all, Serena recalled the Marquis’s cool comment: Lady Serena has announced her intention to reform me. In her own, very special way.
Oh, that silky voice of his. It was devilish. It was totally dangerous, in the way it slid like purest silk over her skin. His words made her shiver, because they hinted that he was wicked. Unredeemed. Experienced in all kinds of pleasures...
Serena had to face up to facts. There was no way for now that she could escape her situation and, until she could think of something, she had to play her part. So for the benefit of all the onlookers she had allowed him to escort her around the various rooms full of paintings. She conversed with him about any that particularly caught her eye and laughed a little with him over the most peculiar ones. It must have looked to the outside world as if they were completely at ease in one another’s company, and yet...
‘Look at that one,’ Lefevre murmured to her. He was pointing to a life-size portrayal of the Greek god Pluto welcoming the innocent Persephone to his underworld kingdom. Persephone was watching Pluto with an almost horrified fascination because he was striking and muscular and altogether too male, but the young Persephone clearly could not resist him. The picture had attracted almost as much attention as Serena and Lefevre.
And Serena could not miss the obvious comparison. Because she was like Persephone—and Pluto was the devilishly handsome Marquis.
‘It really is a most eye-catching painting,’ Lefevre went on. ‘Don’t you agree? And Persephone obviously cannot wait to find out what her new lover has to offer her—’ He broke off. ‘Stop. Stop, Lady Serena!’
But she was already marching towards the main doors and was halfway down the steps by the time he caught up with her.
She whirled to face him. ‘You find all this amusing, Monsieur le Marquis? I have to say that I do not!’
‘A pity.’ The corners of his mouth lifted a little. ‘I’ve discovered that one has to find amusement in life’s various trials.’
With increasing agitation she realised there was a glint of mockery in his eyes. ‘I hate all this,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I hate being subject to so much speculation and gossip. I hate having to pretend to enjoy your company, when you are clearly determined to destroy my reputation!’
There was a moment’s silence. Then he said, ‘I thought you were quite set on destroying your reputation anyway, by going to Covent Garden on your own that night.’
She stood there, heart sinking into her shoes. He was right. She’d got herself into the mess because she was so fearful of her dead husband being exposed as a coward.
She was getting herself deeper and deeper into trouble, just like Persephone being led into the underworld. And like Persephone, she couldn’t drag her eyes from the man who tormented her so—the Marquis himself. His informal clothing in such an elite environment didn’t detract one jot from his charisma.
It was the fact that he didn’t care, realised Serena rather wildly. Didn’t care in the slightest how he looked or what people thought of him. And unfortunately for her, she thought of him far too often. She was finding that a kind of sweet, yet almost painful, ache of need unfurled inside her whenever he was near—and it made her desperately afraid. Desperately ashamed.
She couldn’t handle this. It was like being trapped and her heart knew it as it thumped wildly inside her ribcage. Escape, it was urging her. Escape!
But she couldn’t and there were two very good reasons for that. Firstly, Lefevre was aware o
f the full story of her husband’s miserable death—aware also how desperate Serena was to conceal it. Secondly, half of the ton knew she’d been seen that night in Covent Garden submitting to Lefevre’s kiss and he was right: there was no way to overcome the scandal of it except by pretending that they were indeed enjoying a romantic relationship. She could not maintain her previous hostility to him without appearing utterly ridiculous. But in her head—and especially in her heart—she must always hold Lefevre in the contempt he deserved. For her own sake.
She pulled herself away from him and said coolly, ‘You’ll excuse me, I’m sure, but it really is time for me to leave. I have another appointment this afternoon. I’m sorry—did I forget to mention it?’
He stepped closer and rested his hands on her shoulders. ‘An appointment? Do you really? Where is it?’
‘I can’t see that it’s any business of—’
‘It certainly is my business,’ he said calmly, ‘if it’s an occasion at which I might be expected to appear with you. Remember, Lady Serena, you’ve just as much interest as me in keeping up our appearance as a couple. I repeat: Where is your appointment?’
She looked rather desperately around the forecourt of the Academy as if seeking escape, but of course there was none. At last she said in a low voice, ‘It’s at the charity school. Of course, you will laugh at that. You’ll pour scorn on our “lady bountiful” act, no doubt.’
He looked slightly exasperated. ‘I’m not pouring scorn on your school—far from it. Listen, why don’t you take me there with you? We’re supposed to be sharing one another’s interests and aims. Remember?’
She said rather desperately, ‘But what if all this is in vain? What if after four weeks Silas Mort turns up again? How am I better off? All this...humiliation I’m enduring might prove to be completely in vain!’
At first she thought he wasn’t going to reply at all. But then Lefevre said, ‘Mort won’t be back.’
Something caught in her chest. ‘What do you mean?’
He was watching her with his inscrutable gaze. ‘He won’t be back. You can be sure of that, Lady Serena.’
An appalling thought struck her. ‘You told me at the ball that you’d dealt with him. Have you killed him, monsieur?’
‘There was no need, since somebody else did the job. It was a case of gangland rivalry, I gather. Men like him have countless enemies. Mort was found the other morning dumped in the Thames with his throat cut.’
She was suddenly too aware of his eyes still burning into her. She said at last in a low voice, ‘Would you have killed him, if he’d threatened me again?’
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I rather think I might. Because, you see, I don’t like cowards who taunt defenceless women.’
He said no more. So Silas Mort was dead—but Serena knew Lefevre could still ruin her by revealing her meeting with the man and the reason for it. Lefevre was an equal danger, her heart told her so. And she had yet more unanswered questions, so many of them, but she didn’t ask any at all, because his very nearness was kindling her most intimate senses and her heart was full with the desperate sense of wanting something from him that she could never have.
So instead she said at last, ‘Come, then. Come to visit the school with me. Why don’t you?’
‘So you can expose me for the superficial wretch I really am?’ he said lightly. ‘Very well, then, I’ll come. Especially since I can now regard myself as one of the school’s foremost benefactors.’
‘You are unbelievably arrogant,’ said Serena.
‘Yes. Aren’t I?’
And she was able to summon up a façade of scorn for him again, telling herself that her moment of weakness had been merely a clouding of her normally clear judgement, an aberration as unwanted as it was ridiculous.
But her defences were crumbling. And she was frightened.
Chapter Twelve
Raphael did indeed learn more than he’d expected during his visit to the school in Spitalfields that afternoon. He realised, for a start, that he was seeing a very different Serena. It also occurred to him that she’d dressed as plainly as she did not only to only put him in his place, but also to be suitably attired in order to travel on to Spitalfields afterwards.
It was as well, then, that he was plainly clad also.
Jacques was waiting with the barouche outside the gallery and his face was a picture when Raphael came up to speak to him. ‘Spitalfields? My lord, you’re not taking her there?’
‘No.’ Raphael patted him lightly on the shoulder. ‘You’ve got it the wrong way round. The lady is taking me.’
‘But I can’t drive this carriage of yours there!’
‘Indeed you can’t. So you drive it home, there’s a good fellow. And Lady Serena and I will find ourselves a hackney cab.’
He was able to hail one within minutes and, after giving the driver instructions, he helped Serena inside. ‘Your friends won’t be expecting me,’ he remarked as the cab moved off. ‘I trust they won’t be too startled.’
She shrugged slightly. ‘They’re certainly expecting me. They also know you and I have struck up a friendship, of sorts—and as you pointed out earlier, at present you are the school’s prime benefactor. You saved our lease.’
She was offering him a wordless truce, he realised as they progressed eastwards through the city. To call their liaison a friendship was inaccurate, but it was a term which for now, at any rate, he was content to accept. ‘Tell me a little more, if you will,’ he said, ‘about your school.’
So she did. And he realised how she became more animated, less reserved as she explained how the charity had been set up by Mary and how the four friends between them searched for donors and patrons to support the cause.
‘These patrons are perhaps our most important benefactors,’ she explained earnestly. ‘Much of the money, of course, we provide ourselves—with the aid of some generous friends. But what we really need is more influence over the people who hold power. We need to persuade the government that the children of the poor deserve an education, just as much as the children of the rich.’
‘Worthy thoughts indeed,’ he said when she’d finished.
She flushed slightly and he saw her gloved hands tighten in her lap. ‘You are mocking me, monsieur, and I cannot blame you. There could not be a greater contrast between the lives led by myself and my friends and the lives of these poor children. I’m making a feeble gesture, I know.’
‘Wrong, my lady.’ His voice was gentler. ‘I wasn’t mocking you. You are giving them your time and your heart, as well as your money. You are also, thanks to your rank, drawing attention in the highest places to the cause of educating the needy. No doubt you and your friends face opposition—hostility, even—from certain quarters, which you should take as a compliment to the brave stand you’ve all taken.’
She didn’t answer and he said after a few moments, ‘Forgive me. You must be thinking that I’m in no position to make any kind of judgement on another person’s moral stance.’
Her eyes had been downcast, but now she faced him with something like passion. ‘No! It’s not that,’ she blurted out at last. ‘It’s just that—this is how I thought you would be!’
He was mystified. ‘What do you mean, how you thought I would be?’
‘The night that we first talked, at the ball last November. The night when we danced. I thought you were honest—honourable, even, until...’
Ah. ‘Until that fool of a man burst in with his comment about a wager?’
‘I wish,’ she whispered, ‘you could have explained to me at the time that he was telling a lie.’
And Raphael thought, Damn it all. Surely to God she wasn’t beginning to feel something for him? And wouldn’t that, on his part, be the vilest trick of all? Shouldn’t he explain everything to her, now?
No. It was too early—besides, though her
own hostility to him appeared to be lessening, she still had dangerous acquaintances. He steeled himself. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘it was as well you recognised my devious and untrustworthy nature from the start.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said in the same low voice.
And as the cab rolled on through the city to Spitalfields, she said nothing more.
* * *
The school building stood on Crispin Street. Raphael climbed out, instructed the driver to wait for them, then took in their surroundings—rows of narrow tenement houses interspersed with alehouses and small shops, together with the premises of tradesmen like blacksmiths and barrel makers. Serena pointed the school out to him and when he commented that it was a larger building than most, she explained that it was once a hospital built by the French Huguenots who’d fled to London over a hundred years ago. But it had become dilapidated, until Mary led the charity’s efforts to repair and re-use it.
By the time she’d finished her story they were both inside and Raphael was welcomed by her friends with surprise.
‘Monsieur Lefevre!’ Mary was the first to step forward to shake his hand. ‘This is unexpected. Though of course I’m glad to have the chance to thank you personally for persuading Lord Gardner to renew the school’s lease.’
Raphael was dismissive. ‘I was glad to be of help,’ he said.
Mary showed him round, the others following. Mary was businesslike, Joanna’s eyes were speculative, while poor Beth was considerably flustered by his presence.
The children, he was told, had already finished their lessons for the afternoon, but now they were filing into the school’s kitchen and he saw how the ragged and unkempt urchins headed eagerly for the buttered bread and cups of milk that were laid out for them.
‘We feed them before they go home,’ Mary explained to Raphael, ‘and they are given a more substantial meal at midday, because it’s impossible for them to concentrate on anything when they’re poorly nourished. It’s difficult for any of us to imagine true hunger, isn’t it? These poor children. We do what we can. And you may be interested to know, Monsieur Lefevre, that we have some French children among our pupils.’
