by Louise Allen
‘Now, if I may have your first names.’
‘Lina,’ she said, watching him write Lina Haddon in careful script across a document.
‘And which bank would you wish the money deposited in, Miss Haddon?’
‘I do not have a bank account.’ Was it against the law to open one in a false name? Perhaps she would need papers to prove who she was. But surely in six months her name would be cleared. Or she would be hanged.
Lina repressed the shudder. ‘I must organise something. Might I have an advance of cash?’ It would need to be enough to make good her escape if they found her, but not so much that Mr Havers would think it strange. ‘Twenty-five pounds would be excellent.’
‘I am afraid that the money only becomes available at the end of six months, Miss Haddon.’ He made another note. ‘But all your costs will be met and that would include a reasonable clothing allowance and pin money.’
‘Oh.’ But she could not leave and find herself a new hiding place without cash in her hand. If she had a thousand pounds, she could hire an investigator, an agent to contact her aunt, a lawyer, flee abroad if necessary; but now, with no money, she must stay here or her aunt would not know where to find her.
And she needed to help Aunt Clara fight Makepeace, she could not just run away and abandon her. ‘Of course. I did not quite understand.’ She would have to stay here under the protection of a man who might turn out to be no protection at all, but thoroughly dangerous himself. ‘Thank you, Mr Havers.’
‘Thank you, Miss Haddon. Would you be so good as to ask Trimble to come in next?’
Lina delivered the message, then found herself staring rather blankly at the front door, at a loss what to do next. Cook would prepare luncheon and needed no further instruction, the house was as orderly as any that closely resembled a chaotic museum could be, and the thought of hemming yet another worn sheet was intolerable.
On impulse she ran upstairs, changed into stout shoes, found her cloak and told Michael, ‘If anyone wants me, I have gone for a walk up to Flagstaff Hill.’
‘His lordship says we’re to have a guest bedchamber made up for Mr Gregor,’ the footman said. ‘I’m confused about him, I must confess, Miss Haddon. I thought he was a servant to start with, but he sits down to dinner like a gentleman.’
‘I think he likes to tease us,’ Lina said, ‘to confound our expectations. Give him the red bedchamber.’
‘But that’s—’
‘The one where we put all the worst examples of the taxidermist’s art, including the crocodile. Exactly. It is about time that Mr Gregor realises he is not the only person in this household with a sense of humour.’
It seemed a very long time since she had laughed out loud, not since before Simon Ashley had been found cold in his bed. He had kept her in a ripple of amusement with his dry wit and scurrilous anecdotes, the wicked old man.
She was still smiling when she passed the archway into the stable yard and glanced through it at the sound of voices. Gregor was holding the head of the grey horse she had glimpsed when the men had arrived and Quinn Ashley was walking round it, running his hands down its legs, lifting each hoof in turn. Lina knew nothing about horses, but she knew beauty when she saw it and this animal with its slightly dished face, big dark eyes, long white tail and mane and air of disciplined power was beautiful.
Ashley and Gregor must be checking the animals after their long ride, she supposed, seeing an equally handsome black tied up at the rear of the courtyard with a sturdy bay beside it. She drew back against the arch and watched. The men were talking easily together, dropping a word here and there, hardly troubling to complete their sentences. Lina could remember when it had been like that with her sisters, Bella and Meg. They had been so close that one or two words, a phrase or a smile was enough to share thoughts and feelings.
Where are you? she asked in a silent plea for an answer that never came. Be safe, please be safe and happy. If she ever got out of this mess, she would devote her legacy to finding her sisters, she swore, hurrying away from the arch and the sight of the men and their easy, unthinking friendship.
She ran, paused only to open the simple iron gate into the park, then slowed as she followed the overgrown track that climbed up the side of the ridge that separated the park from the sea, sheltering the house within its wooded slopes.
Once carriages would have carried houseguests along this route up to the gazebo on the top where they could survey the sweep of coastline in one direction or the fine parkland in the other. But it had been many years since old Lord Dreycott had entertained houseguests who enjoyed picnics and flirtations in the coppices and the track had dwindled almost to a footpath.
Lina climbed on, only half-aware of the alarmed call of jackdaws and crows, the flash of colour as a jay flew across the path. If—no, when—she was cleared of this charge of theft, then what should she do? Aunt Clara had been so good to her it seemed like treachery to think of leaving The Blue Door, but she could hardly spend the rest of her life in a brothel.
Perhaps Clara imagined she would take over and run it one day. Lina could not suppress a wry smile at the thought of a virgin as abbess of a select nunnery. She had heard many of the names for houses of ill repute—school of Venus, vaulting school, smuggling ken, house of civil reception—but nunnery was the one that had startled her the most. As well as being an ironic name, it seemed that nuns were a popular male fantasy and The Blue Door had enough habits hanging in its bizarre wardrobe room to equip a small convent.
But she must acknowledge the fact that, however much she loved her aunt and liked the girls, that could never be her life, only a temporary sanctuary, one that could ruin her permanently by association.
Panting slightly, she reached the top of the hill. Set on stout wooden pillars right in front of her was the gazebo, built to add another twenty feet to the vantage point for anyone with enough breath still to climb. Lina lifted her skirts in one hand, took a firm grip on the rickety handrail with the other and mounted the steps.
At the top she went to the seaward side and leaned her elbows on the rail. The wind was fresh up here, bringing the scent of the ocean with it, and she pulled off her snood and hairpins, shaking her hair free so it blew out behind her in the breeze.
No, she could not live in a brothel for ever, nor run one, not with her lack of experience. And she had no intention of acquiring the practical knowledge, not after that hideous experience with Sir Humphrey Tolhurst. The thought of a man paying to touch her, of having to feign pleasure at the act, do whatever he wanted when she did not like or desire him, made her feel sick.
Now, if she could only come out of hiding, she had the resources to find herself a little cottage somewhere while she searched for her sisters. But she would not forget her aunt or the girls at The Blue Door, or look down on them for making the choices that they had. They had been forced into it, just as she had, but unlike her, or even Mama, they would find no escape. She would—
‘Why, I have found the little nun at last and she has cast off her wimple.’ He moves like a cat, Lina thought, spinning round on the platform to confront Quinn Ashley as he reached the top of the steps.
Then what he had said penetrated. ‘How dare you! How dare you call me a nun!’ But she had stood still while this man had kissed her fingertips, stood still and quivered with terrified pleasure. The thought of her own perverse weakness only fuelled her anger. Her loose hair settled round her shoulders in a cloud, partly obscuring her sight, and she pushed it back. ‘You…libertine, you…’
He took two strides across the platform and caught her wrists in his hands before she could strike him. ‘Do you seek to insult me, Celina? You will have to do rather better than that. I will willingly admit to libertine. Rake as well, for I can see that word forming on those very pretty lips of yours. Come then, let me give you stimulus for your vocabulary.’ And he pulled her to him, bent his head and kissed her.
Chapter Five
Celina had never
been kissed on the mouth by a man before. Sir Humphrey had been too eager for her to disrobe to worry about preliminaries so she had nothing to compare this kiss with, no expectations of what it would be like. She tried to stay composed, in control, ready to pull free the moment Ashley relaxed his hold, but the shameful reality was that her brain forgot how to work and her limbs how to struggle, the moment his lips pressed against hers.
Whatever she had expected from a kiss, it had not been this totally enveloping sensual experience. Ashley’s warm lips moving over hers were disturbing enough in the intimacy of the gesture, but she could taste him as well and she felt the brush of his tongue against the seam of her lips and guessed he wanted her to open her mouth. Stubbornly she managed to keep it closed, even while she inhaled the scent of him mingling with the fresh smells of the spring woodland all around them and the tang of the sea breeze. His body was hot and hard and so much stronger than hers that even struggling seemed pointless. Or was it that his strength was arousing and, shamefully, she did not want to struggle?
Ashley released his hold on her wrists and put one hand in the middle of her back, the other hand raking deep into her loose hair. He growled, a husky sound of appreciation, as he shifted his stance to turn and get his back against the rail and Celina found herself pressed intimately close as his tongue began its assault on her closed lips once again.
She felt so strange. She ached and yearned and trembled and the inner voice that cried Stop! was drowned in the roaring of her blood and the hammering of her pulse. Lina parted her lips, felt the thrust of Quinn’s tongue. Heat flooded through her at the intimacy of the intrusion and for a moment she could not react. Her body, though, knew what to do; her own tongue moved, tangled with his, the taste of him filled her senses.
He was aroused; she felt him hard and urgent pressing against her. A flutter of alarm brushed against her mind and was drowned in the torrent of new sensation. Ashley’s hands moved, one sliding down, urging her against him, the other slipping between their close-pressed bodies to cup her breast.
Long, knowing fingers found the edge of her bodice, slid beneath it to find the tight-puckered nipple. A stab of fire lanced from his fingertips to her belly, terrifying in its effect.
She was aware, hazily, that in a moment she would be beyond rational thought, utterly at the mercy of her own untutored sensuality and Ashley’s skilful seduction. We were so innocent… Her aunt’s words seemed to ring in her ears. Innocent, seduced, ruined.
No, stop this. Now. He thinks I have yielded, she thought, then closed her teeth hard, released them as she felt his recoil, pushed out of his arms and was away down the steps, heedless of the slippery surface and the ancient rail.
She was almost at the bottom when she lost her footing and pitched down the final six steps, bumping painfully on the sharp wooden edges to land in an undignified, bruised heap on the ground. It hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she was not going to dissolve into sobs in front of him, she thought fiercely, drawing in gasps of breath while she tried to work out if anything was broken.
Ashley came down the stairs after her with even more reckless haste, two at a time, and vaulted over her huddled body at the bottom, kicking up the deep leaf mould as he landed. ‘Hell, woman, of all the stupid things to do! These stairs are lethal. Don’t move.’ He knelt beside her. ‘Don’t move anything. Where does it hurt?’
‘I have been up and down those steps a dozen times,’ Lina retorted, indignation taking her mind off her bruises, and almost off the clamouring demands of her body. He was so close. ‘They are only dangerous if one is running away from a libertine! This is all your fault.’
‘There was no need to run—a simple no would have sufficed. Does that hurt?’ He took hold of her right ankle, his big hand gentle as it encircled the slender bones.
‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Everything hurts. And take your hands off my…my nether limb. You would not take any notice of no, I have no doubt of that! A sledgehammer would be required to discourage you.’
He sat back on his heels and grinned, her anger seeming to wash right over his head. To her relief he did not seem inclined to take advantage of the fact she was sprawled on the ground in front of him, her petticoats up to her knees and her ankle still in his grasp. A minute ago she had been melting in his arms… She twitched her skirts down as he said, ‘It is a very charming nether limb, but I really do need to check.’
He appeared to have absolutely no shame for what he had just done as he undid her laces and eased off the boot, then the other one. ‘Now, can you wriggle your toes? Good. Circle your ankle. Now your hands—fingers, wrists. There, nothing broken.’ He slipped her boots back on and laced them, then got to his feet and held out his hands. ‘Up you come. What was that?’ he asked, his arm coming round her when she gave a yelp of pain.
‘My ribs are bruised. I bounced on those steps all the way down,’ Celina said resentfully. ‘And my bu… My pos… I landed with a thud.’
‘I see. I had better carry you back.’ Ashley stooped and swept her up before she could protest. ‘And do not struggle or I might drop you and then you would land on your bu… On whatever unmentionable part it was you have just bruised so painfully.’
Lina found herself settled against his chest with nothing to do with her right arm but wrap it around his neck. In sensation novels the heroine, when swept into the hero’s masterful arms, was prey to a multitude of sensations, most of them described as fluttering, swooning or joyful.
This did not happen when one was bruised, embarrassed and angry and the man doing the masterful sweeping up was not the clean-cut hero rushing to the heroine’s rescue, but quite obviously the villain of the piece, with libertine tendencies lurking behind a thin veneer of humour and charm.
‘This is entirely your responsibility, my lord,’ she snapped, so close to his ear that he flinched. There was a mark in the lobe—it was pierced for an earring, she realised, shocked. At least he had the decency not to sport it in English society. As a first experience of a kiss, a first romantic encounter, this was not at all what she had dreamed of. It had been anything but tender; in fact, it had been shamefully disturbing and almost violently arousing.
‘How so? I did not tell you to throw yourself down those stairs.’
‘I was escaping from your assault.’
‘You assaulted me,’ he protested. ‘You bit me.’
‘You kissed me first.’
‘I was trying to kiss you,’ Ashley corrected. ‘And it was very pleasant—up to a point.’ He was grinning, the wretch. ‘And you tried to hit me.’
‘And that did not tell you anything about my wishes in the matter?’ Lina demanded. I should be alarmed. I could have been ravished just now. Or would even the most hardened rake attempt seduction on top of a windswept lookout deep in the woods? It had seemed like seduction just now. It had seemed like madness.
‘I was coming to the conclusion that we were not entirely of one mind—and then you opened those very lovely lips and I was lost. For a few seconds I was completely off guard.’
It was difficult not to smile back. But of course, this sort of disarming behaviour was probably standard tactics for a predatory rake. ‘Lord Dreycott,’ Lina said with all the severity of which she was capable—which, to be frank, she knew was not much, ‘you should not have tried to kiss me in the first place.’
If he only looked like Sir Humphrey Tolhurst or one of the other habitués of The Blue Door, then she would be terrified of him. Because this man was handsome and charming and made her laugh, and left her feeling as though her bones were melting along with her will-power, he was more dangerous than they were, not less. The devil, as Papa was fond of saying, wore a pretty face when he was tempting the unwary sinner.
‘I know. But you were so utterly irresistible. I was intrigued enough by the nun, but when she was suddenly a furious Valkyrie, eyes flashing, that mane of blonde hair flying in the breeze, I was lost.’
‘What is a Va
lkyrie?’ Lina asked, suspicious that it was another cant term for a loose woman. Ashley began to make his way down the steep path, his muscles moving in intriguing and disturbing ways.
‘A Norse female horsewoman who carries the dead warriors back to Valhalla, the home of the gods, from the battlefield. But never mind Norse legend—why were you so furious when I called you a nun?’
‘Because…’ Lina found explaining was beyond her. ‘Why did you?’
‘The plain gowns, the prim necklines, the scraped-back hair, the downcast eyes.’ He turned his head a little to see her face. His own was amused, but she could read the speculation in his eyes. ‘A perfect little nun. I assume it was your idea to make yourself look older than you are and more suitable as a housekeeper.’
‘Oh.’ So, he had seen right through that! ‘I did think it was more appropriate. And after your great-uncle died and we were in mourning, black was the only proper colour.’ She had thrown gowns into her portmanteaux almost at random when she had fled. One had fortunately been black, another a soft blue grey and the third plain white, so with dye, the coloured trimmings removed and the necklines raised with the judicious use of ribbons and muslin, she had sufficient sombre gowns to be respectable.
‘Great-Uncle Simon would not want mourning,’ Ashley said with decision. His foot slipped, but with a twist he had his balance back, despite the burden in his arms. He was strong, Lina realised, strong and fit and hard. She closed her eyes for a moment and let her head rest on his shoulder before she had the will-power to lift it again. ‘In fact, I think I will forbid it to the entire household. No, you may get out your pretty gowns again.’
‘I have just dyed them all black,’ Lina said, pulling herself together and opening her eyes again. It was not true, she had three more gowns untouched, but she was not producing those, all chosen with the help of Aunt Clara. Quinn Ashley would like them far too well, she was sure.
