Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Unwed and UnrepentantReturn of the Prodigal GilvryA Traitor's Touch

by Marguerite Kaye

  Lady Sophia, however, seemed to have a pretty good grasp of her brother’s Machiavellian mind. ‘My brother made his wishes clear in the matter of communication when Cressie finally told me of your whereabouts. I expect he made them equally clear to you.’ She took a deep draught from her Madeira, and waved the glass at Iain for a refill. ‘Very well,’ she said heavily, ‘I can see you do not wish to speak against your father, and I must condone you for that, though you are misguided if you think he needs your protection.’

  Cordelia snorted. ‘I assure you Aunt Sophia, I am not so misguided.’

  Her aunt smiled thinly. ‘No, you always did seem to me to have his measure.’

  ‘I thought so too, but it turns out in this instance I was mistaken,’ Cordelia said. ‘Be that as it may, what I did was inexcusable. I caused you a great deal of worry.’

  ‘You did, that I will not deny. When the weeks passed without any word after that first letter, I thought the worst, despite Cressie’s assurances. I blamed myself, for you were in my charge.’

  ‘Oh, Aunt, it was not your fault. I was irresponsible, and headstrong, and...’

  ‘And a lot more,’ Lady Sophia said with another of her grim smiles, ‘but you were in my care all the same. No, please don’t get emotional, Cordelia, for I am not—this gout, my age, I am not as strong as I once was, and I find tears—so please do not.’

  Cordelia blinked furiously. Lady Sophia took another large swallow of her sherry. ‘So, now you are to be married,’ she said.

  ‘We are betrothed,’ Iain replied quickly, sparing Cordelia the need to lie.

  ‘Though I understand your acquaintance has been extremely brief.’

  ‘We’ll have plenty of time to get to know one another in the next few months.’

  ‘Ah, yes, you are going to Arabia. To Celia. Fortuitous, is it not, that Mr Hunter has business in exactly the place you wish to be, Niece?’

  Cordelia looked flustered. ‘Yes. That is, Aunt Sophia, you should know that...’

  ‘I shall thank Lady Celia’s husband myself,’ Iain interrupted. ‘Though he doesn’t know it, he brought us together, and I’ll be forever grateful.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the ships. My brother was most enthusiastic about this deal he brokered, Mr Hunter. Really, very enthusiastic. He seems to think that you will be of great use to him—more specifically his sons—in the future.’

  Iain snorted. ‘I know he does.’

  Lady Sophia cackled. ‘Playing him at his own game, eh?’

  ‘I made no promises on that score,’ Iain said, thinking that in her own way, her ladyship was as devious and as knowing as her brother.

  It seemed he was right. ‘Take care that you do not get burned, Mr Hunter, my brother always has a few tricks up his sleeve,’ she said, ringing the handbell which sat at her side. ‘I am tired. No doubt I will see you again at this party your father has arranged. You know that Bella will be there?’

  Cordelia nodded, getting to her feet.

  ‘You want to know if you are forgiven?’ Lady Sophia pursed her lips. ‘I could castigate you for not confiding in me, but that would be hypocritical since everything in your upbringing and that of your sisters has encouraged you to distrust and secrecy. We are a family with far too many skeletons in our cupboards, Mr Hunter, and it is contagious I fear. Those who marry into the Armstrongs—but there, that is only the women.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean, Aunt? The only women who have—do you mean Bella has a secret?’

  ‘We all have secrets, Cordelia. I find that it is better not to ask, unless one’s own cupboard is empty of bones.’

  Lady Sophia’s smile was enigmatic, catlike, and very disturbingly like one of Cordelia’s. Looking from one woman to the other, Iain had the distinct impression that there was a quite different conversation going on that he knew nothing of. He saw the precise moment, however, when Cordelia decided not to pursue the matter, which reminded him once more that they had their own conversation to be had on the subject of skeletons and closets, so he made his bow. ‘Until Saturday,’ he said.

  A regal nod, he received in return, but her niece was given a hand to kiss, he was relieved to see.

  ‘I will forgive you,’ her ladyship said gruffly, ‘because you are my niece and because I understand you. But be aware, Cordelia, that I can never condone your actions, no matter what the circumstances. You acted very wrongly. No matter how much you may rail at it, this is a man’s world. You cannot change that, and you will always be judged accordingly.’

  * * *

  It was a beautiful sunny day outside, but Cordelia could not stop shivering. Her aunt’s parting words had wounded her deeply, but they had also, paradoxically, salved her conscience. Despite her claims to understand her, Lady Sophia was far too much the product of society to do so. No matter how right Cordelia believed herself, in her aunt’s eyes, she would always be in the wrong. It infuriated her and saddened her, but more than anything, it made her absolutely determined to stick to her own course.

  ‘I owe you an explanation,’ she said to Iain, sounding far more aggressive than she intended.

  ‘You do,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll walk back to Milvert’s. You need to calm down first.’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was perfectly calm, but one of his level looks made her think again. Had he made any attempt to take her arm, she would have taken great pleasure in pushing him away, but to her annoyance he didn’t, matching his step to hers, his face irritatingly inscrutable while she was sure hers was showing every single one of the storm of emotions she was feeling. Her fists clenched and unclenched. Head down, she quickened her steps, colliding with a baker’s boy, who cursed, and only just held on to the tray of currant buns he was carrying on his head.

  Cordelia glowered at the boy, aware that she was being ridiculous, yet unable to stop herself. Iain tossed him a coin and took one of the buns. ‘It’s not funny,’ she said.

  He gave her a bland look. ‘I’m not laughing.’

  Perfectly well aware that he had the right to be furious with her, she rubbed her eyes, and forced a smile. ‘Is it a good bun?’

  ‘Nothing like as good as the ones my mother used to buy.’

  ‘Your mother?’ Cordelia frowned, trying to remember what little Iain had told her of his family, happy to be distracted from her own. ‘I thought you said you were an orphan.’

  ‘I think it was you who assumed so.’

  ‘So you’re not?’

  Iain threw the rest of the bun into the gutter. His face was quite closed, and there was a bleak look in his eye that gave her shivers on the back of her legs. ‘I think one cupboard full of skeletons is enough for today.’

  It was none of her business, he meant, and meant it very clearly, which made her all the more intrigued, but with her own confession pending, now was hardly the time. Tempted as Cordelia was to pursue the matter, it was not merely Iain’s intimidating expression which stopped her. Having slithered so far down the icy slope of revelations at Aunt Sophia’s house, she was anxious to get the rest out of the way.

  She should be glad that he had turned up today. She would like to think she would have plucked up the courage to come clean before their betrothal was announced, but she was not entirely convinced. She shuddered to think of how it would have been if he had walked unknowing into a room filled with her nearest and dearest, all of whom knew more than he. Telling him would be unpleasant, but at least it would allow him to walk away before it was too late.

  * * *

  Braced as she was however, she took the precaution of ordering a bottle of wine to be sent to her rooms when they arrived at the hotel. Excusing herself, she retired to her bedchamber to remove her hat and gloves. Dashing some cool water over her face, she stared at herself in the mirror.

  ‘What’s
the worst that can happen?’ It was a trick she had used many times to boost her courage. ‘He can walk away, and I’ll be no worse off than I was before we agreed to this charade,’ she told herself. It ought to be true. That it was not, made her feel quite ill. It mattered to her what he thought. It mattered to her that he understood, which was silly, because no one else ever had. Not that she’d ever explained herself, not even to Cressie. She was being quite irrational. Still as she straightened her shoulders and headed for the door, she could not deny the fact that it did. Too much, to tell him the whole truth. Which, she reminded herself once more, was none of his business.

  * * *

  Cordelia entered the room looking like a soldier facing execution. Iain had been telling himself that whatever she had to say couldn’t be that bad, but now he changed his mind. He had so many questions he was having difficulty keeping track of them, trouble in stopping himself from blurting them all out, one after another. He poured himself a glass of wine and handed one to Cordelia, taking the seat at right angles to the couch on which she perched. Beneath her skirts, he could see her foot tapping. ‘Go on then, out with it,’ he said, putting his wine down untouched, ‘I’m braced.’

  ‘Right.’ She emptied her own glass in one long gulp. ‘Well, the first thing you need to know is that I’ve never been married.’

  Of all the things he’d thought of, this had simply not occurred to him. Iain gawked. He knew he was gawking, but he couldn’t help it. ‘But...’

  ‘When you met me, I was not a virgin,’ she said.

  What he’d been about to say was that she’d told him she was a widow. This blunt statement rendered him speechless. Cordelia, on the other hand, now she had launched into her story, seemed less ill at ease. She stood and poured herself another glass of wine, swallowed it back and then sat back down, determinedly holding his gaze, daring him to judge her. He was far too dazed to do any such thing.

  ‘I’ll stick to what my father would call the pertinent facts,’ she said with an ironic smile. ‘You already know that he saw us girls merely as assets he could marry off. We have none of us done as he wanted. Though he is adept at twisting the truth, neither Cassie nor Celia’s marriages were of his making. Caro did marry the man he picked.’ Her mouth curled with disdain. ‘A man who beat my sister, and then he threw her out without a penny. Poor Caro, the only one of us who ever tried to do what our father wanted, was utterly miserable. And Cressie too, not because she was married but because she couldn’t bring herself to behave in an encouraging enough manner to attract any of the suitors on my father’s list.’

  She was almost snarling now as she spoke. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said in response to his sceptical look, ‘he really did have a list. When Cressie failed to pluck a candidate from it, that duty fell to me. I was one-and-twenty when I came up to London for the Season, and I was absolutely determined that I would not give him the satisfaction. You may say that was ungrateful of me...’

  ‘I would say that you were damned right,’ Iain said, ‘you’re not a bit of horseflesh.’

  ‘Well then, at least we are agreed on that,’ Cordelia said. ‘Though actually, when I first came to London I really did intend to marry some man off the list just to escape, but I discovered I simply couldn’t stomach it, and so I—I am ashamed to say, I decided to see how many proposals I could amass, just to prove a point. I had persuaded myself that I didn’t care what my father thought of my behaviour at that point, when in fact, my behaviour was designed to bring myself to his attention. Not that I saw that at the time.’

  Cordelia sighed. ‘I’m sorry. It is one thing to know one’s limitations and faults and to judge oneself, but quite another to spread them out for someone else to pick over.’

  ‘I don’t have the right to judge you,’ Iain said.

  ‘No, but that won’t stop you doing so, even if you do keep it to yourself,’ she replied frankly.

  He couldn’t deny it, and didn’t try, merely indicated that she continue.

  ‘There was a man. Is there not always a man, you will be thinking, when there is a tale to be told of a young flighty, pretty girl?’ she said mockingly. ‘For I was considered one of the pretty sisters, along with Cassie. That we had minds of our own didn’t matter, needless to say. But I digress. As I was saying, there was a man, and as in all such stories, this man was suitably handsome and suitably profligate. A lady’s man, is what my aunt called him. A libertine is what she meant, meaning to ensure I kept well away from him, not realising that I was bound to be attracted, because not only was he everything a young lady should flee from, he was everything my father would have hated. Not a scrap, not a single scrap of political influence did he have.’

  ‘So you let him dangle after you,’ Iain said. ‘Despicable as he is, I didn’t have Lord Armstrong down as an idiot. I’d have thought he’d be wise to that.’

  ‘You forget he was otherwise occupied with Wellington. How my father reveres that man. Second only to himself of course.’

  Cordelia began to pace the room restlessly, speaking in short bursts. ‘He wanted me, you see, that man. He didn’t give a damn about my father or my family, he wasn’t in the least bit interested in politics.’ She stopped to poke the fire, rising with her face flushed, though it might have been the heat. ‘He was the only one who showed an interest in me. For myself, I mean, Cordelia, and not Lady Cordelia Armstrong. I thought he loved me. I thought I loved him. We eloped. It was his idea, but I took little persuading. I ran off with him thinking we were to be married—though to be fair, he never actually proposed, not then. Of course I thought that since we were getting married there was no point in waiting to consummate our love, and neither of us wanted to wait in any case, and so—and so we didn’t.’

  She went over to the window, leaning her cheek against the pane, looking over at him with that mixture of defiance and defensiveness that reminded him so much of his younger self. Iain waited, expecting to hear the predictable sorry tale, relieved, truth be told, for that was an explanation he could understand. The twisted logic of this bothered him, for it was also a tale which left Cordelia much wronged. She began to speak again before he could pick through this paradox.

  ‘You think I’m going to tell you that it was all a ruse, that we didn’t go to Gretna, that he planned only a seduction all along,’ she said, and smiled that twisted smile of hers when his face gave him away, resuming her seat opposite him, speaking with a new hardness in her voice. ‘You would be right, but you would be wrong to think of me as a victim. He didn’t need to seduce me. I went to him willingly and I enjoyed it.’

  She glared at him, daring him to speak. He wanted to, but her words conjured up such mixed feelings. He was not a man who expected a woman to lie on her back and endure, but nor did he like to imagine the woman he ached for with another. ‘There’s no sin in that,’ Iain managed.

  Cordelia laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘Not when there’s a bit of paper legitimising it, no. Otherwise, there is, in the eyes of the world, a great deal of sin—for the woman, at least. My lover duped me, but not as much as I duped myself. He was the antithesis of what my father wanted for me, and I thought that was love.’

  ‘But—I don’t understand. Your family could have hushed it up, couldn’t they? Surely that sort of thing happens all the time?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably. You cannot comprehend, Iain, how much I hate to be wrong, and how impossible it was for me to admit that I’d been wrong, especially to my father. So—so there could be no hushing it up because I didn’t go back.’

  There was so much of what she was telling him that troubled him. So much he admired, and so much made him angry too. As to the man—no, he could not afford to think of him. ‘So it was because you wouldn’t allow him to hush it up that your father disowned you?’ Iain asked.

  Cordelia hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘And presumably
it is this that your aunt meant she couldn’t condone?’

  ‘“This is a man’s world. You cannot change that, and you will always be judged accordingly”,’ Cordelia quoted bitterly. ‘Had I claimed to have been ravished, had I fled from my seducer, I would have been forgiven. Because I would neither pretend nor flee, because...’ Cordelia’s hands curled into two tight balls on her lap. ‘Because I am a woman,’ she said through very gritted teeth, ‘my behaviour cannot be condoned.’

  Her knuckles were white. Her eyes were bright, not with tears but with anger. She looked like a vengeful goddess. ‘By God, remind me never to make an enemy of you,’ Iain said. ‘What did you do to him in the end, boil up his entrails and have them on toast for breakfast?’

  ‘Worse than that,’ she replied with a satisfied little smile, ‘I refused to marry him. The cardinal sin.’

  Iain couldn’t help it; a guffaw of laughter escaped him. ‘Sorry, it’s just—you look so bloody magnificent. What really happened?’

  ‘That’s what really happened. Perhaps my charms grew on him, or perhaps he grew a conscience. Whatever the reason, he asked me to marry him, and I refused. He wanted to do right by me. I could see that tying myself to him could only be wrong. Instead, I became a widow and a writer, and so I have been until now.’

  ‘So you threw away your reputation by running off with a libertine to thwart your father, and when the libertine offered to make an honest woman of you, you ran away from him too because...’

  ‘Because another lesson I learned the hard way, Iain, is that as a woman you can only live the life you want by being alone.’ Cordelia poured herself another glass of wine. This time she drank only half of it in one swallow. ‘Independence is what I wanted. Is that so difficult to understand? I suppose it is. As my aunt said, it is a man’s world. You no doubt take such things for granted.’