Marriage Made in Shame
Sophia James
Secrets of the marriage bed… Heiress Adelaide Ashfield lost her trust in men years ago. She spurns the advances of society's most eligible bachelors, but time is running out. Forced to make her choice, Adelaide accepts the hand of Gabriel Hughes, Earl of Wesley.Despite his debauched reputation, Gabriel shies away from intimacy. But his marriage to Adelaide awakens a desire he never thought he'd feel again. Maybe his beguiling new bride is the key to shaking off the shame which has haunted him for so long…
THE PENNILESS LORDS (#ulink_58ed7b5b-e4a8-575b-aae7-305b4b06ad82)
In want of a wealthy wife
Meet Daniel, Gabriel, Lucien and Francis Four lords: each down on his fortune and each in need of a wife of means.
From such beginnings, can these marriages of convenience turn into something more treasured than money?
Don’t miss this enthralling new quartet by Sophia James
Read Daniel and Gabriel’s stories in
Marriage Made in Money Already available
Marriage Made in Shame Out now
AUTHOR NOTE (#ulink_da933a3e-c2dd-5b50-8180-96e5036fcc30)
Marriage Made in Shame is the second book in The Penniless Lords quartet, and Gabriel’s story has been a delight to write.
I took his problem to the book club I have been in for twenty years, with twelve of my closest friends, and we had such a great time discussing just exactly how he might be cured.
He’s a complex, enigmatic hero, who needed an interesting and unusual heroine for his happy-ever-after.
Lady Adelaide Ashfield is a wealthy bluestocking with her own particular demons and a desperate need to be loved.
Daniel (Book 1 Marriage Made in Money), Lucien (Book 3), and Francis (Book 4) are also part of the story—and so is Christine, Lucien’s sister, who keeps popping her head in everywhere.
I hope you enjoy Marriage Made in Shame.
I love any feedback, and can be found on sophiajames.co (https://sophiajames.co).
Marriage Made in Shame
Sophia James
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay, on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband, who is an artist. She has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed by reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house. Sophia enjoys getting feedback at sophiajames.co (https://sophiajames.co).
Contents
Cover (#ucb9c49fe-6c5e-5943-a626-e7bed79083b7)
THE PENNILESS LORDS (#u2a76b0de-2a89-5ba4-b853-fee03cf256e8)
Author Note (#u6ab35af8-9a44-57a8-85b5-89fb3e353acc)
Title Page (#ubf054897-2d2f-56d9-b23b-7d87fcc44f2a)
About the Author (#u341f0b56-16e4-5669-b040-dccedea32a75)
Chapter One (#ua46ad507-0771-507b-9a08-89a7b582d7c8)
Chapter Two (#u9445723f-f022-5c9d-9689-2f46b39d1f75)
Chapter Three (#u0bc660d0-70cb-5f49-a9aa-4886c0585075)
Chapter Four (#uef4770ae-82ad-5e04-aa17-59bdd41f8ad6)
Chapter Five (#u0e2e0c16-8157-58fe-b2a3-fe92278ed618)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_11c94747-c3e5-58d7-9c00-7c32de7b3a89)
London—1812
The familiar sense of nothingness engulfed Gabriel Hughes, the fourth Earl of Wesley, taking all breath and warmth with it as he sat with a glass of fine brandy and a half-smoked cheroot.
Willing women dressed as sprites, nymphs and naiads lounged around him, the white of their scanty togas falling away from generous and naked breasts. A dozen other men had already chosen their succour for the night and had gone one by one to the chambers fanning out from the central courtyard. But here the lights were dimmed and the smoke from dying candles curled up towards the ceiling. The Temple of Aphrodite was a place of consenting lust and well-paid liaisons. It was also filled to the brim.
‘I should very much like to show you my charms in bed, monsieur,’ the beautiful blonde next to him whispered in a French accent overlaid with a heavy, east London twang. ‘I have heard your name mentioned many times before and it is said that you have a great prowess in that department.’
Had... The word echoed in Gabriel’s mind and reverberated as a shot would around a steel chamber. Downing the last of the brandy, he hoped strong alcohol might coax out feelings he had long since forgotten. Memory. How he hated it. His heartbeat quickened as he swallowed down disquiet, the hollow ache of expectation not something he wanted to feel.
‘I am Athena, my lord.’
‘The sister of Dionysus?’
She looked puzzled by his words as she flicked the straps from milky white shoulders and the warm bounty of her bosom nudged against his arm as she leant forward. ‘I do not know this sister of Diana, my lord, but I can be yours tonight. I can pleasure you well if this be your favour.’
He hadn’t expected her to know anything of the Greek gods, but still disappointment bloomed—a woman of beauty and little else. Her tongue ran around pouting lips, wetting them and urging response, dilated pupils alluding to some opiate, a whore without shame or limit and one whom life had probably disappointed. Feeling some sense of kinship, Gabriel smiled.
‘You are generous, Athena, but I cannot take you up on your offer.’
Already the demons were arching, coming closer, and when her fingers darted out to cup his groin, he almost jumped. ‘And why is that, monsieur? The Temple of Aphrodite is the place where dreams are realised.’
Or nightmares, he thought, the past rushing in through the ether.
Screams as the fire had taken hold; the stinging surprise of burning flesh and then darkness numbing pain. The last time he had felt whole.
Gabriel hated it when these flashbacks came, unbidden, terrifying. So sudden that he had no defence against them. Standing, he hoped that Athena did not see the tremble in his fingers as he replaced his empty glass on the low-slung table. Run, his body urged even as he walked slowly across the room, past the excesses of sex, passion and craving. He hated the way he could not quite ingest the cold night air once outside as the roiling nausea in his stomach quickened and rose.
He nearly bumped into the Honourable Frank Barnsley and another man as Gabriel strode out into the gardens and he looked away, the sweat on his upper lip building. He knew he had only a matter of minutes to hide all that would come next.
There were trees to his left, thick and green, and he made for them with as much decorum as he could manage. Then he was hidden, bending, no longer quite there. It was getting worse. He was falling apart by degrees, the smell of heavy perfumes, the full and naked flesh, the tug of sex and punch of lust. All equated with another time, another place. Intense guilt surfaced, panic on the edges. His heart thumped and fear surged, the sensation of falling so great he simply sat down and placed his arms around the solid trunk of a young sapling. A touchstone. The only stable thing in his moving dizzy world.
Leaning over to one side, he threw up once and then twice more, gulping in air and trying to understand.
His life. His shame.
Coming tonight to the Temple of Aphrodite and expecting a healing had been a monumental mistake. He needed to lie down in dark and quiet. Aloneness cloaked dread as tears began to well.
* * *
‘I do not wish to marry anyone, Uncle.’ Miss Adelaide Ashfield thought her voice sounded shrill, even to her own ears, and tried to moderate the tone. ‘I am more than happy here at Northbridge and the largesse that is my inheritance can be evenly divided between your children, or their children when I die.’
Alec Ashfield, the fifth Viscount of Penbury, merely laughed. ‘You are young, my dear, and that is no way to be talking. Besides, my offspring have as much as they are ever likely to need and if your father and mother were still in the land of the living, bless their poor departed souls, they would be castigating me for your belated entry into proper society.’
Adelaide shook her head. ‘It was not your fault that Aunt Jean died the month before I was supposed to be presented in London for my first Season or that Aunt Eloise took ill the following summer just before the second.’
‘But your insistence on an overly long mourning period was something I should have discouraged. You have reached the grand old age of three and twenty without ever having stepped a foot into civil society. You are, as such, beyond the age of a great match given that you no longer bear the full flush of youth. If we wait any longer, my love, you will be on the shelf. On the shelf and staying there. A spinster like your beloved great-aunts, watching in on the life of others for ever.’
‘Jean and Eloise were happy, Uncle Alec. They enjoyed their independence.’
‘They were bluestockings, my dear, without any hope of a favoured union. One had only to look at them to understand that.’
For the first time in an hour Adelaide smiled. Perhaps her aunts had been overly plain, but their brains had been quick and their lives seldom dull.
‘They travelled, Uncle, and they read. They knew things about the body and healing that no other physician did. Books gave them a world far removed from the drudge of responsibility that a married woman is encumbered by.’
‘Drudges like children, like love, like laughter. You cannot know what seventy years in your own company might feel like and loneliness has no balm, I can tell you that right now.’
She looked away. Uncle Alec’s wife, Josephine, had been an invalid for decades, secreted away in her chamber and stitching things for people who had long since lost the need for them.
‘One Season is all I ask of you, Adelaide. One Season to help you understand everything you would be missing should you simply bury yourself here in the backwaters of rural Sherborne.’
Adelaide frowned. Now this was new. He would stipulate a limited time. ‘You would not harry me into a further Season if this one is a failure?’
Alec shook his head. ‘If you have no one offering for you, no one of your choice, that is, then I will feel as if my duty to your parents is done and you can come home. Even if you agree to stay half of the Season I would be happy.’
‘From April till June. Only that?’
‘Early April to late June.’ There was a tone of steel in her uncle’s voice.
‘Very well. Three months. Twelve weeks. Eighty-four days.’
Alec laughed. ‘And not one less. You have to promise me.’
Walking to the window, Adelaide looked out over the lands of Northbridge. She did not want to leave this place. She didn’t want to be out in the glare of a society she had little interest in. She wanted to stay in her gardens and her clinic, helping those about Northbridge with the many and varied complaints of the body. Her world, ordered and understood; the tinctures and ointments, the drying herbs and forest roots. Safe.
‘As I would need gowns and a place to live and a chaperon, it seems like a lot of bother for nothing.’
‘I have thought of all of these things and a relative of mine, Lady Imelda Harcourt, will accompany you.’ As she went to interrupt Alec stopped her. ‘I realise she is a little dour and sometimes more than trying, but she is also a respectable widow with undeniably good contacts amongst the ton. I, too, will endeavour to visit London as much as I am able whilst you are there. Bertram will want to have some hand in it as well, as he has assured me his gambling habits are now well under control.’
Her heart sank further. Not only Lady Harcourt but her cousin, too? What else could go wrong?
However, Uncle Alec was not quite finished. ‘I wasn’t going to mention this, but now seems like the perfect time to bring it up. Mr Richard Williams from Bishop’s Grove has approached me with the hopes that he might be an escort whom you would look favourably upon during your time in town. A further arrow to our bow, so to speak, for we do not want you to be bereft of suitors. One day I am sure you will be thankful for such prudence. Here you are well known, Adelaide, but in London it can be difficult to meet others and a first impression has importance.’
Adelaide was simply struck dumb. She was being saddled with three people who would hardly be good company and her uncle expected her to thank him? It was all she could do to stay in the room and hear him out.
‘Men will know you have a fortune and there are some out there who could be unscrupulous in their promises. Great wealth comes with its own problems, my dear, and you will need to be most careful in your judgement. Pick a suitor who is strong in his own right, a man whose fortune might equal your own. A good man. A solid man. A man of wealth and sense. Stay well away from those who only require a rich wife to allow them back into the gambling halls, or ones whose family estates have been falling around their feet for years.’
‘I am certain I shall know exactly whom to stay away from, Uncle.’ Privately she hoped that every single male of the ton would want to keep their distance from her and after this she would never have to be beleaguered by such ridiculous frippery again.
* * *
The doctor’s rooms were in a discreet and well-heeled part of Wigmore Street and Gabriel had had it on good authority from the books he had acquired over the past months that Dr Maxwell Harding was the foremost expert on illnesses pertaining to problems in men of a more personal nature.
He almost had not come, but the desperation and despondency caused by his condition had led him to arrive for the earliest appointment at noon.
No other people graced the waiting area and the man behind a wide desk gave the impression of disinterest. For that at least Gabriel was glad. He did toy with the thought of simply giving a false name and was about to when the door behind him opened and an older man walked out.
‘It is Lord Wesley, is it not? I am Dr Maxwell Harding. I have heard your name about town, of course, but have not had the pleasure of meeting you. In my line of work you are the one many of my patients would aspire to emulate, if you take my meaning, so this is indeed a surprise.’ His handshake was clammy and he brought a handkerchief from his pocket afterwards to wipe his brow in a nervous gesture. ‘Please, follow me.’
For Gabriel the whole world had just turned at an alarming rate. He did not wish for this doctor to know his name or his reputation. He certainly did not want to be told of a plethora of patients with their own sexual illnesses and hardships who all earmarked him as some sort of a solution.
He suddenly felt almost as sick as he had a week ago outside the Temple of Aphrodite, but as the door behind him closed he took hold of himself. Harding was a doctor, for God’s sake, pledged under the Hippocratic Oath to the welfare of each of his patients. It would be fine. The doctor had walked across to a cupboard now and was taking a decanter and two glasses from a shelf and filling them to the brim.
‘I know why you are here, my lord,’ Harding finally stated as he placed one in Gabriel’s hands.
‘You do?’ With trepidation he took a deep swallow of the surprisingly good brandy and waited. Was it marked on his face somehow, his difficulty, or in the worry of his eyes? Was there some sort of a shared stance or particular gait in those who came through this door for help? Hopelessness, perhaps, or fear?
‘You are here about the Honourable Frank Barnsley, aren’t you? He said you had looked at him strangely when he met you the other day. As if you knew. He implied that you might come and talk with me. He said his father was a good friend of yours.’
‘Barnsley?’ Gabriel could not understand exactly where this conversation was going though he vowed to himself that after he finished the drink he would leave. This was neither the time nor the place to be baring his soul and the doctor was sweating alarmingly.
‘His predilection for...men,’ Harding went on. ‘He said you had seen him and Andrew Carrington embracing one another in the garden at some well-heeled brothel and wondered if you might begin making enquiries...’
Anger had Gabriel placing his glass carefully down upon a nearby table. Harding was not only a gossip, but a medic with no sense of confidentiality or professionalism. Before the outburst he had had no inkling of the sexual persuasions of either man and it was none of his business anyway. He could also just imagine the hushed tones of Harding describing Gabriel’s own problems to all and sundry should he have decided to trust in the doctor’s honour. He was damned thankful that he had not.
He’d buy Barnsley and Carrington a drink when he saw them next in his club as a silent measure of gratitude. But for now he had one final job to do.
‘Mr Frank Barnsley is a decent and honourable man. If I hear you mention any of this, to anyone at all, ever again, I will be back and I promise that afterwards no one will hear your voice again. Do I make myself clear?’
A short and frantic nod was apparent and at that Gabriel simply opened the door and walked out of the building, into the sunshine and the breeze, a feeling of escaping the gallows surging over him, one part pure relief, though the other echoed despair.
He could never tell anybody. Ever. He would have to deal with his problem alone and in privacy. He would either get better or he would not and the thought of years and years of sadness rushed in upon him with an awful truth.
His reality. His punishment. His retribution.
But today had been like a reprieve, too, a genuine and awkward evasion of what might have come to pass. He was known across the ton for his expertise with the opposite sex and if the scale of his prowess had grown with the mounting rumour he had not stopped that, either, his downfall sharpened on lies.
This is what he had come to, here and now, walking along the road to his carriage parked a good two hundred yards from the doctor’s rooms to secure privacy and wishing things could be different; he could be different, his life, his secrets, his sense of honour and morality and grace.
Once he had believed in all the glorious ideals the British Service had shoved down his throat. Integrity. Loyalty. Virtue. Principle. But no more. That dream had long gone in the face of the truth.
He was alone in everything he did, clinging to the edge of life like a moth might to a flame and being burned to a cinder. There was nowhere else, or no one else. This was it.
He had always been alone and he always would be.
Chapter Two (#ulink_dba37976-7a7c-5679-abdc-227ac6eef24f)
Two weeks in the London Season had already seemed like a month and this was the fourth ball Adelaide had been to in as many nights. The same grandeur, the same people, the same boring chatter concerned only with marriage prospects, one’s appearance and the size of a suitor’s purse.
She was tired of it, though tonight the crowd was thicker and those attending did not all have the rarefied look of the ton. A less lofty gathering, she decided, and hence more interesting. Lady Harcourt beside her did not look pleased.
‘Lord and Lady Bradford are rumoured to be enamoured by the changing tides of fortune and one can see that in some of the guests present—a lot of wealth but no true class. Perhaps we should not have come at all, Penbury?’
Her uncle only laughed and finished his drink. ‘Adelaide isn’t a green girl, Imelda, and I am certain she can discern whom to speak with and whom to avoid. In truth, even those with genuine titles seem to be rougher these days, less worried by the way a fortune is made or lost.’ His eyes fixed on a group of men in the corner.
At that very moment the tallest of them raised his glass and said something that made the others laugh. Adelaide noticed he wore a thick band of silver around one of his fingers and that the cuff on his shirt was intricately embroidered in bronze thread. He was everything she had never liked in a man, a fop and a dandy, handsome to the point of beautiful and knowing it. Nearly every woman in the salon looked his way.
From her place to one side of a wide plastered pillar she watched him, too. Out of a pure and misplaced appreciation, she supposed, the length of his hair as extraordinary as every other feature upon him.
‘The Earl of Wesley is the most handsome man in the King’s court, would you not say, Miss Ashfield?’ Miss Lucy Carrigan’s voice rose above the chatter, breathless and adoring. ‘It is understood that his London town house has mirrors on every wall so that he might look at himself from all possible angles.’
‘And he would boast of this?’ The frown that never left the forehead of Lucy Carrigan deepened.
‘Well, if you were that beautiful, Miss Ashfield, should you not wish to look upon your form, too?’
Adelaide could only laugh at such a thought. My goodness, the girl was serious. She struggled to school in her mirth and find kindness.
‘Perhaps it would be so.’
‘My cousin Matilda said Lord Wesley kissed her once when she was much younger and she has never forgotten the feelings his expertise engendered. Indeed, she is long married and yet she still brings up the subject every few months.’
‘And her husband is happy to hear this?’
‘Oh, Norman can hardly object. It was Lord Wesley himself who introduced them to each other and steered them on to the pathway of Holy Matrimony.’
‘Which he believes in?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The earl? Is he married?’
Peals of laughter were the only answer. ‘Oh, dear me, no. A man like that is hardly going to be tied down to one female, is he, though word has it he did come close.’
‘Close?’
‘To Mrs Henrietta Clements. Some dreadful accident took her life a few months back, but the whole thing was hushed up quickly because she had left her wedded husband for Wesley. A scandal it was and the main topic of conversation for weeks after.’
Normally Adelaide stayed clear of such gossip, but fourteen days of society living had broken down her scruples somewhat and Lucy Carrigan for all her small talk was proving most informative.
‘And so the earl was heartbroken?’
‘Ahhh, quite the opposite. For a while nobody saw him at all, but then he began to spend far more time in the vicinity of fast women with questionable morals.’
‘You speak of London’s brothels?’ Adelaide could not quite work out what she meant.
The other reddened considerably and dropped her voice. ‘No lady of any repute should ever admit to knowing about such things, Miss Ashfield, even amongst friends.’ Lucy Carrigan’s eyes again perused the figure of the one they spoke about and Adelaide regarded him, too.
The Earl of Wesley was tall and broad with it, the foppish clothes out of character with his build. But the arrogance was not to be mistaken and nor was the intricately tied cravat that stood up under his chin and echoed the style of the day. The Mathematical, she had heard it called, with its three demanding and precise creases, one horizontal and two diagonal.
He stood with his back to the wall. Even as others came to join the group he was within, he still made certain that he faced any newcomer. And he watched. Everyone. Even her. She looked quickly away as bleached golden eyes fell by chance upon her face.
Lady Harcourt beside her was fussing about the heat in the room and the noise of the band. Tired of listening to her constant stream of complaints, Adelaide signalled to her chaperon that she wished to use the ladies’ retiring room and quietly moved away, glad when Imelda did not insist on accompanying her.
A moment later a small bench to one side of the salon caught her attention, a row of flowering plants placed before it allowing a temporary shelter. Glancing around to see that no one observed her, she pushed the greenery aside and slipped through, sitting down to stretch her legs. A row of windows before her overlooked a garden.
She had escaped, if momentarily, from the inane and preposterous world of being presented to society and she planned to enjoy every fleeting second of it.
‘Ten more weeks,’ she enunciated with feeling. ‘Ten more damned weeks.’
A slight noise to one side had her turning and with shock she registered a man standing there. Not just any man, either, but the foppish and conceited Earl of Wesley.
Without being surrounded by admirers and sycophants he looked more menacing and dangerous. Almost a different person from the one she had been watching a few moments earlier if she were honest. The pale gold of his eyes was startling as he looked towards her.
‘Ten more damned weeks, until...what?’
A dimple in his right cheek caught the light of a small flickering lamp a few feet away, sending shadows across the face of an angel. A hardened angel, she amended, for there was something in his expression that spoke of distance and darkness.
‘Until I can return home, my lord. Until this dreadful society Season of mine is at last over.’ The honesty of her response surprised her. She usually found strangers hard to talk to. Especially men who held all of the ton in thrall as this one did.
‘You do not enjoy the glamour and intrigue of high courtly living, Miss...?’
‘Miss Adelaide Ashfield from Northbridge Manor.’ When question crossed into his eyes she continued. ‘It is in Sherborne, my lord, in Dorset. I am the niece of the Viscount of Penbury.’
‘Ahhh.’ The one dimple deepened. ‘You are rich, then, and well connected?’
‘Excuse me?’ She could not believe he would mention such a thing. Was that not just the very height of rudeness?
‘My guess is that you are a great heiress who has come to the city on the lookout for a husband?’
‘No.’ The word came harshly and with little hidden.
He turned. Up close he was even more beautiful than he was from afar. If she could have conjured up a man from imagination personifying masculine grace and strength, it would have been him. The thought made her smile.
‘You find society and its pursuit for sterling marriages amusing?’ A bleak humour seemed to materialise on his face.
‘I do not, sir. I find it degrading and most humiliating. The only true virtue in my list of attributes is wealth, you see, and as such I am...an easy target for those with dubious financial backgrounds.’
The returned laughter did not seem false. ‘Such a description of desperation might include half the lords of the ton then, Miss Ashfield. Myself included.’
‘You are...penniless?’ She could not believe he would be so candid.’
‘Not quite, but heading that way.’
‘Then I am sorry for it.’
The mirth disappeared completely. ‘Do not be so. There is a freedom in such a state that is beguiling.’
Again Adelaide was perplexed. His words were not those of a vacuous and dandified lord. Indeed, this was the very first conversation that she had actually enjoyed since leaving Dorset.
He glanced around. ‘Where is your chaperon, Miss Ashfield? I could hardly think she would be pleased to see you alone in my company.’
‘Oh, Lady Harcourt is back amongst the crowd, complaining of the crush and the noise. I am supposed to be in the retiring room, you see, but I slipped off here instead.’
‘A decision you might regret.’
‘In what way, my lord?’
Now only ice filled the gold of his eyes. ‘A reputation is easily lost amongst the doyens of the ton, no matter how little you do to deserve it.’
‘I don’t understand.’
He smiled. ‘Stay close to your chaperon, Miss Ashfield, or one day you surely will.’
With that he was gone, a slight bow and then gone, only the vague scent of sandalwood remaining.
Adelaide breathed out deeply and pushed back the shrubbery, aware that others were now moving in her direction. Suddenly the room seemed larger and more forbidding than it had done before, an undercurrent of something she could not fathom, a quiet whisper of warning.
She had seen these weeks in the ton as both a game and a trial, but perhaps it was not quite either. To be roped into marriage on a mistake would be disastrous and life changing. Without pause she hurried back to Lady Harcourt.
* * *
She should not have been alone, Gabriel thought, watching as the unusual Miss Adelaide Ashfield rushed past him and back towards safety. She was so far from the usual run of those new to society he had barely believed she was one. Older for a start and much more...beguiling. Yes, that was the word. She did not seem to harbour the cunning and duplicity of almost every other débutante he had met. She was tall, too, her head rising to his chin, and at six foot four that was something that seldom happened. She was not blonde, either, her hair a mix of sable and dark chestnut and her eyes the colour of a winter stream running over limestone. Deep clear blue with shadows of hurt. He doubted the spectacles she wore were for any reason other than a way of making her appear more studious, less attractive. He could not remember seeing another woman ever wear spectacles to a ball. A further oddness that was intriguing.
Men who came for the Season with the hope of finding a docile and curvy blonde would not be interested in Miss Adelaide Ashfield from Sherborne.
‘God,’ he swore, but his eyes still followed her, pushing past other patrons, barely pausing.
He had frightened her. A good thing that. If one’s reason for being in London for the Season was truly not marriage then she should be glued to the side of the harridan she had finally reached. Another man came to join her and Gabriel recognised him as the hapless Bertram Ashfield, no doubt newly come from the card rooms on one end of the salon. He looked defeated and luckless.
A taller man had also joined the party, his sallow face wreathed in smiles. He was talking to Miss Ashfield in the way of one whose words portrayed more than just the pure sounds. A suitor. Observing the way she leaned away from him, Gabriel gained the impression that any tender thoughts were not returned.
Perhaps she did not lie. Perhaps indeed she was here under duress. The scene became even more interesting when Frederick Lovelace, the Earl of Berrick, joined the small group in the company of the Viscount of Penbury himself. The baby-faced earl had the same look of hope in his expression as the other taller man had.
Gabriel smiled. Could Miss Ashfield be a siren perhaps with the penchant to attract men despite her wishing not to?
Look at her damned effect on him!
He rarely spoke with the new débutantes of the Season and certainly never for so long. Even now he wished he might find her again somewhere isolated so that they could converse further, the low and calm voice that did not hold back feelings placating somehow and sensible.
When the music began to play Gabriel knew it was a waltz and he watched as Berrick took Miss Ashfield’s arm and led her on to the floor. All débutantes needed permission to dance the waltz and he wondered which of Almack’s patronesses had allowed it.
The trouble was she did not seem to know the steps, tripping over her feet more times than he thought possible. Berrick held her closer and tighter so that she might follow him with a greater ease.
Hell. Why did the chaperon not intervene? Or the uncle? Did not others see how very inappropriate such closeness was? He glanced around, but no face was turned towards the couple in censure.
Perhaps Frederick Lovelace was further down the pathway of his courtship than Miss Ashfield had let on? With a curse Gabriel turned for the door. An early night would do him good for once. If only he could sleep.
* * *
Adelaide saw Lord Wesley leave the room, the sure steps of his exit and the quiet observation of others. For one long and ridiculous moment she had imagined that he still watched her and that he might ask her to dance.
Instead the Earl of Berrick held her to the steps, his arms too tight and his body too close. The waltz must soon be finished, surely, and then pleading a headache she could leave, too. She was at that moment glad of such an elderly chaperon and one who would be more than happy for an early night.
Her uncle might not be so pleased, of course, but even he had begun to flag beneath the ludicrous constant social graces and late-night soirées of the ton. Bertie would stay, no doubt, locked into the card rooms in the hope of a win that never seemed to materialise.
‘I should like to call upon you on the morrow if I may, Miss Ashfield.’
He looked as serious as she had ever seen another look. Would he be showing his hand as a suitor? Pray God, she hoped not, but when he squeezed her fingers and looked intently at her she knew that such a wish was false.
‘You are a sensible girl, well endowed with a brain and the ability to use it.’
She smiled, hating her pasted-on joviality with an ache. She could never before remember playing people so false than here in London.
‘My mother, the countess, would like you.’
The music stopped just as she thought she might burst into laughter and Lord Berrick could do nothing but escort her back to her chaperon.
For once the frowns of Lady Harcourt were reassuring and Adelaide took her hand.
‘You are tired, Aunt. Perhaps we might leave?’
The older lady failed to hide the relief that flooded into her eyes as she leant upon her charge and they threaded through the crowded room to the exit.
* * *
Gabriel dreamed that night of colourful dresses and tuneful waltzes, and of a woman in his arms on the dance floor smelling of lemon and hope. Her dark hair was loose and her eyes mirrored the hue of the flowers the greenery around them was bedecked with.
But something was wrong. The ease of the dream turned into worry. He must not kiss her. She would know otherwise. He needed to find some distance from the softness of her touch, a way of leaving without causing question. But she was stuck to him like a spider’s web, clinging and cold, and the only way to be rid of her was to push her down and down until she lay still beneath the marbled font of the destroyed wooden chapel, the smell of sulphur on the glowing fabric of her gown and her feet bare.
Henrietta Clements morphed from Adelaide Ashfield, the blonde of her hair pinked with blood.
He tried to shout, but no words came, tried to run, too, but his feet could not move and the burning ache on his upper right thigh pulled him from sleep into the cold and grey light of dawn.
He could barely breathe, his whole body stiffened in fright and the anger that hung quiet in the daytime now full blooded and red.
Henrietta had come to him out of fear, he knew that. Her husband was purportedly involved in helping to fund Napoleon’s push into Europe and Gabriel had been tailing Randolph Clements for a month or so in an effort to find out more. The Service had had word of the man’s close connections with others in London who held radical views and they wanted to see just whom he associated with.
A simple target. An easy mark. But the small notice he had allowed Henrietta Clements had changed into something else, something he should have recognised as dangerous from the very start.
He laughed, but the sound held no humour whatsoever. Since the fire Randolph Clements had gone to ground, hiding in the wilds of the northern borders, he supposed, or perhaps he had taken ship to France. It didn’t matter much any more. If Clements wanted to exact revenge for the death of his wife, Gabriel would have almost welcomed it, an ending to the sorry saga that his life had now become.
The fire at Ravenshill had ruined him, completely, any intimacy and want for feminine company crouched now amongst pain and fury and sacrifice.
He’d broken hearts and promises for years whilst cutting a swathe through the capricious wants of unhappily married wives. Information to protect a country at war could be gathered in more ways than one might imagine and he done his patriotic duty without complaint.
The rumours that circled around about him had helped as he gathered intelligence whilst a sated paramour lay asleep. It was easy to sift his way through the contents of a husband’s desk or safe or sabretache without prying eyes, and the danger of stepping into the lair of the enemy had been a great part of the enjoyment.
Until Henrietta Clements.
As he perceived his hand stroking the damaged skin on his right thigh he stopped and touched the silver-and-gold ring he had bought three months ago from the jewellers, Rundell and Bridges, in Ludgate Hill.
‘The symbol engraved upon the circle is Christian, my lord, and of course the word engraved is Latin. Fortuna. Lady luck, and who cannot do with a piece of that.’
The salesman was an earnest young man Gabriel had not seen in the shop before and seemed to have a bent for explaining the spiritual. ‘Luck is, of course, received from the faith a believer entrusts in it, for a talisman is only strong when there is that sense of conviction. We have other clients who swear by the advantages they have received. The safe birth of a babe. The curing of a badly broken arm. A cough that is finally cured after months of sleepless nights.’
The ability to make love again?
Did he believe? Gabriel thought. Could he afford not to? Once he would have laughed at such nonsense, but for now he was catching at rainbows and hope with all the fervour of the newly converted. He had paid a fortune for the questionable assistance and had worn it ever since. He wondered momentarily if he should not just snatch the trinket from his finger and throw it into the Thames, for twelve weeks with no sign at all of any inherent powers was probably a fairly conclusive sign of its lack of potency.
Yet hope held him to the wearing of it, even though his own condition had not changed one whit for the better.
* * *
It was a week later, despite all his attempts at desiring otherwise, that Gabriel Hughes finally accepted the fact that he was impotent.
He looked down at his flagging member in the darkened room off Grey Street and thought that this was where life had brought him. An ironic twist. An unwanted mockery of fate.
The woman in the bed was beautiful, bountiful and sweet—a country girl with the combination of dewy sensibleness and a sultry sensuality burning to be ignited. She sat there watching him, a clean and embroidered chemise the only thing covering her, a quiet smile on unpainted lips.
‘I thought my first customer might be old and ugly, sir. I had wondered if I should even be able to do what my aunt has bidden me to, but I can see that this job is likely to be a lot less difficult than my old one. I worked in a weaving mill, you see, but it closed down. It was me and a hundred other girls and the light hurt my eyes and we were never allowed to just stop. Not like this, sir. Never like this. Never on our backs in the warmth and with a glass of good wine for the drinking.’
‘You are a virgin, then?’ His heart sank at all such a state would imply.
She shook her head. ‘Mary said I was to say I was ’cos the coinage is better that way, but I go to church on Sundays, sir, and could not abide by the lie.’
Gabriel was glad for this fact at least. The first time should be special for every woman. He believed that absolutely.
‘My Jack went and died on me before we were married. He got sick one day and was taken the next. It was just lucky that I did not catch the worst of it though I was ill for a good many weeks after.’
The barrage of information ran into the room with an ease that held him still and listening. For the first time in a long while Gabriel did not wish to be away from the company of a half-naked woman with such desperation. Even the roiling nausea seemed to settle with her words, the information comforting somehow.
‘Mam said I should come to London to her sister, who was doing more than well.’ She shook her brown curls and laughed. ‘I don’t think she realises exactly what it is Aunt Mary is up to, but, with little other in the way of paying work back home, I agreed to come in and try it. We haven’t yet though, have we?’ And, with colourful language, she went on to say just what it was they hadn’t yet done.
Gabriel turned towards the window. The phrases she used were coarse, but the talk was relaxing him. Perhaps such candour was what kept the blood from his ears and his breath even. Small steps in the right direction. Tiny increments back to a healing. If he could only stop thinking and do the deed once...
Reality brought his attention to the problem before him as he looked down. Flaccid. Unmoving. The scar tissue on his right thigh and groin in the light from the window was brutal and he pulled his breeches up.
But she was off the bed in a flash, one warm hand clutching his arm. ‘Can you stay for a while, sir? Only a little while so that...’ She stopped as though trying to formulate what she wanted to say next.
‘So your aunt will think you at least earned your keep?’
‘Exactly that, sir, and it is nice here talking with you. You smell good, too.’
He laughed at this and removed her hand. Sitting here was not the agony he had imagined after the fiasco in the Temple of Aphrodite and he gestured to her to pour more wine, which she did, handing it to him with a smile. His beaker was chipped on one side so he turned it around.
‘Jack used to say we would be married with a dozen children before we knew it and look what happened to him. Life is like a game of chess, I’d be thinking. One moment you are winning everything and the next you are wiped off the board.’
‘You play chess?’
‘I do, sir. My father taught me when I were little. He was a mill worker, too, you understand, but a gent once taught him the rudiments of the game in a tavern out of Styal in Cheshire and he never forgot it. I have my board and pieces with me. We could play if you like? To waste a bit of time?’
The wine was cheap, but the room was warm and as the girl brought her robe off of a hook and wrapped it around herself, Gabriel breathed out.
Little steps, he reiterated to himself. Little tiny steps. And this was the first.
* * *
An hour later after a close game Gabriel extracted a golden guinea from his pocket and gave it to her. ‘For your service, Sarah, and for your kindness.’
Bringing the coin between perfectly white teeth, she bit down upon it. Still young enough not to have lost them, still innocent enough to imagine that gold might be a cure for the dissolution of morality. A trade-off that at this point in her life still came down on the black side of credit. God, he muttered to himself as he grabbed his jacket.
Henrietta Clements had been the same once. Hopeful and blindly trusting.
He brought out his card from a pocket and laid it down on the lumpy straw mattress. ‘Can you read?’
She shook her head.
‘If you ever want to escape this place, find someone who can, then, and send word to me for help. I could find you more...respectable work.’
She was off of the bed in a moment, the scent of her skin pungent and sharp as she threaded her arms about his neck.
‘If you lay down, I’d do all the work, sir. Like a gift to you seeing as you have been so nice and everything.’
Full lips closed over his and Gabriel could feel an earnest innocence. The pain of memory lanced over manners as he pushed her back.
‘No.’ A harsher sound than he meant, with things less hidden.
‘You won’t be calling again?’ Sarah made no attempt at hiding her disappointment. ‘Not even for another game of chess?’
‘I’m afraid I won’t.’ The words were stretched and quick, but as manners laced through reason he added others. ‘But thank you. For everything.’
Chapter Three (#ulink_5b6e830e-90d0-5c27-b9bf-4b9845edbc08)
The stone was cold, rubbed smooth with the echoes of time. He had tried to reach her, through the tapestries of Christ under thorns, but the choking smoke had stopped him, the only sound in his ears the one of a ghastly silence.
His dagger was in his fist, wrapped around anger, the Holy Water knocked from its place on the pulpit and falling on to marble pocked with time. The spectre of death had him, even as he reached for Henrietta, the trickle of red running down his fingers and her eyes lifeless.
* * *
Gabriel woke with the beat of his heart loud in his ears and his hands gripping the sheets beneath him.
The same bloody dream, never in time, never quick enough to save her. He cursed into fingers cradled across his mouth, hard harsh words with more than a trace of bitterness within as his eyes went to the timepiece on the mantel.
Six o’clock. An hour’s sleep at least. Better than some nights, worse than others. Already the first birds were calling and the working city moved into action. The street vendors with their words and their incantations. ‘Milk maids below.’ ‘Four for sixpence, mackerel.’ The heavier sound of a passing carriage drowned them out.
Unexpectedly the image of the water-blue eyes of Miss Adelaide Ashfield came to mind, searing through manners and propriety on the seat at the edge of the Bradfords’ ballroom as she cursed about her ten more weeks.
Where did she reside in London? he wondered. With her uncle in his town house on Grosvenor Square or in the home of Lady Harcourt? Did she frequent many of the ton’s soirées or was she choosy in her outings?
Swearing under his breath, he rose. He had no business to be thinking of her; she would be well counselled to stay away from him and as soon as he had caught those who were helping Clements in his quest for Napoleon’s ascendency he, too, would be gone.
The society mamas were more circumspect with him now, the failing family fortune common knowledge and the burned-out shell of the Wesley seat of Ravenshill Manor unattended. His father had squandered most of what had been left to them after his grandfather’s poor management, and Gabriel had been trying to consolidate the Wesley assets ever since. The bankers no longer courted him, neither did the businessmen wanting the backing of old family money to allow them an easy access to ideas. It would only be a matter of time before society turned its back altogether.
But he’d liked talking with Adelaide Ashfield from Dorset. This truth came from nowhere and he smiled. God, the unusual and prickly débutante was stealing his thoughts and he did not even want to stop and wonder why.
She reminded him of a time in his life when things had been easier, he supposed, when conflict could be settled with the use of his fists and when he had gone to bed at midnight and slept until well past the dawn.
What would happen after the allotted ten weeks? Would her uncle allow her to simply slip back into the country with her fortune intact, unmarried and free?
His eyes rested upon the gold locket draped on the edge of an armoire to one side of the window.
The bauble had been Henrietta’s. She had left it here the last time she had come to see him and he had kept it after her death. For safekeeping or a warning—the reminder of love in lost places and frozen seconds? For the memory of why a close relationship would never again be something that he might consider? He had tried to remember how the fire in the chapel had begun, but every time he did so there was a sense of something missing.
For a while he imagined it might have been he who had started it, but subsequently he had the impression of other hands busy with that very purpose. Hers? Her husband’s? The men they associated with? The only thing Gabriel was certain of was the hurt and the stab of betrayal that had never left him.
But perhaps he and Miss Adelaide Ashfield were more alike than he thought? Perhaps she had been hurt, too, by someone, by falsity, by promise. It was not often, after all, that a young and beautiful girl held such an aversion to marriage and stated it so absolutely.
He would like to meet her again just to understand what it was that she wanted. The Harveys were holding a ball this very evening and perhaps the Penbury party had the intention of going? He had heard that Randolph Clements’s cousin George Friar might be in attendance and wanted to get a measure of the man. Wealthy in his own right, the American had been staying with the Clements for a good while now, but some said he was a man who held his own concealments and darkness.
The inlaid gold on his ring glinted in the light and Gabriel frowned as he recited the Anglican prayer of resurrection beneath his breath. Turning the circle of gold and silver against his skin, he positioned it so that the inlaid cross faced upwards.
Fortuna.
He suddenly felt that he had lost the hope of such a thing a very long time ago.
* * *
Arriving at the Harveys’ ball later than he meant to, the first person Gabriel met was his friend Daniel Wylde, the Earl of Montcliffe, with Lucien Howard, the Earl of Ross, at his side.
‘I am only down from Montcliffe for a few days, Gabe, trying to complete a deal on the progeny of a particularly fine pair of greys I own.’
Gabriel’s interest was piqued. ‘The Arabian beauties that were standing at Tattersall’s a year or so back? The ones that caused a stir before they were pulled from auction.’
‘The very same. Perhaps you might be interested in a foal for the Ravenshill stables?’ Lucien Howard’s voice was threaded with an undercurrent of question.
‘My means are about as shaky as your own are rumoured to be, Luce. I doubt I could afford to feed another horse, let alone buy one.’
Daniel Wylde laughed heartily before any more could be said. ‘Find a wife, then, who is both beautiful and rich. That’s your answer.’
‘Like you did?’
‘Well, in all truth, she found me...’
The small and round Miss Greene and her younger sister chose that moment to walk past and gaze in Gabriel’s direction. He had stood up with her in a dance earlier in the Season as a favour to their bountifully blessed aunt and the girls had seemed to search him out at each ensuing function.
A plethora of other ladies milled around behind them, each one seemingly younger than the next. And then to one corner he noticed Miss Adelaide Ashfield. Tonight she was adorned in gold silk, the rich shade making her hair look darker and her skin lighter.
She was laughing at something the girl beside her had said though at that very moment she looked up and caught Gabriel’s glance. From this distance he could see something in her eyes that drew out much more in his expression than he wanted to show. With shock he broke the contact, his heart hammering.
Not sexual, but an emotion far more risky. He almost swore, but a footman chose that exact moment to pass by with an assortment of drinks on a silver tray.
The liquor slid across panic and soothed it. He saw the question that passed between Montcliffe and Ross, but he turned away, the card room as good a place as any to drown his sorrows.
‘If you will excuse me, I might try my hand at a game of whist.’
‘But a waltz is about to begin, Gabe, and the girl in gold in that corner looks as though she would welcome a dance.’
He left saying nothing though the sound of their laughter followed him for a good many yards.
George Friar was not yet here. He’d hoped to have a word with him, not to warn him off exactly, but to allow the colonial to understand the danger of becoming involved in political intrigues against England. Still, Gabriel was prepared to wait, and it was early.
* * *
A hundred pounds later Gabriel acknowledged his mind was not on the game and cashed in his chips.
‘Thank you, gentlemen, but that is me out for the evening.’
Francis St Cartmail pulled his substantial winnings over in front of him. ‘Are you sure you will not stay, Gabriel? I could do with as much as you can lose.’
For the first time that evening Gabriel smiled as if he meant it. ‘Daniel and Luce are out there somewhere. Get them to sit down with you.’
The other shook his head. ‘Ross is skint and Montcliffe is a responsible married man. He spends his extra on the horses he sees with potential and, by God, he is doing well with it, too.’
‘You can’t get in on the game?’
‘Never really interested, I am afraid. But I am off to the Americas in a month or so on the search for gold.’
‘You think you will find some?’ A fresh spurt of interest surged.
‘I do. Come with me. I’d be happy to have you along.’
The invitation was both sincere and unexpected and Gabriel thought that if he had not been consumed in his revenge for Henrietta’s death he might have even taken him up on it.
‘I met a man a few months back who told me to look for gold in North Carolina, Francis. He said the town of Concord was the place I should journey to and his brother-in-law, Samuel Huie, was the man who would show me where to look. He said Huie had found a nugget as big as his fist while he was out fishing one day. As he did not seem like a man who often embellished the truth, I believed the yarn.’
‘Well, I will keep the information in mind and if I find it in the place you mention, I will keep bring some back for you.’
‘Then I wish you all the luck in the world.’
* * *
‘Thank you for the dance, Miss Ashfield.’ Mr George Friar’s words were laced with a slight American accent as he drew Adelaide to one side of the room. ‘Are you enjoying your time here in London?’
‘Indeed, sir.’ This was a complete lie, but she knew if she had said otherwise she would have a complicated explanation in front of her.
‘I saw you speaking with Lord Wesley the other night at the Bradfords’ ball. Is he a particular friend of yours?’
Unexpectedly the blood rushed to her face and Adelaide cursed her reaction, especially when she saw the man’s obvious curiosity.
‘I am newly come to London, Mr Friar. I barely know the earl.’
‘But you have heard the stories, no doubt? He is not to be trusted and it would be wise for any woman to keep her distance.’
Such a confidence made Adelaide shiver.
‘A strong opinion, sir. Is he an acquaintance of yours?’
The man shook his head. ‘No, but he led the wife of my cousin astray and it cost her her life, an ending she did not in any way deserve.’
‘You are implying then some sense of blame on the part of Lord Wesley, sir?’ She had made a point of asking Lucy and her other acquaintances here about the chequered past of Gabriel Hughes since meeting him, partly out of interest, but mostly out of the feeling he was somehow being wrongly dealt to. She could not explain her connection with a man who appeared to be everything she had always abhorred and yet... ‘From the stories I have heard it was your cousin’s wife who had absconded with her lover in the first place?’
This time Friar laughed out loud. ‘A woman who is not afraid to voice all that she thinks is a rare jewel in the London court. Why are you not married ten times over already, Miss Ashfield? Can these English lords not recognise a veritable treasure when they see one?’
She brushed off his nonsense though a part of her was pleased at such praise. ‘A woman’s need for a husband is overrated in my opinion, though my uncle is not to be persuaded otherwise.’
For a moment his visage was one of shock before he managed to drag his expression back.
‘Well, Miss Ashfield, I have always applauded honesty in a woman. Would you take a walk with me, perchance, so that I might tell you a story?’
Adelaide looked around. She could see Lord Berrick making his way towards her and wanted to avoid him.
‘Perhaps a turn on the terrace for privacy might be in order.’ Friar said this as he saw where she looked.
She did not wish to be alone with Mr Friar, she thought, remembering Lord Wesley’s warning, but glancing through the glass she observed others lingering there and enjoying the unusual balminess of the evening.
It could not hurt for five minutes to listen to what he had to say, surely, and with the growing warmth in the room she would appreciate a little fresh air.
Once outside Adelaide could tell Mr Friar was trying to think up what words to give her next as he looked over the small balustrade leading into the garden. Finally he spoke.
‘There are some who would say that the Earl of Wesley is not the fop he pretends to be. My cousin, for example, was completely crushed by the loss of his precious wife. He does not believe her demise was an accident at all.’
‘What does he believe, then?’
‘If I could speak plainly, I would say he thinks Wesley killed her for he had become tired of her neediness as his lover and wanted her gone.’
Shock ran through Adelaide at the bitterness in his words and also that such an accusation should be levelled at Gabriel Hughes. ‘Presumably the courts thought otherwise, Mr Friar, as I heard there was a case of law to be answered for it.’ The thought did cross her mind as to why she should be such a stalwart in her defence of a man whose reputation was hardly pristine, given everything she knew of Lord Wesley had come through gossip.
‘Indeed they did, Miss Ashfield, but justice and money walk hand in hand and the Wesley title holds its own sway in such decisions.’
‘Such are the words of those who perceive their case lost by some unfair disadvantage that they can never prove. Better to move on and make your life over than look back and wreak havoc with all that is left.’
‘You are not the more normal sort of débutante, Miss Ashfield, with your strong opinions.’
‘I will take that as a compliment, Mr Friar, for I am older and a lot wiser. Wise enough to know that people can say anything of anyone and yet the saying of it does not make it true.’
He laughed, but the sound was not pleasant. ‘Have you ever been to the Americas?’
When she shook her head he continued.
‘I own a large property in Baltimore, in Coles Harbor on the west side of the Jones Falls River. I have come to England to find a partner who might enjoy the place with me, neither a timid bride, Miss Ashfield, nor a young one. I need a woman who would cope with the rigours of the New World and one with enough of a fortune to help me build my own legacy.’
‘I see.’ And Adelaide suddenly did. She had left the relative safety of the frying pan that was Lord Berrick and jumped into a fire.
It was how the business of marriage worked in London, after all, brides were only a commodity and an article of trade. Men put their collateral on the table and a prudent woman weighed up her options and accepted the most favourable. For life. For ever. It was exactly as Aunt Eloise had said it would be, was it not? Women sold their souls for marriage and regretted it until the end of time.
The thought of it all held her mute, but George Friar seemed to have taken her silence as acquiescence, for he leaned forward and took her fingers in his own before his lips came down hard upon the back of them.
Cold, wet and grasping. She could not believe he would dare to touch her like this out here amongst others, but as she broke away and looked around she realised everybody on this end of the terrace had left to go inside.
Mr Friar hadn’t released her, either, his fingers still entwined in hers and allowing no means of escape, the expression on his face ardent as he breathed out rapidly.
‘Oh, come now, Miss Ashfield, I am certain we could do better than that. You look like a woman with a great deal of sensuality about you and, if I say so myself, I am considered something of a catch by the unmarried women of Baltimore. A new life, an adventure and the opportunity to use your considerable fortune in a way that could double it again. Take the chance of it whilst you can. Caution can be most stultifying.’
Adelaide thought quickly. She needed to diffuse this situation and get back inside without causing even more of a scene. ‘I am sure you are as you say, sir, a veritable catch, but believe me when I tell you that I have no want for a husband despite my presence here.’ This explanation solved nothing, however, for his grip tightened as he pulled her towards him. ‘I will ask you one more time to please let me go, sir.’ She hated the slight shiver in her words as he met her glance directly and lifted his brows. A game? He thought it such?
‘One kiss, then, to convince you. Surely that would not be amiss?’
The sharp slap of fingers on his cheek and his legs caught on the edge of a pot plant tipping him off balance. Even as she reached forward to stop him tumbling he was gone, falling over the balustrade in an ungainly surprise and lying prone and motionless on the path below.
My God, had she killed him? Forgetting about convention and her own safety, she scrambled down after him and saw in relief that he still breathed.
She could hardly just leave him here, but to do otherwise would involve her in discussions she would rather not be a part of. A movement from above surprised her, but she knew who it was immediately.
Chapter Four (#ulink_2cda0543-b475-5e0a-b932-ea305a619072)
‘We meet again, Miss Ashfield.’
‘In circumstances even more trying than the last time, I am afraid, Lord Wesley. Mr Friar is newly come from the Americas and seems to have a poor understanding of the word “no”. His ability to pretend to be something he is not must be the only thing allowing him entrance here for he has few other redeeming features.’ She knew she was babbling, but couldn’t seem to stop. Surprise and relief at the earl’s presence obliterated her more normal reason and fright had made her shake.
As he joined her, Gabriel Hughes placed two fingers across the pulse on George Friar’s neck. ‘A trifle fast, but given the circumstances...’
Today he looked tired, the darkened skin beneath both eyes alluding to a lack of sleep. His glance had also taken in the telltale mark on the unconscious man’s cheek.
‘His dress sense is appalling, would you not say?’
At that she smiled. There was a certain sangfroid apparent in the comment. Indeed, he did not look even the least perturbed about what had happened.
‘I didn’t push him. He fell across that potted plant and down into the garden.’
‘After you slapped him?’
She felt her own blood rise. ‘I had asked him to remove his hand from my person, Lord Wesley, and he did not.’
He looked up quickly. ‘He didn’t hurt you?’ His gold eyes were darker tonight, though when she shook her head the anger in them softened.
‘Perhaps then it would be better if you were gone when he awakes?’
Taking that as a hint, she turned.
‘Miss Ashfield?’
She turned back. ‘Yes?’
‘If you say nothing of this to anyone, I will make certain that he never does, either.’
‘How?’ The question tumbled out in horror.
‘A firm threat is what I was thinking, but if you want him dead...?’
Could he possibly mean what she thought he did? Friar’s explanation of how Wesley had killed Henrietta tumbled in her mind to be dismissed as the upturn of his lips held her spellbound. He was teasing, but already she could hear the voices of others coming closer and knew she needed to be gone. Still she could not quite leave it at that.
‘Sometimes I am not certain about just exactly who you are, my lord. Amongst the pomp and splendour of your clothes and the artful tie of your cravat I detect a man who is not quite the one that he appears.’
But Gabriel Hughes shook his head. ‘It would be much safer for you to view me exactly as the rest of the world does, Miss Ashfield; a dissolute and licentious earl without a care for anything save the folds in his most complicated cravat.’
No humour lingered now, the hard planes of his face intractable, and as George Friar groaned Adelaide fled. She could not fathom the Earl of Wesley at all and that was the trouble. He was nothing like any man she had met before. Even when he laughed the danger in him was observable and clear. But the colour of his eyes in this light was that of the gilded hawks she’d seen as a young girl in a travelling menagerie that had visited Sherborne, the quiet strength in them hidden under humour.
Lady Harcourt looked up as she came to her side. ‘You are always disappearing, my dear. I am certain that is not a trait to be greatly encouraged. If your uncle were here and he asked me of your whereabouts, I would not know, you see, and so it would be far better if...’
Her words petered off as a shout at one end of the salon had them turning and Adelaide saw Mr Friar burst into the room using a large white handkerchief to wipe off his bleeding nose. She was glad he was heading straight for the exit even as she stepped back into the shadow of her chaperon.
Gabriel Hughes came into view behind him, accompanied by Lord Montcliffe, and the Earl of Wesley’s left hand was buried deep in his pocket. Walking together, the two men were of a similar height and build and every feminine eye of the ton was trained towards them as well as a good many of the masculine ones.
‘Goodness me. What is society coming to these days?’ Lady Harcourt lifted her lorgnette to her face to get a better view. ‘A fist fight in the middle of a crowded ball? Who is that short man, Bertram, with Lord Wesley and Lord Montcliffe?’
Adelaide’s heart began to beat fast and then faster. Would there be a scene? Would she be revealed as the perpetrator of the American’s questionable condition?
‘Mr George Friar is an arrogant cheat,’ her cousin drawled. ‘Perhaps the Earl of Wesley has finally done what many of the others here have not been able to.’
‘What?’ Imelda’s voice was censorious. ‘Broken his nose?’
‘Nay, Aunt. Shut him up.’
The Earl of Berrick, standing beside them, frowned. ‘I have my doubts that Lord Wesley would put himself out for such a one unless it suited his purpose.’
Bertie nodded in agreement. ‘He’d be far more likely to be in the card room or cavorting with the numerous women of the ton who are unhappy in their marriages.’
Lady Harcourt gave her grand-nephew a stern look. ‘You are in the company of a young girl in her first Season, Bertram. Please mind your tongue.’
‘Pardon me, Aunt, and I am sorry, Addie.’
Her cousin gave her one of the smiles that Adelaide could never ever resist.
‘Make it up to me, then.’
‘How.’
‘Come with me as my chaperon to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. There is a physic garden there that I have always wanted to see.’
* * *
‘You look like hell, Gabe.’ Daniel Wylde did not mince his words as they left the Harveys’ ball. ‘You need some beauty sleep.’
Gabriel heard the concern behind the words. ‘I’ll live.’
‘Who was he, to you? Mr Friar back there?’
‘No one. He’d tripped over the balustrade and had fallen. I was the first to find him.’
‘I doubt that.’ Montcliffe’s words were low. ‘Unless you have taken to slapping strange men I would say there was a woman involved. Besides, you would hardly take a hard swipe at an injured man unless you had some gripe with him?’
Gabriel swore, but didn’t answer.
‘Your sister, Charlotte, was unkind, Gabriel, but you were always nicer.’
‘It’s been a while. People change. I’d be the first to admit that I have.’
‘Why?’
One word biting at his guts, so easy just to spill the worries and feel better. Even easier to not. Still it might not hurt to sound Montcliffe out on a little of it.
‘What do you know of Randolph Clements?’
‘His wife, Henrietta, died in the fire at Ravenshill Chapel. It was rumoured you had something to do with that, but it was never proven.’
‘I think Clements killed his wife.’
‘And walked away?’
‘Unconvicted. Mr Friar here is one of his American cousins.’
‘You think he was involved, too?’
‘Odds are that he is here in London for a reason.’
‘He is single and wealthy. He wants a wife. Many might say that is enough of a reason. Who slapped him before you turned up?’
‘Miss Adelaide Ashfield.’
‘And she is...?’
Gabriel swallowed hard. ‘Penbury’s niece and one of this Season’s débutantes.’
‘The woman in gold?’ Montcliffe began to smile. ‘God, you have an interest in this lady.’
‘No.’ He made the word sound as definite as he could.
‘Yet you just avenged her for an insult, I am presuming? Such an action indicates more than mere indifference.’
Gabriel had forgotten about Daniel Wylde’s quick mind. He could also see the wheels of curiosity turning in sharp eyes.
‘You never told me about happened in the bloody chapel? Some say it was you who lit the fire.’
‘No, I can’t even remember how it started. I know I did try to save her, but then...’ He stopped, searching for a glimpse into recall and failing.
‘You couldn’t?’
‘I didn’t love Henrietta Clements in the way she wanted me to.’
There was silence, the guilt of it all howling around the edges of Gabriel’s sanity like a cold wind blowing relentlessly from the north. He had had liaisons with women all of his adult life, unrequited political connections, and this was the result. His penance. His atonement. The resulting impotence was only deserved and proper. A God-given punishment so very close to the cause of all his destruction—he could not deny it.
If he had been alone he might have hit something, but he wasn’t. As it was he held his hands into the side of his thighs in tight fists. The nail on his right forefinger broke into the skin of his thumb.
‘Perhaps I hurt your sister in the same way?’ Daniel offered the explanation.
‘Pardon?’ With all his other thoughts Gabriel could not quite work out exactly what was meant.
‘Charlotte. I didn’t love her enough, either, and we ruined each other. Same thing you are talking of, isn’t it?’
The minutes of quiet multiplied.
‘But then Amethyst taught me about the honesty of love.’
God, Gabriel thought, and what I would not give for a wife like that. Empty loneliness curled into the corners of hope. He had never felt close to anyone and now it would never again be possible.
For a second he almost hated the other’s joy. It was what happened when you were down on your luck. You became surrounded by those who were not. Even his sister, for all her poor choices in life, had written to say that she had met a wealthy and cultured man in Edinburgh with whom she could see a future.
‘Come to Montcliffe, Gabe. Some country air might be just what you need. Amethyst is almost eight months along in her pregnancy so she does not come to London any more, preferring the quiet of Montcliffe.’ Daniel Wylde was watching him closely. ‘She would be pleased to have you there and so would I.’
Thanking him for the offer, Gabriel replied that he would certainly think about it and then he left.
* * *
He actually spent the night thinking of Adelaide Ashfield. Her smile. Her blue eyes. The quiet lisp in her words. Friar was a threat to her in some way he could not as yet fathom. Gabriel knew that he was. He returned his attention to the notes spread across the table in front of him—maps, drawings and timings—as he searched for a pattern.
Clements was there somewhere in the middle of the puzzle though he had been careful to cover his tracks. His cousin George Friar told others that he had arrived in England a month or so before Henrietta had died, on the clipper Vigilant travelling between Baltimore and London. But when he had tracked down the passenger list for that particular voyage his name had not been upon it. Why would he lie about such a thing? Had he lied about who he was as well?
Frank Richardson had visited Friar and Clements, too. He had stayed over at the Whitehorse Tavern with John Goode, his cousin.
Four of them now. Gabriel knew there were six, because Henrietta Clements had told him so. She had been so angry she could barely talk when she had come to him at Ravenshill, that much he did remember.
‘My husband is here,’ she had said simply. ‘Right behind me, and I know for certain his political allegiances lie with France and Napoleon’s hopes. Take me away to the Americas, Gabriel. I have an aunt who lives there. In Boston. We could be free to begin again...together, for I have money I can access and much in the way of jewellery.’ Her arms came around him even as he tried to move away.
Then there was blankness, an empty space of time without memory. He had been trying to fill in the details ever since, but the only true and residing certainty he’d kept was the pain.
The knock at the door was expected, but still he stood to one side of the jamb and called out, ‘Who is it?’
‘Archie McCrombie, sir.’ The reply was firm.
Sliding the latch downwards, Gabriel ushered the small red-haired man inside, the cold air of evening blowing in with him and his coat lifting in the wind.
‘Friar is residing at Beaumont Street, where he has spent most of the last week enjoying the charms of Mrs Fitzgerald’s girls. I left Ben there to make certain he stays put.’
‘Did he meet anyone else?’
‘Frank Richardson, my lord. I did not recognise the others who came and went. Someone tailed me as I left, but I shook him off. Tall he was and well dressed. He does not seem to fit in around this side of town. He was armed, too, I would bet my life on the fact.’
‘Expecting trouble, then, or about to cause it?’
‘Both, I would say, sir. I’d have circled back and tailed him, my lord, if I wasnna meeting you.’
‘No, you did well. Give them some rope to hang themselves; we don’t just want one fish, we want all six of them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
After McCrombie left, Gabriel stood and walked to the window. It was raining outside and grey and the cold enveloped him, his life worn down into a shadow of what it had previously been.
His finances were shaky. He had gone through his accounts again and again, trying to find a way to cut down his spending, but his country estate of Ravenshill was bleeding out money as was his London town house. He wasn’t down to the last of his cash yet, as Daniel Wylde had been, but give it a few more years and...
He shook that thought away.
Once he had those associated with Clements he could leave London and retreat to Ravenshill Manor. Then he would sell off the town house. The new trading classes were always on the lookout for an old and aristocratic residence in the right location and he knew it would go quickly. In Essex he would be able to manage at least until his mother was no longer with him. He shook that thought away and swore softly as he remembered back to their conversation at dinner the night before.
‘You need to find a wife who would give you children, Gabriel. You would be much happier then.’
The anger that had been so much a part of him since the fire burgeoned. ‘I doubt I will ever marry.’
The tight skin on his right thigh underlined all that he now wasn’t. No proper women would have him in the state he was in and even courtesans and prostitutes were out of his reach. A no-man’s lad. A barren and desolate void.
When his mother reached out to place her hand over his he had felt both her warmth and her age. Her melancholy was getting worse, but he did not mention that as he tried to allay her fears.
‘Everything will work out. We will leave London soon and go up to Essex. You can start a garden and read. Perhaps even take up the piano again?’
Tears had welled in the old and opaque eyes. ‘I named you for the angel from the Bible, you know, Gabriel, and I was right to, but sometimes now I think there is only sadness left...’
Her words had tapered off and he shook his head to stop her from saying more, the teachings of the ancient shepherd of Hermas coming to mind.
‘In regard of faith there are two angels within man. One of Righteousness and one of Iniquity.’
The Angel of Iniquity was a better analogy to describe himself now, Gabriel thought, but refrained from telling her so.
The sum of his life. Wrathful. Bitter. Foolish. Cut off. Even Alan Wolfe, the Director of the British Service, had stated that Gabriel could no longer serve in the same capacity he had done, his profile after the fire too high for a department cloaked in secrecy.
So he had kept on at it largely alone, day after day and week after week. A more personal revenge. Once he had thought the emotion a negative one, but now...?
It was like a drug, creeping through his bones and shattering all that was dull; a questionable integrity, he knew that, but nevertheless his own.
The veneer of social insouciance was becoming harder and harder to maintain, the light and airy manners of a fop overlaying a heavy coat of steel. The lacy shirt cuffs, the carefully tied cravat. A smile where only fury lingered and an ever-increasing solitude.
Adelaide Ashfield’s honesty had shaken him, made him think, her directness piercing all that he had hoped to hide and so very easily. But there were things that she was not telling him, either, he could see this was so in the unguarded depths of those blue eyes. And Friar was circling around her, his derogatory evaluation of England’s royal family and its Parliament as much of a topic of his every conversation as his need to make a good marriage.
Revolution came from deprivation and loss, and he could not for the life of him work out why George Friar, a successful Baltimore businessman by his own account, would throw in his lot with the unpopular anti-British sentiments of his cousin. They were blood-related, but they were also wildly different people.
Perhaps it was in the pursuit of a religious fervour he had come with, the whispers of the young prince’s depravities rising. America’s independence had the same ring of truth to it, there was no doubt about that, a better way of living, a more equitable society and one unhampered by a monarch without scruples.
Conjecture and distrust. This is what his life had come to now, Gabriel thought, for he seldom took people at their face value any more, but looked for the dark blackness of their souls.
Gabriel strained to remember the laughter inside the words of Miss Adelaide Ashfield as he poured himself a drink, hating the way his hands shook when he raised the crystal decanter.
She was the first person he had ever met who seemed true and real and genuine, artifice and dissimulation a thousand miles from her honestly given opinions.
But he did wonder just who the hell had hurt her.
Chapter Five (#ulink_3cbc0d03-de9f-574a-9cae-29f261408c74)
Adelaide had tried to like Frederick Lovelace, the Earl of Berrick, but in truth he was both boring and vain, two vices that added together led to the third one of shallowness.
‘A titled aristocrat no less,’ her uncle had proclaimed after noticing Berrick’s interest at their last meeting, a lilt in his voice and pride in his step. ‘I thought Richard Williams a catch, but here is a man of ten thousand pounds a year, my dear, and a country home that is the envy of all who see it.’
As the earl in question regaled her with myriad facts about horse racing, however, Adelaide struggled to feign an interest.
Eventually he came to the end of his soliloquy and stopped. ‘Do you enjoy horses, Miss Ashfield?’ he queried, finally mindful of the fact that he had not asked one question that pertained to her as yet.
‘No. I generally try to stay well away from them, my lord.’ She saw the resulting frown of Lady Harcourt and her uncle as he began to speak.
‘My niece rides, of course, though the tutor I employed to teach the finer points found her timid. Perhaps you might take a turn together in Hyde Park if it suited you. I think she simply needs more practice at the sport to become proficient at it.
‘Indeed, if you were going there by any chance today, perhaps we could meet, Miss Ashfield? I should be more than willing to help in your equestrian education.’
Her uncle looked pleased and nodded with pride. ‘Well, now that you mention it we were intending to take a turn around the park.’
Adelaide did not deign to answer, but her pulse began to race. Please God that her uncle would not promise Berrick her company.
‘Perhaps my niece and I could meet you there around five?’
Short of refusing outright Adelaide could say nothing. At least her uncle would be with her, but it was just this sort of ridiculousness that had put her off coming to London right from the beginning.
‘I shall be there at five, then. Lord Penbury, Miss Ashfield.’ Taking her hand as everyone stood, Berrick bowed across it, his head barely reaching the top of her brow and a growing bald patch clearly visible.
When he was gone her uncle finished the last of the brandy in his glass and turned towards her.
‘A well brought-up young man, I think, Adelaide. A man who might suit you well with his wide interests and great fortune. At least we would know it is not your money that he is after for he is well endowed with his own.’
Adelaide listened with horror. ‘You promised you would allow me the choice of a husband should I come for the Season, Uncle. I should not wish to be told who is the right one to choose and who is not.’
‘That might all be very well, my love, but Frederick Lovelace is a good man from a sterling family and it behoves me as your uncle to offer the advice so that you are aware he’d make a remarkable connection.’
‘He may be a good man, Uncle, but he is not the good man for me.’
Alec Ashfield turned and for the first time ever Adelaide saw real anger come into his eyes. ‘Then find one, my dear. Find a man who can be all that you need and want and I will give you my blessing.’
Lady Harcourt stood as tension filled the room about them.
‘I am sure she will, Alec. It may just take a little time for your niece to realise the honour the Earl of Berrick accords her, but let us hope this meeting you have organised goes somewhere towards the fact.’
Adelaide took her leave, feeling like screaming all the way up to her room on the second floor. She should never have agreed to come to London in the first place, she knew that now. She should have stayed at Sherborne and dug her feet in, refusing to be budged by any argument presented, because this was the result of it all. This coercion and well-meaning forcefulness.
When a tear welled up and fell over one cheek she angrily wiped it away.
She had not always needed to explain things to her old aunts, the fact that she was resigned to a productive spinsterhood simply accepted. An option the same as the one they themselves had taken and nary a second of regret for it, either.
The day suddenly felt heavy and difficult and now there was the further worry of a ride in a few hours in Hyde Park with a suitor who had a lot more hope than she knew was warranted. Could she feign sickness and simply miss it? She shook her head.
No, she would meet the Earl of Berrick with her uncle and tell him herself that she was not interested in marrying him or anybody at all. Hopefully that would be the end of it.
* * *
The ride began badly as Lord Berrick took her hand and pressed his lips to her skin, an action so reminiscent of her skirmish with Mr Friar that she found herself snatching her fingers back and standing there speechless. All around her others watched, the eyes of the ton upon them.
‘I have looked forward to this, Miss Ashfield. I hope you will allow me to help you mount.’
When he placed his hands beneath the stirrup of the horse Adelaide thanked him. At least up on her steed he would be out of touch, so to speak, and she might be able to relax just a little.
She and her uncle had dismounted as soon as they had got inside the gates and now her uncle had elected to stay and wait whilst she took a turn about Rotten Row. This was a tactical manoeuvre, probably, and one that gave Frederick Lovelace some time alone with her.
At least the track was busy. With only a small difficulty she could get around the whole thing without having to converse with him to a great extent save to tell him of her desire to remain unattached.
Adelaide had never been proficient at managing a horse and here amongst many other steeds her stallion seemed nervy and difficult. At Northbridge she seldom rode, preferring instead to walk the short distances between the manor and the village. In London it seemed everybody was an expert, the tooling precise and accomplished.
Taking in a breath, she tried to hide a building fear. She had heard it mentioned more than once that horses could tell if their rider was afraid and acted accordingly. From the prancing of the horse beneath her she was sure he must understand her frame of mind completely. It obviously felt a certain attraction for the filly the Earl of Berrick rode, as it constantly veered to one side to get closer.
Just what she needed, she thought to herself, and, jamming her hand about the reins, made a supreme effort to keep them apart. At that moment when she looked up she stared straight into the laughing molten glance of Lord Wesley.
‘Miss Ashfield.’ He tipped his hat to her. The animal he rode was huge and black. A mount she imagined one would ride into battle, the arrogant stance of its head marking it out as different from all the others in the park.
Like horse, like owner, she found herself thinking uncharitably, though his presence seemed to have had the effect of making Lord Berrick back off a bit and for that she was glad. Two more turns and she could reasonably call it a day. If she managed one with Lord Wesley then all the better.
‘I see you are as proficient at riding as you are at dancing the waltz.’
She could not help but smile. ‘You have not yet seen me paint a watercolour or stitch a tapestry. I am even worse at those most necessary of feminine skills.’
When he laughed the sound burrowed down into the marrow of her bones, making her warmer than she had been.
‘What are you good at, then?’ he asked.
‘Healing,’ she returned. ‘I run a clinic at Northbridge and people come for miles to get my ointments and tinctures. I have a garden, you see, and my aunts taught me many things about—’
She stopped as she saw his surprise and wondered if such skills would be deemed appropriate by the lords and ladies of society.
‘Like Asclepius?’ he returned and she shook her head.
‘Well, I cannot restore the dead to the living as he did, my lord, but then neither do I wish to be smote with Zeus’s thunder.’
‘It might be argued accepting gold for raising the dead was hardly good form. Someone had to stop it.’
Adelaide was astonished. It was seldom she had met anyone, apart from her aged aunts, with a solid memory for the complicated names and deeds of the Grecian legends. A scholar, then, and a man who hid such learning? Today the sun had brought out the colour in his hair to a variety of shades of light brown, red and gold. When he wiped back the unruly hair on his forehead, she saw that the knuckles on his left hand were bruised and split. From the contretemps with Friar?
Adelaide glanced about to see that Lord Berrick was not too close before she mentioned them. ‘I could give you salve for your fingers if you wanted it.’
As an answer to that he merely jammed his hand into his pocket and she pushed back her spectacles with a sigh.
‘Why do you wear them?’ He did not sound happy.
‘The spectacles?’ She couldn’t quite understand what he meant.
‘The glass in them is plain. Poor eyesight normally requires the fashioning of a lens for improved vision.’
She gave back her own question. ‘Do you keep hawks, my lord?’
‘No. Why?’ He shifted on his horse in order to watch her better.
‘I think you would hold an affinity with a bird who notices all that is around him even as he pretends nonchalance.’
With a gentlemanly tilt of his head Gabriel Hughes dropped back; a slight tug on the leather and he was gone, Lovelace replacing him.
‘Is it not just the most appealing time of day, Miss Ashfield, and might I also say that you ride magnificently.’
As Adelaide swallowed back mirth she also resisted the strong impulse to turn around and look for the enigmatic Earl of Wesley.
* * *
Gabriel watched her trot on with the popinjay Lovelace chattering beside her and thought he should simply turn for the gate and leave. But something made him stay. Her uncertainty with the horse, he was to think later, or the unguarded way she had looked at him when she had offered her salve.
The shout came from close by, reverberating as a young man called his friend. Any other day such a sound might not have mattered, but with Adelaide holding her reins so tightly her horse took umbrage and reared. She had no hope at all in managing it.
Berrick simply stepped his horse to the side and watched, uncertain as to what he could do.
Gabriel was off his mount in a second and strode towards her frightened animal, reaching out for the dangling reins as he told Adelaide Ashfield to hold on any way that she could. Frightened blue eyes turned to him, but the message seemed to be getting across as she crouched down on the back of the stallion and grabbed large handfuls of mane in her fists.
Within a moment he had gentled the horse, and when it had settled enough for Gabriel to move around to the side, he reached up to the terrified rider.
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