you.’ Lucius bowed as gracefully as he could manage despite the torn muscles. He smiled bleakly. ‘As I have informed Sir Wallace, we have no prior acquaintance. Any accusations on his part are misinformed. Your honour is without blemish.’
Sir Wallace waved the apology away, his attention on his sister. ‘Your guest at the Pride is Lucius Hallaston, Earl of Venmore,’ he announced with relish. ‘Were you aware of that?’
Entirely composed, Miss Lydyard ignored her brother and curtsied, eyes now lowered. ‘My lord. I see you are much recovered.’
It was the voice that did it for Lucius. Cool, low tones, carefully controlled, calmly confident. Astonishing in the circumstances. And then the eyes confirmed it as they rose to meet his across the room. Oh, yes, he could not mistake those eyes. As cool as her voice, grey, almost silver in the morning light, like the flash of sunlight on water at daybreak. And her hands, now clasped firmly before her, her knuckles white, if he were not mistaken. So perhaps she was not as composed as he had thought. Longfingered, capable hands, able to pull on a rope or manoeuvre a barrel on a moving deck. Or bathe a man’s forehead with cool water and bind a wound…
The suspicion transformed itself into a certainty. This was Captain Harry. The knowledge, the memory of the Captain’s intimate ministrations, lurched uncomfortably in Lucius’s belly.
‘So Harry Lydyard tended to you, did he, my lord? I fail to see how you could be unaware.’ The words burst from Sir Wallace. ‘A foolish notion that no man of sense would believe. This is my sister, Miss Harriette Lydyard. Whom you, my lord, have dishonoured!’
Seeing a chasm opening up before his feet, Lucius viewed the occupants of his borrowed bedchamber with distaste. Miss Lydyard continued to make no response to her brother’s recriminations, a matter that earned his reluctant respect, except for the little line that had dug itself between her brows and a tinge of colour to her cheeks. She was not afraid of her brother, nor of the situation, even though her brother was accusing her of immodesty and him of some form of lascivious seduction, remarkable given the condition he had been in! As for the brother…Had he imagined it or had Lydyard’s interest grown as soon as he knew his title? Lucius’s head might ache, but there was nothing wrong with his wits. Here was a situation that had the makings of a trap set to catch a man of wealth and consequence and some degree of honour. How to snap up a prize for a spinster sister who was not in the first flush of youth or blessed with obvious beauty. And he, the Earl of Venmore, was to be the prize. Lydyard had said he already had a marriage arranged for his sister. Like Hell, he had! Lydyard had an eye to the main chance and had leapt to secure it.
Well, he would not be caught in that trap. Lucius’s nostrils flared at the audacity of the man. And at the same time caught the eyes of the lady. Grave and solemn, they touched his and held there, and if he were not mistaken there was a plea in their silver intensity. But for what? Perhaps that he should not make it worse for her than it already was. He set himself to do his best. He owed her that much.
‘As I recall, Lydyard, not that I recall much of it, I was unconscious for most of the night. I could have spent the night with an entire gang of smugglers in the room, together with their contraband and an invading force of Preventive officers, and been unaware of it.’
But Lydyard’s smile widened to show an array of unpleasantly discoloured teeth. ‘And would the gossipmongers of London society believe that? That Earl Venmore spent the entire night with my sister in his room, in an empty house, with her honour still intact at daybreak? Hardly, my lord. My sister will be disgraced. Nor, I hazard, will it do much for your own reputation, robbing an innocent girl of her good name. We may be distant from London, but news and gossip travels. One of the biggest catches in the marriage market as you are, if I am not mistaken, reduced to seducing and abandoning innocent girls. Will the gossips believe the innocence of all concerned? And your presumed unconsciousness throughout?’
The chasm not of Lucius’s making yawned wider. ‘No, probably not.’
‘For certain they will not! You have rendered my sister unmarriageable, sir!’
And Lucius saw Harriette Lydyard grow pale, as she had never done when she had his blood on her hands. He saw horror dawn and spread over her face in a tightening of the skin along her cheekbones. Still she made no reply. On her behalf as much as his own, anger bubbled up, enough to make him light-headed in his weakened state. He had been neatly trapped, had he not, one disaster following upon the next, but if he read the girl’s reaction right, she was as much a victim as he.
So he would take control of this situation. He had had quite enough in recent weeks—more than any man could tolerate—of being outmanoeuvred and manipulated, outwitted and outgunned. Jean-Jacques Noir might have got the better of him in France, but he was damned if he would allow Sir Wallace Lydyard to do so in—where was this God-forsaken place?—Old Wincomlee! Nor would he allow the man to take such a bullying tone of voice with his innocent sister. A vulnerable, gently reared girl did not deserve that.
Hell and the devil! Did he not have enough to plague him without this? But those grey eyes were suddenly dark like a winter sea, wide and anxious.
Harriette continued to stand where she had stood since the beginning of this appalling scene, a mere step into the room, wishing with all her heart that she could remain Captain Harry for just a little while longer. Or that the rotten floorboards of the chamber would collapse beneath her feet and swallow her down into a black hole. Her heart sank to the depth of her scuffed satin shoes. She had hoped to make her escape back to Whitescar Hall with no one being the wiser, certainly without any further conversation between herself and her wounded spy. And here she was, summoned by her brother as if she were a servant. She had managed, if nothing else, to dispose of her breeches, which would have added kindling to the flames, but Wallace, damn him, had come hotfoot. Wallace was furious. She slanted a look towards his unappealing features and her attention was caught. Perhaps Wallace was not so furious as he might wish to appear. Manipulative was more the order of the day. Her half-brother had seen an opportunity and was intent on making the most of it. Harriette did not know whether to descend into hysterical laughter or weep from the sheer incongruity of the whole situation
An earl! Her spy was an earl! Ridiculous. And was, furthermore, accused of dishonouring her. As if her private dreams had blossomed into reality. What arrant nonsense was that?
No point in her arguing the case with Wallace. When he was in this mood, he would listen to neither excuse nor reason, so she might as well keep her silence until he ran out of foolish accusations and the exquisite Earl had made his inevitable rapid escape from Lydyard’s Pride.
She risked another glance at the Earl.
The ripple of laughter almost won despite the horrors. Because the Earl of Venmore was a Corinthian. All that Wallace wanted to be, tried so ineffectually to ape, here was his heart’s desire in the flesh. Wallace had the ambition to be a sportsman, proficient and lauded for his abilities in the saddle, with pistol and rapier. To be admired for his splendid physique, his handsome looks. To be recognised as a leader of fashion. He never could. And here standing before him was the epitome of all his dreams.
And hers.
Washed, shaved, his hair settling into shining, elegant dishevelment, the Earl cut a splendid figure. He was taller than she had thought, more than six feet, his shoulders impressively broad beneath the lurid monstrosity, and did she not know at first hand how the muscles ran sleek and smooth, as water over a rock, beneath his skin, the athletic moulding of his strong thighs and firm belly? Did she not know the smooth satin of his skin beneath her palms when she had washed and bound his wounds? And Harriette felt her face and her blood heat at the memory.
How degrading that he should look at her
