you say, my lord. I refer to Lady Felsham. I understand from her ladyship that you were indisposed last night and sought refuge here, finding it familiar, as it were.’
So he was in his own house, and he was not losing his mind. Only he had sold it—he could remember now he had been given a clue. He had written to his agent Grimball from Brussels three months ago. This comfortable little house had proved both too small, and too large, for his needs. He had the family town house—mausoleum though it was—for his mother and sisters on their unpredictable descents upon London, and after selling this house Grimball had taken chambers for him in the Albany for comfortable bachelor living.
But who the devil was Lady Felsham? Surely not the Venus in the translucent silk nightgown he could remember now his head was clearing? She must have been a dream. Women like that only existed in dreams.
The butler was waiting patiently for him to make a decision. ‘Coffee would be a good idea, thank you, Hedges, then hot water. And my compliments to her ladyship and I would be delighted to join her for luncheon.’
He frowned at the butler. ‘Where is Lord Felsham?’ If he remembered correctly, Felsham was older than he—about thirty-five—staid to the point of inertia and widely avoided because of the paralysing dullness of his character and conversation. That did not bode well for an entertaining luncheon, but it was probably all his battered brain could cope with.
‘His lordship, I regret to inform you, passed away almost two years ago as the result of a severe chill caught while inspecting the drains at Felsham Hall.’ The butler cleared his throat discreetly. ‘Her ladyship is only recently out of mourning. If you would care to remove your shirt, my lord, I will do what I can to restore it.’
Stripped to the waist, Ashe shaved himself with the painstaking care of a man who was all too aware that his finer reflexes had a way to go to recover themselves. At least he did not look too much of a wreck, he consoled himself, peering into the mirror after rinsing off the lather. Weeks out of doors drilling his troops had tanned his skin, tightened up his muscles, and one celebratory night of hard drinking did not show—at least not on the outside.
Internally was another matter. He was beginning to wonder what the devil he had consumed, if his memories of last night were so wild. The earlier part was no problem. He had called briefly at his new chambers, changed for the last time into his dress uniform and gone straight to Watier’s, leaving Race, his valet, to unpack.
They had all been there, his brothers-in-arms who had survived Waterloo and were fit enough to have made it back to England. And as they had sworn they would the night before the battle, they settled down to a night of eating, drinking and remembering. Remembering the men who were not here to share the brandy and the champagne, remembering their own experiences in the hell that was being acclaimed as one of the greatest battles ever fought—and trying their hardest to forget that they now had to learn all over again to be English gentlemen and pick up the life they had abandoned for the army.
That much was clear. A damned good meal at Watier’s, champagne for the toasts, then on through a round of drinking clubs and hells. Not playing at the tables, not more than flirting with the whores and demi-reps who flocked around them, attracted by the uniforms, but drinking and talking into the night. Doing and seeing the things they could do and see because they were alive.
Eventually, about half past two it must have been, he had turned homewards up Piccadilly towards the Albany. And there old habit must have taken control from his fuddled brain and steered his feet into the curve of Half Moon Street, through the mews and up to his own old back door. He could recall none of that, nor how he had got upstairs, nor what had happened next. Because whatever he might expect to find upstairs in the bedroom of the widow of the most boring man in England, a dark-haired Venus and a large white bear were not within the realms of possibility.
‘Your shirt, my lord, and your boots.’ Hedges materialised with the expressionless efficiency achieved only by the most highly trained English butler. ‘And I have taken the liberty of borrowing one of the late master’s neckcloths.’
‘Thank you.’ Ashe dressed in silence, got his hair into some sort of order, submitted to Hedges whisking the clothes brush over his jacket and followed the butler downstairs. In the blaze of silver lace and frogging he felt distinctly overdressed, but sartorial errors were apparently the least of his faux pas.
‘Luncheon will be served in about twenty minutes, my lord.’ Lady Felsham had not changed the function of the downstairs rooms around, he noted as Hedges opened a door, cleared his throat and announced, ‘Major the Viscount Dereham, my lady.’
Taking a deep breath Ashe tugged down his cuffs and strode into the drawing room to confront the straitlaced widow whose home he had invaded.
The breath stayed choked in his lungs. He had expected a frowsty middle-aged woman in black. Standing in the middle of the room was his Venus of the night before, regarding him with steady grey eyes, the colour high on her cheekbones.
Only she was now decently dressed in an exquisite green gown that made her elegantly coiffed hair gleam like polished wood. Pearls glowed softly against her flushed skin and the memory of the scent of her almost drove his scattered wits to the four corners of the room.
‘Lord Dereham.’ Straight-backed, she dropped the very slightest formal curtsy. She could not be a day over twenty-six, surely?
‘Lady Felsham.’ He managed it without stammering like a callow boy, thank God, and bowed. There was a slight movement at the back of the room and he saw a plainly dressed woman of middle age in the shadows. A chaperon. Where the blazes had she been last night when he had needed her?
‘Please, sit.’ Her ladyship gestured at a chair and sank down on the chaise opposite. The woman at the back sat too. Not a chaperon, then, or she would have been introduced. Her dresser no doubt. ‘I am glad you are able to stay for luncheon, Lord Dereham.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. I am delighted.’ And I’m gaping at her like a nodcock. Pull yourself together, man! ‘I must apologise for invading your home last night. There is no hiding the fact that I had been celebrating rather too enthusiastically.’ A faint smile curled the corner of her lips. The lower lip had the slightest, most provocative, pout. What would it be like to nip gently? He dragged his eyes away from it. ‘I am somewhat confused about what then transpired. This is not helped by recollections of a white bear, which leads me to believe I was rather more in my altitudes than I had imagined.’
‘Horace.’ She might have been naming a relative. ‘He is a polar bear skin on the floor in front of the fireplace.’
‘Horace.’ The damned bear was called Horace. What sort of woman gave her hearthrugs names, for heaven’s sake? But at least he was not losing his mind. ‘I think I must have tripped and measured my length on your Horace,’ he added, the memories coming back now he knew the white bear was not a dream.
Ashe had thought her colour somewhat heightened when he entered the room. Now she flushed to her hairline. What the devil had he said? Lady Felsham could no longer meet his eyes. He closed them, searching the blurred pictures behind his lids. She had been lying on the fur. It was not Horace he had landed full length upon, it was her, and all those tantalising dreams of warm female curves, of the scent of her skin, of, Heaven help him, following the whorls of her ear with his tongue, were accurate memories.
Chapter Three
Ashe stared at his hostess and Lady Felsham gazed back, sitting there, outwardly composed, while inwardly she must be desperately wondering just what he could recall of all this—and whether he
