Introducing Louise Allen’s most scandalous trilogy yet!

DANGER & DESIRE

Leaving the sultry shores of India behind them, the passengers of the Bengal Queen face a new life ahead in England—until a shipwreck throws their plans into disarray …

Can Alistair and Perdita’s illicit onboard flirtation survive the glittering social whirl of London?

Washed up on an island populated by ruffians, virginal Averil must rely on rebel captain Luc for protection …

And honourable Callum finds himself falling for his brother’s fiancée!

Look for

RAVISHED BY THE RAKE August 2011

SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL September 2011

MARRIED TO A STRANGER October 2011

from Mills & Boon® Historical

Alistair caught her as she stumbled back. ‘The door must have been unlocked,’ he said as she stared about her, confused. ‘It’s an empty cabin.’ There was just enough light to see. Alistair reached outside, lifted a lamp from the wall and came in, closing the door behind him. She heard the click of the key as he stood there.

‘Alistair—’

‘Yes?’ he said, putting down the lantern and coming to pull her into his arms. ‘What do you want, Dita?’

‘I don’t know.’ She tugged at his waistcoat buttons. ‘You.’

‘I want you, too,’ he said as she undid the last of them and began to pull his shirt from his waistband. ‘I only meant to kiss you: I should have known it wouldn’t stop there. Trust me a little more, Dita? Trust me to pleasure you?’

‘Yes,’ she said, not quite understanding what he was asking, what it meant. ‘I need to touch you …’

About the Author

LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news!

Novels by the same author:

VIRGIN SLAVE, BARBARIAN KING

THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER*

THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM*

THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON*

THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST*

THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST*

THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST*

PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS†

VICAR’S DAUGHTER TO VISCOUNT’S LADY†

INNOCENT COURTESAN TO ADVENTURER’S BRIDE†

and in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks: DISROBED AND DISHONOURED

* Those Scandalous Ravenhursts

† The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters

Ravished

by the Rake

Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication

For the Regency Silk & Scandal ‘continuistas’

Author Note

Flying to India on holiday last year, I grew weary of the long flight, but I cheered up when I thought of how many months the passengers on the East India Company’s ships plying to and from the Far East must have been at sea together. Intrigued, I read more—especially the memoirs of the rake William Hickey, who spent much of his legal career in India and who described in vivid detail life on-board ship.

The voyage had its dangers, as well as its discomforts, and shipwrecks were not uncommon. I began to wonder what would happen to the passengers who survived such a disaster: would the bonds forged during months together withstand such a trauma? How would the wreck affect friends and lovers ashore?

This book is the first in a trio of novels that explores that question. Shocking Lady Perdita Brooke and rakish adventurer Alistair Lyndon strike sparks off each other from the moment they meet—but what will happen when the Bengal Queen is wrecked on the treacherous rocks of the Isles of Scilly?

I hope you enjoy finding out as much as I did, and will follow their fellow passengers in the next two books as three love stories emerge from the shipwreck.

Chapter One

7th December 1808—Calcutta, India

It was blissfully cool, Dita assured herself, plying her fan in an effort to make it so. This was the cool season, so at eight o’clock in the evening it was only as hot as an English August day. Nor was it raining, thank heavens. How long did one have to live in India to become used to the heat? A trickle of sweat ran down her spine as she reminded herself of what it had been like from March to September.

But there was something to be said for the temperature: it made one feel so delightfully loose and relaxed. In fact, it was impossible to be anything but relaxed, to shed as many clothes as decency permitted and wear exquisitely fine muslins and lawns and floating silks.

She was going to miss that cat-like, sensual, indolence when she returned to England, now her year of exile was over. And the heat had another benefit, she thought, watching the group of young ladies in the reception room off the great Marble Hall of Government House: it made the beautiful peaches-and-cream blondes turn red and blotchy whereas she, the gypsy, as they snidely remarked, showed little outward sign of it.

It had not taken long to adapt, to rise before dawn to ride in the cool, to sleep and lounge through the long, hot afternoons, saving the evenings for parties and dances. If it had not been for the grubby trail of rumour and gossip following her, she could have reinvented herself, perhaps, here in India. As it was, it had just added a sharper edge to her tongue.

But she wanted so much now to be in England. She wanted the green and the soft rain and the mists and a gentler sun. Her sentence was almost done: she could go home and hope to find herself forgiven by Papa, hope that her reappearance in society would not stir up the wagging tongues all over again.

And if it does? she thought, strolling into the room from the terrace, her face schooled to smiling confidence. Then to hell with them, the catty ones with their whispers and the rakes who think I am theirs for the asking. I made a mistake and trusted a man, that is all. I will not do that again. Regrets were a waste of time. Dita slammed the door on her thoughts and scanned the room with its towering ceiling and double rows of marble columns.

The Bengal Queen was due to sail for England at the end of the week and almost all her passengers were here at the Governor’s House reception. She was going to get to know them very well indeed over the next few months. There were some important men in the East India Company travelling as supercargo; a handful of army officers; several merchants, some with wives and daughters, and a number of the well-bred young men who worked for the Company, setting their feet on the ladder of wealth and power.

Dita smiled and flirted her fan at two of them, the Chatterton twins on the far side of the room. Lazy, charming Daniel and driven, intense Callum—Mama would not be too displeased if she returned home engaged to Callum, the unattached one. Not a brilliant match, but they were younger brothers of the Earl of Flamborough, after all. Both were amusing company, but neither stirred more than a flutter in her heart. Perhaps no one would ever again, now she had learned to distrust what it told her.

Shy Averil Heydon waved from beside a group of chaperons. Dita smiled back a trifle wryly. Dear Averil: so well behaved, such a perfect young lady—and so pretty. How was it that Miss Heydon was one of the few eligible misses in Calcutta society whom she could tolerate? Possibly because she was such an heiress that she was above feeling delight at an earl’s daughter being packed off the India in disgrace, unlike those who saw Lady Perdita Brooke as nothing but competition to be shot down. The smile hardened; they could certainly try. None of them had succeeded yet, possibly because they made the mistake of thinking that she cared for their approval or their friendship.

And Averil would be on the Bengal Queen, too, which was something to be grateful for—three months was a long time to be cooped up with the same restricted company. On the way out she’d had her anger—mostly directed at herself—and a trunk full of books to sustain her; now she intended to enjoy herself, and the experience of the voyage.

‘Lady Perdita!’

‘Lady Grimshaw?’ Dita produced an attentive expression. The old gorgon was going to be a passenger, too, and Dita had learned to pick her battles.

‘That is hardly a suitable colour for an unmarried girl. And such flimsy fabric, too.’

‘It is a sari I had remade, Lady Grimshaw. I find pastels and white make me appear sallow.’ Dita was well aware of her few good features and how to enhance them to perfection: the deep green brought out the colour of her eyes and the dark gold highlights in her brown hair. The delicate silk floated over the fine lawn undergarments as though she was wearing clouds.

‘Humph. And what’s this I hear about riding on the maidan at dawn? Galloping!’

‘It is too hot to gallop at any other time of day, ma’am. And I did have my syce with me.’

‘A groom is neither here nor there, my girl. It is fast behaviour. Very fast.’

‘Surely speed is the purpose of the gallop?’ Dita said sweetly, and drifted away before the matron could think of a suitably crushing retort. She gestured to a servant for a glass of punch, another fast thing for a young lady to be doing. She sipped it as she walked, wrinkling her nose at the amount of arrack it contained, then stopped as a slight stir around the doorway heralded a new arrival.

‘Who is that?’ Averil appeared at her side and gestured towards the door. ‘My goodness, what a very good-looking man.’ She fanned herself as she stared.

He was certainly that. Tall, lean, very tanned, the thick black silk of his hair cut ruthlessly short. Dita stopped breathing, then sucked down air. No, of course not, it could not be Alistair—she was imagining things. Her treacherous body registered alarm and an instant flutter of arousal.

The man entered limping, impatient, as though the handicap infuriated him, but he was going to ignore it. Once in, he surveyed the room with unhurried assurance. The scrutiny paused at Dita, flickered over her face, dropped to study the low-cut neckline of her gown, then moved on to Averil for a further cool assessment.

For all the world like a pasha inspecting a new intake for the seraglio, Dita thought. But despite the unfamiliar arrogance, she knew. Her body recognised him with every quivering nerve. It is him. It is Alistair. After eight years. Dita fought a battle with the urge to run.

‘Insufferable,’ Averil murmured. She had blushed a painful red.

‘Insufferable, no doubt. Arrogant, certainly,’ Dita replied, not troubling to lower her voice as he came closer. Attack, her instincts told her. Strike before you weaken and he can hurt you again. ‘And he obviously fancies himself quite the romantic hero, my dear. You note the limp? Positively Gothic—straight out of a sensation novel.’

Alistair stopped and turned. He made no pretence of not having heard her. ‘A young lady who addles her brain with trashy fiction, I gather.’ The intervening years had not darkened the curious amber eyes that as a child she had always believed belonged to a tiger. Memories surfaced, some bittersweet, some simply bitter, some so shamefully arousing that she felt quite dizzy. She felt her chin go up as she returned the stare in frigid silence, but he had not recognised her. He turned a little more and bowed to Averil. ‘My pardon, ma’am, if I put you to the blush. One does not often see such beauty.’

The movement exposed the right side of his head. Down the cheek from just in front of the ear, across the jawbone and on to his neck, there was a half-healed scar that vanished into the white lawn of his neckcloth. His right hand, she saw, was bandaged. The limp was not affectation after all; he had been hurt, and badly. Dita stifled the instinct to touch him, demand to know what had happened as she once would have done, without inhibition.

Beside her she heard her friend’s sharp indrawn breath. ‘I do not regard it, sir.’ Averil nodded with cool dismissal and walked away towards the chaperons, then turned when she reached their sanctuary, her face comically dismayed as she realised Dita had not followed her.

I should apologise to him, Dita thought, but he ogled us so blatantly. And he cut at me just as he had that last time. Furthermore, he apologised only to Averil; her own looks would win no compliments from this man.

‘My friend is as gracious as she is beautiful,’ she said and the amber eyes, still warm from following Averil’s retreat, moved back to hers. He frowned at the tart sweetness of her tone. ‘She can find it in herself to forgive almost anyone, even presumptuous rakes.’ Which is what Alistair appeared to have grown into.

And on that note she should turn on her heel, perhaps with a light trill of laughter, or a flick of her fan, and leave him to annoy some other lady. But it was difficult to move, when wrenching her eyes away from his meant they fell to his mouth. It did not curve—he could not be said to be smiling—but one corner deepened into something that was almost a dimple. Not, of course, that such an arrogant hunk of masculinity could be said to have anything as charming as a dimple. That mouth on her skin, on her breast …

‘I am rightly chastised,’ he said. There was something provocative in the way that he said it that sent a little shock through her, although she had no idea why. Then she realised that he was speaking to her as a woman, not as the girl he had thought her when he had so cruelly dismissed her before. It was almost as though he was suggesting that she carry out the chastisement more personally.

Dita told herself that one could overcome blushes by sheer force of will, especially as she had no very exact idea what she was blushing about now. He did not recognise her; even if he did, what had happened so long ago had been unimportant to him, he had made that very clear at the time. ‘You do not appear remotely penitent, sir,’ she retorted. Sooner or later he would realise who he was talking to, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging him and thinking she attached any importance to it.

‘I never said I was, ma’am, merely that I acknowledged a reproof. There is no amusement in penitence—why, one would have to either give up the sin or be a hypocrite—and where’s the fun in that?’

‘I have no idea whether you are a hypocrite or not, sir, but certainly no one could accuse you of gallant behaviour.’

‘You struck first,’ he pointed out, accurately and unfairly.

‘For which I apologise,’ Dita said. She was not going to act as badly as he. Even as she made the resolution her tongue got the better of her. ‘But I have no intention of offering sympathy, sir. You obviously enjoy fighting.’ He had always been intense, often angry, as a youth. And that intensity had miraculously transmuted into fire and passion when he made love.

‘Indeed.’ He flexed the bandaged hand and winced slightly. ‘You should see the other fellow.’

‘I have no wish to. You appear to have been hacking at each other with sabres.’

‘Near enough,’ he agreed.

Something in the mocking, cultured tones still held the faintest burr of the West Country. A wave of nostalgia for home and the green hills and the fierce cliffs and the cold sea gripped her, overriding even the shock of seeing Alistair again.

‘You still have the West Country in your voice,’ Dita said abruptly.

‘North Cornwall, near the boundary with Devon. And you?’ He did not appear to find the way she had phrased the statement strange.

He misses it, too, she thought, hearing the hint of longing under the cool tone. ‘I, too, come from that area.’ Without calculation she put out her hand and he caught it in his uninjured, ungloved, left. His hand was warm and hard with a rider’s calluses and his fingertips rested against her pulse, which was racing. Once before he had held her hand like this, once before they had stood so close and she had read the need in his eyes and she had misunderstood and acted with reckless innocence. He had taken her to heaven and then mocked her for her foolishness.

She could not play games any longer. Sooner or later he would find out who she was, and if she made a mystery of it he would think she still remembered, still attached some importance to what had happened between them. ‘My family lives at Combe.’

‘You are a Brooke? One of the Earl of Wycombe’s family?’ He moved nearer, her hand still held in his as he drew her to him to study her face. Close to he seemed to take the air out of the space between them. Too close, too male. Alistair. Oh my lord, he has grown up. ‘Why, you are never little Dita Brooke? But you were all angles and nose and legs.’ He grinned. ‘I used to put frogs in your pinafore pocket and you tagged along everywhere. But you have changed since I last saw you. You must have been twelve.’ His amusement stripped the eight years from him.

‘I was sixteen,’ she said with all the icy reserve she could manage. All angles and nose. ‘I recall you—and your frogs—as an impudent youth while I was growing up. But I was sixteen when you left home.’ Sixteen when I kissed you with all the fervour and love that was filling me and you used me and brushed me aside. Was I simply too unskilled for you or too foolishly clinging?

A shadow darkened the mocking eyes and for a moment Alistair frowned as though chasing an elusive memory.

But he doesn’t seem to remember—or he is not admitting it. But how could he forget? Perhaps there have been so many women that one inept chit of a girl is infinitely forgettable.

‘Sixteen? Were you?’ He frowned, his eyes intent on her face. ‘I don’t … recollect.’ But his eyes held questions and a hint of puzzlement as though he had been reminded of a faded dream.

‘There is no reason why you should.’ Dita pulled her hand free, dropped the merest hint of a curtsy and walked away. So, he doesn’t even remember! He broke my foolish young heart and he doesn’t even remember doing it. I was that unimportant to him.

Daniel Chatterton intercepted her in the middle of the room and she set her face into a pleasant smile. I am not plain any more, she told herself with a fierce determination not to run away. I am polished and stylish and an original. That is what I am: an original. Other men admire me. It is good that I have met Alistair again—now I can replace the fantasy with the reality. Perhaps now the memories of one shattering, wonderful hour in his bed would leave her, finally.

‘Never tell me that you do not idolise our returning adventurer, Lady Perdita.’ Apparently her expression was not as bland as she hoped. She shrugged; no doubt half the room had heard the exchange. She could imagine the giggles amongst the cattery of young ladies. Chatterton gestured to a passing servant. ‘More punch?’

‘No. No, thank you, it is far too strong.’ Dita took a glass of mango juice in exchange. Was the arrack responsible for how she had felt just now? Without it perhaps she would have seen just another man and the glamour would have dropped away, leaving her untouched. As she raised her drink to sip, she realised her hand retained the faintest hint of Alistair’s scent: leather, musk and something elusive and spicily expensive. He had never smelled like that before, so complex, so intoxicating. He had grown up with a vengeance. But so had she.

‘If you mean Alistair Lyndon, the insolent creature who spoke to Miss Heydon and me just now, I knew him when he was growing up. He was a care-for-nothing then and it seems little has changed.’ Now she was blushing again. She never blushed. ‘He left home when he was twenty, or thereabouts.’

Twenty years, eleven months. She had bought him a fine horn pocket comb for his birthday and painstakingly embroidered a case for it. It was still in the bottom of her jewel box where it had stayed, even when she had eloped with the man she had believed herself in love with.

‘He is Viscount Lyndon, heir to the Marquis of Iwerne, is he not?’

‘Yes. Our families’ lands march together, but we are not great friends.’ Not, at least, since Mama was careless enough to show what she thought of the marquis’s second wife, who was only five years older than Dita. With some friction already over land, and no daughters in the Iwerne household to promote sociability, the families met rarely and there was no incentive to heal the rift.

‘Lyndon left home after some disagreement with his father about eight years ago,’ she added in an indifferent tone. ‘But I don’t think they ever got on, even before that. What is he doing here, do you know?’ It was a reasonable enough question.

‘Joining the party for the Bengal Queen passengers. He is returning home, I hear. The word is that his father is very ill; Lyndon may well be the marquis already.’ Chatterton looked over her shoulder. ‘He is watching you.’

She could feel him, like the gazelle senses the tiger lurking in the shadows, and fought for composure. Three months in a tiny canvas-walled cabin, cheek by jowl with a man who still thrived, she was certain, on dangerous mischief. It wouldn’t be frogs in pinafore pockets these days. If he even suspected how she felt, had felt, about him, she had no idea how he would react.

‘Is he, indeed? How obvious of him.’

‘He is also watching me,’ Chatterton said with a rueful smile. ‘And I do not think it is because he admires my waistcoat. I am beginning to feel dangerously de trop. Most men would pretend they were not observing you—Lyndon has the air of a man guarding his property.’

‘Insolent is indeed the word for him.’ He did not regard her as his property, far from it, but he had bestowed his attention upon her just now and she had snubbed him, so he would not be satisfied until he had her gazing at him cow-eyed like all the rest of the silly girls would do.

Now Dita turned slightly so she was in profile to the viscount and ran a finger down Daniel Chatterton’s waistcoat. ‘Lord Lyndon might not admire it, but is certainly a very fine piece of silk. And you look so handsome in it.’

‘Are you flirting with me by any chance, Lady Perdita?’ Chatterton asked with a grin. ‘Or are you trying to annoy Lyndon?’

‘Me?’ She opened her eyes wide at him, enjoying herself all of a sudden. She had met Alistair again and the heavens had not fallen; perhaps she could survive this after all. She gave Daniel’s neckcloth a pro-prietorial tweak to settle the folds, intent on adding oil to the fire.

‘Yes, you! Don’t you care that he will probably call me out?’

‘He has no cause. Tell me about him so I may better avoid him. I haven’t seen him for years.’ She smiled up into Daniel’s face and stood just an inch too close for propriety.

‘I shall have to try that brooding stare myself,’ Chatterton said, with a wary glance across the room. ‘It seems to work on the ladies. All I know about him is that he has been travelling in the East for about seven years, which fits with what you recall of him leaving home. He’s a rich man—the rumour is that he made a killing by gem dealing and that his weakness is exotic plants. He’s got collectors all over the place sending stuff back to somewhere in England—money no object, so they say.’

‘And how did he get hurt?’ Dita ran her fan down Daniel’s arm. Alistair was still watching them, she could feel him. ‘Duelling?’

‘Nothing so safe. It was a tiger, apparently; a man-eater who was terrorising a village. Lyndon went after it on elephant-back and the beast leapt at the howdah and dragged the mahout off. Lyndon vaulted down and tackled it with a knife.’

‘Quite the hero.’ Dita spoke lightly, but the thought of those claws, the great white teeth, made her shudder. What did it take to go so close, risk such an awful death? She had likened it to a sabre wound; the claws must have been as lethal. ‘What happened to the mahout?’

‘No idea. Pity Lyndon’s handsome face has been spoiled.’

‘Spoiled? Goodness, no!’ She forced a laugh and deployed her fan. His face? He could have been killed! ‘It will soon heal completely—don’t you know that scars like that are most attractive to the ladies?’

‘Lady Perdita, you will excuse me if I tear my brother away?’ It was Callum Chatterton, Daniel’s twin. ‘I must talk tiresome business, I fear.’

‘He’s removing me from danger before I am called out,’ Daniel interpreted, rolling his eyes. ‘But he’ll make me work as well, I have no doubt.’

‘Go then, Mr Chatterton,’ she said, chuckling at his rueful expression. ‘Work hard and be safe.’ She stood looking after them for a moment, but she was seeing not the hot, crowded room with its marble pillars, but a ripple in the long, sun-bleached grass as gold-and-black-striped death padded through it; the explosion of muscles and terror; the screaming mahout and the man who had risked his life to save him. Her fantasy of Alistair’s eyes as being like those of a tiger did not seem so poetic now.

She turned, impulsive as always. She should make amends for her remark, she should make peace. That long-ago magic, the hurt that had shattered it, had meant nothing to him at the time and it should mean nothing to her now. Alistair Lyndon had haunted her dreams for too long.

But Alistair was no longer watching her. Instead, he stood far too close to Mrs Harrison, listening to something she was virtually whispering in his ear, his downturned gaze on the lady’s abundantly displayed charms.

So, the intense young man she had fallen for so hard was a rake now, and the attention he had paid her and Averil was merely habitual. A courageous rake, but a rake none the less. And he was just as intrigued to find his plain little neighbour after all these years, which would account for his close scrutiny just now.

It smarted that he did not even seem to remember just what had happened between them, but she must learn to school her hurt pride, for that was all it could be. And he had found a lady better suited to his character than she to talk to; Mrs Harrison’s reputation suggested that she would be delighted to entertain a gentleman in any way that mutual desire suggested.

Dita put down her glass with a snap on a side table, suddenly weary of the crowd, the noise, the heat and her own ghosts. As she walked towards the door her bearer emerged from the shadows behind the pillars.

‘My chair, Ajay.’ He hurried off and she went to tell Mrs Smyth-Robinson, who was obliging her aunt by acting as chaperon this evening, that she was leaving.

She was tired and her head ached, and she wished she was home in England and never had to speak to another man again and certainly not Alistair Lyndon. But she made herself nod and wave to acquaintances, she made herself walk with the elegant swaying step that disguised the fact that she had no lush curves to flaunt, and she kept the smile on her lips and her chin up. One had one’s pride, after all.

Alistair was aware of the green-eyed hornet leaving the room even as he accepted Claudia Hamilton’s invitation to join her for a nightcap. He doubted the lady was interested in a good night’s sleep. He had met her husband in Guwahati buying silk and agreed with Claudia’s obvious opinion that he was a boor—it was clear she needed entertaining.

The prospect of a little mutual entertainment was interesting, although he had no intention of this developing into an affaire, even for the few days remaining before he sailed. Alistair was not given to sharing and the lady was, by all accounts, generous with her favours.

‘There goes the Brooke girl,’ Claudia said with a sniff, following his gaze. ‘Impudent chit. Just because she has a fortune and an earl for a father doesn’t make up for scandal and no looks to speak of. She is going back to England on the Bengal Queen. I suppose they think that whatever it was she did has been forgotten by now.’

‘Her family are neighbours of mine,’ Alistair remarked, instinct warning him to produce an explanation for his interest. ‘She has grown up.’ He wasn’t surprised to hear of a scandal—Dita looked headstrong enough for anything. As a gangling child she had been a fearless and impetuous tomboy, always tagging along at his heels, wanting to climb trees and fish and ride unsuitable horses. And she had been fiercely affectionate.

He frowned at the vague memory of her wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. That had been the day before he packed his bags and shook the dust of Castle Lyndon from his shoes.

He had been distracted with grief and humiliated anger and she had tried to comfort him, he supposed. Probably he had been abrupt with the girl. He had been drinking, too, the best part of a bottle of brandy and wine as well, if his very faint recollection served him right. But then his memory of that day and night were blurred and the dreams that still visited him about that time were too disturbing to confront. Dita … No, the dreams had not been of an affectionate kiss from a tomboy but of a slender, naked body, of fierce passion. Hell, he still felt guilty that his drink-sodden nightmares could have produced those images of an innocent girl.

Alistair glanced towards the door again, but the emerald silk had whisked out of sight. Dita Brooke was no longer a child, but she had most certainly developed into a dangerous handful for whichever man her father was aiming to marry her off to.

‘You think her lacking in looks?’ It was amusing to see the venom in Claudia’s eyes as she thought about the younger woman. He had no intention of asking her to speculate about the scandal. Given the repressive English drawing rooms he remembered, it had probably been something as dreadful as being caught kissing a man on the terrace during a ball. Dull stuff.

‘No figure, too tall, her face lacks symmetry, her nose is too long, her complexion is sallow. Other than that I am sure she is tolerable.’

‘A catalogue of disasters to be sure, poor girl,’ Alistair agreed, his fingertip tracing lazy circles in Claudia’s palm. She made a sound like a purr and moved closer.

She was right, of course, all those things could be said of Lady Perdita. Little Dita Brooke had been as plain and ungainly as a fledgling in a nest. And yet, by some alchemy, she had overcome them to become a tantalising, feminine creature. Poise, exquisite grooming and sheer personality, he supposed. And something new—a tongue like an adder. It might be amusing to try his luck as a snake charmer on the voyage home.

Chapter Two

‘Steady, Khan.’ Dita smoothed her hand along the neck of the big bay gelding and smiled as he twitched one ear back to listen to her. ‘You can run in a minute.’ He sidled and fidgeted, pretending to take violent exception to a passing ox cart, a rickshaw, a wandering, soft-eyed sacred cow and even a group of chattering women with brass bowls on their heads. The Calcutta traffic never seemed to diminish, even at just past dawn on a Wednesday morning.

‘I wish I could take you home, but Major Conway will look after you,’ she promised, turning his head as they reached one of the rides across the maidan, the wide expanse of open space that surrounded the low angular mass of Fort William. Only one more day to ride after today; best not to think about it, the emotions were too complicated. ‘Come on, then!’

The horse needed no further urging. Dita tightened her hold as he took off into a gallop from almost a standing start and thundered across the grass. Behind her she heard the hoofbeats of the grey pony her syce Pradeep rode, but they soon faded away. Pradeep’s pony could never catch Khan and she had no intention of waiting for him. When she finally left the maidan he would come cantering up, clicking his tongue at her and grumbling as always, ‘Lady Perdita, memsahib, how can I protect you from wicked men if you leave me behind?’

There aren’t any wicked men out here, she thought as the Hooghly River came in sight. The soldiers patrolling the fort saw to that. Perhaps she should take Pradeep with her into the ballroom and he could see off the likes of Alistair Lyndon.

She had managed about three hours’ sleep. Most of the night had been spent tossing and turning and fuming about arrogant males with dreadful taste in women—and the one particular arrogant male she was going to have to share a ship with for weeks on end. Now she was determined to chase away not only last evening’s unsettling encounter, but the equally unsettling dreams that had followed it.

The worst had been a variation on the usual nightmare: her father had flung open the door of the chaise and dragged her out into the inn yard in front of a stagecoach full of gawking onlookers and old Lady St George in her travelling carriage. But this time the tall man with black hair with her was not Stephen Doyle, scrambling out of the opposite door in a cowardly attempt to escape, but Alistair Lyndon.

And Alistair was not running away as the man she had talked herself into falling for had. In her dream he turned, elegant and deadly, the light flickering off the blade of the rapier he held to her father’s throat. And then the dream had become utterly confused and Stephen in a tangle of sheets in the inn bed had become a much younger Alistair.

And that dream had been accurate and intense and so arousing that she had woken aching and yearning and had had to rise and splash cold water over herself until the trembling ceased.

As she had woken that morning she had realised who Stephen Doyle resembled—a grown-up version of Alistair. Dita shook her head to try to clear the last muddled remnants of the dreams out of her head. Surely she hadn’t fallen for Stephen because she was still yearning for Alistair? It was ludicrous; after that humiliating fiasco—which he had so obviously forgotten in a brandy-soaked haze the next morning—she had fought to put that foolish infatuation behind her. She had thought she had succeeded.

Khan was still going flat out, too fast for prudence as they neared the point where the outer defensive ditch met the river bank. Here she must turn, and the scrubby trees cast heavy shadow capable of concealing rough ground and stray dogs. She began to steady the horse, and as she did so a chestnut came out of the trees, galloping as fast as her gelding was.

Khan came to a sliding halt and reared to try to avoid the certain collision. Dita clung flat on his neck, the breath half-knocked out of her by the pommel. As the mane whipped into her eyes she saw the other rider wrench his animal to the left. On the short dusty grass the fall was inevitable, however skilled the rider; as Khan landed with a bone-juddering thud on all four hooves the other horse slithered, scrabbled for purchase and crashed down, missing them by only a few yards.

Dita threw her leg over the pommel and slid to the ground as the chestnut horse got to its feet. Its rider lay sprawled on the ground; she ran and fell to her knees beside him. It was Alistair Lyndon, flat on his back, arms outflung, eyes closed.

‘Oh, my God!’ Is he dead? She wrenched open the buttons on his black linen coat, pushed back the fronts to expose his shirt and bent over him, her ear pressed to his chest. Against her cheek the thud of his heart was fast, but it was strong and steady.

Dita let all the air out of her lungs in a whoosh of relief as her shoulders slumped. She must get up and send for help, a doctor. He might have broken his leg or his back. But just for a second she needed to recover from the shock.

‘This is nice,’ remarked his voice in her ear and his arm came round her, pulled her up a little and, before she could struggle, Alistair’s mouth was pressed against hers, exploring with a frank appreciation and lack of urgency that took her breath away.

Dita had never been kissed by a man who appeared to be taking an indolently dispassionate pleasure in the proceeding. When she was sixteen she had been in Alistair’s arms when she was ignorant and he was a youth and he had still made her sob with delight. Now he was a man, and sober, and she knew it meant nothing to him. This was pure self-indulgent mischief.

Even so, it was far harder to pull away than it should be, she found, furious with herself. Alistair had spent eight years honing his sexual technique, obviously by practising whenever he got the opportunity. She put both hands on his shoulders, heaved, and was released with unflattering ease. ‘You libertine!’

He opened his eyes, heavy-lidded, amused and golden, and sat up. The amusement vanished in a sharp intake of breath followed by a vehement sentence in a language she did not recognise ‘… and bloody hell,’ he finished.

‘Lord Lyndon,’ Dita stated. It took an effort not to slap him. ‘Of course, it had to be you, riding far too fast. Are you hurt? I assume from your language that you are. I suppose you are going to say your outrageous behaviour is due to concussion or shock or some such excuse.’

The smouldering look he gave her as he scrubbed his left hand through his dusty, tousled hair was a provocation she would not let herself rise to. ‘Being a normal male, when young women fling themselves on my chest I do not need the excuse of a bang on the head to react,’ he said. He wriggled his shoulders experimentally. ‘I’ll live.’

Dita resisted the urge to shift backwards out of range. There was blood on his bandaged hand, the makings of a nasty bruise on his cheek; the very fact he had not got to his feet yet told her all she needed to know about how his injured leg felt.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘Is my horse all right?

‘Pradeep,’ she called as the syce cantered up. ‘Catch the sahib’s horse, please, and check it is all right.’ She turned back, thankful she could not understand the muttered remarks Lyndon was making, and tried to ignore the fact that her heart was still stuck somewhere in her throat after the shock. Or was it that kiss? How he dared! How she wanted him to do it again.

‘Now, what are we going to do about you?’ she said, resorting to brisk practicality. ‘I had best send Pradeep to the fort, I think, and get them to bring out a stretcher.’ At least she sounded coherent, even if she did not feel it.

‘Do I look like the kind of man who would put up with being carted about on a stretcher by a couple of sepoys?’ he enquired, flexing his hand and hissing as he did so.

‘No, of course not.’ Dita began to untie her stock. Her hands, she was thankful to see, were not shaking. ‘That would be the rational course of action, after all. How ludicrous to expect you to follow it. Doubtless you intend to sit here for the rest of the day?’

‘I intend to stand up,’ he said. ‘And walk to my horse when your man has caught it. Why are you undressing?’

‘I am removing my stock in order to bandage whichever part of your ungrateful anatomy requires it, my lord,’ Dita said, her teeth clenched. ‘At the moment I am considering a tourniquet around your neck.’

Alistair Lyndon regarded her from narrowed eyes, but all he said was, ‘I thought that ripping up petticoats was the standard practice under these circumstances.’

‘I have no intention of demolishing my wardrobe for you, my lord.’ Dita got to her feet and held out her hand. ‘Are you going to accept help to stand up or does your stubborn male pride preclude that as well?’

When he moved, he moved fast and with grace. His language was vivid, although mostly incomprehensible, but the viscount got his good leg under him and stood up in one fluid movement, ignoring her hand. ‘There is a lot of blood on your breeches now,’ she observed. She had never been so close to quite this much gore before but, by some miracle, she did not feel faint. Probably she was too cross. And aroused—she could not ignore that humiliating fact. She had wanted him then, eight years ago when he had been a youth. Now she felt sharp desire for the man he had become. She was grown, too; she could resist her own weaknesses.

‘Damn.’ He held out a hand for the stock and she gave it to him. She was certainly not going to offer to bandage his leg if he could do it himself. Beside any other consideration, the infuriating creature would probably take it as an invitation to further familiarities and she had the lowering feeling that touching him again would shatter her resolve. ‘Thank you.’ The knot he tied was workmanlike and seemed to stop the bleeding, so there was no need to continue to study the well-muscled thigh, she realised, and began to tidy her own disarranged neckline as well as she could.

‘Your wounds were caused by a tiger, I hear,’ Dita remarked, feeling the need for conversation. Perhaps she was a trifle faint after all; she was certainly oddly light-headed. Or was that simply that kiss? ‘I assume it came off worst.’

‘It did,’ he agreed, yanking his cuffs into place. Pradeep came over, leading the chestnut horse. ‘Thank you. Is it all right?’

‘Yes, sahib. The rein is broken, which is why the sahib was not able to hold it when he fell.’ The syce must think he required a sop to his pride, but Alistair appeared unconcerned. ‘Does the sahib require help to mount?’

He’ll say no, of course, Dita thought. The usual male conceit. But Lyndon put his good foot into the syce’s cupped hands and let Pradeep boost him enough to throw his injured leg over the saddle.

It was interesting that he saw no need to play-act the hero—unlike Stephen, who would have doubtless managed alone, even if it made the wound worse. She frowned. What was she doing, thinking of that sorry excuse for a lover? Hadn’t she resolved to put him, and her own poor judgement, out of her head? He had never been in her heart, she knew that now. But it was uncanny, the way he was a pale imitation of the man in front of her now.

‘What happened to the mahout?’ she asked, putting one hand on the rein to detain Lyndon.

‘He survived.’ He looked down at her, magnificently self-assured despite his dusty clothes and stained bandages. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You thought he was worth risking your life for. Many sahibs would not have done so.’ It was the one good thing she had so far discovered about this new, adult, Alistair. ‘It would be doubly painful to be injured and to have lost him.’

‘I had employed him, so he was my responsibility,’ Lyndon said.

‘And the villagers who were being attacked by the man-eater? They were your responsibility also?’

‘Trying to find the good side to my character, Dita?’ he asked with uncomfortable perception. ‘I wouldn’t stretch your charity too far—it was good sport, that was all.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ she agreed. ‘You men do like to kill things, don’t you? And, of course, your own self-esteem would not allow you to lose a servant to a mere animal.’

‘At least it fought back, unlike a pheasant or a fox,’ he said with a grin, infuriatingly unmoved by her jibes. ‘And why did you put yourself out so much just now for a man who obviously irritates you?’

‘Because I was riding as fast as you were, and I, too, take responsibility for my actions,’ she said. ‘And you do not irritate me, you exasperate me. I do not appreciate your attempts to tease me with your shocking behaviour.’

‘I was merely attempting to act as one of your romantic heroes,’ he said. ‘I thought a young lady addicted to novels would expect such attentions. You appeared to enjoy it.’

‘I was shocked into momentary immobility.’ Only, her lips had moved against his, had parted, her tongue had touched his in a fleeting mutual caress … ‘And I am not addicted, as you put it. In fact, I think you are reading too many novels yourself, my lord,’ Dita retorted as she dropped the rein and turned away to where Pradeep stood holding Khan.

Alistair watched her walk, straight-backed, to her groom and spend a moment speaking to him, apparently in reassurance, while she rubbed the big gelding’s nose. For all the notice she took of Alistair he might as well not have been there, but he could sense her awareness of him, see it in the flush that touched her cheekbones. Momentary immobility, his foot! She had responded to his kiss whether she wanted to admit it or not.

The syce cupped his hands and she rose up and settled in the saddle with the lack of fuss of a born horsewoman. And a fit one, he thought, appreciating the moment when her habit clung and outlined her long legs.

In profile he could see that Claudia had been right. Her nose was too long and when she had looked up at him to ask about the mahout her face had been serious, emphasising the slight asymmetry that was not apparent when she was animated. And a critic who was not contemplating kissing it would agree that her mouth was too wide and her figure was unfashionably tall and slim. But the ugly duckling had grown into her face and, although it was not a beautiful one, it was vividly attractive.

And now he need not merely contemplate kissing her, he knew how she tasted and how it was to trace the curve of her upper lip with his tongue. The taste and feel of her had been oddly familiar.

He knew how she felt, her slight curves pressed to his chest, her weight on his body, and oddly it was as though he had always known that. It was remarkably effective in taking his mind off the bone-deep ache in his thigh and the sharp pain in his right hand. Alistair urged the bay alongside her horse as Dita used both hands to tuck up the strands of hair that had escaped from the net. The collar of her habit was open where the neckcloth was missing and his eyes followed the vee of pale skin into the shadows.

Last night her evening gown had revealed much more, but somehow it had not seemed so provocative. When he lifted his eyes she was gathering up the reins and he could tell from the way her lips tightened that she knew where he had been looking. If he had stayed in England, and watched the transformation from gawky child into provocatively attractive woman, would the impact when he looked at her be as great—or would she just be little Dita, grown up? Because there was no mistaking what he wanted when he looked at her now.

‘We are both to be passengers on the Bengal Queen,’ he said. It was a statement of the obvious, but he needed to keep her here for a few more moments, to see if he could provoke her into any more sharp-tongued remarks. He remembered last night how he had teased her with talk of chastisement and how unexpectedly stimulating that had been. The thought of wrestling between the sheets with a sharp-tongued, infuriated Lady Perdita who was trying to slap him was highly erotic. He might even let her get a few blows in before he …

‘Yes,’ she agreed, sounding wary. Doubtless some shadow of his thoughts was visible on his face. Alistair shifted in the saddle and got his unruly, and physically uncomfortable, imaginings under control. Better for now to remember the gawky tomboy-child who had always been somewhere in the background, solemn green eyes following his every move. ‘You will be anxious to get home, no doubt,’ she said with careful formality. ‘I was sorry to hear that Lord Iwerne is unwell.’

‘Thank you.’ He could think of nothing else to say that was neither a lie nor hypocritical. From the months’-old news he had received from Lyndonholt Castle there was a strong chance that he was already the marquis, and try as he might to summon up appropriate feelings of anxiety and sadness for his father, he could not. They had never been close and the circumstances of their parting had been bitter. And even if his father still lived, what would he make of the hardened, travelled, twenty-nine-year-old who returned in the place of the angry, naïve young man who had walked away from him?

And there was his stepmother, of course. What would Imogen be expecting of the stepson who had not even stayed to see her wed?

She was in for a shock if she thought he would indulge her or had any tender feelings left for her. She could take herself off to the Dower House with her widow’s portion and leave the Castle for the bride he fully intended to install there as soon as possible. And that bride would be a gentle, obedient, chaste young lady of good breeding. He would select her with care and she would provide him with heirs and be an excellent hostess. And she would leave his heart safely untouched—love was for idealists and romantics and he was neither. Not any more.

‘A rupee for your thoughts?’ Dita said, her wary expression replaced with amusement at his abstraction. It almost had him smiling back, seeing a shadow of the patient child in an unusual young lady who did not take offence at a man forgetting she was there. But then, she was probably relieved his attention was elsewhere. ‘Are you daydreaming of home?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But the thought was hardly worth a rupee. Ma’am, it was a pleasure.’ He bowed his hatless head for a moment, turned his horse towards Government House and cantered off.

For a moment there he had been tempted to stay, to offer to escort her back to wherever she was living. He must have hit his head in that fall, Alistair thought, to contemplate such a thing. He was going to be close to Dita Brooke for three months in the narrow confines of the ship, and he had no intention of resuming the role of elder brother, or however she had seen him as a child. He was not going to spend his time getting her out of scrapes and frightening off importunate young men; it made him feel old just thinking about it. As for that impulsive kiss, she had dealt with it briskly enough, even if she had responded to it. She was sophisticated enough to take it at face value as part of the repertoire of a rake, so nothing to worry about there.

Alistair trotted into the stable yard of Government House and dismounted with some care. The Governor General was away, but he was interested in plant hunting, too, and had extended a vague invitation that Alistair had found useful to take up for the few weeks before the ship sailed.

Damn this leg. He supposed he had better go and show it to the Governor’s resident doctor and be lectured on his foolishness in riding so hard with it not properly healed. But the prospect of weeks without energetic exercise had driven him out to ride each day for as long as the cool of the morning lasted. No doubt Dita had been motivated by the same considerations.

Which led him to think of her again, and of violent exercise, and the combination of the two was uncomfortably vivid. No, his feelings were most definitely not brotherly, any more than those damnably persistent dreams about her were. ‘Bloody fool,’ he snapped at himself, startling the jemahdar at the front door.

Intelligent, headstrong, argumentative young women with a scandal in their past and a temper were not what he was looking for. A meek and biddable English rose who would give him no trouble and cause no scandal was what he wanted and Dita Brooke had never been a rosebud, let alone a rose. She was pure briar with thorns all the way.

Chapter Three

As Alistair limped up the staircase to the first floor he thought of Dita’s threat to apply a tourniquet around his neck and laughed out loud at the memory of her face as she said it. The two men coming out of an office stopped at the sound.

‘Hell’s teeth, Lyndon, what’s happened to you?’ It was one of the Chatterton twins, probably Daniel, who had been flirting with Perdita last night. ‘Found that tiger again?’

‘My horse fell on the maidan and I’ve opened up the wound in my thigh. I’d better get a stitch in it—have you seen Dr Evans?’ Stoicism was one thing, being careless with open wounds in this climate quite another.

‘No, no sign of him—but we only dropped in to leave some papers, we haven’t seen anyone. Let’s get you up to your room while they find Evans. Daktar ko bulaiye,’ one twin called down to the jemahdar.

That was Callum, Alistair thought, waving away the offer of an arm in support. The responsible brother, by all accounts. ‘I can manage, but come and have a chota peg while they find him. It’s early, but I could do with it.’

They followed him up to his suite and settled themselves while his sirdar went for brandy. ‘Horse put its foot in a hole?’ Daniel asked.

‘Nothing so ordinary. I damn nearly collided with Lady Perdita, who was riding as if she’d a fox in her sights. I reined in hard to stop a crash and the horse over balanced. She wasn’t hurt,’ he added as Callum opened his mouth. ‘Interesting coincidence, meeting her here. My family are neighbours to hers, but it is years since I have seen her.’

‘Did you quarrel in those days?’ Daniel asked, earning himself a sharp kick on the ankle from his brother.

‘Ah, you noticed a certain friction? When we were children I teased her, as boys will torment small and unprepossessing females who tag around after them. I was not aware she was in India.’

‘Oh, well, after the elopement,’ Daniel began. ‘Er … you did know about that?’

‘Of course,’ Alistair said. Well, he had heard about a scandal yesterday. That was near enough the truth, and he was damnably curious all of a sudden.

‘No harm in speaking of it then, especially as you know the family. My cousin wrote all about it. Lady P. ran off with some fellow, furious father found them on the road to Gretna, old Lady St George was on hand to observe and report on every salacious detail—all the usual stuff and a full-blown scandal as a result.’

‘No so very bad if Lord Wycombe caught them,’ Alistair said casually as the manservant came back, poured brandy and reported that the doctor had gone out, but was expected back soon.

‘Well, yes, normally even Lady St George could have been kept quiet, I expect. Only trouble was, they’d set out from London and Papa caught them halfway up Lancashire.’

‘Ah.’ One night, possibly two, alone with her lover. A scandal indeed. ‘Why didn’t she marry the fellow?’ Wycombe was rich enough and influential enough to force almost anyone, short of a royal duke, to the altar and to keep their mouths shut afterwards. A really unsuitable son-in-law could always be shipped off to a fatally unhealthy spot in the West Indies later.

‘She wouldn’t have him, apparently. Refused point blank. According to my cousin she said he snored, had the courage of a vole and the instincts of a weasel and while she was quite willing to admit she had made a serious mistake she had no intention of living with it. So her father packed her off here to stay with her aunt, Lady Webb.’

‘Daniel,’ Callum snapped, ‘you are gossiping about a lady of our acquaintance.’

‘Who is perfectly willing to mention it herself,’ his twin retorted. ‘I heard her only the other day at the picnic. Miss Eppingham said something snide about scandalous goings-on and Lady Perdita remarked that she was more than happy to pass on the benefits of her experience if it prevented Miss Eppingham making a cake of herself over Major Giddings, who, she could assure her, had the morals of a civet cat and was only after Miss E.’s dowry. I don’t know how I managed not to roar with laughter.’

That sounded like attack as a form of defence, Alistair thought as Daniel knocked back his brandy and Callum shook his head at him. Dita surely couldn’t be so brazen as not to care and he rather admired the courage it showed to acknowledge the facts and bite back. He also admired Wycombe’s masterly manner of dealing with the scandal. He had got his daughter out of London society and at the same time had placed her in a situation where it would be well known that she was not carrying a child. Three months’ passage on an East Indiaman gave no possibility of hiding such a thing.

But what the devil was Dita doing running off with a man she didn’t want to marry? Perhaps he was wrong and she really was the foolish romantic he had teased her with being. She certainly knew how to flirt—he had seen her working her wiles on Daniel Chatterton last night—but, strangely, she had not done so with him. Obviously he annoyed her too much.

But, whatever she thought of him, the more distance there was between them mentally, the better, because there was going to be virtually none physically on that ship and he was very aware of the reaction his body had to her. He wanted Perdita Brooke for all the wrong reasons; he just had to be careful that wanting was all it came to. Alistair leaned back and savoured the brandy. Taking care had never been his strong suit.

‘Perdita, look at you!’ Emma Webb stood in the midst of trunks and silver paper and frowned at her niece. ‘Your hair is half down and your neckcloth is missing. What on earth has occurred?’

‘There was an accident on the maidan.’ Dita came right into the room, stripped off her gloves and kissed her aunt on the cheek. ‘It is nothing to worry about, dearest. Lord Lyndon took a fall and he was bleeding, so my neckcloth seemed the best bandage.’ She kept going, into the dressing room, and smiled at the ayah who was pouring water for her bath from a brass jug.

‘Oh?’ Her aunt came to the door, a half-folded shawl in her hands. ‘Someone said you were arguing with him last night. Oh dear, I really am not the good chaperon my brother expected.’

‘We have not seen each other since I was sixteen, Aunt Emma,’ Dita said, stepping out of her habit. ‘And we simply picked up the same squabble about a frog that we parted on. He is just as infuriating now as he was then.’

And even more impossibly attractive, unfortunately. In the past, when she had told herself that the adult Alistair Lyndon would be nothing like the young man she had known and adored eight years ago, she had never envisaged the possibility that he would be even more desirable. It was only physical, of course. She was a grown woman, she understood these things now. She had given him her virginity: it was no wonder, with no lover since then, that she reacted to him.

It was a pity he did not have a squint or a skin condition or a double chin or a braying laugh. It was much easier to be irritated by someone if one was not also fighting a most improper desire to …

Dita put a firm lid on her imagination and sat down in eight inches of tepid water, an effective counter to torrid thoughts. It was most peculiar. She had convinced herself that she wanted to marry Stephen Doyle until he had tried to make love to her; then she had been equally convinced that she must escape the moment she could lay her hands on his wallet and her own money that was in it.

She was equally convinced now that Alistair Lyndon was the most provoking man of her acquaintance as well as being an insensitive rake—and yet she wanted to kiss him again until they were both dizzy, which probably meant something, if only that she was prone to the most shocking desires and was incapable of learning from the past.

‘I think everything is packed now,’ Emma said with satisfaction from the bedchamber. ‘And the trunks have gone off to the ship, which just leaves what you need on the voyage to be checked. Twelve weeks is a long time if we forget anything.’ She reappeared as Dita stepped out of the bath and was wrapped in a vast linen sheet. ‘I do hope Mrs Bastable proves as reliable as she appears. But she seems very happy to look after you and Miss Heydon.’

Averil was going to England for the first time since she was a toddler in order to marry Viscount Bradon, a man she had never met. Perhaps I should let Papa choose me a husband, Dita thought. He couldn’t do much worse than I have so far. And her father was unlikely to pick on a pale imitation of Alistair Lyndon as she had done so unwittingly, it seemed. ‘It isn’t often that we see brides going in that direction,’ Lady Webb added.

‘Do you think me a failure?’ Dita asked, half-serious, as her maid combed out her hair. ‘After all, I came over with the Fishing Fleet and I haven’t caught so much as a sprat.’ And do I want to marry anyway? Men are so fortunate, they can take a lover, no one thinks any the worse of them. I will have money of my own next year when I am twenty five …

‘Oh, don’t call it that,’ her aunt scolded. ‘There are lots of reasons for young ladies to come India, not just to catch husbands.’

‘I can’t think of any,’ Dita said. ‘Other than escaping a scandal, of course. I am certain Papa was hoping I would catch an up-and-coming star in the East India Company firmament, just like you did.’

‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ Lady Webb said happily. ‘Darling George is a treasure. But not everyone wants to have to deal with the climate, or face years of separation for the sake of the children’s health.’ She picked up a list and conned it. ‘And you will be going home with that silly business all behind you and just in time for the Season, too.’

That silly business. Three words to dismiss disillusion and self-recrimination and the most terrible family rows. Papa had been utterly and completely correct about Stephen Doyle, which meant that her own judgement of men must be utterly and completely at fault. On that basis Alistair Lyndon was a model of perfection and virtue. Dita smiled to herself—no, she was right about him, at least: the man was a rake.

10th December 1808

‘Two weeks to Christmas,’ Dita said as she hugged her aunt on the steps of the ghat. ‘It seems hard to imagine in this climate. But I have left presents for you and Uncle on the dressing table in my room, and something for all the servants.’ She was babbling, she knew it, but it was hard to say goodbye when you had no idea if you would ever see the person again.

‘And I have put something in your bag,’ Emma said with a watery smile. ‘Goodness knows what happens about Christmas celebrations on board. Now, are you sure you have everything?’

‘I went out yesterday,’ her uncle assured her, patting his wife on the shoulder and obviously worried that she would burst into tears. ‘You’ve got a nice compartment in the roundhouse below the poop deck, just as I was promised. That will be much quieter and the odours and noise will be less than in the Great Cabin below. It is all ladies in there as well, and you will be dining at the captain’s table in the cuddy with the select passengers.’

‘But those wretched canvas partitions,’ his wife protested. ‘I would feel happier if she was in a cabin with bulkheads.’

It had been a subject for discussion and worry for weeks. ‘The partitions give better ventilation,’ Dita said. ‘I felt perfectly secure on the outward passage, but that was in a compartment forward of the Great Cabin and it was so very stuffy.’ And revoltingly smelly by the time they had been at sea for a month.

‘And all your furniture is in place and secured,’ her uncle continued. All made it sound as though she was occupying a suite. The box bed that was bolted to the deck was a fixture, but passengers were expected to supply anything else they needed for their comfort in the little square of space they could call their own. Dita had a new coir mattress and feather pillow, her bed linen and towels, an ingenious dressing chest that could support a washbasin or her writing slope and an upright chair. Her trunk would have to act as both wardrobe and table and her smaller bags must be squashed under the bunk.

‘And there are necessaries for the passengers’ and officers’ use on this ship,’ Lord Webb added. Which was a mercy and an improvement on a slop bucket or the horrors of the heads—essentially holes giving on to the sea below—that had been the only options on the outward passage.

‘I shall be wonderfully comfortable,’ Dita assured them. ‘Look, they want us to go down to the boats now.’

Plunging into the scrimmage of passengers, porters, beggars, sailors and screaming children was better than dragging out this parting any longer, even if her stomach was in knots at the thought of getting into the boat that was ferrying passengers to the ship. It hurt to part with two people who had been understanding and kindly beyond her expectations or deserts, and she feared she would cling and weep and upset her aunt in a moment.

‘I love you both. I’ve written, it is with the Christmas presents. I must go.’ Her uncle took her arm and made sure the porter was with them, then, leaving her aunt sniffing into her handkerchief, he shouldered his way to the uneven steps leading down into the fast-running brown water.

‘Hold tight to me! Mind how you go, my dear.’ The jostling was worse on the steps, her foot slipped on slime and she clutched wildly for support as the narrow boat swung away and the water yawned before her.

‘Lady Perdita! Your hand, ma’am.’ It was Alistair, standing on the thwarts. ‘I have her, sir.’ He caught her hand, steadied her, then handed her back to one of the Chatterton twins who was standing behind him.

‘Sit here, Lady Perdita.’ This twin was Callum, she decided, smiling thanks at him and trying to catch her breath while her uncle and Alistair organised her few items of hand baggage and saw them stowed under the plank she was perched on. ‘An unpleasant scrum up there, is it not?’

‘Yes.’ She swallowed hard, nodded, managed a smile and a wave for her uncle as the boat was pushed off. Alistair came and sat opposite her. ‘Thank you. I am the most terrible coward about water. The big ship is all right. It is just when I am close to it like this.’ She was gabbling, she could hear herself.

‘What gave you a fear of it?’ Alistair asked. He held her gaze and she realised he was trying to distract her from the fact that they were in an open boat very low in the water. ‘I imagine it must have been quite a fright to alarm someone of your spirit.’

‘Why, thank you.’ Goodness, he was being positively kind to her. Dita smiled and felt the panic subside a little.

‘Presumably you got into some ridiculous scrape,’ he added and the smile froze as the old guilt washed through her.

Without meaning, to she gabbled the whole story. ‘I was walking on the beach with my governess when I was eight and a big wave caught me, rolled me out over the pebbles and down, deep.’ She could still close her eyes and see the underneath of the wave, the green tunnel-shape above her, trapping her with no air, beating her down on to the stones and the rocks. ‘Miss Richards went in after me and she managed to drag me to the beach. Then the next wave took her. She nearly drowned and I couldn’t help her—my leg was broken. The poor woman caught pneumonia and almost died.’

‘Of course you couldn’t have helped,’ Callum said firmly. ‘You were a child and injured.’

‘But Lord Lyndon is correct—I had disobeyed her and was walking too close to the water. It was my fault.’ No one had beaten her for her bad behaviour, for Miss Richards had told no one. But the guilt over her childish defiance had never gone away and the fear of the sea at close quarters had never left her.

‘It has not prevented you from taking risks,’ Alistair said dispassionately.

‘Lyndon.’ Chatterton’s tone held a warning.

Alistair raised one eyebrow, unintimidated. ‘Lady Perdita prizes frankness, I think.’

‘It is certainly better than hypocrisy,’ she snapped. ‘And, no, it did not stop me taking risks, only, after that, I tried to be certain they were my risks alone.’

‘My leg is much better.’ Alistair delivered the apparent non sequitur in a conversational tone.

‘I cannot allow for persons equally as reckless as I am,’ Dita said sweetly. ‘I am so glad you are suffering no serious consequences for your dangerous riding.’

‘We’re here,’ Chatterton said with the air of a man who wished he was anywhere rather than in the middle of a polite aristocratic squabble.

‘And they are lowering a bo’sun’s chair for the ladies,’ said Alistair, getting to his feet. ‘Here! You! This lady first.’

‘What? No! I mean I can wait!’ Dita found herself ruthlessly bundled into the box-like seat on the end of a rope and then she was swung up in the air, dangled sickeningly over the water and landed with a thump on the deck.

‘Oh! The wretched—’

‘Ma’am? Fast is the best way to come up, in my opinion, no time to think about it.’ A polite young man was at her elbow. ‘Lady Perdita? I’m Tompkins, one of the lieutenants. Lord Webb asked me to look out for you. We met at the reception, ma’am.’

‘Mr Tompkins.’ Dita swallowed and her stomach returned to its normal position. ‘Of course, I remember you.’

‘Shall I show you to your cabin, ma’am?’

‘Just a moment. I wish to thank the gentleman who assisted me just now.’

The ladies and children continued to be hoisted on board with the chair. Most of them screamed all the way up. At least I did not scream, she thought, catching at the shreds of her dignity. What had she been thinking of, to blurt out that childhood nightmare to the men? Surely she had more control than that? But the tossing open boat had frightened her, fretting at nerves already raw with the sadness of departure and the apprehension of what was to come in England. And so her courage had failed her.

Dita gritted her teeth and waited until the men began to come up the rope ladder that had been lowered over the side, then she walked across to Alistair where he stood with Callum Chatterton.

‘Thank you very much for your help, gentlemen,’ she said with a warm smile for Callum. ‘Lord Lyndon, you are so masterful I fear you will have to exercise great discretion on the voyage. You were observed by a number of most susceptible young ladies who will all now think you the very model of a man of action and will be seeking every opportunity to be rescued by you. I will do my best to warn them off, but, of course, they will think me merely jealous.’

She batted her eyelashes at him and walked back to Lieutenant Tompkins. Behind her she heard a snort of laugher from Mr Chatterton and a resounding silence from Alistair. This time she had had the last word.

Chapter Four

Dita sat in her cabin space and tried to make herself get up and go outside. Through the salt-stained window that was one of the great luxuries of the roundhouse accommodation she could see that they were under way down the Hooghly.

Every excuse she could think of to stay where she was had been exhausted. She had arranged her possessions as neatly as possible; thrown a colourful shawl over the bed; hung family miniatures on nails on the bulkhead; wedged books—all of them novels—into a makeshift shelf; refused the offer of assistance from Mrs Bastable’s maid on the grounds that there was barely room for one person, let alone two, in the space available; washed her face and hands, tidied her hair. Now there was no reason to stay there, other than a completely irrational desire to avoid Alistair Lyndon.

‘Perdita? We’ll be sailing in a moment—aren’t you coming on deck?’ Averil called from the next compartment, just the other side of one canvas wall.

Courage, Dita, she thought, clenching her hands into tight fists. You can’t stay here for three months. She had grown up knowing that she was plain and so she had learned to create an aura of style and charm that deceived most people into not noticing. She was rebellious and contrary and she had taught herself to control that, so when things went wrong it was only she who was hurt. Or so she thought until her hideous mistake with Stephen Doyle meant the whole family had had to deal with the resulting gossip. And in India she had coped with the talk by the simple method of pretending that she did not care.

But I do, she thought. I do care. And I care what Alistair thinks of me and I am a fool to do so. The young man she had adored had grown up to be a rake and the heir to a marquisate and she could guess what he thought about the girl next door who had a smirched reputation and a sharp tongue. Hypocrisy. Had the tender intensity with which he had made love to her eight years ago been simply the wiles of a youth who was going to grow up into a rake? It must have been, for he showed no signs of remembering; surely if he had cared in the slightest, he would recall calling her his darling Dita, his sweet, his dear girl …

‘I’m coming!’ she called to Averil, fixing a smile on her face because she knew it would show in her voice. ‘Just let me get my bonnet on.’ She peered into the mirror that folded up from the dressing stand and pinched the colour into her cheeks, checked that the candle-soot on her lashes had not smudged, tied on her most becoming sunbonnet with the bow at a coquettish angle under her chin and unfastened the canvas flap. ‘Here I am.’

Averil linked arms with the easy friendliness that always charmed Dita. Miss Heydon was shy with strangers, but once she decided she was your friend the reserve melted. ‘The start of our adventure! Is this not exciting?’

‘You won’t say that after four weeks when everything smells like a farmyard and the weather is rough and we haven’t had fresh supplies for weeks and you want to scream if you ever see the same faces again,’ Dita warned as they emerged on to the deck.

‘I was forgetting you had done this before. I cannot remember coming to India, I was so young.’ Averil unfurled her parasol and put one hand on the rail. ‘My last look at Calcutta.’

‘Don’t you mind leaving?’ Dita asked.

‘Yes. But it is my duty, I know that. I am making an excellent marriage and the connection will do Papa and my brothers so much good. It would be different if Mama was still alive—far harder.’

In effect, Dita thought, you are being sold off to an impoverished aristocratic family in return for influence when your family returns to England. ‘Lord Bradon is a most amiable gentleman,’ she said. It was how she had described him before, when Averil had been excited to learn that Dita knew her betrothed, but she could think of nothing more positive to say about him. Cold, conventional, very conscious of his station in life—nothing there to please her friend. And his father, the Earl of Kingsbury, was a cynical and hardened gamester whose expensive habits were the reason for this match.

She only hoped that Sir Jeremiah Heydon had tied up his daughter’s dowry tightly, but she guessed such a wily and wealthy nabob would be alert on every suit.

‘You’ll have three months to enjoy yourself as a single lady, at any rate,’ she said. ‘There are several gentlemen who will want to flirt.’

‘I couldn’t!’ Averil glanced along the deck to where the bachelors were lining the rail. ‘I have no idea how to, in any case. I’m far too shy, even with pleasant young men like the Chatterton brothers, and as for the more … er …’ She was looking directly at Alistair Lyndon.

As if he had felt the scrutiny Alister looked round and doffed his hat. ‘Indeed,’ Dita agreed, as she returned the gesture with an inclination of the head a dowager duchess would have been proud of. Alistair raised an eyebrow—an infuriating skill—and returned to his contemplation of the view. ‘Lord Lyndon is definitely er. Best avoided, in fact.’

‘But he likes you, and you are not afraid of him. In fact,’ Averil observed shrewdly, ‘that is probably why he likes you. You don’t blush and mumble like I do or giggle like those silly girls over there.’ She gestured towards a small group of merchants’ daughters who were jostling for the best position close to the men.

‘Likes me?’ Dita stared at her. ‘Alistair Lyndon hasn’t changed his opinion of me since that encounter at the reception, and the accident we had on the maidan only made things worse. And don’t forget he knew me years ago. To him I am just the plain little girl from the neighbouring estate who was scared of frogs and tagged along being a nuisance. He was kind to me like a brother is to an irritating little sister.’ And who then grew up to discover that she was embarrassingly besotted by him.

‘Well, you aren’t plain now,’ Averil said, her eyes fixed on the shore as the Bengal Queen slipped downriver. ‘I am pretty, I think, but you have style and panache and a certain something.’

‘Why, thank you!’ Dita was touched. ‘But as neither of us are husband-hunting, we may relax and observe our female companions making cakes of themselves without the slightest pang—which, men being the contrary creatures they are, is probably enough to make us the most desirable women on board!’

Dinner at two o’clock gave no immediate opportunity to test Dita’s theory about desirability. The twenty highest-ranking passengers assembled in the cuddy, a few steps down from the roundhouse, and engaged in polite conversation and a certain jostling for position. Everyone else ate in the Great Cabin.

Captain Archibald had a firm grasp of precedent and Dita found herself on his left with Alistair on her left hand. Averil was relegated to the foot of the table with a mere younger son of a bishop on one side and a Chatterton twin on the other.

‘Is your accommodation comfortable, my lord?’ she ventured, keeping a watchful eye on the tureen of mutton soup that was being ladled out to the peril of the ladies’ gowns.

‘It is off the Great Cabin,’ Alistair said. ‘There is a reasonable amount of room, but there are also two families with small children and I expect the noise to be considerable. You, on the other hand, will have the sailors traipsing about overhead at all hours and I rather think the chickens are caged on the poop deck. You are spared the goats, however.’

‘But we have opening windows.’

‘All the better for the feathers to get in.’

Dita searched for neutral conversation and found herself uncharacteristically tongue-tied. This was torture. The way they had parted—even if he had no recollection of it—made reminiscence of their childhood too painful. She was determined not to say anything even remotely provocative or flirtatious and it was not proper to discuss further details of their accommodation.

‘How do you propose to pass the voyage, my lord?’ she enquired at last when the soup was removed and replaced with curried fish.

‘Writing,’ Alistair said, as he passed her a dish of chutney.

The ship was still in the river, its motion gentle, but Dita almost dropped the dish. ‘Writing?’

‘I have been travelling ever since I came to the East,’ he said. ‘I have kept notebooks the entire time and I want to create something from that for my own satisfaction, if nothing else.’

‘I will look forward to reading it when it is published.’ Alistair gave her a satirical look. ‘I mean it. I wish I had been able to travel. My aunt and uncle were most resistant to the idea when I suggested it.’

‘I am not surprised. India is not a country for young women to go careering around looking for adventures.’

‘I did not want to career around,’ Dita retorted, ‘I wanted to observe and to learn.’

‘Indeed.’ His voice expressed polite scepticism. ‘You had ambitions of dressing up as a man and travelling incognito?’

‘No, I did not.’ Dita speared some spiced cauliflower and imagined Alistair on the end of her fork. ‘I am simply interested in how other people live. Apparently this is permissible for a man, according to you, but not for a woman. How hypocritical.’

‘Merely practical. It is dangerous’. He gestured with his right hand, freed now of its bandage.

Dita eyed the headed slash across the back, red against the tan. ‘I was not intending to throw myself at the wildlife, my lord.’

‘Some of the interesting local people are equally as dangerous and the wildlife, I assure you, is more likely to throw itself at you than vice versa. It is no country for romantic, headstrong and pampered young females, Lady Perdita.’

‘You think me pampered?’ she enquired while the steward cleared the plates.

‘Are you not? You accept the romantic and headstrong, I note.’

‘I see nothing wrong with romance.’

‘Except that it is bound to end in disillusion at the very best and farcical tragedy at the worst.’ He spoke lightly, but something in his voice, some shading, hinted at a personal meaning.

‘You speak from experience, my lord?’ Dita enquired in a tone of regrettable pertness to cover her own feelings. He had fallen in love with someone and been hurt, she was certain. And she was equally certain he would die rather than admit it, just as she could never confess how she felt for him. How she had once felt, she corrected herself.

‘No,’ he drawled, his attention apparently fixed on the bowl of fruit the steward was proffering. ‘Merely observation. Might I peel you a mango, Lady Perdita?’

‘They are so juicy, no doubt you would require a bath afterwards,’ she responded, her mind distracted by the puzzle of how she felt about him now. Had she ever truly been in love with him, and if so, how could that die as it surely had, leaving only physical desire behind? It must have been merely a painful infatuation, the effect of emotion and proximity when she was on the verge of womanhood, unused to the changes in her body and her feelings. It would have passed, surely, if she had not stumbled into his arms at almost the moment she had realised how she felt.

But if it was merely infatuation, why had she been so taken in by Stephen? Perhaps one was always attracted to the same looks in a man … Then she saw the expression on Lady Grimshaw’s face. Oh goodness, what had she just said?

‘Bath,’ Alistair murmured. He must have seen the look of panic cross her face. ‘How fast of you to discuss gentlemen’s ablutions, Lady Perdita,’ he added, loudly enough for the elderly matron’s gimlet gaze to fix on them intently.

‘Oh, do hush,’ she hissed back, stifling the giggle that was trying to escape. ‘I am in enough disgrace with her already.’

Alistair began to peel the mango with a small, wickedly sharp knife that he had removed from an inner pocket. ‘What for?’ he asked, slicing a succulent segment off the stone and on to her plate.

‘Existing,’ Dita said as she cut a delicate slither and tried it. ‘Thank you for this, it is delicious.’

‘You have been setting Calcutta society by the ears, have you?’ Alistair gestured to the steward who brought him a finger bowl and napkin. ‘You must tell me all about it.’

‘Not here,’ Dita said and took another prim nibble of the fruit. Lady Grimshaw turned her attention to Averil, who was blushing at Daniel Chatterton’s flirtatious remarks.

‘Later, then,’ Alistair said and, before she could retort that he was the last person on the ship to whom she would confide the gossip that seemed to follow her, he turned to Mrs Edwards on his other side and was promptly silenced by her garrulous complaints on the subject of the size of the cabins and the noise of the Tompkinson children.

Dita fixed a smile on her lips and asked the captain how many voyages he had undertaken; that, at least, was a perfectly harmless topic of conversation.

When dinner was over she went to Averil and swept her out of the cuddy and up on to the poop deck.

‘Come and look at the chickens, or the view, or something.’

‘Are you attempting to avoid Lord Lyndon, by any chance?’ Averil lifted her skirts out of the way of a hen that had escaped from its coop and was evading the efforts of a member of the crew to recapture it.

‘Most definitely,’ Dita said. ‘The provoking man seems determined to tease me. He almost made me giggle right under Lady Grimshaw’s nose and I have the lowering suspicion that he has heard all about the scandal in England and has concluded that I will be receptive to any liberties he might take.’

The fact that she knew she would be severely tempted if Alistair attempted to kiss her again did nothing to calm her inner alarm.

‘Forgive me for mentioning it,’ Averil ventured, ‘but perhaps if one of the older ladies were to hint him away? If he has heard of the incident and has wrongly concluded that you … I mean,’ she persisted, blushing furiously, ‘if he mistakenly thinks you are not …’

‘I spent two nights in inn bedchambers with a man to whom I was not married,’ Dita said. ‘An overrated experience, I might add.’

It had been a dreadful disillusion to discover that the man she had thought was perfect in looks and in character was a money-hungry boor with the finesse of a bull in a china shop when it came to making love.

The realisation that she had made a terrible mistake had begun to dawn on her by the time the chaise hired with her money had reached Hitchin. Stephen had no longer troubled to be charming, to be witty, to converse or to show the quick appreciation of her thoughts he had always counterfeited before. He had fretted about pursuit and asked interminable questions about her access to her funds. When the postillions, who quite obviously realised that an elopement was afoot, became impertinent he blustered ineffectually and Dita had to snub them with a few well-chosen words.

By the time they had stopped for the first night Dita decided she had had enough and declared that she would hire another chaise and return alone. It was then that she discovered that Stephen was quite capable of forcing her into the inn and up to a bedchamber and that he had removed all the money from her luggage and reticule.

The effort to keep him from her bed involved a sleepless night and a willingness to stab him with a table knife after he had run the gamut from trying to charm her, to attempting to maul her, to a desperate attempt to force her.

The second day had been worse. He had been furious and sulky and every pretence that this was anything but an abduction had gone. Papa had caught up with them as they had arrived in Preston and by that time she was so exhausted by lack of sleep that she had simply flung herself on his chest and sobbed, unconscious of the audience in the inn yard and uncaring about his anger.

Averil was blushing, but it did not stop her putting the question she was obviously dying to ask. ‘Is it really horrid? You know, one hears such things.’

‘With the wrong man it is,’ Dita said with feeling. And that had been without the actual act taking place. She shuddered to think what it would have been like if Stephen had forced her. ‘With the right one—’ She stopped on the verge of admitting that it was very pleasurable indeed.

‘I am sure it would be wonderful,’ she said, as if she did not know. There was no point in making Averil fearful of her own nuptials, even if she suspected that her betrothed had no finesse to speak of. Dita shivered a little, wondering what would happen if another man tried to make love to her.

Oh, but she had enjoyed Alistair’s impertinent kiss on the maidan. The cockerel in the chicken coop flapped up on to the perch and crowed loudly, ruffling his feathers and throwing his head back. ‘Yes, you are a fine fellow,’ she said to him and he crowed again. Male creatures were all the same, she told herself. They needed feminine admiration and attention all the time. And Alistair had sensed she had enjoyed that meeting of lips, she was certain. No wonder he was so confident about teasing her. It would be well to exercise considerable caution if he was to not to guess the way she felt about him now—which could be summed up in three words: desirable, treacherous, trouble.

‘Let us walk,’ she said firmly. ‘We must exercise every day, it will help keep us healthy.’

They strolled round and round the poop deck, both of them sunk, Dita guessed, in rather different thoughts about wedding nights. The view was not particularly diverting, for the river banks were hardly higher than the water, here in the delta of the Ganges, and mud banks, fields covered in winter stubble and herds of buffalo were all that could be seen between the small villages that dotted the higher ground.

‘I had better go and unpack,’ Averil said after a while. ‘I can see now why I was advised to bring a hammer and nails to hang things up. I cannot imagine how I am ever going to fit everything in and still live in that space. It is a quarter the size of my dressing room at home!’

Dita could well believe it. For all that she was unpretentious and unspoiled, Averil was used to considerable luxury. She wondered what she would make of the chilly Spartan grandeur of her betrothed’s home. But doubtless her own money would go a long way to making it comfortable.

When her friend went below Dita leaned her forearms on the rail and let herself fall into a daydream. Soon the rhythms of shipboard life would assert themselves and the passengers would develop a routine that could become quite numbing until landfalls, quarrels or hurricanes enlivened things. On the way out she had read her way through a trunk full of books, determined to keep her mind off her problems with light fiction. Now she was equally determined to face the reality of her future. There was only one problem, Dita realised: she had no idea what she wanted that to be.

‘That was a big enough sigh to add speed to the sails.’

She turned her head, but she had no need to look to know who that was, lounging against the rail beside her. Her biggest problem, in the flesh.

‘I was trying to decide what life will be like when I return to England,’ she replied with total honesty. ‘What I want it to be like.’ Whatever was the matter with me when I was sixteen? Perhaps all girls that age believe themselves in love without receiving the slightest encouragement. Only she had received rather more than a little encouragement. She sighed again, thinking of the girl newly emerged from childhood, suddenly realising the boy she had idolised had turned into a young man, just as she was becoming a woman.

‘Will the scandal be forgotten?’ Alistair asked.

Dita blinked at him. Most people politely pretended they knew nothing about it, to her face at least. Only the more catty of the young women would make snide remarks, or the chaperons hint that she needed to be particularly careful in what she did.

‘You know about it?’

‘You eloped and your father caught up with you after two nights on the road and you refused to marry the man concerned.’ Alistair shifted so that his elbow almost met hers on the rail. Her breath hitched as though he had touched her. ‘Is that a fair summary?’

‘Fair enough,’ Dita conceded.

‘Why did you refuse?’

‘Because I discovered he was less than the man I thought he was.’

‘In bed?’

‘No! What a question!’ The laugh was surprised out of her by his outrageous words. She twisted to stare at him. No, this was not the boy she remembered, but that boy was still there in this man. The trouble was, every feminine instinct she possessed desired him. Him, Alistair, as he was now.

He was waiting for her answer and she made herself speak the truth. ‘He was after my money. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been a bore and a lout into the bargain. He must be a very good actor.’ Or I must have been blinded by the need to escape the Marriage Mart, the restrictions of life as a single young woman.

‘Or you are a very poor judge of men?’ Alistair suggested.

‘Perhaps,’ Dita conceded. ‘But I have your measure, my lord.’

He was staring out to sea and she could study his profile for a moment. She had been correct when she had told Daniel Chatterton that the savage slash of the scar on his face would only enhance his attractiveness. Combined with the patrician profile and his arresting eyes, it gave him a dangerous edge that had been missing before.

Then he turned his head and she looked into his eyes and realised that the edge had been there already: experience, intelligence, darkness. ‘Oh yes?’

She straightened up, pleased to find she could face him without a blush on her cheeks; it had felt for a moment as though every thought was imprinted on her forehead. Alistair turned so he lounged back against the rail, shamelessly watching her. She tried not to stare back, but it was hard. He looked so strong and free. Bareheaded, the breeze stirred his hair and the sun gilded his tanned skin. I want him. He fills me with desire, quite simple and quite impure.

‘You have a great deal in common with that creature there.’ She nodded towards the cockerel’s cage. ‘You are flamboyant, sure of yourself and dangerous to passing females.’

There was no retort, not until she was halfway across the deck and congratulating herself on putting him firmly—safely—in his place. His crack of laughter had her pursing her lips, but his words sent her down the companionway with something perilously close to an angry flounce.

‘Why, thank you, Dita. I shall treasure the compliment.’

Chapter Five

After their exchange on the poop deck Dita did her best to avoid Alistair without appearing to do so, and flattered herself that she was succeeding. It did not prevent the disturbing stirring in her blood when she saw him, but it gave her a feeling of safety that, in the restless small hours, she suspected was illusory.

She was helped by the captain relaxing his seating plans at dinner. Having clearly established precedent, he acknowledged that to keep everyone tied to the same dining companions for three months was a recipe for tedium at best and squabbles at worst.

Breakfast and supper were informal meals and by either entering the cuddy with a small group, or after he was already there, Dita ensured she was always sitting a safe distance from Alistair.

During the day, when she was not in her cabin reading or sewing alone or with Averil, she sought out the company of the other young women on deck. They were all engaged in much whispering and secrets, making and wrapping Christmas gifts, teasing each other about who was giving what to which of the men.

They irritated her with their vapid conversation, giggling attempts to flirt with any passing male and obsession with clothes and gossip, but they provided concealment, much, she thought wryly, as one swamp deer is safer from the tiger in the midst of the herd.

Alistair had no way of realising that this was not her natural habitat, she thought, as she watched him from under the tilted brim of her parasol while Miss Hemming confided her plan to get Daniel Chatterton alone under the stars that evening.

It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that Mr Chatterton was already betrothed, and had been for years to a young woman who awaited him in England, and that with the amount of cloud cover just now there would be no stars to flirt beneath. But she bit her lip and kept the tart remarks to herself. Alistair bowed slightly as he passed the group, accepting both the wide-eyed looks, nervous titters and her own frigid inclination of the head with equal composure.

Now, why is Dita so set on avoiding me, I wonder? Those chattering ninnies are boring her to distraction and in five days I cannot believe we have not sat next to each other for a meal simply by chance. That kiss on the maidan? Surely not. Dita has more spirit than to flee because of that, even if she knows I want to do it again. And more. And I’ll wager so does she.

‘Oh, Lord Lyndon!’ It was one of the Misses Whyton, indistinguishable from each other and with a tendency to speak in exclamations.

He stopped and bowed. ‘Miss Whyton?’

‘What is your favourite colour, Lord Lyndon?’

Ah, Christmas gifts. He had hoped to escape that by the simple expedient of not flirting with any of the little peahens, but it was obviously not working. ‘Black,’ he drawled, producing what he hoped was a sinister smile.

‘Ooh!’ She retreated to her sister’s side, a frown giving her face more expression than it usually bore. Apparently whatever she was making would not work well in mourning tones.

He glanced across and saw Dita’s head bent over a book. Now, it would be amusing to surprise her with a Christmas gift. What a pity he had no mistletoe to accompany it.

Or, perhaps he could improvise; he certainly had the berries. Smiling to himself as he plotted, Alistair strolled along the main deck to where the Chatterton twins and a few of the other young men had gathered. With the captain’s permission they were going to climb the rigging. After a few days out most of them were already feeling the lack of exercise and it seemed an interesting way of stretching muscles without overly shocking the ladies. Wrestling, sparring or singlestick bouts would have to be indulged in only when a female audience could be avoided.

Daniel and Callum had already taken off their coats and were eyeing the network of ropes as they soared up the main mast. ‘It looks easy enough,’ Daniel said. ‘Climb up on the outside and you are leaning into the rigging the whole way.’

‘Until you get to the crow’s nest,’ his brother pointed out. ‘Then you have to swing round to the inside and climb up the hole next to the mast.’

‘Bare feet,’ Alistair said. Like the other younger men he was wearing loose cotton trousers. He heeled off his shoes as he looked up. ‘I tried this on the way out.’ He squinted up at the height and added, ‘Smaller ship, though!’

‘We cannot all get up there at once, not with a sailor already in the crow’s nest,’ Callum pointed out, and the others moved off to stand at the foot of the smaller foremast, leaving the Chattertons and Alistair in possession of the main mast.

‘We three can if we move out along those ropes the sailors stand on to bundle up the sails,’ Daniel pointed out. ‘And don’t snort at me, Cal, I don’t know the name of them and neither do you, I wager.’

‘Sounds as though that will work.’ Alistair took a yard in his hand and swung up to stand on the rail. ‘Let’s try it.’

The tarred rope was rough under the softer skin of his arches, but it gave a good grip and his hands were toughened by long hours of riding without gloves. It felt good to reach and stretch and use his muscles to pull himself up and to counteract the roll of the ship, one minute dropping him against the rigging, the next forcing him to hang on with stretched arms and braced legs over the sea.

The newly healed wound in his thigh reminded him of its presence with every contraction of the muscle, but it was the ache of under-use and weakness, not the pain of the wound tearing open. His right hand was not fully right either, he noticed with clinical detachment, and compensated by taking more care with the grip.

The wind blew his hair off his face and ripped through his thin shirt and Alistair found he was grinning as he climbed. Daniel appeared beside him, panting with effort as he overtook. From below Callum called, ‘It isn’t a race, you idiot!’

But Daniel was already twisting around the edge of the rigging to hang downwards for the few perilous feet up into the crow’s nest. Alistair heard the look-out greeting Chatterton as he reached the top spar of the mainsail himself and eyed the thin rope swinging beneath it. It was a tricky transfer, but if sailors could do it in a storm, he told himself, so could he. There was an interesting moment as the sail flapped and the foot rope swayed and then he was standing with his body thrown over the spar, looking down at the belly of the sail.

Callum appeared beside him. ‘I wouldn’t want to do this in a gale at night!’ he shouted.

‘No. Damn good reason not to get press-ganged,’ Alistair agreed as he twisted to look back over his shoulder. The young women had stopped all pretence of ignoring the men and were standing staring up at them. Dita, hatless, was easy to pick out, her face smoothed into a perfect oval by the distance.

‘We have an audience,’ he remarked.

‘Then let’s get down before Daniel and make the most of the admiration,’ Callum said with a grin.

Going down was no easier, as Alistair remembered. As he glanced down at the ladies, and to set his feet right on the rigging, the scene below seemed to corkscrew wildly, as though the top of the mast was fixed and the ship moved beneath it.

‘Urgh,’ Callum remarked, and climbed down beside him. ‘Remind me why this is a good idea.’

‘Exercise and impressing the ladies, if that appeals.’ Alistair kept pace with him as the rigging widened out. His leg was burning now with the strain, but it would hold him. He’d be glad to relax his hand, though. ‘It is Daniel who is betrothed, is it not?’

‘Yes,’ Callum agreed, somewhat shortly. ‘A childhood friend,’ he added after another rung down. ‘I’m not looking for a wife myself, not yet while I don’t know whether the Company wants me to come back out or work in London.’ After another two steps down he seemed to unbend a trifle. ‘What about you?’

‘I certainly require a wife,’ Alistair agreed. ‘There’s the inheritance to think of. I shall no doubt be braving the Marriage Mart this Season in pursuit of a well-bred virgin with the requisite dowry and connections, not a thought in her brain and good child-bearing hips.’

Callum snorted. ‘Is there no one below us right this minute with those qualifications? What about Lady P—?’

He broke off, obviously recalling that Dita fell scandalously short of one of Alistair’s stated requirements. ‘Er, that is—’

‘That is, Lady Perdita has enough thoughts in her brain to keep any man in a state of perpetual bemusement,’ Alistair said, taking pity on him. ‘I have had my fill of troublesome women, I want a placid little English rose.’

And besides, he thought as he jumped down on to the deck and held out a hand to steady Callum, she certainly hasn’t got child-bearing hips. She’s still the beanpole she always was.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.