Those Scandalous Ravenhursts Volume 2
The Shocking Lord Standon
The Disgraceful Mr Ravenhurst
Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

The Shocking Lord Standon

Excerpt

About the Author

Author Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Disgraceful Mr Ravenhurst

About the Author

Dear Reader

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Afterword

Author Note

Copyright

The Shocking Lord Standon

Louise Allen

RAVENHURST FAMILY TREE

Join favourite author

Louise Allen

as she explores the tangled love-lives of

Those Scandalous Ravenhursts

First, you travelled across war-torn Europe

with

THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER

Then you accompanied Mr Ryder’s sister,

THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM, on her quest for a hero.

Now be scandalised by

THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON

Coming soon THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST

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!

Author Note

Gareth Morant, Earl of Standon, is upright, eligible—and a bachelor who views the chancy business of falling in love with alarm.

Marriage just isn’t for him, and certainly not to his wild childhood friend Maude. But Maude is going to be in deep trouble if she doesn’t marry the highly respectable Earl, so what is a gentleman to do but create a scandal?

It isn’t easy to become a rake overnight, as Gareth and I discovered, but finding a naked governess in a brothel certainly helped and, with the enthusiastic support of his cousins Eva and Sebastian Ravenhurst (THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER) and Bel and Ashe Reynard (THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM), Gareth succeeds in shocking Society.

But by then Gareth has dug himself into a moral, emotional and social hole, and he has to climb out of it, greatly hindered by his own treacherous heart, Maude’s appalling acting and the surprising allure of the chaste Miss Gifford, who just wants to get back to teaching the piano and the Italian tongue. Or so she says.

I do hope you enjoy the progress of this reluctant rake as he discovers that falling in love is perhaps the most shocking experience of all.

My exploration of the life and loves of Those Scandalous Ravenhursts takes me to France next, where bluestocking spinster Elinor is assisting her scholarly mama amidst ecclesiastical ruins, quite unprepared for the eruption into her orderly life of THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST, her black sheep of a cousin Theo. He’s the last thing she needs—unfortunately she soon discovers he’s the one thing she wants.

Chapter One

London—late February 1816

‘My lords, your honours, gentlemen! Your attention, please! At midnight, upon the stroke of the hour, Madame Synthia’s School of Venus presents our famed Parade of Beauty. Ladies of rich and varied experience! Exotic creatures of every hue! Country-fresh innocents willing and eager to learn their business at the hands of dashing London beaux! Posture girls of amazing flexibility and ingenuity for your delectation! In half an hour, my lords and gentlemen—take your places early and do not be disappointed!’

The ex-town crier employed at considerable expense by Madame Synthia—formerly known as Cynthia Wilkins of Camden Town—shouted himself to a stop and left the platform at the end of the Grand Assembly Lounge. Footmen began to set chairs around the stage and keen patrons jostled to fill the front row, despite there being half an hour to go before the start of the performance.

‘Morant, come on.’ Gareth Morant, Earl of Standon, winced as Lord Fellingham nudged him sharply in the ribs. ‘Those posture girls are all the go, but you need to be close up to get a proper eyeful.’ Fellingham licked his rather full lips. ‘They hold up a mirror and there are candles…’

‘I doubt they have any feature that any other woman you have had congress with was lacking, Fell.’ Gareth set down his almost-full champagne flute and regarded the scrimmage around the stage with bored distaste. ‘This place is a vulgar dive, I cannot imagine what we are doing here.’

‘You’re off your oats, old fellow, in need of a tonic, in my opinion,’ Fellingham retorted. ‘You’re no fun these days, and that’s the truth of it. Look at you—you’ve sat by the fire, toying with one glass the entire time Rotherham’s been upstairs with those Chinese twins, and never a word out of you but grunts.’

‘Indian twins.’ Gareth got to his feet and stretched. ‘They are Indian. I’m off to White’s, see if I can drum up a decent hand of cards.’

‘We can’t go without Rotherham,’ his friend protested, one eye on the rapidly filling seats before the stage. ‘And besides, I want to see this show. I’ve heard all about it, that’s why I wanted to come—remember? Let’s go and get old Rothers and watch it and then we’ll all go to White’s. He must be finished by now, surely. What do you say? Don’t be a killjoy.’

‘Very well.’ Gareth picked up his glass with a suppressed sigh, tossed back the contents and stood up. ‘Do you know which room he’s in?’

‘The Mirrored Chamber. Damn good room that, mirrors all over it, even the ceiling.’ Fellingham made for the stairs, pushing his way against the tide of men intent on reaching the stage.

‘So I collect. The name gives a slight hint.’ Damn it, Fell was right, his temper was short, nothing appealed any more. He wanted—no, needed—something, but he had no idea what, although it most definitely was not to be found in this temple to commercial sexual gratification. And the respectable novelty being pressed upon him—marriage—held no charms whatsoever either.

His friend snorted, good humoured despite Gareth’s tone. ‘Jaded, that’s what you are, you sarcastic devil. What you need is a good woman. No, make that a thoroughly bad one!’ Roaring with laughter at his own feeble wit, Fellingham struck off down a dimly lit corridor. ‘Down here somewhere, if I recall.’

‘Give me my clothes back!’ Jessica Gifford made a wild grab at the bundle of drab garments before the maid tossed them out of the door and slammed it. Outside, the key turned.

‘Now then, don’t give me trouble or I’ll have to get Madame Synthia up here, and you won’t like that, believe me.’ The maid grinned and went over to the wardrobe with a sway of her hips that indicated that the skimpiness of her gown was more than just an accident in the wash.

‘This is all a terrible mistake.’ Jessica stood there shivering, stark naked and too bemused and angry to be properly afraid. But at the back of her mind there was a growing awareness that she should be. She should be very frightened indeed, she realised, for it seemed that all the far-fetched tales she had heard about innocent country girls being snatched off the street by evil procurers were nothing less than the truth. But she wasn’t some innocent young milkmaid, she was a grown-up, independent, educated woman—this should not be happening to her!

‘There has been some error.’ She tried a reasonable tone, keeping her breathing light in an attempt to control it. ‘I am a governess, here to take up a new position.’

‘You’ll take up one of those all right.’ The maid laughed. ‘Lots and lots of new positions. You are a virgin, aren’t you?’ The glance she sent Jessica’s shivering, goose-bump-covered body was scornful.

‘Of course I am! I said there was some mistake. I asked the woman who greeted me as I got off the coach if she was Lady Hartington’s housekeeper and she said yes and took me to a carriage and the next thing I know, I am here.’

‘Yes, well, Lady H. won’t be wanting your services for her precious brats after tonight, especially as Lord H. himself is here and is likely to bid high for you. He’ll be getting you to show him the use of the globes, I’ll be bound. Or perhaps he’ll be slow at his Latin and’ll need a good birching. Put these on.’ She tossed a handful of flimsy scraps of fabric on to the bed.

‘This is a brothel?’ As well to have it clear, the logical, sensible part of Jessica’s brain told her, while the rest of it screamed in silent panic.

‘Lord love you, of course it is. Best vaulting house in town. Wonder if we ought to do something about your hair.’ The maid peered at her. ‘Nah. I’ll just unpin it, give you that ready to be tumbled look. They like that.’

‘There has been a mistake,’ Jessica repeated, adopting the tone of clear reason she found effective with some of her more dense pupils. ‘I am a governess, I am in the wrong place. If I am kept captive here, that is kidnapping and when I complain to the magistrates someone is going to be in very serious trouble with the law.’

‘How’re you going to do that, then?’ The maid advanced on her with a hairbrush and began to pluck out hairpins. ‘You’ll stay here until you’re properly broken in, then there’s nowhere else for you to go because no one respectable will want you. If you want to chat to a magistrate or two, I’m sure there’s some here tonight. Very sympathetic they’ll be—want to make you feel right at home, I’ll be bound.’

Cold fingers of fear slithered down Jessica’s spine. She had been earning her own living for three years and she knew just how perilous was the position of an unprotected young woman with the slightest hint of scandal attaching to her name. She knew, all too well, the consequences of that one step off the slippery path of respectability.

If she got out of here and complained, most likely she would be ignored. If she were believed, then she was as good as ruined, whatever happened.

‘How can you help them do this to another woman?’ She put her hand on the other girl’s arm imploringly. In this situation she was not too proud to plead. She would be on her knees begging in a minute. Whatever it took to end this nightmare. ‘Don’t you want to be out of here yourself?’

The maid stared at her as though she was mad. ‘Leave here? I’d be crazy to,’ she said shortly. ‘Warm room, good food, lots of company, gentlemen giving me good tips. All I have to do is lie on my back on a clean comfy bed and do what comes natural. Leave here and go back to what? A filthy slum in Wapping, that’s what. And there you do it up against the wall for a handful of coppers and a black eye.’ She peered in the mirror and pinched her own cheeks, bringing some colour into her pert, sharp-featured face.

‘Look, you silly cow,’ she said suddenly, with what Jessica realised was an attempt at kindness, ‘it ain’t so bad after the first time. Why make it difficult for yourself? If you make a scene, Madame will just send up some of the doormen to break you in, and you won’t like that, believe me.’

Jessica sank down on the end of the huge bed, oblivious to the cold slippery satin under her bare behind. The choices appeared to be to be deflowered by a group of bully boys, to be sold to some debauched gentleman or to throw herself out of the window. Only that was barred with iron.

Life had been hard, these past three years, but she had her modest savings, a respectable profession, her self-respect and she was dependent on no one. Under no circumstances was she going to give that up. Her mind seemed to move beyond terror into a desperate resolve.

The maid was gathering up her fallen hairpins. Jessica put her foot carefully on one of them. ‘All right,’ she said, having no trouble letting her voice shake. ‘What happens now?’

‘There, that’s better! See how much easier it is if you stop being so foolish about it? What’s your name?’

‘Jessica.’

‘Well, Jessy, I’m Moll. We get’s you into your costume—that won’t take long, there ain’t much of it—then at midnight the show starts. You’re the only virgin on the bill, so the bidding’ll be brisk. You’ll get a nice rich gentleman who’ll tip you well after, I’ll be bound, seeing you’re the real thing.’

‘What’s the time now?’ Jessica reached for the scraps of muslin the maid held out.

‘Twenty to the hour.’

‘Well, if there isn’t any other option… Isn’t there a costume that’s a nicer colour?’ she asked, feigning petulance. ‘I don’t like lilac. It looks so insipid with blonde hair.’

Moll did not appear to find the sudden change of tone suspicious. ‘I think there’s a green one, that’ll be pretty with your eyes.’ She opened the wardrobe doors again.

The maid’s shriek was cut off by Jessica bundling her bodily into the clothes press. One piece of muslin was around her wrists, the other gagging her mouth before she could recover her wits. Jessica pulled down more pieces from the hooks, tying the struggling girl’s ankles.

‘If you make a noise in the next half-hour, I’ll hit you on the head,’ she warned, hoping she sounded convincingly fierce. ‘If you are quiet, nothing will happen. Understand?’

Wide blue eyes stared at her over the gag, then Molly nodded energetically. Jessica shut the wardrobe door, wedged a chair under the handle, retrieved the hairpin and set about picking the door lock.

In sensation novels, the sort governesses are supposed never to read and in fact devour by the shelf full, the beleaguered yet valiant heroine can pick a dungeon lock in seconds as she escapes from the wicked duke’s evil clutches. Her hands shaking, cold sweat standing out all over her, Jessica could only conclude that either wicked dukes employed inferior locksmiths to brothel keepers or the authors of the Minerva Press were sadly misinformed.

After five minutes she stood up in an attempt to relieve her cramped knees. ‘Open, you beastly thing,’ she said, almost weeping with frustration, and fetched the lock a thump with her clenched fist. With a click it did just that.

Jessica was out into the corridor before she could think. Opposite her a shadowy figure moved. She gave a yelp of fear and realised that it was her own reflection in a full-length mirror. And she was stark naked.

Behind her the door swung to, the catch snicked closed. She could not go back, that was where they would come for her. Clothes. That was the priority. Like this she had no hope, and she was finding it very hard to think clearly. One of these rooms, surely, must contain something she could wear.

She opened the first door that she came to and peered round the edge. Inside was a big bed and on it a welter of naked flesh. Gasping, Jessica made out six legs, two pairs of buttocks, a glimpse of hairy chest… How many people? Doing what? She shut the door, flattening herself instinctively into the recess. The participants in the orgy had appeared totally preoccupied, but even so, she did not think she had the courage to sneak in and steal clothing while that was going on.

It was ridiculous to feel even more alarmed and fearful than she was already—how much worse could her predicament possibly get?—but that glimpse into carnal matters beyond her comprehension had shocked her out of any delusion that this was a nightmare. There, for real, was what she risked becoming if she could not escape.

Jessica drew in a deep breath and forced herself to plan. To assume the worst was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Her fate was sealed if she panicked. Steadier, she surveyed the corridor in which she found herself. Opposite was the door she had just escaped through, behind her the room with the orgy in progress. On either side were two more doors and then, in both directions, the passage turned. More cautious now, she applied an ear to each door in turn and from each came the sounds of gasps and sighs, and, from one, the crack of a whip.

Which way to go? Her sense of direction had quite deserted her in the hectic few minutes when she had been bundled out of the carriage and up the stairs. Then, as she hesitated, her arms wrapped around her chilly ribs, the decision was made for her by the sound of a door opening and loud voices from out of sight to her right. Without hesitation Jessica fled around the other corner.

It might have been better, she realised in the second she thudded into a solid wall of male muscle, if she had been looking where she was going and not wildly back over her shoulder.

Her nose was buried in a shirt front, the crisp upper edge of a tailored waistcoat stuck into her chin and her shivering body was pressed against warm superfine and knitted silk. The immovable object stood quite still as the voices behind her grew louder.

Jessica tilted back her head and found she was squinting up past a chin that was already shadowed by an evening beard into amused grey eyes. One dark eyebrow rose. ‘Help,’ she whispered, her voice fled along with her hope. ‘Please help me.’

‘This is the room,’ a slurred voice from behind the man announced. ‘Come on, Morant, in we go.’

‘By all means,’ a voice as amused as the eyes answered, turning Jessica around and putting one firm hand on her shoulder. ‘In we all go.’

Her quivering flesh seemed to steady at the warm touch and the thought came to her that at least, if she was about to be ravished, about to lose her virginity, at least he was not the slavering monster of her imagination; not the gross, sweating horror she had been trying not to think about.

The room was brightly lit, glittering with candles reflected over and over from mirrors all around. It was like being inside a chandelier. Jessica, her eyes hunting frantically around the chamber for some escape, saw three figures entwined on the bed, closed her eyes and stumbled.

The hand on her shoulder tightened, holding her up. ‘Come on,’ the deep voice said softly in her ear. ‘Pay attention, I can’t do this all by myself.’ He still blocked the door, she realised, as the two golden-skinned women on the bed sat up, a pair of pagan idols, and turned identical faces to watch them. Silken black hair flowed down their backs and, between them, his face mercifully hidden by the thighs of one girl and his loins by those of another, was the prone form of a naked man. A fallen Greek statue.

The man holding her reached out his other hand and lifted an exotic brocade robe off a chair beside the door. ‘Put this on.’

With a gasp of relief Jessica struggled into its heavy silken folds as a plaintive voice said, ‘Move, would you, Morant!’ She found herself gently turned to one side as the big man stepped into the room and his companion barged in behind him, closing the door.

Jessica pulled the deep collar up to hide the lower half of her face. With clothing came some semblance of inner calm; it was incredible how the very fact of being naked clouded the wits. She found she could look around her and see the whole room, not tiny details of it magnified as though in a nightmare. The two women on the bed became clearly twin mortals; the room was not a crystal palace of light, but simply a tawdry chamber lined with smoke-smudged mirrors; and the naked god sitting up on the rumpled sheets was just a blond young man with an incipient pot belly and a flushed face.

‘Hello, Fell, Morant,’ he managed before slumping back on to the pillows. ‘Brought your own, have you?’

‘What?’ The man at the back—Fell?—pushed past and stared. ‘Where did you get this little ladybird, Morant? We didn’t have her with us when we started out, did we?’ He reached towards Jessica.

‘Hands off,’ the big man said easily, pushing his friend towards the bed. ‘You go and help Rotherham get his money’s worth: he doesn’t seem to be up to it, all by himself.’

The two black-haired girls held out their arms in welcome and Fell stumbled forwards, collapsing on to the bed with a hoot of laughter amidst his friend’s vehement protests.

The big man reached out and scooped up a pile of clothing from the chair, then propelled Jessica out into the passageway again. ‘Get dressed.’ He dropped the things at her feet. A tall silk hat rolled away, teetered on its brim for a moment, then fell over.

‘These are men’s clothes.’ Jessica clutched the silk robe even tighter around her.

‘Exactly. Do you think you are going to walk out of here dressed like that?’ He gestured at the robe. Jessica had a vivid mental picture of her hair, her bare feet, the naked skin under the lush brocade.

‘You are taking me with you, then?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She could not see properly, but she knew he was smiling—it was in his voice. ‘I am certainly taking you.’ Something inside her, something very complicated indeed, was making it hard to think. He would take her out of here, yes, but his words meant more than that—or did they? She shook her head: deal with the immediate problem, Jessica.

‘You are right, this is a good idea.’ She picked up the pantaloons and hauled them on under cover of the robe, rummaged and found the neckcloth and used it to tie round the waist to hold them up. ‘Turn round.’ The passageway was barely lit, she could make out the shape of him, the flash of white teeth as he grinned, the shape of a closely barbered head.

‘I’ve seen all there is to see already, sweetheart.’

‘Well, I don’t want you seeing it again,’ she retorted and to her amazement he turned a shoulder with a grunt of amusement, leant against the panelling and began to whistle softly while she shucked off the robe, dragged the shirt over her head and pulled on the greatcoat. It came down to her feet. Her bare pink toes peeked out. ‘Shoes?’ she said.

‘And hair.’ He turned back and looked at her. ‘Heaven help us. Here.’ His hands on her hair were ruthless. With one hand he gathered up the whole unruly mass, twisted it into a knot and then into the tall hat, which he jammed on her head. It came down to her nose.

He was heeling off his own evening slippers. Balancing on one foot, he dragged off the black silk socks, then repeated the gesture with the other foot before putting the shoes back on. ‘Try these. At least your feet won’t seem to be bare. If they notice my bare calves, they’ll think I was too fuddled to get dressed properly.’

This was insanity, yet now, with this man she could not even see properly, she felt safe. She had no idea how he could rescue her, but somehow she knew that he would. She was going to survive this. But the illusion of safety was just that, an illusion, and she must not forget it.

Feeling like an exceptionally well-dressed scarecrow Jessica stood in front of the looming dark bulk of her rescuer. ‘We will never get out of here with all these people still awake.’

He pulled a watch out of his waistcoat pocket and held it up close to his eyes in the gloom. ‘Oh, yes, we will, it is two minutes to midnight. Come on.’

What midnight had to do with it Jessica could not imagine, although images of coaches and pumpkins floated into her mind. She obediently padded along in his wake, one hand holding the hat so she could squint under the brim, the other clutching the coat around her.

They reached the head of a broad staircase, not the narrow one she had been so unceremoniously bundled up, struggling and scratching, only an hour before. The heat and the noise rising from the room below were overwhelming. Jessica took a firm hold of the man’s coat tails.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said mildly, ‘My valet will complain. Here, beside me.’ She forced her clenched fist to relax and, stumbling in her trailing greatcoat, went to stand on his left side. She tried to look up, see him now the light was better, but the hat brim defeated her.

‘You are drunk,’ her rescuer ordered, his deep voice calm and definite. ‘You can do that?’

‘Yes.’ Actually she wanted to scream, have the vapours and faint dead away. Do all the things, in fact, that the well-bred women lucky enough to be in a position to think themselves her superiors would do if they found themselves captives in a brothel. But she owed it to herself, and to this calm capable man, to have courage, even if she was going to have to pay for her rescue by losing her virtue in his bed. She could not imagine any man would remove a naked woman from a brothel and not expect the logical reciprocal gesture. After all, why else would he be here, if not for a woman? That was what he had meant when he had said he would take her.

‘Slump against me, then, and, whatever happens, don’t panic.’ One arm came round her shoulders and clamped her to his side. He smells nice, Jessica thought irrelevantly. Spicy citrus and clean linen and leather. ‘And whatever happens, hang on to that hat.’

They began to stagger down the stairs, the man keeping up a slurred, grumbling commentary that taught Jessica, in two terrifying minutes, more cant and bad language than she had ever heard in her life.

The noise swelled, overwhelming her; the stink of hot oil, candle wax, alcohol, sweat and excited masculinity enveloped her, driving away the comforting smell of the man beside her. Then their feet hit the level floor of the entranceway and she drew in a deep, sobbing breath. They were down. The door was right in front of them.

‘Off already, gentlemen?’ It was the false-genteel accents of the woman who had picked her up at the inn, the woman whose face she had glimpsed, hard and merciless, as the bullies had swept her up the stairs into the nightmare of captivity. Madame Synthia.

‘Unfort…unfortunately, Madame, Lord Rotherham ish…is overcome. We will have to return another night—see your famed midnight ex’bition.’

Jessica pressed herself against the tall, gently swaying figure as the madam took her rescuer’s other arm and tried to urge him into the room. ‘He’ll be all right, my lord, one of the girls will look after him. Or I’ll get the lads to keep an eye on him. Here, Geordie…’

‘Hat,’ he hissed, sweeping her up and over his shoulder. Jessica made a grab and held it on. ‘Too late, Madame, you don’t want him throwing up on your nice marble floor.’ Then the doors were open and with an exaggerated stagger they were out. Out into the blissful cold of the night, out into the quiet of a side street with only a hackney cab driving past.

‘Cab!’ The carriage reined in. Jessica tried to catch a glimpse of the man’s face in the light from the windows of the brothel, but he bundled her into the musty interior before she could focus.

‘Well.’ The door slammed shut and he settled down opposite her in the darkness. ‘Here we are, then.’

Chapter Two

The dark shape opposite her did not become any clearer, however hard she stared. Dots began to swim in front of her eyes and Jessica gave up. Seeing him clearly was not going to make any difference—she was in those large, capable hands whether she liked it or not.

Count your blessings, she always said to pupils who whined or complained, knowing as she did it just how infuriatingly smug it sounded. But it was the sort of thing expected from teachers. Now she tried to apply her own good advice.

Blessing One: I am not naked, I have clothes on—but they belong to some man who is currently disporting himself in a house of ill repute. Blessing Two: I am not in a brothel about to be ravished by goodness knows who—but I am in the power of a complete stranger who probably has my ravishment high on his agenda. Blessing Three… She appeared to have run out of blessings.

Know your enemy. Another useful dictum. Especially when you did not know how much of an enemy he was.

‘My name is Jessica Gifford.’ She ignored the impulse to give a false name. Life was complicated enough without that. ‘Miss,’ she added with scrupulous care.

‘And mine is Gareth Morant.’ The deep voice was curiously calming. She had noticed that in the corridor in the brothel, but then, at that point, anyone who had not drooled or sworn at her would have been comforting. Now that her panic had subsided into cold fear she expected to be rather more discriminating—but he still made her feel safe. Safe-ish, she corrected scrupulously.

‘Mister?’

‘Lord.’ She could hear he was smiling. ‘Earl of Standon.’

‘Thank you for rescuing me, my lord.’ There was no call to be impolite, even if you were quaking in your silk-stockinged feet. His silk stockings. That felt almost more indecent than wearing that other man’s pantaloons.

An earl. An aristocrat. Oh Lord, she really had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. A nice, respectable baronet might be concerned with rectitude and reputation. A plain gentleman might be law abiding and bound by the conventions of church and received morality.

But everyone knew about the aristocracy. They did what they liked and to hell with anyone else’s opinions or values. So long as they paid their gambling debts they disregarded with impunity every standard held dear by lesser mortals. They gambled, they spent with wild extravagance, their sexual morals were a scandal, they duelled and they did not give a fig for the opinion of anyone else outside their own charmed and privileged circle. Look at Papa, she thought with an inward sigh. And look at Mama—which is rather more to the point under the circumstances.

‘So, what am I going to do with you, Miss Gifford?’ Lord Standon enquired. The thread of amusement was still there in the deep voice—he knew exactly what he was going to do with her, she supposed.

‘Take me to a respectable inn?’ she suggested hopefully.

‘You have your luggage safely somewhere, then?’

‘No. They took it all.’

‘But you have some money?’

‘No.’ Obviously she did not have any money, he must know that perfectly well.

‘Some respectable acquaintance in London to whom I could deliver you?’

‘No,’ she repeated through gritted teeth. He was finding this amusing, the beast.

‘Then I think you are coming home with me.’

Where you will expect me to show my suitable gratitude for this rescue, she thought with a sinking heart. The trouble was, it was not sinking quite as much as it ought, given that she was a respectable virgin completely in the power of a rakish aristocrat. There was something about his size that made it very hard not to feel safe with him, and something about the amused kindness in his voice that made her want to talk to him. And something about the sheer masculine splendour of him that makes me want to put my hands on him. All over him…

‘Are you frightened?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Yes.’ It was the honest truth. Frightened of him, frightened for the future, terrified of her own, purely female, responses to him.

‘Sensible of you.’ He did not appear insulted by her response. She supposed she should have tried a little feminine fluttering: I feel so safe with you, my lord…’ In fact you are an admirably sensible female, are you not, Miss Gifford? Strange how one can tell that in a mere twenty minutes’ acquaintance.’

‘Not sensible enough to avoid being tricked by a brothel keeper,’ Jessica said bitterly. She was not flattered to be told she was sensible. She knew she was, it was her chief virtue and stock in trade and, try as she might, she could not sound anything else.

‘Well, you will not be caught a second time. If my solution is not to your liking, what would you like me to do with you?’

Have your wicked way with me? she thought wildly, then caught herself up with a effort. She was exhausted, frightened and completely out of her depth, but that was no excuse for hysteria.

‘Would you lend me some money, my lord? Then I can go to a respectable inn tonight and seek employment from an agency in the morning. I am a governess.’

‘Go to an inn dressed like that? I am afraid all the shops are shut and I do not carry ladies’ clothing on my person.’

‘Oh. No, of course you do not.’ He must think her completely buffle-headed.

‘However, I do have some available.’ He let the sentence hang. ‘At my house.’

‘You mean your wife will lend me something?’ she enquired sweetly. How she knew it Jessica could not say, but this man was quite definitely not married. The clothing in question was doubtless the silks and laces of some past or present mistress.

‘I am not married.’ She had the impression that she had slightly unsettled him. ‘If I were married, I would not be patronising establishments such as the one we have just left.’

‘You have no need to explain yourself to me, my lord.’ And having a wife at home made no difference to whether a lord kept a mistress or frequented the muslin company.

‘No,’ he agreed with the calm that appeared to be natural to him. ‘I was explaining it to myself. A tawdry place—there is little excuse for its existence.’

‘Other than that gentlemen patronise it.’ She thought sadly of Moll, grateful to be employed in a brothel because there she had regular food and nobody blacked her eyes. She hoped someone had found her by now and released her from the clothes press.

The hackney cab drew up with a lurch. ‘My town house,’ Lord Standon said, getting up and opening the door. He held out his hands to help her down and Jessica paused in the doorway, seeing him for the first time in the light of the torchères either side of the wide black front door.

He was big. She already knew that. His hair was dark and she could not make out the exact colour, but what held her was the power of his face. No one would ever call Gareth Morant handsome, but no one would ever be able to call him less than impressive. Someone—she could not imagine who, unless it was a blacksmith with a hammer—had managed to break a large nose that had not been particularly distinguished to start with. His jaw was strong and determined, in contrast to the peaceable tone he seemed to habitually employ. His eyes, which she already knew were grey, were shadowed below dark brows and his mouth, which she could see all too clearly, was wide, sensual with a lurking smile.

He was waiting with patience for her to move and to alight from the hackney. Jessica thought frantically. Had she any option other than to enter this man’s house? No, she had not. ‘Thank you, my lord,’ she said as placidly as she knew how, and allowed him to take her hand as she jumped down to the pavement.

Doubtless she should embrace death rather than dis-honour, but that seemed both unpleasant and disproportionate under the circumstances. Like mother, like daughter. The thought flickered through her brain and was instantly banished. Mama…Mama had been different. And beside any other considerations, Miss Jessica Gifford believed strongly that one honoured one’s obligations. Up to now that had sometimes been onerous, but never quite so frightening to contemplate.

She stood and waited while he paid the driver, her stockinged feet cold and damp on the flags, her ridiculous hat pulled down over her face, then allowed him to take her arm and guide her towards the shallow steps. Despite the hour a butler materialised as Lord Standon closed the door behind him.

‘Ah, Jordan. Is Mrs Childe still up?’

‘No, my lord, she retired an hour ago, as have all the maids. Would you wish me to rouse one of them?’ His very lack of interest in the bizarrely clad figure shivering beside his master revealed the superiority of an upper servant, but Jessica would have been grateful for a look of surprise—she was beginning to feel invisible.

‘No, there is no need to disturb them. This young lady has had an unpleasant experience and requires a bedchamber, some supper and some suitable clothing. A fire in the room, please, Jordan.’

‘Yes, my lord. Would the young lady care to come into the library to eat while her room is prepared? There is a fire there as usual.’

‘Yes, that would be best.’ The earl turned and regarded Jessica, who stared back from under the brim of her hat. Her feet were beginning to grow numb on the cold marble. ‘Clothes first, though. Come along, Miss Gifford, we should find something in the Chinese bedchamber.’

He led the way to the sweep of stone stairs rising from the chequerboard marble. Jessica grabbed her trailing coat and struggled up after him, clutching the elegant wrought-iron handrail with her free hand. The position gave her an unrivalled opportunity to study long well-shaped legs, narrow hips and broad athletic shoulders. Having run into him at speed, she did not make the mistake of imagining that Lord Standon’s figure owed anything to his tailor, who must give thanks daily for a customer who did so much credit to his creations.

On the other hand, she thought critically as she reached the landing and he turned to make sure she was following, he definitely was not a handsome man. The good light showed that her impression outside on the pavement had been correct. At least, she corrected herself, as she plodded along in his wake, trying to lift her tired feet up out of the thick carpet, he was not a classically handsome man. Neither Lord Byron’s romantically tumbled locks, nor Mr Brummell’s much-vaunted beauty need fear competition from the Earl of Standon. On the other hand, he was unmistakably a very virile, masculine creature and she knew perfectly well that his size was provoking a thoroughly unwise desire to cast herself upon his broad chest and beg to be looked after.

Jessica reminded herself that she was not a woman who could afford to succumb to romantic notions, but one who lived by her intelligence and common sense, and that what she was striving for in life was respectable, dull, safe security. Men played no part in that ambition and aristocrats who frequented brothels, however kind they seemed, and however much one wanted to wrap one’s arms around as much of them as possible, were the shortest way to the primrose path that led inexorably downwards to shame and degradation. Look at Mama.

Well, possibly shame and degradation were rather strong words for it in Mama’s case, but it had certainly led to her being cut off without a penny, shunned by her family and living the sort of life that Jessica had sworn, at the age of fourteen, that she would never, ever, risk. Mama had thought the world well lost for love; then, when that love itself had gone, she had lived on her wits, her beauty and her charm.

As far as Jessica was concerned, falling in love ranked somewhat below wagering one’s entire substance on a lottery ticket as a sensible way of carrying on for a woman.

Sensation novels promised true love would find you if you only waited long enough and the Old Testament was littered with prophets being sustained entirely by faith and passing ravens, but a good education and hard work seemed more positive routes to security, food on the table and a roof over her head to Jessica than prayer and patience.

Lord Standon stopped and Jessica walked into the back of him. ‘Sorry. It is this hat.’

‘I believe you might safely remove it now, Miss Gifford.’ He opened the door and she stepped inside, pulling off the tall-crowned hat as she did so. There was no point in being a ninny about this. She must do what she had to do to get her life back on course. This was an interlude, then she could get back to being Miss Gifford, superior governess—pianoforte, harp, water-colours and the Italian tongue included.

They had entered what was presumably the Chinese bedchamber. Jessica stood inside the door while his lordship touched a taper to the candelabra standing around the room, trying not to be overawed by the fine painted wallpaper, the golden silk hangings or the rich carpet. It was, when all was said and done, merely a room for sleeping in. She swallowed, hoping that whatever happened before the sleep was not going to occur here under the jewelled eyes of dragons. Common sense and resignation were not proving as fortifying to the spirits as she might have hoped.

‘There should be night things at least.’ He pulled out drawers and turned over fabrics. ‘Yes. Help yourself.’ A carved panel opened at a touch and revealed hanging rails. ‘And there are robes in there as well, and slippers. Will you be able to find your way down again? Jordan will show you where the library is.’

So, it was not going to happen here and now in this room. Jessica placed the tall hat on a chest and nodded, managing her breathing somehow. ‘Thank you, my lord. I will not be long.’ He smiled and went out, closing the door behind him. Jessica went to look down into the open drawer at the fine lawn and rich Brussels lace, the satin ribbons and the shimmer of silk. It seemed she was going to lose her virtue whilst lavishly dressed—if that were any consolation.

Gareth stood frowning down at the meal his butler was setting out on the side table in the library. ‘Jordan, Miss Gifford was kidnapped by bullies from a brothel as she arrived on the stage this evening.’

‘Tsk. Shocking. One hears about such things, of course. How fortunate you were able to assist her.’ The man shook his head at the wickedness of the world and adjusted the position of the cruet slightly. ‘Miss Gifford will doubtless be hungry, my lord. Snatched meals at post inns are not sustaining fare and I presume she has had nothing since. I will bring a slice of fruit pie in addition to the sweetmeats.’ He regarded the table, apparently satisfied with its arrangement. ‘Will Miss Gifford be staying with us long, my lord?’

‘Until I have settled her future, Jordan.’ There was a tap and the door opened. ‘Ah, that is better.’ Gareth regarded the slim figure in the open doorway and found himself fighting back a grin. Top to toe in Julia’s luxurious lingerie, Miss Gifford still managed to look like a governess. Her hair was braided down her back, her feet were neatly together and her hands clasped at her waist. She had managed to find the plainest of the robes and, from the lack of frills showing under it, one of the simplest of the nightgowns.

The memory of her naked, her hair in glorious disarray around white shoulders, those small, high, rounded breasts pressed against his shirt front, filled him with a pleasurable glow that none of the exotic pleasures promised at Madame Synthia’s had evoked. Something must have shown in his eyes, for her chin came up a fraction and those wide green eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. However naïve Miss Jessica Gifford had been in stepping into a brothel-keeper’s carriage, she was not lacking in either courage or perception.

‘Come and sit down by the fire and eat, you must be hungry.’ He pulled out a chair for her and waited while she came and seated herself, managing it neatly and without glancing down at the chair as he pushed it in. Used to dinner parties. Gareth added the fact to his slim mental dossier on Miss Gifford. Obviously a superior governess, and one with much to lose from this night’s events.

‘Thank you, my lord.’ She waited, hands folded in her lap while Jordan pulled out a chair for him. ‘I confess I am a trifle peckish.’

‘Tea, Miss Gifford? Or lemonade, perhaps?’ Gareth saw her glance from the waiting butler to the opened bottle of white Chablis standing in an ice bucket by his side.

‘Wine, if you please.’ There was a touch of defiance about the choice. Dutch courage, he thought, wondering just why she was still so tense. There would be a period of uncertainty while she recovered from the shock, no doubt, but she would feel better in the morning. Mrs Childe would find her ready-made clothes and she could visit some agencies. He had no doubt she would soon find a suitable appointment; in the meantime he would have to find her somewhere to stay. Maude would help.

She was eating elegantly, he noticed, yet with a single-minded approach that was making inroads into the cold meats before her. Her lack of the vapours appealed to him and he plied her with food until she sat back with a sigh of repletion. ‘Thank you, my lord. I cannot remember when I last ate anything beside the merest snack.’

‘You have travelled far to London?’ Gareth picked up his wine and stood to pull back her chair. ‘Shall we sit by the fire?’

She gave him a long, searching look from under lashes that seemed ridiculously lavish for such a neat, self-contained creature. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said at last, picking up her own half-empty glass and moving to the chair he indicated.

‘I have come down from Leicestershire,’ she explained. In the big, masculine, winged chair she looked more fragile than he had thought before. Despite her poise, she also seemed vulnerable in a way that was different from her panic in the brothel. Her eyes were wide and watchful on him and she seemed braced for something. ‘My last position ended when my pupil went to stay with her grandmother in Bath. I have…had…a position with Lady Hartington to teach languages to her two older daughters. I understand that Lord Hartington was at that place tonight.’

‘Yes. In any case, you are better off not employed in that household, Miss Gifford. Lady Hartington is a bitter woman and her husband has a poor reputation.’

Jessica shrugged, a slight, unconsciously graceful gesture. ‘It is my job to fit in and make the best of what I find. Few households can be said to be ideal.’

‘No doubt you are right. Finish your wine now, it is time for us to retire.’ He got to his feet and reached for a candle to give her.

There was no mistaking the tension that shot through her at his innocuous words. She stood up, lifted her chin and said with just the merest tremor in her voice, ‘Of course my lord. I am quite…ready.’

Ready for what? Then he realised what the tightly clasped hands and the pulse beating visibly at her throat meant. She thought he had brought her home to—Damn it, does she take me for some libertine? Gareth leashed his temper with an effort. ‘So, you think you have jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, do you, Jessica?’

Her eyes widened at his use of her name, the pupils expanded so their green light became almost black. ‘You had gone to that place for a purpose and thanks to me you were not able to accomplish it.’ She stood quite still, although he could see the edge of the nightgown moving. She was trembling and suddenly that made him furious.

‘Are you a virgin?’ he asked, his voice harsh.

She went white. ‘Yes. I am.’

‘And you think I am in the habit of ravishing virginal young ladies?’

‘I am not a lady, I am a governess.’ Her lips tightened for a moment. ‘From my observations, the aristocracy regards governesses in much the same light as chambermaids.’

‘As fair game?’ Obviously being an aristocrat weighed heavily against him.

‘Yes.’ She gave a little huffing breath as though to recover herself after running. ‘And I owe you for rescuing me—I pay my debts.’

‘Indeed?’ Gareth set the candlestick down with a snap, suddenly too angry to analyse why. ‘Would it be worth my while, I wonder? Virgins are no doubt interesting, but then there is the lack of experience…’

‘I learn quickly my lord.’

‘Do you, Jessica?’ He closed the distance between them and cupped his hands around her shoulders. Under his big palms her bones felt fragile. ‘Let us see just how quickly’, and he bent his head and kissed her full on the mouth.

Chapter Three

Jessica had just enough warning to drag a breath down into her lungs and then her world changed. One moment she had no idea what a man’s mouth felt like, what a male body crushed against hers would feel like or how her own body would react to such contact—and the next everything became a sensual blur filled with this man’s heat and scent and taste and the pressure of his lips devouring hers.

She was up on tiptoe, held hard to him, his big body forcing hers to curve and mould into his. His mouth moved on hers with purpose that confused her until she realised that he wanted her to open to him. With a little gasp she did so and his tongue filled her, hot and moist and indecently exciting. She could taste the wine they had been drinking and something else that must be simply him. He was possessing her mouth with what she hazily realised was an echo of a far more complete possession and she melted, boneless, shameless, against him.

When Gareth Morant lifted his mouth from hers and set her square on her feet again she had lost the power of speech, of movement and, utterly, the will to resist him. Jessica gripped the powerful forearms as his hands steadied her. She tried not to pant.

‘Miss Gifford.’ Unfortunately he did not appear to have been reduced to the same state. His breathing was perfectly even, his face calm, his colour normal. ‘Miss Gifford, you are a delightful young lady and a pleasure to kiss, but I hope you will believe me when I tell you that I have not the slightest intention of taking you to my bed. I went to that place this evening at the behest of my friends, not to seek a woman, and you may rest assured that even if I had that intention, I am capable of suppressing my animal instincts for one night.’

‘Oh.’

‘And I am not in the habit of ravishing virgins, nor of extracting a price from someone whose plight should have prompted any gentleman to rescue her.’ He paused and the corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Or even any aristocrat.’

‘Oh.’ Jessica struggled to get her brain out of the morass of warm porridge into which it appeared to have fallen and to say something coherent. ‘Then I must say that was the most embarrassing mistake I have ever made,’ she admitted with painful honesty.

‘Kissing me?’ His eyebrows shot up. Obviously his lordship was not used to having his caresses dismissed as embarrassing. He was probably offended that, having reduced her to a quivering puddle, she was not begging for more.

‘No. I had no choice about that, had I?’ Jessica glared at him. ‘I mean, assuming that you would expect—you know.’

‘Well, I do not.’ He picked up the candlestick again and handed it to her. ‘I will ring for Jordan to show you to your room.’

‘Why did you kiss me, my lord?’ She had not meant to say it, she had meant to say Thank you in a calm and dignified manner, but the question just escaped.

‘Because you made me cross.’ He stood watching her and she made herself stand up to the scrutiny without fidgeting until the corner of his mouth quirked into a ghost of a smile. ‘And because I wanted to.’ He reached for the bell pull. ‘You may sleep in peace, Miss Gifford, my curiosity has been satisfied.’

Well, that was a flattening piece of reassurance to be sure! Jessica produced a perfectly correct curtsy and stalked out in the butler’s wake. So his lordship’s curiosity had been satisfied, had it? And what if it had not been? Would he have persisted? Obviously he was used to far more sophisticated kissing than she could provide.

‘Your room, Miss Gifford.’

Her agitation melted away on a sigh. Warm firelight flickered on rose-coloured walls. A bed heaped with white linens sat comfortably in the far corner. Steam curled upwards from the ewer standing on the washstand and the curtains were closed tight against the damp London night and all the dangers it held. This was not some rake’s love nest. Lord Standon was treating her as a guest and she had cast aspersions on his motives.

‘Oh dear.’

She had realised she had spoken aloud. Jordan turned. ‘Miss Gifford? Is something wrong?’

‘I have just realised that perhaps I expressed my gratitude to Lord Standon insufficiently just now.’

What might have been a fleeting smile passed over the impassive countenance. ‘It is easy, if I might make an observation, miss, to misinterpret things, especially when one is tired and in some distress.’

‘Yes. Thank you, Jordan.’ The man bowed and left her. Jessica took off the heavy apricot satin robe, pulled the cream silk nightgown over her head and went to pour water into the basin. Her feet were filthy, but her whole being felt contaminated from those desperate hours in the brothel and she stood for long minutes lathering the sweet-scented soap over every inch of her body before she began to feel clean again.

Fresh and dry at last Jessica slipped back into the nightgown, luxuriating in its soft fabric and luxurious detail. Sinful behaviour obviously had its rewards, she decided, climbing between the warm sheets and snuggling down, wishing now that she had chosen one of the more elaborately trimmed garments—she would never have the opportunity to indulge in such opulence again.

It had been an eventful day. She had been inside a brothel, she was sleeping in silk—and she had been kissed by a man. Jessica blew out the remaining candle and lay watching the pattern of firelight on the walls. She should be making plans, but…. As her agitation slowly ebbed away and she relaxed into the warmth and safety of the bedchamber, the sensual memory of that kiss flooded back. She had resigned herself to never being kissed—the path she had set herself precluded any relationship with men beyond that of employee and employer.

Now she knew what it felt like to be held so tightly, and yet want to be held tighter yet. She knew what a man tasted like, how his skin smelt, how her own body yearned to betray every standard and scruple just to experience that glory again. And that was just a kiss. What would it be like to be made love to by Lord Standon? Perhaps, if she willed herself to sleep, she would dream about him.

The rattle of curtain rings woke Jessica from a deep sleep undisturbed by the nightmares of Madam Synthia’s or the bliss of Lord Standon’s arms.

‘Good morning, Miss Gifford.’ Jessica sat up and found a neatly clad maid setting a tray down beside her bed. ‘I am Mary, miss, and I’m to look after you while you are here. Mr Jordan told us about what had happened—what a dreadful thing, miss!—and Mrs Childe will be going out in a minute to buy you some day clothes. Here’s your chocolate, miss, and his lordship says, would you care to join him for breakfast? In your dressing gown’s quite all right, miss.’ She ran out of breath at last and stood beaming.

‘Thank you, Mary.’ Jessica took a reviving mouthful of chocolate. Oh, the luxury! It seemed to stroke down inside her like warm velvet, soothing and invigorating, both at the same time. ‘How will Mrs Childe know what size clothes to get for me?’

‘His lordship lined us all up and said Polly was just the right size, miss.’ Mary bustled about. ‘I’ll fetch your hot water, shall I?’

Oh Lord! So he had told them Polly was the right size, had he? Just in case the rest of the household had no idea that their master had had the opportunity to scrutinise her in intimate detail. Jessica had become very familiar with the inner world of households, their miniature social hierarchies, their taboos and their rules. The servants would not be kind about a governess gone astray; she and her kind were usually regarded as being neither gentry nor servants and as a result were an outcast class between the two. Not that Mary appeared hostile.

The maid bustled back with the water and drew the screen round the washstand. ‘Here you are, miss, I’ve brought a fresh nightgown as well.’

Gareth pushed back his chair as the door opened on to the breakfast parlour and Jessica walked in. He saw with relief that she did not appear much affected by her adventures the night before—neither the kidnap nor his insane kiss. He was still kicking himself about that, and he had suffered long sleepless hours reviewing just how unwise it had been to yield to temptation. He was not sure whether it was the ache in his groin or in his conscience that had most disturbed his slumber, but they had both proved damnably uncomfortable.

‘Miss Gifford. I trust you slept well?’

‘Very well, thank you, my lord. That was a most comfortable room, I could not have been better cared for.’ She hesitated, one hand lying with unconscious elegance on the back of a dining chair. ‘I leapt to an unforgivable conclusion last night, my lord, and I apologise for it.’

Coals of fire heaped on his tender scruples. ‘And I apologise for what followed. I suggest we both forget about it, Miss Gifford. Now, would you like to take a seat and I will fetch you some breakfast from the buffet?’

She inclined her head and Gareth felt a flicker of admiration for her poise. ‘Very well, thank you. But I will not forget your kindness. And please, do not let your own meal get cold, I will help myself.’

He sat, watching with a carefully suppressed smile of appreciation as she walked past him to the back of the room where the chafing dishes had been laid out on the sideboard under their silver domes. This morning rich silk ruffles flounced from under the heavy hem of the apricot robe and her hair had been brushed until it shone and then caught up with skilful simplicity. There was far less of the prim governess on show this morning. Julia always said Mary was the most accomplished of the maids.

‘Mrs Childe has gone shopping on your behalf,’ he began, reaching for the mustard pot.

‘So I understand.’ There was a muted clang as she turned back a lid and began to fill her plate. ‘I understand you could accurately identify Polly as being just my size.’ Ah. Mary might be skilful as a lady’s maid, but she was obviously somewhat lacking in tact. ‘Goodness, black pudding, what a treat.’ There was another clang. Gareth began to amuse himself following Jessica’s progress along the buffet by sound alone. ‘Who else is coming to breakfast, my lord?’

‘Just us.’ He bit into the rare sirloin.

‘Indeed? How lavish it is.’

He suspected he was on the receiving end of a very governessy look, to do with extravagance and possibly gluttony. Gareth grinned at his rapidly diminishing steak and contemplated what response would be most calculated to tease her.

‘I do not believe in stinting—’ He broke off at the sound of raised voices in the hall. Or at least, of one, very familiar, female voice raised in argument and Jordan’s even tones attempting to head her off. Impossible, the man should know that by now.

‘—his lordship is up!’ The door swung open. ‘You see, he was in here all the time. Good morning, Gareth darling.’

‘Maude.’ Gareth got to his feet and submitted to being pecked on the cheek by the black-haired whirlwind who swept in, thrusting her vast muff into Jordan’s hands. ‘What on earth do you keep in a muff that size? A small pony? And what are you doing here at this hour of the day and without a chaperon?’

‘They are all the crack this size. And as for chaperons—piffle.’ She sat down next to him, tugged off her bonnet and reached for a cup. ‘Is that coffee?’

‘Yes.’ Resigned to the invasion, he sat down again and passed the pot. ‘And it is not piffle. Do you want to end up marrying me?’

‘Lord, no!’ She laughed at him, glossy black curls bouncing, the morning chill colouring her cheeks and lending sparkle to her blue eyes. She really was the most lovely creature and he was strongly tempted to box her ears. ‘That’s why I am here, this marriage thing is getting serious. Papa has Pronounced. Say what I will, he is fixed upon our union. You are the only man for me, in his opinion—as well as being well bred, healthy, in your right mind and rich, you are also, he tells me, a pillar of rectitude and just what a flibbertigibbet like me requires in a husband.’

‘I don’t want to marry you,’ Gareth said flatly. ‘None of this is news, Maude. You don’t want to marry me either. Our parents came up with this idiot agreement, it isn’t legally binding.’

‘I know that! But most of society believes we are betrothed. Gareth, how am I ever going to find a man to marry if they are all afraid of you?’

‘What do you want me to do about it?’ Gareth poured them both more coffee. ‘I have never confirmed the rumours, I have never given your father any indication that I might do as he wishes.’

‘He will not listen. And neither do all the gorgeous men out there who are avoiding me like the plague!’ Maude set her elbow on the table, put her pointed chin on the palm of her hand and gazed at him earnestly. ‘There is only one thing to do Gareth, you are going to have to embark on a life of sin and debauchery.’

The gasp behind him had Maude swinging round on her seat, her eyes searching the less well-lit end of the room. ‘Gareth! You fraud—you’ve already started.’

The eruption into the room of one of the loveliest young women she had ever seen froze Jessica in front of the buffet. Even in the flat light of a winter morning the intruder seemed to gleam like a highly finished piece of jewellery. Her hair was a glossy mass of black ringlets, her clothes had the dull sheen of silk and merino, her eyes glinted like Ceylon sapphires and her teeth as she laughed at Lord Standon were white and perfect.

Jessica stood quite still, her plate clasped in both hands while this lovely creature, quivering with barely suppressed energy, swept on. Despite her lack of a chaperon, she did not need Lord Standon’s words to realise that this was a lady and not, despite her scandalous presence in an unmarried man’s breakfast parlour, one of the muslin company. Maude, whoever she was, was quite obviously well bred, wealthy and supremely self-confident.

‘…you are going to have to embark on a life of sin and debauchery.’

Jessica gasped, all too aware of the picture she must present. There was no way out of the room unseen.

Maude swung round, her face lighting up into a picture of delighted mischief at the sight of Jessica. ‘Gareth! You fraud—you’ve already started.’

‘I—’ Jessica put down her plate and walked towards the door. ‘Excuse me, you will wish to be alone, Lord Standon.’

‘Miss Gifford.’ He stood up. ‘Please, sit down and have your breakfast. Lady Maude is just going.’ He held out a chair for her on the opposite side of the table and waited. Jessica sat while he retrieved her plate, placed it in front of her and poured her coffee. There did not appear to be any choice.

‘Thank you, my lord. But—’

‘My pleasure. Maude, go home.’

‘Certainly not, this is far too interesting.’ Lady Maude settled herself squarely to the table and reached for the bread and butter. ‘Introduce us properly, Gareth.’ She beamed at Jessica. ‘That’s Julia’s robe, I was with her when she bought it. Are you a friend of hers? I was rather hoping that you were an exotic bird of paradise and that Gareth was about to launch himself into a life of scandalous dissipation and save us both. But I can see you are a lady. Which is a disappointment, I must admit.’

Jessica blinked in the face of this torrent and plucked out one name. ‘Who is Julia?’

‘Lady Blundell, Gareth’s sister. Would you pass the honey? Thank you so much.’

So she had completely misjudged him. He had lent her his sister’s clothes, not his mistress’s, he had no intention of ravishing her—and now she was embarrassing him by being here when this extraordinary young woman descended upon him.

Jessica shot Lord Standon a cautious sideways glance. He had pushed his plate to one side and had buried his face in his hands, which she supposed was a reasonable reaction from anyone attempting to deal with Lady Maude. She looked back at the other woman. Maude gazed back, her lovely face a picture of cheerful curiosity. Jessica succumbed to it, unable to think of a single fabrication that might cover her presence there.

‘My name is Jessica Gifford. I am a governess and yesterday I was abducted off the stage by a brothel keeper. Lord Standon rescued me and his housekeeper is buying me clothes so I can go to an employment agency today and secure another position.’

‘Goodness. How beautifully concise and organised you are. I shall see if I can match you. I am Maude Templeton, my papa is the Earl of Pangbourne and my entire ambition at the moment is not to end up married to Gareth.’

‘Why?’ Jessica enquired bluntly. ‘His lordship appears eminently eligible to me.’ This was greeted by a faint moan from the head of the table. Lady Maude rolled her eyes.

‘Gareth, stop it. Miss Gifford is obviously a woman of sense and her breakfast is getting cold. We can all agree that you are completely eligible, utterly gorgeous and I am demented not to want to marry you. Likewise I am lovely, desirable, incredibly well bred and amazingly well dowered. You must be all about in the head not to want me. Let us all finish our breakfast and then we can decide what to do about it.’

‘I know exactly what I am going to do.’ Lord Standon lowered his hands and regarded both of them with dis-favour. ‘I am going to ring for Jordan, who will put you in your carriage and send you home, Maude. Miss Gifford is going to finish her breakfast and then, when Mrs Childe returns with her new clothes, I will send her in the barouche to interview as many employment agencies as she sees fit to visit. You, meanwhile, will stand ready to provide whatever references Miss Gifford requires to cover the period of unemployment she is currently experiencing. In fact, come to think of it, she can stay with you until she finds a new position.’

‘Lord Standon, I could not possibly impose upon La—’

‘Of course you can. What fun. Do call me Maude, we are going to be great friends, I can see.’ Maude smiled at her, then turned a gimlet stare back on Lord Standon. ‘Gareth, what about me? I am truly desperate and if you don’t—’

The door opened, Jordan positively slid through the gap and closed it behind him, his back to the panels. ‘My lord,’ he murmured, his voice hushed, ‘Lord Pangbourne is here, demanding an interview.’

‘Papa?’ Maude stood up with a faint shriek.

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Shh!’ Lord Standon set down his coffee cup. ‘Tell him I am not at home Jordan.’

‘I attempted so to do, my lord. The earl says he will wait in the hall. He has resisted all my efforts to establish him comfortably in your study—he appears suspicious that you will attempt to evade him.’

‘Damn right,’ his lordship said grimly.

‘Jordan!’ The masculine voice from the hall had all three of them at the table regarding the door warily. The handle rattled. ‘Is Standon in there?’

‘Just coming, my lord,’ the butler called back, then lurched forward as the door partly opened behind him.

‘Maude,’ Lord Standon hissed, ‘get under the table and take your bonnet with you.’ As she slid out of view he was on his feet, pulling Jessica to hers.

‘What—?’

‘I’ll make this up to you. Promise.’ His fingers were in her hair, dragging out pins, sending her curls tumbling around her shoulders, then he yanked open the satin sash, pushed the robe back off her shoulders and fell back in his chair, Jessica tumbling into his lap. ‘Kiss me.’

The door burst open. Her mouth captured by Gareth Morant’s, her body held hard against his, all Jessica could do was to fight to keep her senses. The pressure on her mouth eased a little. ‘Help me, I can’t do this all by myself,’ he whispered. The echo of his words to her in the brothel. Jessica stopped struggling. This was how she could repay him.

She snaked her arms around his neck, opened her mouth under his and arched her back. The robe slithered free and the warm air caressed the swell of her breasts revealed by the silken gown. Deep in his throat he made a soft sound, a growl. Something inside Jessica turned to liquid fire. Was this only playacting?

An infuriated voice thundered, ‘Damn it, Jordan, get out of my way.’ There was silence, broken only by the thunder of her heartbeat. Then, ‘Morant, you libertine! What the devil do you think you are doing?’

Chapter Four

Lord Standon shifted Jessica in his arms so that her face was hidden in his shoulder. She clung, quivering with mingled excitement and embarrassment.

‘I am attempting to eat my breakfast in my own dining room,’ he replied coldly. ‘You will forgive me if I do not get up. I believe Jordan did attempt to intimate that I was not receiving.’

‘You’ve been avoiding me, Sir! And neglecting poor Maude—and now I see why.’

‘Maude is hardly moping without my presence, Templeton.’Jessica gave a little wriggle as she felt the satin of her nightgown sliding over his knees. Lord Standon closed his hand more firmly over her hip and pressed her to him.

‘You are betrothed to Maude, damn it,’ the older man snapped. Jessica could imagine him, red faced with bristling eyebrows.

‘Forgive me, but we are not betrothed, whatever you and my honoured father cooked up between you. And neither of us wish to be. With respect, sir, you cannot force me to make a declaration to Maude.’

‘I can stop her marrying anyone else. What do you say to that, eh?’ Jessica, her senses filled with the smell and feel of the man who held her, struggled to focus on what was happening on the far side of the table. Lord Pangbourne appeared to be pacing.

‘I would say that I find it hard to believe that you would be such an unfeeling father.’

‘Bah! I’ll talk to you again, Morant, when you haven’t got most of your mind on your doxy. I give you good day!’

The door slammed. Lord Standon exhaled, his breath feathering hot all down her neck. ‘You can come out now, Maude.’ Jessica wriggled, sitting upright, but he still held her on his lap, apparently forgetting that they were merely playacting. The sensation of a man’s legs pressed so close to her derrière was breathtaking. Jessica felt the shift of thigh muscles and sat very still.

Maude popped out from under the table, pushing back her tumbled curls. ‘You see? He is quite impossible.’ She brushed down her skirt and stood regarding them. ‘Gareth, are you still supposed to be cuddling Jessica?’

‘What? Lord, I beg your pardon, Jessica, you felt so right there I quite—’ He broke off, shaking his head as though surprised at his own words and opened his arms. Jessica slid off his lap and returned to her own place, her cheeks glowing.

‘My lord…’ She pulled her robe into some sort of order and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. This was a madhouse and she needed to extricate herself from it and go and interview employment agencies before she became any more embroiled.

‘Gareth. I think we have gone beyond the use of titles, do you not?’

Gareth. It suited him, a solid, warm name. But she could hardly imagine herself using it, except in her head.

‘You see, don’t you, Gareth?’ Maude continued. ‘Papa finds you in the torrid embraces of a scarlet woman, and still persists in saying we should marry. What on earth do you have to do to make him realise we are not suited?’

‘Perhaps Lord Standon could marry someone else?’ Jessica suggested. She suppressed the turmoil the last few minutes had thrown her into and tried to apply some logic to the situation. Someone had to. ‘It seems the commonsense solution.’

‘So it is, if there was anyone I wished to marry.’ Gareth grimaced, pouring more coffee. ‘I’d sooner marry Maude than some female I don’t like.’

‘Then why?’ Jessica persisted, determined to make sense of it all. Her food was lukewarm. She pushed the plate to one side and started on the bread and butter and honey. ‘Why is Lord Pangbourne so insistent and why, when you obviously both like each other very much, don’t you do what he wants?’

Maude and Gareth exchanged looks, then he shrugged and gestured for her to start. ‘Once upon a time,’ she began, her voice taking on the singsong tone of the storyteller with a much-told tale, ‘Gareth’s uncle fell in love with my aunt. Our families’ lands march together and it was true love and a marvellous romance. He was the son of the duke, she was a great beauty. Everyone was thrilled, but on the eve of the wedding they were killed in a carriage accident. Both families were plunged into deepest mourning and our fathers vowed that when we grew up—I had just been born—we would marry and recreate the legendary love match.’

Jessica’s thoughts—that this was a piece of sentimental nonsense—must have shown, despite her careful lack of comment, for Gareth grinned. ‘It was not such a foolish piece of romance as you might assume. As we grew up it became obvious that because of her poor mother’s continuous ill health Maude was going to remain an only child—and there we were, presenting the perfect alliance to unite two great estates.’

‘Our fathers exchanged letters formally agreeing to the betrothal,’ Maude picked up the story. ‘And here we are.’

‘But you are not legally bound?’

‘No, this is not the Middle Ages, thank goodness, but Papa controls my money until I am thirty or I marry with his consent. And he has made sure everyone believes us to be betrothed.’

‘Then why don’t you do as he asks?’ Jessica persisted. ‘You can hardly object to Lord Standon, surely?’

‘Thank you Jessica,’ he said gravely.

‘I meant,’ she said repressively, kicking herself under the table for thinking aloud, ‘you are apparently highly eligible and you like each other.’

‘They made the mistake of bringing us up like brother and sister—we simply can’t think of each other except as that. And I know perfectly well that somewhere, out there, is the man I am going to fall in love with,’ Maude said flatly. ‘And I do not want to be married to someone else when we meet. Doomed love and broken hearts may be all very well in novels, but I have no intention of subjecting myself to such discomfort.’ She attacked an apple with a pearl-handled knife and a fierce expression. ‘But I will never get to know any men to fall in love with because no one will do more than make polite conversation because they are all scared of Gareth.’

‘He is rather formidable,’ Jessica agreed, eyeing his lordship’s brooding figure at the head of the table.

‘Thank you,’ he said again, politely. ‘We are agreed that I am eligible and formidable and that Maude cannot be sacrificed upon the altar of matrimony other than to a man she truly loves. You will also have observed that her father is a thick-skinned old termagant who won’t take no for an answer. You are a young lady whose common sense is her stock in trade—what do you suggest?’

Jessica pondered the problem, her abstracted gaze fixed on the rather attractive whorl of Gareth’s left ear where the crisp brown curl of his hair set the defined shape into sharp relief. She knew exactly what the skin there smelled like.

‘Um… You could pretend to become betrothed to someone else. Lord Pangbourne would admit defeat then, surely? But that means you need to find a complacent lady who would not mind such a charade, and you risk finding yourself permanently attached if she proves unscrupulous. Or you could do what Lady Maude suggested and embark upon a course of debauchery so public that even Lord Pangbourne will be forced to admit that he cannot marry his daughter to you. After all, he has just surprised you apparently making love amidst the marmalade.’

Maude suppressed an unladylike snort. Jessica contemplated another slice of bread and honey, decided that she was eating merely to keep her mind distracted from Gareth’s proximity and sucked the tips of her sticky fingers. Then she realised his gaze was resting on her lips and promptly snatched up her napkin. ‘The latter course would be safer—the debauchery, I mean, not the marmalade.’ Maude gave way to giggles. ‘I imagine that you could hire a professional without risk of finding yourself sued for breach of promise.’

She closed her eyes for a moment, imagining Gareth back in that brothel interviewing candidates for a charade of debauchery. Only, once having paid for them, she assumed it would require a saint not to avail himself of the services thus acquired, so playacting would not be required. He is a man, she reminded herself briskly. That is what men do. And in any case, what is it to me?

‘Excellent. We have a plan.’ Maude tossed her napkin on to the table and stood up, ignoring Lord Standon’s grimace and shaken head. ‘You see, Gareth, Jessica agrees with me.’ She smiled across the table. ‘Now, I will drive home and then send my carriage back to collect you and take you round the agencies. As soon as that is done you can come and stay with me until you are settled.’

‘But Lord Pangbourne has seen me.’

‘He saw a wanton female with her hair down, half-dressed in a improper nightgown and from the back. He will not recognise you, Jessica, take my word for it.’ Gareth walked across and opened the door. ‘Maude’s offer of the carriage is a sensible one.’

Gareth strolled through the doors of White’s, nodded absently at the porter who relieved him of his outer garments, and climbed the stairs to the library. He needed some peace and quiet to think about Maude’s predicament. For himself, although it was tiresome, Lord Pangbourne’s ambitions were merely a nuisance. He could, and would, marry where he chose. One of these days. When he got round to it.

But Maude was a considerable heiress and, if her father truly intended to, he could keep her financially dependent on him until she was thirty. She could choose herself a husband, he supposed, always provided she could find someone prepared to ignore the persistent rumour that she was already betrothed to him, or who was prepared to take a dowerless wife, but that was assuming a case of love at first sight and a determined lover at that.

He could put an advertisement in the paper, denying the rumours, but that would create a scandal—the presumption would be that there was some reason discreditable to her, which was why he did not want to marry Maude. He could carry on denying it whenever it was mentioned—but no one believed him when he did. By common consent, he would be insane to refuse to marry a lovely, high-born, wealthy young woman who would bring the Pangbourne acres to join his own. And everyone knew that Gareth Morant was no fool. He was simply, the gossips concluded, in no hurry to assume the ties of matrimony.

Meanwhile poor Maude was effectively out of bounds to any gentleman who might otherwise court her, unless he took the first step and married.

Gareth picked up a copy of The Times and found a secluded corner to read it in. Ten minutes later it was still folded on his knee and he was passing in review each of the young ladies currently on the Marriage Mart and dismissing all of them. There was a new Season about to start in a week or two; that would bring the new crop fluttering on to the scene.

Gareth steepled his fingers and contemplated marriage to a seventeen-or eighteen-year-old. It was not appealing. He liked intelligence, maturity, wit, sophistication…

‘Morant, thought I might find you here.’

Hell and damnation and… ‘Templeton.’ Gareth tossed his newspaper on to a side table and got to his feet. He might feel like strangling Maude’s father, but good manners forced him to show respect for the older man.

‘Gave me a shock this morning! Ha!’ Lord Pangbourne cast himself into the wing chair opposite Gareth and glared around to make sure they were alone. ‘Young devil.’

‘If I had expected you, my lord—’ Gareth began.

‘You’d have kept your new doxy upstairs, I’ll be bound.’

‘And what makes you think she’s a new one?’ Despite his irritation, Gareth was intrigued.

‘No sign of her before. Discreet, that’s good. I was a bit out of sorts.’

It was, Gareth realised, an apology of a kind. The best he was likely to receive. He snatched at the sign of reasonableness. ‘You know, my lord, that neither Maude nor I wish to marry each other; we have told you time and again.’

‘You’ll grow out of that nonsense.’

‘Sir, I am seven and twenty. Maude is only four years younger. She’ll be on the shelf if she has to wait much longer.’

‘She’s on your shelf, that’s the thing.’ The older man looked smug. ‘Snuff?’

‘No, thank you.’ Gareth scarcely glanced at the proffered box. ‘And if I do not marry her?’

‘You will, I have every confidence in your good sense. You are perfect for her and she’ll bring the Pangbourne estates with her when I go. Mind you, I’m not going to put up with these vapours of hers much longer. One more Season I’ll stand for and then she can go back to the country and wait for you there.’

Frustrated, Gareth tipped back his head and stared up at the chaste plasterwork of the ceiling. Maude would go mad in the country, and no suitor was going to find her stuck in rural solitude. If that was what the old devil intended then he, Gareth, was probably going to have to make the sacrifice and marry someone else.

‘Is there anything,’ he said between gritted teeth, ‘that would convince you that I am not suited for your daughter?’

‘Nothing.’ Lord Pangbourne beamed at him, his hands folded neatly over his considerable stomach. ‘I watched you with some anxiety in your salad years, I have to admit. Never can tell which way you young bucks will go—and I wouldn’t have given her to you if you’d been some rakehell, not fair on the girl to have to live with scandal and dissipation.’ He grimaced. ‘Diseases and all that. But look at you now. Perfect.’

Gareth felt far from flattered. ‘This morning you called me a libertine,’ he pointed out. ‘I was exhibiting behaviour that might well be characterised as both scandalous and dissipated,’ he added hopefully.

‘Mere irritation of nerves on my part—that daughter of mine is enough to try the patience of saint. Keeps telling me that her own true love is out there somewhere and she can’t find him with you in the way. True love, my eye! Balderdash! As for your little ladybird—don’t expect you to be a monk, my boy, just be a bit discriminating and don’t upset Maude while you’re about it.’

Lord Pangbourne hauled himself to his feet and nodded abruptly. ‘I’ll be off. See to it now, Morant—make her a declaration and all will be right and tight.’

Gareth watched the broad shoulders vanishing behind the book stacks with a sense of being caught in a trap. His thoughts churned. Damn the old… Scandal and dissipation…Coherent phrases spoken in a clear, dispassionate voice penetrated his anger. Embark upon a course of debauchery so public that even Lord Pang¬ bourne will be forced to admit that he cannot marry his daughter to you. That was what the eminently sensible Miss Gifford had counselled.

It had been Maude’s idea first, but, fond of her though he was, Gareth was used to Maude’s schemes—most of them hare-brained, to put it mildly. Miss Jessica Gifford with her wide green eyes, her clear gaze, her common sense, her sweet, high breasts and innocently generous mouth—Stop that, damn it!—her calm governess manner, now she would not suggest something hare-brained.

A business arrangement, that was what was needed. He needed to create a scandal with no repercussions once it was all over, so that Templeton accepted he was too unreliable for his Maude.

Gareth steepled his fingers and tapped the tips absently against his lips. London was filled with highly skilled courtesans with a flair for the dramatic and a love of money. Finding one to misbehave with would be simple. And distasteful. He tried to sort out why. He had taken mistresses in the past, but that had been a straightforward relationship. Something made him recoil from involving a stranger in his business and Maude’s feelings.

His errant memory conjured up a cool voice observing that a lady could hardly object to Lord Standon, a pair of warm, innocent lips against his and a slight figure shivering at his side in Rotherham’s clothes, terrified yet gamely playing her role. Playing a role…

‘Morant, there you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere—what have you done with my clothes, you—’

Gareth got to his feet as his friend marched into his sanctuary, his chubby face set in a scowl. ‘Rotherham, if you want to pluck a crow with me, you’ll have to do it some other time. I’ll get my man to pack them up and send them round this afternoon. I’m busy now.’ He added something under his breath as he passed Lord Rotherham, giving him an absentminded slap on the shoulder as he went.

The younger man stood staring after him. ‘I say, Morant, did you just say you were off to create a scandal?’ He received no response. ‘Damn funny way to carry on,’ he grumbled, picking up Gareth’s discarded newspaper and dropping into his chair. ‘Damn funny.’

An hour after breakfast, her hair braided into severity, and clad in one of the sombre and respectable gowns and pelisses Mrs Childe had purchased, Jessica began her round of the agencies. She knew them all by experience or reputation, although her previous employment had been as much as a result of answering personal advertisements as through their efforts. She did not expect much trouble in finding something suitable. Her accomplishments were superior, her references excellent and Lady Maude Templeton’s address could only, she was certain, add a certain cachet.

By four in the afternoon Jessica was hungry, thirsty and dispirited. No one, it seemed, was seeking superior governesses just now. The Climpson Agency could offer her a family of lively small boys—Jessica knew enough to interpret that as thoroughly out of control. Another bureau suggested a family in Northumberland who were seeking an adaptable governess for a daughter who, as the owner Mrs Lambert explained, was ‘Just a little, er…eccentric.’ Yes, she confirmed, there was rather a high turnover of governesses for that post.

And, as always, there were any number of middle-class families who were looking for governesses who would also act as general companions. Jessica had heard about those sort of positions; they translated as general dogsbody to the lady of the house.

‘It will be the start of the Season soon,’ Mr Climpson explained, running an inky finger down his ledgers and shaking his head. ‘People have made arrangements already so they can concentrate upon social matters. There are sure to be more opportunities once the summer is upon us; many people make changes then for some reason.’

‘I had hoped to find something suitable more quickly than that.’ Jessica looked down at the dark blue wool of her skirts. Every stitch she wore was borrowed, she had not a penny piece of her own until she could write to her bank in Leicester. And then she would have to dig into her precious savings, her only and last resource. How on earth was she going to cope otherwise—unless she took one of those posts that no one else wanted?

‘Your references and experience are excellent,’ Mr Climpson added, obviously intending to be encouraging. She knew they were, and knew without arrogance that they were the result of her own hard work and careful selection of posts. To take anything less would diminish her status, but it did not appear she had much choice.

How long could she possibly impose upon Lady Maude? A week perhaps? ‘I will call back in a few days.’ She stood up with a bright smile—it would not do to appear desperate. And there were always the newspapers to scan. Lord Pangbourne’s household would be sure to be well supplied with those.

The coachman was waiting patiently outside the agency. ‘That will be all for today, thank you.’ Jessica smiled as the footman flipped down the steps for her and held the door. ‘Please can you take me to Lady Maude’s house now.’ The carriage was such a luxury with its lap rug and heated bricks—it would not do to become used to such things. Jessica sat up straight and gave herself a mental talking to. She was lucky to be here, she knew it. If it had not been for Gareth, she would be living a nightmare of degradation and shame. She had begun from very little when Mama had died—now she had experience and references. Soon she would find employment and, in the meantime, at least she had a safe and comfortable refuge for a few days.

The carriage drew up and she peered out of the window on to the gloomy early evening scene. This must be the Pangbourne’s residence. A door opened and a tall liveried footman ran down the steps and opened the carriage door. She half-rose, expecting him to offer her his hand to descend.

‘Miss Gifford? I have a note from Lady Maude.’

Jessica unfolded it, confused, tipping the note to read it in the light from the open door. Maude’s handwriting was as bold as her personality, the words slashing across the expensive cream paper.

Dear Jessica, Things have got Much Worse—but Gareth has a plan, if only you will help us. Please will you go back to his house? Papa must not see you. Imploring your understanding, your good friend, Maude.

She looked up at the impassive footman. ‘Please tell Lady Maude I will do what she requests. Will you ask the driver to return to Lord Standon’s residence, please?’

He closed the door and the carriage rumbled off into the light drizzle. Jessica felt her shoulders sagging again, and this time found it an effort to straighten them. Now what was going to become of her?

Chapter Five

‘When did you last eat?’ Gareth demanded, his hands fisted on his hips as he looked at her.

It was not what Jessica was expecting and she stared blankly at him while she made herself think. Jordan removed her bonnet and pelisse from her unresisting hands. ‘Breakfast?’ she hazarded.

‘I thought so, you look ready to drop. Jordan! Food for Miss Gifford, in the library as soon as possible.’

‘At once, my lord.’

‘I thought you were the sensible one in all this—what were you thinking of, to starve yourself?’ Gareth was positively scolding as he guided her into the book-lined room and sat her firmly down in one of the big wing chairs in front of the fire.

‘There were so many agencies to get round,’ Jessica protested, stretching out her feet to the hearth and letting her tired back rest against the soft old leather. It was seductively easy to allow him to take charge and organise her. It gave her an entirely false sense that all would be well and she knew she could not succumb to that: she was in charge of her own destiny and no one could help her but herself.

‘This is not a race—you know I will find you somewhere to stay for as long as you need.’ Gareth dropped into the chair opposite and crossed his legs, the silver tassels on his Hessian boots swinging. A pair of those boots would keep her for months. It was a timely reminder of just how far apart their worlds were.

‘It seems the residence you suggested for me is not so suitable after all.’ Jessica held out the note. Gareth took it, scanned it and grimaced. ‘And I am afraid I was unable to find anything in the way of employment today. I will have to look at the newspapers and try the agencies again in a day or two.’

‘Nothing suitable? Please, Jessica, don’t let it worry you.’ He read the note again. ‘Maude has such a taste for the dramatic it is a pity a career on the stage is so ineligible.’ Gareth screwed it up and tossed it on to the fire. ‘It is true that if you agree to our plan it will be impossible for you to stay with her, but did you think we were going to cast you out?’

‘I am having trouble thinking clearly at all,’ she confessed. ‘I am so disorientated, so much out of my depth. I fear I must ask you for a loan of money until I can get funds from my bank in Leicester.’

‘You have funds?’ He was regarding her steadily, his face thoughtful. It was like being interviewed for a post.

‘My savings.’ My precious savings.

‘Well, you will not want to dip into those.’ She found herself nodding agreement and forced herself to sit still. It was dangerous to agree with anything he said. ‘Jessica, I have to say I am selfishly glad that you have not secured employment yet. I have a proposition for you. Maude may be dramatic, but she is right, things have deteriorated.’

‘Yes?’

He smiled at her wary tone, and she wondered why she had not thought him handsome before. And Maude does not want him? She must be about in her head…

‘You are right to sound so cool, my sensible Miss Gifford. Ah, here is something for you to eat. We will talk when you are a little revived.’

It took considerable self-control to sit quietly and eat the savoury omelette, the soft white roll and butter and the dish of lemon posset that the footman set out on the little table before her. Jessica sipped the glass of red wine Gareth poured and schooled her tongue and her patience.

When she had finished she waited while he lifted the table to the side and then folded her hands in her lap with as much composure as she could muster. ‘You say you have a proposition for me, my lord?’

‘Gareth.’ He waited until she repeated his name. ‘You made an eminently sensible suggestion at breakfast, Jessica.’

‘That you should appear to follow a path of dissipation with a mistress and scandalise Lord Pangbourne so that he will consider you unsuitable for Lady Maude?’

‘Indeed. He called upon me at my club this morning and made it very clear that he means what he says—but he also betrayed the fact that openly scandalous behaviour would not be tolerated. I think it is the only solution if I am to free Maude from this situation.’

‘And yourself?’ she asked, curious about his own position. He must be of an age where he was looking to marry, set up his nursery, ensure the succession to the title.

‘I have no desire to marry yet and, when I do, I foresee no problem. In this case it is, as so often, the woman who is weakest.’

Jessica nodded, surprised at his understanding. It seemed Gareth Morant could comprehend the difficulties of women more generally than just those applying to his friend Maude.

‘Then in what way can I assist you?’ The only possibility she could think of was that Lady Maude might require a companion to support her in this masquerade if Lord Pangbourne became even more difficult. It might even help to have another virtuous female voice echoing Maude’s assumed shock and outrage.

‘I would like you to be my mistress.’

The empty wine glass fell from her fingers and rolled away on the Oriental rug unregarded until it clinked against the table leg.

‘What? Outrageous! What do you take me for?’ Jessica sprang to her feet and took three strides away from the fireside before she swung round to face him, more words of righteous indignation trembling on her lips. And then it hit her—the memory of his mouth over hers, the heat and the smell and the feel of him. The long, hard body—

Furious and horrified at herself, Jessica shut her mouth with a snap as Gareth got slowly to his feet. ‘A masquerade, Jessica. I am asking you to pretend to be my mistress.’ His voice was steady, but there was a trace of colour across his cheekbones. ‘I would not insult you by proposing anything else.’

‘I… You… No, you would not. You made that clear last night. I beg your pardon; I seem to be more tired and less rational than I thought.’ Jessica walked back to her chair and sat, her legs suddenly stiff and awkward. She knew why she had reacted with such vehemence: Mama, of course. But mostly it was because of her own guilty desires. Self-knowledge, an admirable trait she had always thought, did nothing to improve her mood.

‘You must be tired.’ Gareth sat again too, making the silver boot tassels swing as he crossed his long legs. Jessica found herself staring at them and dragged her eyes up to meet his somewhat rueful gaze. ‘It is the shock of yesterday’s experiences; you should not underestimate the effect such trauma has on the body and mind. And then you have spent the day without proper refreshment or rest. Not very sensible of you, Miss Gifford.’

‘Then let us be sensible at all costs,’ she retorted, taking a grip on her emotions. ‘What, exactly, are you proposing, my…Gareth?’

He steepled his fingers and bent his head to touch the tips to his mouth as if collecting his thoughts, then he raised his head and looked at her steadily. How changeable his eyes are. From the light grey of a cloudy sky to hard steel from moment to moment.

‘I believe the course of shocking Lord Pangbourne is the only way to reach a speedy resolution of this problem. But I am reluctant to involve a professional—actress or Cyprian—in our personal affairs. One places too much trust in their discretion and too much power in their hands should they choose to make mischief later: I cannot risk that with Maude. Nor, I find, can I contemplate some vulgar piece of play-acting.’

Gareth paused, marshalling his thoughts. ‘I believe this wants more than simply my apparent misbehaviour with one of the demi-monde. A man of Pangbourne’s generation considers that almost routine. The scenario I believe would be most effective is a flagrant dalliance with a lady on the thin edge between scandal and respectability. To have the maximum impact my liaison must be conducted under the noses of the ton, not merely observed at the theatre or in the park.’

‘But who, then, do you want me to be?’

‘A wicked widow.’ Gareth smiled suddenly, and she found her own lips curving in response. She caught herself and pressed them tight together. ‘A lady returned from abroad where her husband died. A lady on the fringes of respectability, yet with an entrée into London society as she searches for her next protector. And I am going to fall head over heels in my blatant pursuit of her favours.’

‘I can see that that would, indeed, cause talk and scandalise Lord Pangbourne, especially if you insultingly ignored Lady Maude in the process,’ Jessica agreed. ‘But firstly you will need to secure an entrée for this impostor and secondly—look at me! Do I look like a glamorous and dangerous adventuress?’

As she spoke she gestured at the overmantel mirror that reflected the upper parts of their bodies as they sat before the fire. Her blonde hair was still neatly in its governess’s braids and bands, its colour pretty, but, in its tight confinement, quite ordinary. Her gown was high at the neck, shrouding her figure that, while brisk walks and healthy eating might have kept neat, was by no means the voluptuous form she assumed such a siren as Gareth was describing would possess. And her deportment was that of a respectable professional woman—contained, controlled, immaculate, designed to be the very opposite of obvious.

‘Not at the moment, I must agree.’ That smile again, turning a well-looking man into one of dangerous appeal. ‘You look charming and eminently respectable. But you forget, I know exactly what you look like without that drab gown and those neat braids.’ He ignored her inarticulate sound of protest and her reddening cheeks and added, ‘And you could look spectacular, Jessica. No, do not shake your head at me—it will take two things, the transformation of your wardrobe and your coiffure and for you to think like an adventuress, a woman on the edge, a dangerous, predatory, beautiful huntress.’

Despite everything Jessica’s sense of humour got the better of her. She laughed at him, ‘You think the church mouse can turn into the hunting cat, Gareth?’

‘No, I think the fireside tabby can arch her back and flex her claws and become a tigress.’

She shook her head, unconvinced. There was no need to panic over his scandalous scheme—it would fall at the first hurdle, her inability to be the woman he was describing. She would humour him a little.

‘And who are you going to prevail upon to let this dangerous female loose in a respectable setting?’

‘My cousin Bel, who has recently remarried. She and Maude are both deeply involved in a charity to secure employment for soldiers returning from the wars. One of Maude’s schemes to raise money for this cause is to hold a subscription ball, but as she is an unmarried girl the hostess issuing the invitations will be Bel, now Lady Dereham. Everyone who is anyone will be there, for they plan to make it one of the grand opening events of the Season—and that will include Lord Pangbourne.’

‘And how, exactly, am I going to prevail upon the respectable Lady Dereham to invite me?’

‘She would do it as a favour to me, but for the public explanation of the acquaintance we depend upon another cousin of mine, Bel’s brother, Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst. He is married to Eva, the Grand Duchess of Maubourg.’

‘But I read about that in the newspapers—it was a most romantic affair by all accounts!’ The dashing Lord Sebastian had snatched the Grand Duchess from the claws of French agents and had smuggled her across France to arrive in Brussels on the day of the Battle of Waterloo. The Grand Duchess had been reunited with her son in London and returned to Maubourg with the young Grand Duke and the man she had fallen in love with on their perilous journey.

‘It was, and there was considerably more romance to it than you would guess, even reading between the lines. However, for now I think we can agree that your late husband was employed in some manner by the Duchy. As an economic adviser perhaps? I will ask Eva’s advice.’

‘She is in England?’ A few days ago Jessica had been attempting to instil the basics of Italian conversation and Mozart sonatas into the daughter of a baronet. Since then she had been kidnapped, flung herself naked into the arms of a man, escaped from a brothel and been kissed for the first time. Now, it appeared, she was to be thrust into proximity with minor royalty.

‘She and Sebastian divide their time between his estates here—where she is Lady Sebastian Ravenhurst, a private citizen—and Maubourg where she is the Grand Duchess and Sebastian seems to have taken over as Minister for Agriculture, although I am not sure I entirely believe that. Fréderic, her son, is at school at Eton. Eva has decided she would like to do the London Season for a change, so they arrived last week and the Duke of Allington, Sebastian’s brother, has loaned them the town house.’

And now dukes, Jessica thought faintly, then pulled herself together. She was never going to be the sultry temptress Gareth was deluded enough to imagine, but at least she could continue to apply common sense to this madcap scheme.

‘And where am I going to live whilst I am scandalising London?’

‘In Bel’s house in Half Moon Street, which is currently empty while she decides whether to sell it, keep it or lease it out. You will appear to have purchased it.’

‘Or perhaps the Grand Duchess has done so in recognition of my late husband’s contribution to the Duchy?’ She had meant to be faintly sarcastic, but Gareth nodded.

‘Good idea.’

Jessica sat and regarded him, trying to convince herself she was not dreaming. Although whether this was a dream or a nightmare was debatable. ‘I arrive, transformed by some miracle into a femme fatale. We conduct a very public, flagrant liaison, Lady Maude goes into a shocked decline, Lord Pangbourne cuts your acquaintance—and then what?’

‘We keep it up for the Season.’ Three months of flirting—or worse—with Gareth? Oh, my God…’ And then you vanish off to Maubourg, seduced by one of Eva’s court, perhaps, and I am left a sadder and wiser man. One who is, most obviously, unworthy of Templeton’s ewe lamb.’

‘And I return to seeking work as a governess, with no doubt some good explanation of what I have been doing for three months?’

Gareth dropped his hands and clasped them together, his eyes on her, searching, it seemed, for some insight into her thoughts. Jessica felt they should be more than obvious.

‘Do you enjoy being a governess? No, let me rephrase that—do you have a dedication to education?’ She shrugged. ‘Why then do you seek employment in that way?’

‘Because I wish to eat! And I find I am a good teacher.’

‘You have no relatives?’ he asked, frowning at her snappish tone.

‘Yes—an aunt, cousins.’ Jessica began to see the drift of his questions and produced her usual prevarication—it was not so very far from the truth in some ways. ‘You wonder why I do not live with them? I do not chose to be beholden to anyone and dwindle into an unpaid companion, dependent on family charity for my very existence. I wish to be independent and to provide for my old age. I have no aptitude as a milliner or a dressmaker. There is very little money or security as a paid companion. But I do have skills that I can teach and I have chosen my employers with great care to enhance my references and my reputation.’

Gareth nodded as though she was confirming his own thoughts. ‘So your long-term aim is for financial security and respectable independence?’

‘Exactly.’ It seemed she was getting through to him at last. ‘And I can think of few things more damaging to that ambition than flaunting myself in London society as your mistress!’

‘Certainly if you wish for further employment, I can quite see that.’ He appeared unconscious of Jessica’s frowning regard. ‘Would I be accurate if I said that you would hope to reach the point one day where you could afford a small house in a charming village or market town with adequate funds to employ a small staff and perhaps own a gig? To be in the position where you had no need to work, but might, if you wished, take the occasional pupil for individual tuition in an instrument or a language?’

‘You have painted a picture of my exact ambition.’ The image of roses round the door, a cheerful maidservant bringing in a tea tray, an earnest child happily learning the piano, flickered before Jessica’s gaze. ‘And to achieve the half of that I need to work. Work hard for years,’ she added.

‘I am offering you work.’ Gareth stood up and walked round the chair to lean his folded arms on its padded back while he watched her. ‘I am asking you to take on an onerous acting job for three months and then I will give you the house and an annuity that will allow you to do just as you please.’

‘But—’

‘You think I am offering too high a price? I can assure you—’

‘I think you are offering a very fair price for such an outrageous request,’ she retorted robustly. ‘Gareth—look at me. Do I look like a seductress? Do I seem to you to have any wiles, any aptitude for casting out lures? I have never flirted in my life, not even mildly. How do you expect me to learn?’

‘I will teach you,’ he said and the smile he sent her was pure, wicked, promise. ‘I will teach you so well, Miss Gifford, that half the men in London will be at your feet and every lady in society will wish to scratch your eyes out.’

‘No…I could not.’ She had to be strong. It was impossible, she could never do this.

Gareth walked round and picked up her hand as it clasped the arm of her chair. His fingers were warm and his thumb brushed gently against the soft mound of flesh at the base of her thumb.

‘What colour are the roses round the door in your dream house?’ he asked her, his eyes intent and dark onher face.

‘Red,’ she murmured. And was lost.

Chapter Six

‘How do you intend teaching me these arts of fascination?’ Jessica rescued her hand from Gareth’s grip and tried to make her voice as businesslike and brisk as possible. He sank back in his chair, recognising her capitulation and, she could only hope, not seeing the churning mix of terror and anticipation behind her question.

‘It will be easier for you once you have your new hairstyle and your new clothes, I imagine. I will send a note around to my cousin Bel and ask her to call tomorrow and take you under her wing.’

‘Will she agree?’ Jessica wondered. ‘It is a scandalous deception. She might well disapprove.’ He had not answered her question, she noted. One faculty life as a governess taught you was to recognise evasion when you saw it. Lord Standon might not be a naughty eight-year-old with a toad in his pocket, but in her opinion all males of whatever age were that boy under the skin.

‘Bel? I suspect not. She was first married to Lord Felsham, who was generally accounted to be the most boring man in the ton. When she was barely out of mourning she encountered Ashe Reynard, Viscount Dereham, who was just back from Waterloo. By all accounts it was a lively courtship. I have no idea of the details, but our highly respectable bluestocking of a cousin Miss Elinor Ravenhurst, who is a great friend of Bel’s, blushes whenever she mentions Reynard.’

‘It would be a relief if she does help us, because I do not feel we should involve Lady Maude in this.’ Jessica waited, trying her best stare to see if Gareth was going to answer her question about her lessons in flirtation.

‘I agree. Tell me, Jessica, why are you regarding me as though I have not finished my Latin exercises?’

‘I am waiting for an answer to my question about how you intend to teach me—and I fear you may be evading one.’

‘Very well. This is not something I have attempted before, believe me, but I will try. May I be frank?’

‘Ye…s,’ she responded, suspicious. His lordship was studying her closely. She felt uncomfortable meeting his gaze, but it was equally unnerving trying to find something innocuous to look at. Her immediate field of view seemed very full of large, disturbing, male. She settled upon his neckcloth and attempted to regard it tranquilly.

‘You are a very contained person, are you not?’ Startled, she nodded, the neckcloth and its intricate folds forgotten. ‘You sit very still, you occupy your own space and do not intrude into that of other people. You communicate with your voice and with the force of your argument, not with touch, or teasing or cajoling.’

‘Yes. That is appropriate to my role in life.’ That stillness and self-control had been hard-won, but necessary.

‘But not to your new one. You are to become a creature of the senses—all five of them. You want to touch silks and skin. You want to taste champagne and kisses. Your eyes will long for luxury, your ears for flattery, you will want to move within clouds of scent from lavish flowers and from exotic perfume. You will talk with your hands, with your eyes, with your laughter. Instinct will appear to dominate over thought.’

‘Appear?’ She felt breathless, her mind reeling from thoughts of silk, skin, kisses, perfume.

‘Underneath you will be thinking very hard indeed, because you will be acting, and the woman you are portraying will be thinking hard too. She is not a heedless flirt, she is a determined adventuress.’ He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. ‘Unless we can release the inner hedonist in you.’

‘I am not sure I have one,’ Jessica confessed. Hedonism required money, time and self-indulgence. The first two she could not afford, the third she dare not permit. Until now.

‘In that case we will take one sense at a time and work on it. Which shall we start with? Not taste, for you have just had your supper, and not smell, because this fire seems intent on smoking. I shall have to think about hearing a little. Sight—or touch, Jessica?’

‘You choose.’ She threw the question back as fast as if this were a ball game and the ball red hot.

‘Oh, no. You must also learn to be demanding and capricious. You will always be the one to choose, whatever the question.’

Sight sounded safest. It was probably the one he expected her to say. ‘Touch,’ she decided, her eyes meeting his defiantly.

* * *

He had been sure she would decide upon sight, an apparently safe sense, although he was having ideas about that. Inwardly Gareth gave Miss Gifford points for courage.

‘Close your eyes.’ She stiffened immediately, her fingers curling tight around the arms of the chair. ‘Do you not trust me, Jessica? We are not going to get very far with this if you do not.’

Clear green eyes looked into his. For long seconds he watched her thinking. ‘Yes,’ she decided finally, her mouth quirking into a rueful smile. ‘Although quite what I trust you to do I am not certain.’ The long lashes that contrasted so piquantly with her tightly bound hair lowered, feathering her cheeks and she waited, blind, outwardly tranquil. Except for her death grip on the leather arms.

‘Stroke the arms of the chair,’ Gareth said, keeping his voice low. A frown line appeared between her brows, then she nodded and relaxed her fingers. ‘Tell me what you feel.’

‘It is smooth, warm from where my hands have been.’ She felt further down. ‘Cool here. It feels strong. Somehow I can tell it is thick.’ He waited while she explored further. ‘It is smoother here, where hands have rubbed; I can feel the grain lower down.’

Gareth felt in his pocket and pulled out the clean linen handkerchief his valet had placed there that morning. On the table beside him was a sample of heavy silk Maude had forgotten last time she had sat in this room. He leaned over and dropped both pieces of fabric into Jessica’s lap. ‘And these?’

She scooped them up in her cupped hands and rubbed with thumb and forefinger, then bent her head to bury her face in them. ‘That is cheating,’ Gareth said mildly and she raised her head and smiled in the direction of his voice.

‘Very well.’ She dropped the silk into her lap and concentrated on touching the linen. ‘Expensive, very fine Irish linen. I imagine one could see through it. But a strong, masculine feel.’ Her fingers found the white-ork monogram in the corner and rubbed gently. ‘Excellent work.’

‘And the other?’ He found he could not take his eyes off her face.

‘The silk? Beautiful. A dress weight, expensive again. I imagine it is coloured, although I have no idea why.’ She ran it through her fingers and sighed. ‘It is alive.’

‘Which would you prefer to wear?’ Gareth asked. Jessica frowned. She was thinking too much still, not feeling. ‘Next to your skin?’ he added outrageously, intent on shocking an instinctive reaction out of her.

Jessica gave a little gasp at his effrontery, but answered, as he had hoped, without reflection. ‘The silk. Utterly impractical, but like bathing in warm oil. See how it slides and slithers.’ Eyes still closed, she held it out to him and he took it, warm from her hands, and let it slip through his fingers. It was no longer possible, for some reason, to sit still. Gareth got to his feet, standing in front of the chair so close their toes nearly touched.

‘Will you stand up, Jessica?’

Obedient, she did as he asked. ‘You are standing very near.’ It was a matter-of-fact observation but he could sense the reserve behind it.

‘How can you tell?’

‘Your voice. And I can feel your—’ She swallowed, making the chaste muslin fichu veiling her throat move. ‘Your heat.’

Heat? Gareth felt suddenly as though he was burning up, the colour in his cheeks as high as that on Jessica’s. He dragged air down into his lungs and kept his voice steady. ‘Touch me.’ It might have been steady—he could do nothing about the huskiness.

‘What!’ Her eyes flew open and she took a half-step back until the edge of the chair hit the back of her knees.

‘Jessica, I am not asking you to make love to me…’

‘Good!’ She looked deliciously flustered.

‘But the new you is going to touch men all the time,’ Gareth explained, in haste before one of Miss Gifford’s clenched hands found his ear. ‘It will be part of your charm, one of your weapons. The slightest, fleeting touches. A caress with your fingertips on a sleeve, a flick to remove an imaginary piece of lint from a lapel, a handshake held just a fraction too long. You must be completely relaxed touching a man.’

‘I see.’ She narrowed her eyes at him, still suspicious. ‘I think.’

‘You think too much Jessica, just feel.’

‘Hmm.’ She put her head on one side, reminding him irresistibly of an inquisitive robin who has just spotted a worm. ‘Like this?’ She reached up and brushed her fingertips across his lapel, her movement wafting a faint scent of Castile soap and warm woman to his nostrils.

‘Yes. Just like that. Now, find some other ways.’

There was a glint of mischief in her eyes now and she caught her lower lip in her teeth for a moment. The heat flooded Gareth again, this time sharply focused in his groin. If his reaction to an inexpert touch from Miss Gifford, dressed like a governess, was this, what effect was she going to have in her new guise?

‘I need to find excuses to touch, and they should be so brief that the man concerned will not know if they are an accident, an impulse—or a message. An invitation, even.’ She nodded to herself, then, smiling, raised her hand and brought it up to pat her fichu into order, managing as she did so to brush the back of her fingers against his. The tingle reached right up his arm. ‘Like that?’

‘Perfect, Jessica.’

‘But I need to hold your eyes as I do it, I think, to make you even more unsure of my intentions. You must not know whether I meant to touch you or not.’ The limpid green gaze held nothing but the faintest question and then she was smiling again, a polite social smile.

‘Excellent,’ Gareth managed, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. True, he had spent a decidedly fraught twenty-four hours, but that was no excuse for feeling like a randy eighteen-year-old simply because he was toe to toe with a buttoned-up governess.

‘Oh!’ She was peering up at him now. ‘My lord, I do believe there is a money spider in your hair.’ Jessica stood on tiptoe, reached and flicked lightly at the side of his head, her fingers just skimming his temple before they ruffled into his hair. This time the tingle went straight down to the base of his spine with predictable results. ‘There.’ She held up slender fingers for him to see the tiny red dot that was swinging from them. ‘What luck for me.’

There was a faint ink mark on her forefinger. It would need work with a pumice stone—seductresses did not have ink blots. Jessica blew softly and the red dot landed on his lapel and vanished into his neck cloth. This one does… ‘You gave it back.’

‘We can share it—I expect we are going to need all the luck we can get to pull this off.’

‘You have not changed your mind?’

The half-hidden seductress vanished to be replaced with the governess, her expression severe. ‘I said I would do it—I do not go back on my word.’

‘No.’ Gareth studied her straight back, raised chin, determined expression. ‘I can see that.’

‘My lord. Her Ser…’ There was a muffled exchange from the hall. ‘I beg your pardon, Lady Sebastian Ravenhurst and Lady Dereham are here. I explained that you were at breakfast, my lord, but—’

‘Show them in, Jordan, bring more cups.’ Resigned to yet another turbulent breakfast Gareth pushed back his chair and got to his feet as his cousin Bel and her sister-in-law Eva, Grand Duchess of Maubourg, swept into the room in a flurry of flounces. At the other end of the table Jessica stood too, schooling her knees not to knock together. These two elegant, assured, sophisticated matrons would take one look at her and laugh Gareth’s plan to scorn.

‘Gareth, we came at once, Maude said things have reached a crisis.’

‘Thank you, Bel.’

So that would be his cousin, Lady Dereham. A tall brunette, she kissed him on the cheek, and stood aside to make room for an equally tall, rather more statuesque brunette whose deportment could have been used as a model of perfection. The Grand Duchess.

‘Gareth, you poor man. Lord Pangbourne appears to have become quite irrational, even allowing for Maude’s tendency for the dramatic.’ Her English accent was perfect, her gaze direct. ‘Your message was cryptic, but we will do our very best to help.’

‘Then allow me to introduce Miss Gifford, who has agreed to play the critical role in this scheme.’ Both ladies turned and Jessica sank down into her best court curtsy. She knew how to do it in theory, but she had never had to do it in practice. It was murder on the thigh muscles, she discovered, rising with relief as the Grand Duchess stepped forward and caught her hand in her own kid-encased one.

‘Your Serene Highness…’

‘Lady Sebastian, please. Except for court appearances, I do not use my title outside the Duchy. Miss Gifford…’ she looked at her, a smile lighting up her face, ‘…you poor thing—what theatricals have Maude and Gareth prevailed upon you to join?’

‘Good morning Miss Gifford.’ Lady Dereham came to shake hands, then sank down on a dining chair and peeled off her gloves. ‘Yes, we insist upon knowing all the details at once.’ She lifted the silver pot before her. ‘I fear we will need sustaining with considerably more coffee.’

‘Templeton has become fixed in his intention to carry out the exceedingly mawkish scheme he cooked up with my esteemed parent and marry off Maude and myself.’

‘Not so mawkish if you consider the land holdings,’ Lady Dereham observed, stirring sugar into her cup. ‘Templeton’s no fool—he is dangling an estate almost the size of your own before you.’

‘Quite. How can I refuse? That is the problem. He has decided I am perfect for Maude—but it is obvious that even he would draw the line at marrying her off to a libertine. Or, at least, to one who created a public scandal. He has a strange way of showing it, but he is fond of Maude and would not want her to be hurt by her husband’s public infidelities.’

‘His private ones would, no doubt, be of no account,’ Lady Sebastian remarked wryly. A flicker of memory came back to Jessica—Lady Sebastian’s first husband, the Grand Duke, had been a notorious rake, leaving a trail of highly visible liaisons across Europe.

‘Exactly. I, therefore, must become not just a rake, but a very public philanderer.’ Gareth reapplied himself to his sirloin, then looked up to find three pairs of eyes fixed upon him, sighed and put down his knife and fork. ‘Our intention is that Jessica, who is the widow of a gentleman who performed some service for the Duchy…’ he raised an eyebrow at Lady Sebastian, who nodded ‘…has returned to London to re-establish her life. Bel has leased her the Half Moon Street house as a favour to Eva and will introduce her to society at Maude’s charity ball. Jessica, it will soon become apparent, is an adventuress at whose feet any number of gentlemen are about to prostrate themselves.’

Jessica could almost feel the effort it took the two ladies not to turn and look at her in disbelief. ‘I,’ Gareth concluded, ‘will make a complete cake of myself over her, conduct a flaming affaire in the full glare of the Season and Templeton will cast me off.’

‘I see,’ Lady Dereham said with what Jessica regarded as almost supernatural calm. Suddenly she could see the family relationship between them—Lady Belinda was exhibiting the same calm as she had seen in Gareth in the brothel. A sort of watchful stillness. ‘And our role—other than providing an entrée for Miss Gifford—is to be what exactly?’

‘I am very much afraid that Lord Standon expects you to transform me into a dashing adventuress,’ Jessica said, bracing herself for the polite laughter that must surely follow. ‘A glamorous siren,’ she added, heaping on the improbabilities.

Both ladies did turn at that, fine dark eyes under arched brows and amused grey ones regarded her. Neither woman laughed. They must feel it was past a joke to achieve such a task.

‘Oh, yes,’ Lady Dereham said. ‘Hair first, don’t you agree, Eva? And then see what suggests itself once we know what colour we are working with?’

‘MonsieurAntoine.’ Lady Sebastian nodded. ‘Gareth, would you be so good as to ring for Jordan, I must send a note immediately.’

‘You think it is not impossible?’ Jessica shook her head. Not only did she have to appear stylish enough to be seen with leaders of the ton such as these, but in addition she must seem alluring and dangerous.

‘I think Gareth is showing remarkable insight,’ his cousin said with a mocking smile in his direction. ‘Lord Fellingham was saying to me just the other day that Gareth seemed jaded; one can only be relieved that he is not so bored that he missed this opportunity.’

‘Fellingham is an ass,’ Gareth retorted, pushing his plate away and reaching for the toast. ‘Bored? I have estates to run, a speech to write for the House, that damned orphans’ charity Maude nagged me into chairing…’

‘You enjoy it, you know you do. If you did not, why did you invite them all down to Hetherington in the summer and teach the boys to play cricket?’

Gareth grimaced. ‘Smashed half the glass in the succession houses, young hellions.’

‘So did you when you and Sebastian were boys,’ Lady Dereham retorted. ‘You don’t fool me, Gareth Morant—you are working hard for those orphans, and you enjoy it. But being busy does not preclude becoming jaded; this will do you a power of good.’

‘We are doing this to rescue Maude from an impossible situation, not me from the ennui of my duties. Ah, Jordan, Lady Sebastian wishes to have a message delivered.’ The butler bowed his way out with instructions to deliver the hairdresser on Lady Sebastian’s doorstep in an hour equipped with sufficient tools of his trade to create a transformation. What if he is not free? Jessica wondered, then smiled at her naïvety. Not free for a Grand Duchess, the sister-in-law of a duke?

Jessica sat, eating her breakfast in the unobtrusively quiet manner life as a paid dependent in numerous households had taught her, and watched with the focus she would have applied to learning a new instrument.

She watched the unselfconscious grace and command of the two women, she listened to the freedom with which they conversed and the lightness with which they teased Gareth. And she allowed her eyes to feast on their clothes, on carriage dresses in the very latest stare, crafted from fabrics of quiet luxury, trimmed with exquisite detail. She looked longingly at the smart gloves, tossed carelessly to one side, the thickness of the grosgrain bonnet ribbons, the pretty clasps on the reticules. How could she even learn to treat such luxury with nonchalance, let alone seduce men to her side while she did it?

‘What name will you be using?’ Lady Dereham asked, cutting across her increasingly alarming thoughts.

‘Name?’ On top of everything else she had to lose her identity as well, it seemed. Her mind went blank.

‘Francesca Carleton,’ Gareth said. Three women looked at him in enquiry. He shrugged. ‘It just came to me.’

‘Well…’ Lady Sebastian got to her feet, gathering up her possessions ‘…in that case it is time for Mrs Carleton to come with us.’ She paused on the threshold, waiting while Gareth came round the table to open the door for her. ‘Be prepared for a surprise, Gareth.’ As she looked at Jessica her eyes twinkled in a smile of pure naughtiness. ‘We are going to have so much fun.’

Chapter Seven

Jessica sat in the closed carriage and tried not to look anxious under the combined scrutiny of the ladies opposite.

‘How on earth did you become entangled in this madcap scheme?’ Lady Dereham enquired, in much the same tone as she might have used to enquire whether Jessica had enjoyed a concert.

‘Lord Standon rescued me from a brothel.’ Lady Sebastian opened her mouth, then closed it again without speaking. It seemed there was something that would shake their sang froid after all. ‘I am a governess.’

‘I rather thought you might be.’ Lady Dereham nodded.

‘I was kidnapped when I arrived on the stage and taken to the brothel.’ She shivered—repeating the story did not make it any less horrible. ‘Gareth—Lord Standon—rescued me. Before anything too awful happened,’ she added hastily. She did not feel up to explaining that she had careered down the corridor stark naked, observed two orgies and had escaped slung over Gareth’s shoulder while wearing Lord Fellingham’s pantaloons.

‘What was Gareth doing in such a place?’ Lady Sebastian enquired, interested. ‘No, do not tell me, I can imagine.’

‘Nothing, actually.’ Jessica felt bound to defend him. ‘He was accompanying Lord Fellingham and Lord Rotherham, but he was rather cross and bored by it, I think.’

‘But how did you go from your rescue—for which we must be profoundly grateful—to this?’ Lady Dereham was looking understandably puzzled. You did not know Gareth before, did you?’

‘Like all the men of your family, Bel dear, Gareth is nothing if not ingenious.’ Lady Sebastian’s smile was one of pleasurable reminiscence. Jessica remembered the circumstances of the Grand Duchess’s unconventional romance. ‘I presume Miss Gifford is unknown in London, is presently unemployed and, being a young lady of intelligence and integrity, is a much safer partner in this deception than one of her frailer sisters.’

Jessica nodded. ‘You are quite right, Lady Sebastian. Gareth, er…Lord—’

‘Call him Gareth,’ Lady Dereham interjected. ‘And I am Bel and this is Eva. We are all going to become very good friends before this is out, I should imagine.’

Jessica cast a dubious glance at the Grand Duchess, who smiled her wicked smile again. ‘Eva,’ she confirmed. ‘Now, you were saying, Jessica?’

‘Gareth is concerned that Lady Maude is not implicated in this, in case it goes wrong, and he was also anxious not to involve anyone who might be less than discreet.’

‘And what is to become of you when this is all over?’ Bel enquired. ‘I imagine that reverting to being a governess again—unless in the Scottish Highlands—might be somewhat dangerous.’

‘I receive a cottage and a pension.’ Jessica braced herself for some critical comment about such largesse, but none came.

‘Very reasonable,’ was all Bel said. ‘You will enjoy that better than being at the beck and call of some demanding employer and their obnoxious brats, I dare say.’

‘Not all brats are obnoxious,’ Eva remarked. ‘My son, naturally, is an angel.’ Somehow, if he took after his mother, Jessica doubted it. ‘As will yours be, I am sure,’ she added with a sly sideways and downwards glance at Lady Dereham’s waistline.

‘Eva! How did you know?’ Bel laid one hand protectively over her flat stomach.

‘When I saw Reynard last night he was looking stunned—I recognise the symptoms of a man coming to terms with incipient fatherhood—and you are looking a trifle pale.’ Eva smiled, ‘However, I suspect mine will be born first.’

‘You, too? Eva, how wonderful!’ The two embraced while Jessica sat in tactful silence through a confusing exchange about what Freddie would make of it, how insufferably smug Jack was, dates and something about sea air that made Bel blush.

‘Jessica, I am sorry.’ Eva turned to her, her cheeks flushed, her expression apologetic. ‘We are neglecting you.’

‘Not at all. May I offer my congratulations to you both?’

‘Thank you. Oh, look, we’re here. Borrow this and use the veil.’ Eva whipped off her bonnet and placed it on Jessica’s head.

The door was opened, the steps let down and Jessica found herself in a wide hallway, confronting a man whom she supposed from his clothing must be the butler. With his brawny frame and broken nose he appeared to have been recruited from the prize-fighting ring. Perhaps the Grand Duchess employed him as a bodyguard as well.

‘Grimstone, is his lordship at home?’

‘No, my lady. I understand Lord Sebastian is at his club.’

‘Excellent. This is Miss Gifford, Grimstone. You have not set eyes on her, nor have you ever heard of her.’

The butler gazed at a point somewhere over Jessica’s head without a flicker of expression. ‘Monsieur Antoine is in your dressing room, my lady.’

Jessica regarded the room and its occupants with some trepidation. A large dressing table draped in net supported a wide mirror and an elaborate silver-mounted vanity set. Next to it was a wash stand with ewer and basin and, standing waiting before it, was a slender, intense-looking man in a black suit, a languid-looking youth and a woman she guessed was Lady Sebastian’s dresser.

She tried not to stare about her at the array of gowns draped over chairs or hanging from the blue brocade screen in the corner. Hat boxes teetered in a pile and gloves spilled out of their packaging. Bel was not so reticent.

‘Eva, you must have bought out every shop in town!’ She picked up a gauze scarf and ran it through her fingers.

The Grand Duchess laughed, shedding her furs and gloves into the hands of her silent dresser. ‘Thank you, Veronique. But of course I have been shopping—I haven’t been to Paris yet this year. One must dress, my dear! Ah, Monsieur Antoine.’

‘Your Serene Highness.’ Eva did not correct him and from the elaborate flourish of his bow Jessica guessed he would have been mortified if he been unable to extract every drop of enjoyment from his contact with royalty. ‘In what way may I serve you?’

‘This lady, who as you see has naturally a most modest and elegant style…’ Elegant? ‘…has, for reasons which I cannot reveal, to appear in society in quite another guise. Naturally, this matter requires the utmost discretion. I trust I may rely upon you?’

‘A matter of state!’ Eva did not disabuse the coiffeur of this useful notion. ‘Our lips are sealed, your Serene Highness. May I enquire in what way madame should be transformed?’

‘Into a lady of some…experience. A lady who will be invited to the very best parties, naturally, but one who will be popular with the gentlemen, shall we say?’

‘I comprehend entirely, ma’am. Dashing, a little dangerous, perhaps? A lady of powerful attraction.’

‘Precisely,’ Bel said, perching on a stool and untying her bonnet. ‘Dangerous.’

The hairdresser advanced upon Jessica with finicking small steps, his head on first one side, then the other. She tried to look experienced, dashing and dangerous and knew she was failing comprehensively to look anything but a governess out of her depth. It was an effort of will not to shift from one foot to the other under the intensity of his stare.

‘If madame will kindly shed her pelisse and bonnet and sit here.’ He gestured to a stool set before the dressing table. The dresser darted forward, removing the items and taking Jessica’s gloves. Feeling as though she was going to the dentist, Jessica sat.

‘Remove the pins!’ The acolyte darted forward and began to deconstruct the tight, careful coiffure pin by pin, then combed out the braids. Her hair, blonde, waving and long enough to reach to her elbows, fell about her shoulders. ‘Hmm.’ Monsieur Antoine picked up a strand, rubbed it between his fingers, peered closely at it, then dropped it dismissively. ‘A natural, most English blonde.’ That did not appear to be a recommendation. Jessica seemed to recall hearing somewhere that blondes were out of fashion.

‘It is a very pretty colour,’ Bel said supportively.

‘But not dangerous,’ Monsieur Antoine pointed out incontrovertibly, beginning to prowl again. ‘Not dashing.’ He came close and stared into Jessica’s eyes as she blinked back. ‘Gold, that is what is needed, with just a hint of red.’

‘Won’t that be a touch brassy?’ Anxious, Jessica frowned into the mirror at her pale skin and long—but blonde—lashes. What would she look like with brassy hair?

‘Brassy? Brassy? Madame, remember, I am an artiste! We speak here of guineas, of glow, of subtle excitement. Of élan, panache!’ He scowled, perhaps daunted by the reality in front of him, then made a recover. ‘And curls. This demands curls. The scissors, Albert.’

‘You are not going to cut it?’ Jessica grabbed handfuls defensively.

‘But of course; as it is it is impossible—the hair of a governess.’ He stood poised, the scissors in hand, having delivered what was apparently the ultimate insult. ‘I assume madame has come from the Continent…’

‘I have?’

‘She has,’ Eva confirmed. ‘The very latest French style, if you please, monsieur. It will grow again,’ she pointed out to Jessica.

‘Oh, very well.’ Jessica released her grip and clasped her hands in her lap. Curls and gold it was. In for a penny, in for a…guinea. At least it should soon be over.

Two hours of snipping, washing, soaking in strange substances, more washing, combing, the application of a thick red paste, rinsing, drying and curling later, Jessica stared dumbfounded into the mirror again.

A mass of shiny guinea-gold curls framed her face in an outrageously flattering manner. The curls were short enough to cluster naturally, except at the back where they were half-teased down into flirty ringlets on her shoulder and half-pinned up to give some mass to the coiffure. The wide-eyed woman looking back must be her—after all, the eyes were green, although they looked darker and more intense than she remembered, the mouth was the same, although now it was parted in a gasp of surprise and the plain blue gown was certainly the one she had arrived in.

‘Oh,’ said Jessica. ‘That is me?’

‘It most certainly is,’ Eva said with satisfaction. ‘A most excellent result, Monsieur Antoine, exactly what I had hoped for. You will call upon madame daily once she is established and you will maintain this look, with appropriate variations depending on her social diary.’

The hairdresser and his assistant bowed themselves out, leaving two satisfied ladies and one stunned one behind them.

‘Now,’ said Bel with resolution. ‘Now we shop.’

‘After luncheon,’ Eva said firmly, walking Jessica to the door. ‘When we have made lists.’

‘But who is going to pay for all this?’ Jessica protested, waving a hand in a gesture that encompassed the pile of parcels and hat boxes that surrounded the three of them and the even larger list of items that would arrive from the workshops of the modistes and milliners they had spent the afternoon visiting. It might well be vulgar to mention money, but someone had to—Bel and Eva appeared oblivious to the amount that was slipping through their prettily gloved fingers.

‘Gareth is,’ Bel said. ‘Now don’t frown, Jessica—sorry, Francesca. We really must become used to calling you that or we will make slips later. He can well afford it and, if this is to be done, it must be done properly or no one will believe it. And these things are not so very extravagant, just suitable to your supposed background. Here we are, your new home.’

Jessica peered out and her wavering spirits rose at the sight of the neat narrow house with its black brick and shining door knocker and the pair of clipped bay trees by the green front door. Her own house, even if it were only for a few weeks. Somewhere that was all hers, not a plain room in someone else’s house where she was regarded as barely above a servant and entered a reception room on sufferance. However difficult this task she had accepted was going to be, at least there would be a safe haven to retreat to at the end of each day.

‘I have left it fully furnished,’ Bel was saying as they climbed the steps and the door swung open. ‘And I will leave Mr and Mrs Hedges and the rest of the staff to look after you. Good afternoon, Hedges, this is Mrs Carleton. I hope you received my note this morning and everything is ready for her?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ This butler was cut from a very different cloth than Lady Sebastian’s ex-pugilist, but his expression as he regarded the incongruous figure before him with the dashing hairstyle and the governess’s clothes was a masterpiece of tact. ‘Mrs Carleton, ma’am. Mrs Hedges has prepared your room.’

‘Thank you, Hedges.’ Jessica had long since learned not to show that she was intimidated by superior butlers, but now she hesitated. If this really was her house now… She glanced at Bel, who gave a slight nod of encouragement. ‘Could you bring tea to the drawing room, please?’

‘At once, ma’am.’ He moved to throw open a door and Jessica smiled, inclined her head and swept through it. Goodness, she thought faintly, that worked.

‘I have left all my staff in place here except for my dresser, and that is going to be an important position under the circumstances.’ Bel sank into a chair and put her feet up on a beadwork footstool. ‘Ooh, why is shopping so tiring?’ She did not wait for an answer, her brow clearing as an idea seemed to strike her. ‘I wonder if Lady Catchpole’s dresser has found a new employer.’

‘Lady Catchpole?’ Eva frowned. ‘I do not know her.’

‘She was Rosa Delagarde, one of the leading lights of the stage for the past three years, but she caught herself a baron and they married last week. Now, knowing George Catchpole, he might have married an actress, but he is going to want a command performance as a lady from her in future. I would not be at all surprised if he will insist on a starched-up dresser of the highest respectability.’ She got up and went to the French writing desk at the side of the room and drew out some paper. ‘I will write at once. La Delagarde was always turned out in the most dashing style—just what we need.’

‘But would she be discreet?’ Jessica wondered.

‘There was never any gossip about the Catchpole romance before the announcement, and that would have made her dresser some good money if it had been leaked to the scandal sheets.’ Bel folded the note, stuck on a wafer and addressed it as Hedges brought in the tea tray. ‘Hedges, please see this is delivered as soon as possible.’

They sipped tea in companionable silence for a while. Jessica had no idea what was passing through the minds of her two companions, but her own thoughts were a muddle of impressions, worries and, lurking under everything else, excitement.

I am taking tea with a countess and a Grand Duchess, I have been shopping in the most exclusive shops in London and I am about to embark upon a Season of scandal with a man who has a completely reprehensible effect on my pulse rate.

‘Can you dance?’ Bel asked, cutting across Jessica’s ruminations on just how Gareth Morant made her feel and how shocking it was that he should have such an effect.

‘Yes. In theory,’ she added with scrupulous honesty. ‘I have taught all the country dances and so forth, but I have never waltzed, nor have I danced a cotillion.’

‘A dancing master, then?’ Eva reached for her reticule and extracted her note tablets. ‘Another list is called for, I can see.’

At least, Jessica consoled herself as she surrendered to having her life, her appearance and her wardrobe organised, she would be able to spend this evening in peace and quiet reflection.

The door opened and Hedges coughed. The ladies turned to regard him. ‘Lord Standon has sent to say that he hopes it will be acceptable if he joins you for dinner tonight, Mrs Carleton.’

Jessica realised with a start that he was speaking to her. ‘Where?’

‘Here, ma’am. He has sent Mrs Hedges instructions for a detailed menu.’

‘Has he, indeed?’ Jessica meant to sound sarcastic, but the butler merely inclined his head.

‘Yes, ma’am. Mrs Hedges has sent the footman out with a shopping list now.’

No one appeared to think that she might refuse this suggestion. Or was it an order?

‘And how many people is his lordship intending that I entertain to dinner this evening?’

‘I understood from the note that it was to be a private occasion, ma’am.’ Hedges bowed himself out.

‘He is impossible!’

‘Hedges? But I always found him—’

‘Gareth. Impossible. What on earth are the staff to conclude from him inviting himself here for a dinner à deux? That we are lovers?’ Bel and Eva both smiled and Jessica felt the colour rising up her cheeks. ‘Whatever he wants people to think for the purposes of this masquerade, I have no intention—’

‘Of course not,’ Bel soothed. ‘I will have a quiet word with Hedges. He and Mrs Hedges already understand that you are helping Gareth with a tricky family problem.’

‘Thank you.’ Jessica brought her agitation under control with an effort. If she was going to make a public spectacle of herself with Gareth Morant, it might seem out of proportion to worry about what the servants thought, but she had to live with them for several weeks and the prospect of reading contempt or condemnation in their eyes was not easy to bear.

‘What are you going to wear?’ Eva put down her tea cup and looked thoughtful. ‘What a pity so many of your gowns will take several days and we only have the ones we bought ready made.’

‘Well, obviously I will dress for dinner, but would Gareth expect me to make a special effort?’

‘I imagine that Gareth is intending to teach you the arts of dinner-table flirtation,’ Bel observed.

‘And remember,’ Eva interjected, ‘Francesca Carleton always makes an effort. She would not be seen outside her bedchamber less than exquisitely gowned and coiffed and with a subtle use of maquillage. Or in it, come to that,’ she added, ‘if she has a companion.’

That is not going to arise, Jessica reassured herself. The only man I will appear to encourage is Gareth and he will not want to enter my bedchamber in any case. After all, he had kissed her only to satisfy his curiosity and he had already seen her, stark naked and covered in goose bumps. There was no erotic mystery there. Thank goodness.

‘From now on you will never appear except in character, although you will not be ready to burst upon society until Maude’s ball in three weeks’ time. Meanwhile, you must practise with us, with Gareth and with your new dresser until your image and your story is perfected.’ Eva’s smile held sympathy as well as kindness. ‘I do not expect you have ever been encouraged to be thoroughly selfish, have you?’

‘I have not had that luxury,’ Jessica confessed. ‘I have been earning my own living in a way that does not allow for mistakes or self-indulgence. Common sense, practicality and self-control are my talents.’

‘But Miss Jessica Gifford, superior governess, is an act too, is she not?’ Eva turned her dark, intelligent eyes on Jessica. ‘It is an act you have worked on and perfected, but it is not you. What were you before you made that decision, chose that path, I wonder? If you could subdue your real self to become her, you can free something of you to become Francesca.’

Bel, nibbling on a macaroon with a faraway look on her face, was not listening. ‘The pale green silk,’ she pronounced. ‘It needs taking in, but with a sash it will be perfect for this evening.’

‘Yes, thank you.’ Jessica turned, eager for the distraction from Eva’s disconcerting theory. Was there really something in her of the wanton, daring creature she needed to portray?

Mama…Wide green eyes peeping provocatively over the edge of a fan, the soft teasing voice that could charm birds out of trees, the careless shrug of her shoulders when Jessica, aged thirteen, had worried about the rent being in arrears yet again.

‘Oh, I’ll go and smile at Mr Gilroy, darling,’ she would say. ‘He’ll give us another week.’

Jessica had vowed she would never be in a position where keeping the roof over her head relied on her ability to smile at a man until she turned him into a fool. But then, Jessica had never had one-tenth of her mother’s natural charm, so she had believed. Or had Miss Miranda Trevor, banker’s daughter, learned those arts out of sheer necessity when she had run away with Captain the Honourable James Gifford and found herself living the life of a gambler’s wife?

‘Shall we help you change before we go?’ Bel offered and the disturbing thoughts vanished, obscured by the immediate worry of what Gareth Morant, Lord Standon, was going to make of her first steps in the shoes of Mrs Francesca Carleton.

Chapter Eight

Gareth mounted the steps to Jessica’s new front door with an anticipation that surprised him. He already knew that he enjoyed her company but the necessity for this masquerade was a tiresome interruption to his life and he should be resenting it. He paused, his hand on the knocker, examining his feelings.

He was not resentful, he was not even vaguely irritated. He was stimulated and he rather thought he was going to be amused. Was Rotherham right? Had he become bored and jaded with the round of careless pleasures and unavoidable duties?

The door opened and he let go of the cast metal with a thud.

‘Good evening, my lord.’ Hedges regarded him benevolently. Gareth decided that the staff must approve of their new, temporary, mistress. ‘Mrs Hedges has followed your instructions for dinner to the letter, my lord.’

‘Excellent.’ Gareth shed his heavy coat and handed the footman his hat, cane and gloves. He did not know whether Jessica would have the gowns to enable her to dress for dinner yet, but he had done the occasion justice with silk knee breeches, striped stockings and his newest swallowtail coat.

‘Lord Standon, madam.’ Hedges threw open the drawing-room door and Gareth walked through.

‘My lord.’ A slender lady in pale almond green silk rose from the fireside and dropped a slight curtsy. ‘A most inclement evening, is it not? I do hope you did not become chilled.’

Gareth returned the courtesy with a bow, unable to repress the smile that curved his mouth. It was Jessica, but not the Jessica who had left his house that morning, wide-eyed and in the more than capable grasp of his cousin and Sebastian’s new wife.

‘Mrs Carleton. It is indeed very raw out, but I took the precaution of wearing a heavy coat.’

The door closed softly behind him as he walked to the fireside. ‘Please, do sit.’ She extended a hand as though to show him which chair to take, pale fingers emerging from the tight ecru lace sleeves, and the tips just brushed his knuckles.

So, she had remembered one lesson from the night before. Gareth said nothing, but caught and held her gaze for a long moment as they both sat. The colour rose, charmingly, under her skin, then she laughed. ‘Oh dear, I am afraid I simply cannot control my blushes.’

‘They are charming,’ he said, meaning it. Her hair was astonishing, the soft curls opening up her face and taking at least two years from her appearance. The severity and the attempt to look older had been deliberate, he was sure; now Jessica was the most intriguing mixture of sophistication and innocence.

‘What is it?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing at him. All of a sudden she was the governess again and he reminded himself that she was neither the innocent nor the sophisticate. Jessica was a respectable, intelligent woman who was making her own place in the world and had been managing that very well until the rotten underbelly of polite society had ensnared her.

‘I was admiring your hair,’ he said, with partial honesty. ‘It is delightful—exactly the look I think we should aim at, yet it is still you.’

‘I am not certain about the colour.’ Gareth found himself watching the play of expression on her face: the frown as she worried about the colour, the look of rueful acceptance that it was suitable for their masquerade and then the amusement at her own doubts banishing the seriousness from her eyes. ‘I know it is exactly right for our purposes. I will get used to it and it will wash out in time.’

‘I like the style. You will keep that, will you not? Afterwards?’ He wondered if there was any length left in it—the back was elegantly pinned up provoking an inconvenient fantasy of unpinning it.

‘Perhaps.’ She was silent while he wondered whether a comment on the gown she was wearing might push her from frankness into reticence. She was wearing a fine lace fichu around her shoulders. Was the subtle glimpse of flesh through the lace deliberate or modesty? He decided to keep silent on the subject, although he was admiring the effect of softly draped silk on a form he was only too aware was sweetly rounded and warm.

The memory of the sensual shock as she had hurtled into his arms in the brothel came to him with almost painful intensity and he crossed his legs, trying not to think about the lovely elegance of the line from shoulder to the swell of her hip. He was quite certain that Jessica had not the slightest idea of how beautiful her body was.

And why should she? She is inexperienced and respectable, he reminded himself sternly. He was here for one reason only, and that was to equip her for the role she was to play. And it was a role, not reality.

‘Did you enjoy your shopping expedition?’

‘Very much. Your cousins are so kind. But it is not real,’ she added, echoing his thought. ‘I cannot believe that it is me, sitting in all those fashionable shops, being waited upon, making decisions, choosing between ribbons for my slippers as though I have a dozen pairs already and can toss them aside the moment they show wear.’

Gareth thought of telling her that she must keep all the clothes and accessories they bought for the deception, then caught himself in time. Jessica had accepted payment for what she was doing because she was a professional woman and knew she was worth her hire. But he guessed she might have a very different reaction to accepting fine clothes and fripperies—they were too close to the presents a true courtesan would expect.

She was restful to be with, sitting there with her clasped hands, her eyes resting on him as though she was studying him, which he supposed she was. Miss Gifford was not a woman who went headlong into something unprepared. That mixture of restraint and sense, combined with the image of the girl who, stark naked and terrified, had picked a lock and set about rescuing herself from a situation where most would have been in a dead faint of horror, piqued more than his amused interest—it stirred something inside him.

‘I assume that this evening’s meal is so that we can explore the sense of taste?’ she asked, cutting across his uncomfortable self-examination. He did not feel Jessica Gifford was so restful after all.

‘Yes. The sense and sensuality of food and how you can use it for flirtation and seduction.’ Her eyebrows rose. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Very,’ Jessica admitted. ‘Have you any idea how tiring spending large amounts of money is?’ Her smile seemed to glow and she gave a little wriggle of pleasure, as though someone had run a finger down her spine.

Gareth took a deep breath. He was enjoying this too much; that had to cease. It was not what he was here for, they had work to do.

‘Well, being hungry before meals in public must stop at once,’ he said severely. ‘Food must become a luxury, a game, a tool in your armoury of seduction. Before any meal taken when men are present, you must consume something solid and sustaining at home first.’

‘Dinner is served, madam.’ Hedges stood holding the door while Jessica closed her lips on what he suspected was about to be a withering comment on the foolishness of fashionable life.

She stood instead and placed the tips of her fingers on his proffered forearm, glancing up at him from under her lashes as she did so.

‘Very nice,’ he murmured, escorting her through the door and into the dining room. Their chairs had been placed as he had requested, with hers at the head of the table and his on her right. On the white cloth there were only the place settings, a flower arrangement, a candelabra and two dishes, one before each place.

‘I wanted to concentrate on one thing at a time,’ he explained, holding her chair for her. Jessica sat, regarding the almost empty table dubiously.

‘Oysters?’

‘Do you dislike them?’ He sat beside her. ‘If you have no objection to dining alone with me, I will pour the wine and we can ring when we require the second course.’

‘Yes. Thank you, Hedges, that will be all for the moment.’ The butler closed the door behind him. ‘That is a relief; I do not feel comfortable having this sort of lesson before an audience.’ She lifted her fork, then put it down again. ‘I’ve never eaten raw oysters, I have only had them in beefsteak-and-oyster pie.’

‘Oysters are regarded as a highly erotic food. Look at them.’ He wondered if she would understand the symbolism and watched as she studied the six open shells set out on an extravagant bed of crushed ice.

‘Erotic?’ Jessica murmured, lifting one shell delicately and advancing it closer so she could stare down into the fleshy folds moving gently in their briny liquid, cradled within the opalescent shell. He knew the exact moment she caught his meaning from the blush that coloured her cheeks. ‘Well, really! Do men think of nothing but sex?’

Gareth had been watching her over the rim of his wine glass as he took a sip of the white burgundy. At her question he choked, half-laughing, and put the glass down. ‘I’m afraid we do think about it quite a lot,’ he admitted apologetically.

Jessica knew she was blushing. She put the oyster back on the plate and lifted her own glass, hoping for a little Dutch courage. ‘You mean that in dining rooms all over the country people are sitting down to oysters and the men are looking at them and thinking they look like… And then eating them?’

Now what have I said to amuse him? she wondered as Gareth gave another gasp of laughter.

‘Yes.’ He did not appear capable of elaborating.

‘I see.’ She eyed the offending shellfish. ‘How exactly does one eat a raw oyster?’

‘You squeeze on a little lemon juice, then raise the shell to your lips and tip it in.’ Garth suited the action to his words, chewed a couple of times and then swallowed. ‘Sublime. In very polite company one eats it with your knife and fork, but that need not concern us.’

‘Hmm.’ Jessica knew she was sounding prim, although something inside her was wanting to giggle, partly because the whole idea of food as erotic seemed nonsensical and partly because she was beginning to feel as though she was in a dream, or had had far too much to drink, or both. Not that she had ever had more than one glass of wine at once in her life, but she supposed this light-headed, bubbly sensation was how intoxication felt.

She picked up her oyster, regarded it severely and tipped it to her lips. Cool, salty, fleshy and sensuous, it was like nothing she had ever tasted, and certainly not like the rather rubbery constituents of a pie. Jessica bit, swallowed, thought about it and smiled. ‘It is fabulous!’

‘Then let me give you another.’ Gareth squeezed lemon, then lifted one from his plate and advanced it to her lips. Jessica sat back, a little shocked. ‘Oh quite, absolutely scandalous behaviour, and you do not do this at polite dinner parties, not until we have reached the stage of really setting the ton to talking. But we might be seen sharing our oysters in a box at the theatre.’

Jessica opened her lips and Gareth touched the shell to them. ‘Keep your eyes on me,’ he murmured as, instinctively, her lids drooped. His eyes, as she lifted hers to them, were dark and something hot burned at the back of them. ‘Just so, we are exchanging unspoken words, messages that cannot be said out loud in company. And everyone else will know that is what we are doing.’

This time she let the flesh slide into her mouth and the memory of his tongue, tangling with hers, as hot as this was cold, filled her. ‘What is it?’ He was instantly alert to her mood. ‘What are you thinking about?’

Too startled by her own reaction to prevaricate, Jessica answered honestly, ‘You kissing me’, and was rewarded by the knowledge that she had both surprised and disconcerted him.

The heat in his eyes flared and she knew he was remembering too, but his voice was dry as he said, ‘Those are exactly the thoughts you should be conjuring up—they will add verisimilitude to your acting.’

‘Excellent.’ If he thought he was going to disconcert her, he had another think coming. And in any case, she was more than capable of disconcerting herself, without his help. ‘My turn.’

This time, as she held out the shell and the oyster slid between Gareth’s lips she ran the tip of her tongue over her own and he almost choked. ‘You are worryingly good at this,’ he said when he was recovered and they laughed and ate the remaining oysters chastely from their own plates.

Jessica rang the little bell by her plate and the next course, ‘A pea fowl, larded, removed with a ginger soufflé and asparagus, madam’, was brought in.

The guinea fowl led to a much less disconcerting discussion about taste and texture and a good-natured dispute about the amount of port in the sauce, which Jessica lost as she had never knowingly tasted port before. She thought she had scored points by batting her eyelashes prettily and imploring Gareth to carve, because he was certain to be so good at it.

The ginger soufflé melted on the tongue, leaving an unexpected heat behind it. By this time she found she was paying as much attention to taste and texture, heat and cold, spice and sweetness as she had to the feel of the items Gareth had had her touch the night before.

‘That just leaves the asparagus,’ he remarked innocently.

Jessica eyed the thick green shafts, glistening with melted butter and the giggle finally escaped. She had eaten asparagus often enough in the past, daintily with knife and fork, casually with her fingers, the butter running down her chin; now, fuelled by the atmosphere of sensual indulgence and the experience with the oysters, she had no doubt at all what asparagus was supposed to be symbolising.

‘No,’ she gasped, not worrying that the end of her nose must be turning pink as she laughed or that this was not behaviour expected of either the governess, or of the lady who wore a fashionable silken gown. ‘This is too funny to take seriously.’

Silence. She had overstepped the mark with the man who was, when it came right down to it, her employer. He was paying her to take this seriously and she was giggling. What was the matter with her? Miss Jessica Gifford never giggled.

Eva and Bel had wanted her—expected her—to wear the gown without a fichu, to let her hair down, to rouge her lips and blacken her lashes. But her instincts had told her that the first time that Gareth saw her in public he had to see someone who would shock him in truth. His reaction must convince a jaded, cynical audience.

So she had found a fichu, pinned up her ringlets, left her face scrubbed and innocent—and laughed at the game he was trying to teach her. And now he was looking at her, his face shuttered. Those grey eyes were wet-flint dark and the mobile mouth still. Jessica held her breath, wishing she could not remember what his lips had felt like against hers, wishing she had no memory of the scent and the heat of him.

His mouth moved She saw the tip of one white, sharp, canine catch at the corner of his underlip, and then Gareth smiled at her, a slow, lazy smile that caught her breath in her throat and had the stumbling words of apology tangling into silence on her tongue. Oh, my God, she thought, shocking herself, he is gorgeous.

All he said, mildly, was, ‘Sex often is very funny.’

‘Oh.’ Jessica, charmed out of her embarrassment, regarded him, curious. ‘I thought it a subject men had little sense of humour about. That…place was so cold, so joyless. Would you ever hear laughter there? Joyous laughter?’

‘Perhaps not.’ Gareth picked up his wine glass, twirling it gently between thumb and fingers. ‘But there are more aspects to the relations between men and women than that—and, yes, men, despite our fragile sense of self-worth, do enjoy being with a woman with a sense of humour and wit.’

‘I shall remember that,’ Jessica said primly, wondering whether Gareth was being ironic about the fragile sense of self-worth or whether even large, calm aristocrats had their insecurities.

‘Tell me about your family.’ He changed the subject abruptly as she rang the bell.

‘I was about to leave you to your port and nuts.’

‘You have an absorbing novel, or perhaps some stitchery to occupy yourself?’ Gareth leaned back in his chair to allow the footman access to his plate.

‘Neither, I confess.’

‘Then stay and keep me company,’ he suggested as the man placed the decanter at his side and the dish of nuts before him.

‘Is that not rather…unusual behaviour for a lady?’

‘Rather dashing—but then…’ Gareth waited until the door closed behind the footman ‘…you are rather a dashing lady, are you not, Mrs Carleton?’

‘So I understand. May I try some port?’

Gareth poured a little into her empty wine glass, then cracked a walnut and placed the meat on her side plate. Jessica sipped, wrinkling her nose. ‘Very heavy.’ He took a swallow of his, watching her over the edge of his glass. Strangely it did not make her feel uncomfortable; it was as though she had spent many an evening companionably in his company. She put her elbows on the table, nibbling the nut, her port forgotten. ‘What should I be doing tomorrow?’

‘What do you want to do? More shopping?’

‘No!’ Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘I have shopped until I can shop no more—at least for a day or two. I shall wait until everything is delivered, then Lady Dereham and Lady Sebastian will come and we will go through it all and see what further accessories I need. I cannot imagine anything can be missing, but they insist there will be all kinds of things we have forgotten.’

‘If you have no engagements, there are two things we need to see to.’

‘Really?’ Jessica frowned and absently sipped her port. The rich taste was beginning to grow on her.

‘Perfume and jewellery,’ Gareth said and it seemed to her he was watching her for her reaction.

‘Jewellery?’ she enquired coolly. There were only two sorts of women a man bought jewellery for—his wife and his mistress.

‘I rather thought you might take it like that. How would it be if I promise to take it all back at the end, every last pearl? If I promise to leave you with not so much as an amber bead?’

‘That, my lord, would be acceptable.’ At least, it would be socially acceptable. Jessica found her heart was beating erratically with a mixture of disappointment and the thought of wearing such jewellery, if only for a short time. The picture of Gareth showering gems upon her was shamefully pleasurable—and yet she had never so much as coveted a diamond in her life. Mama’s pearl set was in the bank along with her savings, Papa’s signet ring and her coral-and-silver christening rattle.

Governesses did not wear any jewellery beyond, perhaps, a chaste cross. Had a few hours with this man seduced her from her acceptance of her true station in life to such a extent that she had fallen prey to the shallowness of fashionable life?

The feeling that had give risen to the giggle was stirring again and a little voice was murmuring in her ear to stop being such a prig. She was going to earn her holiday from reality; if that meant revelling in a little shallowness, then she, Miss Jessica Gifford, was going to do so with gusto.

Chapter Nine

‘May I have diamonds?’ Jessica asked, hoping Gareth would realise she was joking. In for a penny, in for a thousand pounds, the reckless little voice urged her, while common sense told her that aquamarines, pearls and garnets would be the sensible thing for him to buy.

‘Of course. Of the finest water, naturally, although, with your eyes, emeralds should be your stone. But only a limited number of pieces.’ Without thinking she raised her eyebrows in enquiry, surprised at his sudden lack of liberality. ‘To be in keeping with your cover story. The late Mr Carleton would have earned good money from his royal service, but not so much that he could shower his wife with jewels. And perhaps you have already sold a few pieces to finance your London adventure.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She tried another sip of port, beginning to enjoy the warm slide of the wine down her throat. ‘I am, perhaps, just a little bit desperate to find a new protector?’

‘Not desperate yet, but certainly a trifle concerned. This London adventure is a big gamble for you.’

‘And yet I am retaining the good will of the Grand Duchess?’ Jessica took the fresh walnut that Gareth cracked for her, frowning over the intricacies of her new character. She seemed as convoluted as the whorls of the nut.

‘Eva is a continental—London society will expect her court to be a touch more…relaxed. And I am sure she will let it be known that the family owed your late husband a debt of gratitude for some service. Given the intrigues of her late husband, the exact nature of the service is naturally something we do not speak about. It would explain a little indulgence on her part.’

‘May I ask a personal question?’ What was making her so bold? Perhaps the port, perhaps the intimacy of sitting like this with a man with the curtains drawn tight against the cold, damp night and the candlelight flickering. Or perhaps it was just this man

‘You may, although I cannot promise I will answer.’ He smiled at her, a look heavy-lidded and amused. ‘In return I will ask you again about your family.’

‘Very well.’ She did not have to tell him everything, after all. ‘If you met this Mrs Carleton in real life, would you pursue her, attempt to become her protector?’

Would he answer? ‘I don’t know,’ Gareth replied, his expression becoming speculative. ‘I haven’t met her yet.’

Very clever, my lord, Jessica thought, determined not to let him escape with word play. ‘But in principle?’

‘In principle, possibly.’

‘Even if you were not trying to shock Lord Pangbourne?’

‘Possibly.’ He watched her face. ‘Now have I shocked you?’

‘No.’ Jessica shrugged, hiding the fact that, yes, she was a little shocked. Which was foolish. Did she think this man was different from all the rest in some way? ‘It is the way of the world. Or at least, of so-called polite society.’

‘And not-so-polite society, I can assure you. Enough of my moral deficiencies—where do you come from, Miss Jessica Gifford?’

She had thought about this moment and what she could safely reply. ‘My father was a military man. And a gamester. He and my mother eloped and both families cut them off. He was killed in an argument over cards when I was twelve.’ She paused, wondering how much more she might tell him.

‘Twelve? Were you the only child?’ She nodded. ‘How did your mother support you?’

Tell him the truth, the shocking truth I only realised when I was sixteen? Tell him that I was raised and sent to a good school in Bath on the proceeds of Mama’s great charm and thanks to the liberality of her protectors? No.

‘Mama had many good friends. I was well educated and able to take all those expensive additional lessons that have equipped me for life as a superior governess. I can play the harp as well as the pianoforte, speak three languages, paint in watercolour. Mama died of a fever when I was in my final year at school in Bath.’

The protector of the moment had disappeared before his paramour was even laid in her coffin. She fought back the memories of those days when she could not allow herself to give way to her grief, days while she sold every piece of jewellery, every pretty trinket, every length of lace, buried her mother decently and bought herself the good, but sombre, wardrobe befitting her new role in life.

‘And those good friends could not support you?’ Gareth asked, the concern in his voice almost upsetting her careful control.

‘One—a vicar—did offer to take me into his home, but I do not care to be beholden.’ And certainly not to a pious hypocrite who preached virtue to his flock while visiting Mama every Saturday night! And there was always the fear that those men might expect her to carry on in her mother’s footsteps.

Mama had done the shocking, the unthinkable thing and had sacrificed her virtue and her reputation to give her daughter a future. Jessica could only guess at what that had meant for a woman who had loved her husband, with all his faults, and who had been brought up in the strictest respectability.

‘You do what you have to do, darling,’ she had said once when Jessica had protested that the Honourable Mr Farrington was anything but honourable. The reality of what Mama had been to those men had never been spoken between them, the fiction that Mama was merely keeping them company was always maintained, even when Jessica dabbed arnica on bruised wrists or listened to her mother’s stifled sobs late at night.

You do what you have to do. And now she was all but standing in her mother’s shoes, only she was doing it to gain her own independence, once and for all, and to repay a debt to a man who had rescued her from degradation and shame.

‘I see.’ Gareth poured himself more wine and sat back, loose-limbed, relaxed, in the high-backed chair. ‘I must confess to even more admiration for you than I was already feeling. Your independent career and high standards are to be applauded.’

‘Thank you.’ Jessica felt embarrassed. She knew, without false modesty, that she deserved the praise and yet it was strange to have someone recognise what she had achieved, what it had cost in sheer hard work and determination. ‘Now, tell me about tomorrow.’

He smiled, obviously recognising that she was trying to turn the subject. ‘I will go and buy your jewels and you and Maude can go and have your scent designed.’

‘Designed?’ Jessica stared at him.

‘But of course. When you pass by, men will inhale, entranced, and know it is you, and only you.’

‘Poppycock!’ Jessica retorted roundly. ‘You are teasing me.’

‘Not at all.’ Gareth regarded her for some moments, then stood up. ‘Will you come here, Jessica?’ Wary, she stood and walked towards him. ‘Give me your hands.’

Biting her lip, she placed her palms in his outstretched hands. His fingers meshed with hers then lifted, carrying her inner wrists up to his face. His breath feathered the fragile, exposed skin and her own breath caught in her throat.

‘You have your own, unique, fragrance. I can smell it now, warm and female and Jessica.’ His voice was husky, the words, spoken so close to the sensitised flesh, was like the brush of feathers across her pulse. ‘But it is subtle, a scent only a lover will know and recognise.’ And you, she thought, unsteady on her feet. You will know the scent of me again. ‘We need to give you a scent the hunting male can find and then seek out.’

‘That is a disconcerting thought,’ she murmured.

Gareth’s eyes lifted, met hers across their conjoined hands, and she thought she glimpsed the hunter there, in front of her, dangerous, more of an animal than a man. She drew their hands towards her, pulling down until his knuckles were level with her mouth, then inclining her head until she could inhale the heat from the back of his hands.

‘Warmth and man and Gareth,’ she murmured. His very stillness told her she had startled him, even without the sudden hammering of his pulse against her wrist. She kept her eyes on the clean lines of his tendons, the blue veins under the skin, the healing graze on one big knuckle. A man’s hands engulfing hers, and yet, at this moment, who was the stronger? She rather thought it was she.

‘You learn your lessons well, Miss Gifford,’ Gareth said after a moment, and she admired the control in his voice. ‘You are going to become a very dangerous huntress.’

‘Count upon it, my lord,’ she promised, releasing his fingers and turning on her heel to walk to the door. As she opened it she turned to see him still standing there watching her, a smile of reluctant admiration on his lips.

How I dared, Jessica thought, distracted, as Maude’s carriage drew up in front of a small bow-fronted shop entrance. Todmorton’s it read in spindly gilt lettering above the door. Craftsmen Perfumers. At a gesture from Maude she pulled down her veil and stood to follow her out of the carriage.

It had been keeping her awake all night, tossing and turning. How she had dared turn the tables on Gareth like that, behave like a woman of the demi-monde, how it had felt to hold him in her thrall for those long, shimmering moments while his blood raced in his veins and his skin heated in her clasp.

It was power and it was dangerous power and he was not the man to practise it on. There were no men it was safe to practise such wiles upon and certainly not the one with whom she had to act out this masquerade. She did not need to seduce, only to give the impression of seduction. But it was all becoming too real.

‘What did you say, Jessica?’ Maude turned from her contemplation of a display of giant bath sponges in the shop window. ‘Did you say frightening?’

‘Er, yes. Frightening being out like this, in disguise,’ she extemporised as the footman opened the shop door for her and they entered into fragrant gloom.

‘Not to worry, no one will know you veiled, and afterwards, no one could make any connection with you wearing that frightful stuff gown,’ Maude reassured her, blissfully unconscious of the fact that such dreadful gowns were Jessica’s everyday uniform. ‘Mr Todmorton, good morning. Yes, I am in the best of health, thank you. Now, this is the friend of mine for whom we require a scent. Something unique, something tantalising, yet discreet. Can you help us?’

‘Lady Maude, an honour to assist a friend of yours. Clarence, a chair for her ladyship and show her our new range of triple-milled soaps while she waits.’ The man who bustled forwards, stirring the air into a swirling rainbow of scents as his long apron swished across the floor, was of an indeterminate age. His bald pate gleamed, his white hands were clasped across his rotund belly and his smile was wide and ingenuous.

‘Madam, please, come into my workshop.’

* * *

Jessica felt awkward, sitting disguised by her heavy veil in front of the neat, professional figure of the perfumer in his workroom. She looked round, curious at its ordered rows of labelled drawers from floor to ceiling, its racks of bottles and phials and its clean, bare surfaces. She had expected to smell a riot of perfumes like the fragrant shop outside, then realised he must need to work with nothing to distract his sensitive nostrils.

‘Would you mind removing your glove, madam?’ With the coolly impersonal tone it was like going to the doctor. Jessica stripped off her right glove. ‘And holding out your hand, palm upwards?’

It was like the encounter with Gareth last night, and yet utterly unlike. This man made no attempt to touch her, merely leaning forward until his nose was above her bared wrist and inhaling. He might, she thought with an inward chuckle, be a cook smelling the soup to adjust the chervil.

‘Hmm.’ Mr Todmorton sat back, nodded sharply and reached for a notebook. ‘You wish for a scent for evening and for day, madam?’

‘Yes.’ She supposed she did, although a daring dab of lavender water, or essence of violets on her handkerchief was the sum total of Jessica’s experience with perfume.

‘And the impression you wish to create?’

She stared at him, failing to understand, then realised he could not see her expression for her veil. ‘I am sorry, I do not quite comprehend.’

Again, she might have been with a medical man, she embarrassed to discuss some feminine problem, he entirely at his professional ease.

‘Do you wish to be seductive and subtle or flamboyant? Do you wish to be unique and memorable, or merely sweetly feminine?’

‘Subtle,’ Jessica said hastily. ‘But seductive, memorable. Definitively unique.’

He nodded, apparently unsurprised by her requests, which seemed to her contradictory. ‘Now, which family? That is our first question. Florals as a main group are insufficiently memorable, and besides, will not last well on your type of skin. The woody, leather and fougère groups are too heavy and perhaps too masculine.’ He jotted another note and frowned. ‘Chypre or amber?’ It was apparently a rhetorical question, as he shook his head in thought. ‘Chypre. Mystery, warmth, natural depth. Floral undertones rather than moss, perhaps? Yes, I see it clearly now. I will prepare something in a parfum, an eau de toilette and a very light dilution for scenting linen.’

Jessica, who had been expecting to be offered samples to sniff and choose between, found herself being escorted to the workroom door, a decision made without the slightest involvement on her part. It was a relief, she decided, buttoning her glove again; how she would have recognised a suitable scent she had no idea, although it would have been amusing to have sniffed her way along the array of intriguing bottles.

Maude was perched on a stool in front of the counter, a predictably large stack of packages in front of her. The assistant was folding white paper crisply around what appeared to be the final box, although Maude’s gaze was roving the shadowed interior with all the concentration of a huntress in search of prey.

The assistant knotted string and reached for the sealing wax as she saw Jessica. ‘Well? Mr Todmorton, have you found just the thing?’

‘I will create just the thing,’ he corrected in gentle reproof. ‘If you and madam return in three days, Lady Maude, I will have the first bottles ready.’

‘Oh, look at these lovely little things!’ Maude jumped down and went to rummage in a basin of miniature, fine-grained sponges.

‘From Corfu, my lady.’ The assistant knew his trade, Jessica thought, amused. ‘Young girls dive for them; each is selected with great care to be perfect for cleansing the face…’

‘We must have some, see how fine they are. Catch!’ Maude tossed one to Jessica across the width of the little shop. A featherlight ball, it wavered in the air and she reached for it just as the door opened.

The sponge bounced off the broad chest of the gentleman who entered and he reached up and caught it one handed.

‘Gar—’ No, it was not Gareth, it was quite another man altogether, Jessica realised, puzzled why she had made the mistake. This man was as tall and as broad, but he was far darker, both in hair and eyes, but also in skin tone as though some Mediterranean blood flowed in his veins. She was spending too much time with Gareth, that was the trouble. Thinking about him too much led to seeing him everywhere.

Frowning over why that should be such a very bad thing, it took Jessica a moment to recall the people around her, then she saw Maude’s face. There was a faint rose flush on her cheekbones, her lovely lips were parted as though she had just gasped and her eyes were wide. The gentleman, apparently impervious to this vision of loveliness, turned the sponge over in his fingers for a moment, then handed it to Jessica, his eyes sliding over her veiled face with polite indifference.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Not at all.’ He inclined his head, unsmiling, giving her an opportunity to observe a nose that would have done credit to a Grecian statue, dark brown eyes and severe, well-formed lips.

There was nothing further to be said. Jessica stepped forward and placed the sponge on the counter. Maude was still standing to one side clutching an over-spilling double handful of tiny globes. ‘Here, let me.’ She removed them and dropped them back into the basin, her back firmly to the gentleman. ‘How many do you want?’

Maude blinked at her, a frown of irritation between her arched brows. ‘Move,’ she hissed.

‘What?’ Jessica hissed back. She could almost feel the three men staring at them. ‘More, did you say?’ she added in a clear voice. ‘Shall we take six?’ She stepped to one side before Maude could physically shove her aside as she appeared about to do, and began to select another five sponges, delving amongst them to find the ones of the finest grain. ‘Please,’ she half turned and spoke to the assistant, ‘do serve the gentleman, we may be some time.’

‘Thank you.’ Again, that polite, chilly, inclination of the head. Beside her Jessica heard Maude moan faintly. What on earth is the matter with her?

‘The order for the Unicorn, Mr Hurst?’ Unicorn?

‘Indeed. And two dozen of those small sponges, if you please—send them round later. I will take the main order, madame awaits it.’

‘Certainly.’ The assistant retrieved a package from under the counter and handed it over with reverent care. ‘If you will just keep it this way up, Mr Hurst.’

‘Thank you. Good day.’ He nodded to Mr Todmorton and the assistant and raised his hand to the brim of his hat as he passed the ladies.

The door closed behind him, the bell jangling into silence. Jessica frowned at Maude, who appeared to have been struck dumb. ‘Maude, we need to pay.’

‘What? Oh, put it all on my account, Mr Todmorton. Who was that gentleman?’

‘Mr Hurst, Lady Maude. He owns a number of theatres, including the Unicorn.’

Jessica scooped up their shopping and took Maude firmly by the elbow before she could make any more outrageous enquiries about a strange man. ‘Thank you, Mr Todmorton, I look forward to my new scent. Good day.’

It seemed she had not lost her touch with recalcitrant pupils. Maude was outside on the pavement before she could protest, her mouth open indignantly.

‘Jessica! I wanted to find out more.’

‘You cannot interrogate shopkeepers about gentlemen, Maude, it just is not done.’ She broke off as the footman jumped down from the carriage and hurried to take the parcel. ‘Thank you. We will walk a little. Hyde Park is that way, is it not?’

‘Yes, ma’am, just along there, left into Piccadilly and a short walk and you’ll be there.’

‘How am I going to find out about him if I do not ask?’ Maude said with crushing reasonableness.

‘But why should you want to?’ Jessica snuggled her gloved hands into her wide sleeves and wished she had a large muff like Maude’s. The day was chill and a touch misty, but they could hardly have this conversation in the carriage for the servants to overhear.

‘Why?’ Maude sounded incredulous. ‘Did you not think him the most attractive man you have ever seen?’

‘He was very good looking, if you like icebergs,’ Jessica agreed. ‘But I would hardly call him the most attractive man I have seen. Although when he first walked in, I thought for a moment he was Gareth.’

‘Gareth is a very well-looking man, but nothing to compare with Mr Hurst,’ Maude pronounced reverently. ‘But the name is an odd coincidence, do you not think?’

‘What do you mean?’ Jessica side-stepped to avoid a snapping pug being led along by a liveried footman with his nose in the air.

‘Well, Gareth is a Ravenhurst—at least, his mother is. He and Eva’s husband and Bel, and goodness knows how many others—I lose count, some of them are abroad—are grandchildren of the Duke of Allington. Hurst—Ravenhurst. Perhaps he is a connection.’

‘Hurst is a very common name, especially in the North, I believe,’ Jessica said repressively, rather spoiling the aloof effect by adding, ‘That cock won’t fight, Maude—you are not going to be able to get to know him on account of him being some sort of distant relative of your Ravenhurst friends. And besides, your papa is not going to want you speaking to a theatre owner, however well off.’

‘His clothes were very superior, were they not?’ Maude sighed, walking straight past a shop window containing an array of bonnets labelled Fresh in from Paris without a sideways glance.

‘I did not notice.’ Jessica studied as much of the lovely, determined face as she could while it was screened by a wide-brimmed bonnet. Maude looked uncommonly focused. ‘Maude, I am not going through this masquerade in order to free you from Gareth just for you to commit some indiscretion with a tradesman!’

Her companion stopped dead and glared at her. ‘Mr Hurst is not a tradesman.’

‘Well, he certainly does not have vouchers for Almack’s,’ Jessica retorted. ‘You have glimpsed him for five minutes—you know nothing about him! Maude, what are you planning?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jessica sighed with relief: that sounded genuine. ‘I shall have to think about it. I refuse to give up. Did you see the way he looked at me?’

‘Maude, he looked at both of us as though we were part of the furniture,’ Jessica said repressively. ‘And you were throwing sponges about and then moaning—he probably thought you were slightly about in the head and I was your keeper.’

‘Oh.’ Momentarily cast down, Maude began to walk on and Jessica hid another sigh of relief which rapidly turned to one of exasperation as Maude gave a little skip. ‘I must look through the newspapers and see what is on at the Unicorn. He cannot be made to think of me unless I am very much in his way, now can he?’

Gareth is going to have to sort this out, Jessica decided. It was beyond her. She would write and ask if he would take breakfast with her, then she could be sure of a private word before any of her enthusiastic supporters descended upon her for the day.

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.