Regency Innocents (29 page)

C
harles pulled his watch from his pocket and frowned as it confirmed what he already knew. It had been three hours since Sukey had put his note into Heloise's hands, and still she had not come to him.

‘You sent for me, my lord?'

Charles looked up to see Giddings standing in the doorway.

‘Yes.' He snapped his watch shut and tucked it back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Have luncheon served in the breakfast parlour, and send someone to find out if Her Ladyship will be joining me.'

Perhaps she was unwell. Although, if that were the case, surely she would just have replied to his note with one of her own, apprising him of the fact.

No, he could not shake the conviction that this prolonged silence was a message in itself. He sighed. It had been too much to hope that he could put things right with his brother and his wife on the same day.

He went to the window, leaning his forearm on the sash as he gazed out at the rain which had begun to fall not long
after Robert had left in the family coach, bound for London. He accepted that Robert needed time on his own, to come to terms with the new understanding they had reached in the early hours of the morning. And when Robert had haltingly given his reasons for wishing to return ‘home', his heart had leapt, knowing that this was at last how he thought of his rooms at Walton House.

He turned at the sound of a knock on the door.

‘Begging your pardon, my lord,' said Giddings. ‘But Sukey does not seem to know Her Ladyship's whereabouts. Apparently she dressed in a great hurry and left her rooms quite early this morning, as soon as she received the note Your Lordship sent her.'

Charles felt as though a cold hand had reached into his chest and clamped round his heart. It could not be a coincidence that Heloise had disappeared the same morning his brother had returned to London.

‘Will that be all, my lord?'

‘What? Oh, yes—yes,' he snapped, dismissing his butler with a curt wave of his hand.

He had been standing in this very room, he recalled, the last time he had received news that had rocked his world to its foundations. Though he had only been a child, and standing on the other side of this desk, when his maternal uncle had told him he was never going to see his stepmother again. He stared blindly at the desk-top as he felt that same sense of isolation closing round him all over again.

His stepmother had kept a little singing bird in a cage in the sitting room that now belonged to Heloise. He had been able to hear it singing clear up to his schoolroom. But not that morning. When she had left she had taken it with her, and a dreadful silence had descended on Wycke.

And now, though Heloise had never really belonged to
him, her absence would reverberate through every corner of his existence.

How could she have betrayed him like this? How could Robert?

He drew in a deep breath, forcing himself to sit down and consider his situation rationally.

Though jealousy would have him believe his wife was the kind of woman who would run off with another man, his saner self knew her better than that. Though she had made her marriage vows in haste, and soon come to regret them, he could not believe she would break them so easily. Her conscience was far too tender. Look how she had berated herself for supposed lack of morals that night he had kissed her at the masquerade, when she had still been a virgin!

No, if she had left with Robert, it was not to embark on an affair.

She could not do it.

The only thing that would ever induce her to break her marriage vows was if she fell in love with someone else. And there was no evidence to indicate she had done so.

And as for Robert … No, he could no longer believe that he would deliberately conspire against him either. What he could imagine was Heloise going to him and begging him to take her back to London, where she would be safe from her cruel husband. A man would have to have a heart of stone to refuse her.

He would give her a few days' respite from his loathsome presence before following her to London. Though follow her he would. For he would not be able to rest until he could look her in the face and tell her …

He sucked in a sharp breath as the truth hit him. He had fallen in love with his wife. Fallen. He groaned. What an apt term! A fall was something you had no control over. It
happened when you least expected it. It shook you up, and took your breath away, and it hurt. God, how it hurt. Especially when the woman you loved could not bear to be in the same room—nay, the same county!

What was he to do now?

Why, he mocked himself, take luncheon as if there was nothing the matter, of course. It was what he did best—act as though nothing touched him.

He went to the breakfast parlour, sat down, and methodically worked his way through the food that was set before him.

When at last he rose from the table, he went to the windows. For a while he just watched the rain trickling down the panes, observing how it was drowning his entire estate in tones of grey. But at length something impinged on his abstracted mood. There was a thin plume of smoke rising from the trees on the island. Who on earth would be foolish enough to try lighting a fire, on his private property, in such weather as this?

His heart quickened. He knew only one person foolish enough to be outside at all on a day like today. He could not begin to imagine what Heloise was doing out on the island, nor did he question how he was so certain she was the one responsible for raising that defiant plume of smoke. He only knew he had to get to her.

Flinging open the French windows, he strode along the parterre, vaulted over the stone parapet, and broke into a run. He sprinted across the lawns and through the shrubbery, skidding down the slope and landing in an inelegant heap on the carriage drive.

He scrambled to his feet and pounded his way across the bridge, not stopping until he reached the foot of the tower, from which, he had soon realised, the smoke was rising.

‘Heloise!' he roared as he forced his way through the half-open door. ‘What the devil do you think you are doing in here?'

‘Charles?'

He looked up to see her head and shoulders appear over the lip of the upstairs landing. It took him only a moment to work out what must have happened. All that remained of the staircase was a heap of rotten timbers scattered across the floor.

Heloise's face looked unnaturally white, and her hair was plastered to her face. Just how long had she been stranded up there, alone and afraid? When he considered how he had tucked into a hearty luncheon, bitterly imagining her guilty of all manner of crimes …

‘I'll soon have you down from there!' he vowed, looking wildly about for something he could use to climb up to her. He had to get her to safety, take her in his arms, and wipe that agonised expression of dread from her face.

There was a chest which he knew contained croquet hoops and mallets, a table kept specifically for picnics on the island, and several chairs and other boxes used for storing all manner of sporting equipment. Hastily he piled them up against the wall where the stairs had been, and began to climb.

‘Oh, take care!' Heloise cried, when the pyramid of furniture gave a distinct lurch.

‘It is quite safe, I assure you. Give me your hand and I will help you climb down.'

She shook her head, backing away. ‘Charles, I don't think I can …'

He was just about to offer the reassurance he thought she needed when his improvised staircase separated out into its component parts. The chest went one way, the
chair another, and he gave one last desperate push upwards, to land sprawled at his wife's feet on the upper landing.

Before he could do more than push himself to his knees, Heloise had flung her arms around his neck.

‘Oh, thank heaven you made it safely! I was so afraid you were going to fall,' she said, pulling back just far enough to be able to gaze up into his face. Her eyes were full of concern.

Charles looked down into her tear-streaked face with a sense of wonder. She cared about him. Oh, maybe not as much as he cared for her, but nevertheless …

Taking ruthless advantage of her momentary weakness, he wrapped his arms about her and hugged her to his chest.

‘I am fine,' he said, and in fact he could not remember when he had ever felt better. ‘But what about you? Are you hurt?'

‘Only a graze on my leg where my foot went through the stairs.'

‘Let me see.' As he pulled her onto his lap, he suddenly registered that she was wrapped in what looked like a large, dusty sheet.

‘What on earth is this?' he asked, pushing a swathe of material away from her leg. He winced as he saw the gash on her shin, and the blood which smeared her skin right down to her toes. Her bare toes.

‘It is a curtain. I hope you do not mind, but I was so wet and cold, and I did not know how long it might be until somebody came to rescue me, and then I found the tinder box, and there was already some kindling in the grate, and I am sorry, but I also smashed one of the chairs, but only the littlest one, to get a fire going …'

Looking over her shoulder, he saw various items of feminine attire draped over a semicircle of chairs arranged
in front of the fireplace. A muddy gown, a dripping petticoat, torn stockings …

His hand stilled.

‘Are you completely naked under that curtain?' he asked throatily.

She nodded, her cheeks flushing. ‘That is why I could not have climbed down to you. I was going to explain that if I let go it would just fall away, for I have no pins to secure it, nor a belt …'

She had simply wrapped the curtain round her shoulders like a cloak, and was maintaining her modesty only with the greatest difficulty.

‘Your feet are cold,' he said, having forced his hand to explore in a downward direction, when all it wanted to do was slide upwards, underneath the curtain. Her ankles were so slender, he noted, gritting his teeth against the sudden surge of blood to his groin. He could almost encircle them with his fingers.

The rest of her was not cold at all—not any longer, she thought. As his hand gently stroked her injured leg, it sent fire coursing through her veins, making her feel as though she was melting from the inside out.

‘And I fear I am making you wet again,' he said, suddenly pushing her off his lap.

Guilty heat flooded her face as she wondered how on earth he could know what his touch was doing to her. But when he stood up and stripped off his jacket she realised he had not been saying what she thought he had at all.

For as he draped it over the back of the chair which already held her stockings, he remarked, ‘My waistcoat is a little damp, too, but apart from my neckcloth—' which he deftly unwound and hung beside her petticoat ‘—my shirt is quite dry.'

Her mouth went dry when he untied the laces and pulled it over his head.

‘Here,' he said, holding it out to her. ‘Put this on. You will be more comfortable and … er … secure than wrapped in that curtain. Which looks none too clean, by the way.'

She got up and moved towards him. The flickering firelight seemed to caress the planes of his face, the powerful sweep of his shoulders. His hair was a little mussed from having pulled off his shirt, his shoes were caked in mud, and his breeches were grass-stained. For the first time since she had met him he did not look in the least forbidding.

As her eyes strayed to the enticing expanse of male flesh bared to her avid gaze, her lips parted. Instead of taking the shirt he was holding out, she found herself reaching out to touch the very centre of his chest. The hair which grew there was coarse and slightly springy. His body was so intriguingly different from hers. Where she had soft mounds of flesh, he had slabs of hard muscle. Her hand slid over, and down, until Charles abruptly stopped her exploration by clamping her hand under his own.

‘What are you doing?' he rasped.

Shocked at her own temerity, she tried to pull her hand away. But he would not let it go. Keeping it firmly pressed to his waist, he declared, as though in wonder, ‘You want me!'

She could not deny it. But nor dared she admit it, only to suffer the humiliation of being rejected all over again. She turned her face away, biting down on her lower lip as she wondered how on earth she was going to come up with an explanation for what she had just done.

‘You don't need to be shy with me. I'm your husband,' said Charles, taking her chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger and turning her face upwards. ‘If you really do
want me, I will be only too happy to oblige.' He smiled, and lowered his head to kiss her.

His mouth was so gentle. For the first time he was kissing her as she had always imagined a lover would kiss his woman.

And it was all she could ever have dreamed of. As he let go of her hand to pull her closer she slid it up his side, finally feeling she had permission to explore the rugged contours of his body. He was so big, so powerful. Yet so gentle as he lifted her and laid her down on a rug by the hearth.

She basked in the wonder of his touch, not even registering the moment he unwound the curtain from her body until he reared up to gaze down at her nudity.

It was too much for her. Shyly, she pulled a corner of material over her hips, stammering, ‘I cannot … we cannot … it is broad daylight! Somebody might discover us!'

‘Nobody will even think of beginning to search for us until we do not appear for dinner,' he pointed out. He could not bear it if she were to draw back now. ‘We have hours. Hours and hours …' he murmured, bending to kiss her into submission again. But she was no longer so pliant under his ministrations.

Eventually he knew he would have to make some concession to her shyness. In desperation, he got up, went to the window, and tore down the one remaining curtain.

‘Here,' he said, draping it over them both as he lay down beside her. Though he would have enjoyed being able to look at her while they made love, the most important thing was that he got her past this first hurdle.