The Charmer (13 page)

He should probably tell her that foreign missions and political plans were one thing, and the hidden pain of a woman was another. He had no idea at all how to manage that.

“What would you have done?” she asked. “If I had not nominated you? You said in Paris that you would have occupied yourself with your other interests.”

He suspected that she posed the question only to avoid something else.

“I have been asked on occasion to manage other than ambassadors, M.P.'s, and duchesses.”

“Businesses?”

“Sometimes. More appealing have been the offers to accompany scientific and archeological expeditions. The latter in particular require extensive organization, much like a military campaign. They make use of native workers, and in my travels for the Foreign Secretary I learned how to be accepted by them.”

“Then perhaps you would make a good ambassador, if you are sympathetic to foreigners and their ways.”

“Ambassadors are too visible. They must be Britain personified. For important posts, they are always drawn from the nobility and mostly serve a ceremonial role. It is left to their staffs to conduct the more subtle work.”

“Were you good at being less visible and more subtle?”

“My appearance helped with the first.”

“I hadn't thought about that, but I imagine that it did.”

The fact that she did not think about that, and had never found him especially exotic, was one of her appeals. After Greeks and Hungarians, a half-breed Englishman would not be very distinctive.

“The Foreign Secretaries were lucky to have you. Do you still do that sometimes?”

“On occasion, when Parliament is not in session. Since taking my seat in the Commons, I mostly just serve as a fancy messenger boy.”

She seemed to accept that. She turned back to the sea.

Abruptly, as if some inner decision had been made, she pointed to the east. “He drowned there, where the rocks make the water churn badly. He was twenty years old. We were twins.”

He could sense her fragile hold on her emotions, and wished that he could do more than stand like a silent witness. Whatever ghost she had decided to face here was bigger than his protection. In the things that mattered, he was worthless to her.

“It was my fault,” she breathed the words so low the crashing surf almost submerged them. “I swam too close to the eastern edge, and got into trouble. I almost died. I remember fighting the water with a ghastly panic and then losing consciousness. I came to on the shore. Gerald was here, and he and the steward saw me washed up and pulled me out of the surf. Brandon must have seen me going down and came in to help. They found his body a few hours later on the other side of that promontory.”

“It was not your fault.”

“It was. In this one judgment my father was right. I was angry and hurt that day and I swam like a madwoman, not caring where I went. It was my brother's misfortune to be walking on the rocks where he could see me struggling.”

“You would have tried to help him, too, I have no doubt.”

“It was my carelessness.”

Her body swooned subtly. Her battle against the anguish twisted his heart.

“The wrong child died,” she said, her voice strangling on a swallowed sob.

Those were Alistair's words. He just knew it. Anger blazed at the realization that the man had been so cruel as to actually say that, no matter what was thought. He pictured the duke, stern and accusatory and unforgiving. No comfort had been given to her that day, or later.

She pressed her hands to her eyes. “This is so embarrassing. I'm sorry. When I asked you to stay I did not expect to get like this. I think it would be better if you left after all.”

He did not move. He could not leave her like this, balanced on the brink.

With deep breaths and a rigid stance she fought valiantly for composure. “I realize now that I never mourned him. Not properly. I could not. Thinking about it at all made me feel as if I were being physically torn into pieces.”

He reached for her and pulled her into his arms. “Then mourn him now, Sophia. I will hold you together.”

She struggled but he held tighter. Her fingers stretched and twisted into the fabric of his shirt.

With a moan of defeat, she gave up.

He had never seen a woman cry as she did then. Soul-wrenching, groaning sobs racked her, sapping her strength until only his arms kept her upright, clutched to his chest. The shredding pain that she feared tore through her, and into him. Throat and chest burning, he buried his face in her hair and prayed that she would not emerge shattered forever.

Slowly, her explosive grief calmed to a quieter sorrow. Her clawing fingers relaxed against his chest and she lay against him, weeping gently. He kept her wrapped in his arms, giving what feeble comfort he could, hoping this confrontation with the past had helped her.

After it passed she stayed resting in his arms, her spent breath warming his body between her flat palms. He fought a swelling awareness of her soft femininity beneath his hands. A flowing sensuality bathed the poignant intimacy that her emotional outburst had created.

He angled his head and kissed her brow, telling himself that he intended no more than a single gesture of friendship and solace. She tilted her face up and suddenly his good intentions came undone. A soul-shaking desire flared. His lips tasted the salty tears on her cheek and then met her mouth.

She accepted his kiss with an assenting sigh that obliterated good sense. Hoping that he gave as well as took, he lost himself in the taste of her mouth, the scent of her body, the signs of her climbing arousal. Her palms caressed up his chest to encircle his neck, their pressing paths inciting a ferocious hunger.

He knew how to manage a woman's pleasure and mindless passion led him to exploit hers. His caresses brought her closer, trembling against his length, gasping with helplessness. No stays or petticoats interfered. His hands explored soft curves of hips and back and thighs, pressing, feeling, and stroking her to a needful delirium that left her rising up into his body until his erection buried in her stomach.

His mind was already taking her in the damp grass outside, against the post of the gazebo, on the wood floor beneath their feet. His imagination already had her naked, pliant, accepting him any way he wanted her. His body responded to the expectation with an eager fire. Easing his knee between her thighs he caressed up to her breast and stroked the erect nipple straining against the muslin.

Arm around her waist, he lifted and carried her to a nearby bench and pulled her onto his lap. He trailed kisses down her neck and found the rapid pulse that throbbed in time with the one pounding in his head. He tasted the smooth warmth of her skin down to the gown's low neckline.

He caressed her breast and she melted. Kissing her again, claiming and exploring her mouth the way he planned to learn all of her, he released the two tapes on the back of her gown.

She straightened and gazed at him in the dark. For a few seconds she did not move. He waited for whatever she was deciding while her short, shallow breaths prodded his desire so high that he thought he would burn if she pulled away.

Then she surprised him in the unpredictable way that she had. She removed her arms from his shoulders and he thought that she intended to leave. Instead her hands bent to the shoulders of her gown, and then slid down as she lowered the bodice.

He peeled off her chemise and took her lovely breast in his hand. As he had wanted to do since that first night in Paris, he dipped to kiss it while gently palming the hard nipple. Her head lolled against his neck. Her desperate kisses heated his skin while her gasps of pleasure scorched his brain.

He took his time, caressing those full swells and teasing at the hard tips until she grew impatient and the gasps turned to cries. The sound of her need sent his own arousal soaring. Taking a breast in his mouth, he licked and drew. He caressed down the length of her flexing, rocking body and then retraced the path under her skirt.

Again she paused, as if he had confused her with an unexpected question. He kept his hand on her legs, stroking ever higher, his mind blank to any thought but of soon following the path of his fingers with his lips. He took her breast again and this time she held it to him. He did not wait for a sign of assent this time, but moved up her thigh and slid his hand to his goal.

He stroked the secret, soft flesh. A tremor shivered through her, into him, shaking his control. She suddenly went as limp as she had been in her grief. A low, melodic cry of submissive passion broke the breezy night.

Its desperate, helpless note touched him. It resonated with the night's earlier defenseless emotions.

A spot of lucidity reemerged. He lifted his head and stilled his hand.

Her mouth sought his impatiently, almost angrily. “Don't stop,” she gasped, pressing him down to her breast and moving her hips against his hand.

“Sophia—”

“Don't. Please don't.”

He pulled his hand away from her undulating body, cursing the chivalry that was asserting itself. “This will go too far.” With the fevered, biting kisses they kept giving each other, he barely got the words out.

“You said that you wanted me. Last night . . .”

“I do want you. Too much to start it like this.”

“But I want this.”

“For the wrong reasons. This is not the way to bury your pain. You are vulnerable and if I take advantage of that you will hate me for it, with good cause.”

She stopped showering kisses on him. Her body stilled and her forehead sank against his shoulder. “Damn it, Burchard. Why couldn't you just use me like you were supposed to? For once I wouldn't have minded.”

“I do not want to use you at all.”

She sat upright and turned her face away. “Yes, you do.” She sighed deeply. “All men do. I do not mind so much anymore. In Paris I learned how to manage all of that.”

That provoked an edgy resentment. He had just rejected an offer his body did not thank him for refusing, and she had responded by lumping him in the same group as the duke and Captain Brutus and those artists.

Furthermore, she implied that she managed a man's use of her now, which meant that in reality she used the man. She insinuated that tonight had not been under his control, and out of hers, quite the way he thought.

Still, he would have gladly held her in his embrace all night, but he sensed her retreating emotionally. As with her recent child's game at the balustrade, she kept swinging into intimacy and then pulling back. This time, however, he suspected that he knew why.

She scrambled off his lap and hurriedly drew up her garments. She would have bolted immediately but he rose and blocked her escape. Turning her, he fixed the gown's tapes.

“I should thank you for being so honorable. And for before, when I spoke of Brandon,” she said.

“I do not want your thanks.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want you. I can offer you nothing but affection and pleasure, but when the ghosts do not interfere as they do today, I want to make love to you. If I can make it happen, I will.”

She turned to him. “Then you should have done so while you had me at a disadvantage, because now it will not happen. You see, I know that is not all you want. I know why you are here.”

“Sophia, politics is the last thing on my mind this evening.”

“No, it isn't. I know what you stand to gain. I know about the Treasury position. It is a stepping stone, isn't it? To a ministry someday.”

“Are you convincing yourself that this was about my career? Do you assume every man is only moved by self-interest?”

She stiffened at the accusations. “I did not like this. I will not let it happen again.”

“You liked it. Too well. That frightens you, doesn't it? It complicates the game of who uses whom that you worked out so neatly in Paris. Keep control, keep it shallow, and there are no risks. That is how you want things with men, isn't it?”

“That is right. That is how I want it.”

“Sorry, darling. I am not one of your boys looking for a frivolous friendship, or an artist offering the great lady amusement in return for a chamber. It will not be that way with us, even if you prefer the safety of it.”

“It will not be any way with us.”

“The hell it won't.”

A renewed, pounding desire ached to show her how it would be, right now, and to hell with the restraint provoked by her grief.

He forced himself to turn away so that he would not act on the impulse. “Return to the house now. I will wait until you have retired before I follow.”

She had the good sense to obey. She ran away, up the garden path.

chapter
14

S
uch a pity that you have to wear weeds all through the summer,” Dorothy said. “Although I think that an argument can be made that you should attend the coronation ball come September. After all, you are Everdon. Don't you agree, Adrian?”

“If the duchess seeks a rationale, I am sure that we can devise one.”

Adrian strolled beside his willowy aunt, and glanced past her cloud of white hair to Sophia. The duchess's broad bonnet, laden with black sweeping feathers, obscured his view, so that only her nose and chin were visible.

Adrian had invited his aunt on this walk, knowing that they would most likely meet Sophia, since she took a morning stroll in the park each day at this time. He was reduced to these machinations because Sophia had been avoiding him. She had dismissed him at the end of the journey to nominate her candidates. Since coming up to London three weeks ago she had arranged that someone else was always present if she received him.

Sophia managed to engage Dot in a conversation that did not include him. The two of them pulled ahead by a few steps, and the Earl of Dincaster paced alongside them. That the earl had tagged along this morning was, Adrian suspected, not good news.

Adrian turned his attention to the other members of their party. Daniel St. John and his wife, Diane, had also taken a morning stroll, and Adrian had introduced them to the duchess upon meeting them in the park.

“She seemed to recognize both of you,” he said to Daniel.

“We have been introduced before, several years ago, while we visited our home in Paris.”

“Then you know something of her life there.”

“Miss Raughley and her Ensemble were well-known in Paris.” St. John's voice carried no censure or sarcasm. “She built another life there. Another identity. Pity she could not hold on to it if she preferred it to the one here.”

Adrian knew that St. John spoke from experience. Daniel St. John himself now lived a different identity than the one to which he had been born. Adrian was one of the few people in England who knew that secret and why the mystery had been created. He was not entirely sure why St. John persisted in the deception when the reasons for it had long ago been resolved.

“She appears very tired,” Diane St. John said, her soulful eyes fixed on the duchess's black dress. “I expect coming home has been a trial.”

“Yes, and coming to London has made it worse. A steady stream of visitors has been calling on her. Every woman in society wants to conduct an independent inspection before agreeing with the growing consensus that Sophia Raughley really isn't very suitable for her position.”

“Let me guess. They also think that the right husband would go far to redeeming her, and she would be much improved if she just married the visitor's perfect son, brother, or nephew,” St. John said.

“Undoubtedly. I arranged this accidental meeting with Dot because she could use a friend who is formidable enough to protect her through the next few months of social hell.”

“That was thoughtful of you, since she has no family to help her. She must do this all alone,” Diane said. “Perhaps she could also use some friends who are not a part of that particular hell. I will call on her, to reminisce about Paris, if you think it would help. Unless you think she would find us beneath her.”

“I think it would help enormously. Nor does the duchess hold strict notions about who is suitable for her circle, as she proved in Paris.” Nor would the friendship of Daniel and Diane St. John be much of a step down. St. John had become incredibly wealthy through shipping and finance, and could buy most of the peers of the realm.

“Then I will make the overtures and see if she is amenable.” Diane lengthened her stride just enough to fall into step beside Dot.

As she did so, the earl slowed enough to trail the ladies a bit.

St. John noticed. “It appears he wants some conversation with you.”

“There is no other explanation for his presence here this morning. I don't think he has seen this much exercise in months.”

“I will make myself scarce, then.” St. John joined his wife and extricated her from the ladies. The two of them turned and retraced their steps.

That left Adrian walking with the earl, who sidled up closely.

“Is it done, then?” he asked, slowing even more so the ladies could not hear.

“They were all elected and are arriving for the Parliament even as we speak.”

Sophia's candidates had been voted in, but not enough other Tories had won. Whigs elected on a mandate of reform firmly controlled the lower house by a huge margin.

Wellington and Peel and the other Tory leaders now faced a delicate situation. The goal would be to see that the bill was very moderate at worst, and that the vote was very close so that the House of Lords could kill it without too much public outrage.

Which meant that Sophia's twelve votes still mattered, and that Everdon's empty seat in the upper house had become more critical.

“Heard talk out of Cornwall. Seems she didn't tell them how to vote.”

“That is her choice for now.”

“Heard she started a riot.”

“A very small riot.”

“Damn it, you were supposed to manage it, keep her in hand, control the ribbons.”

“She is not a horse to be steered by a bridle.”

“No, she is a woman to be steered by a husband. Stidolph still doesn't know, although I think someone should tell him. Thinks he still has first claim, when in fact the filly is tethered in someone else's corral. Hell of a situation. Why couldn't Everdon have sired a nice, demure, obedient colt?”

“Maybe he did, but pulled too hard on the bit and ruined her mouth. Now, don't you think that we have butchered the horse metaphor enough?”

It was the lengthiest conversation they had suffered in years, and Adrian waited for the rest. What had been broached thus far was not important enough to force the earl to arrange for it.

Suddenly the earl pivoted, placing his body in front of Adrian, forcing him to stop.

Adrian squarely met the gray eyes so different from his own. The earl's pale skin had flushed from the unaccustomed exercise. His swept-back white hair, once fair like Colin's and Gavin's, poked out the back beneath his hat. The face, once angular, and the chest, once fit and strong like his sons', had gone soft and puffy from too much indulgence. As had the mind.

Adrian considered that if the House of Lords were made up entirely of Earls of Dincaster, he would vote for reform in an instant.

“She went to a radicals' meeting last night,” the earl confided.

“Did she?” Adrian was amused that the earl thought this would be news. He could himself recite where she had gone everytime she had left her house these last weeks. He could relate what she ate every day. He could tell that she had embarked on a frenzy of extravagance that had modistes all over the city elated.

He could report that she had received two more letters from Captain Brutus, and had not called for Adrian to discuss them.

“Laclere gave a speech. The duchess met with him afterwards. She's to visit his house tomorrow.”

The Viscount Laclere was one of the few Tory peers supporting reform. He was also a member of a circle of Adrian's friends that included St. John and a few others, men with whom he had experienced events that forged bonds that transcended social rank or politics. When young they had dubbed themselves the Hampstead Dueling Society, and they still congregated on occasion at the Chevalier Corbet's fencing academy, to spar with sabres.

It was, in essential ways, the only social circle where he had ever really been accepted, and to which he ever truly belonged.

“Laclere's wife is an artist,” Adrian said. “The duchess is probably more interested in that than Laclere's political views.”

“Artist! Hell, the woman is an opera singer. American at that. Laclere used to be solid, but she's ruined him. Everyone knows that he dabbles in trade now too. I think that you should find a way to go tomorrow, to keep an eye on things and make sure the duchess doesn't get bamboozled.”

Adrian forced an expression of agreement. Wellington had already made this suggestion, and seen that an invitation had arrived the past evening.

“There is something else,” the earl began, looking uncomfortable but determined.

Adrian almost didn't hear him because he became distracted by activity seen out of the corner of his eye. In the distance behind them on the carriage path a curricle approached, careening back and forth from inexpert handling. A dark figure stood in it beside the driver, wobbling off balance, waving its arms. A shout just barely made it to them on the breeze.

Sophia.

“Whatever else you need to say, let us discuss it while we catch up with the ladies,” Adrian said.

“It is best discussed in privacy.”

Sooo . . . pheee . . . aaaa.

The Earl cocked his head. “Did you hear something?”

“Not at all. Now, what is this other matter?”

“I could have sworn . . . It has to do with the duchess as well. Stidolph spoke with me. Thinks that you have been attending on her far too much. Won't do, will it?”

Oh, sweet Sophia, my lady.

“First you instruct me to keep an eye on things, and now you say to stay away.”

“See here, Adrian, you know what I am saying.”

They were almost alongside Dot and Sophia. Adrian glanced back and watched the curricle weave precariously. The waving figure tumbled into the seat.

“I am not sure that I do know. Perhaps you had better say it more clearly.”

The gray eyes turned to flint and the puffy face found some angles. “It won't do. A liaison would be scandalous.”

“Any liaison, or just one with me?”

“I do not want my family to be the entertainment of the summer gossips.”

“In other words, you want me to remain as invisible as possible. That has never been very easy.”

The earl scanned his face with a cold appraisal that Adrian had resented since he was old enough to understand what was reflected in his mirror. No response came to his oblique reference to what his face revealed, however. None ever had.

He caught up with the ladies and herded them away from the carriage path toward some trees. He could hear the curricle bearing down on them, but its noise broke and obscured the continued shouts.

Soph . . . stop . . .

“There is a lovely pond back here,” Adrian said. “There are swans, and one is black. You really must see it.”

“I have seen it already and none of the swans are black,” Sophia said. “Why are we hurrying? I will ruin my skirt if you do not slow—”

Wait. Come back.

“What was that?” She glanced around.

“The black swan must have been hiding the day you visited. Come along.”

“I am sure that I heard . . .”

Sophia! Kedvesem, wait!

She pivoted. “Attila! Look, Burchard, it's Attila and Jacques.”

“By Zeus, so it is.”

She ran the seventy yards back to the carriage path. Adrian followed with Dorothy and the earl in tow. By the time they arrived, a display of hugging and kissing was underway. Dorothy watched with a curious smile. The earl's face puffed.

“
Kedvesem!
Oh, it is so good to see you again,” Attila cried. “Jacques and I were so worried about you. There we were, sitting around Paris, talking about our wonderful Sophia, and then inspiration struck. Why not go and visit? When we went to your house this morning Jacques cajoled Charles into telling us where to find you.” He bowed to give her hand another big kiss, then turned to Adrian. “Mister Burchard, we meet again. I hope that you do not mind. Jacques said that you might want more time alone with Sophia after all those years . . .”

Hell.

“. . . but I said you would not mind old friends coming to make sure that she was happy in all her new responsibilities, not only to her country but to you and that . . .”

Fortunately Sophia interrupted the effervescent flow to make introductions, and neither Dot nor the earl noticed the odd references to Adrian.

“Is it just you two? Where is Dieter?” Sophia asked.

“Dieter got word that a countess back home will pay to have his latest novel printed, so of course he had to return for that,” Jacques explained. “Stefan just disappeared one day. A new composer arrived in Paris from Poland. His name is Chopin, and he really
is
of their nobility, so of course things got a little warm for poor Stefan.”

“Did you just disembark?”

“Yesterday. Jacques found us a charming little inn for last night, and we came looking for you at once this morning.”

“An inn? I will not hear of it. We will send for your things at once. There is plenty of room at Everdon House.”

Attila grinned with delight. “Wonderful. It will be just like old times.”

Jacques smiled smoothly. “We would be honored, dear lady. Of course, that is if Monsieur Burchard does not mind.”

“Burchard?” Sophia frowned. Adrian watched the potential disaster dawn on her. She glanced askance at Dorothy and the earl.
“Oh.”