Regency Rogues: A Winter's Night: The Winterley Scandal / The Governess Heiress
He was Colm Hancourt again for the first time in years, but he had little control over his destiny.
For the next few days he tried to forget their ultimate destination and enjoy the tour of the greatest houses and collections in the land before they ended up at Darkmere Castle. At first all he noted was mud and the biting cold, then the quiet beauty of the late autumn landscape stole his heart. He didn’t suppose dire poverty felt better in Britain than in the war-ravaged lands he’d quit with a sigh of relief after the first, fragile peace was made and Bonaparte went to Elba for a nice little holiday before Waterloo. It wasn’t much to boast about, but a British pauper could aspire to more than he was born to and stand some chance of achieving it.
This particular Briton had gone from fabulous fortune to nothing much at all, so he’d done it the other way about, but he was privileged all the same. He was the Duke of Linaire’s nephew and dressed as a gentleman. He had a good horse to ride, warm clothes to wear and the luxury of sleeping in the best inns when they were not staying in some of the finest houses in the land. This was a chance to learn more of his own country than a London childhood and eight years in the army allowed until now.
He rode out on a crisp November morning a week or so after leaving London as courier to his uncle and aunt and wondered at the meandering route they only seemed to decide a day at a time.
Wherever they were going he had settled into being Mr Hancourt again, he reflected, as he got a lower bow from the landlord of the Swan and Whistle than Mr Carter would have done. Life was less dangerous than it had been as a humble ensign, lieutenant, then captain of the 95th Rifles. Colm once swore to manage without a family who saw him as an embarrassment, but eight years of war had tempered him. He managed a self-deprecating grin at the thought of that angry resolution and hoped he was a better man than he was when he invented Mr Carter.
But for Miss Evelina Winterley he might even be content and it would be so much better if he could forget her until she was under his nose again, but somehow he couldn’t. He had too much time riding ahead of the ducal carriage to think right now. While Miss Winterley should have vanished from his thoughts after her father’s warnings it was impossible to forget a lady of character and grace to order. He caught himself smiling at thin air as if she was smiling right back. Just as well he was riding ahead of his uncle and aunt today and not by the side of the coach because this way neither of them could ask what he was grinning at.
He groaned quietly. This was nonsense, wasn’t it? He had nothing; he wasn’t quite nobody, but what sort of a gentleman lived off his wife’s dowry and his uncle’s charity? Not his sort, he told himself against the wild thunder in his blood that turned hot and primitive at the thought of having Miss Winterley as his wife. Her father was right and even if she wanted him right back that would fade when the sneers and whispers made her wonder what sort of a fool she was to wed the penniless son of her mother’s last lover. He didn’t love her; they had only met three times, for heaven’s sake, so how could he? This stupid feeling that they were perfectly designed to fill the dark and empty places in each other’s lives was a snare to avoid at all costs. Longing for a woman he couldn’t have would drive him mad. He could stop himself wanting what he couldn’t have if he worked hard enough. If he put his mind to it and perhaps wasted far too much of his meagre savings on a mistress, he could stop himself longing for impossible things and forget how urgently he wanted Miss Winterley that night at Warlington House and ever since.
Lord Farenze had made it very clear he was to arrive at Darkmere as the Duke’s nephew and act as if he had no idea Miss Winterley ever met a librarian in a dusty book room, or a lowly clerk in the respectable confines of Green Park. Colm thought the man was worrying without cause. He hadn’t seen any signs she even liked him in the lady’s lovely turquoise gaze. The sneaky idea that if his lordship was worried about his daughter’s feelings he must have good reason to be banished somehow. Yet he only had to think of their first meeting in Derneley’s neglected library to become that tongue-tied idiot again and as for that confounded kiss…
Best not to think about that. What else was there? At that dangerous point the yard of tin sounded and he turned round to see a groom waving at him to stop.
‘Colm, dear boy, we were supposed to turn off at the last crossroads, but you’re so deep in thought we missed it. Anyone would think you were Wellington busy planning a battle,’ Aunt Barbara said when he was in earshot.
He’d been thinking of Miss Winterley most of the morning then and wasn’t it a good thing her father didn’t know? ‘I am a clod, your Grace,’ he admitted with a sheepish grin. ‘We could take the next turning and get back to Berry Brampton as best we can.’
‘I’d sooner find somewhere Rooksby can sweep round so we can head back rather than risk being jammed down a narrow lane,’ the Duke argued mildly.
‘I should be paying attention,’ Colm replied, feeling a fool for letting Miss Winterley get between him and his duty yet again.
Chapter Ten
‘I quite thought the Duke of Linaire would be here by now,’ Eve said to her father as they rode back to Darkmere in Verity’s wake one day in early December. Chloe had given up riding until her latest baby was born now and Verity wanted to spend as much time as possible with her beloved aunt. Verity’s life was changing and she was poised on the edge of womanhood. Eve shivered at the thought of that night at Warlington House and feelings she didn’t want to think about ran through her as Carter’s kiss felt so vivid on her lips it was almost as if she could still feel the warmth, strength and excitement of his touch with all her senses. Verity wasn’t the only one confused by the war between mind and body as she tried to come to terms with a new reality.
‘The Duke said they were to call on friends and fellow scholars on the way,’ Lord Farenze replied, seeming oblivious to the battle she was waging against a heady memory. ‘Are you bored with our company then, Eve?’
‘No, but it will be awkward for you to meet Lord Christopher Hancourt’s son under your own roof, won’t it, Papa?’
‘Maybe I already know him,’ her father said with that closed expression she had seen a little too often lately.
‘What’s he like, then? Goodness knows what he’s been up to so far, it seems a deep dark family secret.’
‘Goodness might know, but you’ll find out soon enough.’
‘I wish you’d stop being so mysterious and tell me about him.’
He shot her a sceptical look, as if he’d like to get inside her head and have a good rummage about. ‘I shall let you judge for yourself.’
‘Why do you seem to dislike him already? You were living apart from my mother when Lord Christopher Hancourt became her lover.’
‘Maybe I can’t forgive his father for being such a confounded idiot then?’
‘There are so many of them in the world according to you, Papa,’ she said sweetly. ‘What was so special about that one?’
‘You think I’m a grumpy bear?’ he said, neatly avoiding her question.
‘I think you might be if you hadn’t had the sense to marry Chloe. She usually laughs you out of your dark moods now and I’m very grateful for the improvement in your temper.’
‘If my temper is so uncertain, I like to think my daughter is shrewd enough not to provoke it too often.’
Eve couldn’t tell if he knew how disturbed she was by Mr Carter. He should have faded more with every mile they travelled from London, but it was as if she had brought the fogs and gloom of the capital with her to Darkmere and him as well. Try as she might she couldn’t get the wretched man out of her head.
‘I did say it improved when you married Chloe, didn’t I?’ she teased lightly enough.
‘So you did.’
‘I shall risk it and ask again why you hated Lord Christopher for running off with my mother so much then.’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘And you still think me too young to hear the full story, I suppose? To you I’ll always be so; isn’t it about time you realised that I need to know?’
‘I’ll discuss it with you after you wed and can understand the contrary passions of men and women better. The truth is I don’t really want to think about your mother and her last lover at all. If Lord Christopher Hancourt ever thought she would bring him joy, I suppose I ought to pity him, though.’
‘You acquit me of any stain from my mother’s sins, but seem reluctant to give his son the same immunity, Papa.’
‘I never said I was logical about it,’ he said austerely.
Eve almost gave up on the subject to stop that bleak look silvering his eyes whenever he thought of his first unhappy marriage.
‘Hancourt is more of a man than his father was, but I don’t want him near you, love. I know how young men think and feel, I was one myself once upon a time.’
‘I have no intention of encouraging Mr Hancourt as more than a simple acquaintance.’
‘Far from simple, I suspect.’
Eve rolled her eyes at the grey sky over their heads and waited for something more worthy of her father as an excuse. ‘I have no intention of falling in love with the man, or is he still a boy? He can’t be very much older than I am.’
‘You must judge for yourself, but I wish your stepmother had been a little less generous with her hospitality for once.’
‘I’m hardly likely to fall in love with Lord Christopher Hancourt’s son at first sight, so you’re worrying about things that will never happen, which isn’t like you.’
Her father still looked troubled as they rode along the Northern Avenue towards the more workaday side of Darkmere and the stables. ‘I only ever want to do what’s best for you, Eve,’ he said at last.
‘Anyone would think Mr Hancourt was going to ride up the drive on a knightly charger and carry me off across his saddle brow. How astonished the poor man would be if he knew we even considered him as an impassioned suitor for my hand. He’s never even set eyes on me and I don’t inspire that sort of romantic passion in a young man’s heart, thank heavens.’
‘Only because you have never met one who could wake the passion under the careful control you assume in public,’ he said a little too seriously.
‘Don’t worry, Papa, I shall lock myself in the Sea Tower and throw away the key if I begin to harbour even one warm feeling towards Mr Hancourt.’
And once the week or so the Duke and Duchess of Linaire were due to spend here was over, they need never see Mr Hancourt again, Eve decided as her personal groom hurried up to help her out of the saddle and Papa’s attention swung back to his wife.
‘I think it’s sweet the way he fusses over her,’ Verity objected when Eve whispered Chloe might not welcome her husband’s anxiety until she had finished being unwell for the day when they met later. ‘For years she had to be strong and self-sufficient for my sake and she deserves to be doted on by your papa.’
‘She does and I’m so glad she dotes on him as well,’ Eve said. ‘Would I could love and be loved like that,’ she added with a sigh. ‘I’m not the sort to inspire such a grand passion in a man.’
‘Nonsense,’ Verity argued loyally. ‘It just takes longer to win your good opinion, but I am shallow as yonder puddle and don’t think true love is for me.’
Eve suspected Verity’s infatuation with the youngest Louburn brother was responsible for that declaration and the accompanying grimace. It was good that Verity had realised how much danger she was in that night, but Eve didn’t want her to wear a hair shirt.
‘As if Chloe would let you be a careless butterfly even if you were that way inclined. Stop belittling yourself.’
‘I’ve good reason to be wary after I nearly landed us both in the basket that last night in London. Now we’re home and the world fits as it should again, I can’t imagine why it mattered so much to see Rufus that night. It wasn’t as if he was leaving for far-off lands or about to marry someone else; marriage is clearly the last thing on his mind.’
‘I doubt he has very much on that at the best of times, but I expect your parents’ love affair led you to expect something truer and deeper of first love than it can usually bear, Verity. I know your mother was barely half a year older than you are now when she fell fathoms deep in love with your father. You had a very different childhood, though, and Chloe always put your welfare first so you don’t need to escape a lonely childhood and an uncaring father. Captain Revereux adores you and can never wait to get home and spend time with you. Find a decent man to fall in love with and remember your mother and father paid a terrible price for loving so passionately and so young. Even the thought of you suffering like they did makes me feel quite faint.’
‘Please don’t turn into a hysterical female for my sake then, for I can’t have been in love with Rufus Louburn to have forgotten him so quickly and I promise not to imagine myself in love with a handsome face ever again. So stop frowning and come and play with the babies; I swear little James has grown a new tooth since yesterday, so no wonder he was fretful last night.’
Would that logic and determination were strong enough to stop a woman falling in love, whispered the secret Eve, under her good sense and virtuous reputation. Be quiet, the everyday one ordered and hurried after Verity before the reckless creature could come up with a scathing reply.
‘Fine sight, hey?’ the Duke of Linaire asked as the coach stopped so they could wonder at the famous prospect of Darkmere Castle ahead.
‘Indeed,’ Colm replied, ‘caught by the afternoon sun like that it makes me wish I could paint.’
‘Would that I could as well,’ the Duchess observed ruefully.
‘Come now, m’dear, I never came across a lady who could hold a candle to you at watercolour.’
‘I want to paint as I see, not as I can,’ she objected, her gaze sharpening as the sun caressed the famous old fortress and the last rags of autumn leaves left on the noble trees planted to shelter it from the worst of the wind shone russet and gold.
‘We’ve lost her again, m’boy,’ the Duke said with an indulgent look at his wife. The Duchess collected her sketching equipment, then he jumped down to help her out of the coach. ‘I shall tell Farenze you’ll be along when the muse deserts you, my love,’ he added as his wife’s maid joined her with a resigned nod to say she would get her mistress up to the castle before daylight faded completely.
‘Hmm? Yes, that would be as well,’ the Duchess said absently, making rapid pencil strokes in her sketchbook to capture Darkmere with the low winter sun on it and an angry sea and sky behind.
‘I hope Lady Farenze is as tolerant as she seemed in London,’ the Duke said with a last proud look at his Duchess before they went on without her.
‘Since she asked me to come here with you, she must be,’ Colm said ruefully.
‘Nonsense, lad, you have to meet them sooner or later. I suppose we’ll soon find out if her ladyship’s forbearance extends to my bookishness and your aunt’s painting. We rely on you to do the polite, my boy; you do it so much better than we ever could.’
‘Then we had best not unpack too hastily.’
‘Don’t be such a defeatist, lad; you and Farenze have more in common than either of you realise.’
His daughter for one, Colm thought gloomily and doubted Miss Winterley would ever be a bond between them.
Lord and Lady Farenze welcomed the two guests who turned up without a blink. The Viscount even seemed mildly amused that the Duchess of Linaire had absented herself before she could even arrive and Lady Chloe was too good humoured to take offence where none was intended.
‘I have learned to love this wild and glorious place and often wish I could paint it myself,’ she told them when they turned up at her door a duchess short. ‘I lack both skill and talent with watercolour myself and am in awe of those with both. I should love to see your wife at work, your Grace, and promise not to be offended if she would rather not have a spectator. A true artist must be respected.’
‘I am sure my wife will be delighted,’ the Duke said and exchanged a wry glance with Colm at the thought of Barbara’s contempt for would-be artists who only wanted to talk of their own efforts. Polite dribbles of paint on expensive paper, the Duchess dismissed the correct and soulless watercolours that usually caused a young lady to be thought accomplished.
‘I don’t suppose she will, but if I promise not to make silly observations and sit still, maybe she will rescue me from being kept indoors and coddled half to death,’ Lady Farenze said with a militant look for her husband.
‘You may have to clean brushes, sharpen pencils and act artist’s assistant, Lady Farenze,’ Colm warned, as he concluded rumour was right and the lady must be with child again. ‘My aunt never intends to be a tyrant, but forgets everything but the next mix of colour and stroke of her brush once she is at work.’
Chapter Eleven
A whisper of movement on the edge of his senses and Colm saw Miss Winterley pause in the doorway of what looked like a family sitting room to glare at him. For a moment he thought she was going to rip up at him for letting her believe Mr Carter was a real man. He was a real man, Colm decided, in a hot daze at the sight of her so passionately angry he wondered candles didn’t light spontaneously in their sconces all around her. Very real, he discovered, as all the enchantment he’d been trying to argue himself out of for so many miles flooded back. He wanted to step forward and greet her very personally, ask if she’d thought of him as constantly as he did about her and please excuse all his deceptions. They were not alone, though, and she didn’t look in any mood to listen even if they were.
‘Good day, your Grace, welcome to Darkmere,’ she said with genuine warmth. She let it drain away when she turned her unique blue-green eyes on Colm. ‘I suppose you must be Mr Hancourt. How do you do, sir?’ she said, so icily indifferent that the hand he hadn’t even known he was holding out to her fell to his side.
This was the guarded and coldly aloof young woman he had spied from a distance that first night at Derneley House and he wondered if he would ever crack the ice he could almost see forming in the air between them again. Unlikely—she didn’t hate him that night and she certainly looked as if she did now. She might sound cold and look it, but the fury in her eyes was hot and hasty—if there was a vat of boiling oil handy he’d be very warm indeed right now.
‘Miss Winterley,’ he returned with an elegant bow he didn’t know he had in him. Something tender and tentative shrivelled under that Ice Queen stare and he was her parents’ guest after all, even if her father had put stern limits on his hospitality back in London.
‘I hope you had a comfortable journey, your Grace?’ she asked his uncle with a sweet smile.
Colm had to admire her acting, even if the fierce guard she put on her fury made him wonder if he would ever know the real Eve Winterley. Why did he want to? She was Pamela’s daughter and that divided them efficiently as a wall. He had to control his unfortunate sense of the ridiculous as he imagined Miss Winterley building it herself, setting stones and hurrying the masons along lest the barbarian invader come back. It wasn’t funny being her enemy, though, and he saw hurt as well as fury in her turquoise gaze. Nothing could have sobered him more surely, not even Lord Farenze’s hard gaze reminding him of that promise he had made to keep infuriating Miss Winterley. Right now she looked as if she would like him to leave before he’d hardly got over the threshold, so at least his host should be happy.
‘Very comfortable, thank you, my dear,’ his uncle said genially.
‘I’m so glad the Duchess has found something worth painting already,’ she went on greeting his uncle as if Colm didn’t exist. ‘After seeing some of her paintings when I was in London I thought she would enjoy our magnificent scenery.’
Colm wondered if he was invisible and decided Miss Winterley had even better ways of humbling an errant gentleman than that icy glare she treated him to just now. Why had he ever worried about her among the less scrupulous rakes of the ton? She could wither the worst of them with a pointed stare and that air of charmed ignorance that he even existed as she chatted about the landscape.
‘You must be a fine diplomat to have persuaded my wife to let you see her work when you were last in London, Miss Winterley,’ Uncle Horace said absently and Colm followed his gaze to the open door of the library and wondered if he might wander off to inspect it much as his wife vanished into the castle grounds. Serve the infernal woman right if she was left stranded by his bookish uncle before she could trot out her next platitude, he decided disagreeably.
‘My father will tell you I rarely give up until I get what I want, your Grace, but I hope you will ignore him,’ Miss Winterley joked with a fond look at her father and no sign that the Duke and Duchess were unwelcome, so it was probably only him she wished a hundred miles away.
‘Can’t do that, m’dear. Your father might not let me have the run of his library if I’m rude to him,’ the Duke said with the wry smile that made him endearing, despite his limitations as a duke and guest who hated being lionised.
‘So, how does it feel to be yourself again, Mr Hancourt?’ Miss Winterley’s coolly ironic murmur came as they followed her parents and guest of honour upstairs to the rooms the Duke and Duchess had been allotted, before Uncle Horace could plunge into my lord’s library.
‘Very odd, Miss Winterley,’ he answered honestly. ‘I was Carter so long I almost forgot about myself.’
Her sidelong glare told him he’d better not think that was an excuse for deceiving her. ‘Why did you invent him in the first place?’ she asked distantly.
‘Grandsons of dukes don’t serve in the 95th Rifles, Miss Winterley. I would have been out of place.’
‘And the scandal would follow you?’ she challenged as if he was a coward to hide behind that alias so long.
‘Yes, of course. You know as well as I do that it goes everywhere with me,’ he said bleakly.
‘Which is why you clung to Mr Carter after the war was over and he could be safely pensioned off, I suppose?’
She sounded so indifferent they might have been discussing a stranger. Colm hoped the Viscount was listening and approving of the void that now gaped between his least wanted guest and the daughter of the house. Or did he know how much of a challenge that icy façade of hers was to a red-blooded male? Colm was torn between a longing to drag her into the nearest empty room and kiss her until she forgot all about Carter and his sins and everything else and this thorn in his pride that argued he should limp back downstairs and ride away from a place where a man of his birth would never be truly welcome.
‘Not entirely. My uncle wanted me to bring his new purchases safe back from Derneley House and I could hardly go there as my true self, could I?’
‘I doubt it would have been very comfortable, considering who you really are, but Lord Derneley is hardly in a position to argue with your uncle, is he?’