A Less Than Perfect Lady

Thanks to Bevis Alstone’s decline and fall, it didn’t take long for his son to establish himself as a shady dealer in whatever came his way, once he had traced the two rogues who had corrupted or murdered his crew and stolen his cargo. After a day spent finagling customers and suppliers out of as much as he could get, he usually spent the evening drinking and dicing in one of the lowest dives on the docks while watching and waiting. At least the man he had drunk with that night had almost played fair, which was all a half-honest man could ask after all.

‘Gen’lmen…’ a voice rose over the hubbub in the stinking tavern ‘…got a proposition for you.’

Seeing who was making it, the customers went back to gaming, drinking and whoring with a contemptuous shrug and a snarled curse or two. Kit’s gaze lingered thoughtfully on the ravaged figure at the door that must lead upstairs. The man’s face, under that unkempt golden beard, must have been handsome before drink and dissipation put their stamp on him, and his voice had the polished edge of a gentleman, even if the rest of him fell well short of the mark. A man with nothing to lose, he deduced, and wondered if he was on to a lead after all.

‘Last time ’e wanted to ’awk a goldmine,’ his fellow gambler told Kit with a dismissive shrug. ‘Told ’im to take it up to Clifton where there’s flats a-plenty to catch.’

Kit’s well-honed instincts told him there was something odd about that particular drunkard. Business and pleasure carried on around him, but when the sot reappeared, the woman at his side took Kit’s breath away, and stopped the clamour in the tavern between one second and the next.

Smoky lamplight highlighted a heavy mass of silky hair that was neither gold, brown nor red, but a rich mix of all three as it lay loose on her shoulders and framed a face made for a far better setting—Olympus, perhaps? Kit blinked and tried to believe rum and lust were riding him, but when he opened his eyes the goddess was still there, looking back at him as eagerly as he was staring at her.

He might have been flattered, if not for something strange in that lapis-lazuli gaze of hers that part of him wanted to lose himself in and not count the cost. They would be bewitching he decided, even if the rest of her didn’t match their vivid glory. Yet half-closed eyelids and velvety black pupils woke him from a daydream, and told him she didn’t see him for the narcotic ruling her. Apparently his Venus of the dockyards was far from untouched by the corruption around her after all.

‘Drugged to stop ’er runnin’, poor soul,’ the barmaid murmured, as she placed another glass of rum on the table beside him.

Did she think he’d pay well for a harlot fresh to her trade and thus keep the irascible landlady happy for once? Or was that simple pity for whatever indignity his goddess was about to suffer? He’d been a cynic practically since he learned to talk, but something in Venus’s demeanour told him not so long ago she had been more innocent than he had ever been in his life.

‘Tol’ you I had a prop’sition,’ the man slurred out with unstoppable determination. ‘Wife sale,’ he concluded triumphantly. ‘That’s how you peasants do it, don’ see why it won’ work for me.’

Luckily for him, too much attention was on the woman at his side for him to suffer for those reckless words, at least for now.

‘C’mon, gen’lmen, what am I bid? Ah,’ he said owlishly, his finger just hitting the side of his nose, ‘need to see more of the goods, eh?’

The girl stared serenely at Kit as if the sight of him negated the avid eyes and eagerly licked lips around her. Then her husband tore her high-necked gown from neck to navel, revealing her snowy breasts, rising proud above her chemise, and she looked for a moment as if reality was about to descend.

Kit’s hands tightened involuntarily into fists even now as he thought of the casual way that miserable drunkard had torn even that fragile protection aside to expose more than any woman should have to in company. Yet at the time Kit’s gaze had clung hungrily to her coral-peaked nipples despite his fury, and his loins had tightened viciously. He might have been filled with revulsion by the whole sordid business, but he had still been racked with such lust he became almost a stranger to himself. Unsure if he was more furious with himself for behaving like an over-excited lout, or her for being the siren he wanted above all others, he was still in thrall to Venus.

He had reminded himself that he was a successful man now, and when he wanted a woman he kept a willing one in luxury. Yet he met the densely blue eyes of his goddess and nearly fell headlong into her blurred reality. When her gaze faltered she had looked very young all of a sudden. He watched her sway and correct herself to stand as far away from the sot at her side as she could with his cruel fingers biting into her arm like fetters.

When Kit looked again, he decided he must have been wrong about her age after all, for her fathomless eyes were full of dazed sensuality as they met his. He felt heat shoot through him. The bidding was up to ten pounds when his brain finally persuaded his senses to pay attention and he knew that, whatever she was, he was going to have her tonight and that was that. No other man deserved her, and certainly none present tonight were capable of seeing she had a seduction fit for a goddess.

‘That’s giving her away. Fine-looking woman, even if has go’ tongue like an asp,’ the vendor claimed rather foolishly, but his audience scarcely heard him.

‘Twelve,’ an eager young tar shouted.

‘Twenty!’ the ship’s master Kit had been pursuing all week offered, and greedily feasted his eyes on mysteries only Kit should be allowed to see.

The rating fell back, disappointment written all over his tanned young face.

‘Thirty!’ Kit heard himself shout above the din.

The room went silent as a new tension filled the air. Kit knew he had been right in thinking this was the hideaway of at least one of the rogues he was after. It obviously took a brave man, or a fool, to challenge him here. He was certainly the latter, he decided wryly, as weeks of careful work went begging for the sake of a bought woman he intended having in his bed for many nights to come.

‘Any more f’r any more,’ her contemptible keeper bawled cheerfully.

‘Fifty,’ the master snapped, and Kit guessed he had already spent most of his ill-gotten gains after murdering half Kit’s crew and suborning the rest.

‘Sixty guineas,’ he countered quietly and his rival’s shoulders slumped, until he remembered how to lie again.

‘Seventy!’

‘If you got that much gelt you’ll pay yer shot fust, Toby Rigg,’ the landlady bawled from her vast chair by the fire. ‘Pay me what’s owed afore you bids for my drabs, or don’t expect me to ’ide you next time Lloyds men come arter you.’

‘Shut your loose mouth, you’ll be paid when I’m good and ready.’

‘You’ll’ and over me money now or soon wish as you ’ad,’ the woman rapped out implacably and her three burly sons gathered around her to discourage any counter-threats he might care to make.

‘You’ll ’ave it ten times over, when I gets my proper share.’

‘That fine gentleman you sets such store by is long gone, my lad, or I’m a Chinese; which I ain’t nor never will be. So we’ll take them seventy yellow boys on account, eh, m’lads?’

‘He’s coming back, I tell thee, and I’ll be a rich man when ’e does.’

‘You’m a damn fool, and I wants me money,’ the lady of the house informed him implacably.

‘Sold to the pirate captain!’ the goddess husked.

Taking advantage of the startled silence, his friend the barmaid pushed the goddess toward him.

‘Got it on you, Captain?’ she asked saucily.

Trying to resist the sensuous appeal of warm and curvaceous woman as the goddess snuggled into his arms and instinctively hid her nakedness against his broad chest, Kit decided it was time they got out fast. Sooner or later the inevitable brawl would break out, and even a man of his background would be helpless to protect her from random violence.

‘I’ll split the twenty I have got with you if you get us out of here with a whole skin. The rest when we get back to my ship.’

‘Ten guineas now?’ she bargained, and casually clouted an over-eager customer with a pewter plate.

Kit handed her his purse, certain he would shortly regret it. Of course he had wriggled out of far tighter spots, but not encumbered by a half-conscious goddess.

‘Here’s for you, lads,’ the wench shouted and threw a couple of gold pieces and all the silver high in the air so that it scattered round the room.

As fighting broke out, she grabbed the swaying Venus by her other arm and towed her away from the wife-seller who was now striving vainly against the surging crowd. Shouldering open the one stout door in the place, Kit gasped in air that might have seemed rank if he hadn’t just spent hours in a stinking tavern.

The cooler air felled his goddess like a hammer blow. Cursing bitterly, and not sure if he was more furious with her or himself, he swung her over his shoulder and started to run. He stood little chance of avoiding pursuit, so he had no choice but to run for his ship when the door behind them opened so abruptly Kit was surprised the bang didn’t shake the wretched place apart.

‘Run to the Ellen May,’ he gasped to the tavern wench.

The so-called husband was straw in the wind, but Kit’s rival in the bidding was a hardy rogue. Burdened with a drugged woman, Kit knew he would need a wonder to avoid a fearsome beating, especially when his tavern wench melted into the night. Nobody was more shocked than Kit when a rich contralto voice bellowed out, ‘Ahoy there, Ellen May!’ at the top of a very healthy pair of lungs. ‘Help us, oh, God help us!’ she managed in an ever-weakening voice.

‘Well done, Venus,’ he gasped

At the very least she had won them a few seconds’ grace as his pursuers tried to remember where and what the Ellen May might be. Kit took advantage of everyone to spurt towards the sturdy sloop, but he knew he wouldn’t do it when taverns along the dock emptied and their patrons joined in for the thrill of the chase. He had betrayed his lost crew and now would very likely be torn to shreds while his dockside Venus fell victim to the mob.

Then came the relentless beat of a drum and regular treads on the cobbles, a disciplined body of men approaching at a sort of running march and the warning cry, ‘The Press! The stinking Press!’ spread along the waterfront.

The dock emptied even faster than it had filled and Kit was left panting and spent, helpless to defend himself or the beauty in his arms. Years at sea loomed ahead of him, and heaven knew what fate his Venus would meet at the press gangs’ brutal hands. It wasn’t the hard work and indignity, he decided, but the loss of all he had fought so hard to make from nothing that galled him. His blue-blooded relatives would be proved right and Christopher Alstone would come to nothing, just like his father and grandfather before him.

‘Damned high-nosed Alstones,’ he rasped as he sank to his knees on the cobbles, and his fair burden stirred across his broad shoulders and moaned in what sounded like despair, ‘whole pack of them can rot in hell!’

‘Already there,’ he thought he heard her murmur.

Then Venus had somehow found the strength to stand and was swaying uncertainly on her own two feet when the tavern wench appeared out of the shadows and tugged at her hand again. For a moment they sketched a pantomime of urgency and reluctance as the half-naked beauty clung to his shoulder, and then she let go and was gone just as if she had never been. Winded and shocked as any silly beau out on the strut in the wrong place at the wrong time, Kit glared into the darkness and saw nothing but inky shadows and silent menace. She had left him to the mercies of the press-gang!

The memory stung anew as he came back to the present. She couldn’t have known his ship’s master had made as much noise and commotion as he could and fooled the crowd into fleeing from him and his crew. Somehow it still stung that he had rescued his Venus from an appalling fate and then she had blithely left him to his fate without a backward look. Then there was the fact that it had taken him so long to forget the wretched female the first time round, and now he would have to set himself to doing it all over again.

When he had steeled himself to do his duty as host and welcome his latest cousin back to the fold, he had been in danger of letting Venus fell him twice as he was transported back to that filthy dock, on his knees and almost in despair. Instead of the hoyden he had expected Mrs Miranda Braxton to be, given her fabled elopement and disgrace, he had looked down and seen his tavern goddess instead. He had even managed to convince himself he must be mistaken, until the sight of the so-called tavern wench standing bold as brass beside her, daring him to say he knew her, scotched that hope for ever.

The open and friendly smile that had curved Mrs Miranda Braxton’s lush mouth upward had almost charmed him all over again, until fury roared through him like a tornado. Then an image of the composed and lovely widow superimposed itself over that of his wild young Venus, with her heavy eyes and sensual smile, and desire had torn through him in a merciless fever. How he got through the next few minutes without either strangling the wretched female, or throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her off to the lofty luxury of his bedchamber, he couldn’t say even now.

Staring grimly into the glowing fire, Kit unconsciously tightened his grip on the brandy glass until the fine glass snapped and blood and spirit mingled when he opened his hand at last. So much for the fine control he had once prided himself on. Now all he had to do was to overcome this need to seize the witch and carry her off to some isolated lair where no one else would find them and he might be free of her spell at long last.

Even as he considered forgetting her, his lips curled into a sensual smile as he fantasised about Mrs Miranda Braxton, lying sated and sleepy-eyed in his bed. If he couldn’t force oblivion on his raging desire for her, he would see her so, he vowed to himself. Then he rang the bell to confess at least some of his folly and have his wound fussed over with due ceremony before the blood ruined the carpet. Oh, yes, he decided while he was waiting for the inevitable fuss to die down, before she left Wychwood the incomparable Miranda would be emphatically his and then he could set about learning to forget her once and for all.

Only denial had made her memory so potent that every woman he bedded was measured against an impossible standard of beauty. Well, this time his revenge would be sweet and very complete and Miranda Alstone would be his mistress before she left Wychwood. He had seen something of his own driven desire in her blue gaze before she veiled it and left the room with such offended dignity that he could not but admire her anew. The lovely Miranda did not want to want him, but she couldn’t quite help herself and eventually that desire would seal her fate.

That kiss should be a warning to him to let her go, for it had rocked his certainties and demolished all his defences. He should leave her strictly alone, but the yearning to feel her writhe in ecstasy beneath him all night long was powerful, and how the devil could he let her go back to her isolated Welsh valley once he had experienced such a luxury of the senses?

He decided Kit Stone was as big an idiot now as he had been that night he first cursed her loss so harshly. Then he had been one huge ache of frustrated passion, but this time he wouldn’t burn alone. Their first kiss had told him it wouldn’t take much persuasion to tip Mrs Miranda Braxton from cool sceptic into warm and very willing lover and he longed for that abandoned little sensualist as if he had only lost her yesterday, instead of five years ago.

There was a bright fire burning in the grate of Miranda’s old room and Leah was waiting with the promised tea. For one dangerous moment Miranda felt as if she was truly home. Then, remembering how effectively his new lordship dealt with such unworthy souls as herself, she shivered and wondered for a wistful, wasted moment what it might be like inside the magic circle she knew by instinct he would cast about those he loved.

‘I thought you were in a great hurry to put off your travelling attire,’ her maid chided, before falling significantly silent.

Surely Leah didn’t think she had lingered below out of some insane desire to cultivate the new earl’s interest?

‘I am,’ she insisted calmly and eased off her half-boots with a sigh of relief to prove it. Rubbing her feet to get some warmth back into them, she sank down in front of the fire and wriggled her cold toes in the welcome heat.

‘Ladies don’t sit on the floor,’ Leah rebuked mildly, before saying with apparent carelessness, ‘His new lordship’s a very handsome gentleman, don’t you think?’

‘If you admire that kind of dark, damn-your-eyes looks.’

‘As any sane female would.’

‘Then you’d better write me off as insane,’ Miranda told her firmly, recognising the calculation in her friend’s eyes, ‘his lordship will need to work a little harder to win my appreciation.’

‘Maybe,’ murmured Leah in an infuriatingly smug undertone and Miranda only just suppressed the urge to throw something at her.

‘Having behaved madly once over a handsome face, I have no plans to repeat the mistake,’ she said lightly instead, ‘and if I ever take another husband, I intend to make a dear friend of him first.’

‘That sounds a shrewd enough notion.’

‘Well, so it is.’

‘And awful dull, Miss Miranda.’

Part of her wanted to agree, but the Miranda of recent years overrode it, and wondered if there was a man alive who could persuade her to take another tilt at matrimony. Of course his lordship had no such honourable intent, or he wouldn’t have fallen on her like a hungry wolf. Even the thought of being more than friends with Christopher Alstone sent such a shudder down her spine that it convulsed her whole being and left her fighting a heady sense of promise. Experience told her it was a mirage, yet still her lips throbbed at the memory of his wicked mouth teasing and demanding there.

She moved a little closer to the fire and rubbed her feet in the hope that the movement would disguise her reaction to the very thought of being intimate with so much untamed masculinity from her shrewd maid.

‘Much depends on one’s expectations, I suppose, but have you found out all that’s happened since we left yet?’ she asked.

‘Even I need more than half an hour for that, Miss Miranda.’

‘You must be more tired than I thought,’ she said lightly, then insisted Leah went downstairs and took tea with the other upper servants in the housekeeper’s room. ‘For you’ll be busy enough later on and might as well indulge in a good gossip while you can.’

Protesting that she never gossiped, Leah went all the same and Miranda settled in the armchair by the fire with a sigh of relief. Obviously she was deeply attracted to the new earl, whether she liked it or not, and she was fairly sure that she didn’t. All hope of finding happiness with a man like him had died the night she eloped with Nevin, for she would never be his mistress and he would never ask her to be anything more. Heaven knew she had received enough dishonourable offers over the last few years to steel herself against another one, but this time, unfortunately, she would be fighting herself as well as the importunate gentleman in question.

Chapter Four

At least Miranda had had no illusions that there would be a true welcome awaiting her in the home of her ancestors when she set out on the long journey from Nightingale House, so she really shouldn’t be disappointed. Yet nothing could have prepared her for meeting the new Lord Carnwood, and suddenly she longed for her little sisters with a familiar pain she knew could never be soothed. Although she knew in her heart they were better off away from her, and from Wychwood at such a time, they were the only living Alstones she cared a snap of her fingers for.

Trying to think of them instead of a certain darkly handsome nobleman, she attempted to rest after that tedious journey in preparation for the ordeal dinner would certainly be. Every time she closed her eyes, images of a certain arrogantly handsome nobleman imprinted itself on her mind. All in all, it was a relief when Leah came back to begin the tedious task of dressing her mistress for a formal dinner.

‘His lordship’s expecting the lawyer at any minute and Mr Coppice was instructed to tell everyone not to stand on ceremony. Her ladyship will have something to say about that, I dare say,’ Leah observed as she set about the task of subduing Miranda’s hair to some sort of order.

‘The sky will fall before my aunt allows her standards to drop,’ Miranda replied wry as the fiery mass stubbornly crackled and curled even under Leah’s skilled fingers.

‘Good, I’m not having that high-nosed maid of Miss Celia’s looking down her nose as if I’m incapable of turning you out properly.’

With a militant expression Leah finally wound her mistress’s hair into a neat chignon and secured it firmly, allowing only one or two curls to escape and kiss her brow. Then she triumphantly produced the beautifully pressed lilac silk gown that Miranda’s godmother had insisted on having made up by her London dressmaker when Miranda put off her blacks and went into half-mourning for a man who had ignored her for the last five years of his life.

After Leah had gone to so much trouble to iron it, she could hardly refuse to wear the cunningly cut gown, but once it was on Miranda was beset by doubts. For some reason Lady Rhys would never be persuaded it was better for her goddaughter to dress quietly and do nothing to attract undue attention to herself, and this time she had clearly been determined on the opposite effect.

‘Nonsense,’ Lady Rhys had said brusquely when Miranda protested the gown clung a little too lovingly to her curves. ‘Hiding a fine figure and a lovely face like yours behind black crepe and that wretched cap is nigh on criminal. Kindly consider us poor souls who have to look at you for a change.’

Miranda cautiously surveyed the end result in the full-length pier glass she had once vainly insisted on owning, so she could survey her younger self with misplaced complacency. She froze as she recalled what a vain fool she had once been. Reminding herself stalwartly that a great deal of water had flowed under the bridge since then, she turned away to pick up the dark shawl she would surely need in Wychwood’s lofty hallways.

‘I look very fine,’ she admitted flatly. Leah just sighed and stood back to critically survey her mistress.

‘That you do. Time you put some flesh on your bones, though. The gowns you left behind here would go round you twice.’

‘You don’t mean they’re still here?’

‘In the clothes press, just as if you left yesterday. I don’t know how I am supposed to fit all your current ones in. Not that you have half enough of them to clothe a lady of fashion.’

‘Just as well I am not such a delicately useless article, then,’ Miranda replied stalwartly, but she found the notion that her grandfather had ordered her room kept as she left it less comforting than she would have expected.

So much love had been wasted in stubborn pride on both sides that she felt tears threaten, before she reminded herself she could not afford to indulge in sentiment. She had her aunt and cousin and a far more significant foe to outface in his new lordship before she could even think of doing that.

‘Do with my old gowns as you think best, Leah,’ she ordered. ‘I’m a different person from the one I was then, as well as a thinner one.’

‘I could take them in for you—fashions haven’t changed that much,’ Leah offered, in the teeth of her own interests. After all, discarded gowns were usually regarded as ladies’ maids’ perks.