The Wild Wellingham Brothers: High Seas To High Society / One Unashamed Night / One Illicit Night / The Dissolute Duke. Sophia James
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The poorhouse took them.
The place of liars and cheats.
A liar. It was who she had become. If she could find the map, she could fashion a home. Not a grand one, but a for-ever place. A place to stay and grow and be. A place like St Clair. She closed her eyes against the pure thread of desperation that snaked itself around her heart, because she knew that the old house was gone, up in flames, the living embodiment of the McIlverray hatred for her father. And grounded perhaps on a sense of justice, for Beau had promised Karl McIlverray far more than he had ever delivered.
She let out her breath. Beau had promised everyone more than he had ever delivered and she needed to make it right.
Right?
If she hadn’t been so worried, she might have smiled at the thought. Right? Wrong? Good? Bad? She remembered Beau’s interpretation of law and doubted that Asher Wellingham’s would be even remotely similar. Enormous wealth and righteous morals were easy when you were not staring down the barrel of a gun and saying what you thought the bearer would most like to hear.
Lies and deception.
It was all that she was left with as truth withered under the harsher face of reality.
Azziz pulled his blade from the leather sheath at his shin and wiped it with an oiled rag from his pocket. The movement caught her attention.
The sheer danger of it all was no longer as exhilarating as it had once been. Now, instead of seeing the adventure in everything she saw the pitfalls, and an encounter with McIlverray worried her a lot more than she allowed Azziz to see that it did.
Was she growing old?
Twenty-one…twenty-two in six months. Sometimes now she caught herself looking across at other women her age as they walked the streets with husbands and children at their side.
She tried to remember what her own mother had looked like, tried to remember the touch of her hand or the cadence of her voice and came up with nothing.
Nothing. The emptiness of memory caught at her with a surprising melancholy. To distract herself, she began to speak of the entertainment for the following night.
‘There is a party at the Bishop of Kingseat’s that I am indebted to attend. Lady Flora has been generous in her friendship…’ She faltered.
‘Will Carisbrook be there?’
‘I think so.’
‘Miriam said he seemed interested in you. If he should find out even a little—’
‘I know,’ she interrupted Azziz before he went further and was glad when he left the room for the kitchens on the ground floor to find his supper.
At a gathering at the home of the Bishop of Kingseat the following evening, Asher again met Emma Seaton. The result, he suspected, of their encounter at Jack’s ball and the host’s wife’s penchant for matchmaking. If he had liked the Learys less he might have left on some simple pretence, but George had been a good friend to his father and Flora was a woman of uncommon sensitivity.
Today, as Flora Leary turned to attend to a question another guest had asked of her, Emma Seaton looked rather nervous. Asher saw that the lace on the top of one of her gloves had been badly mended and that the gown she wore was at least a size too big. The colour was odd too. Off-brown and faded in patches. None of this seemed to faze her, though, and her confidence in a room full of well-dressed ladies was endearing. The bruise on her cheek was barely visible today.
‘Lady Emma. You look well.’
‘Thank you, your Grace.’ Folding down the sleeve of her gown to cover the torn lace, she took a sip of the orgeat she was drinking. ‘I was certain that Lady Flora had mentioned just a small gathering?’
He looked up. Only forty or fifty people milled around the salon.
‘At Falder a little supper would constitute thrice this number,’ he remarked and she coloured. But it was not embarrassment that he saw in her eyes when she met his glance, but irritation.
Sea blue.
Her eyes were turquoise and outlined with a clear sea blue. Here in the light it was easy to see today that which he had missed yesterday.
‘My family was a quiet and modest one. My father was religious, you see. Very religious. And time spent in the company of others was time that he could not spend in prayer.’
‘A devout man, then?’
She nodded and fiddled with the fan she held. ‘With an equally devout family.’
‘You are Catholic?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Catholic? The persuasion of your beliefs?’
‘Oh, indeed.’
‘And which church do you attend in London?’
The fan dropped out of her hands and onto the floor, surprising them both. As he leaned down to fetch it for her, she did the same and her bodice dipped in the middle.
She wore nothing beneath. No stays. No chemise. No bindings. Two beautifully formed breasts topped with rosy nipples fell into his sight and were gone again as she righted herself.
He felt his body jolt in a way he had not felt for years and shifted his position to better accommodate the hardening between his thighs. God, he was at the house of a bishop and the woman next to him was completely naked under her ill-fitting dress. He could barely believe it. Heat and lust made the cravat he wore feel tight and he was annoyed when Charlotte Withers, a woman whose company he had once enjoyed, came over to him.
‘It has been an age, your Grace, since I have seen you in London. I had heard that you were here and I suppose on reflection you were down for Henshaws’ ball. The evening before last, was it not, and all the gossip of how the Duke of Carisbrook was cajoled into falling for the wiles of a green and fainting country miss.’
‘Not a faint, but a fall,’ he returned and moved forward, pleased to see a blush mark Charlotte’s cheeks when she saw who stood next to him.
‘Lady Emma! I did not realise you were here and I apologise for any hurt you may have suffered from my careless remarks. Are you quite recovered from your mishap?’
‘I am and I thank you for your concern.’ Emma Seaton’s reply contained no little amount of irony.
‘Your accent eludes me,’ Charlotte remarked as she recovered her equilibrium. ‘Where exactly are you from?’
‘My mother was French.’
Asher frowned. She had answered another question without telling anyone anything.
‘So it is your father who is related to the Countess of Haversham?
‘Was. He died last year from the influenza. A wicked case it was, too, according to the doctor; it took him a long time to succumb to the effects of the infection. One moment hot and the next cold. Why, I pray nightly to the Lord above that I should not see another soul die in such a way.’
‘Yes. Quite.’ Charlotte looked away to the riper pickings of Percy Davies who had come to her other side and Asher, while silently applauding Emma Seaton’s skilful evasion, decided to up the stakes a little.
‘Charlotte Withers is a notorious gossip and an inveterate meddler. If you were to entrust any secrets to her I am certain that they should be all over town by the morning.’
As the colour drained out of Emerald’s cheeks, the smile he gave her was guarded.
Could he be warning her? For just a second she wanted to fold her fingers around his and pretend that he offered protection. Here. In London, where