A Most Unconventional Courtship. Louise Allen
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Alessa untied her flat straw hat and hung it behind the door before reaching for her apron.
‘I wish you would call me Chance.’ Dark brown eyes watched her, a smile lurking behind apparent seriousness.
You, my lord, are a charmer and you know it. I should refuse. ‘Very well, Chance.’ She reached behind her to tie the apron strings and saw his glance flick to her breasts as the movement strained them against her embroidered lawn shirt. The glance was momentary and not accompanied by the knowing leer that she had come to expect from so many of the Englishmen who had passed through the town in the wake of the French retreat. She poured a little of the heavily resinated red wine from the north of the island into two beakers, watered both generously, then passed him one. ‘You were explaining how the warm evening made you careless?’
He took the beaker with a murmur of thanks and sipped. To her secret amusement his eyebrows shot up as he tasted it, but he made no comment. His second sip was far more circumspect. ‘I was behaving like a tourist,’he admitted. ‘A picturesque scene, friendly, smiling faces, intriguing little streets, a balmy evening made for strolling, the stars like diamonds on black velvet. Who could have expected danger?’
Alessa raised a quizzical eyebrow and was rewarded by a self-mocking grin.
‘Any idiot, of course, as you are obviously too polite to remind me. If it had been Marseilles or Naples, I would have been on my guard. As it was, I took a risk and paid for it, but not as much as I deserved, thanks to you.’
Alessa hefted the cauldron on to the fire and poured in water. Then she began to lift the individual items from the soaking pails, checking each for marks that would require further treatment. ‘Is your nickname because you take risks? Or gamble, perhaps?’
‘Chance?’ He smiled. ‘No, just a convenient shortening from when I was a child. I am really quite painfully respectable and sensible.’
Alessa felt her eyebrows rising again and hastily straightened her face. He was too good to be true: handsome, nice to children and respectable to boot.
‘I can see you do not believe me.’
‘If that is so, you most certainly do not fit into the mould of most of the English gentlemen of my experience.’ Alessa reached down a bottle of liquefied soap and measured some out into the cauldron. He was very easy to talk to. ‘No gambling?’
‘Well, merely to be sociable.’ That sounded almost convincing.
‘No carousing late into the night?’
‘I do not carouse, merely enjoy fine wines and spirits in moderation.’ That was positively sanctimonious, if difficult to believe.
‘No ladies of the night, glamorous mistresses, orgies?’ Aha, that had produced a faint flush of colour on Chance’s admirably sculpted cheekbones.
‘Absolutely no orgies.’
Alessa shot him a slanting look, but did not comment. After all, one did not expect a man to be a saint—or one would be severely disappointed for most, if not all, of the time, in her opinion. A gentleman who did not squander all his money at play, drink himself into a stupor and pursue the female servants with lecherous intent was, as Chance said, positively respectable.
Was he also very conventional? He was standing up surprisingly well to her frank interrogation. What would he make of her story, if she were rash enough to tell him? She took a paring knife and began to flake off slivers from a block of greenish-grey olive oil soap; the last bottle she had prepared was almost empty.
‘Is there nothing useful I can do? I cannot feel comfortable lying here while you are working so hard.’
Alessa shook her head, then realised that he might as well carry on with the soap so that she could be dealing with the more soiled items while the water heated. ‘Thank you. Perhaps you can do this.’ She perched on the edge of the couch and handed Chance a bowl, the knife and the soap. ‘I need fine slivers so it will dissolve well in water, then I bottle it up concentrated and use it with the washing. It is better with the fine fabrics than scrubbing the soap directly into them.’ She realised she was explaining, as though to the children. ‘I am sorry, you could not possibly want to know all that. I get into the habit of teaching.’
He took the knife and began to whittle at the block. ‘Like this?’
‘Perfect.’ She smiled stiffly at him, suddenly self-conscious at their close proximity. She could feel the firm length of his thigh against her hip and made rather a business of standing up and twitching the cover straight. It did not help that she knew precisely what lay under that blanket.
He was so approachable that it was almost like chatting with Fred Court, or Spiro the baker, and she had fallen into the Greek habit of openly expressed curiosity about strangers. Her neighbours would think nothing of a close interrogation about family, occupation, views, interests and wealth, but she must not allow herself to fall into the trap of undue familiarity with someone from the Lord High Commissioner’s circles.
As she massaged soap directly into the dirty marks on Chance’s stockings, Alessa reflected that she had allowed herself to swing from irritable suspicion to liking, and, if she was honest, attraction, in the space of barely twelve hours. And all because of a handsome profile, a pair of thoughtful brown eyes and an open manner. Careful, she admonished herself, tossing the stockings into the cauldron, this man is serious temptation.
It did not matter in the least that a man in his position was obviously not going to be interested in a laundress for anything other than dalliance. Her instincts told her he would not take advantage of her in that way; she was quite safe from Lord Blakeney. But was she safe from herself? She needed to guard her heart as carefully as she hoarded her money, if she were to remain strong and single-minded for herself and the children.
They worked in companionable silence. As the bowl of shavings grew fuller and the items of clothing followed each other into the hot water, Alessa pushed the damp hair back from her forehead and forgot to worry about her involuntary guest.
The church clock striking eleven brought her back to herself. She straightened up and looked across at Chance. There was a full bowl of soap shavings on the floor beside him and he was intently whittling the remains of the soap into some kind of animal. He looked up, caught her eye and grinned. ‘Pathetic, is it not?’
Alessa scrutinised the stunted creature, called on all her tact learned from praising juvenile attempts at art, and said encouragingly, ‘It is a very nice pig.’ Probably it should have one more leg, but one should not be over-critical.
‘Thank you. Honesty, however, leads me to confess it is supposed to be a horse.’
‘Oh, dear!’ His rueful laughter was infectious and Alessa was still chuckling as she pulled out the screen from the wall and arranged it around the couch. ‘I am expecting…clients. Your presence might embarrass them. Would you mind…?’
‘Pretending I am not here? No, not at all.’
Alessa smiled her gratitude and hurried to set the bedroom to rights. It had only just occurred to her that, as the couch which she normally used was occupied, she would have to retreat to the rather more intimate setting of the bedroom. All her visitors would be known to her, but even so, it felt like an intrusion, and she wanted to make certain no personal items were visible.
Chance lay back against the pillows, tried to get comfortable and contemplated taking a nap. That felt like a good idea—unless he snored, which would most certainly draw attention to his presence. Presumably Alessa was expecting ladies with intimate items of apparel for laundering, or perhaps she did dressmaking alterations. A strange man would most definitely not be welcome in the midst of that feminine activity.
No one had ever complained about him snoring; perhaps he could risk dropping off. The knock at the door cut across that train of thought and he listened to Alessa’s hurrying feet as she went to open it.
‘Kalíméra, Alessa.’
‘Kalíméra,