Regency Rumours: A Scandalous Mistress / Dishonour and Desire

‘Tomorrow evening.’

‘I cannot go…no, I cannot! Your parents will be there.’

‘They won’t. They’re attending a court function in London. Only my sister’s family and friends will be there, and Miss Chester will be among people of her own age. My sister would particularly like to meet you after Miss Chester told her about you.’

For the first time since leaving the workhouse, Amelie’s eyes met his, holding them steadily, and Nick knew she was saying what she could not bring herself to speak, that she would be on show as his newest conquest, paraded, compared, discussed and judged, that this was a role she had no idea how to fulfil, nor did she have the aptitude for it.

‘We shall be among friends. They will congratulate us, that’s all.’

‘Your sister is not like the Marchioness, then?’ She had mused, on the way home, about the sewing group run by the mother and daughter who made clothes for those unfortunates so heartily disapproved of by at least one of them. There was nothing so strange, she had told herself, as folk.

‘Not at all. You will like each other, I know it. They all will.’

‘And the other invitation?’

‘Equally pleasant. A soirée at Ham House. Professional musicians. I think you’ll enjoy it. Interesting people, artists, poets, writers too.’

‘When?’

‘The day after tomorrow,’

‘And Caterina?’

‘Of course, that’s why I shall accept, so that she can meet the best people. She’ll be a sensation.’

Again, there was a long silent exchange of messages behind the eyes that said it was more likely to be she who would be the sensation, that she was the one he wanted to flaunt like a trophy. He sensed the struggle in her, the excitement of being desired by a man, the conflict of needs, her reluctance to adapt to her new role and her fear of passing control of her life to a complete stranger. To him.

‘I don’t understand you,’ she said at last. ‘Why are you doing this? There must be easier ways of getting a woman to partner you.’

‘A woman like you, my lady? I think not. Perhaps I’ve had it all my own way till now. Perhaps I need to work harder at it. Perhaps my other relationships were so brief because there was no incentive to make them last. I’ve certainly never offered to take a seventeen-year-old in tow before.’

‘Then I should be flattered, my lord, as well as grateful.’

‘I don’t know about that. But I do know one thing—that no man who sees you with me will be surprised by my haste and, although they may wonder how I managed it, I shall be the envy of them all. If that comes near to answering my question about why I’m keeping a hold on you, then so be it. Call it pride, if you will. A search for the best and pride in having found a way to hold it.’

She had stood with head bowed and cheeks flushed as his somehow left-handed tributes were delivered quietly across the elegant saloon, their sincerity all the more believable for their unexpectedness.

‘Captured, or bought?’ she whispered, testing him. ‘It doesn’t seem to me that you have had too exhausting a time of it in this search and capture. I seem to think it all fell into your lap rather easily, my lord.’

His stroll towards her was deceptively languid, but his hands caught her in a grip that bit through her sleeves. ‘I was not referring to the pursuit, my lady, as you well know, but to the holding of the prize. And I intend to keep you by my side for the foreseeable future. Make no mistake about it.’

‘Until all the skeletons in my cupboard are let loose upon the world. That’s what you mean, of course.’

His eyes searched lazily over her features. ‘You are telling me something, I believe. More skeletons? Hurst? Was he your lover?’

In a sudden blaze of anger barely hidden beneath the surface, she squirmed in his hold. ‘I might have known you’d not believe me,’ she said angrily. ‘Let me spell it out for you. I have never had a lover. There, now take it or leave it.’

‘Very well. So since we’re spelling things out, hear this. With or without skeletons, I want you in my bed and at my board, and the sooner we put that to the test the better it will be for both of us. And if you had it in mind to delay the pleasure, think again. I agreed to take it slowly, but I am not inclined to wait for the first frosts of winter.’

The words and the cynical use of the term ‘pleasure’ seemed to find no warm response in her eyes, for his expression was anything but lover-like. ‘You’re squeezing my arms,’ she whispered.

‘Forgive me.’ Taking one of the hands that moved up to comfort the crushed velvet, he raised it to his lips, palm upwards, to place there the lightest of kisses and to close her fingers over it. ‘I do not mean to shock you, Amelie. Are you shocked?’

‘Today,’ she said, ‘you have dispelled a trouble from my mind that has been with me since I arrived here. That is a great relief to me, my lord. If only my other concerns could be dealt with so efficiently. What is the hearing of a few down-to-earth manly intentions compared to that? No, I am not shocked, but nor am I prepared to gallop up to your bed so that you can notch up the score on your side of the board. I never wanted to be in your debt, I did not choose the stakes, and I won’t pay out what is still mine just because you are not inclined to wait. I’m sorry, my lord, but you may as well know how it is.’

‘Brava, my beauty,’ he said, smiling. ‘I would have thought you in very queer stirrups if you’d not fought back on that one. Well done.’

‘Tomorrow,’ she said, moving away from his laughing eyes, ‘it will be evening dress, I take it?’ Unthinking, she placed a cool hand to her cheeks.

‘Yes, but not too grand. We shall bring the coach round at five. My sister dines quite late these days.’

Amelie nodded, all replies used up.

Taking his gloves from the table, he came back to her and lifted her chin with one finger, touching her lips with his in a soft salute. ‘Go up and take a rest, my lady,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a rough day.’

She did not, of course, take a rest and, even if she had, she would not have been able to prevent so many conflicting thoughts from tangling into the most complex of knots. Apart from that, those heartrending moments of melting bliss when she had held the infant in her arms had left such a deep and aching void inside her that she felt drained and quite unable to pull herself back into shape. Lord Elyot had said he understood, but no one could share that all-consuming blinding passion to bear a child except those women like her whose need had never been satisfied. Was it not ironic, she asked herself, that the circumstance in which that need might now be filled was the very problem she had striven so hard to rectify? She would never find herself in the workhouse, but nor had he put her mind to rest about his share in the responsibility, should there be one, of accepting a fatherless child.

Throughout the mantua-maker’s visit, the enormity of what she had agreed continued to disturb her, and it was Caterina who conducted the dress fitting with confidence, despite the woman’s grumbling apologies for the continued absence of her young assistant and the inevitable lateness of the new gowns. When questioned about Millie’s illness, the mantua-maker had to admit that she had not had time to make enquires about her.

Later that afternoon, the appearance of the recovered but pale Millie disturbed Amelie’s conscience less than it might have done, her newest act of charity far outweighing the furtive transfer from the girl’s former employer to a bedroom of her own, warm clothes, good food and sensible hours of work. The grateful lass was speechless at the offer of six guineas a year, and the unfamiliar smiles she received from Mrs Braithwaite quite overcame her. In lieu of words, she kissed Amelie’s hands.

Millie was familiar with the new gowns that had just arrived, and it was soon clear that her knowledge of how they should be worn as well as how they had been constructed would make her an ideal dresser for Caterina. After a bath, a change of clothing and some food, Millie was suggesting adjustments like a true professional, trying out combinations of ribbons, draping lace and fur while the names of hairstyles tripped off her tongue and wove through her nimble fingers.

Upstairs in her workroom, Amelie propped an array of calling cards across her writing table and gazed at them. Most were from the best-known families in Richmond who could, with a little less natural caution, have left cards weeks ago.

One or two with the corners turned down had been left in person by gentlemen she had danced with at the Castle Inn ball, and some were from strangers who apparently wanted to know her. It was most gratifying, she thought, pushing the Oglethorpes’ card behind the rest.

Pulling out the lid of the writing-desk, she took paper and quill and began to write: Dearest and Most Esteemed Brother, I fear that, since receiving your last letter, so much has happened that I hardly know where to begin with my reply. Nevertheless…

Nevertheless, once started, she was able to form a tolerably coherent summary of the events that had suddenly overtaken her tidy life, leaving out little except Lord Elyot’s indecent proposal, his intimacies, and her own confused reaction to it all. Stephen Chester, Caterina’s widowed father, had been a true, though not impartial, tower of strength, and any hint that Amelie had agreed to a physical relationship with Lord Elyot in return for his support and discretion was not allowed to colour her account. Not even between the lines.

For Caterina’s sake, I have accepted the brothers’ offers of escort…Caterina and he get on so well together…to their sister’s dinner party…a concert at Ham House where she will meet…so many calling-cards already…quite spoilt for choice.and so on.

Amelie had never been good at deception; on the few occasions she had tried it, she had come woefully unstuck. Consequently, she found it easier to tell her brother-in-law of Hurst’s passing visit while painting Lord Elyot as the knight in shining white armour whose support she had accepted just as she had accepted his in Buxton. She hoped that this would not offend his feelings, for she knew how he had hoped for an affection of a deeper kind after his brother’s death. For him, it would have been the ideal solution. But not for Amelie, who had two genuine objections to the connection, one of which was that she did not love him. Nor did she believe she ever would.

The village of Mortlake lay on the other side of the royal park on a loop of the River Thames to the northeast of Richmond, making a triangle with Kew. Amelie had driven through it once or twice and thought that, had she known of its existence earlier, its prettiness and clean lines might have suited her well.

‘We’ll come by boat one day,’ said Lord Elyot as the coach turned through the gates of Elwick Lodge. ‘It’ll take longer, but the approach is spectacular from the river steps.’

But Caterina’s description of the house as ‘white and enormous’ had not done justice to the groups of limes and elms, the green sloping lawns, rose-covered walls and the sparkling boat-studded river beyond. And it was enormous, three-tiered and grand with wide steps leading up to a porti-coed entrance even now swarming with liveried men and a bouncing rash of black labrador puppies followed by two small children dragging their nurse behind them.

It was as if the house had suddenly had its cork drawn, spilling its contents around the coach and fizzing with welcomes. If Amelie had had any reservations about her acceptance, they were dispelled at once by the extended Elwick family who absorbed her like a sponge into their continuous embrace as if she had always been one of them. Caterina was greeted like a long-lost cousin, narrowly rescued from four eager hands by nurse and paternal grandmother. With hardly a coherent introduction to penetrate the general hub-bub, the frothy company then reversed its flow through the double doors into a cavernous hall, marble-floored, columned, and spiralling upwards in a coil of delicate ironwork from which coloured paper streamers fluttered in the breeze.

‘Mama’s birfday,’ the fair-haired little angel lisped, pointing upwards. ‘Look…steamers…look, Unca Nick!’

Having conserved a kind of distance until now, Amelie was obliged to revise her assumptions about Lord Elyot’s judgemental relatives, for this scene certainly did not fit her previous images of them. Whether Adorna Elwick was used to receiving her brothers’ current partners or whether Amelie was an exception, there was no way of knowing, but her smiles seemed as genuine as the children’s. ‘You must call me Dorna as everyone else does,’ she said. ‘Our names go back for generations. We can’t escape them.’

‘Dorna, may I wish you a happy birthday?’ said Amelie.