Scoundrel in the Regency Ballroom: The Rake and the Heiress / Innocent in the Sheikh's Harem

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,’Nicholas said more sympathetically. ‘Do you have other family?’

‘No. No one. At least—no. Maman died when I was ten, and since then it has always been just me and Papa. Now it is just me.’

‘I find it hard to believe that someone so very lovely as you is wholly unencumbered. Are Frenchmen quite blind?’

‘Perhaps it is just that I am quite choosy, Mr Lytton. We seem to have strayed some way from the point.’

‘Ah, yes, the point. Your papers, which have lain unclaimed with my father for—how long?’

‘Over twenty years.’

‘And you have known about them all this time?’

Serena inspected her gloves. ‘No. Only since…’

‘Don’t tell me, Papa told you about them on his deathbed.’

She laughed nervously. ‘I know, it sounds like a fairy story.’

‘Exactly like one.’

‘I see you don’t believe me.’ And no wonder, she thought, rising to leave. She would just have to face the lawyer without her documents. ‘I won’t waste any more of your time.’

Though he did not doubt that her papers, if they ever existed, were lost, Nicholas was not ready to allow Serena to leave just yet. He was bored beyond measure and she was quite the most beautiful creature he had clapped eyes on in a long time. With her air of assurance and her cultured voice she could pass for quality, but he was not fooled. No gently bred young woman came calling on a single gentleman unaccompanied. Of a certainty, none allowed themselves to be diverted from their call into watching a mill. The more he saw of her, the more certain he became that her gratitude would be worth earning.

‘Don’t be so hasty, mademoiselle, give me a moment to reflect. Your father’s name—his real name—does sound familiar. Is there nothing else you can tell me that would help?’ He was simply teasing her, drawing out her visit in order to while away the time, so her reply surprised him.

‘The last rose of summer left blooming alone. I was to say those words so that your father would not doubt my identity.’ She smiled in reluctant response to Nicholas’s crack of laughter. ‘I know, it sounds even more like a fairy tale now.’

‘Perhaps it’s a clue,’ Nicholas said, pointing to the panelling. He meant it as a joke, having no faith at all in his visitor’s story, but Serena’s reaction gave him pause.

‘Of course,’ she said excitedly, clapping her hands together. ‘A hiding place. How clever of you to think of that.’

A long curl of hair the colour of ripe corn tangled with her lashes and lay charmingly on her cheek. Her vivid blue eyes sparkled like turquoise. She smiled at him quite without guile and he remembered the feel of her soft lips beneath his own. Delicious. She was really quite delicious and he was really very, very bored. ‘Of course,’Nicholas agreed lightly, ‘a clue. Why not? This house is Tudor, after all, it’s absolutely strewn with roses. There are roses on the panelling in almost every room, to say nothing of the ones worked into the stone on the fireplaces, and even hidden away on some of the original furnishings. What’s more, when it was built the family were Catholic. We’ve priest holes, secret passages, concealed doors, the whole kit and caboodle. It could take weeks to search it thoroughly.’

‘Weeks!’

Chasing rainbows seasoned with a little light dalliance would pass the time most agreeably, he decided. He had planned to quit the Hall within the week for London or, depending on the news he was awaiting, the Continent. He could not bring himself to care which. Why not indulge the so-charming mademoiselle with some tapping on panels in the meantime? Such enforced intimacy was bound to bear fruit. Delicious, forbidden fruit. ‘Perhaps just days, if you have someone to help you—someone who knows where to look,’ he said with an innocent look.

‘You mean you,’ Serena said cautiously.

‘Yes, who better? Though you should know that you’d be keeping company with a murderer.’

She could see from the tightening of his mouth and the frown that brought his heavy black brows together that he was no longer teasing her, yet she could not take him seriously. ‘I hope you jest, Mr Lytton.’

‘No jest, I assure you, although I am not quite a murderer yet. I fought a duel two weeks ago. A stupid thing, but I was in my cups, and my opponent was so very insulting I could not resist the challenge.’

‘My papa was given to saying that it is better for gentlemen to fight it out fairly and in cold blood than to resort to what he called fisticuffs in the height of a quarrel.’

‘A man of sense. That is exactly what we did. My opponent is a poor swordsman, whereas I am attributed somewhat better than average. I pinked him, a mere warning cut, a perfect lunge that caught his shoulder and disarmed him at the same time. Harry Angelo, my fencing master, would have approved, but my opponent, I am sorry to say, was merely angered. I turned away, assuming all was over. He picked up his sword and lunged at me. I had no option but to fight back, and, in being caught unawares, caused him an injury that may yet prove fatal. So here I am, rusticating and awaiting the outcome, ready to flee to the Continent from the hands of the law should he avenge himself upon me by dying, for duelling is become illegal now, you know. And so you see why I am quite happy to put myself at your disposal.’

The glint in his eye made her uncomfortable, for she could not help wondering what he might want in return. ‘That is very kind, but I can’t help thinking it would be an imposition. And in any case, it wouldn’t be proper for me to spend time here alone with you.’

‘Proper! No, indeed, I was very much hoping that it would be quite the opposite.’

Startled by his bluntness, Serena got hastily to her feet, blushing wildly. ‘I fear my coming here unaccompanied has misled you as to my character.’

He remained quite annoyingly unflustered. ‘That, and the way you kissed me.’

She wrestled with the fastening on her glove, and her flush deepened. ‘Well, Mr Lytton, let me put you to rights. Even if I agreed to accept your help—which I have not done—and accepted the risk to my reputation which being here alone with you would engender, I am not the type of female to reward you with kisses.’

‘Aren’t you? Then I am to assume the kiss after the fight was out of character?’ Nicholas took her wrist and dealt expertly with the recalcitrant button.

She tried to pull her hand away, but he held on to it. His fingers were warm through the soft leather of her glove. They were long and slender, the nails trimmed and neat. His knuckles were grazed and bruised from the fight. His touch seemed to flicker from her hand up her arm, raising goose bumps on her skin under the long sleeve of her dress. Nervously, Serena gazed up at him, her hand still lying compliant, knowing she should move, yet caught as before in a trance of awareness. His intentions were unmistakable. He was going to kiss her again. ‘No,’ Serena said in that curiously breathy voice that did not belong to her. ‘I will not pay for your co-operation by allowing you to take liberties. You mistake me.’

‘You would kiss a ruffian in a stable yard, but not a gentleman in a parlour,’he teased. ‘I did not take anything from you that wasn’t freely given, and I won’t now.’

‘Then let me go.’

‘I will, just as soon as you persuade me you want me to, mademoiselle.’

That look of his again—it made her feel as if he could read her thoughts, which meant he would see all too plainly the war between ought and want going on her mind. It was just a kiss, nothing more. If he could treat it lightly, so surely could she.

‘It’s just a kiss, after all,’ Nicholas whispered persuasively, echoing her thoughts so precisely she wondered if she had spoken out loud. ‘A kiss to seal the beginning of our quest together.’

She opened her mouth to say no, but somehow the words did not come and he took it for an invitation. His lips were cool, exploring, gentle. Questioning. For a breathless moment she hesitated. His mouth stilled. Then she felt her free hand reach up of its own accord to stroke the silken hair at the back of his head. She opened her mouth like a flower to the sun. Softening her lips against his, she melted into his embrace, savouring the taste, the smell, the power. Lost in the newness, the strangeness of it all.

And then it was over. Nicholas took a step back. ‘Enough for now, I think; any more would be a liberty. I am a gentleman, despite my earlier appearance, and I meant what I said, I will never take anything you do not want to give.’

Serena shook her head, resisting with difficulty the urge to touch her hand to her lips, for they were tingling. ‘I have agreed to nothing.’

‘Come, come, mademoiselle, you cannot possibly be thinking of leaving without these precious papers of yours. What are you afraid of?’ Nicholas asked in a perturbingly confident voice. ‘Is it perhaps yourself you don’t trust?’

No, frankly, she didn’t! He was a wolf in wolf’s clothing from whom she should run as fast as she could. ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ Serena replied tartly, ‘I have every confidence in my ability to resist your charms.’

‘Then you’ll allow me to help you?’

It was simple really. Without his help she could not claim her inheritance. She could seek out her father’s lawyer, but unless she had the papers—it would be useless. She searched his face for reassurance. ‘I have your promise that you will behave properly?’

‘I have already given you one promise, mademoiselle. I see no need for another.’

They had reached an impasse, and he knew it! Serena fumed inwardly. ‘Oh, very well,’ she finally conceded rather ungraciously. ‘With such a knowledgeable guide as yourself, it can’t possibly take too long, after all.’

‘Very sensible. Do you wish to start immediately?’

She tried to collect her senses, which by now were utterly scrambled, not least by her own shocking responses to being kissed. And not once but twice! ‘Thank you, Mr Lytton, but, no, I have had quite enough excitement for one day,’ Serena responded drily. ‘I think it best that I return to my lodgings in the village for now. I’ll come back in the morning, if that is acceptable to you?’

Nicholas grinned. ‘My dear mademoiselle, I can think of little regarding you that wouldn’t be most acceptable to me. Until morning, then.’