Dangerous Lord, Seductive Mistress

Her stepfather might not have held those fellows in high esteem, but he obviously gave tacit permission for their booty to enter his house.

That first introduction to the smugglers had been five years ago. Two and a half years later she’d become engaged to Edmund Green. It was to be a tragically brief betrothal. He had been killed within four months by one of the smugglers in an affray with the dragoons on coast watch.

Her solemn musing was interrupted as she spied Harriet’s brother emerging from a large, elegant house set back from the road. Her expression turned wry as she saw he’d caught his vicar’s robe in the gate and was fighting to free it from the hinge. Having adjusted his dress, the Reverend Gerard Davenport banged shut the gate with discernible irritation.

‘Gerard seems to have finished his meeting with the bishop earlier than expected.’ Harriet had also caught sight of her brother and waved at him. ‘I hope he is going to take me to Rye market.’ She gave her friend a smile. ‘It is always nice when Susanna is from home,’ she said, referring to her sister-in-law with a frown. ‘It is like the old times when Gerard and I would go shopping or visiting without a sour puss sitting between us on the seat.’

Gerard Davenport had married for the first time when he’d just turned forty. His wife, Susanna, was only a few years older than her sister-in-law. Harriet was twenty-eight but she had always got on very well with her older brother, and they had lived in peace and harmony at the vicarage until Gerard had decided it was time to get a wife and family.

He’d found his wife too quickly, Harriet was wont to mutter. She knew very well that Susanna resented her presence in what she classed as her domain, but Gerard maintained his sister was welcome beneath his roof for as long as she wanted to remain there.

‘Why do you not come to Rye, too, and forget all this unpleasantness for a short while?’ Harriet suggested. ‘Perhaps Mrs Woodville might like an invitation. An outing will do you both good.’

‘I’d like to go with you,’ Deborah said wistfully. ‘But…Mama has been suffering with her heads recently. I sent Fred back with the trap.’ She sighed. ‘I told him to bathe his face and rest a while in case he again came over queer. I shall walk home…’ Her soft lips remained parted as though she had more to say, but had been distracted.

Deborah had been intermittently flicking glances about at the street scene whilst conversing with her friend. She’d just noticed a gentleman emerge from the blacksmith’s doorway and she continued to gaze in his direction so steadily that Harriet frowned at her.

‘What is it?’

‘I thought I recognised someone,’ Deborah said with a hollow little laugh. Her heart had ceased beating for those few seconds she’d stared and wondered if it could possibly be him. The man had again gone inside the forge, and she was no longer able to scrutinise him from a distance. Now, as her lurching stomach steadied, she realised just how silly she’d been to imagine that Randolph Chadwicke would be so far from home. His home now, to the best of her knowledge, was in the Indies and had been so for many years. If he were back in England on a visit, she imagined he would either be found in Suffolk, where his family lived, or in Mayfair where he used to lease a town house. Perhaps he still did. She knew nothing of him now, nor did she want to. But once…once she’d been keen to know everything about him. She’d wanted him for her husband.

‘How are you, Deborah?’ Gerard asked solicitously as he joined them and slipped his sister’s hand through the crook of an arm. He gave Harriet’s gloved fingers a fond pat before launching into speech. ‘I saw Fred mopping his face of blood this morning. He told me that some local ruffians had set about him. Would you like me to speak to Savidge about it to find out what can be done, my dear?’

A grateful smile rewarded the vicar for his offer. ‘That’s kind, Gerard,’ Deborah said. ‘But I have already been to see him.’

‘Mr Savidge thinks that nothing should be done,’ Harriet told her brother flatly.

‘It’s a dreadful to do when even the local magistrate is too scared of the villains to act.’ Gerard Davenport sadly shook his head. He looked at Deborah for a response, but again her wide blue eyes were riveted elsewhere.

The tall gentleman had emerged from the smithy and she no longer was presented with his profile. He’d turned her way, causing a small gasp of disbelief to escape her soft lips.

Almost as though he sensed her eyes on him, he looked up. At first there was nothing, just the slightly sardonic, narrow-eyed interest of a gentleman who has caught an attractive young woman watching him. Then she saw the change in him, saw the hand that had been smoothing the sleek flank of the newly shod bay become still. He looked down before slowly raising his head to stare at her, and with such fierce intensity that Deborah felt her face flinch aside as though to evade a blow. A moment later she was aware of him approaching.

Chapter Two

‘Miss Cleveland?’

It was a long while since Deborah had been addressed so and it brought with it a poignant memory of her time as the débutante daughter of Viscount Cleveland. At eighteen she’d been the toast of the ton, and newly single, having broken her engagement to the heir to an earldom.

He’d spoken before reaching her, a query accenting her name. He’d thought, too, that his eyes might be deceiving him, Deborah realised. A darting glance at her companions confirmed they were swinging interested looks between the two of them.

George Woodville had been her stepfather, not her sire, but since she’d arrived in Sussex with her remarried mother, people had seemed to assume she would want to be a Woodville too. Her father had been a peer of the realm, but he was not known in these parts, whereas the Squires Woodville could trace their prominence in Sussex gentry back as far as Cromwell’s days. It had seemed trivial to Deborah to keep pointing out that her mother might now be a Woodville, but she was not.

Harriet was cognisant with her history and Deborah could see the young woman retrieving the relevant snippet from her mind. She turned with her brother to gaze up at the ruggedly handsome stranger who had joined them.

‘Why…Mr Chadwicke…what a surprise to see you,’ Deborah uttered in a stiff, suffocated tone. It was not at all the first thing she had promised herself she would say should their paths ever again cross. But her good manners dictated that she remain polite in company. She could tell that her friends were impatient to be introduced to him, but his relentless golden gaze remained unnervingly on her face, causing colour to seep beneath her cheeks.

‘I should like to introduce you both to Mr Chadwicke, he is…’ Debbie hesitated and her uncertainty on how to continue caused a skewing of his narrow mouth. ‘Mr Chadwicke and I…have mutual friends,’ she resorted to saying. ‘This is the Reverend Mr Gerard Davenport and his sister Harriet,’ she concluded the niceties.

Randolph enclosed Gerard’s extended fingers in a large brown hand and gave them a firm shake. Harriet received a courteous bow coupled with a murmured greeting.

‘Are you related to the Somerset Chadwickes, sir?’ Gerard asked brightly.

‘I’m not,’ Randolph replied. ‘I hail from the east of Suffolk.’

‘Ah,’ Gerard said. ‘A good part of the country; I have been to Yarmouth on several occasions and have found it most pleasant. But the cold winds nigh on cut one in half.’

‘It can be bitter there in winter,’ Randolph agreed.

At close quarters, and having surreptitiously studied him from beneath her bonnet brim whilst he conversed with the vicar, Deborah was astonished she had so easily recognised him. Apart from those hazel eyes seeming just as wolfish as she remembered, he looked quite different. His hair, once nut brown, had been made fair by a foreign sun and streaked here and there to colours close to caramel. His skin tone, too, was weatherbeaten and his features roughened. He looked to be a man who had been brutalised by life and the elements since last she’d seen him. There was no more of the debonair youth in him. Yet something in her first glimpse of his profile, of his physique, had been achingly familiar to her.

‘Are you staying long in Hastings?’ Deborah blurted as a silence developed between them all.

‘I’m not sure, Miss Cleveland. Are you?’

‘I reside here now, sir,’ Deborah informed him levelly. ‘I live at Woodville Place with my mother. My stepfather, George Woodville, died just over two years ago.’

‘I had a communication from Marcus that your father had died,’ Randolph said gently. ‘I was very sad to hear that news. I knew, too, that your mother had remarried, but not that she was once again a widow. Neither was I aware you had permanently quit London for the country.’

‘My stepfather kept a small town house in Chelsea. Before he passed away we used it quite often in the Season. Now I believe his son lives there.’

A silence again strained, but it seemed that Mr Chad-wicke had no intention of taking his leave and returning to his horse. The blacksmith had emerged from his forge, looking for his customer; seeing him socialising, he’d tethered the magnificent beast more securely to a post before returning inside.

‘Are you away from Suffolk to visit relatives in the area?’ Gerard asked amiably.

‘I have no relatives in the area,’ Randolph once more told him. ‘I’ve travelled to the south coast on a business matter.’

‘And will it keep you here long, sir?’ Harriet asked politely.

‘Possibly,’ Randolph replied succinctly.

After a pause that vainly begged a better explanation Harriet reminded her brother, ‘Well…we must be going. You’ve promised to take me to Rye this afternoon and I’ve not forgotten. Are you sure you won’t come with us, Debbie?’

‘I must be getting along home,’ Deborah replied huskily, but with a small smile for her friend. The ruthless golden gaze was again savaging the side of her face and instinctively she raised a hand to touch her hot cheek.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk privately without being gawped at?’ Randolph said whilst watching the vicar and his sister strolling away towards their dogcart.

Deborah, too, had noticed that they were under observation. In London well-bred people would mask their inquisitiveness behind concealing lashes or fluttering fans; these simple country folk employed no such sophisticated tactics. They stared quite openly as they passed by.

‘Strangers always stir interest hereabouts,’ she explained to him. Deborah knew, too, that undoubtedly news was travelling on the grapevine that her driver had been involved in a brawl whilst protecting her.

‘Is there a tearoom we can go to?’

She had heard nothing from him in almost seven years. Now he wanted to sit and chat over tea!

Oh, there was much they could discuss that need not touch on the very thorny subject of their brief romance. They might swap news about their mutual friends, the Earl and Countess of Gresham. They could reminisce on the couple’s glittering wedding when she had been a bridesmaid and Randolph had been Marcus’s groomsman. It had been the last occasion they’d seen one another, seven years ago. The last time he’d kissed her passionately before forgetting about her.

‘There is a teashop, but I’m not sure that visiting it, or prolonging this meeting, is necessary, sir,’ Deborah rebuffed him coolly.