Chapter Twenty-Two

‘I had not understood,’ Averil whispered as Luc leaned back on the chaise beside her after dinner and rested his head on the carved back rail with a sigh of repletion. Sex or food? she wondered. Perhaps both.

‘What did you not understand? You don’t have to whisper, no one can hear you.’

‘I thought we would make love once or perhaps twice a day. I did not understand that we can do it over and over again.’ She managed to raise her voice above a whisper, but it still seemed wicked to be talking about things like this outside the bedchamber. Luc turned his head and smiled that lazy, satisfied smile she was beginning to recognise.

‘Am I wearing you out?’

‘No, not at all. I still … It is very shocking.’ And wonderful. She had not realised that she could speak of love without words, with her body.

‘You still want more?’

Blushing, she nodded. How was it possible not to? Perhaps one simply dropped from exhaustion after a while—or burned up with frustration if you had to stop.

Luc slid down until he was lying on the chaise, then he unbuttoned his evening breeches. ‘If you want more—’

Of course she wanted more. But surely not in the dining room, on the chaise. ‘The servants!’

‘They will not come until we ring.’ He had freed himself from his clothing and she could not help but reach for him as he shifted a little. ‘Kneel over me, there is room either side of my hips.’

‘Me—on top?’

‘Then you can be in control, go as slowly and as shallowly as you like. I don’t want to hurt you, Averil. You are very new to this.’

But not so new that he had to help her, she thought with a surge of triumph as she looked down at him. Gently she eased him into her warmth and felt the tears start in her eyes because of how perfect it was. She blinked them back in case he thought he was hurting her and bent forwards to kiss him. Love you, she murmured against his lips. So much.

‘You had better stay in today,’ Luc said over a very belated breakfast the next morning. ‘I will do the rounds of the clubs and see if there are any rumours about your disappearance. I don’t think I have done anything to make Bradon suspicious of me, but it will do no harm for him to see me around as usual.’

‘I have no idea how he will react,’ Averil said. But a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach said otherwise. He would be furious and ruthless, for he would be losing a great deal of money. ‘Do be careful,’ she added. ‘What if he uses Runners?’ But he merely smiled and reached for the coffee.

Grace had returned safely with her own possessions to report that she had mentioned to Lady Kingsbury’s dresser Finch that Miss Heydon was lying down in her bedchamber with a sick headache. She had locked the door and taken the key away with her, she added with a mischievous grin.

There was a real world out there, Averil reminded herself. And Luc had to live in it—and he had to continue to live in it when she had gone. ‘I should have asked before now,’ she said, contrite. ‘How was your report received at the Admiralty?’

‘Well, I believe. They are interested in the methods of analysis I used to trace the leaks and focus on the source. They want me to teach them to a group of lieutenants who have an interest in intelligence work.’

‘That is good,’ Averil said. His mouth twisted wryly. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘It is flattering and it means they aren’t posting me to the far ends of the earth right away.’

‘No, of course.’ The cold knot inside became a stone. ‘It will mean you can continue to court Mademoiselle de la Falaise.’

Luc put down his cup. ‘I’m not courting the woman while I am with you! What do you take me for?’

‘A man who wanted to set up a mistress,’ Averil retorted. ‘You have every intention of keeping one when you are married, have you not?’

‘I—yes. Yes, I suppose so, after a few months, I suppose, if I am still in the country.’

‘Well, then? How is this different?’

‘You are different.’ He frowned at her and she stared right back at him. ‘Don’t ask me why. I do not know.’ Luc pushed back his chair and got to his feet. ‘It just does not seem right.’

‘It is less hypocritical to take a mistress after you have married and have taken vows than it is when you are simply courting a woman and making her promises by implication?’

‘Damn it, Averil. You are hardly in a position to take the high moral ground on this!’ He strode towards the door. ‘You had a contract with Bradon that you set great store by, I seem to remember.’

‘My father had. I had made no promises to Bradon and you know perfectly well why I could not marry him! I do not like breaking a contract—’

‘Stop talking like a merchant!’ He spun round and stalked back. ‘This is not about some cold-blooded business deal.’

‘No?’ She found she was on her feet. ‘It always was. A mistress provides her body in return for money, does she not? You were clear about that, back in the Scillies—you treat your mistresses well, you said. You provide for them. What would you have done about finding a wife if I had said yes then?’ He opened his mouth and she swept on. ‘You would have gone ahead and courted Mademoiselle de la Falaise and told yourself that she would expect you to have a mistress, that it was part of the expectations in that kind of marriage. And this, now—you and me—is about a financial exchange, so what is different?’

‘I don’t know, damn it,’ Luc said as he came to a halt in front of her. ‘It just is.’

‘Well, I hope that your analysis of clandestine enemy activity is better than your understanding of relationships, or there are going to be some very confused lieutenants in the near future,’ Averil said, standing her ground in the face of over six foot of infuriated male. Oh, but he was magnificent, grey eyes flashing, chest heaving; even that nose of his was designed for nostrils that flared. She wanted him …

He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her. He was furious, she could taste it, feel it and the excitement flared through her veins. What had come over her? She rocked back on her heels as he released her and she realised she was fizzing with energy and desire and excitement. All her life she had been well behaved and quiet and had avoided conflict like the plague. Now all she wanted was to rouse Luc to kiss her like that again.

‘You brute!’ Wanting to provoke, Averil picked up the first thing that came to hand, the coffee pot, and to her surprise Luc gave a bark of laughter.

‘Oh, well done—perfect mistress behaviour! But you should choose something more valuable and then, when you have smashed it, you must wheedle an even more valuable replacement out of me—’ He ducked as the pot flew past his head and splintered into shards against the door. ‘Ah well, at least it was empty. That flower vase soaked me.’

With his amusement her own excitement ebbed away. Averil just stood there, her hands pressed to her mouth. What had she done? Twice she had thrown things at him, behaved like a hoyden, and now he was laughing at her as though that was amusing. She loved him and all she was to him was a convenient body, a female to amuse himself with, a predictable creature with grasping habits and a tendency to make scenes.

Appalled, she felt the hot tears welling up and running down her face, unstoppable.

‘Averil!’ Luc’s feet crunched through the ruined coffee pot. ‘Stop it. You do not cry, you never cry.’

‘I don’t mean to,’ she said. ‘They won’t stop.’ He reached for her and she batted at his hands. ‘Go away. Please, just go away.’

She meant it. Luc backed towards the door, reluctant to leave her with those great tears running silently down her cheeks, but he had no idea how to stop them or what to say without making things worse. How had their leisurely, contented breakfast turned into this? His crime, he decided as he picked up hat and gloves and let himself out, was that he was not continuing to court Louise.

As he cut diagonally across Green Park for St James’s Street he puzzled over why Averil was not pleased that he was staying faithful to her. She had his undivided attention for two weeks—and she was showing every sign of thoroughly enjoying those attentions. There was something wrong, some hairline crack in the pattern of what Averil had told him and how she was acting, yet he could not put his finger on it. And what had made her cry? She had faced far worse on St Helen than a row over the breakfast table and yet she had never once given way to tears. Why was he able to untangle the subtle pattern of a spy’s actions and yet he could not understand a woman who was sharing his bed?

His heartbeat slowed as he walked and his thoughts became more coherent. She was sharing his bed. He had got what he wanted, but at what cost? He had ruined her. That she seemed to enjoy his lovemaking mattered not at all. He had corrupted her.

But I have agreed to help her, the inner demon protested, but he thrust away the easy excuses. Now, the hangover gone, his lust slaked, he could see clearly. What he should have done was to install her in the house, buy her what she needed and protect her until the ship sailed. He should not have laid a finger on her whatever either of them wanted.

Luc felt sick. Sick with guilt, sick with the knowledge that the moment he had her alone again he would not be able to stop himself from taking her again, caressing her, making love to her until they both collapsed with exhaustion. Sick with the knowledge that when she left him he had no idea how he would stay sane.

The walk was long enough, and brisk enough, for him to have regained a semblance of calm by the time he reached White’s. Which was fortunate as the first person he saw as he entered was Lord Bradon.

‘Ah, Bradon, this is well met. I have been hoping to run into you.’ He kept his voice cheerful and his hands relaxed even though in his imagination he had the man by the throat and was pounding his brains out on the elegant marble floor.

The other man turned, his already frowning countenance turning darker when he saw who was addressing him. ‘Were you, indeed!’

‘Yes, although this appears not to be a convenient time to discuss porcelain. You seem distracted.’

‘You want to talk to me about porcelain? Is this a joke?’

‘Well, it might be a forgery,’ Luc said. How interesting that Bradon should react so badly to seeing him. Given that Luc had done nothing to anger the man there could be only one conclusion to be drawn: he was suspicious that Luc might have something to do with Averil’s flight. ‘I am not experienced with Meissen and I wondered if—’

‘To hell with Meissen.’ Bradon shouldered past him and out of the doors.

‘Damn bad form,’ Percy Fulton remarked, strolling past the porter’s desk and joining Luc as he went into the library. ‘He was prowling round here like a bear with a sore head last night and back he comes this morning, asking who had seen you. I suggested he went round to your chambers and had my head bitten off for my trouble and now that he finds you he doesn’t want to talk. Done something to upset him? I’m always ready to stand as second, you know. Can’t abide the man.’

‘A misunderstanding, that is all. But thank you.’ Luc retreated behind a copy of The Times. So, Bradon had put two and two together and come up with the only naval officer who had been paying Averil any attention. It never did to underestimate the opposition and it seemed that he had done just that with Averil’s betrothed.

So now he had to be very careful indeed or he would lead the man to her doorstep and, while he had no objection to facing him at dawn over the matter, it would do Averil’s reputation no good at all.

Half an hour later he realised that he had been thinking about Averil and had not given a thought to protecting her from Bradon. Restless, he got up and walked out, back up the long slope to Piccadilly and Albany. He turned into the court yard and caught a movement from the corner of his eye. A man in dark, ordinary clothing moved down the side of the yard and out on to the street. Nothing so unusual there, but the way he kept his head averted had the hairs rising on the back of Luc’s neck.

He had felt like that before now and had found a sniper with his sights on him. ‘Who was that?’ he asked the porter.

Jenks shook his head. ‘No idea, Captain. I’ve been out the back for a few minutes.’

‘Hughes,’ he said as he let himself into his rooms, ‘I have a problem. How do you fancy a game of hide and seek?’

‘Has to be better than blacking your boots for the rest of the morning, Captain.’ The manservant began to untie his green baize apron. ‘What’s the plan?’

Half an hour later Luc strolled out of Albany at a leisurely pace. If they couldn’t keep up with this, they deserved to lose him. At the bottom of St James’s Street, with the warm red brick of the Tudor palace in front of him, he opened the door of Berry Brothers and Rudd and walked into an atmosphere redolent of wax polish, coffee and wine.

‘Captain, welcome back!’ The wine merchant came out from behind the counter. ‘Are you here to be weighed or to restock your cellar?’

‘The latter.’ Luc moved around the great swinging coffee scales that most of the aristocracy of the day were weighed on. ‘I am deplorably short of Burgundy.’

‘Not easy to get just now, as you no doubt know.’ The man shook his head as he steered Luc towards the head of the stairs down to the cellars. ‘We are buying up what private holdings there are in the country, but naturally, we cannot countenance smuggled wines …’

‘Indeed not.’ Luc paused and peered at racks as he passed. Behind him the bell on the door rang as someone came in. ‘I have a long list, I’m afraid, Humphries.’

At the bottom of the stairs Hughes appeared, a valise in his hands. Humphries said, ‘Mind the shop, John. I’ll be a while with Captain d’Aunay’, and a young man put down a ledger and hurried up the stairs.

Luc stripped off tail coat and pantaloons and changed into buckskin breeches, a riding coat and a low-crowned hat, then followed the wine merchant back through the labyrinth of cellars and up another set of stairs.

‘There you go, sir.’ Humphries heaved open a trapdoor. ‘Pickering Place.’

‘Thank you—there will be an order coming your way in the next few days.’ Luc walked briskly down the narrow passage back to St James, round the corner into Pall Mall and signalled for a hackney.

Averil rang for the maid and apologised for the state of the dining-room carpet. The girl, Polly, seemed surprised that she should do so and went calmly about her business picking up the pieces and sponging the thick pile.

Presumably such tantrums were only to be expected of a kept woman. Averil bit her lip. That was what she was: ruined, wanton and an outcast from decent society and there was no point in deluding herself that this was simply an idyll with the man she loved.

She had sold herself to him. The fact that Luc seemed to like her and that he also appeared to find their lovemaking satisfying, was beside the point, she lectured herself as she walked moodily up and down the pretty little drawing room. He had appeared quite happy that this was a financial transaction. What had she expected? That he would refuse to sully their relationship with money?

He had been gone a long time, but that was only to be expected. He had business of his own and no incentive to hurry back to a mistress who treated him to scenes over breakfast.

At last, after picking at her luncheon and mangling some embroidery for an hour, she rang for Grace. ‘I am going out.’

‘Is that wise, miss? What if someone recognised you?’

‘In a hackney and wearing a veil?’

‘Very well, miss.’

With both of them shrouded in sufficient black veiling for heavy mourning the two stepped out on to the pavement. ‘There’s a cab,’ Grace said, but as she stepped forwards another figure emerged from behind the railings and hailed the hackney.

‘Ferret!’

‘Afternoon, miss. You hop in now. Where are we going?’

‘We?’ Beside her Grace was taking a firm and threatening grip on Averil’s parasol.

‘Cap’n said I was to go with you everywhere, miss. What’ll I tell the driver?’

‘Round Hyde Park,’ Averil said at random and climbed in.

‘Miss Heydon?’

‘It is all right, Grace. I know this man.’ Ferret settled opposite her and began to peer out of the windows as the vehicle moved off. ‘When did the captain say you were to go with me, Ferret? He didn’t tell me.’

‘About noon, it was. Turned up down at the docks at me auntie’s beer house. We’re all down there while he sorts out the pardons and work and ships for us. Says there’s a gent means you no good, so we’re to guard you.’ He flipped back the front of his frieze coat to reveal a collection of knives and a small club. ‘Don’t you be worrying about anything.’

‘I feel very safe,’ Averil said, her mind reeling at the thought of Bradon confronted by Ferret. ‘All of you?’

‘Well, Tubbs and Dawkins are watching the Cap’n’s lodgings to sort out the men who are watching that, and Bull’s following the Cap’n to see who is following him.’ Ferret looked remarkably clean and tidy, although his gap-tooth grin was as disreputable as ever.

‘What will they do with whomever they catch?’

‘Sell ‘em to the press gang, miss. Nice park, ain’t it?’ He settled back as the hackney began to trot along the perimeter track, but his eyes flickered from side to side and Averil did not believe for a moment that he was as relaxed as he pretended to be. Beside her Grace kept a firm grip on the parasol; it was not going to be a calming ride, but at least it had the charm of novelty. Then Ferret’s words sank in. Bradon had someone following Luc—he was in danger and all he had to protect him were the rascally crew from the island.

Luc turned the key in the door of the Half Moon Street house with a degree of caution. In his experience once a mistress had acquired the taste for throwing things she was likely to retain it.

The sound of running feet had him bracing himself, but Averil threw open the drawing room door and cast herself on his chest with no sign of a weapon. ‘Are you all right?’ She looked up into his face and the worry drained out of hers. ‘Oh, thank goodness, yes, you are. I was so worried when Ferret told me about Bradon.’

‘Bradon can go to the devil,’ Luc said and kissed her with enjoyable thoroughness. Life was hideously complicated but this, at least, was perfect in its simplicity.

‘Yes, but how does he know?’ Averil, most satisfactorily pink and flustered from the embrace, dragged him into the drawing room. How easily she had slipped into this role, into his life. And how easily she would leave it.

‘The man is not an idiot. He knows you were compromised by a naval officer and the only naval officer who has been paying you any marked attention since you arrived in London is me. Once his suspicions were aroused it wouldn’t take much to discover that I have been out of town for some time, that no one can be very positive about where I have been and I returned just as you arrived.’

She had gone very pale. ‘Averil, there is no need to worry. The whole crew are covering you.’

‘I am not worried about myself!’ She turned on him, fierce and passionate, and his breath caught and something he did not recognise jolted, deep inside. Not lust, not desire, although they were there, too. This was something warmer and deeper, this was what had been churning inside him ever since she had walked into his chambers at Albany. Puzzled, he caught at her hands as she twisted them into an anguished knot.

‘He could harm you, he is vindictive and calculating. He could have you stabbed in some dark alley or go to the Admiralty and make trouble for you there. I must leave, now.’

‘Over my dead body!’

‘That is what I am afraid of, you stupid man!’

Luc produced his best quarterdeck frown. He needed to distract her, and fast. ‘Might I remind you that you are my mistress and as such I expect obedience and respect. You have twice thrown things at my head, you have ruined a shirt, my best evening coat may never be the same again, that coffee pot was Dresden and now you say I am stupid. That little catalogue calls for chastisement, I fear.’

‘What? You do not mean that you would—no!’

Averil gave a scream of protest as Luc picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, just as he had that first day on the beach. This time she fought, drumming her fists on his buttocks and thighs as she dangled upside down, kicking her heels as he carried her up upstairs and into the bedchamber, but it was hopeless. He twisted her round as he sat down on the edge of the bed and she found herself face down across his lap.

‘Let me go, you brute! You dare beat me! I’ll … I’ll …’

Cool air touched her thighs, her buttocks and the world went dark as her skirts flew over her head. One large warm hand spread over her exposed backside, lifted—and she was rolled on to the bed with Luc scrambling after her, tickling her until she screamed with laughter.

‘Oh, you beast,’ she murmured when they finally lay still, gasping and tear-stained and still hiccupping faintly with hilarity.

‘I know. Shall I be more beastly still?’

‘Yes, please,’ Averil said. ‘I would like that very much.’