The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

I couldn’t ask you to do something that went so strongly against the grain. We mean too much to each other for that; like it or not.’

      ‘I’m sure you underestimate our will-power, Lord Farenze,’ she said icily, as if not ready to make a similar leap into the dark.

      ‘Maybe I do. I still intend to find out why you were driven to take this job to keep yourself and your daughter out of the poor house.’

      ‘Then how dared you use me as entertainment for an idle moment?’

      Luke felt oddly wounded she thought so little of him, but he couldn’t leave her to lie sleepless or tumble back into night terrors.

      ‘I would not dream of it and we’re talking about you and your daughter, not my many and varied shortcomings.’

      ‘No, we’re not. Please go to bed and leave me to watch by Virginia one last time, my lord. You must sleep if you’re going to be chief mourner at your great-aunt’s funeral. I have had my fill of sleeping for now and really don’t want to experience that nightmare again tonight.’

      Luke opened his mouth to deny he felt the least need to rest, but a huge yawn stopped him. ‘I’m not a nodding infant,’ he insisted brusquely afterwards.

      ‘No, you’re a stubborn man who rode here as fast as coach and horses could go in order to be in time for your great-aunt’s funeral. What good you will be for that if you’re nodding over your duties is beyond me, but I’m only the housekeeper, so who am I to tell you not to be a fool?’

      ‘It never stopped you in the past,’ he muttered crossly.

      ‘Oh, just go to bed, my lord. As a mere woman, I’m not required to put in an appearance until after you return from church tomorrow, so I can sleep in the morning. You owe it to Lady Virginia to be properly awake and aware for her last rites.’

      Luke saw the logic of her words, but couldn’t let go his duty to care for all those who lived under one of his roofs. His housekeeper would be heavy eyed and weary tomorrow if he did as she suggested. The idea of her keeping watch when he should be the one to hold his loved ones safe also made him feel as if he was less of a man, foolish though that might be.

      Still, it seemed as if she preferred waking to sleeping and didn’t that betray how haunted and disturbing her nightmares truly were? He longed to offer her simple comfort and scout her demons, so she might sleep sweetly and wake without the shadows under her remarkable eyes. Folly to find it touching that she appeared to care he was tired, despite the dagger-look she shot him, as if he’d made her another dishonourable offer.

      ‘How can I let you take on a duty rightly belonging to me?’ he said clumsily.

      ‘Mere servant as I am?’ she bit out furiously.

      Luke wondered if he’d imagined her burrowing so desperately into his arms when he came to this room to find out why she was shouting in her sleep and why his tongue always tied itself in knots when he was with her.

      ‘No, because you have done more for my great-aunt than anyone had a right to ask you; not that I’m suggesting you can’t withstand every tempest life throws at you, so don’t bite my nose off,’ he argued and wondered why his temper wasn’t rising to her barbed comments this time.

      He was weary to his very bones, but he knew she was trying to get him out of here before heat and awareness flared back to life. In some ways he knew her so well it hurt, in others she felt as much of a mystery to him as she was the first day he laid eyes on his great-aunt’s new companion–housekeeper and felt his world tilt on its axis for a terrifying moment.

      ‘If you watch for an hour or so, I will lie on the bed in the Lord’s Chamber with the connecting door open. It’s been locked since Virgil died and nobody will recall it’s there at a time like this. That way you won’t be alone and I’ll feel more of a man.’

      She looked unconvinced, but eventually nodded and seemed prepared to accept a compromise to end this uncomfortable intimacy. ‘I loved Lady Virginia too much in life to be frightened now she’s with her Virgil again at last. I’ll miss her all my days, but she wouldn’t want to live without him any longer than she had to. So please take yourself off whilst I dress, my lord.’

      ‘Very well, my lady,’ he said with a bow he might give to the equal in rank she suddenly sounded.

      ‘Exasperating man,’ she muttered as he left the room to wait in the cramped little corridor over the nobly proportioned room below.

      Out in the dark, Luke fought a battle between physical tiredness and feelings he didn’t want to examine. He’d wanted to stay in that neglected room and feel her sleep in his arms. It shocked him to feel so much for the contrary mixture of a woman Chloe had grown into. He’d tried to convince himself for years only his daughter was allowed under his guard and into his heart, but right now it looked like a battle lost.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded in a fierce whisper as she came out of her room and nearly cannoned into him in the gloom.

      ‘Waiting for you,’ he managed suavely.

      He saw something in the depths of her dark eyes when her candle wavered in her shaking hands that said he wasn’t the only one fighting his feelings tonight. He forced himself not to grin like a triumphant boy.

      ‘Well, don’t,’ she said crossly.

      He raised his eyebrows and let some of the passion he felt for her show as their eyes met.

      ‘Verity is ten years old, my lord, and has a right to all I am. I won’t accept a lover when my daughter would be harmed by association, so waiting for me to do so will only waste your time and energy you need for the obligations ahead of you.’

      ‘I’m here to escort you to Virginia’s bedchamber.’

      ‘Where I don’t belong,’ she said to herself as much as him.

      ‘Where you will be doing me a favour I should not permit, considering you’re so tired yourself,’ he corrected.

      ‘I didn’t ride all the way from Northumberland in the depths of winter.’

      ‘And I wasn’t here to nurse Virginia through her last illness, but if we’re not to be caught in a tryst and forced into wedlock, Mrs Wheaton, it’s about time we quit this draughty corridor and got on with all that needs doing.’

      Chloe sniffed a very expressive sniff of reproach, yet something else lurked behind her coolly composed look. The thought of what Virginia would make of them standing here like a pair of star-crossed lovers unwilling to say goodnight hung unspoken in the air between them and made him flinch.

      His beloved but infuriating great-aunt would be planning their wedding before one more late and reluctant January dawn had passed. Virginia usually opposed misalliances and a viscount and a housekeeper were one of those many times over, but something told him she would have been delighted if they ever found the courage to defy convention and wed. So what did Virginia know about the woman he didn’t?

      ‘I am going to sit with my beloved late employer and friend and you are going to sleep, my lord, and that is all,’ Chloe said sternly and he let her lead the way while he struggled with puzzlement and weariness and did as he was bid for once in his life.

      * * *

      The next morning was bright and frosty with a sky as clear and delicate a blue as the flower of a mountain harebell. Chloe finished drying her hair by the fire Lord Farenze had ordered to be lit in her room and told herself she hadn’t really needed the bath he ordered after she spent half the night nodding in a comfortable chair in the late viscountess’s bedchamber. Even so, it felt good to be clean and new vitality sparked through her along with the crackle of electricity in her heavy auburn hair. She really ought to have it cut, but it had been easier and cheaper to let it grow so ridiculously long she could sit on it when it hung down her back.

      It seemed wrong she should feel vital and alive, today of all days, and she looked at the