Dangerous Lord, Seductive Mistress. Mary Brendan

And he certainly hadn’t forced her to kiss him. She’d been a very willing participant in that! The most she’d had from him were compliments and complaints that she was a seductive little miss who could drive him wild with desire. It was probable she’d had a lucky escape. Had he not gone away when he did she might have let him properly seduce her. The consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about. But she was determined not to let him know that any of it bothered her.

      ‘It is my mama’s greatest wish that we return to town to live.’ Her voice sounded shrill despite her attempt to keep it light and level.

      ‘Are you also keen to return there to live?’

      ‘I certainly miss the gaiety and the friends I had there,’ Deborah answered, more composed.

      ‘If you returned to London, you’d avoid the necessity of living amongst the likes of the Luckhursts.’

      ‘I shan’t allow them to drive us away,’ Deborah retorted with a defiance that made him cock a dark brow at her. Had he told her he found her attitude immature he could not have made his opinion plainer. ‘We have some friends here,’ she continued doggedly. ‘Harriet and her brother are nice people. So are Mr and Mrs Pattinson. Not everybody hereabouts is in league with the smugglers. Evil will triumph if good people are too cowardly to combat it.’

      ‘Certainly,’ he agreed drily. ‘But a lot of decent folk don’t consider contraband a bad thing, but a benefit.’

      A defeated little grimace was Deborah’s acknowledgement of the truth in that statement. Her stepfather had been a good man, yet he had happily paid to have his cellars stocked illicitly.

      ‘Why do you not return to London to live?’ Randolph asked. A few brown fingers curled to rest close to his narrow mouth as he waited for her reply. After a silent moment he prodded, ‘Is there more to it than a battle of wills with the smugglers?’

      Deborah got to her feet and collected the cups to put on the tray. She spun about to face him, feeling an odd unwillingness to admit that she—once an heiress with a magnificent dowry—now could not afford to live in London. Yet she had nothing to be ashamed of. She had not squandered her inheritance; it had been taken from her. Again she had an inclination to tell him that he had no right to ask. But then that would imply that she cared what he thought. And she didn’t.

      ‘When Papa died the whole estate was entailed on the next male heir. I have no brother, as you know. There was no close relative on the paternal side who might have felt morally obliged to treat us generously. A distant cousin—a gentleman we haven’t met who resides in a castle in Scotland—took the title and estate. Mama was very well provided for in my father’s will, and my inheritance was held in trust. Unfortunately it was one that could be breached.’ She shrugged, clattering crockery.

      ‘When your mother remarried her assets became Mr Woodville’s,’ Randolph guessed.

      ‘Indeed,’ Debbie muttered, her fingers tightening on the edge of the table until the knuckles showed bone. ‘And Mr Woodville had a son and a strong belief in primogeniture.’

      A silence ensued and whilst Debbie stared fiercely through the window Randolph watched her.

      ‘You have enough to live on?’ he eventually asked quietly.

      ‘Oh, yes. Mr Woodville left Mama enough to carry on living here comfortably, if we are careful. When she has passed away the house and estate will go to his son, Norman. In order that I would not be left destitute, he also left me a bequest of a few thousand pounds to tempt a prospective husband. It is not quite the sixty that my father had wanted me to have.’ She turned with a smile on her lips. ‘Well, as we have finished tea, sir, shall we now take a stroll in the gardens?’