Louise Allen - Regency Scoundrels And Scandals

The quivering got worse, then she looked up, her eyes brimming with tears. Of laughter. ‘Pretending to be a virgin?’ she gurgled. ‘You know, Jack, I don’t think you would have deceived me for a moment.’ She rubbed the sleeve of her nightgown over her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, I am not such a hypocrite that I expected you to have been saving yourself for me. In fact,’ she added, a decidedly wicked twinkle in her eyes, ‘I’m glad you didn’t.’

Jack reached for her. ‘Get back under the covers and go to sleep. It is late and tomorrow we are going to Ostend. I want you on a ship before half the English army decides to head home.’

‘Won’t you stay?’ Something of his feelings must have shown, for she added hastily, ‘I mean just sleep.’

‘While you drop off, then,’ he said, resigning himself to the bittersweet pain of having her so close, perhaps for the last time.

‘That’s what I used to say to Freddie,’ she murmured, wriggling down between the sheets, then turning on her side so she could wrap an arm across his chest.

‘I’m not singing you a lullaby.’

‘No?’ She sounded almost asleep already.

‘No.’ Jack settled her more comfortably against his chest and lay back. He had never understood the need women seemed to have for cuddling, until now. You made love and then you slept, he had thought. But now, as always with Eva relaxed in his embrace, he felt a calm soaking into his bones, despite the lurking knowledge that he might never experience this again. This was love, damn it. Love.

‘Is this the road to Eton?’ Eva demanded, trying to read signposts as the post chaise bounded up the road from the coast.

‘No. London.’

‘But I don’t want to go to London, I want to go to Eton to see Freddie.’ She twisted round on the plush upholstery to glare at Jack indignantly. ‘You know I do.’

‘And my instructions are to take you to London.’ Eva opened her mouth to protest, but Jack shook his head before she could get the words out. ‘We have a charming house for you in the heart of fashionable London. I am taking you there, then I will check with the Foreign Office and, if you still want to, we will go to Eton tomorrow, after you are rested.’

‘But I don’t want to rest! I’ve tossed about on that wretched boat for twenty-four hours—without getting seasick—and now I shall be stuck in this bounding carriage for hours. Compared to days in the saddle and sleeping under the stars, I am perfectly rested.’

And no lovemaking to make her feel languid and lazily inclined to do nothing but curl up in Jack’s arms until one or other of them began those irresistible caresses that ended, inevitably, in ecstasy and exhaustion. She ached for him, but ever since they had set foot on the sloop he had waiting at Ostend, Jack had behaved with total circumspection.

It made her restless and impatient now, and, when she let herself brood, miserable for the future. The thought of seeing Freddie had been buoying her up; now that treat had been snatched away and she knew she was reacting like a child told to wait until tomorrow for her sweetmeats. Well, she was not going to stand for it…

‘Don’t even think about it.’ The corner of Jack’s mouth twitched, betraying his awareness of her rebellious thoughts.

‘What?’

‘Getting on your high horse and ordering me to take you to Eton, your Serene Highness.’

‘Surely you are not frightened of a lot of Whitehall clerks, are you?’ She opened her eyes wide and was rewarded by his grin at her tactics. Wheedling was not going to do it.

‘I thought you understood the concept of duty,’ Jack said mildly.

‘I do. But would it matter so much if I were one day late arriving in London?’

‘Yes.’ Jack produced a travelling chess set. ‘This will wile away the time.’

‘No, thank you, I have no desire to play chess. Please? Take me to my son, Lord Sebastian.’ That got his attention. Jack placed the box deliberately on the seat next to him and leaned back into the corner of the chaise.

‘So that was what you were doing up a ladder in Mr Catterick’s library.’ Eva nodded. ‘I do not use my title when I am working.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it makes me more of a target, less invisible. I am two different people, Eva. You have not met Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst, and I doubt you will.’

‘Why not?’ she demanded again, kicking off her shoes impatiently and curling up on the seat facing him.

‘Lord Sebastian is a rake and a gamester and does not mix in the sort of society that grand duchesses, even on unofficial visits, frequent.’

‘Is that why you fell out with your father?’ That would explain it, an estrangement between the duke and his wild-living son.

‘Actually, no. My father rebuffed my efforts to be a dutiful younger son, learn about the estate, make myself useful in that way. He supplied me with money beyond the most extravagant demands I might make and sent me off to London to become, in his words, a rakehell and a libertine.’

‘But why? I do not understand.’ Jack’s face was shuttered. Eva leaned across the space that separated them and put her hand on his knee. ‘Tell me, I would like to understand.’

‘I think because he was disappointed in Charles, my elder brother, and he did not want to admit it. I am very like my father, probably very like what he expected Charles to be. But Charles was—is—quiet, reclusive, gentle. My father maintained he was perfect in every way and dismissed me so he would not see the contrast proving him wrong at every turn.

‘By the time I was ten—and my brother twenty—I was careering round the estate on horseback, ignoring falls and broken bones. I was pestering him to teach me to fence, to shoot. Charles was stuck in his study, reading poetry. By the time I was sixteen I was in trouble with all the local light-heeled girls, Charles had to be dragged to balls and virtually forced to converse with a woman. And so it went on. Eventually the contrast was too extreme, but my father’s sense of duty to the family name, the importance of primogeniture, was too strong. He could not admit he loved me more, so he had to pretend the opposite. I had to go.’

‘How awful,’ Eva said compassionately. What a mess people got themselves into with their expectations and their pressures. Why could they not accept each other for what they were? ‘Did you miss your family and your home very much?’

Jack shrugged. ‘I was eighteen, the age when you want to get out and kick your heels up. He didn’t show me the door, I still came home, saw Charles, my mother, Bel, my sister. But for a few days, every now and again. And my father got the constant comfort of people comparing his sober, quiet, dignified elder son with the wild younger one.’

‘Then why aren’t you drunk in some gaming hell now?’ she asked tartly, to cover up the fact that she felt so sad about the young man he was describing. In nine years Freddie would be that age.

‘Nothing was expected of me,’ Jack went on, gazing out of the window as though he were looking back ten years at his younger self. ‘Nothing except to spend money and to decorate society events. I did my best. I can spend money quite effectively, I scrub up quite well, I can do the pretty at parties—but I was bored. Then I found myself helping a friend whose former valet was blackmailing him over indiscreet love letters. One thing led to another and I found that I liked Jack Ryder far more than I did Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst.’

‘Aren’t they now the same person, just with two different names?’ Eva asked. ‘Hasn’t Lord Sebastian grown up with Jack Ryder?’

‘Perhaps.’ He shifted back from the window to regard her from under level brows. ‘It makes no difference to you and me. The Grand Duchess Eva de Maubourg does not have an affaire with a younger son any more than she does with a King’s Messenger.’