Indiscreet (3 page)

He was not. Only that once. Never again.

And married ladies were dangerous, as Eden had found within the past few months. One could lose one's life in the face of an
irate husband's bullet or have to live with the guilt of having killed a man one had wronged. Even if the husband was too cowardly to issue a challenge, as appeared to have been the case with the man Eden had cuckolded, there was always the censure of the
ton
to be borne. That meant absenting oneself from London, and even perhaps from Brighton and Bath for a year or so.

Females who were not ladies were generally a bore. They were necessary for the slaking of one's appetites, of course, and they were often marvelously skilled between the sheets. But they were too easily had and they generally had nothing at all to offer except their bodies. They were a bore. It was several years since he had employed a regular mistress. He preferred casual encounters if the choice must be made. But they posed their own danger. He had brought his body more or less safely through six years of fighting in the Peninsula as well as through Waterloo. He had no wish to surrender it to a sexual disease.

No, widows were perfect in every way. He had twice had affairs with a widow. There had been no complications with either. He had left each when he tired of her. Neither had put up any fuss. Both had moved on to the next lover. He remembered them with some fondness.

Mrs. Winters was a widow. And an extraordinarily lovely one. Oh, not in any very obvious way, perhaps. Ellen Hudson was dressed far more richly and fashionably. Her hair was styled far more intricately. She was younger. But it was in the very absence of such lures that Mrs. Winters's beauty shone. In her rather plain and definitely unfashionable green gown, the woman became apparent. The eye did not linger on the appearance of the dress
but penetrated beyond to the rather tall, slender, but shapely form within. It was an eminently beddable body. And the simplicity of her hairstyle, smooth over the crown of her head and over her ears, caught in a knot behind, with only a few loose curls to relieve the severity, drew attention, not to itself, but to the rich dark sheen of the hair. And the hair was not fussy enough to draw attention from her face, regular-featured, hazel-eyed, intelligent. Beautiful.

She was a widow. He silently blessed the late Mr. Winters for having the courtesy to die young.

The stay in the country promised to be tedious. Oh, it was good to be back in what had been his grandparents' house. It revived many pleasant childhood memories. And it would be good to spend a few weeks with Claude. They shared the unusual closeness of identical twins and yet their lives had taken quite separate paths since Claude had married at the age of twenty. They no longer saw a great deal of each other. He could not ask, either, for more congenial company than that of two of his three closest friends. They had been close since they were cavalry officers together in the Peninsula. They had been dubbed there by one wag of a fellow officer the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he, Eden, Nat, and Kenneth Woodfall, Earl of Haverford, because it had seemed that they were always in the thick of action.

But the stay was going to be tedious. He could not like Clarissa, though to give her her due, she seemed to be keeping Claude happy enough. It was very obvious to him, though, that she had set herself a mission to be accomplished during the next few weeks. She wanted him for her sister. And so there was all the tedium to
be faced of being polite to the girl while giving no false impression that he was courting her. He knew he would be up against Clarissa's determined maneuvering.

Sometimes he cursed himself for a fool for feeling such an obligation to Eden and Nat. Did he have to feel obliged to rusticate with them just because they had no choice but to do so? Could he not leave them to keep each other company? But he knew that they would have done as much for him. Besides, Horatia would probably be in town for the Season. He would be as happy to avoid seeing her.

And so he was stuck here for a few weeks at the very least. He needed more diversion than a brother and two close friends could provide. He needed female diversion.

And Mrs. Winters was a widow.

And available.

She had signaled as much more than once. Quite unmistakably. Her behavior was entirely well-bred throughout the evening. She appeared quiet yet charming, just as a woman of her apparent position and means would be expected to behave. She neither pushed herself forward nor hung back with false modesty. In the drawing room after dinner she conversed with Clayton and Daphne and Mr. Lipton and appeared to be doing so with some sense, if their interested expressions when she was talking were any indication. After Miss Hudson, Miss Lipton, and Miss Hulme had favored the company with pianoforte recitals and songs, she was invited by Claude to play for them and did so without fuss. She played well but did not linger after the one piece as Miss Lipton had done. When Mrs. Lovering rose to leave, Mrs.
Winters joined her without hesitation, bade Claude and Clarissa a courteous good night, and nodded politely at the company in general. She waited quietly for the pompous ass of a rector to pile effusive thanks on his hosts, to commend them on their distinguished guests, and to praise the meal they had all enjoyed. Almost ten minutes passed before the three of them finally took their leave, Claude with them to hand the ladies into the rector's conveyance and to see them on their way.

Oh, but she had signaled her availability. There had been the smile and the feigned confusion and the lowered lashes at dinner—beautiful long lashes they were too, as dark as her hair. And there had been the several covert glances in the drawing room, most notably the one she had given him after she had finished playing the pianoforte and was smiling at the smattering of applause. She had looked directly to where he was standing, propped against the mantel, a glass in one hand, and she had blushed. He had not been applauding, but he had raised his glass one inch and had lifted one eyebrow.

Yes, she was definitely available. As he stretched out in bed later that night, having dismissed his valet and extinguished the candles, his loins ached in pleasurable anticipation.

He wondered if the late Mr. Winters had been a good teacher of bedroom skills. But no matter. He would just as soon teach her himself.

S
HE
had just walked back the three miles from the small cottage elderly Mr. Clarkwell occupied with his son and daughter-in-law. She had been reading to him as she tried to do at least once a week. He could no longer get about without the aid of two canes, and sitting indoors or even in the doorway all day made him peevish, his daughter-in-law claimed.

Catherine scratched an ecstatic Toby's stomach, first with the toe of her shoe and then with her hand.

“Foolish dog,” she said, catching him by the jaw and shaking his head from side to side. “Anyone would think I had been gone for a month.” She laughed at his furiously wagging tail.

It was a chilly day despite the sunshine. She poked at the embers of the fire in the kitchen grate and succeeded in coaxing
it back to life. She put on more wood and then filled the kettle and set it to boil for tea.

It always felt good to come back home and close the door behind her and know that she did not have to go anywhere for the rest of the day. She thought about last evening and smiled to herself. Such evenings were pleasant and she had found the company congenial despite several moments of embarrassment. But she did not crave them as a general way of life.

Not any longer.

But it seemed the rest of the day was not to be all her own after all. There was a sharp rap on the door. She hurried to answer it, sighing inwardly while Toby went wild with barking. It was a groom from Bodley.

“Mrs. Adams is coming to call on you, ma'am,” he said.

Mrs. Adams never called upon those she considered beneath her socially. What she did do was summon a person to the garden gate, regardless of the weather or of what that person might have been busy at inside the house. And there she would speak for a few minutes until she chose to signal her coachman to drive on.

Catherine sighed again and closed the door on an indignant Toby before walking down the path to the gate. It was not the carriage approaching this time, though, she saw immediately, but a group of riders—Mr. and Mrs. Adams, Miss Hudson, Miss Lipton, Lady Baird, Lord Pelham, Mr. Arthur Lipton, and Viscount Rawleigh. They all stopped and there was a chorus of greetings.

“How do you do, Mrs. Winters?” Mr. Adams said with a cheerful grin. “Clarissa decided that she must call you outside in
case you missed and failed to admire such a splendid cavalcade of horses and their riders passing by.”

Mrs. Adams ignored him. She inclined her head regally. It was a head covered by a very fetching blue riding hat with a feather that curled attractively beneath her chin. She wore a matching blue riding habit. It was new, Catherine believed. And expensive.

“Good day, Mrs. Winters,” she said. “I trust you did not take a chill from riding home in the vicar's dogcart last evening? It is a pity you do not keep a carriage, but I do not suppose you would have much need for one.”

“Indeed not, ma'am,” Catherine agreed, entertaining herself with a mental image of a carriage house in her back garden—twice as large as her cottage. “And it was a very pleasant evening for a drive, provided one was dressed appropriately.”

“What a delightful cottage,” Lady Baird said. “It is in a quite idyllic setting, is it not, Eden?”

“There are many people in London,” Lord Pelham said, his blue eyes twinkling down at Catherine, “who would kill to have property on the river, as you have, Mrs. Winters.”

“Then I must be thankful I do not live near London, my lord,” she said.

“I do not believe such a small property would be of interest to anyone in town, Pelham,” Mrs. Adams said. “Though it must be admitted that the river makes a pleasing setting for the village. And the stone bridge is very picturesque. Did you notice it when we arrived two days ago?”

“We will ride on and pay homage to it,” Mr. Adams said, “and
allow Mrs. Winters to return to the warmth of her cottage. You are shivering, ma'am.”

Catherine smiled at him, and generally at all of them as they bade her farewell and proceeded down the street toward the triple-arched stone bridge at the end of it. Yes, she had shivered. And yes, it was chilly standing outside without her cloak and bonnet.

But it was not the cold that had been her chief discomfort. It was
him.
Perhaps it was nothing at all. Perhaps she was being girlishly silly over a handsome man. She would be very annoyed with herself if that were really the case. She had thought herself past all that. She was five-and-twenty years old and she was living quietly in the country for the rest of her life. She had resigned herself to that, adjusted her life accordingly. And she was happy. No, contented. Happiness involved emotion, and if one was happy, then one could also be unhappy. She wanted nothing more to do with either. She was content to be content.

Or perhaps she was not just being silly. Perhaps there really was something. Certainly he had spent a great deal of last evening looking at her, even though he had made no attempt to converse with her or to join any of the groups of which she was a part—except before dinner, when he had had no choice. It surely could not be coincidence that every time she had glanced at him he had been gazing back. She had felt his eyes even when she was not looking at him. And whenever she had looked, it had been unwillingly to try to prove to herself that she was imagining things.

The same thing had happened today. He had not spoken a word to her but had hung back behind the rest of the group. While
they were all glancing about them at her cottage and garden, at the village, and at her, his own eyes had not faltered. She had felt them even though she had not once glanced at him.

And that was ridiculous, she told herself, letting herself back into the house and suffering the excited assault of Toby, who had been denied the pleasure of barking at strangers. She had looked quite easily at all the others, including the other three gentlemen, and had felt no awkwardness or embarrassment at all even though Mr. Adams and Lord Pelham were equally handsome as Viscount Rawleigh and Mr. Lipton too was a good-looking gentleman. Why should she feel embarrassment? They had called on her. She had not presumed to invite them.

Why had she found it impossible to turn either her head or her eyes in the direction of the viscount? And how could she know that he had looked steadily at her with those hooded dark eyes of his since she had not looked to see? And how would he construe the fact that she had not returned his look at least once—coolly and courteously?

She felt like a girl from the schoolroom again, struck dumb and brainless by the mere sight of a handsome male face.

No one had mentioned last evening how long the guests were to remain at Bodley. Perhaps they were there for only a few days. Or for a week or two at the longest. Surely it would not be much longer than that. There was still some time before the Season started in London, but young blades would want to be there before all the balls and routs and such began in earnest. Viscount Rawleigh, Lord Pelham, and Mr. Gascoigne definitely qualified as young blades. Though not so very young either. They must all
be close to thirty. The viscount was Mr. Adams's twin, and Mr. Adams had been married long enough to have produced an eight-year-old daughter.

She tried desperately to stop thinking about the houseguests at Bodley and about one of them in particular. She did not want to do so. She liked her new life and she liked herself as she was. She made her tea, poured it after it had steeped for a suitable time, and sat down with one of Daniel Defoe's books, lent her by the rector. Perhaps she could lose herself in an account of the plague year.

She eventually succeeded in doing so. Toby stretched out on the rug at her feet and sighed noisily in deep contentment.

•   •   •

SHE
really was beautiful. She was one of the rare women who would look so even dressed in a sack. Or in nothing at all. Oh, yes, definitely that. He had sat his horse outside her cottage unclothing her with his eyes while she exchanged small talk with everyone else. And his mental exercise had revealed long limbs, a flat stomach that did not need the aid of corsets, firm, uptilted, rose-peaked breasts, creamy skin. And with his eyes he had let down her hair from its plain and sensible knot and watched it cascade in a dark mane down her back to her waist. It would wave enticingly—he remembered the tendrils that had been allowed to remain loose the evening before.

He had not failed to notice that she did not once look directly at him. Neither had he failed to sense that she was more fully aware of him than of any of the others, at whom she looked and
with whom she conversed quite easily. There had been an invisible thread drawn tautly between them and he had pulled on it only very gently. He had no wish to be teased again by Eden. He had no wish for anyone else to notice, especially Claude, between whose mind and his own there was a strange bond.

He was glad that she was discreet. If she were not, of course, he would not pursue his interest in her. He certainly would not take her up on the invitation she had so covertly extended the evening before.

But take her up on it he would. And without delay. His stay would probably be no more than a few weeks long, and he had the feeling that there was enough about Mrs. Winters to hold his interest for a number of weeks.

There were no guests in the evening even though Clarissa appeared to find the uneven numbers an embarrassment. There were enough people interested in cards to make up the tables. He was free.

“I shall step out for some fresh air,” he announced languidly, hoping that no one else would discover any burning desire to keep him company. Ellen Hudson, fortunately, was one of the cardplayers.

“It is dusk,” Clarissa said, clearly annoyed that he had avoided partnering her sister. “You may get lost, Rawleigh.”

Claude chuckled. “Rex and I enjoyed many a clandestine nocturnal adventure here when we were boys, my love,” he said. “We will send out a search party if you are not home by midnight, Rex.”

“I shall use a ball of string if it will make you easier in your mind, Clarissa,” his lordship said, his voice bored.

He was on his way a few minutes later, blessedly alone. And he blessed too his familiarity with the estate, though he had not visited it for years. One did not easily forget boyish haunts. Even in the gathering dusk he knew unerringly the route across the lawn and among the trees and through the postern door in the wall about the park that brought him out onto the road a short distance beyond the far end of the village—Mrs. Winters's end. He did not wish to tempt fate by striding through the village on his way to her cottage.

It was almost dark by the time he stepped through the postern door onto the road. The curtains were drawn across the windows at the front of the cottage, he could see. There was light behind one of them. She was at home, then. He must hope that she was there alone. He must have some sort of excuse to present if she was not.

He opened the gate and closed it carefully behind him. A glance along the street showed it to be deserted. He felt unaccountably nervous now that the time had come. He had never done such a thing in the country before. Certainly never at Stratton. And he had never stayed long enough anywhere else even to consider the desirability of doing so. It was the sort of thing one associated with the anonymity of a large place, like London.

Claude would not be pleased if he got wind of it.

Eden and Nat would be amused and would never let him hear the end of it.

He must make sure that no one got wind of it.

He knocked on the door.

He thought he was going to have to knock again, even though he could hear a dog barking with some enthusiasm inside, but he heard the key turning in the lock just as he was raising his arm, and the door opened a short way. She looked at him in some surprise. She was wearing a lace-trimmed cap, which made her look charmingly pretty instead of matronly. She wore the same high-necked, long-sleeved wool dress she had worn earlier in the day. He wondered if she realized that it emphasized her slimness and clung enticingly to her curves.

“My lord!” she said.

He could hardly hear her above the barking of the dog. He wondered for the first time how it was she could tell the difference between him and Claude. Most people could not, at least on early acquaintance.

“Mrs. Winters?” He removed his hat. “Good evening. May I step inside?”

She looked beyond his shoulder as if she expected to see someone else with him. Some seconds passed before she opened the door wider and stepped to one side so that he could move past her. A small brown-and-white terrier stepped into the breach and announced its intention of guarding its territory.

“I do not bite,” he told the dog in languid tones. “I hope you will return the favor, sir.”

“Toby,” she said, “do be quiet.”

But her words were not needed. The dog had turned over onto its back and was thumping its tail on the floor and waving its paws
in the air. He tickled it with the toe of his boot and the animal turned right side up and trotted away, apparently satisfied.