The Scandals Of An Innocent

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ALICE HAD FOUND IT VERY ODD and disturbing to meet Miles at the breakfast table. After what they had shared, it felt as though every nerve in her body was supremely aware of him. The low tones of his voice made her tingle. Each glance that he cast her seemed to heat her from the inside out. She felt utterly at his mercy-and the mercy of her own needs and desires.

She was sure that the others must be aware of the atmosphere that simmered between them, and yet it seemed they were not. Lizzie chattered with her usual frankness. Mrs. Lister read the tea leaves and bemoaned the fact that there were only bad signs in the cup.

“A pair of scissors!” she announced. “A quarrel or separation! Alice, dear-” her gaze traveled from Alice to Miles and back again “-I do hope you are not going to give me cause for concern.”

“Of course not, Mama,” Alice said. “Why would I do such a thing? Now, would you care to visit the Pump Rooms today? I understand that Lady Vickery and Mrs. Anstruther will be there.”

Mrs. Lister brightened. “Oh, then I will most certainly attend! Dearest Lady Vickery and I need to discuss arrangements for the wedding.” Her gaze darted from her daughter to Miles again. “I wish you would set a date, Alice dear. Now that the marquis is living in our house it is quite inappropriate for you to delay!”

“And even more so when I almost had you in your own bed this morning,” Miles whispered in Alice’s ear. “Set a date, sweetheart.”

“What was that?” Mrs. Lister looked up, beaming, from the hunt for her reticule.

“Lord Vickery was adding his own words of encouragement,” Alice said, glaring at Miles, “in his own inimitable style.”

“Good, good,” Mrs. Lister said absently. “Now, where can that have gone? There was no suggestion in the leaves that I would lose anything today!”

“Your mama truly believes in these things, does she not?” Miles commented, as they set out later to walk into the village. Lizzie and Mrs. Lister were walking ahead of them and Alice had been obliged to take Miles’s arm, an irreproachably respectable maneuver that she could see amused him. She was all too conscious of the hard muscle of his arm beneath the blue superfine of his coat. She could remember the ripple and flow of that muscle beneath his skin. And she simply had to stop thinking about Miles without his clothes because it was doing her no good at all.

“Miss Lister?” Miles prompted. “I was merely making conversation about your mother’s penchant for the leaves.”

“Yes, I am afraid she does believe it,” Alice said dolefully. “She is most shockingly superstitious. When your mother told her about the Curse of Drum I thought she would expire on the spot.”

“It did not put her off the idea of your marrying me, then?” Miles inquired.

Alice laughed. “Oh, no, though it did make her even more anxious for the wedding to take place! As long as I am a marchioness before the Curse takes you, she will be quite happy!” She lowered her voice. “A little while ago Mama encouraged me to show you some kindness, my lord,” she said. “She shocks me sometimes,” she added.

“Some kindness,” Miles said thoughtfully. “Was that what you showed me earlier, Miss Lister?”

“I permitted you far too much license earlier,” Alice said.

“But you want to permit me more.” Miles’s voice was soft.

The cold winter air chilled Alice’s hot cheeks. She fidgeted with her gloves. It was only what she had admitted to herself earlier. It was only what he already knew from her impassioned response to him, yet to confess it to him seemed brazen. “I admit it,” she said. “I have always been honest with you-”

“You have.”

“And though it is not remotely ladylike of me to confess it, you know I desire you.”

“You refine too much upon being a lady,” Miles said. “Women are made of flesh and blood, too.”

He caught her suddenly in his arms and his lips came down on hers, cold from the March air but conjuring all the sensual passion that he could always evoke in her. Alice’s head spun at the contrast of heat and chill. She closed her eyes. The pressure of his lips forced hers apart ruthlessly and then his tongue tangled with hers and suddenly she wanted him so badly that she felt as though she was falling. He let her go and the bright spring light stung her eyes and she stared in shock at the retreating figures of Lizzie and Mrs. Lister. They had not turned around. They had seen nothing.

“You take too many risks,” she stammered.

“Perhaps.” Miles smiled sardonically and offered her his arm again. “The worst thing that would have happened was that your mama would have turned around and seen us kissing and sent immediately for the vicar.” He brushed his lips against her ear and she shivered.

“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” he murmured.

“To wed me?” Alice said.

Miles laughed. “Preferably. But to have you with or without the blessing of the church.”

Alice’s cheeks were burning as she quickened her pace after the others. “You could have had me this morning without it,” she said, “and we both know it. So why did you stop?”

She sensed the change in Miles like a door slamming shut, abrupt and painful. “It seems,” he said shortly, “that I could not go through with what I had planned.”

The sting of his words came as a shock to Alice. Although she had suspected that Miles had had a calculated plan to seduce her, to hear him admit it hurt her. She supposed it was because her response to him had been so open and honest and yet his making love to her had been the reverse, calculated and premeditated. Once again he had shown the depths of his cynicism.

“So it is true,” she whispered. “You had planned from the first to seduce me.”

“I told you I would do anything to win you,” Miles said. Then, as he met the look in her eyes, “Damn it, Alice, don’t look so distressed! You have known all along that I am a scoundrel.”

Alice bit her lip hard. She had known. “I keep forgetting,” she said. “It is my fault. Every so often I forget and then the truth trips me up and it pains me.”

She thought about his tenderness when he had saved her on Fortune Row.

I thought you had started to care for me a little…

How many times, she thought bitterly, was she going to be so foolish and be disillusioned?

She hurried after the others and Miles lengthened his stride to keep up with her and for a while there was a rather strained silence between them.

“Lord Vickery?” Alice said, after a little.

“Miss Lister?” Miles raised a brow at her formal tone.

“I wondered,” Alice said, “why you felt it necessary to sleep outside my bedroom door in the first place. I assured you that there was absolutely no reason why you should.”

“I was there in case you needed me,” Miles said. He smiled suddenly, that flashing smile that always made her heart turn over. “My preference, as you know, would have been for sleeping in your bed, Miss Lister, but given that that is hardly appropriate at present, I wanted to be close by in case you cried for help.”

Alice tried to banish the strange warm feeling that his words evoked. He was protecting his interests, she reminded herself. Nothing more.

“It must have been unconscionably uncomfortable sleeping on that pallet,” she said.

Miles shrugged. “Not as uncomfortable as some of the places I have been obliged to sleep on campaign, I assure you.”

Alice looked at him. “You never talk about your time in the Peninsular.”

“War is not generally considered a topic for polite conversation.”

“I suppose not,” Alice said. “I would like to hear about it, though.”

She realized that she genuinely wanted to know. Anything that cast light on the formation of Miles’s character, on his history, fascinated her. She realized that she had absolutely no idea of the role he had had in the army, whether he had been injured and invalided out, or had resigned his commission. She tried to imagine the places he must have been and the things he must have seen. She found it impossible. In all her life she had traveled no farther than the seaside at Scarborough. Her life had been bounded first by the need to work simply to live and then by the behavior her mother had considered appropriate to a lady.

She also sensed the reluctance in Miles to talk. Once again, he was not anxious to reveal anything of himself. His mouth had set in a hard line. “I doubt that you would approve of my experiences, Miss Lister,” he said. “I lived by the very things that you condemn-chicanery, compromise, negotiation. That was my job.”

Alice frowned. “Whatever can you mean?”

“I was a diplomat, Miss Lister,” Miles said. “Oh, not the sort of diplomat who takes tea in the palaces in the capital cities of the world, but a backstairs negotiator who makes the dirty deals that keep the peace and keep the world turning, but whom every government would deny and disown if ever they came out.” There was a wealth of bitterness in his voice that Alice could not understand. “Every government connives secretly at such agreements, of course. They are all pragmatists at heart. They simply do not want to do the dirty work themselves. So that was my job and on the way I sacrificed plenty of people and my own principles along with them.” He looked down into Alice’s face. “If you knew even one of the deals that I had made,” he said, “you would be forced to condemn me utterly.”

“Tell me,” Alice said. She heard the pain in his voice and reached out instinctively to him. “Tell me,” she repeated, as the frown in his eyes deepened. “I cannot begin to understand if you do not explain.”

Miles dropped her arm and moved a little away from her. He drove his hands into the pockets of his coat.

“Very well. I was with Wellesley at Rolica a couple of years ago,” he said. “We took prisoner some local men who had been acting as guides for the French. The wife of one of them came to see me one night.” He closed his eyes. “I can see her now. She was pregnant, barefoot, in rags, with a child clutching at her skirts. She told me her man had only taken the French money because the family was starving. She begged me to save him or they would all die. I promised to help her. Even as I said it I knew I lied.”

Alice shook her head. “What happened?” she whispered.

“Wellesley wanted to make a bargain with the local resistance fighters,” Miles said. “It was early on in our campaign and we desperately needed allies. The leader of the partisans demanded we hand over the prisoners in return for the information we needed. I knew that if we did that, the men would all be killed for collaborating with the French. Very likely they would be tortured and die horribly. But still I negotiated an agreement with the guerrillas.”

Alice felt cold and sick and shocked. “You handed the men over?” she said. Her lips felt stiff as though she could not quite form the words.

“I did,” Miles said grimly. “Treaties are made in such ways, Miss Lister, for the greater good. I did it so that Wellesley had the information he needed to attack. He won the day. Those men were sacrificed so that every man, woman and child in this country could sleep more easily knowing that today will not be the day that Bonaparte invades.”

Alice made a little repudiating gesture with her hands. “I had no notion,” she said.

“Few people do.” Miles’s expression was dark. “They do not want to think about the price paid for their security.”

“But does it not appall you?” Alice burst out. “It’s loathsome, vile, that men will do that to their fellow men. It’s hateful-I feel contaminated even knowing about it!”

Miles’s expression was closed. “I have told you before, Miss Lister, that I am the most cynical of men, so no, it does not trouble me unduly. There is a price for everything and this is the price for peace. War is ugly business, which brings us rather neatly back to where we started and why this is not a fit topic of social discourse.”

“I do not understand what it was that drove you to such work in the first place,” Alice said. She felt frighteningly adrift, grasping after anything that might explain this terrifying coldness in Miles.

“You do not need to understand,” Miles said. His tone utterly forbade any continuance of the conversation. Alice heard it, ignored it and plowed on.

“I know that something happened to cause an estrangement from your family,” she said. “Was that what prompted you to join the army and take on such a role?”

“Miss Lister,” Miles said in a voice with an edge that flayed, “I have no desire to pursue this discussion any further.”

“No, but I do,” Alice argued. “I need to understand you. I need to know what drove you from your family-”

“You need to do neither of those two things, Miss Lister,” Miles said. His voice was very quiet now but absolutely icy. “I suppose you have some foolish, romantic idea that if you are able to reconcile me with my family you can heal whatever wounds you fondly believe me to be suffering. I fear that such happy endings exist only in your highly colored imagination.”

They had reached the marketplace, and Lizzie and Mrs. Lister had turned to wait for them on the steps of the Pump Rooms. Alice tried to arrange her face into an expression of normality in case they guessed at the turmoil inside her. The initial shock she had felt at Miles’s harshness was ebbing now but she felt a little strange. He had spared her nothing in trying to drive her away from him. He had been cruel and contemptuous. She wanted to believe that he had only done it because deep down he was angry and hurt at whatever it was that had set him on such a destructive course in the first place. She could not believe that he was truly so hard that he had no gentleness left in him. How could he make love to her with such skill and tenderness and yet rebuff all the efforts she made to be close to him? It baffled her that sometimes she could feel she was starting to understand him, that she was so drawn to him, and then he could demonstrate such indifference and remind her in the starkest possible terms that the only thing he felt for her was lust, not love.

She glanced up at his face. He looked handsome, cool and remote, and his eyes met hers directly and with no expression in their depths. He made no attempt to reassure her or to apologize for upsetting her or even to smooth matters over with light conversation.

I am the most cynical of men…

She searched his face for answers and he smiled faintly at her though his eyes were still cold.

“Don’t look so stricken, Miss Lister,” he murmured. “You knew the depths of my depravity from the start. If you ever thought you could reform me, this should prove to you that you cannot.”

Alice caught his arm as he made to walk away from her. “But I want to help you-”

Something raw flared in Miles’s eyes. “You cannot, nor do I wish it,” he said. He grabbed her upper arms. “You are confused,” he said roughly. “You think that because I want to make love to you that there is some bond between us. I am sorry to disillusion you once again but what I need from you is very simple, Miss Lister, and it does not require emotional intimacy.”

He turned away from her to hold open the doors of the Pump Rooms for Mrs. Lister. Nothing could have made it clearer that their conversation was at an end.

“May I fetch some spa water for you, ma’am?” he inquired pleasantly. “They say it is most efficacious for the health.”

Alice sank down onto one of the pretty wrought-iron seats scattered about the rotunda, and Lizzie planted herself next to her. “Are you quite well, Alice?” she asked. “You are looking most dreadfully pale. Lord Vickery’s wooing must lack style to leave you looking so wan.”

Alice watched Miles as he strolled over to the counter to procure the spa water. He looked as cool and indifferent as usual, quite as though their quarrel had not occurred and he had not hurt her so deliberately or so profoundly.

“Lord Vickery was telling me about his time in the army,” she said. “Oh, Lizzie, I feel so stupid and naive. I had no idea that such terrible things went on-”

“He should not have told you if it was going to upset you,” Lizzie said stoutly.

“I am beginning to realize that with Miles one gets what one asks for,” Alice said bitterly. “But then I asked him what had led to his estrangement from his family and he went all cold and harsh, and told me he never spoke about it and that I was not to pry.”

“Men,” Lizzie said, with a world-weary sigh. “You know how they can be.”

“Not really,” Alice said. “And neither do you,” she added.

“Yes, I do!” Lizzie said defiantly. “They cannot talk about their emotions. They go all silent, and no amount of badgering will extract any information from them. It is very odd and provoking, but that is just their way and nothing can be done.”

She slewed around in her seat as the rotunda door opened and Nat Waterhouse came in, escorting Flora Minchin and her mother and Mrs. Minchin’s bosom friend, the Duchess of Cole. Laura Anstruther and Lady Vickery followed them in. The duchess was pointedly ignoring both Laura and Lady Vickery.

Lizzie’s mouth turned down at the corners.

“Spiteful old buzzard,” she muttered. “It serves Nat right that he is obliged to dance attendance on those two old witches just so that he can get his hands on Flora’s money. You know that they are to wed in two months’ time, Alice?” She clenched her fists. “I cannot comprehend how Nat can be so stupid!” This final word was hissed in a whisper loud enough to echo off the domed ceiling of the rotunda and draw the attention of everyone inside.

“What else would you have him do, Lizzie?” Alice said wearily. She felt sorry for Nat. “He needs to marry for money and has never made any secret of the fact. Unless you marry him yourself-”

“I’d rather pull my own ears off!” Lizzie interrupted, turning bright red.

“Then stop complaining,” Alice said, rather shortly. “If you are his friend you should be happy for him. If you have other feelings for him then you should do something about them before it is too late.”

Lizzie fell silent, biting her lip, and looking at her Alice suddenly felt a strong misgiving that she had said quite the wrong thing and put some sort of idea into Lizzie’s head that was going to explode in a spectacular way. She had no time to pursue the idea, though, for Laura and Lady Vickery were coming across to join them. Alice saw Miles glance over at his mother, and something changed in his face. What was it-regret, unhappiness? She sat forward urgently.

“Lizzie, do you know why Lord Vickery became estranged from his family?” she asked. “It is so odd-as though he resists all attempts to draw closer to them.”

Lizzie shook her head. “Why do you not ask Laura? She is his cousin. She might know.”

Laura eased herself into the chair beside Alice with a heartfelt sigh, for like her cousin Lydia she was in the fifth month of her pregnancy and was looking rather tired. Lady Vickery took a seat beside Mrs. Lister and they started to chatter like old friends. The Duchess of Cole and Mrs. Minchin had settled on chairs diagonally across from them in prime position to send poisonous little glances across the room.

“It seems the spa water has done nothing to improve Cousin Faye’s temper,” Laura said with a sigh. “We met at the library yesterday and she was monstrous rude to me. She commented that my family seemed hell-bent on marrying beneath themselves, first me, then Miles-begging your pardon, Alice, but you know what arrant nonsense Faye talks-and now Celia.” She smiled. “I must admit that Celia does seem to have a partiality for Mr. Gaines. I saw them hurrying off together somewhere this morning-” She broke off as Miles brought the beakers of spa water across to them. Miles gave Alice hers and then excused himself, going instead to talk to Nat Waterhouse. Laura raised her brows.

“How singular of Miles not to join us! Have you quarreled with him, Alice?”

“Yes,” Alice said baldly. “I asked about his estrangement from his family.”

Laura’s face fell. “He never speaks of it.” She gave a little shrug. “I was already married to Charles when the breach occurred and I do not know what happened.” She gave a quick glance at Lady Vickery, who was still engrossed in her conversation with Mrs. Lister. “All I heard was that Miles had had a terrible argument with his father and went off to join the army immediately. My uncle was furious-he had wanted Miles to follow him into the church.”

Lizzie gave a little giggle. “Now that would have been most inappropriate!”

“Dexter has taken Philip out fishing this morning,” Laura went on, lowering her voice still further. “My aunt pets him as though he is still a child, but Philip is of an age where he likes to do more masculine things.” She glanced over at Miles and shook her head. “I wish that Miles would take more of an interest in his younger brother. Philip worships him, yet Miles spends barely any time with him.” She looked exasperated. “Miles is so good with Hattie, and she is only his goddaughter. I cannot understand it.”

“Please let us talk of something else,” Alice said. Her feelings were still rubbed raw by Miles’s sharp rejection, and she could see that there was no explanation here for his behavior. Whatever the family secret was, it had been buried very deep.

“When does Sir Montague return from London, Lizzie?” she asked, to turn the subject.

“In a day or two, according to his last letter,” Lizzie said. “I expect he has thought up some more medieval taxes to torment us with. How peaceful it has been in Fortune’s Folly without him.”

As they finished their spa water and prepared to leave, Miles bade farewell to Nat and came over to join them. He was not behaving much like a suitor, Alice thought, but more like a jailer.

“I will drive back to Spring House with Mrs. Anstruther,” she said.

“Then I will join you,” Miles said promptly. “I can scarcely protect you if we are in different places.”

“I wish you would not bother,” Alice said crossly, as he handed Laura into the carriage and turned to help her. “I don’t want-”

She broke off as Miles bundled her unceremoniously into the coach, jumping in after her. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her to sit beside him on the seat.

“Just for once,” he said, “you will do as you are told.”

“My, my,” Laura said, trying not to smile as she looked from one to the other, “this is going to feel like a very long journey!”

They sat in pointed silence as the coach trundled back along the route they had walked earlier. Miles did not take his hand from Alice’s wrist. She tried to free herself, furious at his restraint of her after his earlier coldness, but he held her fast.

With only that single point of contact between them, Alice soon found her skin becoming warm and tender to his touch, as though she were heating from the inside out. Her wrist tingled, incredibly sensitized. She clenched her fingers as prickles of sensation ran through her body, making her quiver. It seemed impossible that one light touch from Miles could do this to her, and yet she could concentrate on nothing else but the insistent pressure of his hand. His fingers moved, sweeping her palm in a caress that had her catching her breath. The air in the carriage grew sultry. Alice sat still, transfixed, the blood thrumming through her veins in hard, heavy strokes. The heat built in her body. She did not dare move for fear that Laura would guess her state and for fear that Miles would see what he was doing to her.

But then the pressure of his fingers increased infinitesimally and Alice was powerless to resist looking at him and saw in his dark, heavy-lidded gaze that he knew exactly how she felt. The knowledge made another wave of delicious sensuality roll over her leaving her languid and warm. She shifted on the seat, unable to prevent the tiny shivers of awareness that racked her body. This was almost unbearable. How could Miles do this to her when she was so angry and frustrated with him? How could her body betray her so thoroughly? And yet it seemed that that vicious frustration was part of the friction between them, for it chafed her feelings and gave her no peace, and she wanted to be free of Miles and yet she also wanted him so badly she could barely breathe.

Miles leaned forward and spoke softly in her ear. His breath tickled her neck sending more tremors of feeling along her nerves.

“You seem a little distracted, Miss Lister,” he said. “Are you quite well?”

Laura looked up. “You are very flushed, Alice,” she said. “Are you developing a fever?”

Alice saw a faint smile curve Miles’s firm lips.

“Yes!” she said. “No. I do not know.”

“You sound confused,” Miles said soothingly.

“I am quite well,” Alice said. With inexpressible relief she saw that they were turning into the gate at Spring House. She had spent the entire journey aware of nothing other than the touch of Miles’s hand on hers. Tiny shivers still seemed to be tiptoeing over her skin as she looked at him and he returned the gaze with a very direct look of his own. She could see in his eyes how much he wanted her. She could feel the tension tight in him, held under absolute control. She thought of their quarrel and how it did not seem to make an ounce of difference as to whether she wanted him in her bed or not and she felt helpless and eager and wanton and wicked.

As soon as the carriage rolled onto the sweep there was a shout, and both Marigold and Jim the footman ran out to greet them. Alice jumped and freed herself from Miles’s grip. Marigold was twisting her hands in her apron and looked as though she wanted to cry.

“Miss Alice!” She looked stricken.

“What is it, Marigold?” Alice asked. She was aware of Miles standing tense and watchful at her shoulder. “What has happened?”

“It’s Miss Lydia!” Marigold wailed. “She has run away!”