The Scandals Of An Innocent

CHAPTER TEN

MILES STOOD IN THE DOORWAY of the great hall of Drummond Castle and watched whilst they sold Drum from under him. With each fall of the auctioneer’s gavel another part of his inheritance was traded away. The wooden globe from the nursery his cousins had shared had gone for no more than a bare few shillings. The battered box of tin soldiers that he had fought over with his cousin Anthony during their school holidays had barely raised a single bid. It was fortunate, Miles thought, that none of the previous marquises of Drummond were alive to see how low the family had fallen. They would be spinning in their graves as it was. Barlow and Richardson, estate agents and auctioneers of fine quality property, had been trumpeting the sale for the past week:

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase a part of the ancestral manor and possessions of the marquises of Drummond, including all lands and properties not entailed on the estate and all contents of Drum Castle, from the fine chandeliers and silver cutlery to the chamber pots and kitchen pans!

Miles shifted his broad shoulders against the hard stone of the doorway. Someone at the auctioneering house evidently had a good turn of phrase and an eye for advertising, for the sale had attracted crowds of people from Harrogate, Ripon and the surrounding villages. The great hall was packed. Barlow and Richardson would make a tidy profit from the three-day sale and the money would go some way toward paying off the hideous pile of debt that Miles had inherited along with the Drummond marquisate.

Miles’s glance rested for a moment on the figure of his mother as she sat very still and very upright in the back row of seats, flanked by Philip on one side and Celia on the other. Frank Gaines, he was interested to see, was sitting on Celia’s other side. The Dowager Lady Vickery had shuddered at the vulgarity of the whole commercial process but had insisted on being there to support her elder son through what she referred to as his ordeal. Miles wished that she had not. Whilst the sale of Drum was not as personally painful for his mama as the sale of Vickery Hall had been, it was still unpleasant. Miles’s pride was in the dust and his family name with it. Seeing Lady Vickery’s pain reminded him all too vividly of her distress and grief when his father had banished him. The anger stirred in him and for a second it blotted out all else before he suborned it ruthlessly to his will.

In the front row of seats sat the Duke and Duchess of Cole, bidding vigorously on various items like a pair of horse traders. Faye Cole had sympathized with Miles in a transparently insincere manner that had set his teeth on edge:

“My dear Lord Vickery, such a dreadful business! I am so sorry to see your family brought so low…”

“My dear Duchess,” Miles had said pleasantly, “I am afraid that I do not give a damn for either my family or your pity.” He had left her with her mouth hanging open.

Remembering Alice’s strictures on honesty, Miles had assured himself that it was true. He did not care for Drum Castle and he did not care what people thought about him selling off his heritage piece by piece.

A couple of rows behind the Coles sat Lady Elizabeth Scarlet with John Jerrold dancing attendance on her. Alice Lister and her mother were with Lady Elizabeth. It had not occurred to Miles that Alice would attend the sale, and he felt a bitter twist of the knife within to think that she had come to witness his downfall. In an odd way it felt like some sort of betrayal. The cynic in him said it was no more than he deserved since he had obliged her to accept his proposal of marriage because he was ruthlessly materialistic in his pursuit of her fortune. Yet he found he was still angered that she had chosen to attend.

The announcement of his engagement to Alice had caused less of a stir in Fortune’s Folly than might have been imagined. Everyone knew that he had courted Alice for her money the previous year and the on dit was that she had simply gained a better bargain now that he was a marquis, even an impoverished one. No one was surprised at the apparent trade of money and title. It was the way of the world. Only Lowell Lister and Lizzie Scarlet had expressed any public doubts or disapproval.

In the week since the engagement was announced Miles had escorted Alice and her mother, in the role of overexcited chaperone, to the spa and to the circulating library, to concerts and breakfasts. They had danced together. He had even dined at Spring House. The food had been excellent. Alice had been reserved and quiet, holding herself back and making it quite clear that she was acting the part of his fiancée under sufferance. She also gave him absolutely no opportunity to be alone with her again, and for the present Miles was prepared to indulge her in her attempts to keep him at arm’s length. For the present only, and only because he knew that denial usually strengthened desire.

Miles had been interested to see how far Alice would let him go that day in the parlor at Spring House. He had recognized the sensuality in her from the very start, realizing that underneath her cool exterior was banked a fire that could brand a man to the heart. What he had not expected, in his experience and cynicism, was that her open and artless response to his lovemaking would be enough to push him to the very edge of control. It was a surprise to him but not, he told himself, a problem, other than that he was not accustomed to denying himself sexual satisfaction. He was certain that once he had made love to Alice his attraction to her-his obsession with her-would diminish. It had to do. Nevertheless, three months still seemed like an unacceptably long time to have to court her.

He looked at Alice as she sat so prim and neat between Lizzie and her mother. Just the sight of her seemed to make the lust within him tighten to almost unendurable levels. That really should not happen to a rake. It might be acceptable for a boy in his salad days, perhaps, but not to a man of experience. Miles disliked being at the mercy of his physical needs. He had seriously toyed with the idea of quenching his lust in dalliance with Ethel, the chambermaid at the Morris Clown Inn, who had made him so very welcome the previous year. He had even gone to the inn a few days before, with the intention of seeking Ethel out and paying not only for her body but also for her silence in order to ensure that Alice’s lawyers did not hear of it. Yet when he had gone into the taproom Ethel’s ample charms, so proudly displayed by her low-cut blouse, had failed to move him in any way at all. Instead of purchasing her he had bought a pint of ale and sat in a corner thinking about Alice and the cool silk of her skin beneath his hands and the eagerness of her response and the soft sounds she had made as he had caressed her. He had grown hard at the thought and had slammed the half-drunk pint down on the table and gone out to stand beneath the pump, which had eased his bodily torment, at least temporarily. Fidelity was another quality he had never practiced, and to find that he was obsessed with a virgin to the point where he wanted no other woman baffled and annoyed him. But there was no fighting it. He was a realist and he knew when he was beaten. It had not helped that as he had walked out of the inn yard, dripping wet, angry and frustrated, he had met Frank Gaines casually strolling the other way and the lawyer had given him a look of complete understanding that had made Miles want to punch him.

Now he stood watching Alice for a few moments. Her head was turned away so that all he could see was her charming profile beneath the hood of her cloak, but there was some tension in the way she was sitting. Mrs. Lister turned around to hail the Dowager Lady Vickery as though they were at a garden party rather than the auction of all Miles’s worldly goods, and for a moment Miles caught sight of Alice’s expression. Where Lizzie Scarlet was looking excited, Alice was looking deeply unhappy.

Miles wrenched his gaze away. Seeing Alice’s compassion for his situation aroused emotions he did not want to feel. He was comfortable feeling lust for her-actually it was not comfortable but it was just about tolerable-but this complicated mixture of need and desire went deeper than the physical and he did not want it.

“How much am I bid for this fine Breguet watch?” the auctioneer demanded. “A genuine Breguet, ladies and gentlemen, from Paris, signed on the dial…”

Miles turned away. His father had given him the watch for his sixteenth birthday. When they had sold off the contents of Vickery Hall a few years before he had resisted selling too many of his personal possessions, not because of any sentimental connotations but because he had wanted to keep something back. Now, though, his finances were so dire that he could no longer afford the luxury of personal items.

“Take care of it,” he remembered the late Lord Vickery telling him when he had stood before him on the worn Axminster carpet in the study at Vickery Hall. “It is very valuable.”

It had been doubly precious to Miles, who had kept the gift safe right up until this moment. Even when he had left Vickery in anger and disillusionment he had held on to the watch, his father’s present to him, as though it had been some sort of talisman.

And then he saw that Alice was bidding on the watch. He felt sick. Clearly he had misjudged her earlier. She had come to the Sale of Drum to crow over his plight and in his heart of hearts he knew he could not blame her, for he was the one who had forced her into this situation. He told himself that he was not disappointed in her. He did not care what Alice did; she could be as venal as he was for all he cared. Which did not really account for why he found he wanted to smash his fist through the twelfth-century paneling.

The bidding rose higher and higher. There was a strange, hollow feeling beneath Miles’s breastbone. He could not place the sensation but it made him feel blue-deviled. He turned away from the auction and made his way through the stone-flagged hallway toward the study. He needed a drink but he had sold the contents of the wine cellar and the crystal glasses. He needed a bit of peace but all the rooms in the castle had been thrown open to the public so that they could view the sale items, so there was no privacy anywhere. Miles walked over to the window embrasure and stood looking out over the moors. It was a raw February day with lowering clouds and a misty sleet shrouding the rocky outcrops. The view suited his mood.

He heard the gavel come down on the watch and the auctioneer’s delighted cry and the ripple of applause that meant that it had sold for some astronomical sum. Something snapped within him. Marching back into the great hall, Miles strode up to the place where Alice was sitting. She was looking flushed and triumphant. It was obvious that hers was the winning bid. Miles grabbed her wrist and dragged her to her feet in full view of the crowds. He saw Mrs. Lister’s shocked face and heard his mother’s horrified gasp. He ignored them. Dragging Alice behind him, oblivious to the shocked whispers that rustled through the throng, he hurried her out of the door and into his study, slamming the door behind them.

“What the devil do you think you are doing?” Miles’s voice was harsh. “When we agreed to the terms of our engagement they did not include you coming to the sale here and making it plain to everyone that you were taking pleasure in buying me up twelve times over!” He realized that he was shaking with anger but seemed powerless to regain control. “I thought that I had made myself clear,” he continued. “If you cannot summon up any enthusiasm for our betrothal you will at least show me a modicum of respect in public or everyone will suspect there is something suspicious about our arrangement.”

Alice drew herself up. She was very pale. Her cloak was awry, her fair hair ruffled, but instead of the anger he expected to see in her eyes there was nothing but distress.

“The watch was for you,” she said, with an honesty that devastated him. Her face was set and white but she continued doggedly. “Your mama told me that it was very precious to you and I did not want anyone else to have it.”

Miles swore. He felt sick. “I don’t want it,” he started to say, instinctively rejecting both Alice and the dangerous intimacy of her gesture, but she held his gaze and continued to speak.

“It’s true that I came here intending to embarrass you,” she said. “I meant to spend lots of money and show you up, but-” she shrugged her shoulders beneath the crimson cloak “-I find it’s not my way to take revenge like that. Perhaps I am too generous. Lizzie says I am softhearted, but-” her tone hardened “-I will not change the way that I am, I will not let myself become twisted out of shape because of the way that you have behaved to me.”

Miles swallowed hard. He did not understand why her words were as painful as the sympathy in her eyes.

The last thing he wanted-the last thing he could bear-was her pity.

He could hear the echo of the auctioneer’s voice rising and falling as he sold the next item, and winced as he tried to block out the sound. Alice came across to him and laid a hand on his arm.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry, Miles. It must be very difficult for you to have to do this.”

Miles closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered the compassion in Alice’s face ten days before when they had been at the Granby Ball and she had pressed him on his feelings for his family. He had not wanted her kindness then, or her sympathy. He did not want it now. He absolutely could not admit that this ghastly parade of his possessions mattered in any way at all. It did not. It could not.

He tried to find some casual words to dismiss Alice’s concerns but they seemed to stick in his throat. He wanted to back away from this unexpected emotion, to dismiss it out of hand. He grasped after his customary cool cynicism. “It is of no consequence, Miss Lister. Why, when everything is sold there may even be some profit for me to gamble away…”

He told himself that it was the truth, but the words would not come.

And suddenly, with a blinding shock that shook him to his soul, he realized that he was bitter and furious that he should be the one forced to sell Vickery and Drum, to be the man who had humbled the family pride, when it was his father with his irresponsible profligate ways who had done the real damage years before. He felt sick and angry that the late Lord Vickery had once more abrogated his responsibility by dying before he had had to sell up, leaving Miles to bear the burden of all that ignominy and to sell his honor along with his possessions. His father, whom he had idolized before their terrible quarrel and cold estrangement…He could see at last that he had kept the Breguet watch for sentimental reasons hoping, perhaps, to keep faith with his father even though at times they had been so bitterly divided. And now at last he saw that everything had gone. He had lost everything and it hurt damnably.

He found that instead of dismissing Alice as he wanted to, he had put his hand over hers as it lay on his arm. Her face was tilted toward him and her lips were parted, pale pink, soft and sweet. In her eyes was something that looked like genuine pain and concern. Miles felt something shift deep within him.

He pulled her to him and kissed her with all the pent-up rage and violence that was in him, pushing the hood of her cloak back so he could tangle a hand in her bright hair and tilt her head to bring her mouth up even more ruthlessly to meet his. He felt her gasp against his lips and then she yielded to him instantly and absolutely, and her surrender lit something wild and primitive in him, and he was aware of nothing other than the unconditional need he had for her and the whirling, painful spiral of their desire. He felt shaken to the depths of his soul and yet somewhere in that raging darkness he felt a core of peace he had not known in a very long time, a peace that only Alice could give him.

He thought nothing of her youth and her inexperience. When he had kissed her in the parlor at Spring House he had been in control, dictating the encounter, planning a calculated seduction and showing her the extent of his mastery. He had had some restraint then, but there was nothing restrained about either of them now as he drew her ever closer and Alice responded, sliding her hands across his back to hold him hard against her. He felt her tug his shirt loose, and then she was running her fingers over his bare chest and shoulders, and the sensation wrenched a groan from his lips. He angled her head to take his kiss more deeply still and felt as though he was falling into a place of mystery, heat and shadows, somewhere he had never been before, somewhere that terrified him and yet offered the most tempting peace and absolute bliss that he could ever wish for, where he did not have to fight for what he wanted because his heart’s desire was freely given and his for the taking…

“Alice!” Lizzie was calling for her from the hall. “Alice, are you all right? Where are you?”

For a moment the words barely penetrated Miles’s brain, for he was so wrapped up in the taste and feel of Alice in his arms. Then he heard the sharp tap of footsteps on the stone floor, and sanity flooded his mind with cold clarity. He let Alice go so abruptly that he had to catch her arm to prevent her from falling. One look at her face told him she was completely stunned. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes were wide and dark with a mixture of shock and the remnants of heated passion and she was pressing her fingers against her lips in a gesture of bewilderment that sent a sharp, unexpected surge of tenderness through him.

Miles’s breathing slowed and the fever in his blood abated. He felt cold and shocked and disturbed in a manner that he could not quite analyze. A part of him was cursing the interruption, for surely he could have seduced Alice there and then, taken advantage of her honest response to him in order to oblige her to marry him at once and damn the lawyers and their conditions. But another, deeper part of him was so troubled he could not bear to think about it.

“Alice!” Lizzie was practically upon them.

Miles wrapped the cloak about Alice, pulling up the hood and dropping a brief, hard kiss on her lips.

“Lady Elizabeth is here,” he whispered, and to his relief she blinked and lost the look of shock and wonderment that had held her still as a sleeping princess in a fairy tale. She spun around just as Lizzie shot through the study door. Miles took strategic cover behind his desk. He had no wish to display his current physical state to all and sundry and in doing so put Alice in an impossibly embarrassing situation.

“There you are, Alice!” Lizzie exclaimed. “We all thought that Lord Vickery must have carried you off and ravished you by now! I was the only one brave enough to come to your rescue and I am relieved to find you unharmed.” She looked at Miles, making no attempt to offer him false sympathy on his losses.

Miles held Alice’s gaze for a long moment. There was a reflection of his dark desire in her eyes alongside shock and some wariness, but when she spoke she sounded quite collected and a great deal less shaken than Miles felt.

“I am perfectly well, Lizzie, I thank you,” she said. “Lord Vickery-” the tremor in her voice was almost undetectable “-I’ll bid you good day.”

“At your service, Miss Lister,” Miles said. “I will call on you tomorrow.”

Her gaze flickered to meet his. “Will you?”

“You may be certain of it.”

Lizzie grabbed her arm. “Come along, Alice! I want to show you my latest purchase! I have bought the prettiest set of china ladies…”

They went out into the hall, Lizzie chattering like a magpie. Alice did not look back. Miles heard her footsteps fade away and then she had gone.

Miles shook himself, trying to dispel the disturbing sensation that something profound had occurred between him and Alice. It was no more than lust, pure and simple. The flare of intimacy between them when she had reached out to him counted for nothing in any emotional sense. He did not wish to have any deep connection to Alice. He only wanted to sleep with her-and to have her money. He had been bored and blue-deviled by the sale, momentarily angered to think of his father’s profligacy. Alice had wanted to offer comfort and so he had taken it from her physically. He was still hard to think of her. He should have seduced her on the desk and thus compromised her so thoroughly that the lawyers would have had to retire in scandalized defeat, Lady Membury’s conditions were laid waste and a priest would have been sent for immediately.

Once again the image of Alice came into his mind, but it was not the fantasy of Alice lying in wanton submission beneath him but of her reaching out to comfort him in his loss, her pity and concern somehow touching his soul. Miles swore violently. His mind was being turned by this fever he had for her. That was the only explanation. And there was only one cure.

Three months be damned. Lady Membury’s conditions be damned. He would have Alice and he would have her money, too. She would surrender to their mutual desire. He would see to it that she did. And next time he would not behave like a gentleman. He would lock the door, ignore all interruptions and seduce her with the ruthlessness of the true rake.