Tarnished Amongst the Ton Part 19

I love you. She did not mean it, did she? He had not tried to attach her emotionally, she had made no attempt to cling to him, to plead with him. Her eyes as she said it had been dry.

Why had he not let her tell him her story? If she could bear to tell it, then he should have the patience to hear it. Then he realised that it would have taken courage for him to sit and listen, that it mattered to him, more than an abstract story of an everyday outrage. It mattered because Phyllida mattered.

Sara was alone in the drawing room when he walked in. 'Whatever have you been doing? You look as though you have been in a fight!'

'That is because I have been in a fight.' He sank down on the sofa beside her and leaned his aching head on the cushioned back. 'And don't worry Mata by telling her.'

'Of course not. Did you win?'

'I think so.'

'Excellent.' She picked up her embroidery and let him rest.

'Sara, may I ask you something shocking? Something I should not even dream of speaking of to you?'

'Is this something else I should not be telling Mata about? Of course you may.'

Ashe sat up, rested his elbows on his knees and studied his clasped hands. 'What would drive you to sell yourself? To give your body to a stranger, a man who revolted you. Hunger?'

'No!' He felt the movement as she shook her head vehemently. 'I would rather starve.'

'Money?'

'Well, the money would be a reason, otherwise why do it? But...' She fell silent for a while, thinking. 'I would do it if it would save Mata from some awful danger. Or for you or Papa. If one of you were sick and there was no money for a doctor and medicines, then nothing else would matter.'

She said it earnestly, obviously meaning it. After a moment she moved close to him and put her hand on his arm. 'Is that why you were in a fight?'

'Yes. She was very young.'

'Oh, poor thing,' Sara said compa.s.sionately. 'Is there anything I can do to help her?'

'No, she's safe now.' I have broken her heart, but she's safe. Ashe got to his feet. 'I'm going out, probably won't be home for dinner.'

Fransham, when he finally ran him to earth, was at White's, dozing over a newspaper in a quiet corner of the library. 'Clere! Have a drink.' He waved to the waiter and tossed the paper aside. 'You're looking uncommonly serious.'

Ashe had washed, changed, combed his hair, before he had left home, but it seemed he had not been able to scrub away the darkness in his mind. 'I wanted to ask you something personal, something you probably don't want to talk about. Only it affects Phyllida and I need to understand.' Understand not only Phyllida, not only what had driven her to that desperate act, but himself. How he felt for her, why he ached inside, why he felt worse than he had when Reshmi had died.

'All right.' Gregory sat up and poured a couple of gla.s.ses of brandy. 'Ask away, I can always punch you on the nose if you get too personal.'

'Phyllida told me about your parents, why they didn't marry until after she was born. But what happened when your mother died? She didn't seem able to talk about it.'

Fransham's face clouded. 'G.o.d, that was an awful time. She told you how unreliable our father was? Well, the time he spent with us got less and less-and so did the money. And then Mama got sick. Consumption, the doctor said. We did the best we could. I was fifteen and I got a job with the local pharmacist, just a dogsbody, really, but he paid me in medicine. Phyllida was seventeen and she ran the house and nursed Mama and kept writing to Papa.

'He never answered, so in the end she sc.r.a.ped together enough money for the stage and set off to London to find him. She came back a month later, looking ghastly, and said he'd died in a tavern brawl. Knock on the head and too much drink. She'd seen the lawyers and they said there was some a.s.sets and more debts. I was the earl, and that kept the creditors at bay for a bit, but it was too late for Mama. She died a week after Phyll got home.'

'If she took only enough money for the stage, how had she lived in London?' Ashe asked, knowing the answer only too well. She could have turned around and gone home when she didn't find her wastrel father at once, but she had hung on, kept searching even though she was starving.

'Got some odd jobs, I suppose. I never asked, what with Mama and the news about Father.' Gregory scrubbed his hand over his face. 'I should have thought. She was as thin as a rake, took her ages to put the weight back on.'

So she had sold herself for the money to stay alive while she found her father, because if she did not then her mother and brother would starve. And the world would think-he had thought, d.a.m.n it-that what she had done dishonoured her. And she believed that if she married him it would compromise his honour.

'I have fallen out with Phyllida,' Ashe said bluntly. 'I've hurt her and I doubt she'll open the door to me now.'

'Do I need to name my seconds?' Gregory asked and set his gla.s.s down with a snap.

'No. You need to give me your door key and eat dinner out. In fact, I suggest you go and beg the Millingtons for a bed for the night.'

'The devil you say!' But Gregory was pulling the key out of the pocket in the tail of his coat.

'Don't ask and I won't have to lie to you. Thanks.'

'You had better be intending to marry her,' Gregory warned. 'I've been a d.a.m.ned slack brother, but I mean to do the right thing by her now.'

'I can ask. Only Phyllida can accept,' Ashe said and pocketed the key.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Ashe let himself into the house in Great Ryder Street with the care of a burglar. The ground floor was silent, but he could hear the murmur of voices from the bas.e.m.e.nt, the clang of copper pans. Soft-footed, he moved to the top of the stairs and listened. Three feminine voices, none of them Phyllida's.

They were devoted to her, he knew that from observing Anna. Whether that devotion would move them to fillet him with a boning knife or help him, he had no idea, but he could hardly be alone and uninterrupted with Phyllida unless they knew he was there from the start.

'Good afternoon.'

The cook dropped the ladle she was holding and the little maid gave a squeak of alarm. Anna jumped up from the chair by the range where she had been mending and marched up to confront him. 'What did you do to her? You got her away from Buck, I'll say that for you, but she's shut herself away in her bedchamber and she won't talk to me, or come out. If you've hurt Miss Phyllida, you rakeh.e.l.l, his lordship will beat your brains out and we'll cheer him on!'

'I didn't do anything to her,' Ashe said and sat down in a chair by the kitchen table, neatly unsettling Anna who did not seem to know how to deal with gentlemen lounging at the table, stealing Cook's still-warm jam tarts. 'I managed to say the wrong things, not say the right ones, and comprehensively put my foot in it with her. So, yes, I've hurt her, but not the way I suspect you mean, Anna.'

He laid the key on the table. 'That's Lord Fransham's, by the way. He knows I am here and he won't be in now until tomorrow.'

'So that's the way it is,' Anna said and sat down too.

'If you're all going to eat those tarts, I'd best put the kettle on,' Cook said, suiting her actions to her words. 'Get the tea caddy, Jane.'

'Are you in love with Miss Phyllida?' Anna demanded. Ashe raised his eyebrows at her tone, but she was not to be intimidated and sat there glaring at him while she waited for an answer.

Am I? 'Do you think I'd tell you before I tell her?' he asked. 'I do not mean her harm, that I promise you.'

Cook pa.s.sed him a cup of tea and pushed the plate of tarts closer. 'Well, get your strength up. You'll need it,' she added darkly.

She could not stay in her room for the rest of her life. Nor the rest of the day, come to that. Phyllida swung her legs over the edge of the bed and ran out of energy to stand up.

This would not do. Life had to go on and Gregory would be worried and the staff would fret if she hid herself away like a lovelorn adolescent. There was much to be done, that would help. A manager to find for the shop, the Dower House to whip into habitable shape, Gregory's wedding to plan for.

Goodness, she would be so busy she would forget Ashe Herriard in a few days. Oh, who was she deceiving? Not herself, obviously. Phyllida lay down again, curled up into a miserable ball and stubbornly refused to cry. A girl was ent.i.tled to mourn for a day when her heart was broken, she told herself with a rather hysterical attempt at humour.

The door opened. 'Go away, Anna. I do not want to be disturbed.' It closed again, but there were soft footfalls, the sound of breathing. 'Anna, please go away. Tell Cook I will not be down to dinner and say to Lord Fransham that I have a headache.'

'Lord Fransham will not be in to dinner. He is staying the night with the Millingtons.'

Ashe? Phyllida uncurled and sat bolt upright. 'What the devil are you doing here? I said goodbye and I meant it.' How could he come and mock her like this?

Ashe sat down on the side of the bed. 'I was shocked. I was shaken and I was horrified and above all I was hurting and I had no idea why,' he said abruptly. 'Then I made myself think. No woman sells herself unless she is desperate, or foolishly thinks prost.i.tution is an easy way of life. And you are neither stupid nor wanton. I ought to have had that clear in my head. I recalled what you had said about your father, how your family had been abandoned and so I asked Gregory about the time just before your mother died.'

'You told him what I did?' It would kill Gregory to know she had been driven to that.

'No, of course not.' Ashe scrubbed one hand across his face. 'I might have made a thoroughgoing mess of this, but he has no idea why I asked him. What he told me made sense and I knew why you had no choice. d.a.m.n it, Phyllida, if a man fought and killed for honour and to protect his family, then everyone understands, thinks he's a fine fellow. If a woman puts herself through h.e.l.l for her family, sacrifices everything short of her life, then she is called a wh.o.r.e and is ruined.'

He twisted round to face her fully. 'I should have had that straight in my mind and I should have told you that was what I thought, there and then. What you did for your family was courageous and honourable. When you wanted to tell me about it, I should have listened and rea.s.sured you and comforted you.'

He thought her courageous and honourable? He was apologising to her when she had taken advantage of him, hidden the truth from him?

When, lost for words, she simply stared at him, at his beloved face, taut with pain and self-recrimination and regret, he stood up. 'I don't imagine you can forgive me for that. Like an arrogant fool I told Gregory to stay away tonight, that I had been clumsy, but that I would make it right with you and that I would marry you. I was wrong to presume. Insensitive. I am sorry, Phyllida.'

He had his hand on the door before she could find her voice to stop him. 'Ashe, I love you.' His back to her, he stayed where he was, as though he could not turn. 'I would forgive you anything, understand anything. You do not have to marry me and make that sacrifice. Just knowing you understand and do not condemn me for it, that you forgive me for letting this masquerade of a courtship go on as long as it has, that makes so much difference.'

'Why would it be a sacrifice?' he asked and his voice, always so confident, always so strong, was unsteady.

'For all the reasons we have rehea.r.s.ed before. Sooner or later the strain of that, of my birth, of my secrets, they would crack such a marriage. I would rather not have you than ruin your life.' He had praised her courage just now. This, if he did but know it, was the hardest, most courageous thing she had ever done, sending away the man she loved.

'None of it would matter if I loved you,' he said and turned, his voice quite firm again, his eyes green and calm and certain. 'My family like you, soon they will love you as a daughter and a sister. And, with love, we can face down any whispers about your birth.'

'But you-' Ashe did not lie to her, she felt that deep in her bones. Her heart, so heavy, suddenly became light, the beat so fast she felt dizzy with it.

'But I do love you. It took a lot of pain to make me realise just why I felt the way I did. What I had thought was love before was only a faint shadow of the real thing. You loving me, despite everything, is a miracle I do not deserve. But perhaps our children do.' His beautiful, expressive mouth curved into the first smile she had seen, it seemed, for days. 'Marry me, Phyllida. Let me love you. Shut all your secrets away so they will wither and die in the darkness and come and live in the light with me.'

'Yes. Oh, yes, Ashe.' She found she had scrambled off the bed, all anyhow, her arms held open to him, and he was in them and they held each other so tight she could not breathe, but it did not matter, because Ashe loved her.

Ashe set her back a little and grinned. 'That feels as though a huge weight has just lifted off my heart. Do you want to go and tell Gregory and my family, start to make plans for the wedding?'

'No.' She laughed at the surprise on his face. 'You sent Gregory off for the night. You meant to stay here with me, did you not?'

'Yes, but I already said it was arrogant and insensitive of me to a.s.sume that is what you would want.' He was running his fingers over her cheek, tracing her lips, stroking her hair as though he had just found her after a long absence.

'It is exactly what I want,' she murmured and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. 'I want to show you how much I love you. I want to feel how much you love me.'

'You are not afraid?' Ashe murmured into her hair.

Phyllida swallowed. 'A little. Parts of it will not be... will hurt, I know that.'

'No, they won't,' Ashe said with complete confidence. 'For a start, no one has ever made love to you before and, even if they had, they were not me.'

'Of all the arrogant creatures!' she protested, laughing uncertainly as he attacked the fastenings of her crumpled gown.

'Not at all. I know what I am doing-don't frown at me like that. There have been other women, but you are the last one. The last and only.' Her gown fell to her feet, her corset dropped away. 'As I was saying, I have been learning to make love so I could pleasure the woman I do love.'

Ashe shrugged out of coat and waistcoat together, yanked off his neckcloth and pulled his shirt over his head. 'There is a time and place for leisurely undressing, but this is not it. You, my darling, need sweeping off your feet and that is precisely what I am going to do.'

His boots went flying, his breeches were kicked off, Phyllida clutched rather desperately at the front of her shift as she found herself confronted by a naked, fully aroused, man. 'Oh, my.' Her eyes felt wide as saucers.

'All yours, indeed.' Ashe said as he stripped the shift from her, deposited her on the bed and straddled her hips. 'This is the frightening bit, I imagine. I promise I won't squash you.' He slid down her body and she felt her legs opening instinctively to cradle him. He took his weight on his elbows and looked down at her. 'All right?'

'Yes. Yes, perfectly all right.' And it was. There was no point of resemblance at all to how it had been with Buck. This was Ashe and he loved her and he was going to pleasure her. She reached up and freed his hair from the tie, ran her fingers through the silky weight of it, gasped as he bent his head and let the ends tease across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

He kissed her mouth, a fleeting caress, then slid down her body until he could kiss her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, nibbling the tips until she gasped and then sucking and swirling with his tongue until her hips lifted off the bed and she writhed against him, her fingers laced into his hair as though she did not know whether to hold him captive there for ever or push him away to end this exquisite torture.

'Ashe. Oh, please...'

He moved to the other breast, shifted his weight so he could slide one hand down between her thighs where she ached and throbbed and needed him, needed him desperately to do those wonderful things that he had the other night.

When Ashe left her b.r.e.a.s.t.s she gasped in protest, but he only murmured, 'Sweet, so sweet,' and possessed her mouth again while his fingers slid and teased and pressed and she panted into his mouth, so close to the bliss, so close.

Then his weight and heat had gone, leaving her reaching for him. She opened her eyes and saw his dark head where his hand had been, his hair fanned out over her thighs, startling against the white skin. He pushed firmly but gently to open her and then kissed her there, even as he slid two fingers into her. Shocked, she tensed. It would hurt, she had known it would...

'Oh.' It was a murmur, a gasp. Instinctively she tightened around the intrusion, arched up against his mouth, sobbed wordless pleas that he would never stop, never, because it was almost there, that wonderful sensation that transcended reality.

He moved, too fast for her to protest at the absence of his lips, his hand. He was over her, holding her, whispering what she knew were love words although she did not know the language. His hips moved in the cradle of her thighs and he filled her in one long stroke and she shattered, broke, heard her own voice crying out.

Phyllida came to herself to find the pleasure was not waning, only changing. Ashe moved within her, his body part of hers, his gasps of pleasure hers as well as his. She curled her legs around his hips, tilting up until he was as deep as she could take him, and clung to the broad shoulders, slick with sweat, kissed him wherever she could reach and heard her own voice, 'I love you, I love you', as he groaned and went rigid in her arms.

They lay locked together in a hot, sticky, blissful knot on top of the tangled sheets. Phyllida kissed the angle of Ashe's neck, the only place she could reach. 'You were not arrogant at all,' she told him. 'Very modest, in fact.'

He pushed up on one elbow and smiled down at her. 'I'm glad you think so. Does that mean that you have not changed your mind?'

'It does. I intend making an honest man of you, my lord.' She wriggled out of his embrace and surveyed the room. 'Just look at this! Your breeches are hanging from my dressing-table mirror, there is a boot in a hat box and that dreadful brown gown will never be the same again. And to think that before you came in I was lying here trying to convince myself that no one died of a broken heart and that somehow I could get over you.'

'Do you think you might?'

'Get over you?' Phyllida placed her index fingertip in the middle of her chin and a.s.sumed a pose of deep thought. 'I suppose I could possibly become tired of you. To be on the safe side you had better ask me in, say, eighty years' time.'

'I will make a note in my memorandum book,' Ashe said seriously. 'I do love it when you pretend to be serious and prudent.'

'Well, make the most of it.' Phyllida ran one fingernail down the middle of his chest, down to the flat belly with its intriguing trail of hair, and tickled into Ashe's navel. 'Because I fully intend to be scandalous, frivolous and utterly naughty.'

'Excellent,' Ashe murmured, submitting to her hands. 'I will do my very best to survive eighty years of this, my love, but I warn you, we had better practise as much as possible.' And then he ceased to be able to say a coherent word for the next half-hour.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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