Scandals of an Innocent. Nicola Cornick

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      “I thought you were behind me!” Lizzie had said, nursing the cup of hot chocolate that Alice had rustled up for both of them on the kitchen hob. “You said you were! And then when I realized you were nowhere to be seen I did not know whether to wait or go back for you, or what to do!”

      Alice had made some excuse about twisting her ankle and having to hop home, and that had satisfied Lizzie, who had spotted that Alice no longer had the wedding dress and was berating her for dropping it in the street. The girls had taken their cups of chocolate upstairs, tiptoeing through the quiet house so as not to wake its sleeping occupants, and Lizzie had completely failed to notice that Alice no longer appeared to be limping.

      And now, lying in her bed, Alice could not really understand why she had not told her friend about Miles Vickery catching her. Perhaps it was because she did not wish to think about Miles, let alone speak about him. She had never told anyone what had happened between her and Miles the previous autumn, probably, she thought, rolling over in bed in a vain attempt to relax, because nothing had happened. There was nothing to think about and nothing to remember. Miles was a penniless adventurer who had set out with calculated intent to seduce her. He had failed. That was all there was to it.

      Actually, that was not all that there was to it. Alice winced as she felt pain like an echo in the recesses of her body. She had fallen in love with Miles Vickery, with a naive, hopeless and very innocent passion. She had admired him for the honorable man that she had believed him to be, the army hero who had become a warrior for justice, working for the Home Secretary to keep the country safe. She had thought him all that was courageous and principled and daring. She had been a complete fool, for, after a couple of months of courtship, he had shown his true colors when he’d abandoned her to pursue a richer heiress.

      Now that she was so thoroughly disillusioned with him, Alice could see that she had imagined Miles to be the man she wanted him to be. She had invented a hero, who was very different from the reality. For in reality Miles Vickery had been a callous philanderer who had only been interested in her money. She still felt physically sick when she thought about the wager he had made. Thirty guineas against her virtue.

      Alice punched her pillow rather violently. Miles had deserved that jab in the ribs. She wished she had stabbed him all the harder. There were several tricks she had learned when she was a housemaid to enable her to deter amorous gentlemen. Miles deserved to experience every one of them, especially the knee in the groin.

      She rolled onto her back and stared up at the shadowy canopy of the bed.

      Fortune hunter, rake, unscrupulous deceiver…Miles’s strength and apparent sincerity had almost been her undoing the previous year. Alice had had to fend for herself from an early age, and to have someone strong and steadfast to rely on had felt ridiculously seductive. But that had been the point of Miles’s actions, of course. He had been set on seducing her into marriage for her fortune and she, silly girl that she was, had almost fallen for it. Strange that in some ways she could be so wise in the ways of the world—what servant girl could fail to see the less salubrious side of life—and yet when it had come to her own heart she had been so utterly naive.

      She turned her cheek against the cool linen of the pillow. She could not sleep. Her mind was too full of Miles—of the sensation of his hands on her and his body hard against hers and the heat and the power and the strength in him. It did not seem to help that she told herself Miles was an experienced man who had deliberately used his amatory skill to lead her astray. Her wanton body responded to him regardless. It betrayed her at every turn. It did not care that Miles was a scoundrel. Her body wanted him even as she told herself that she hated him.

      Alice knew all about physical passion even though she had never experienced it herself. She had been brought up on a farm and had gone into service early. She had not been a cosseted, protected debutante, and as a servant she had seen enough licentious behavior to leave her with few illusions about lust. She understood her own nature and knew full well that it was within her to behave with absolute passionate abandonment if she chose to give herself to a man. There would be no shame in it—not with the right man. But that man would be honest, truthful, respectful and trustworthy. All of which ruled out Miles Vickery. In fact, any one of those ruled out Miles Vickery.

      Alice rolled over again, seeking to quell the flame that burned in the deepest part of her. Miles had proved himself dishonest and untrustworthy, and she would do well to remember that fact. She must ignore her physical response to him. It meant nothing and it was dangerous.

      Alice shivered a little beneath the covers. She had not expected to see Miles again. Although she had heard a rumor that he was back in Yorkshire on some business connected with his work for the government, she had imagined it would be a fleeting visit and that he would soon return to London. Evidently it was the place that suited him best. After he had failed to secure Miss Bell, the nabob’s heiress, in marriage, he had cut a swathe through the bawdy houses of the capital and had set up one of the most famous courtesans in the city as his inamorata. Lizzie Scarlet had told her all about it, and Alice had pretended that she had not cared. But she had cared. She had cared dreadfully. It had hurt her so much to think of Miles’s profligate ways when once she had naively imagined he had some feelings for her. It had been a salutary lesson in the pitfalls of imagining herself in love. She was never going to make that mistake again.

      Alice thumped her pillow into final submission and rolled over onto her side in a vain attempt to sleep. It was a great pity that Miles had recognized her tonight. She wondered what he would do. When she had heard the gossip about his despicable wager, she had written to him to demand that he never approach her again. Her pride had prompted her to tell him what she thought of him and she had confidently expected never to hear from him again. Now, though, she had a suspicion that he might seek her out to ask her what on earth she had been doing robbing a gown shop in the middle of the night. He was, despite his shameful behavior, still an officer of the Crown, with certain responsibilities. And she was, indubitably, a criminal.

      Alice wriggled uncomfortably. She was well aware that she was now in Miles’s power, and the ways in which he might choose to exert that power made her shiver. Yes indeed, robbing the gown shop had been a dangerous mistake and now she knew she was going to have to pay.

      Chapter Two

      “WHERE ON EARTH did you get to?” Dexter Anstruther and Nat Waterhouse looked up curiously as Miles Vickery reentered the salon of the Granby, the most respectable hotel in Fortune’s Folly. Miles and his colleagues had been talking business late into the night and had chosen the Granby over the rather more dubious pleasures of the Morris Clown Inn because, as Nat said, if they had met at the Morris Clown then every criminal in Yorkshire would have known their business within the hour. In contrast, the staff at the Granby were discreet, even if they were glancing ostentatiously at the clock and barely stifling their yawns. The other guests, a couple of half-pay officers and a respectable, gentrified couple, had retired to bed long since. Fortune’s Folly out of the spa season was as inhospitable as the grave. Not even hardened fortune hunters had chosen to spend the winter in the snowbound Yorkshire dales, though no doubt they would flock back in spring when the weather improved in order to take advantage of Sir Montague Fortune’s Dames’ Tax and find a local heiress to wed.

      By then, Miles thought, he would have stolen a march on all the others and carried off the richest prize in the Fortune’s Folly marriage mart. His recent, unexpected and wholly unwelcome inheritance of the Marquisate of Drum had left him with a monstrous pile of debt—twice his original commitment—and so once again he intended to pay court to Miss Alice Lister, a former housemaid whose eccentric employer had left her the magnificent sum of eighty thousand pounds when she had died the previous year.

      Alice’s inheritance had caused a sensation СКАЧАТЬ