Innocent Courtesan to Adventurer's Bride. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘We could dispense with propriety,’ he suggested. ‘My name is Jonathan Quinn Ashley. No one calls me Jonathan and I suppose you will not accept Quinn as proper.’ She heard the amusement in his voice at the word. She doubted he often gave much thought to propriety. ‘You must call me Ashley, which is my surname. What is your given name?’

      ‘Celina, my…Ashley. But really, I cannot, it would be most unsuitable in my position.’

      ‘What position? You are a guest. And who are we going to scandalise?’ Quinn Ashley enquired. ‘Gregor is unshockable, I assure you. And after years in my great-uncle’s service I imagine Trimble and the staff are hardened to far worse behaviour than a little informality. Is that not so, Trimble?’ He pitched his voice to the butler, who was standing by the sideboard, supervising.

      ‘Indeed, my lord. My lips are, however, sealed on the subject.’

      ‘Very proper. Now, Celina, are we to dispense with the bowing and scraping?’

      She looked up through her lashes and found he was watching her steadily. He did not appear to be flirting; his manner was friendly and neither encroaching nor suggestive. Her severe hairstyle and modest evening gown must be working, she decided. She doubtless looked the perfect plain housekeeper and was not in the slightest danger of any attempts at gallantry on his part.

      ‘If that is what you wish, Ashley.’ He nodded, satisfied, and went back to his soup. Lina took advantage of his focus on his food to study the strong profile. He looked intelligent and sensitive, she decided. How sad if he was the fifth son and all his brothers had predeceased him, as they must for him to inherit. ‘Did you have many older siblings?’ she enquired sympathetically.

      He caught her meaning immediately. ‘No, no brothers or sisters. Quinn is for my mother’s maiden name, not short for Quintus.’ They sat back while the soup plates were cleared and the fish brought in. The steady green eyes came back to her face and she dropped her gaze immediately. Sensitive and intelligent, certainly, but also disturbing. When she caught that look she felt very aware that she was female. ‘Have you brothers and sisters?’

      ‘I had two sisters, Margaret and Arabella,’ Lina admitted. ‘But Meg left the country with her husband, who is a soldier in the Peninsula, and I do not know where Bella is now.’

      ‘So you are quite alone? What about this aunt?’ He did not appear shocked by her absence of family. Of course, an interrogation about her antecedents was only to be expected.

      ‘She fell ill and can no longer give me a home.’ Ashley poured white wine into her glass as the whitebait were served and she took a sip, surprised to find it tasting quite light and flowery in her mouth. It was positively refreshing and she took another swallow. She was unused to wine, but one glass could not be harmful, surely?

      ‘I see.’ For a moment she wondered if he was going to ask what she intended doing once he employed a proper housekeeper, a question to which the only answer was I have not the slightest idea, but Ashley simply nodded and reapplied himself to his food, which was disappearing at a considerable rate.

      ‘More fish, my lord?’ Michael proffered the salver.

      ‘Thank you. Forgive my appetite, Celina, we did not stop for more than bread and ale since London.’

      She could not help glancing at the impassive man standing behind him.

      ‘We can try,’ Quinn Ashley said, apparently reading her mind. ‘Gregor.’

      He growled something in a language Lina could not understand and Ashley said, ‘English, please, Gregor.’

      ‘Lord?’

      ‘Eat.’

      ‘No, lord.’ It was said with neither insolence nor defiance. ‘Later.’

      Quinn shrugged. ‘Stubborn devil.’

      ‘Yes, lord.’

      ‘If the housekeeper can sit down to dinner with you, I do not see why your companion may not,’ Lina said. The silent man made her uneasy, but she hated the thought that he was hungry, and if he would not leave the baron to eat in the kitchen, then there seemed only one solution. ‘Michael, please lay a place for Mr Gregor.’

      It was Lord Dreycott, not she, who should say who ate at his table, but the new baron was so unconventional that the words were out of her mouth before she could bite them back.

      ‘You hear, Gregor?’ He did not seem offended that she was giving orders. ‘The lady wishes you to dine with us. Will you insult her by refusing?’

      The man muttered something in his own language that made Ashley laugh and took the seat opposite her. ‘Lady.’

      Michael began to serve the lamb cutlets. She only hoped they had enough to go round, now that a second large hungry male had been added to the table. Trimble slipped out, doubtless to warn Cook.

      ‘I must send for my uncle’s lawyer tomorrow. I assume the will has not been read?’ Ashley moved away her half-empty wine glass and filled another with red wine.

      ‘No. Mr Havers said they must first locate you. He seemed to think this would take some time. Your great-uncle certainly said it would.’ He’s off somewhere in Persia, lucky devil, were the old man’s actual words. Seducing his way through harems and getting into fights, I have no doubt. Presumably the fights came as a result of making an attempt on a harem and its occupants. Images of silks and sherbet and tinkling fountains came to mind. Dare she ask him about them?

      No. This man was just as steeped in sin as the clients at The Blue Door, Lina reminded herself. And probably considerably more sophisticated and devious, she added. She should be on her guard, she thought; not all wolves had bulging blue eyes and unpleasant manners. Lina took a sustaining mouthful of red wine. It slipped down, warm and soothing.

      ‘My uncle had sent for me and I came as soon as the letter reached us. A message to go to Mr Havers first thing, Trimble, asking him to call at his earliest convenience.’ Ashley returned to his cutlets. Across the table Gregor had silently demolished the remains of the fish and was now eating meat with the air of a man who expected there to be wolfhounds to throw the bones to. A footman came in and added a dish of stewed beef to the table.

      ‘He sent for you? But he died in his sleep, and despite his age, it was unexpected.’ The doctor had actually muttered that he’d expected the aged reprobate to live to be a hundred.

      ‘He wrote a year ago to say I must return to pick up the pieces, as he put it. The letter took ten months to find me and then I had to travel back here. The old devil had his timing almost right, in the end.’ He paused and picked up his wine glass, looking into the claret as though it was a seer’s scrying glass. ‘I would have liked to have met him once more, I owe him a lot, but neither of us would have wanted me kicking my heels around the place for long.’

      ‘But it is so beautiful here,’ Lina protested. She had fallen in love with the wild grey sea just over the wooded hill that sheltered the house; the steep walks up through the woods on the opposite side of the valley or through the park; the wide expanse of sky that seemed to reach for ever.

      ‘Beautiful? I hope that there are many of your opinion, for I intend to sell it as soon as possible.’

      ‘Sell СКАЧАТЬ