He knew she heard when she met his aching eyes with a hint of hurt behind the eyeglasses he suddenly suspected were there to keep him and the rest of the world at a distance. Regret nagged at him as he caught sight of her flinching and a feral nag of attraction to this sharp, yet somehow vulnerable, female dug into his conscience like a hot whip. He groaned in audible protest that she took the wrong way from the look of that poker back and her best antidote’s glare. She should know what a contradiction all the pretend hardness was against the soft fullness of her mouth and a figure not even the most determined attack of dowdiness he had ever come across could quite disguise. A true rake would be so intrigued by the contrast between the faulty disguise and a warm, desirable woman underneath it and try all the tricks in his armoury to seduce her. Luckily he was an uneasy seducer and in no state to undo any sane female with his mythical charms right now.
‘I am sorry to disturb you, Mr Haile, but your manservant said you were feeling a little better and I wanted to talk to you before we go,’ Hetta said with more sympathy than he deserved after calling Toby a little devil and greeting her with such revulsion she almost turned tail and ran, until weariness and common sense took over and reminded her what a challenge it would be to find somewhere else to go this late in the day.
But then he’d stared at Toby with what looked suspiciously like a sheen of tears in his bloodshot dark eyes before dashing outside to be disgracefully ill, as if her son was a painful reminder his own child was gone. Her heart went out to him even as she fought an impulse to run after the hired carriage she could hear trundling down the drive and forget she had set eyes on him again. She noted the sunlight played on his wild, wet black curls as they dried in complete disarray, but highlighted his starkly handsome features more acutely than ever as he squinted against the light with a flinch that gave his headache away. Even after seeing how drunk he was when she got here she still had to fight a ridiculous flutter of enthusiasm for the dratted man. He could have walked straight out of one of Lord Byron’s epics and he wasn’t to know she had peeped through the window on the half-landing and glimpsed him bare-chested and rather magnificent as he reeled back from his dousing under the pump. Bran had been five years older than her, but he’d lacked the sleekly muscled power of this mature man even when he died. And Magnus Haile managed to look deliciously masculine even when shivering like a drowned rat in the July sun. With sunlight merciless on his ashen face now and those darkly shadowed eyes showing how little he had slept since she saw him at Dover, a dangerous sort of pity softened her heart. Despite his dissolute ways and low opinion of her and Toby, he was clearly a deeply lonely and bereft man and at least he had a heart to be broken by a lover’s desertion. Her late husband would have shrugged and found the next willing female if she had left him. Heart or no, Magnus Haile had no feelings for her, though, so she ordered herself not to be more of a fool than she could help and waited for him to argue.
‘Why?’ he obliged, producing one of his best frowns especially for her.
‘My son and I need a safe place to lay our heads for the night. The jarvey has demanded his fee and driven back to town. I could not persuade him to take us to the nearest respectable inn. He said his horse wanted its stable and he did as well, so I need your advice on where I can find a respectable and clean place to stay for the night. Oh, and I also wanted to remind you I never gossip.’
‘Everyone gossips in the right circumstances, Mrs Campion.’
‘Champion,’ she told him impatiently. Getting her surname wrong wasn’t an insult even if it felt like one. ‘And I don’t.’
‘What did you say you are doing here, Mrs Champion?’ he demanded sharply as a man could when he was suffering so many self-inflicted ailments.
She should wait until he was completely sober, but she really must find lodgings for the night and, once she had, they need not meet again. Even now she would leave him to his misery and his favourite glower, but he was ghost pale under the tan even she knew a dandy would condemn as bucolic. Maybe the rumours she claimed not to listen to were right about the Honourable Magnus Haile after all, then. Perhaps he had been trying to turn over a new leaf since his father was murdered and wanted to live a more useful life. She reviewed Mr Haile’s solitary drinking spree and decided, no, he was quite happy with the old one.
‘My father came to England to find your father’s murderer,’ she told him.
‘You said that before as well,’ he said impatiently.
‘Drunken gentlemen rarely recall what was said five minutes ago,’ she said and cursed her own stupidity for trying to reason with him. ‘I suppose you are so used to being one you have developed an obliging memory.’
‘If you say so, but if your father is Fat George’s Bloodhound he will need an exceptionally hard head to keep up with his master,’ he said with the suggestion of a sneer in his voice. She could imagine him backing it up with a quizzing glass in his heyday as a dandy. ‘Like his royal patron Sir Hadrian Porter doesn’t seem to take much interest in his immediate family, does he? Even I know he doesn’t spend more time in his home country than he can help, yet he is supposed to catch the killer who has confounded our efforts and half of Bow Street as well? Forgive me if I doubt it, ma’am.’
‘Papa has solved all the mysteries His Majesty’s Government set him so far, I will have you know. He does important work, so why should he worry about things I am capable of sorting out myself? We go on very well together, Mr Haile, and, if I were you, I would be glad he is here to unmask your father’s murderer and he always refuses to listen to rumours. Because of my father your family has a chance of finding true justice instead of some cobbled-together tale made up to satisfy his masters.’
‘I hated my father, so no wonder the gossips whisper I must have killed him, despite my valet’s evidence I was even more drunk that night than I managed to be today.’
‘Your mother and sisters have my sympathy, then. Two drunks in the family must have been almost too much to endure,’ Hetta said bluntly, but he had insulted her and her family first, so why not?
‘I am not a habitual drunkard and I would never hurt them if I was,’ he protested, and deep down she felt guilty for implying it.
She knew he would never use his strength to coerce or dominate a woman. If ever a man was tempted to do so he must have been when Lady Drace walked away with his child. Now, instead of one of Lord Byron’s devil heroes, he looked like a weary knight who had defended too many lost causes for the good of his soul. Fanciful nonsense, she told herself, and it came of being in the wrong place at the wrong time to witness his darkest moments, but what on earth was she going to do with herself and Toby now? The idea of trying to find a hired coach to heaven knew where at short notice nearly overwhelmed even her sturdy determination never to allow a man to order her life again.
‘Why are you here instead of in Worthing?’ she asked impulsively, because it was easier to think about him than worry about where to spend the night.
‘Guess,’ he said wearily. ‘This summer by the sea is supposed to be a much-needed tonic for them and it won’t be if they spend it worrying about me.’
‘Honestly, men,’ she said disgustedly. ‘Do you really believe your mother and sisters won’t worry if they can’t actually see you drunk and miserable? If you truly believe we women live on fluffy clouds of ignorance about what men get up to behind our backs, I am sorry for you. I took you for less of a fool than most of your sex, Mr Haile, but apparently I was wrong.’
‘Obviously, and why would you give me so much credit when my idiocy was writ large the day we met, Mrs Champion?’ he barked as if he meant to drive her away and never mind if she had to sleep under a hedge tonight.
‘Your sister Lady Aline has such a high opinion of you I must have fallen into the error of thinking she knew you better, despite all evidence to the contrary. She seems such a rational being and really should know better.’
‘No