out his face beyond a pale oval against the blackness of the shrubs, let alone read his expression, but the shock and tension came off him like heat from a fire.
She lifted her chin and stood there, deliberately posed in the slender column of rose-pink silk overlaid with silver gauze. The neckline swooped low over her shoulders and bosom, the sleeves were mere puffs of ribbon and her hair was piled high in the latest style. She knew the rubies at her throat and in her ears would pulse in the light in time with her breathing because she had studied the effect in the mirror, and she knew she looked elegant, expensive and provocative, a hundred miles from the genteel respectability of the widow she had pretended to be. It was instinct to display herself and not to try to hide. Avery was here and there was no escape: she would stand and fight.
‘Then who are you?’ He took three long strides forward and confronted her. ‘Step back into the shadow, we cannot be seen like this.’
Laura shrugged, a careless twitch of one shoulder that had his gaze dropping to the swell of her breasts as the silk shifted. ‘No one will be surprised if I am seen on the terrace with a man.’
‘Who are you?’ Avery repeated. She could smell him, his familiar shaving soap, a discreet hint of cologne, the provocative warmth of a man who had been in a crowded room all evening. ‘What are you hiding from?’
‘I am not hiding from anything. Anyone.’ She tipped up her chin. ‘I am Lady Laura Campion.’
Avery went very still, the hiss of breath between his teeth the only sign of the shock she must have given him. ‘How dared you insinuate yourself into my house under false pretences?’ he said, the words low and even, at odds with the anger in the question.
‘How dared you steal my child?’ she flung back, unable to match his icy control. ‘How could you accuse Piers of being a coward and send him to his death?’
‘I sent him to do his duty. He made a choice when he took a commission and he knew the odds of being killed. If I failed him, it was by neglecting to teach him how to recognise a heartless wanton when he saw one. Just look at you now.’
‘You hypocrite.’ The stinging injustice of his words steadied her, gave her back some steadiness, even if it was only the rigidity of fury. ‘You just like control, that is it, isn’t it? You wanted to control Piers’s life, you want to control his estate, you want to control his daughter’s future.’
‘I love that child.’
‘I noticed. You love her so much that you let her think her mother left her.’
‘Instead of telling her that you gave her away?’
‘I—’ Her parents had done it for the best of motives, she tried to believe that. ‘It was the only thing to do.’
‘Of course it was,’ Avery said, his tone so reasonable that she gaped at him. He moved into the edge of the light and she saw his face, took a step back before she could control her reactions and stand her ground. ‘The only thing if you wanted to forget about Piers, if you wanted to resume your gilded life, catch an eligible husband and had no care for your child.’
‘What choice had I?’ she flung at him and moved away, out of the light where he had her pinned like a moth against a lantern. ‘You know perfectly well I would have ruined both my daughter and myself if I had kept her.’
‘Of course I know that, but you could have gone to his family.’
‘And what good would that have done?’ Laura enquired. She groped her way to the balustrade and gripped the cool stonework, the dried lichen rough against the fine kid of her long gloves. ‘His mother died shortly after he joined the army. There was no one to go to.’
‘There was me. I came back.’ Avery must have moved as she did, for he was very close now, the lepidopterist ready to skewer the captive moth with a long pin now she was fluttering, helpless.
‘And what would you have done, pray?’
‘Married you,’ he said.
‘Married me? Why? Why would you have helped me?’
‘I would have not crossed the road for you,’ Avery said dismissively. ‘I would have done it for Piers and for his child.’
‘Easy to say now,’ Laura jibed. Inside she quaked. Where did the brave, defiant words come from? She was shaking so much she could hardly stand.
‘You would not recognise a sense of honour if you fell over it.’ The anger had finally surfaced and cracked his control. ‘You sent the baby to the other end of the country to be brought up as a poor farmer’s daughter. You had no intention of keeping watch over her, simply of getting rid of an embarrassing encumbrance. You might have found her a good home close at hand, but that is too late now. You will stay away from Alice, do you understand me?’
‘Or what?’
‘Or your reputation will suffer for it. It is bad enough as it is, but I doubt even Scandal’s Virgin could ride out that storm.’ His lip curled. ‘And that’s the most inaccurate by-name I have ever heard.’
‘If you betray my secret, then you ruin Alice,’ Laura countered. ‘No one would forget that story. All your scheming to make her eligible and respectable would go out of the window simply because of your spite against me. We are at check, my lord. If Alice is in London, then I will see her, even if you prevent me speaking to her.’
‘I’ll not let you near her. If you had loved her, you would have stayed in touch with the family you sent her to, not left her for six years and then arrived to play with her emotions on some whim.’ All that hard-learned control had deserted him, she realised. Avery took a precipitate step closer, trapping her against the balustrade as Lord Newlyn had done.
‘You cannot stop me—’ Laura began. She had no idea what she was going to say, what she was going to do, for he took all her options away from her. His hands on her shoulders locked around the narrow bones as he pulled her towards him. Then his mouth took hers in a kiss that held nothing of sensuality or even simple arousal. This was punishment, anger, scorn and his own frustration at her defiance.
Laura stamped and kicked as Avery bent her back against the stonework. It took a few seconds to realise that there was cool air all around her, that his weight was gone, his hands had released her. ‘There is no need to scream,’ Avery said, his voice like a lash. ‘I would not touch you again for any consideration I could imagine. Respectable widows are one thing, selfish pleasure-seeking chits are quite another. To think I was under the illusion I was rescuing you just now.’ His laugh jarred, totally without humour. ‘Just believe that I will do whatever it takes to protect what is mine—and Alice is mine in every sense that matters.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she’d had no intention of trying to see Alice again, that she had resolved to leave her child in his care because she believed that was best for Alice. But now...now she would not admit that and let him think he had frightened her away, not if it killed her. Laura ran the back of her hand over her mouth and fixed him with a dagger glare that simply bounced off his disdain.
‘We are all in London,’ she said with a calm that belied her quaking knees. ‘Unless you want to make a mystery of Alice and have people saying you are ashamed of her and want to hide her, then there is every chance I will see her again. I will not approach her because that would confuse her, but believe me, if I ever have the slightest suspicion that she is not happy, that you are not the loving father to her that you purport to be, then I will make such a scandal you would not believe and I will fight you in the courts for her.’
Laura gathered her long skirts in one hand and turned towards the house with all the poise of one of society’s darlings. ‘I will be watching you, Lord Wykeham. Never forget it.’ She swept through the doors into the reception room again, into the heat and light and noise and almost stumbled with shock to find that this other world was continuing just feet from that encounter.
‘There you are!’ The dowager rapped on the floor