dallying on the terrace with that one.’ She looked around the room. ‘Now where has he gone?’
‘Newlyn, ma’am?’ The astringent old bat was as effective as a splash of cold water in the face.
‘No, you silly chit. Wykeham.’
‘The Earl of Wykeham?’ Had she gone white or scarlet? Was her face a picture of guilt? She felt as though the pressure of Avery’s mouth must have branded her. Surely anyone looking at her would see her lips were swollen from his kisses?
‘There’s only the one. He’d do for you. Rank, money, good brain, although he’s encumbered with that by-blow he insists on acknowledging. He won’t do for some innocent girl straight out of the schoolroom, but you’ve enough town bronze to carry off that little embarrassment without any silliness. Eh? Men will be men.’
‘Indeed they will, ma’am.’ Laura agreed grimly. ‘Will you excuse me? I feel quite exhausted—I am not yet used to town hours again.’
As she made her way to the exit she heard the old lady cackle behind her. ‘No stamina, today’s young misses. None at all.’
Damn it, I’m shaking. Avery summoned up every inch of control he possessed, thanked his hostess for a charming evening and strode out into the lobby. He looked down at his hands and willed them to stillness. He did not know what it was: fury at Laura Campion’s deceit and defiance, the urge to shake the breath out of her or sheer frustrated lust. All three, he supposed.
Who the devil did he think he was punishing with that kiss? He was the one who was going to spend the night tossing and turning in frustration, not that deceitful, selfish woman.
‘Your hat and cloak, my lord. Shall I call your carriage?’ The footman waited impassively, too well trained to show that he found anything unusual about peers of the realm standing in the middle of the lobby eyeing their white-gloved hands and muttering.
I’ll be a candidate for Bedlam if I carry on like this, Avery thought. ‘Thank you. I’ll walk. Find my driver and tell him to go home, would you?’
‘My lord.’ The coins hardly chinked as the footman palmed them. Of course, Avery could stand here threading the contents of the flower arrangement into his hair, provided he tipped well enough. The urge to do something totally mindless, utterly irresponsible, gripped him. Go to a hell off St James’s Street and risk a few thou on the tables. Find a gin house down by the river and get stupid drunk and pick a fight. Or investigate a high-class brothel in Covent Garden and forget the taste of Laura Campion’s mouth and the feel of her skin in a welter of costly, highly skilled flesh.
The gaming hells were closest, the thought of gin and a fight the most tempting and the brothel, he realised with a fastidious twist of his lips, the most distasteful. He began to walk, his stick casually in his hand, his senses, below the level that was furious and aroused, testing his surroundings for danger. Footpads abounded. Perhaps he could lose himself in violence that way.
* * *
It took him the ten minutes to Berkeley Square to cool down sufficiently to remember that he had a child to go home to. That would be behaviour to justify every one of Lady Laura’s threats if he rolled in bloodied, drunk, stinking of gin and cheap perfume.
Avery turned around the square towards home and slowed his pace. Every night, whether she was awake or not, he went into Alice’s bedroom and gave her a goodnight kiss. She was probably quite unaware of it—in fact, he suspected the only person gaining any reassurance from it was himself.
The fierce protective love he felt for the child still shook him to the core. He had taken her out of duty and a nagging sense of responsibility—it was only in the small hours of the morning that he admitted to himself that it might be guilt—for having sent Piers back to Spain. Miss Blackstock had cradled the baby in her arms as they bumped down the rough track away from the remote farm and then, when they turned onto the smoother turnpike road, she had handed him the swaddled bundle without a word.
Avery had never held a baby in his life. He took her, looked down and was instantly riveted by the blue eyes staring into his. The baby looked at his face as though it was the only thing in the world, as though it was the entirety of her universe. Avery had looked back and discovered he had stopped breathing. Is this love at first sight? He could recall thinking that and then she freed one hand from the blanket, waved it, a tiny questing starfish, and found his finger. The grip was extraordinary. He looked at perfect miniature fingernails, at the smooth baby skin and knew, as his gaze blurred, that it was, indeed, love.
So much for setting Blackie up with a nursery and staff somewhere hidden away in England. Plans for bringing up the child at a distance in her own well-equipped, carefully staffed establishment went out of the carriage window. ‘You will come with me to Vienna?’ he asked Blackie and she had smiled and nodded, completely unsurprised by his instant infatuation. He supposed his smile must have been uncharacteristically sheepish, because hers had widened. ‘You are sure?’ he asked.
‘Of course. A child should be with her father,’ she had responded.
Her father? He had meant to be Cousin Avery, a remote guardian. He’d had vague thoughts of visits on her birthday and at Christmas, of gifts, selected by Blackie. Eventually a governess, a pony—all taken care of while he dealt with the important matters of international statecraft that filled his days.
But they did not fill his heart, he realised during that long journey. His new-found adoration survived even the unpleasant realities of travel with a baby and the transformation of a sweet-smelling, endearing little creature into a squalling, irritable tyrant who wanted the wet nurse now, who needed her napkin changing now—regardless of whether his lordship thought it might wait until they reached the next inn. He could get out and stand in the rain while the women dealt with it or he could grit his teeth and put up with it. Human babies, it seemed, were just like any other small mammal: they had their needs and they were quite ruthless about getting them filled.
Slowly the months had passed, the baby-blue eyes became greener and greener as Avery observed, fascinated, all the stages of growth. Weaning, the first tooth, the first words and steps. And still that wide, intent gaze would find his face and the smile would curve Alice’s lips and he knew he was never going to be Cousin Avery. He was Papa, to Alice and in the eyes of the world.
Now, when he climbed the stairs to her bedroom, he found her awake and was glad he had resisted the mad urge to bad behaviour. ‘Why are you not asleep?’ he asked, shaking his head in mock reproof.
Alice blinked up at him, then rubbed her eyes and yawned hugely. ‘I’m excited, Papa.’
‘By London? But you are used to big cities.’
‘I know.’ She burrowed down, eyes already closing. ‘But something exciting is going to happen, I know it is.’
‘I hope not, pet,’ Avery said and smoothed her hair before he bent to drop a kiss on the top of her head.
It was not until he was in his own chamber, shedding his clothes into the hands of Darke, his valet, that the question struck him. How the blazes had Laura Campion discovered that Alice was her daughter? Had the Brownes decided to make even more money and had contacted Lady Laura to tell her that they had handed over the child? But why had she left it so late? Then he recalled that her father had died the previous year. It must have been, as he had accused, a selfish whim. Now she was alone in the world, she would take a very belated interest in the fate of her daughter.
Or, he decided cynically, she had ignored Alice all these years, but had finally resolved to take a husband and wanted to make sure her secret was safely buried in that remote dale. It must have been a nasty shock to discover that someone else knew and that the child was not growing up milking cows, baking bread and learning her letters in the village dame school, but was under the protection of someone of influence and power.
‘Am