‘Of course,’ Alistair said. Well, he had heard about a scandal yesterday. That was near enough the truth, and he was damnably curious all of a sudden.
‘No harm in speaking of it then, especially as you know the family. My cousin wrote all about it. Lady P. ran off with some fellow, furious father found them on the road to Gretna, old Lady St George was on hand to observe and report on every salacious detail—all the usual stuff and a full-blown scandal as a result.’
‘No so very bad if Lord Wycombe caught them,’ Alistair said casually as the manservant came back, poured brandy and reported that the doctor had gone out, but was expected back soon.
‘Well, yes, normally even Lady St George could have been kept quiet, I expect. Only trouble was, they’d set out from London and Papa caught them halfway up Lancashire.’
‘Ah.’ One night, possibly two, alone with her lover. A scandal indeed. ‘Why didn’t she marry the fellow?’ Wycombe was rich enough and influential enough to force almost anyone, short of a royal duke, to the altar and to keep their mouths shut afterwards. A really unsuitable son-in-law could always be shipped off to a fatally unhealthy spot in the West Indies later.
‘She wouldn’t have him, apparently. Refused point blank. According to my cousin she said he snored, had the courage of a vole and the instincts of a weasel and while she was quite willing to admit she had made a serious mistake she had no intention of living with it. So her father packed her off here to stay with her aunt, Lady Webb.’
‘Daniel,’ Callum snapped, ‘you are gossiping about a lady of our acquaintance.’
‘Who is perfectly willing to mention it herself,’ his twin retorted. ‘I heard her only the other day at the picnic. Miss Eppingham said something snide about scandalous goings-on and Lady Perdita remarked that she was more than happy to pass on the benefits of her experience if it prevented Miss Eppingham making a cake of herself over Major Giddings, who, she could assure her, had the morals of a civet cat and was only after Miss E.’s dowry. I don’t know how I managed not to roar with laughter.’
That sounded like attack as a form of defence, Alistair thought as Daniel knocked back his brandy and Callum shook his head at him. Dita surely couldn’t be so brazen as not to care and he rather admired the courage it showed to acknowledge the facts and bite back. He also admired Wycombe’s masterly manner of dealing with the scandal. He had got his daughter out of London society and at the same time had placed her in a situation where it would be well known that she was not carrying a child. Three months’ passage on an East Indiaman gave no possibility of hiding such a thing.
But what the devil was Dita doing running off with a man she didn’t want to marry? Perhaps he was wrong and she really was the foolish romantic he had teased her with being. She certainly knew how to flirt—he had seen her working her wiles on Daniel Chatterton last night—but, strangely, she had not done so with him. Obviously he annoyed her too much.
But, whatever she thought of him, the more distance there was between them mentally, the better, because there was going to be virtually none physically on that ship and he was very aware of the reaction his body had to her. He wanted Perdita Brooke for all the wrong reasons; he just had to be careful that wanting was all it came to. Alistair leaned back and savoured the brandy. Taking care had never been his strong suit.
‘Perdita, look at you!’ Emma Webb stood in the midst of trunks and silver paper and frowned at her niece. ‘Your hair is half down and your neckcloth is missing. What on earth has occurred?’
‘There was an accident on the maidan.’ Dita came right into the room, stripped off her gloves and kissed her aunt on the cheek. ‘It is nothing to worry about, dearest. Lord Lyndon took a fall and he was bleeding, so my neckcloth seemed the best bandage.’ She kept going, into the dressing room, and smiled at the ayah who was pouring water for her bath from a brass jug.
‘Oh?’ Her aunt came to the door, a half-folded shawl in her hands. ‘Someone said you were arguing with him last night. Oh dear, I really am not the good chaperon my brother expected.’
‘We have not seen each other since I was sixteen, Aunt Emma,’ Dita said, stepping out of her habit. ‘And we simply picked up the same squabble about a frog that we parted on. He is just as infuriating now as he was then.’
And even more impossibly attractive, unfortunately. In the past, when she had told herself that the adult Alistair Lyndon would be nothing like the young man she had known and adored eight years ago, she had never envisaged the possibility that he would be even more desirable. It was only physical, of course. She was a grown woman, she understood these things now. She had given him her virginity: it was no wonder, with no lover since then, that she reacted to him.
It was a pity he did not have a squint or a skin condition or a double chin or a braying laugh. It was much easier to be irritated by someone if one was not also fighting a most improper desire to …
Dita put a firm lid on her imagination and sat down in eight inches of tepid water, an effective counter to torrid thoughts. It was most peculiar. She had convinced herself that she wanted to marry Stephen Doyle until he had tried to make love to her; then she had been equally convinced that she must escape the moment she could lay her hands on his wallet and her own money that was in it.
She was equally convinced now that Alistair Lyndon was the most provoking man of her acquaintance as well as being an insensitive rake—and yet she wanted to kiss him again until they were both dizzy, which probably meant something, if only that she was prone to the most shocking desires and was incapable of learning from the past.
‘I think everything is packed now,’ Emma said with satisfaction from the bedchamber. ‘And the trunks have gone off to the ship, which just leaves what you need on the voyage to be checked. Twelve weeks is a long time if we forget anything.’ She reappeared as Dita stepped out of the bath and was wrapped in a vast linen sheet. ‘I do hope Mrs Bastable proves as reliable as she appears. But she seems very happy to look after you and Miss Heydon.’
Averil was going to England for the first time since she was a toddler in order to marry Viscount Bradon, a man she had never met. Perhaps I should let Papa choose me a husband, Dita thought. He couldn’t do much worse than I have so far. And her father was unlikely to pick on a pale imitation of Alistair Lyndon as she had done so unwittingly, it seemed. ‘It isn’t often that we see brides going in that direction,’ Lady Webb added.
‘Do you think me a failure?’ Dita asked, half-serious, as her maid combed out her hair. ‘After all, I came over with the Fishing Fleet and I haven’t caught so much as a sprat.’ And do I want to marry anyway? Men are so fortunate, they can take a lover, no one thinks any the worse of them. I will have money of my own next year when I am twenty five …
‘Oh, don’t call it that,’ her aunt scolded. ‘There are lots of reasons for young ladies to come India, not just to catch husbands.’
‘I can’t think of any,’ Dita said. ‘Other than escaping a scandal, of course. I am certain Papa was hoping I would catch an up-and-coming star in the East India Company firmament, just like you did.’
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ Lady Webb said happily. ‘Darling George is a treasure. But not everyone wants to have to deal with the climate, or face years of separation for the sake of the children’s health.’ She picked up a list and conned it. ‘And you will be going home with that silly business all behind you and just in time for the Season, too.’
That silly business. Three words to dismiss disillusion and self-recrimination and the most terrible family rows. Papa had been utterly and completely correct about Stephen Doyle, which meant that her own judgement of men must be utterly and completely at fault. On that basis Alistair Lyndon was a model of perfection and virtue. Dita smiled to herself—no, she was right about him, at least: the man was a rake.
10th December 1808
‘Two