Undoing of a Lady

Titles in the Brides of Fortune series

CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS

SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT

UNDOING OF A LADY

Browse www.nicolacornick.co.uk for Nicola’s full backlist

Undoing of a Lady

Nicola Cornick

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Letter from Mrs Laura Anstruther toEve, Duchess of WelburnMay 1810

My very dear Eve,

It was a great pleasure to receive your last letter and to hear that you and my cousin Rowarth are having such a splendid time on your wedding tour. I owe you particular thanks for the present of the beautiful negligee you sent me from Paris –Dexter likes it extremely!

You mentioned that you were curious to know all the news from Fortune’s Folly and there is much to report. I fear that Sir Montague continues to inflict all manner of greedy and grasping taxes upon us under the terms of the medieval law. There are now only three unmarried heiresses left in the village, for all the others have embraced matrimony in order to escape the Dames Tax!

My good friend Alice Lister tied the knot with my cousin Miles Vickery a month or so past. You will remember Miles, I feel sure. It is perhaps a blessing for the friendship between him and Rowarth that he always preferred blondes and so never sought your favour! However, he is quite reformed now. It is most amusing to see so shocking a rake hopelessly in love with his wife rather than with someone else’s. Stephen, Lord Armitage jilted Miss Mary Wheeler practically at the altar. A lucky escape for her, I feel. The other match is between Miss Flora Minchin and Lord Waterhouse. They are to wed in a few weeks. It is not a love match. His title for her money–you know the sort of thing. Though I have the strangest feeling matters may not go quite to plan.

NICOLA CORNICK first became fascinated by history when she was young. She studied history at university and wrote her Master’s thesis on heroes. Nicola also works as a historian for the National Trust in a seventeenth-century manor house. She can be contacted via her website at www.nicolacornick.co.uk

For Tony, Judy and Clare, with love

Part One

“From his brimstone bed, at break of day, A-walking the devil is gone, To look at his little snug farm of the world, And see how his stock went on.

A lady drove by, in her pride, In whose face an expression he spied, For which he could have kissed her; Such a flourishing, fine, clever creature was she With an eye as wicked as wicked can be.”

—From The Devil’s Walk by Robert Southey, 1799

Chapter One

The Folly, Fortune Hall, Yorkshire—June 1810 A little before midnight

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL NIGHT for an abduction.

The moon sailed high and bright in a starlit sky. The warm breeze sighed in the treetops, stirring the scents of pine and hot grass. Deep in the heart of the wood an owl called, a long, throaty hoot that hung on the night air.

Lady Elizabeth Scarlet sat by the window, watching for the shadow, waiting to hear the step on the path outside. She knew Nat Waterhouse would come. He always came when she called. He would be annoyed of course—what man would not be irritated to be called away from his carousing on the night before his wedding—but he would still be there. He was so responsible; he would not ignore her cry for help. She knew exactly how he would respond. She knew him so well.

Her fingertips beat an impatient tattoo on the stone window ledge. She checked the watch she had purloined earlier from her brother. It felt as though she had been waiting for hours but she was surprised to see that it was only eight minutes since she had last looked. She felt nervous, which surprised her. She knew Nat would be angry but she was acting for his own good. The wedding had to be stopped. He would thank her for it one day.

From across the fields came the faint chime of the church bell. Midnight. There was the crunch of footsteps on the path. He was precisely on time. Of course he would be.

She sat still as a mouse as he opened the door of the folly. She had left the hallway in darkness but there was a candle burning in the room above. If she had calculated correctly he would go up the spiral stair and into the chamber, giving her time to lock the outer door behind him and hide the key. There was no other way out. Her half brother, Sir Montague Fortune, had had the folly built to the design of a miniature fort with arrow slits and windows too small to allow a man to pass. He had thought it a great joke to build a folly in a village called Fortune’s Folly. That, Lizzie thought, was Monty’s idea of amusement, that and dreaming up new taxes with which to torment the populace.

“Lizzie!”

She jumped. Nat was right outside the door of the guardroom. He sounded impatient. She held her breath.

“Lizzie? Where are you?”

He took the spiral stair two steps at a time and she slid like a wraith out of the tiny guardroom to turn the key in the heavy oaken door. Her fingers were shaking and slipped on the cold iron. She knew what her friend Alice Vickery would say if she were here now:

“Not another of your harebrained schemes, Lizzie! Stop now, before it is too late!”

But it was already too late. She could not allow herself time to think about this or she would lose her nerve. She ran back into the guardroom and stole a hand through one of the arrow slits. There was a nail on the wall outside. The key clinked softly against the stone. There. Nat could not escape until she willed it. She smiled to herself, well pleased. She had known there was no need to involve anyone else in the plan. She could handle an abduction unaided. It was easy.

She went out into the hall. Nat was standing at the top of the stairs, the candle in his hand. The flickering light threw a tall shadow. He looked huge, menacing and angry.

Actually, Lizzie thought, he was huge, menacing and angry, but he would never hurt her. Nat would never, ever hurt her. She knew exactly how he would behave. She knew him like a brother.

“Lizzie? What the hell’s going on?”

He was drunk as well, Lizzie thought. Not drunk enough to be even remotely incapacitated but enough to swear in front of a lady, which was something that Nat would normally never do. But then, if she were marrying Miss Flora Minchin the next morning, she would be swearing, too. And she would have drunk herself into a stupor. Which brought her back to the point. For Nat would not be marrying Miss Minchin. Not in the morning. Not ever. She was here to make sure of it. She was here to save him.

“Good evening, Nat,” Lizzie said brightly, and saw him scowl. “I trust you have had an enjoyable time on your last night of freedom?”

“Cut the pleasantries, Lizzie,” Nat said. “I’m not in the mood.” He held the candle a little higher so that the light fell on her face. His eyes were black, narrowed and hard. “What could possibly be so urgent that you had to talk to me in secret on the night before my wedding?”

Lizzie did not answer immediately. She caught the hem of her gown up in one hand and made her careful way up the stone stair. She felt Nat’s gaze on her face every moment even though she did not look at him. He stood aside to allow her to enter the chamber at the top. It was tiny, furnished only with a table, a chair and a couch. Monty Fortune, having created his miniature fort, had not really known what to do with it.

When she was standing on the rug in the center of the little round turret room Lizzie turned to face Nat. Now that she could see him properly she could see that his black hair was tousled and his elegant clothes looked slightly less than pristine. His jacket hung open and his cravat was undone. Stubble darkened his lean cheek and the hard line of his jaw. There was a smoky air of the alehouse about him. His eyes glittered with impatience and irritation.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

Lizzie spread her hands wide in an innocent gesture. “I asked you here to try to persuade you not to go through with the wedding,” she said. She looked at him in appeal. “You know she will bore you within five minutes, Nat. No,” she corrected herself. “You are already bored with her, aren’t you, and you are not even wed yet. And you don’t give a rush for her, either. You are making a terrible mistake.”

Nat’s mouth set in a thin line. He raked a hand through his hair. “Lizzie, we’ve spoken about this—”

“I know,” Lizzie said. Her heart hammered in her throat. “Which is why I had to do this, Nat. It’s for your own good.”

Fury was fast replacing the irritation in his eyes. “Do what?” he said. Then, as she did not reply: “Do what, Lizzie?”

“I’ve locked you in,” Lizzie said rapidly. “I promise that I will release you tomorrow—when the hour of the wedding is past. I doubt that Flora or her parents will forgive you the slight of standing her up at the altar.”

She had never previously thought the Earl of Waterhouse a man who made a display of his emotions. She had always thought he had a good face for games of chance, showing no feeling, giving nothing away. Now, though, it was all too easy to read him. His first reaction was stupefaction. His second was grim certainty. He did not even stop to question the truth of what she had said. If she knew him well, then the reverse was also the case.

“Lizzie,” he said, “you little hellcat.”

He turned and crashed angrily down the spiral stair, taking the candle, leaving her in darkness but for the faint moonlight that slid through the arrow slits in the wall. Lizzie let her breath out in a long, shaky sigh. She had only a moment to compose herself, for once he realized that there really was no escape he would be back. And this time he would be beyond mere fury.

She heard him try the thick oak door—and swear when it would not even give an inch. She saw the candle flame dance across the walls as he checked the guardroom and the passageway for potential exits. The swearing became more colorful as he acknowledged what she already knew—there was no way out. The tiny water closet opened onto the equally miniature moat and was far too small for a six foot man to squeeze through. The room in which she stood had a trapdoor that led up to the pretend battlements but she had locked it earlier and hidden the key in a hollow tree outside. She had wanted to make no mistakes.

He was back and she had been correct—he looked enraged. A muscle pulsed in his lean cheek. Every line of his body was rigid with fury.

When he spoke, however, his voice was deceptively gentle. Lizzie found it more disconcerting than if he had shouted at her.

“Why are you doing this, Lizzie?” he said.

Lizzie wiped the palms of her hands surreptitiously down the side of her gown. She wished she could stop shaking. She knew she was doing the right thing. She simply had not anticipated that it would be quite so frightening.

“I told you,” she said, tilting her chin up defiantly. “I’m saving you from yourself.”

Nat gave a harsh laugh. “No. You are denying me the chance to gain the fifty thousand pounds I so desperately need. You know how important this is to me, Lizzie.”

“It isn’t worth it for a lifetime of boredom.”

“That is my choice.”

“You’ve made the wrong choice. I’m here to save you from it.” Lizzie kept her voice absolutely level despite the pounding of her blood. “You have always cared for me and tried to protect me. Now it is my turn. I’m doing this because you are my friend and I care for you.”

She saw the contemptuous flicker in his eyes that said he did not believe her. Lizzie’s temper smoldered. She had always been hot-blooded, or perhaps just plain belligerent depending upon whose opinion one sought. It seemed damnably unfair of Nat to judge her when she had his best interests at heart. He should be thanking her for saving him from this ghastly match.

Nat put the candle down on the little wooden table beside the door and took a very deliberate step toward her. He was tall—over six-foot—broad and muscular. Lizzie tried not to feel intimidated and failed.

“Give me the key, Lizzie,” he said gently.

“No.” Lizzie swallowed hard. He was very close now, his physical presence powerful, threatening, in direct contradiction to the softness of his tone. But she was not afraid of Nat. In the nine years of their acquaintance he had never given her any reason to fear him.

“Where is it?”

“Hidden somewhere you won’t find it.”

Nat gave an exasperated sigh. He flung out an arm. “This isn’t a game, Lizzie,” he said. She could tell he was trying to suppress his anger, trying to be reasonable. Nat Waterhouse was, above all, a reasonable man, a rational man, and a responsible man. And she supposed it was unreasonable of her to expect him to see the situation from her point of view. She was in the right, of course. She knew that. And in time she was sure he would acknowledge it, too. But at the moment he was annoyed. Disappointed. Yes, of course. He would be angry and frustrated to lose Flora’s fortune. He had cultivated the heiress, courted her and flirted with her, which must have been a dreadfully tedious business. He had invested time and effort in landing his prize. And now she was queering his pitch. So yes, she could see that he would be cross with her.

“What you are doing is dangerous,” Nat said. He still sounded in control. “You have locked yourself in with me. Is this some ridiculous attempt to compromise me so that I am obliged to marry you instead of Flora?”

Lizzie’s temper tightened another notch. She was starting to feel genuinely angry now in addition to feeling afraid. She was infuriated by his presumption in thinking she wanted him for herself. “Of course not,” she said. “How conceited you are! I don’t want to wed you! I’d rather pull my own ears off!”

Nat’s smile was not pleasant. “I don’t believe you. You have deliberately compromised yourself by locking us in together.”

“Rubbish!” Lizzie said. “I don’t intend to tell anyone. I only want to keep you here until it’s too late for the marriage to take place, and then I will let you go.”

“Handsome of you,” Nat said. “You wreck my future and then you let me go to face the ruins.”

“Oh, do not be so melodramatic!” Lizzie snapped. “You should not have become a fortune hunter in the first place. It does not become you!”

“There speaks a woman with fifty thousand pounds and a judgmental attitude,” Nat said. “You know nothing.”

“I know everything about you!” Lizzie flashed. “I have known you for over nine years and I care about you—”

“You aren’t doing this out of disinterested friendship, Lizzie,” Nat interrupted her scathingly. “You are doing this because you are selfish and spoiled and immature, and you do not wish another woman to have a greater claim on me. You want to keep me for yourself.”

Lizzie gaped. “You are an arrogant pig!”

“And you are a pampered brat. You need to grow up. I have thought so for a long time.”

They stood glaring at one another whilst the tension in the room simmered and the candle flame flickered as though responding to something dangerous in the air.

Somewhere inside, Lizzie was hurting, but she cut the pain off, cauterized it with the heat of her anger.

“When have I been spoiled and immature?” she demanded. She had not wanted to ask, to twist the knife in her own wounds, but she found she was unable to keep the words inside.

Nat laughed, a harsh sound that ripped at her soul. “Where shall I start? You have no interest in anyone or anything beyond your own concerns and opinions. You flaunted yourself brazenly at the assembly on the very day that my engagement to Flora was announced, and that could only have been to take attention away from her. You flirt with anything in trousers. You have kept both Lowell Lister and John Jerrold dancing on a string for months when you have no interest in them other than in the way they feed your vanity. And if we are talking about serious lack of consideration for others, you bought some of Miles Vickery’s most valued possessions at the sale of Drum Castle and never had the generosity to give them back to him—”

Lizzie covered her ears. Nat caught her wrists and dragged her hands away.

“You wanted to know,” he said. His voice was hard. “I knew you would not be able to take the truth.”

He dropped her wrist as though he could not bear to touch her, and they fell apart. Both of them were panting. Lizzie felt as though her skin had been flayed bare by his words. Her eyes prickled with hot tears. She forced them back.

After a moment Nat raked his hand through his hair again and made a visible attempt to keep calm.

“Give me the key and we’ll forget this ever happened,” he said.

It was too late for that and they both knew it.

“No,” Lizzie said. She crossed her arms. “I don’t have it.”

“You are a pampered brat. You need to grow up. You are spoiled and selfish…”

She told herself that she did not care what he thought. She knew she was lying. It hurt horribly. Something precious, something she had cherished, had been broken beyond saving. Nat’s opinion had always mattered to her. She had respected him. Now she felt as though she hated him.

Nat’s gaze stripped her, suddenly shockingly insolent. “I suppose you have hidden it about your person.”

“No, I have not!” Lizzie was taken aback both by his tone and the look in his eyes. He had never looked at her like that before, as though she was some Covent Garden whore displaying her wares for the purchase. She felt humiliated; she told herself she was livid. Yet something in her, something shocking and primitive, liked it well enough. The blood warmed beneath her skin, the heat rolling through her body from her cheeks down to her toes and back up again, setting her afire.

Nat grabbed her so quickly she did not even see him move. His hands passed over her body; intimate, knowing hands, seeking and searching. The goose bumps rose all over her skin, following the path of his touch. The heat intensified inside her, burning hotter than a furnace. She squirmed within his grip, protesting against the humiliation of his restraint and her body’s response to it.

“Let me go! I don’t have it, I tell you!” There was more pleading than she liked in her tone.

“But you know where it is.” He let her go, breathing hard. There was some expression in his eyes, something feral, something different. It made her tremble. She remembered for the first time that he was a man who habitually, ruthlessly and coldly hunted down criminals in the course of his duty. She did not think about that often for that was the side of Nat’s life that she seldom saw, but she thought about it now because she could sense the rage in him and the desperation. She remembered that he had said he needed Flora Minchin’s fifty thousand pounds very badly indeed. She knew that he had wanted to restore Water House and provide for his family—his parents were old and his sister Celeste an invalid—but recently it had seemed there was an added urgency to his actions as though something else had happened to make his pursuit of the money even more pressing. She did not know what it was. She had never asked. Perhaps Nat was right that she was always wrapped up in her own concerns. The thought disturbed her.

She searched his face for the Nat Waterhouse she recognized and saw a stranger.

It chilled her so much that she teetered on the brink of capitulation and Nat saw her hesitate on the very edge of defeat—and he laughed.

“That’s right, Lizzie. Act like an adult for once. Go and fetch the key.”

It was the contempt in his voice that decided her, that and his laughter ringing in her ears. She could imagine him telling his friends Dexter Anstruther and Miles Vickery all about her plan, how she had thought to put a stop to his marriage because she was so young and immature and spoiled, and because she was harboring a not-so-secret tendre for him. She burned with humiliation to think of him ascribing such feelings to her and laughing over them with his friends because, she told herself fiercely, it simply wasn’t true. She had tried to rescue him and he had scorned her efforts and for that she would make him pay. The need to make him suffer—to make him hurt the way she was hurting—ached in her chest and ran through her blood like poison.

She drew herself up and stared him in the eye.

“No. I am not going anywhere and neither are you.” She spun away from him across the tiny chamber.

“You’re bloody mad.” Nat was furious and had given up any pretence of courtesy now.

“And you are bloody rude.” She whirled around to look at him, heady with power now. “And arrogant and conceited to think that I care for you.”

“Don’t you?” His eyes glittered.

“Of course not. I detest you. Especially now, after all those wicked things you have said about me. What do you think this is, one of Monty’s ridiculous medieval laws?” She flicked him an impertinent smile even though her heart felt, oddly, as though it was breaking. “The droit de seigneur? Surely you don’t imagine that I kidnapped you in order to have my wicked way with you on the night before your wedding?” She allowed her gaze to slide over him with an attempt at the same insolence with which he had looked at her earlier. It was more difficult than she had thought. She had little experience in eyeing up a man as though he was a commodity for sale.

“You wouldn’t have the nerve to carry off something like that.” Nat’s arrogant assumption twisted the knife. “Come on, Lizzie. You are out of your depth. Admit it. This is one of your childish games that has gone too far.”

Don’t dare me…

Their eyes met. The air between them seemed hot, heavy and pulsing with tension. Lizzie put a hand on his arm.

“You think I could not seduce you, Nat Waterhouse?”

His hand closed hard about her wrist, holding it still. Beneath his fingers, her pulse jumped. “Don’t be absurd.” His voice was rough.

Lizzie stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips inexpertly against his. He remained completely unresponsive beneath her touch even though she knew—she knew—he was not indifferent to her. She could feel the conflict in him for his body was tense, tight as a whip, but his response was battened down now, held under iron control. She moved her lips against his, willing him to react, to grab her, kiss her back, thus proving that she had won, but he stood completely immobile. Damn him. She was starting to feel foolish, reaching up, kissing him, and he as still as a marble statue. He wanted to embarrass her and he was succeeding. Perhaps she was no good at kissing; she did not really know. Several men had kissed her and it had been a severely disappointing experience each time, though whether that was because her expectations were too high or her suitors too incompetent, she was not sure.

She stood back a little and looked at Nat through half-narrowed eyes. Perhaps he was not as restrained as he wanted her to think. She was inexperienced, but some knowledge, deep and instinctive within her, told her that Nat was closer to the edge than he pretended. He was breathing fast and a pulse beat in his cheek. The knowledge that she was pushing him so hard made Lizzie feel heady, as though she had drunk too much wine. The thrill of danger blotted out the pain of the bitter words they had thrown at one another.