The Counterfeit Gentleman Read online

  Or had he been a gentleman and kept his eyes carefully averted? More than likely he was too much in love with the owner of the ebony brush to feel the least bit tempted by a stranger he had dragged out of the sea.

  Holding up her dress, Bethia found it was little more than a rag, which was hardly surprising after the rough treatment it had received. Made of delicate lawn trimmed with velvet ribbons, it had been designed for activities no more strenuous than sitting and sipping tea; it had certainly not been intended for use as a bathing costume.

  Fortunately, there was another, less tattered dress folded neatly on the chair. Mr. Rendel had not been able to provide her with a lady’s gown in the latest mode, but she could hardly fault him for that. The garment of homespun linsey-woolsey was at least clean and not the least bit revealing.

  And it was also vastly warmer than her own gown had been, she discovered once she had dressed herself. Until this moment she had not realized how much comfort a lady sacrificed in order to be stylish.

  Fighting off an unexpected timidity at the thought of seeing Mr. Rendel again—and feeling especially bashful about facing a large group of strange men—Bethia opened the door, but did nothing to call attention to herself.

  “ I only hope they try to fight,” Harry said, raising balled fists. “I wouldn’t half mind cracking their skulls together.”

  “Remember, our purpose is to capture them alive so we can find out who hired them,” Digory said sharply.

  “A little pain will only loosen their tongues,” Harry pointed out with a shrug, and no one in the room saw any reason to contradict him.

  Briefly, Digory outlined his plan, which was quite simple, and when he finished, a soft voice from the doorway said, “When is high tide? Do we need to get started soon?”

  Digory turned and saw Miss Pepperell standing in the doorway, her eyes still soft and heavy with sleep. How long she had been listening, he had no idea, but apparently she had heard most of their plans. “We? You are not coming with us. You are staying here where you will be safe.”

  “Alone?”

  Her voice betrayed her fear, and looking around, Digory saw to his great displeasure that his colleagues were not blind to her charms. They had all risen to their feet as soon as she had spoken, and now they looked ready to fall at her feet in rapt adoration.

  But he was in charge here, and his orders were not to be disregarded as blithely as were the King’s laws. “You are in no danger alone in my cottage,” he said firmly, “and it would be extremely foolhardy for you to come with us, so I shall not listen to any objections.”

  His crew thought different. For the first time since he had brought them together, they did not immediately accede to his wishes. Despite his having made it perfectly clear that the matter was closed, they began trying to persuade him to change his mind. He should have realized that after a year under someone else’s leadership, their unquestioning obedience, which he had once taken for granted, was no longer his to command.

  “It just don’t set right with me to leave the young lady alone here,” Harry said, looking at Jem instead of at Digory.

  “Suppose they’ve already discovered that she didn’t drown? Then what?” Big Davey asked.

  “And suppose they come skulking around here while we’re down at the cove and find her alone?” Little Davey added.

  “The chances of that happening are most unlikely,” Digory pointed out, holding back his temper only with difficulty.

  “But not impossible,” Harry said. “Someone may’ve seen the two of you yesterday climbing up the path from the beach, and people gossip, and you can’t say for sure those two villains have been sitting in a pub with nothing more on their minds than their next mug of ale. They may have been nosing around on their own, sniffing out dangerous information.”

  Miss Pepperell chose that moment to leave her post in the doorway and join the group, and seeing the fatuous smiles on his companions’ faces made Digory realize he was only wasting precious time by arguing.

  In fact, given the way they were looking at her, if she even mentioned wishing to marry him, his formerly loyal men would probably fall all over each other in their rush to drag him before the vicar.

  “Turncoats,” he muttered under his breath, but none of them paid him the slightest attention.

  Not daring to meet his eyes, Miss Pepperell smiled sweetly at the others and seated herself at the table. Looking up at them, she said, “I have been thinking that if I put on my own gown and lay down by the edge of the water, those horrible men would—”

  “No!” came in unison out of five masculine throats.

  “You are not going to be the bait,” Digory said, and this time his men sided firmly with him.

  “A decoy ain’t a bad idea, though,” Harry said. “My wife could take the dress you was drowned in and stuff it with straw and rig it up to look as if it was you.”

  Then another thought relative to Miss Pepperell’s clothing popped into Digory’s mind, and he made an even stronger effort to divert that young lady from her purpose. “Speaking of ladies’ gowns, has it occurred to any of you that if those men see a female with us, they may forget their orders to have Miss Pepperell’s death appear an accident and shoot her down on the spot?”

  There was dead silence, as the men, and Miss Pepperell also, recognized the validity of his objection.

  Then Jem spoke up traitorously, “Do you know, she’s about the size of my littlest brother, and wearing a suit of his clothes and with her hair tucked up under a cap, she could easily pass for a boy. Besides, I’m sure she’ll promise to stay out of sight behind the rocks until the fighting is over.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from the other men, and a rapturous smile from Miss Pepperell for Jem, and Digory realized that if he did not get things under control quickly, someone would next be offering to arm her with a dirk or a brace of pistols.

  Bowing to the inevitable, he finally agreed that Miss Pepperell could accompany them. With a rapturous smile that was enough to break a man’s heart, she hurried to fetch her old dress and give it to Harry.

  With the eagerness of a young lad in the first throes of calf love, Jem promised to drop off a suit of boy’s clothing before dawn, but even with nothing left to discuss, neither he nor the other men made any move to leave. Instead, they all showed every sign of hanging around until dawn just so that they could bask in Miss Pepperell’s smiles, which she was dispensing all too liberally. In the end Digory virtually threw the besotted men out of his cottage.

  Alone at last with Miss Pepperell, who did not look the least bit repentant, Digory forced himself to be stern. “When did you first suspect that one of your cousins was attempting to enrich himself by foul means?”

  Bethia’s mind was instantly flooded with all the horrible memories, which for the moment she had been able to push out of her thoughts. Staring into Mr. Rendel’s eyes, she found herself quite unable to speak.

  Or was she tongue-tied merely because his gray eyes were so bewitching? As desperately as she wanted to turn away from his penetrating gaze, which seemed to be looking into her very soul, she could not break free from the spell he had cast over her.

  Was he experiencing the same thing she was? Could he feel this bond that connected them—the powerful force that linked her fate with his? Or was it only in her imagination that they were forever bound together?

  He got up from the table, and turning away from her, he added another log to the fire, then stood looking down into the flames.

  With his back toward her, she found herself able to talk quite normally, her voice steady and casual, conveying no trace of her inner anxieties and confusion. “Actually, all three of my cousins tried fair means in the beginning. Although none of them had previously paid me the slightest note, after the reading of my grandfather’s will, they began vying with each other quite openly for my attention. I was quite bombarded with flowers and other small tokens of their esteem, and as soon as the period of
mourning was over, they appeared on our doorstep one after another and asked my aunt’s permission to address me.”

  Bethia suppressed a shudder at the memory of how unpleasant and distasteful it had been, then continued, her voice growing more and more wooden as her emotions became more and more heated. “Cousin Wilbur hastened to assure me that since we are only first cousins once removed, there is no problem with consanguinity. Cousin Gervase felt my only possible objection might be the difference in our ages—he is twenty-two years older than I am—but he explained that being around me made him feel quite youthful. And Cousin Inigo actually gave me his word of honor as a gentleman that he would give up all his mistresses once we were married.”

  Instead of returning to his place at the table, Mr. Rendel sat down in the upholstered chair by the fire. “I am surprised that you were able to resist such impassioned proposals,” he said with a smile.

  Although at the time she had not been able to find any humor in the situation, Bethia now found the corners of her mouth turning up of their own accord. “My aunt was likewise of that opinion and felt it was clearly my duty to accept one or the other of my cousins, since their breeding was impeccable, their manners—at least when she was present—were beyond reproach, and in addition, I would thereby be keeping my grandfather’s wealth in the family. Taken together, these were, in her opinion, irrefutable arguments in favor of such an auspicious alliance. She did, however, give me leave to decide for myself which of my three cousins I would marry. She was quite put out with me when I insisted upon having a Season first.”

  It seemed to Bethia that her ears still rang with her aunt’s recriminations, which over time had grown from gentle reprimands to scathing denunciations of Bethia’s character. “Due to my grandfather’s ill health and then his death, I was not able to be presented at court until I was nineteen, and for all of last Season, my cousins paid me such marked attention, at times it felt more like persecution.”

  Turning to look into the fire, which seemed to be radiating less heat than Mr. Rendel, Bethia added, “With the wisdom of hindsight, I can see that I should never have made it clear to them at the beginning of this Season that I was absolutely adamant about refusing them. It would have been safer to have played them off against each other and kept all three of them dangling after me until I was of age.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “Not until the end of September,” Bethia said, her voice little more than a whisper. Surely he must see how much she needed him to marry her?

  “A good four months,” he replied thoughtfully, and then his glance caught and held hers, and once more she was unable to look away.

  Could she survive four months without this man beside her? Could she survive a month? A week? Even a day?

  Although it had not been mentioned, her proposal of that afternoon hovered between them. I think you shall have to marry me. Silently, she pleaded with him to take her offer seriously.

  “It was not the punch talking,” she said finally. She knew she was blushing again, but she met his gaze squarely, trying with her eyes to communicate what was so difficult to say a second time.

  When he did not reply, she said, “You yourself pointed out that the easiest way for me to be safe was to marry.”

  “But I was not proposing myself as the bridegroom.”

  “But—”

  “I cannot marry you,” he said, and his voice carried such conviction, the room at once became colder and the darkness outside the cottage seemed to ooze in through the very stones.

  “I s-see,” she said finally, feeling quite sick at heart. “You are already married. I had not considered that.”

  Looking at the entrancingly beautiful young girl standing so near him, Digory fought a battle with his conscience. How easy it would be to let the falsehood stand—to let her go on thinking that he was a married man.

  It would be even easier to take what Miss Pepperell was offering—to accept her proposal and thereby acquire a well-born wife and a great fortune.

  He cared nothing for her grandfather’s money—he had enough of his own, safely invested in government consols. But it had felt so right to see her lying in his bed, and he knew that if he made the slightest effort, he could undoubtedly turn her gratitude into love.

  A few hours ago he had risked his own life to save hers, and in a few more hours he would do it again. Yet he could not in all honor claim that she owed him anything.

  “I am not married,” he said, knowing that only honesty was possible between them.

  “Betrothed?” she asked, as persistent as a gnat.

  “I have no previous attachments,” he said bluntly, and his honesty was rewarded with a dazzling smile.

  “Then why do you say ‘cannot’?” she asked, her voice as low and seductive as that of the most practiced courtesan. How she had managed to arrive at the age of twenty without having been married—or seduced—he could not for the life of him fathom.

  “Because I am not a gentleman,” he said fiercely, attempting to use anger to blunt his growing desire. “I am a smuggler.” Retired now, but he did not tell her that, knowing it would only serve to weaken his argument. Honesty, he was coming to realize, was a risky business. While he could not lie to her directly, it occurred to him that it would be prudent to conceal much of the truth from her.

  “Some people call smugglers ‘the gentlemen,”’ she said with another of her smiles, this one as innocent as a child’s.

  “Only those who are foolishly romantic.”

  “I do not see that your occupation should stand between us. Once we are married, you will be able to give up smuggling and become a gentleman of leisure.”

  It was obvious that he was going to have to tell her the whole truth—or at least more of the truth—in order to make her understand why marriage was impossible. “I am also a bastard, and marrying you will not make that stigma go away.”

  Miss Pepperell blanched, as if he had struck her, and even knowing he’d had no choice, Digory felt pain that it had to end this way.

  But she surprised him yet again. Closing the distance between them, she laid her hand on his cheek and, looking down into his eyes, said, “I care not whether you are wellborn or base-born. Your actions tell me better than your words what kind of man you are. I believe you are an honorable gentleman, and I find you more to be admired and trusted than most men who have ancient titles and endless pedigrees.”

  Then she showed herself to be a merciless opponent, for she bent and brushed her lips gently against his. The scent of her filled his nostrils, and so difficult was his struggle not to respond, that he was unable to push her away when she slid her arms around his neck and settled herself on his lap.

  Chapter Four

  “I have been alone and frightened for so many weeks,” Miss Pepperell said, pressing herself so close to Digory that her tears wet both their cheeks. “And I cannot believe the danger will be over in a few more hours.”

  Her fear tore at him, but if he accepted what she was offering, he would only pull her down to his level, which would, in the end, cause her additional pain. Yet despite his noble resolve, he found himself here and now holding her close, as if determined that nothing and no one would separate them.

  Rocking her back and forth, he tried unsuccessfully to persuade himself that he was only comforting a hurt child. But her kiss, innocent though it had been, had heated the blood in his veins, and her body was too softly curved for him to succeed in maintaining that illusion. What made it even more difficult to stay where he was, was the clear knowledge that she would not offer even a token resistance if he carried her back to his bed, where he knew he could take her far away from all her troubles.

  But the respite would be temporary. In the end he would only be adding to her problems. No matter how he might try to justify it—and he was trying desperately to do so—seducing her was the worst harm he could inflict on her.

  “You will be safe soon,” Digory explained with
a confidence he did not actually feel. “Despite their claims to being honorable thieves, I am sure that once we have caught them, it will be easy to persuade those two blackguards to tell us who hired them. With their sworn statements we can have your villainous cousin thrown into jail, after which you will be free to marry a proper gentleman.”

  He started to lift her back onto her feet, but she immediately tightened her arms around his neck.

  “I am sorry,” she said, a world of misery in her voice, and he knew she was apologizing for being so frightened. She continued to cling to him, and he did not have the heart to refuse her the little comfort she could find in his arms.

  Feeling her terror as if it were his own, a fierce anger burned in him, and he would have willingly paid out every penny he had earned smuggling in return for half an hour alone with the man who had driven her to this state—who had done his best to destroy her.

  Realizing that they had only this night to be together, and accepting that the longer he held her in his arms, the harder it would be to part with her when the time came, he stayed where he was and made no further effort to put a safe distance between them.

  After what seemed an eternity but was probably only half an hour or so, he realized she had fallen asleep on his lap. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he carried her back into the other room and once again laid her down on his bed and pulled the covers up around her.

  Sleepily she stirred, stretching out her arms as if reaching for him. Knowing she would not object if he crawled under the covers beside her only made it harder to leave her untouched.

  But he was an honorable man even if he had no right to call himself a gentleman. He might don the clothes of a gentleman and provide common clothing for his guest, but that could not alter the fact that she was a lady and he was a bastard.

  What perverse vanity had made him want to have her see him finely dressed? And what twisted desire had made him want to see her dressed as a woman of his own low social standing?