A Most Unconventional Courtship

The praise amused him, but he would have thought less of himself if he led them to believe anything different. A gentleman could manage his private life discreetly, and he had a duty to his womenfolk to care for them. He turned over the closely crossed page of one of the letters that had been awaiting him when he arrived.

Mr Tarleton is proving ideal, as I knew he would, you having chosen him. Such a tower of strength over every matter small or large! And he has explained the correspondence from the estates and sat with me when Mr Crisp came with those papers about the sale of the pasture…His mother continued with her praises of the secretary he had appointed before he set out on his tour, in addition to the battery of advisors and agents at her beck and call.

Chance did not expect Lady Blakeney to concern herself with, let alone understand, the business of the estate, nor that she, or his three sisters, should have to trouble themselves with anything beyond their domestic sphere. That was as it should be and he would never have left if he had any doubts about the arrangements.

I do hope that you are looking after yourself (three times underlined) and wearing wool next to the skin at all times. Also that you are avoiding foreign food—he was not quite sure how she expected him to accomplish that—and the dreadful temptations and lures that one hears these foreign cities place before English travellers. Chance grinned. He could recognise a sharp wherever he met one—and between Paris, Marseilles, Rome and Naples he had met plenty—and he had admired, but resisted, the lures thrown out to him by an exotic assortment of barques of frailty.

He was well aware that his family regarded him as immune from the dreadful things they heard about in London society: and that too was right and proper. It simply meant that one enjoyed oneself with discretion and without excess; ladies did not have to know about such matters.

He read to the end, noted that his own letters were reaching home in an order wildly different from that he had sent them in, and lay back, brooding on the news that Lucinda, his middle sister, aged seventeen, was apparently becoming attached to young Lakenheath. His mother found that worrying. Chance, beyond wondering why Lucy inevitably fell in love with unsuitable young men who fancied themselves as poets, was less concerned. It wouldn’t last, not beyond Lucy encountering the formidable Dowager Lady Lakenheath. He decided against offering any advice to his mother on the subject.

Which left him with nothing to think about but his own affairs, which honesty forced him to acknowledge he had been avoiding doing for twenty-four hours. Specifically Alessa. Not that anyone would consider that she was his affair. Thank goodness. He tried to put some feeling into that pious conclusion and failed. But to his mind she was very much unfinished business, and he was damned if he knew what to do about her.

She had saved him from the consequences of his own recklessness, looked after him—and in return he had insulted her about as badly as it was possible to insult a lady. But she presented herself not as a lady, but as an herb woman who took in washing. Which meant she should be treated with the courtesy due to all her sex and recompensed financially.

Chance shifted without thinking, swore at the pain, and forced himself to confront the problem. Alessa was a mystery, and, whoever she was, she was certainly not simply a Corfiot widow running a couple of business ventures to support her children. She was English. Put her into a fashionable gown, suppress her independence of speech and she could pass, very convincingly, in society. However, she had ended up in the back streets of this town, she did not belong here and something ought to be done about it.

He shifted position again, almost welcoming the warning stab from his ankle as an antidote to the almost equally uncomfortable stab of lust that thinking about Alessa provoked. Lust and liking. The soft pad of footsteps approaching the courtyard came as a timely distraction, then he saw the sway of black skirts in the shade of the arcade opposite the one under which he was sitting, the crisp white of a full-sleeved blouse catching the sunlight, the tall, graceful figure carrying a laden basket. ‘Alessa.’

He spoke as she vanished through a door without glancing in his direction, and he realised he had pitched his voice as though speaking to himself, as though she was a dream.

Alessa found the steward without difficulty. As usual at this time of day he was in his cool office facing into the courtyard. ‘Good morning, Kyria Alessa. I have your money here for last month’s laundry. Are the children well?’ He counted out the coins, the familiar muddle of Venetian and French currencies, and handed her his quill with a smile. As always, Alessa made the point of producing a careful squiggle, which could be taken as a signature or a

mark.

‘Very well, thank you, Mr Williams. Shall I leave the salve that Dr Pyke ordered with you?’

‘Certainly.’ He helped her unpack the pots from under the piles of ironed laundry. ‘Would you care to leave that washing with me as well?’

‘Thank you, but I will take it up to the housekeeper. There are one or two things I would like to draw to her attention.’

She left him with a smile, hefting the basket that was considerably lighter now the jars had been removed. The household was quiet, only the subdued bustle of servants going about their business disturbing the calm that Sir Thomas insisted upon when he was working in his study. He did not always get it, of course, not when his widowed relative, Lady Trevick, and her two daughters were entertaining.

They must all be out, she mused. They had probably taken their new guest with them in the landau to show him the sights, and to allow him to admire the Misses Trevick to their best advantage under pretty new sunbonnets. As she rounded one corner of the cloister, making for the stairs to the housekeeper’s room, she was congratulating herself upon taking such a detached, ironic, view of his lordship.

‘Alessa.’ It could not be anyone else. Even the one word was distinctive in that pleasant, lazily deep voice that seemed to her fancy to be the same brown as his eyes. She dropped the basket. By some miracle it landed squarely on its base and none of the pristine items fell out.

Chance was half-sitting, half-leaning, on the low inner wall that separated the shaded cloister walk from the open garden in the centre. ‘I am sorry, I did not mean to startle you.’

‘My lord.’ He stood up, taking all the weight on his uninjured leg, and she realised he was dressed like the sailors on the English ships that crowded the harbour under the walls of the Paleó Frourio. Only none of the sailors would be dressed in loose cotton trousers and linen shirt of quite such fine cloth and pristine white finish. He was hatless, that intriguing tortoiseshell hair glinting in the sunlight.

‘No harm done, my lord.’ To pick up the basket and bolt, as her nerves were screaming at her to do, seemed gauche, so she left it and stood waiting, feeling at a disadvantage. Who would he be today? The man who talked so easily with her while he whittled ridiculous animals out of soap? The intense, almost angry man who had spoken of jealousy? Or was he, on his own ground, going to prove to be one of those English aristocrats she had learned to despise—cool, remote, arrogant? ‘Are your injuries less painful today?’

Her eyes were regaining their focus. He did look better. The lines of strain around his eyes had gone and his colour was healthier. ‘They are much improved. The hip joint is much more comfortable, although the bruise is spectacular. My ankle is still painful, but Dr Pyke promises me rapid improvement if I will only rest it.’

‘Good, I am sure he is right.’ His feet were bare, she realised with a shock—long-boned and elegant like his hands. It was the most sensible thing, of course, with one ankle bandaged, but somehow it seemed shockingly intimate. Alessa dragged her eyes away, trying to forget the feel of his unconscious, naked body under her hands. The look of his body…Then, until Kate had commented, she had thought of nothing but his injuries, now she could no longer maintain that indifference.

She began to back away.

‘No, please do not go. Have you brought me my clothes back?’

‘Yes.’ Alessa nodded to the basket. ‘They are in there. I should—’

‘Please sit down.’ He patted the wall beside him. ‘Have a glass of lemonade, if you would be so kind as to fetch it.’

‘It would not be proper.’

‘Why ever not? I am not inviting you back to my bedroom, for goodness’ sake.’ His shirt was open at the neck, showing just a hint of dark hair. His trousers were belted tight, emphasising narrow hips and taut waist. Alessa was certain she was blushing.