The Society Catch (Harlequin Historical) Read online

  ‘They were happy times?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. They had a simplicity, an honesty. It was like a big family: one with its rogues and its problem children for sure, but still a family tied together with intense loyalties and one purpose.’

  ‘And what would you be doing on those evenings?’ He was running his fingers through her loosened hair now, lifting it and letting it fall. It was hypnotically sensuous and reassuring. Joanna could feel her eyelids drooping, although she had no desire to sleep.

  ‘If I were not on duty I might walk along the lines, visit men who had been wounded, talk to anyone who wanted a word. Sometimes I’d eat with a group of them, sometimes sit and listen if they were making music. Other times I would sit outside my own tent, talk to my servant, write my journal or letters. Be thankful for the peace and the stillness. As I am now. You are very tranquil company, Joanna.’

  She smiled, her eyes on the dancing blue flames. It had been one of her dreams of when they were married, to be a restful presence for him at the end of a long, hard day. It would never happen again, but now she could savour it.

  One of the pine cones exploded with a sharp crack and landed on the hearthrug in a shower of sparks. Joanna bent forward, but Giles was before her, going down on one knee and reaching out to scoop the burning fragment back with a deft flick of his long fingers. He pinched out the remaining sparks and half-turned, finding himself face to face with Joanna as she knelt beside his chair.

  Her hair flowed over her shoulders and down the curves of her breast and as she regained her balance the last of the pins fell to the ground.

  Giles put out a hand and lifted a heavy lock of hair. ‘Did I do that?’

  ‘Yes, of course you did. You were sitting there, stroking it as if it were a cat, and all the pins fell out.’ Joanna tried to keep her tone lightly amused, but her breath was tight in her chest. He was so close that she could see the firelight catching the golden stubble on his chin. He smelt of leather, a faint scent of brandy and the indefinable masculine smell that was simply Giles.

  ‘You have beautiful hair,’ he said simply, then leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

  His mouth was warm and gentle and for a moment Joanna froze, not with alarm but in pure shock. Then she put out a hand to his shoulder to steady herself and tentatively leaned into the kiss. Giles’s hand cupped the back of her head, pulling her to him, and the pressure of his lips increased, parting her own slightly. He tasted of brandy and his body, so close to hers, was hot.

  No man had ever kissed her like this and she was conscious of her ignorance and inexperience. What should she do now? What would he do? The answer made her gasp as his tongue insinuated itself between her parted lips, touched the tip of her own tongue with a fleeting, startling intimacy and then she was hard against his chest, one of his hands in her hair as the other caressed her neck, sliding sensuously down to her shoulder where the sensitive skin was exposed by the lace of her fichu.

  His mouth now was firm, demanding things that her body seemed to half-understand but did not know how to respond to. She seemed to have stopped breathing and to be both freezing and burning at the same time. Her entire world was focused on the sensation of his mouth on hers, the invasion of his tongue and she was unaware that her fingers were clenched tight in the thick linen of his shirt.

  Then, as suddenly as he had kissed her, he released her. Joanna opened her hands and sat back on her heels with a bump, her lungs filling with a deep, racking breath.

  Giles got to his feet in one swift, violent movement and stood beside the chair opposite her, his face stark. ‘Damn it! I am sorry, Joanna, I don’t know what came over me. No, what am I saying? I know perfectly well what came over me and I should not have let it happen.’

  ‘I…’ Her voice seemed to have vanished along with all the strength in her legs. Her skin seemed unnaturally sensitive and a hot, disturbing feeling burned inside her.

  ‘I am sorry I frightened you, Joanna. Of all the stupid things to do when I imagine the last thing you want is a man so much as laying a finger on you. I had forgotten where I was, who I was with. You look so…so hauntingly different in the firelight with your hair down like that.’

  Even in the gloom Joanna could see the tension in Giles’s face, the way he was gripping the chair back until his knuckles showed white. It was incredible, impossible, but it seemed that kissing her had affected him as profoundly as it had affected her. And yet, he did not love her. As a glimpse of the power of physical desire, it was disturbing and enlightening.

  ‘Giles—’ she swallowed and managed some control over her voice ‘—you did not frighten me, I promise.’

  ‘You are too innocent, too—’

  ‘No,’ she interrupted sharply. ‘I may be inexperienced, but I am not innocent of what has just happened. You kissed me, that is all. We were alone, it is late, neither of us was concentrating on the proprieties. It happened, and I am sure I should not say so, but it was very…interesting.’

  He made a sound which Joanna thought was a choked laugh. ‘You see,’ she persevered, ‘I have never been kissed before, not properly, and I do not expect to be again, so it was interesting to find out what it was like.’ There, that should explain why she had not slapped his face, or shrieked or done any of the other things a well brought-up young lady ought to have done.

  ‘Joanna, you simply cannot go around allowing yourself to be kissed because it is interesting! How many other experiences do you think you might sample out of interest? You are playing with fire…’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Joanna got to her feet shakily. She felt as though her legs were going to give way at any moment and she grabbed hold of the chair back.

  ‘Nonsense? Joanna, I do not believe for one moment that you have any idea of the danger you are in when you trustingly let yourself be kissed like that. And don’t stand there looking at me like that with those big hazel eyes: there is just so much a man can take.’

  ‘You are trying to scare me for my own good,’ she retorted. ‘I don’t believe for one moment I am in any danger from you, Giles. I trust you.’

  Giles stood looking at the defiant, piquant face. Her eyes were huge in the firelight and the shadows flickered over her mouth, swollen from the pressure of his mouth. Her hair fell like black silk, rising and falling with her rapid breathing and she said she trusted him!

  He took a deep breath and said, ‘Joanna, will you please go to bed. Now.’

  ‘Very well.’ Anyone who did not know her would have missed the slight tremor beneath her composed tone, but Giles caught it. He did not believe now that he had frightened her, but he knew he had not been in any way restrained, that he had simply followed his instincts in a way that left him feeling utterly shaken at his own indiscretion. He was no rake, never had been. He was no monk, either, but he had never trifled with virgins, and he had no intention of starting with this one.

  ‘Go on,’ he said again, making his tone light with some effort. ‘And leave me to contemplate exactly what your mama would say if she knew about this.’

  Joanna, who had been making her way to the door, stopped in her tracks and stared at him, her eyes wide. ‘You would not tell her!’ He realised with a shock that she was truly alarmed at the prospect, far more alarmed than she had been by the kiss itself.

  ‘I ought to,’ he said ruefully, ‘but I will not, unless you wish me to confess.’

  ‘No! She would be so angry.’

  ‘At me, with full justification; not with you.’ It seemed incredible that Joanna should appear so worried at the prospect of her mother’s displeasure. Mrs Fulgrave had always seemed a most amiable and reasonable woman.

  ‘Oh…well, you do not deserve her censure for such a thing, after you have rescued me and looked after me. You are a friend of the family, I would not want to put any barrier in the way of that continuing,’ she finished formally, apparently getting control of her feelings with an effort. ‘Goodnight.’

  Giles, finding
himself alone, stood staring at the fire for a long moment before, with a little shake, pulling himself together and raking out the dying embers. He shut and bolted the window and snuffed out one of the candles. Picking up the other with one hand and his coat with the other, he walked slowly upstairs to his bedchamber, trying to sort out his feelings.

  Colonel Giles Gregory was not a man who was given to self-doubt or lengthy introspection. He was self-confident, assured, used to being in command of himself, his emotions and those around him. If he felt himself in error, he had no trouble owning to it and when he confronted a problem he would apply his intellect and experience to it, asking advice when that seemed the best course of action.

  He shut the chamber door behind him and tossed his coat on to a chair, tugging off his cravat with an impatient jerk. There was no problem about what to do in this situation: he simply had to make sure he did not allow himself to relax to the point of carelessness when alone with Joanna and to see she got home, suitably chaperoned, at the earliest possible opportunity.

  No, he thought, glaring at his reflection in the glass with as much irritation as he would if he was lecturing a subaltern caught in some indiscretion, the problem was that his normally well-regulated emotions were now decidedly disordered.

  Giles sat down and began to tug off his boots. ‘Pull yourself together and apply your brain,’ he muttered, leaning back in his shirtsleeves, his stockinged feet propped on the fender.

  He was feeling aroused—damnably aroused. It hardly required any intellectual effort to deduce that. Giles trampled firmly on the demands his taut body was sending him, and, beyond resolving to seek out some accommodating feminine company when he returned to town, did his best to ignore it.

  Joanna had got under his skin in a totally unexpected way. How long had it been since he’d thought about that time in Spain, relived the sounds and smells and emotions? A long time, he realised. And when he had, there was no one to talk to about it. His father and Alex would understand, they had the same experiences, but it was not something you discussed with another man. And yet…it had been curiously comforting to do so. How had she managed to so disarm him, to take him so far off guard and out of himself?

  He had thought her an unhappy girl, hurt by some man she would soon forget, but he had been wrong. Joanna was not a child with an infatuation. She was a young woman who had experienced two Seasons and who had devoted herself to becoming the perfect wife for some insensitive lout who had hurt her by rejecting that dedication, that love. What had she said just now? ‘I have never been kissed before, not properly, and I do not expect to be again.’

  At least that man had not seduced her and then cast her off. Giles winced, remembering the matter-of-fact way she had announced that she did not expect to experience another kiss. What was she going to do with herself now? Return home and dwindle into an unpaid companion to an elderly relative? Become the spinster support of her mother? What a waste!

  Giles wearily got to his feet and began to shed the remainder of his clothes. It was as he pulled his shirt over his head that he realised there was another element to that evening’s encounter, which was fretting him like a stone in his shoe. He stood, one hand on the bedpost, trying to analyse it.

  Joanna had been so trusting when he had imprudently kissed her, so calm in the face of what should, after her terrifying recent adventure, have been an alarming experience. She trusted him, she had said so. Suzy trusted him, too—her ‘darling Giles’. Trusted him enough to kiss him and flirt with him, wheedle and flutter her eyelashes, without a thought in her pretty head that he might step over the line and take advantage of what she was so charmingly offering.

  ‘You’re getting middle-aged, my boy,’ Giles told himself, casting a disparaging glance down at an admirably flat and well-muscled stomach. ‘That’s what it is. You’re no longer a devil with women, just a nice, reliable, safe friend to flirt with.’ With a wry grin at his own self-pity, he blew out the candle.

  In a bedchamber at the other end of the landing Joanna was also wrestling with her emotions. The memory of the kiss itself seemed to warm her whole body and to fill her with a dull yearning ache. She knew she had added a physical desire for Giles to what had always, in her inexperience, been a purely spiritual longing. But how could she not have let him kiss her? How could she not have responded? The pressure of his lips on hers was still tangible: would she feel it still when she woke in the morning or would it become like a dream?

  But wonderful though that simple kiss had been, she treasured more the way Giles had let her share his memories, his recollections of ordinary life with his troopers. Not the glory or the tragedies, just the scents and smells, the music, the rough camaraderie. That was what she had always hoped for, that as his wife she would be someone to whom he could talk without reservation about whatever mattered to him, the big things and the most trivial.

  Like the kiss, his voice describing the firelit camp was a door opening into a world of intimacy and trust. A door that she must shut again. Neither his kisses nor his trust belonged to her: they were another woman’s and she must learn to do without either.

  Chapter Ten

  If Mrs Gedding noticed that her guests were somewhat constrained the next morning she gave no sign of it and carried the burden of conversation at breakfast with her usual cheerful good humour. Had she been privy to the very different preoccupations of Miss Fulgrave and the Colonel she might have been apprehensive, but both managed to give the impression of merely having slept badly.

  Giles was trying to concentrate on what his plans should be once he had safely delivered Joanna back to her mama, but was finding the thought of escorting a disturbingly unpredictable young lady preying on his mind. He gave himself a brisk mental shake. What possible problems could one young woman present to an experienced senior officer?

  On one occasion he had simultaneously delivered a general’s temperamental Spanish mistress, fifty French prisoners, a wagon train of army pay and six field guns through enemy territory and had arrived with every coin, gun and prisoner intact. And he had achieved this without offending the lady, who had made it quite clear that she was offering to make the journey very pleasant indeed for him.

  That aspect of the experience made his mouth quirk in a reminiscent smile and Joanna, watching him covertly over the rim of her coffee cup, caught her breath. Was he remembering last night? The sensual smile faded, leaving her back with her circling thoughts.

  What was she going to do? It did not help that she had no idea what she wanted. She must give up all hope of Giles, that she understood very clearly. His flat refusal to bow to his father’s disapproval of the match with Lady Suzanne was clear enough indication of that.

  Surely Mama would not be too angry now she knew she was safe? Surely she would understand that only real unhappiness would have driven her daughter to such extremes? Joanna, hating the thought of being estranged from her parents, felt utterly miserable that they would feel she had let them down and behaved badly.

  Show some backbone! she lectured herself silently. Mama will write soon and be forgiving, surely. And then we can all go to Brighton and no one will know I am in disgrace and I will be able to think about what to do with the rest of my life once I have got rid of Lord Clifton… Having some sort of plan made her feel better and by the time the maid brought in the morning post the heavy look had vanished from her eyes.

  ‘A letter for you, Joanna.’ Mrs Gedding passed it across with a sympathetic smile at the sudden flare of apprehension in her eyes. ‘Your mama, I expect. One for you, Colonel…two, no, three for Mr Gedding. Thank you, Anna. From Mrs Thwaite by hand? Ah, good, I hope this is the reply I was expecting. Do, please, both of you read your letters, if you will excuse me perusing this.’ She bent her head, crowned with its frivolous cap, over the note and Joanna nervously slit the seal on her letter.

  She ran her eyes rapidly over the page unable to focus at first, then phrases and words jumped out at her with the for
ce of blows. Your poor father…Dr Grace…William quite distraught…wicked, wicked girl…

  Papa! Joanna took a shuddering breath, willed her hand to stop shaking and made herself read the letter from the beginning. After the first few sentences she realised with relief that it was her father’s gout that was so severe that the doctor had been called and not, as she had first feared, that her disappearance had brought on a seizure of some kind. William, apparently, was distressed at the absence of his sister and the fact that no one knew why she had gone and as for her mother…

  Words, Mrs Fulgrave declared, quite failed her. This fact did not, however, prevent her from writing at length of her opinion that Joanna was the gravest disappointment to her parents, that she had behaved in a way which was incomprehensibly wicked and wilful and that her poor mama had been at a loss to know what to do with her. It was only the intervention of Providence in the shape of Colonel Gregory that had prevented the most appalling consequences and it was to be hoped that she was fully repentant and thankful.

  Naturally she could not be inflicted upon her elderly relative in Bath after such behaviour. Dear Hebe had begged that Joanna be allowed to go to her at Tasborough and the Earl had assured Mrs Fulgrave that she would be kept under the strictest watch and that she would be able to make herself useful. The last word was underlined several times with some force.

  Blinking back the tears, Joanna looked up and met Giles’s eye. He raised one eyebrow. ‘Mad as a wet hen?’ he enquired.

  ‘Really! Colonel!’ Mrs Gedding chided, failing to hide the fact that she was amused.

  ‘Mama is displeased,’ Joanna agreed with dignity, swallowing hard. She was in no mood to be teased. Presumably Mama had found Giles’s actions commendable throughout—as indeed they had been. ‘She says I must go to Tasborough and that she has told our acquaintance, including Lord Clifton, that she cannot refuse her dear niece’s request for my company.’