His Secret Heroine (2 page)

The impatient imp of exuberance danced jigs inside him as he lifted her fingertips to his lips. Where would such delicate fingers find the strength to knot cordage?

"Have I said something amiss, Lord Reginald?" asked Miss Englefield. As she cocked her head, a stray golden curl bounced enticingly.

Reggie snapped back to reality and the puzzled pale green eyes. "Have you, Miss
Englefield?" Color heated his cheeks again. If she had, he had been too lost in the machinations of his fantasy to hear her. And if she knew what he was thinking, she'd break every stick and guard of her fan against his face.

"If I have offended you
..."

The flush in his cheeks blazed. "Oh, no, Miss, uh,
Englefield, not at all. Do forgive me. For a moment you reminded me of someone I knew." Someone he'd just made up, to be precise. "A striking resemblance. In the eyes, that is."

"Indeed," said Lady Mythe, and although her lips pursed with disapproval, something impish gleamed in her eyes.

"Yes, startling resemblance," he repeated. "Might you be related to the Englefields in Cambridgeshire?"

"Well, I have a cous
—"

"Oh, dear Lord Reginald," gushed a cloying voice behind him.

Reggie suppressed a groan. If he hadn't recognized Lady Lavington by her thickly sweet voice or the hand placed so coyly atop his sleeve, the warning glint in Lady Mythe's eyes would have told him.

"How kind of you to join us, Lord Reginald," Lady
Lavington said with a luscious smile.

Reggie winced. Only a few weeks before, Lady Mythe had read him a scold for not discouraging
Lavington's widow, and he knew she had been right. It just wasn't in his nature to be harsh toward a woman. From some hidden reserve inside himself, he located a patient smile.

"Lady
Lavington," he said, nodding to acknowledge her. "I have been looking forward to coming." That much was true. Lord and Lady Mythe were his dear friends, but Lady Lavington was Mythe's cousin so it was foregone that she would attend.

Reggie turned back to the intriguing lady in green. With deadly precision, Lady
Lavington slipped her arm onto his, subtly tugging as Lady Mythe pursed her lips and glared. Frustration tightened in Reggie's throat.

Lady Lavington made odd cooing sounds to prece
de her words. "A pity you did not arrive earlier, dear Lord Reginald," she said. "You would have heard our Bronson read his latest work. It is quite wonderful." Her subtly lithe swaying radiated through her arm to his in a way no man alive would misinterpret. The mischievous boy inside Reggie needled him to escape. But his gentleman side could not cut a lady, wayward urges or no.

"Difficulties with the
Xanthe
," he replied, his favorite explanation for his frequent disappearances. He graced the lady beside him with the most pleasant smile he could muster. "I have just made the acquaintance of these two fine ladies, Miss Hawarth and Miss Englefield."

Lady
Lavington clasped his arm and leaned closer, affording a view to her décolletage he had seen more times than he had wished. "Yes. Lord Reginald is the second son of the Duke of Marmount, don't you know?"

"Indeed," replied Miss
Englefield. Her light eyes sparkled, all the colors dancing, threatening to ensnare his runaway imagination again. "Perhaps you know my cousin—"

"Dear Lord Reginald has no doubt just come up from Devon, but I cannot imagine what has taken him so long," Lady
Lavington purred, ignoring the fact that she had cut Miss Englefield's question in half.

"Rigging problems," he replied with a bit of a growl, not mentioning that the
Xanthe
had not even left her berth on the Thames in over two weeks while he holed up, agonizing over his dilemma. Reggie deliberately turned his attention back to the green-eyed miss, wanting to hear her voice again. How might it sound against the roar of a storm?

"Oh I do hope it is not serious, Lord Reginald," said Lady
Lavington, leaning ever closer. Reggie stiffened.

The younger lady politely contained her astonishment, quietly closing her lips. Frustration ate at him, willing her to fight back against Lady
Lavington's encroachment. But he knew better. Young ladies simply did not. She would smile sweetly and give ground, the perfect milk-and-water miss, the sort of young lady he always liked but never found particularly interesting.

Yet he had only to look at her and inspiration inundated him. What the devil was it?

As Miss Englefield stepped back, just the way he knew she would, Lady Lavington advanced like a shark after a hapless sailor overboard. Her red curls jiggled like springs and her eyelids fluttered as she gazed up at him. Reggie's nostrils flared, wishing for some of that boldness in the young lady. But she would not dare.

"What is not serious?" asked the golden-curled lady.

Reggie's heart leaped. There it was, just what he wanted to see, just a spark of defiance flashing in the beautiful green eyes.

"The
boat, of course, my dear." Lady Lavington's hand rubbed his arm. "Lord Reginald thinks of nothing but his boat." Ah, there was his opening. Irritated though he was, Reggie could have kissed the brash lady.

"Oh, she's in fine fettle. A bit of new cordage and the
Xanthe
is as fit as a vessel can be. Ready for guests, I should say. That is, in fact, the very thing. Have you ever been to sea, Miss Englefield?"

The jade-colored eyes took on a glint of mischief that made his heart lurch. "I have been in a punt on the River Cam, but I suspect it is not the same thing." She looked to her aunt
, and unspoken messages of eagerness flashed between the two.

She would love the sea. He knew it. "Do say you will come, Lady
Lavington, and you, Miss Hawarth, with your niece?"

His inner demon of mischief danced.
He didn't have to look to know Lady Lavington would be fuming like Mt. Etna. Not ten minutes into her one and only trip aboard the
Xanthe
and she had cast up her accounts even before making it to the rail. If anything would get rid of her, this would.

"Well, I cannot say, Lord Reginald," said the
dainty older lady, picking words with care. "Perhaps if Lady Lavington..."

Lady
Lavington's face sickened, turning nearly as pale and green as Miss Englefield's dress. "Lord Reginald, you wretched man, you know I cannot abide sailing. No, Miss Hawarth, I shall never again step foot on a sailing vessel, and I counsel you to do the same, if you do not wish to disgrace yourself."

Miss Hawarth
's eyes, green like her niece's, widened. Her lips parted and rounded all at the same time. "Oh. Perhaps it is a more suitable endeavor for gentlemen."

The smile fell from Miss
Englefield's face. Lady Lavington tossed her rival a gleam of triumph, and she tugged at Reggie's arm. "Then come along, Lord Reginald. Perhaps you can find sailing companions among the gentlemen."

Bedamned if he'd let her get away with that! Reggie turned back to the ladies, chuckling. "Surely you jest, Lady
Lavington. You need not fear disgracing yourself. It rarely happens in calm waters, you know. Why, I do not even mean to leave the Thames."

He turned pleading eyes to the object of his inspiration.

The green eyes sparkled. "Aunt Daphne, would it not be a delight? Perhaps just a short trip, Lord Reginald?"

His heart raced like
the ketch before a gale. "If you and your lovely aunt can be enticed aboard, Miss Englefield, I would agree to anything. But I warn you, once you have sailed, you may never be able to give it up."

She hardly moved a muscle, yet as his gaze tangled with hers, he saw
a hungry eagerness battling against carefully schooled decorum. His heart thudded like thunder that threatened his own good manners, so he excused himself to round up other guests.

But he still felt her presence, tingling like the stroke of a feather. He couldn't keep his eyes from searching her out. Every gesture she made impressed itself in his mind and brought new twists to a magically unfolding story. Like ice on a hot day,
the obstacle in his plot melted away, leaving a solution so obvious he had trouble understanding why he'd never seen it before. The very story that he had rewritten over and over, that had fallen flat no matter what he did, sprang suddenly and brilliantly to life.

Remove Scovill. Replace him with
—what would he call her? Circe. Siren of the sea, the tantalizing lure of danger no man could resist. True, the original Circe had an annoying tendency to turn men to swine, but he could work around that. Circe Wolverton. Not replacing Scovill—masquerading as Scovill.

Exhilaration almost overflowing, Reggie cast one last glance at his Circe, and as she turned, his gaze caught hers. In the flash of a moment, the mask of feminine decorum slipped, revealing the woman beneath and her carefully concealed secret self. Boldness. Courage. Behind the veneer of a biddable, milk-and-water miss lurked a secret adventuress, a woman who dared, who challenged life and reached out to the stars.

That, he hadn't made up. She really was his Circe.

He watched as she crossed the terrace with graceful steps, while his mind raged with visions of Circe dashing across the quarterdeck in a rising storm, walking the yard, furling the mizzen sail, fierce wind lashing heavy rain, her golden hair in sodden ringlets. His story burst into flaming glory, as if it had been merely poised, waiting for her to step in and set it afire. She would be magnificent!

A little chest-binding would be necessary, considering her attributes. Imagine the hero's consternation when he discovers...

And t
hat meant he was going to have to completely re-write Chapter Fourteen.

From that moment, Reggie hardly heard another voice as he waited in excruciating anticipation for the first reasonable moment when he could depart. Forcibly, he slowed his rush down the stone steps to the road, and all but shouted aloud as he jumped into his curricle.

At last. The perfect story. The perfect heroine.
The Adventuress
, by Reginald Beauhampton. The story of a woman who lived by her wits.

Of course, he'd not put his own name to it. His father's tongue would flay him like a cat'o'nine tails, and the Duke of Marmount would see to it Reggie never published another line as long as he drew breath.

Reggie was having enough trouble getting that first line published. But the book would sell this time, and he'd be out from under his father's thumb at last, and at last put a period to the duke's demand that he marry his sour cousin Portia.

Reggie sat up so abruptly he almost dropped the ribbons. That was only half the solution. Miss
Englefield would save him altogether. She had a substantial portion that could keep them both in pleasant circumstances until Reggie established himself as a writer, or persuaded his father to release the inheritance that should have come to him on his twenty-fifth birthday.

That part would be tricky. Once his father learned his son was slipping the collar, he might find a way to withhold it entirely. Or, knowing his father, worse. But if Reggie worked it right, he would not only confound his father's consuming passion for control, but have the necessary blunt to pursue the occupation he loved more than sailing. Writing.

* * *

"Oh, my." Aunt Daphne's golden eyebrows arched high. Delight sparkled in her eyes.

Chloe pursed her lips to keep her exhilaration from leaking out. In a world of jaded fops and dandies, only Lord Reginald Beauhampton radiated vitality. It was in his wonderful blue eyes, in his very being. Something inside her suddenly felt like bouncing about with joy in the same exuberant way.

That would not do. She was not at home, where no one cared if she hared about like a hoyden
or polished brass like a housemaid. Her circumstances were much too desperate to run that risk.

Lady Creston, who was standing beside her, sniffed and flared her nostrils.
"Impertinent pup. I should think the duke would do something."

"I rather like him the way he is."
Lady Mythe's wide mouth spread into one of her endearing smiles.

C
hloe clasped her hands together around her closed ivory lace fan and locked her lips closed as tightly, deeming discretion to be the better part of valor. She had far too much at stake to risk entangling herself in this controversy.

"Indeed," said Lady
Lavington. "One must admire such vitality. So few men possess it."

Lady Mythe leveled a glare at her husband's cousin.

Lady Creston stiffened. "The boy has no sense of the proper way to go on. One does not bob about life as if it were a country dance."

Chloe studied the patterns in the carpet at her feet
to hide her thoughts. He did rather remind her of a country dance.

"That is just our Lord Reginald," Lady Mythe said with her pleasant smile, but Chloe saw the fire of a mother dragon flame in the lady's eyes.