Читать книгу: «The Countess Misbehaves»

One

Liverpool, England

August 1856

She knew he was trouble the first time she saw him.

And the first time the Countess of Ballarat saw Armand de Chevalier, was as she boarded White Star’s luxury liner, the S. S. Starlight, for the long voyage to America.

The Countess, known to most as Lady Madeleine Cavendish, lifted her skirts, stepped onto the ship’s long gangway, and then paused to look up. She immediately spotted a tall, strikingly handsome, raven-haired man lounging against the ship’s railing and boldly giving her the once-over.

He smiled disarmingly at her. But the wise noblewoman did not return his smile. Instead, she quickly looked away. She had no wish to encourage him in any manner. She knew his kind well. Too well. She had married just such a man when she was a young, impulsive girl and it had been a disaster.

Lady Madeleine’s delicate jaw hardened at the unpleasant recollection. She had fallen deeply in love with him and the passion between them had raged white hot. In his arms, she had experienced incredible ecstasy, but it had lasted only for a very brief time. They had barely returned from the Italian honeymoon before her bridegroom—a charming commoner her mother had warned her not to wed—began behaving as if he had no wife. He began drinking heavily and gambled away great sums of money. Money that was hers, not his. Worse, he was soon seeking diversion in the arms of other women, humiliating her. It was a nightmare of a kind she was determined never to experience again.

After three miserably unhappy years as the neglected wife, Madeleine Cavendish had been widowed at age twenty-one when her wayward husband was killed in a drunken brawl over another woman.

Now as she ascended the ship’s gangway, Lady Madeleine impatiently shook her bonneted head to clear her mind of those events. The action turned her thoughts to the present.

Was the dark, dangerous-looking man still at the ship’s railing? When she reached the huge vessel’s polished teak deck, she couldn’t restrain herself from casting a quick glance in his direction.

He was, to her genuine surprise, still there. Still staring. And still smiling at her in a disturbingly affable way that enforced her earlier impression that he was indeed trouble. Uncharacteristically flustered, Lady Madeleine made a misstep and almost fell. In an instant, the tall, jet-haired admirer was at her side, steadying her.

The startled Countess abruptly experienced an unwanted rush of excitement when the dark stranger’s powerful right arm went around her waist and he pressed her close against his side. Awed by the granite hardness of his lean male frame, she suddenly felt very small and vulnerable.

Lady Madeleine looked up with intent to thank him, but his flashing midnight eyes arrested her so completely she could not speak. She said nothing. Snared by his hot gaze, she felt her heart begin to pound alarmingly and she knew that she must, on this long journey to America, stay as far away from this sinfully handsome man as possible.

After a long, awkward moment, she finally recovered. “Let me go!” she ordered in a most imperial tone.

She was totally caught off guard when he immediately released her. Struggling to regain her balance and her dignity, the Countess was shocked and highly incensed that this tall stranger offered no further assistance. Instead he stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, laughing.

He was laughing at her, the rude cad!

Nonplussed, she opened her mouth to hurl stinging oaths at him, but closed it before saying a word. To censure someone with such abominably bad manners and such a twisted sense of humor would be a waste of her precious time. He wasn’t worth the effort.

She lifted her noble chin, looked daggers at him, turned about and haughtily flounced away.

Continuing to laugh, an amused Armand de Chevalier watched the angry woman storm off down the crowded promenade deck. Armand liked what he saw. Very much. He decided then and there that he would get to know the lady better during the crossing. He had no idea who she was, but he knew that she possessed a remarkable beauty and fiery spirit.

His kind of woman.

Their face-to-face meeting had been brief, but her image was indelibly etched into his memory. She was, he surmised, about five-six or five-seven. He stood six-two in his stocking feet and the top of her head reached the level of his mouth. Her hair, dressed elaborately atop her head and partially concealed beneath a fussy hat, was an intriguing shade of red-gold. He could all too easily envision it spilling down around her bare shoulders.

A muscle danced in Armand’s tanned jaw and his chest grew tight at the pleasant fantasy.

She was such an uncommon beauty. Her pale skin was as flawless as fine alabaster and her large eyes were a deep emerald green. Her mouth, even tightened in anger as it had been when her face was close to his, was full-lipped and decidedly tempting.

Tall, slender, with a natural grace despite her momentary loss of equilibrium, she was a dazzlingly pretty woman and she had effortlessly arrested Armand’s attention. He wondered who she was and where she was going. And how long it would be before she was in his arms?

This late-summer crossing was, Armand decided, going to be far more pleasurable than he had hoped.

Once she was safely inside her elegantly appointed stateroom, Lady Madeleine was careful to maintain her calm composure. She didn’t want her hired attendant to know that she was upset. She hardly knew Lucinda Montgomery, the young woman who had agreed to be her traveling companion in exchange for passage to America.

“Lucinda, will you please have some ice water sent up at once? I’m very thirsty,” the Countess requested in an effort to have a few minutes alone.

“Yes, my Lady,” Lucinda replied and she hurried out of the stateroom to do her mistress’s bidding.

Alone at last, Lady Madeleine sighed with relief, then immediately shivered and hugged herself. The brief encounter on deck with the impertinent stranger had left her breathless, oddly disturbed and anxious. Which was not at all like her.

She had always led a very social life, one in which she mixed often with the great and near great and took their admiration as her due. She was well aware of her beauty and knew that she possessed a natural talent for charming people. From the time she was a young girl she had been completely comfortable in the company of powerful men. And she had learned early on that she need put forth very little effort to have males, be they young or old, handsome or plain, eating out of hand. She was accustomed to being fawned over, flirted with, panted after and she took it all with good grace and a grain of salt.

So what on earth was bothering her now?

Granted, the stranger was so darkly handsome and potently masculine no female could help but notice and be affected. Tall, slim, impeccably dressed, he appeared to be quite the gentleman. Yet his flashing eyes and audacious manner were contradictory. And, no well-bred gentleman would laugh at a lady the way he had laughed at her.

He was, undoubtedly, a reckless rogue whose outrageous behavior some women would find appealing. Not her. She found him coarse. Common. Vulgar. Not worth wasting another minute’s thought on.

Madeleine decisively shook her head, then took off her bonnet and tossed it on a velvet-covered sofa. She crossed to the bed, turned about, and sat down on its edge. She sighed, stretched and slowly sank down onto the brocade-covered bed.

She raised her arms above her head and sighed once more. And she gave silent thanks that the man to whom she was officially engaged, was a kind, cultured nobleman.

Madeleine smiled as she pictured Desmond Chilton, Fourth Earl of Enfield, whom she was to wed next spring. A distant cousin whom she had known since childhood but had rarely seen, Lord Enfield had left their native England more than a decade ago.

The earl had settled in New Orleans where Madeleine’s dear uncle, Colfax Sumner—her deceased mother’s only sibling—had lived for the past forty-five years. The two men had become good friends and when she had visited her uncle during the past summer, the handsome blond earl had spent a great deal of time at Colfax’s French Quarter mansion. A week before she was to return home to England, the earl proposed and she had accepted.

Lord Enfield would, she felt sure, treat her as a wife should be treated. He clearly adored her. And, if she was less than passionately in love, that presented no weighty problem as far as she was concerned. She much preferred being the ‘beloved’ as opposed to the ‘lover.’ Desmond was most definitely the lover. She his beloved. Which was as it should be, as it would remain.

Never again would she risk being humiliated by a mere mortal man.

Armand de Chevalier remained on deck for the next hour, strolling unhurriedly from stern to bow as the huge vessel moved slowly out of the Liverpool harbor and made its way to the open sea.

Excited, well-dressed travelers had lined the ship’s railing, waving to those left behind. Others, like Armand, promenaded around the ship’s polished decks, greeting fellow voyagers, laughing, talking, anticipating an enjoyable adventure.

Many of those happy passengers were, of course, women. Some with husbands or family members. Others traveling together in groups of two or three. Still others were alone, save for a servant or attendant. There were, Armand noted, dozens of unattached, attractive women.

But not one captured his attention as the stunning woman with the red-gold hair. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He wanted to see her again, and he searched the milling crowds, hoping that perhaps she would take a stroll once they were on the open sea.

She did not.

After a couple of frustrating hours, Armand gave up and made his way to the gentleman’s tavern. There in the darkly paneled club, he stepped up to the long polished bar, ordered a bourbon straight and downed it in one swallow.

As the barkeep poured another, Armand couldn’t help overhearing a conversation taking place between two gentleman standing next to him who were sipping port.

“She’s a British noble lady,” said a short, balding gentleman with muttonchop sideburns. “The only child of the fifth earl of Ballarat and his American-born wife, both of whom are now deceased.”

“Is she now?” replied his drinking companion, a tall, cadaver-thin man in a brown linen suit with a boutonniere in his buttonhole.

Armand knew, instinctively, that they were talking about his red-haired beauty. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said and the port-drinking pair turned to look at him. “Does the noblewoman of whom you are speaking happen to have red hair?”

The tall, skinny fellow nodded, and said with a slight touch of wistfulness, “An unusual shade of red-gold that is incredibly striking against her pale-white skin.”

“Who is she?” Armand asked bluntly.

“Why she’s Lady Madeleine Cavendish, the flame-haired Countess,” said the short man with the muttonchop sideburns. “One of the most renowned beauties in all Europe.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Armand before he downed his second whiskey. “Gentlemen,” he said as he nodded good-day then turned and walked out of the tavern.

Armand was unfazed by her lofty status. Un-bothered by the fact that she was a Countess. An inherently confident man, Armand had learned, long ago, that beneath fine satins and laces, often beat the passionate heart of a hot-blooded woman.

He’d bet everything he owned that the lovely Lady Madeleine Cavendish was such a woman.