‘Checkmate.’ Avaline beamed as her bishop claimed victory. Aidan conceded his king with a laugh. He had won the first game and now their set was split at a game apiece.
‘How is it that you’re so very good at chess? I didn’t think ladies played the game much.’
‘You can blame Mrs Finlay’s Academy for that. Mrs Finlay believed a woman should refine her mind as well as her body so that a man might find pleasure in both when used in the right ways at the right time.’ Avaline set the pieces up—a third game seemed a foregone conclusion now, although she hadn’t been so sure a half-hour ago. Aidan had proven to be a determined opponent.
‘We all went there. Well, almost all of us. Elidh didn’t attend. Did you know that? It’s something your friends’ wives have in common. We weren’t all there at the same time, but it’s an interesting coincidence. Helena is the school’s legend because she married a duke’s heir. But Sofia, Conall, Viscount Taunton’s wife, was there with Helena. Then, later, Pavia, Cam’s wife, attended, and of course I went.’
‘I know who Taunton is. I know Fortis’s friends,’ Aidan said quietly and she grimaced, hating herself for the slip. She hadn’t meant to do that—to fill in the facts for him with little explanations.
‘I’m sorry.’ She’d been doing it ever since the night it had all come out that he wasn’t Fortis. She was sorry, she knew the habit bothered him, but Aidan had to be protected and the only way to do that was with information. Now that they’d all committed to the ruse, there was no room to slip. She’d probably do it again. He was welcome to hate her for it as long he was safe, yet the habit was creating distance between them. Not an enormous chasm, but enough distance to notice.
Ever since the decision had been made, Aidan had withdrawn in little ways, becoming quieter, more reticent with the family as if he wanted to make himself an outsider. She supposed it was only natural. It would take time for him to feel that he truly belonged now that he knew he didn’t. She could only imagine the blow it must have been to think he had a family and then learn he did not. But what she hated the most was how he withdrew from her. Even when he’d been struggling with his memories, he’d shared the struggle with her. Now, he shared nothing. Prying stories from him about his real past was like taking gold from a miser. He would politely resist with phrases like, ‘you don’t want to hear about that’, or ‘it’s not important’. It was important to her. She wanted to know him. She knew why he did it. He thought he had no value. He still saw himself as a street rat. He needed to let go of that past as much as he’d needed to let go of the cave.
Avaline finished setting up chess pieces. Outside, rain came down in hard sheets interspersed with icy hail. But they were safe and warm inside, playing chess before the fire, the perfect way to spend a dark, winter evening. She didn’t mind if it rained liked this for weeks. No one would think of travelling out in such weather. That, too, meant Aidan was safe. Even Tobin Hayworth would think twice before venturing abroad in such conditions.
‘Don’t be sorry, Avaline. I shouldn’t have snapped. I know you mean well. I just don’t want you to worry. It’s not good for the baby or for yourself. I don’t want to be a cause of concern to you.’ Aidan smiled at her and that smile melted the tension that was so often present between them these days as they all readjusted to the reality that Fortis was dead. It was an awkward time of mourning the past mixed with celebrating the future and worrying over what that future might be. Was Hayworth bluffing? Would he strike? When? They’d been waiting nearly two weeks since the party and there’d been no word. She was grateful for that and she was terrified.
Avaline reached across the board and took his hand. ‘How is it that you’re such a fine chess player?’
‘A soldier in my regiment taught me. He had a travelling chess set. He was a minor gentleman’s son. We played almost every night.’ Aidan’s smile faded. ‘He was killed at Alma, a month before Balaclava. The set is in my trunk, wherever that is now. He’d been joking the night before the battle that the set was mine if he was killed.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a morbid sense of humour, but it gets a soldier through, helps them to say difficult things. I didn’t really think he’d die. He was one of those people who seemed charmed.’
‘Like Fortis.’ Avaline couldn’t help herself.
‘Yes.’ Aidan pursed his lips in a tight line she’d come to note as a means of holding back emotion. ‘I had nothing to live for, no mother or father waiting for me. But I lived. I don’t know why. His family needed him, but he died. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It makes perfect sense. I need you. Fortis needed you.’ Avaline smiled, wanting to do so much more to ease his pain and not knowing what that might be.
Aidan said nothing, choosing to give his attention to the newly set board. ‘Queen’s pawn to D-Four.’
‘Queen’s pawn openings are not comme il faut.’
‘It suits me. I am not very fashionable,’ Aidan challenged.
Avaline cocked her head to survey the board. ‘Are you setting up for the Queen’s gambit?’ She moved her black pawn to E-Six, a deceptively passive move.
‘Ah, minx, you’re waiting for me to commit.’ Aidan chuckled. The firelight caught his profile, limning all its angles and planes to perfection, turning him devastatingly handsome. It was easy to see how he’d charmed those ladies mentioned in Hayworth’s report.
‘I expect there have been a lot of women waiting for you to commit.’ The roguish nature of his past revealed in Hayworth’s document had not repulsed her. Instead it had heightened her fascination with him, but he remained frustratingly reluctant to share that piece of his life with her. Even now when it was out in the open between them, it remained a steadfastly closed box. ‘Have you had many women, Aidan?’
His hand stilled on a piece. ‘Are you asking if Hayworth’s report is true? You already know it is.’
‘Everything in the report is true? Or is some of it greatly exaggerated by Hayworth?’ Avaline pressed.
‘Enough. You don’t want to know. You don’t need to know,’ Aidan said tersely, committing to the Queen’s Gambit with his next move.
She moved to accept. ‘I do want to know. I want to know everything about you. The good and the awful. You don’t need to hide it from me. I won’t break.’
‘I know you won’t. But the past is of no consequence, now, Avaline. Knowing anything of it can only hurt you. If Hayworth presses his claims and if he proves them, the only thing that will save you is your ignorance. You have to claim you knew nothing of my identity, that I misled you. It will be your only chance. You will have to cut yourself free of me. Promise me you will.’
The game between them was forgotten. She left her chair and came to him, sitting on his lap. She had her worries and he had his. ‘Please, don’t talk like that.’ She knew he wasn’t sleeping. She’d wake at night and see him standing by the window, sometimes for hours. When she’d wake in the morning, he’d still be standing there, watching the sunrise. He spent his days doing little tasks about the hall, going over ledgers, never sitting still. She knew what he was doing. Last things. In case the worst happened. He was making preparations, trying to see that she was taken care of. It was sweet and all the more reason to love him. She hated what Hayworth was doing to him, to them. The waiting was slowly destroying them, the worry over what-ifs eating them alive.
‘Are you afraid, Aidan?’ she asked softly. He was always so strong for her, from the moment he’d swept her up in his arms at the Harvest ball, yet always so worried he wasn’t strong enough. How could there be any doubt?
‘A good soldier is always afraid. It’s what keeps him sharp, it’s what keeps him alive.’ He held her gaze with those beautiful blue eyes. ‘It’s what keeps the people he loves safe.’ His fingers tangled in her hair, his mouth slanting over hers. ‘Distract me, Avaline. For a few minutes, I don’t want to be afraid.’
These were the moments she lived for, the moments when they could push aside the threat Hayworth posed to their lives. She shifted, straddling him in his chair, her mouth returning his kiss, her hands working his trousers open. She felt his hands beneath her skirts, pushing them up, her thighs exposed. His hand cupped her at the juncture of her thighs. ‘I adore you like this,’ he murmured between kisses, his voice hoarse. ‘So wet, so ready, for me alone.’
‘I like you this way, too.’ Avaline sighed, rising up just enough to tease the tip of his phallus with the wetness at her entrance. ‘All hard, hot male. For me alone.’ There might have been lovers in his past, but she was his last, his only from here on, of that she had no doubt. She slid down his length, taking him inside herself in a long, languid ride, delighting in the way she could make him moan. Then she began to move against him, a deliberate, tantalising motion that drove them both into the slow burn of ecstasy’s flame. His hands gripped her hips, her own hands digging into the muscles of his shoulders until, at last, they slipped to the floor before the fire, pleasure achieved in chorus of gasping cries.
‘You wreck me.’ Avaline sighed. ‘Every time, even when I’m in charge. How do you manage it?’
Aidan’s chest rose and fell, still rapid against her cheek, his arm about her, hugging her close. ‘You wreck me, too.’ His eyes closed. ‘Tell me about Christmas at Bramble. Tell me what it will be like.’
She gave a soft laugh. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a child with all this excitement for the holiday.’ Avaline drew tiny circles around his nipples. She’d told him this story before. In the weeks since his birthday party, it had become something of a favourite topic with him. ‘Didn’t you have Christmas growing up?’ Surely he’d had a small celebration.
‘None, my dear. Christmas is a surprisingly busy time for prostitutes. It was always a bustling evening at the brothel, at any rate. People looking to not be alone, I suppose. At any rate, no one wanted a little boy underfoot.’
Avaline rose up. ‘But Christmas is for children. The sweets, the toys. Children are what makes it so much fun.’
‘Children remind gentlemen of the duties they’re neglecting at home,’ Aidan countered. ‘I spent Christmas on the streets, waiting for my mother’s gentlemen to leave. It was good earnings on Christmas, though. Gentlemen feel guilty and pay an urchin well to hold their horses and watch their carriages while they’re frolicking inside. One Christmas I earned enough to buy us oranges. Two whole oranges. It was a fortune.’
Two oranges. She could not imagine the level of that poverty. How many Christmases had she eaten oranges without a thought? They’d had bowls of them at Blandford even for the servants. She reached up and smoothed back his hair. His story broke her heart, although she dared not say it for fear he would never tell her another thing. She would treat this story as the rare treasure it was. He had shown her so much in that simple story: how he’d lived, how he’d been selfless even under the worst of circumstances.
‘You will never be on the streets again. Christmas at Bramble is a wonder. There are greens up everywhere, a giant log in the fireplace, there’s a huge feast for everyone, and church at midnight in the chapel. In the morning, there’s an enormous breakfast and presents at our places. All the wives make their husbands something homemade.’ This year she was looking forward to that tradition. This year she wouldn’t be left out. She had a husband.
Aidan’s hand slid over the flat of her belly. ‘You’ve already made me something.’ He laughed.
‘Yes, well, I made you something else, too.’
‘What is it?’
‘You will have to wait and see. Just two days now. You can manage that.’ He tickled her then, trying to tease the secret out of her. She laughed and squealed as he pulled her beneath him.
She was in mid-squeal when the sound came. Startled, they both froze. ‘It’s the rain,’ Avaline said.
‘No, it stopped a while ago.’ Aidan eased off her as the sound came again. ‘Someone’s at the door.’ He rose, doing up his trousers. All fun and good humour faded from the room. The tension was back. He held her gaze, a thousand words passing in that glance.
‘No one would be out this time of night in this weather.’ Avaline rose, too, straightening her skirts as voices sounded in the entrance hall. Men, several of them.
The butler entered the room, but these men, led by Tobin Hayworth, preferred to announce themselves. Hayworth, greatcoat drenched from the rain, strode forward, pushing the butler aside. ‘I am here with a warrant for your arrest.’
‘No, you can’t.’ Avaline rushed forward, but Aidan stepped in front of her, his broad shoulders shielding her.
‘On what grounds?’ Aidan asked coolly.
‘On grounds of impersonating a duke’s son and wrongfully claiming the identity of Fortis Tresham. I have compelling evidence and testimony that you are a dangerous criminal who has likely duped this woman and the Tresham family. Those are grounds under which you will be taken to Newgate where you will await trial.’
‘No!’ Avaline pushed around Aidan, tearing away from him when he reached for her, determined to stand between him and whatever disaster came next. She was frantic with fear. ‘You are doing this out of spite and jealousy for perceived wrongs. You cannot take him. It’s nearly Christmas.’ What sort of man arrested someone two days before Christmas? She cast about in her mind for the right arguments. ‘He’ll give parole, we’ll post bail.’ Were those the right words? She’d tried to listen carefully when the Treshams had plotted against this. Had she accepted too much by asking for those things? By asking, had she implied that there was some guilt to defend against? Had she given up the high ground? She didn’t know. She wished fervently that Frederick was here. He would know what to do, how to make Hayworth leave, what to say and when to say it. She was a poor champion for Aidan.
‘I must ask you to stand aside.’ Hayworth’s gaze met her own, cool and steely, devoid of emotion. ‘Resistance can gain you nothing, ma’am. We will be taking him into custody whether you approve or not. I would prefer not to take you with him. Newgate is not a hospitable place for ladies, but I will do it if you persist in obstructing justice by attempting to prevent his arrest.’
‘You’re taking him to London?’ Avaline’s hand went to her stomach, steadying herself, the words like a physical blow. Not only to London, but to Newgate, a veritable hell on earth. ‘He’s done nothing wrong, what about being innocent until proven guilty?’ The world was reeling...she couldn’t think fast enough.
‘There is substantial and likely reason to think him guilty of fraud and theft. That makes him dangerous enough to await trial in prison and that is all of the legal system I am going to waste my time explaining to you, Avaline. You’ve expended what patience I have.’
She could feel Aidan bristling behind her at the casual address. It was an insult to her. Still, Aidan should have let it pass. There were more serious concerns to think on now. But he didn’t. ‘You will address her at Lady Fortis Tresham,’ Aidan growled. ‘She is a titled lady and you will show her the respect she deserves.’ It was a sharp reminder to Hayworth about who held the power even if it wasn’t in clear evidence at this precise moment. ‘You think you have power right now because you can physically enforce your will, but that’s a bully’s power, Hayworth.’
‘I have more than that, Roswell,’ Hayworth sneered. ‘I have the law.’
‘That is Lord Fortis Tresham to you,’ Aidan shot back.
‘That remains to be seen.’ Hayworth gestured to the men he’d brought. ‘Take him now by whatever force necessary. The roads are bad enough as it is without having to travel half the night.’
‘Then come back in the morning,’ Avaline argued desperately, but already the men were closing in on them, intent on their purpose. Irons dangled from one man’s hand. Horror rose anew for her. They would not take Aidan out of this house like a common prisoner. He’d done nothing wrong. He’d only tried to fulfil a dying man’s wish.
She did not move, although Aidan begged quietly at her ear, ‘Avaline, I think I must go with them.’
‘No.’ She didn’t want to cry. She wanted to be strong. She didn’t want Aidan to worry. But the tears came anyway. ‘We were supposed to have Christmas. You were supposed to unwrap my gift and sing carols in the church and walk under the midnight sky together. I’ve waited so long to...’ To have someone to love, to have someone who loved her, and now she was going to lose him. God only knew what would happen to him behind Newgate’s walls. Would he even make it to trial? Did Hayworth want the publicity of a trial or did he just want Aidan dead? That would certainly expedite things even if it didn’t come with a public dose of revenge against Cowden.
Aidan dead.
The thought of it broke her completely. ‘You can’t leave this house, you can’t.’ She broke down completely, sobs overwhelmed her. Aidan’s arms were about her, turning her to him, muffling her cries against his shoulders. She clung to his shirt, her fingers curled into fists inside its folds. The shirt smelled like him. She buried her nose in the fabric and shut her eyes, holding on to every piece of him in every way for dear life.
‘Avaline, don’t cry, don’t give Hayworth the satisfaction.’ Aidan made no attempt to lower his voice. ‘Pain gives him pleasure, my dear, and we will not feed his monster. We are Treshams and we are too proud for the likes of him.’ He should not have said it. The brave words would cost him. She felt the tenor of his comfort change, his arms tensed a fraction of a moment before she was dragged away by brutal hands, the other man clapping Aidan into shackles while her captor mauled her.
‘Avaline!’ Aidan’s hoarse cry ripped through the hall as she struggled. ‘You will take your hands off my wife!’ The hall erupted into brawling chaos. Shackled or not, Aidan was her champion. Aidan lunged for the man nearest him, proving shackles were a mistake. He got the length of chain around the man’s neck, choking him into unconsciousness with quick efficiency and charged for the man holding her. But Hayworth was faster.
He stepped in front of Avaline, knife drawn. ‘Once a street rat, always a street rat. You even fight like a scrapper. My man has an appetite for pretty women like your wife. You come quietly now and she’ll be safe. You make trouble, then I won’t stop my man from having his way.’
‘She is pregnant,’ Aidan growled. ‘You’re despicable. My father was right. You haven’t a shred of decency in your body.’
‘Your father?’ Hayworth laughed. ‘You don’t even know who your father is and neither will that brat she’s carrying once I get done destroying you. But that’s for later. Will you come?’
Her captor squeezed a breast with hard, cruel fingers. Avaline bit back a cry. It’s what Hayworth wanted—to use her to provoke Aidan. Perhaps Hayworth would find it efficient to kill Aidan here behind the thin guise of self-defence.
‘I’ll come, let me say goodbye.’ Aidan was cool steel.
Hayworth stepped aside and sheathed his knife, a victorious smile twisting his mouth. ‘You do not set conditions.’ He made a sweeping gesture towards the door.
‘He needs a coat,’ Avaline exclaimed, wrestling free of her captor. Aidan wasn’t prepared to go out into the night, the cold, the hail.
‘I will be fine, Avaline.’ Aidan’s voice was terse and full of warning. ‘Take care of our child. I will be home soon and this nonsense will be behind us.’ Hayworth pushed him towards the door. He stumbled and caught the door jamb to steady himself. Hayworth punched him in the kidney and Avaline screamed as he buckled. Hayworth and her captor grabbed him between them and dragged him towards the carriage. Even in pain, Aidan called instructions to her, playing his part to the hilt. ‘Go to Bramble, tell my father. He will not stand for this! Take care of yourself, Avaline. Do not risk our child on needless worry!’
‘I will, Fortis. We will be in London before you know it. All of us,’ she cried as the driver pushed past her, dragging his unconscious comrade out to the coach. There was nothing she could do. She watched helplessly as the coach door swung shut behind Aidan and drove off into the night taking the man she loved with it to a very uncertain future. Never had she felt so powerless. She began to shake. No, she would not give in to weakness again, no matter how powerless she felt.
She called for the butler. ‘Ready the carriage, I must leave for Bramble at once.’ Giving orders helped calm her, helped her find a sense of control. ‘Tell the maids to pack my things, have the valet pack a trunk for Lord Fortis. I want trunks ready before I leave.’ She drew a deep breath, calling up the reserves of her strength. She would focus on the next step, and then the next. Each little step would take her closer to Aidan.