‘The church?’ That seemed an innocuous destination. If she had been alone she would have liked to go inside and sit for a while, but she felt awkward asking Luc to wait. ‘Oh. It is very large, is it not? And a tower with those pointed things on the corners. How interesting—this is the first English church I have seen close to.’
She looked over the wall into the churchyard. ‘And so green! In Calcutta, where I used to live in India, there is a big cemetery for the English with massive tombs and dusty paths and trees that look nothing like these at all. And birds and little squirrels and … Oh, dear, I have become quite homesick. How foolish, I thought I had got over that.’
‘Come and sit down.’ Luc led her into the churchyard and found a bench. Waters perched on the edge of a crumbling table tomb and watched Luc with interest.
She finds him attractive, Averil thought as she caught an errant tear with her handkerchief and straightened her shoulders. And who am I to blame her?
‘When my mother and I returned to England my English grandfather, the Earl of Marchwood, thought it was best I go to university and then into the church,’ Luc observed. He took off his cocked hat, leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head, stretched out his long legs and gazed up at the tower.
‘Into—you mean, become a clergyman?’ Averil collapsed into unladylike giggles. ‘You?’
‘You have a very unflattering opinion of me, by the sound of it,’ Luc remarked. He appeared lazily indifferent to her mockery. ‘Grandpapa was not best pleased to discover that I held the same rationalist beliefs as my father. By the time he had stopped spluttering and threatening me with hellfire and eternal damnation I had joined the navy.’
‘You are an atheist?’ She had never met one of those dangerous creatures.
‘A sceptic with an open mind,’ he corrected her. ‘I am perfectly comfortable reading services at sea or turning out for church parade. Does that shock you?’
‘No,’ she said and heard herself sound as doubtful as she felt. ‘But you wanted to join the navy?’
‘Not particularly. I wanted to kill revolutionaries. I wanted to kill the people who had taken my father’s life and my home. It was the navy or the army and I found the Admiralty first.’ He shrugged. ‘It was fortunate, I suspect. The navy is far less snobbish about foreigners without much money than the army is. Now I have the money and it doesn’t matter.’
‘Where did you get it from?’ A most improper question, she knew. Ladies did not discuss money.
‘Prize money and then an inheritance from my mother’s side of the family,’ Luc said. ‘I will need a great deal when I get my hands on my estates again. But there is enough to finance my pleasures very adequately,’ he added, so blandly that Waters, swinging her heels and watching the verger locking the church, did not seem to notice anything untoward.
Luc’s fingers curled around hers and he began to make circles in the palm of her hand. As Averil stiffened and tried to pull away he half turned on the bench so his shoulder was to the maid and lifted her hand to his lips. As she tugged he opened his mouth and sucked the length of her index finger right in.
His mouth was hot and wet and the suction was strong enough to make her gasp and his eyes were sending her the wickedest of messages. Her other fingers were splayed against his face, the evening growth of beard bristling under the sensitive pads. Then she realised what this was mimicking and her cheeks reddened and his lids lowered as if he was in a sensual dream.
Averil tugged again and he closed his teeth, gently. ‘Let me go,’ she demanded. ‘It is indecent!’
He released her and smiled. ‘Such a naughty imagination, Averil,’ he murmured and licked his lips. ‘Whatever can you mean?’
She got to her feet. ‘Waters, come along and stop daydreaming!’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The girl scrambled down from the tomb and Averil felt a stab of guilt for snapping at her.
‘We must go back now. We have a long day tomorrow. Thank you, Captain d’Aunay, but I am sure we can find our own way to the inn.’
‘You will accept my escort, I hope. My intention is to protect you.’
‘Your intention is to seduce me,’ she hissed as she took his arm. It would create a scene, and questions in Waters’s mind, if she made an issue of walking with Luc.
‘To protect and seduce,’ he murmured back as he opened the gate out of the churchyard.
Averil laughed in the hope that the maid would not realise they were arguing. ‘You attempt to reconcile opposites, Captain.’
‘Not at all. I believe I know where your best interest lies, Miss Heydon.’
‘Then we must agree to disagree. My mind is quite made up on the matter.’
‘I had noticed how very stubborn you are, Miss Heydon, and to what lengths you will go to get what you want.’
‘What I think is right,’ she corrected him. ‘For you to lecture me for being stubborn is, I venture, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.’
Luc was silent as they crossed the market square. Averil let herself feel the texture of his uniform jacket under her palm, the rough edge of the gold braid at her fingertips, hear the sound of his boots crunching over the dusty stones.
It felt right to have him by her side, as though they were a respectable married couple walking back to their comfortable home after a church service. There were unspoken words between them, a sensual tension that left her short of breath as though she had been hurrying, yet there was a comfort in being together. Would it feel as natural to walk with Andrew Bradon? Would it be as easy to stroll in companionable silence without the need to make conversation?