Free Seduced by the Scoundrel by Louise Allen

folded his arms and looked at her without emotion or denials. ‘Why do you assume I am a French spy?’
    ‘Because you are French, because you have lied to the Governor about why you are here and because you are hiding those men and training them for some nefarious exercise.’
    ‘That is almost entirely correct on all points, Miss Heydon, and you have drawn entirely the wrong conclusion from it.’
    ‘What is not correct?’ she demanded, wishing she had her clothes. Defiance was much easier when one was not naked, she had discovered.
    ‘I am half-French.’ Luke’s shoulders lost their angry rigidity and he sat on the edge of the table and regardedher with what looked like exasperated resignation. ‘I am going to have to trust you.’
    ‘Well, you cannot. Not if you are my enemy.’
    ‘I may be that—you seem determined that I am—but I am not England’s enemy. I am an English naval officer and I am also
le comte
Lucien Mallory d’Aunay.’
    ‘A French count? A Royalist?’
    That produced a bark of laughter. ‘Shall we say, a constitutional monarchist? That, at least, was what my father was until Madame Guillotine took his head off and ended his political philosophising.’
    He rubbed both hands over his face and through his hair and emerged rumpled and with no sign of the anger of a few moments before, only a weary patience. ‘Averil, will you take my word of honour that what I tell you is the truth? Because if you will not, then I fear we are at an
impasse.
I cannot prove any of it, not here and now.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said with total honesty. He shrugged and suddenly seemed very foreign. ‘I wish I had some clothes on,’ she added, half to herself.
    ‘Why on earth would that make any difference?’
    ‘I want to look into your eyes.’
    ‘I will come to you then.’ He knelt by the bedside and looked steadily at her. ‘What can you see?’
    ‘My own reflection. Your cynicism. Weariness.’ She made herself relax, let herself sink into the wide grey gaze. ‘Truth. Truth and anger.’
    ‘Ah.’ He sat back on his heels. ‘I will tell you then, but you must swear to keep it secret.’
    ‘Who am I likely to be able to tell?’ she demanded.
    ‘You never know.’ He got to his feet and went back to the table. ‘My mother was Lady Isabelle Mallory andshe married my father in 1775. In 1791, when the king was forced to accept the written constitution, I was fifteen. My father was strongly in favour of the new order and believed that bloodshed and revolution would be averted by the more democratic form of government.
    ‘Maman
insisted that it would be a disaster and said she would return to her parents in England. I wanted to stay in France, but my father told me my duty was to look after my mother and that he would send for us when France became the stable land of freedom and prosperity that he predicted.’ He paused and Averil found she was holding her breath. ‘She was right, he was wrong and he paid for it with his head during the Terror in ‘94. Our loyal family servants followed him to the guillotine.’
    ‘Oh, I am sorry. Your poor mother.’ He spoke so flatly that she could only guess at the emotions under the words, what he must have felt when the news reached England. ‘You speak very good English. I would never have guessed you were French.’
    ‘I have thought in it for years. I was already in the English navy when my father died. I went from being Comte Luc d’Aunay to Midshipman Mr Luke d’Aunay—or Dornay—and I did my level best to be an Englishman. But they called me Frenchy and it stuck—the name and the whispers and the lack of acceptance. I was never
one of us,
never quite English. But I worked and I was lucky and my mother lived long enough to see me gain post rank.’
    ‘She must have been very proud of you,’ Averil said. Poor, tragic woman, her husband executed, an exile in her own home country, her son far away and in danger.
    Luke—no, she supposed