Читать книгу Captain Langthorne's Proposal - Elizabeth Beacon - Страница 12

One more turn in the village street and Serena would be alone in open country. Or at least she would be, had Sir Adam not been sitting in his curricle, waiting for her to appear, like a rather handsome spider in the midst of a well-spun web. How had the wretched man managed to summon up such a neat equipage at short notice? she wondered crossly.

‘You’re late, Lady Summerton,’ he said, by way of greeting.

‘I’m ten minutes early,’ she was flustered into saying. Then could have kicked herself for making it sound as if their assignation existed anywhere but in his head.

‘On the contrary, you’re at least five minutes after I expected you,’ he argued. ‘If you wanted to confound me, you should have slipped out of your friend’s back door.’

It was quite true; the shortcut across the fields would have got her to Windham much more quickly and he would never have seen her. Whatever had she been thinking of not to use it? Did a secret, rebellious part of her really want his company so badly that quarrelling with him was preferable to not seeing him at all? Next time there was the least chance of avoiding him she must seize it determinedly—if only to prove to herself he meant nothing to her. Maybe then he would take the hint and stop plaguing her.

She was so sunk in gloom at this happy notion that she let him hand her into his curricle before she noticed she was doing as he had planned all along.

‘I haven’t the least wish to ride home with you,’ she protested idiotically, and she didn’t need his amused grin to feel a fool when she was doing such a good job by herself.

‘Your reluctance is duly noted,’ he said solemnly, and set his team in motion.

‘And you fully intend to ignore it?’

‘Precisely. The fact that you’re here speaks for itself.’

‘You are ungallant, Sir Adam.’

‘And you’re in the mood to argue with your own nose today, my lady.’

‘I’m not considered in the least contrary by anyone else I know,’ she told him between clenched teeth.

‘Of course not. You’re far too busy trying to please them all to argue with anybody. Which makes me wonder why you resist my perfectly natural wish to make your life more comfortable so stubbornly.’

‘I have an aversion to being managed, and milk-and-water misses get trampled all over,’ she said with an audible sniff.

‘How would you know?’

‘I have observed it,’ she said, and shivered.

‘Cold, my dear?’

‘No, and I’m not your dear.’

‘Even you can’t police my thoughts, Lady Summerton,’ he said, with that wicked glint back in eyes she had no intention of meeting, despite the shiver of awareness that shot through her at the intriguing idea of reading those thoughts there.

‘Then pray govern your tongue, Sir Adam,’ she said primly, fervently hoping her waspishness would divert him from the silly blush that had stolen over every exposed inch of skin.

‘I’ll endeavour to do so, my lady,’ he said smoothly, sounding not in the least bit chastened as he gave his pair the office to trot.

Something told her their thoughts were in a most embarrassing harmony on the forbidden subject of her finding out just what it might be like to be mercilessly ravished by the handsome, intelligent and uniquely intriguing gentleman who was Sir Adam Langthorne. She felt ridiculously ignorant of such sensual delights, and she was quite certain they would indeed be almost too delightful. He might be arrogant, and far too certain that he knew best, but she suspected he’d be a lover to eclipse all others. Not that she intended taking any more. Appalled at the direction of her own unwary thoughts, she mentally corrected herself. No, she never intended taking any lovers.

Not that he wouldn’t be a magnificent lover, she conceded silently. It was there in his heated appreciation of her, the way his eyes lingered on her slender curves and played over her slightly too generous mouth, as if intent on reassuring her that their pleasure would be absolutely mutual when she finally yielded to him. She believed it emphatically. It had been quite a revelation when she’d first caught the feral gleam in his dark and light eyes, and a warm shudder shook her at the memory of the flowering of heat it had awakened in her wilful body. Considering they could never be more than neighbours, however he might persuade her, such thoughts really were no help in her battle with her baser impulses. And neither was he, she decided militantly, as she once more caught that look of sensual amusement on his far too fascinating mouth, as if he could read her struggle with the ultimate temptation in her stormy eyes.

‘We’re going the wrong way,’ she informed him stiffly.

‘Not if we intend going via Thornfield Churchyard.’

‘Well, I certainly have no wish to visit the wretched place.’

‘It’s not dark, and you have told me many other things I intend to disprove today, my lady, so we might as well start with Thornfield and work our way down the list.’

‘No, let’s go to Windham Dower House instead, so I can take my leave of you, Sir Adam. Once I’m home you can chase ghosts all day and night with my heartfelt blessing. Take half the neighbourhood with you, as long as you leave me out of it.’

‘Shush. We’re nearly there, and you really shouldn’t be so uncivil to your neighbours—myself included.’

‘I won’t hush, and I like being uncivil. I didn’t want to come and I have no desire to racket about the countryside with a person who never listens to a single word I say,’ she said smartly, fervently wishing it were true. Something told her she might go with him to the ends of the earth if he asked with just the right pitch of need and hunger in his dark voice.

‘Coward. But why not just humour me for once? I would never have brought you if I thought you were in the slightest danger.’

‘Then your definition of danger and mine must be wildly out of kilter,’ she muttered darkly, then subsided into silence as he halted the curricle well short of the church and passed her the reins.

‘If I’m not back within a quarter of an hour fetch my head groom from the smithy, then go home,’ he ordered quietly, before jumping lithely down and ghosting off into the shadows himself, before she could think up a sufficiently indignant and crushing protest.

‘Insufferable, ungovernable, insensitive man,’ she muttered under her breath, but she sat and kept the pair as quiet as she could even so.

If it hadn’t been for her nagging fear that Sir Adam might end up lying disabled and hurt in the ancient churchyard, she might even have found this peaceful interlude quite pleasant, she decided, as she listened to the triumphant fugue of birdsong. Instead she had to force herself not to imagine ruthless villains lying in wait for him, and reluctantly considered his ridiculous scheme to find Rachel a husband to distract herself.

Her friend might be happier, more fulfilled than she was now if she were married to a good man. But after so many years of longing for her dead love, would a mere everyday one ever satisfy her? In such a mundane marriage Rachel might crave the unconventional life of an officer’s wife she would have had with Tom, if only he had survived long enough to live it with her. Excitement, Serena decided with a stern frown at an ancient yew tree that had done her no harm at all, was vastly overrated. Yet if she was strictly truthful she had been bored and restless with her own life for some time now. The question was, had she got to the point where she would grasp any opportunity to escape. Especially if Sir Adam were the one offering it to her, and with her best friend the supposed beneficiary?

Looked at dispassionately, she supposed a season in London with Rachel should be an offer seized on with delight, rather than regarded as a gift horse of the most suspicious variety. Yet she suspected Sir Adam had more in mind than diverting his sister’s thoughts from her lost love. The headlong Serena of her debutante days, that impulsive idiot he had just waxed so lyrical about, would have accepted his offer without a second thought, and worried about any consequences when they came along. Which was precisely why she refused to let the little ninny command her life now. If he thought to influence her by comparing her current lack of spirit with her overabundance of it during her youth, then he was very wide of his mark.

Indeed, if she could go back in time she would settle for one of the worthy young gentlemen who had laid their all at Lady Serena’s elegantly shod feet, instead of the more outwardly fascinating Lord Summerton. And if Sir Adam Langthorne considered her poor-spirited for choosing safety over risk with the benefit of hindsight, then he’d better find someone closer to her former self to confuse with his hot glances and arrogant certainty. A picture of a heady what-might-have-been slotted into her head. If only the then Lieutenant Langthorne had attended the same balls and parties as her younger self had, only to be ruthlessly dismissed. She knew the full treachery of air dreams nowadays, and reality invariably failed to live up to such fool’s gold promises.

She heard the church clock strike the quarter and could hardly believe only ten minutes had ticked by since he had left her sitting here, doing just what she had told herself she wouldn’t and thinking only of him. Even by considering his plan she was giving it credence. Janet’s coming baby was a much more attractive topic to dwell on, she decided resolutely, and spent five minutes wondering how much influence a godmother had over a child’s life, and if she was worthy of such a role.

All the time she was straining to hear the softest of footfalls on the mossy grass that grew under the yew grove at the churchyard perimeter. She felt she was fast becoming part of it. If only he would hurry back, he could drive his restless pair to Windham, restore her to her rightful place, and the world would settle back into its allotted course. By sitting here on pins, as if Sir Adam Langthorne’s safety was of prime importance to her, she was being drawn further and further away from her place of safety and deeper into the dangerous land of make-believe.

Tomorrow she would go and see Rachel, and between them they would circumvent the almighty Sir Adam and his ridiculous schemes. Unfortunately there was today to be got through first, and a cold fear was settling like ice in her belly, almost convincing her that he was lying in the graveyard gravely injured and in dire need of help. She shifted on seat cushions that were somehow becoming harder by the second, and began to seriously contemplate tying the reins to the rail and creeping to the rescue.

If he didn’t need rescuing, or was lying in wait for some nameless villain, she would spoil everything, of course. She would count to a hundred, and if he hadn’t put in an appearance by then, she would drive boldly up to the church and put paid to this whole ridiculous episode. Serve him right if she did put his quarry to flight, she decided militantly, for treating her like some inanimate parcel that could be left here until he was ready to deliver it. When she lost count and had to start again for the third time she gave up, and diverted herself by contriving fitting punishments for such a faulty gentleman.

‘Good girl.’ His deep voice seemed to arrive before he did, and she jumped several inches in the air.

‘I’m not a spaniel. And don’t creep up on people in such a fashion, Sir Adam. Unless you wish to see off your entire acquaintance from the apoplexy,’ she chided furiously. ‘It would serve you right if I was of a vapourish persuasion, just so you would have to cope with my delicate nerves after giving me such a shock.’

‘Believe me, Lady Serena, if they were that finely strung you wouldn’t be here in the first place. Your nerves are as stout as Mrs Burgess’s are wasted,’ he replied, looking infuriatingly unrepentant.

‘Then I must spend more time in her company in the hope of acquiring some sensibility.’

‘Pray do not. I’d hate to be deprived of your delightful companionship for such a flimsy reason—and even you must admit the good lady’s nerves are the only insubstantial thing about her.’

On the verge of a betraying chuckle, she forced her mouth into a straight line, ‘Stop it, Adam,’ she said with a stern look. ‘It’s not kind to mock a good woman.’

‘I promise never to do it again if you’ll call me by my name and not my title more often.’

‘That I won’t! I never meant such a coming piece of over-familiarity to slip out in the first place.’

‘A pity. As we’ll be seeing so much of each other in town, I thought we might consider ourselves friends and be comfortable together.’

Which was the very last thing she would ever be with disturbing Sir Adam Langthorne, Serena decided darkly.

‘You know very well only close family members are so familiar with each other. Anyway, I’m not coming to town, so the need won’t arise for us to call one another anything for several months.’

‘Don’t celebrate your escape too soon, my lady. I learnt strategy from a master, and I’m not so patriotic I can’t watch and learn from Boney’s tactics either. A skirmish is never over until the last shot is fired.’

‘Except your foe might refuse battle.’

‘You never ran from a fight in your life, my lady,’ he said softly, and the steady understanding in his eyes made her shiver.

At least she somehow convinced herself it was a shiver, even as she was held by his gaze, warmed by a host of wonderful possibilities even as her sensible self was telling her to break eye contact and shore up her faltering defences immediately. Torn by two contrary urges, she felt the true power of sensual temptation for the first time in her life.

‘On the contrary, I shall retreat to fight another day. It may just be that you haven’t observed the enemy, Sir Adam.’

‘You’re not my enemy, and it’s high time we went—unless you’d like me to compromise you irredeemably, of course?’

Carefully relinquishing the reins to him, with as little contact as possible, she preserved what she hoped was a chillingly dignified silence from then on and tried hard not to admire his easy mastery of the pair. They were highly trained and well mannered, but spirited enough to prove a handful to a less experienced whip. He had good hands as well, she conceded, slanting a look at them—long-fingered and elegant, despite his size and all too evident strength. They would be sure of touch but gentle, she decided, and shivered once more as she guiltily imagined them touching her in the most shockingly intimate fashion. She blushed and turned an apparently intent gaze on the spring barley rushing to fresh green life in a nearby field.

Watching him like some besotted schoolgirl gloating over her hero wouldn’t do at all. She was a widow of four and twenty, not some dazed child, greedy to experience all the forbidden delights the world had to offer.

‘Are you going to enlighten me about your discoveries, Sir Adam?’ she asked, hoping he was too occupied with his pair to notice that betraying flush.

‘Oh, that feminine curiosity you all share—however strikingly you differ in other ways,’ he said, with a secretive smile that probably meant he missed nothing. ‘I found some things I expected and others I certainly did not.’

‘Well, now I know. Pray don’t be more infuriating than you can help, Sir Adam—even if you are a man and therefore can’t avoid it.’

‘Well, that’s put me in my place,’ he lied blithely. ‘But if you must know the vault had been opened lately, as I’m sure you suspected after hearing Wharton’s fanciful tale. The grass around it was torn, as if something heavy was dragged over it. Why anyone should disturb the dead when there must be so many less macabre hiding places in the neighbourhood is currently beyond me, but I did find this,’ he told her, taking the reins in one hand while he dug in his pocket. He handed a small object to her with yet another frisson of shock when their fingers touched.

Serena wondered if he felt it too, but if he did nothing showed on his face as he concentrated on his pair once more and she forced herself to look coolly composed as she examined the object he had passed her. It was a button of distinctive design, still attached to a piece of dark grey cloth. An elusive memory stirred at the back of Serena’s mind, but however hard she tried she couldn’t make it tangible.

‘It looks vaguely familiar,’ she finally admitted, ‘but anyone we know could have lost it in the village churchyard.’

‘It has been torn off in some sort of accident—or an argument, perhaps. No man would have a button wrenched off like that and not notice unless he were preoccupied with something very urgent indeed.’

‘Yet until we discover something illegal has taken place we’re as guilty of flying at phantoms as any gothic heroine.’

‘Speak for yourself, my lady. Nobody ever accused me of being a heroine before.’

And nobody ever would, she decided, with considerable exasperation at his wilful misunderstanding. ‘It amazes me that Rachel never pushed you into the lake when you were children, Sir Adam.’

‘Not for want of trying. But, being five years younger than I am, she was always too small to manage it on her own.’

‘What a shame I didn’t know you both better then; somehow we could have soaked you between us.’

‘In your presence I would have been on my best behaviour even in my unregenerate days,’ he said, with such a mix of teasing and admiration that she felt the breath catch in her throat.

‘You regarded me as a scrawny and irritating chit, not worth knowing because I couldn’t play cricket. Believe me, I’m liberally supplied with male cousins who left me in no doubt as to the general inferiority of the female half of the population when they were home for the holidays, so there’s no need to pretend you were any different,’ she managed, coolly enough.

‘Scrubby brats!’ he said, with apparent amusement and far too much understanding of her contrary emotions in that teasing smile. ‘Point them out to me when we’re in town and I’ll dunk them in the Serpentine.’

Serena couldn’t suppress a delighted chuckle over her mental picture of the scapegrace Marquis of Helvelin, immaculate Mr Julius Brafford and the very dashing Lieutenant the Honourable Nicholas Prestbury picking mud and pondweed off their normally resplendent persons. ‘Well, you could try,’ she said with a smile, as she reckoned up the combined strength of her three tall and muscular relatives.

‘You should laugh more often, your ladyship. It makes you young and carefree instead of overburdened and old before your time.’

So he thought she looked haggish, did he? Her smile wiped effectively off her face, Serena frowned, then gazed haughtily at the distant Welsh Hills to prove he meant nothing to her whatsoever.

‘I am a widow,’ she informed him majestically. ‘And I live a very comfortable life, thank you very much.’

‘That you do not,’ he replied, as if he would like to shake her for taking such an optimistic view of her situation. ‘You’re exploited by your mother-in-law, and when not relieving her of her duties or fussing over her you’re at the mercy of a sister-in-law who delights in setting your consequence at nought and her own A1 at Lloyd’s. What I quite fail to fathom in the face of such wilful self-abasement is why on earth you endure it and what Helvelin is about to let you, considering he’s head of your family. If you’re truly content with such a lot you’re far more poor-spirited than I ever thought you.’

‘I’m nothing of the sort,’ she snapped furiously, trying hard not to let him see how that brutal assessment of her character had hurt. ‘And I’ll thank you to leave my cousin out of this and mind your own business.’

‘No. You’re Rachel’s best friend, and it concerns her deeply that you let yourself be trampled on by a family who don’t really appreciate you. Even if you won’t allow me to be concerned on my own account, you can’t forbid me to worry about my sister’s friend.’

His voice was gruff with emotions she dared not examine too closely. Her breathing threatened to stall in the face of any chances she might be about to throw away—the main one being the possibility Adam Langthorne might care about her. That could not, must not be. There was no future in such thoughts on either side. Even if she loved him—and so far she’d managed to avoid that trap—she couldn’t marry him. Come to think about it, she couldn’t consider it especially if she loved him.

‘I suppose I could always join my aunt in Bath for a while,’ she said without enthusiasm.

‘Where you’ll run her household and look after Helvelin’s tribe of sisters instead of being at the beck and call of your family by marriage, I suppose? You have a way of humbling a man with your choices to avoid him that is without parallel, Lady Summerton,’ he replied austerely.

Inflicting pain on Sir Adam Langthorne was difficult, but less unthinkable than seeing him grow restless and bored with her. ‘I feel very real affection for my cousins, as I believe they do for me. But they have a doting mama and little need of me, and I do like to be busy.’

‘Yet you just made it sound as if your boxes are packed and your farewells all but complete. Could it be that you are less convinced than you sound, my lady?’

‘I have no wish to be a burden.’

‘Anyone less likely to be a charge on any household she became part of I find it hard to imagine. You overflow with misplaced loyalty to those who don’t deserve it, and begrudge yourself to those who’d value it way above rubies.’

‘That I don’t. I value true affection and consideration far above duty,’ she said stiffly.

‘Then prove it and come to London with Rachel, who surely deserves your friendship and loyalty even if I don’t. Prove you mean it, Lady Summerton, instead of revelling in the heady delights of sacrificing yourself on the altar of family duty in Bath instead of Herefordshire.’

‘I can’t,’ she replied in a hard little voice, trying not to slavishly watch for his reaction to her denial.

She knew without looking that his eyes would be flinty now, and his sensuous mouth set in a disapproving line. It was an effect she had been striving for these many weeks, after all, but she couldn’t resist a sideways glance at him, despite destroying any admiration he had for her once and for all. To her amazement he was smiling at her as warmly as if she had agreed to his ridiculous scheme as eagerly as a schoolgirl.

‘You mean you won’t let yourself, however strong the temptation?’ he asked with considerable satisfaction, and seemed to require no answer. ‘You have no idea how flattering it is to be regarded as so dangerously irresistible that a lady of character dares not risk my company lest she succumb to my fatal charm.’

‘Pray don’t congratulate yourself on reaching that ridiculous conclusion, Sir Adam,’ she replied stoically, although of course it was true. Trust him to deduce exactly why she was refusing such a tempting offer. ‘You must have every single one of your attics to let to truly believe no lady dares spend time in your company lest she falls at your feet in a frenzy of gratitude and infatuation.’

‘Well that’s properly put me in my place. If I might suggest you take a few lessons in rebuffing a gentleman’s hopes and dreams with finesse before you brave London society once more, Lady Summerton? Or perhaps it should be the other way about and your potential suitors are the ones who need their courage honed by an expert? At least giving lessons to them will help me pass any tedious moments during our stay, and I feel uniquely placed to offer such forlorn hopes my wise counsel.’

‘You can’t possibly live with us!’ she heard herself say, as if everything was settled and nothing left to do but decide where they would reside.

‘I really don’t see why not. Even the most exacting chaperon would trust your reputation to Cousin Estelle and my sister.’

‘Your cousin wouldn’t notice if you held an orgy under her very nose!’

‘An interesting notion, but I think I can restrain myself. And my sister would be justly furious if we abandoned her to Cousin Estelle’s tender mercies. She would never see the outside of the nearest library or Hatchards.’

‘You would be there,’ Serena protested, but her resolution was faltering.

She recalled the circus that was the London season for debutantes such as she and Rachel had once been with a shudder. To leave Rachel to face all that in the care of bookish, otherworldly Miss Langthorne would be distinctly unfriendly, and she knew she couldn’t do it.

‘My presence will make matters worse,’ she defended herself weakly, feeling she was leading a forlorn hope against a superior tactician.

‘Rubbish. Nothing could be worse than poor Rachel spending months being carted from one blue-stocking salon to another on my cousin’s coattails, and you know it—unless you’ve become as blue as my esteemed relative.’

‘You know perfectly well I haven’t,’ she told him, ‘and nobody could call Miss Langthorne formidable,’ she added lamely, quite ruining her effect.

‘I prefer to call her a force of nature,’ her undutiful cousin said with a surprisingly affectionate smile for a relative who benignly ignored him and everyone else most of the time.

‘That’s one alternative, I suppose.’

‘It is the only description I ever found that fitted her.’

‘As she has a reputation for speaking her mind, I can’t think why you consider her a suitable chaperon for myself or your sister, given that she will doubtless refuse to attend any event that’s unlikely to amuse or interest her.’

‘Which is precisely why I need your presence. Cousin Estelle, eccentric though she might be, would never permit immorality to flourish under any roof where she was residing,’ he replied, with every appearance of shocked virtue himself. ‘Any more than I would dream of suggesting it.’

‘I should stop right there, Sir Adam. You were doing so well until you got carried away,’ she said, with a frown that was only partly in jest.

‘Then ignore my pleas and come for Rachel’s sake. It could be a bigger disaster than her first season if you don’t support her.’

‘I really don’t see what I can do that any other widowed lady might not do better,’ she protested.

‘You have the sophistication of taste to see my sister is dressed to suit her own looks, rather than those of whichever blonde beauty the dressmakers are promoting this season—or you have when you choose to employ it,’ he said, with a disapproving glance at her very plain gown and shabby cloak.

‘You have a way of flattering a lady that is almost unparallelled, Sir Adam,’ she forced herself to parry lightly, but he had given her pause for thought and she suspected he knew it.

‘What do you think the Bond Street Beaux would say about my sister if she turned up in the salons of the ton in her current guise?’ he challenged her.

‘Poor Rachel,’ she said unwarily, as she considered her friend as she had last seen her clad in a tobacco-brown stuff gown that had never been fashionable, even in the dim and distant past when the village dressmaker had made it up for her.

‘Then you’ll do it?’

‘I’ll talk to Rachel, and if she truly wishes to go I’ll support her in any way I can.’

‘Hmm, an admirably evasive reply. You’ll support her, but is that to be from a distance or at her side, where she needs you?’

‘Where she needs me, of course. It’s time I returned the favour.’