Читать книгу A Most Unseemly Summer - Juliet Landon - Страница 6

L ady Honoria Deventer shaded her eyes against the strengthening pale green rays that streamed into the best bedchamber at Sonning House. By her side, Lord Philip Deventer quietly opened the window, blowing a brittle winter cobweb into the garden below, where already a fuzz of new green covered the untidy plots.

Their joint attention was focussed on a tall and slender figure who stood motionless in the early sunshine, her dark mass of silky hair piled untidily on top of her head, her back curving into a neat waist without the support of whalebone stays. And though her face was turned from the house, her mother had guessed at its expression of sadness.

‘What is wrong with her these days?’ she whispered. ‘So angry. So quiet.’

‘She was not so quiet yesterday morning when she boxed the gardener’s lad’s ears, was she?’ her husband replied.

‘He was tipping birds’ eggs out of their nests to feed the cat. He deserved it. But she was never so severe until recently, Philip. Perhaps I should find her a new tutor.’

‘She’d be better off with a husband. A home. A few bairns.’ The typically brusque response sent a shadow across his wife’s face, which naturally he missed. His great hand wandered across her distended stomach, anticipating the gender of the new bulge, the first of a new strain of Deventers. Their combined families, eleven of his by his late wife and seven of hers by two previous husbands, would total nineteen by summer.

Lady Honoria nestled into him, covering his hand with her own. ‘But she has a home here…’ she turned her face up to him, suddenly unsure ‘…doesn’t she? She’s only nineteen, dearest, and she’s always been good at managing a household. Until we moved here to Sonning,’ she added as an afterthought. Lord Deventer’s household had not appreciated her expertise.

‘Well then, she can go down to Wheatley and manage that.’

‘What d’ye mean?’ Lady Honoria slowly turned within his arm, puzzled by his tone. ‘To Wheatley Abbey? There’s no one there, dear.’

‘Yes, there is. Gascelin will be there now, after the winter break. He sent a message up last week. There’ll be plenty of room for her in that big guesthouse, and she can make a start on the rooms in the New House ready for our move. We could be away from here in the autumn, if they both get a move on.’

His new wife turned away, glancing at her daughter’s lovely back with some scepticism. ‘You cannot be serious, Philip. I know you and Felice haven’t got to know each other too well yet, but I’ll not have her packed off down to Hampshire on her own to work with that man. There’d be trouble.’

‘Yes,’ Lord Deventer replied, unhelpfully, ‘but that man, as you call him, is the best surveyor and master builder this side of the Channel. Brilliant chap. And anyway, Hampshire’s only the next county, love, not exactly the other side of the world. She can always come back if she finds the task too daunting.’ He braced himself for his wife’s predictable defence of her beloved and only daughter.

‘Daunted? Felice? Never! But he’s not the easiest man to work alongside, is he? You know what a perfectionist he is.’

Lord Deventer had chosen Sir Leon Gascelin for just that quality and was only too well aware that the last thing he would appreciate would be someone like young Lady Felice Marwelle getting under his feet. However, there were ways of overcoming that problem.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘so is she, for that matter, and heaven knows the place is big enough for her to keep out of his way. He won’t want much to do with a lass like her. He was after Levina again when I last heard.’

‘Levina! Tch! Half the court is after Levina.’ Hearing the amusement in his voice she quickly closed the window against his impending laughter. ‘You’ll send a message to prepare the best rooms for her? She’ll be comfortable, Philip?’

‘Of course she will, love,’ he said, bending to kiss her downy neck. ‘I’ll send a man down today. She’ll be in her element.’

‘Today? So soon?’

‘Yes, love. No time like the present, is there?’

If only the daughter had been so pliable.

The daughter, Lady Felice Marwelle, had surprised her stepfather by an unusual co-operation verging on enthusiasm over a means of escape that had occupied her mind almost incessantly in recent weeks. But her expectations of the comfort promised by her mother were dashed against the large stone gatehouse leading to Wheatley Abbey through which a large and untidy building site was framed.

The elegant but sour-faced steward held his ground, clinging to his staff with one hand and the wide spiked collar of a mastiff with the other. ‘I received no orders from Sir Leon about a visit,’ he said. Though his tone was courteous, his finality might have dismayed most of those present.

But the young lady astride the bay mare was remarkably steadfast, giving back stare for stare from large brown eyes rimmed with thick black lashes, beating down the watery pale ones that time had faded. ‘That has no bearing whatever on the fact that I am here, now, with thirty members of Lord Deventer’s household and a fair proportion of his possessions,’ she replied, coolly. ‘And in Sir Leon’s absence you may take your orders from myself, Lady Felice Marwelle, Lord Deventer’s stepdaughter. Is that good enough for you?’

‘Lady,’ the steward bowed stiffly, ‘I beg your pardon, but the fact is that Sir Leon—’

‘The fact is, steward, that we have been on the road for two days, at the end of which I was assured there would be lodging in the guesthouse available to us. Are rooms available or not?’

In truth, she was beginning to doubt whether the guesthouse would be the most suitable place to stay, after all, for although the fourteenth-century complex of buildings appeared to be more than adequate, they were far too close to the building site for comfort.

It was inevitable, of course, that any reconstruction work on this scale would cause some considerable mess, and although the abbey’s original stones were being re-used, the sheer scale of the undertaking had turned the whole of the abbey precinct, once so well kept and peaceful, into a waste land. The large area between the gatehouse, guesthouse, abbey church and its old monastic buildings were stacked with stone and timber, scaffolding and hoists, with mounds of grit and sand, with the lean-to thatched sheds of the masons, carpenters, plasterers and tilers.

Most of the workers had finished for the day, but a group of grimy and wide-eyed young labourers hung round to see who would win the argument, Thomas Vyttery, steward, or this saucy young lass on the bay mare. They gawped at her and her two maids appreciatively until their attention was diverted by the steward’s impressively muscular mastiff that suddenly noticed, through the legs of the lady’s horse, two grey deerhounds almost as large as donkeys, standing passively but with bristling crests and lowered heads. Taking him by surprise, the mastiff wrenched itself out of the steward’s grasp and fled for the safety of home with its tail between its legs, leaving the steward without his main prop.

‘My lady, may I be permitted to suggest that, before you make a decision’—he was nothing if not formal—‘you take a look at the inn in the village of Wheatley. You would have passed it on your way to the abbey. It’s quite…’

Lady Felice was not listening. She was looking over to the right, beyond the church, towards a group of ancient stone-built dwellings that must once have been used by the monks for eating and sleeping before the terrible years of the Dissolution had driven them out. The message that Lord Deventer had received last week from his master builder and surveyor, Sir Leon Gascelin, had said that some of the rooms in the converted abbey would soon be ready for furnishing. Surely those must be the ones he meant.

‘Those buildings over there. That must be Lord Deventer’s New House, I take it?’

The steward did not need to look. ‘The men are still working on that house, m’lady, and Sir Leon himself will be moving into the old Abbot’s House within the next day or two.’

‘Mr…?’

‘Thomas Vyttery, m’lady.’

‘Mr Vyttery, hand me the keys to the Abbot’s House, if you please.’

The steward’s voice quavered in alarm. ‘By your leave, lady, I cannot do that. I shall be dismissed.’

‘You will indeed, Mr Vyttery, if you refuse to obey me. I shall see that Lord Deventer replaces you with someone who knows more about hospitality than you do. Now, do as I say.’ She held out a hand. ‘No, don’t try to remove any of the keys. I want the complete set—kitchens, stables, the lot. Thank you.’

In furiously silent remonstration, the impotent steward turned away without another word. Behind Felice, the cavalcade of waggons, carts, sumpter-horses, grooms and carters, cooks and kitchen-lads, household servants and officials lumbered into motion, creaking and swaying past the building site through ruts white with stone chippings and lime.

The fourteenth-century Abbot’s House was on the far side of the abbey buildings within the curve of the river, far removed from the builders’ clutter and larger than Felice had imagined. There were signs of extensive alterations and additions, enlarged windows and a stately carved porch with steps leading up to an iron-bound door.

Sending the carts, waggons and pack-horses round to the stableyard at the rear, Felice handed the large bunch of keys to her house-steward, Mr Peale, whose meteoric rise to the position had been effected especially for this venture. Still in his early thirties, Henry Peale took his duties very seriously, ushering his mistress up the steps into a series of pine-panelled rooms with richly patterned ceilings of white plaster that still held the pungent aroma of newness. In the fading light, it was only possible for them to estimate the rough dimensions, but the largest one on the first floor would do well enough for Lady Felice’s first night, and the rest of the household would bed down wherever they could.

It was testimony to the young lady’s managerial skills that a household, quickly assembled from her stepfather’s staff at Sonning in Berkshire, so soon worked like a well-oiled machine to unload whatever was necessary for their immediate comfort and leave the rest on the carts until they knew where to put it. There was no question of assembling the lady’s bed, but when the candles and cressets were lit at last, the well-swept rooms held a welcome that had so far been denied them. So much for her stepfather’s assurances of comfort, she muttered to Lydia, her eldest maid.

‘We’ll soon have it ship-shape,’ Lydia said, drawing the unpinned sleeves over her mistress’s wrists. ‘But where’s Sir Leon got to? Wasn’t he supposed to have been expecting us?’

‘Heaven knows. Obviously not where Lord Deventer thinks he is. More to the point, what’s happened to the message he was sent?’ She stepped out of her petticoat, beneath which she had worn a pair of soft leather breeches to protect her thighs from the chafing of the saddle. ‘You and Elizabeth take the room next door, Lydie. I’ll have the hounds in here with me.’

Perhaps it was these vexed questions that made her come instantly to life long before dawn and respond with a puzzled immediacy to her new surroundings. To investigate the moonlight flooding in broken ripples through the lattice, she crossed the room to the half-open window, watched by the two sprawling hounds. The scent of wood-ash hung in the air and in the silence she could hear her heart beating.

The moonlit landscape was held together by an assortment of textured greys that there had been no time for her to remember as trees or groups of sleeping water-fowl. A cloud slid beneath the moon reflected in the glassy river below and, as she watched, a series of counter-ripples slid across the water, chased by another, and then another. Across on the far side where the darkness was most dense, a disturbance broke the surface and, even before her eyes had registered it, she knew that it was a boat, that someone who rowed on the river had been caught by the moon. Then the boat disappeared, towing behind it a wide V of ripples.

Wide awake, she pulled on her leather breeches and her fine linen chemise, tucking it in and hurriedly buckling on the leather belt to hold them together. Then, without bothering to look for her boots, she commanded the hounds to stay and let herself silently out of the room. The wide staircase led down to the passageway where the front doors were locked and bolted. They were new and well oiled, allowing her to exit without attracting the attention of the sleeping servants. She was now almost directly below her own chamber window and only a few yards from the riverbank that dropped to a lower level, dotted with hawthorns and sleeping ducks.

She followed the river away from the Abbot’s House in the direction of the boat, her bare feet making no sound on the grass. She kept low, putting the trees between herself and the river, passing the kitchens and the tumbledown wall of the kitchen garden and eventually finding herself on a grassy track that led to a wooden bridge and from there to the mill on the opposite side.

A small rowing boat was tied up below the bridge and, as there was no other, she assumed it to be the one she had seen, suggesting that whoever had left it there was probably in the mill. The miller, perhaps, returning from a late night with friends?

The owls had ceased their hooting as she retraced her steps, the moonlit abbey now appearing from a different angle, the great tower of the church rising well above every rooftop. Rather than return by exactly the same route, she was drawn towards a gap in the old kitchen-garden wall that bordered the track, its stones paving a way into the place where monastic gardeners had once grown their vegetables. It was now impossible for her to make out any shape of plot or pathway, but she picked her way carefully towards the silhouetted gables of the Abbot’s House, brushing the tops of the high weeds with her palms.

A slight sound behind her made her jump, and she turned, ready for flight, only her lightning reaction saving her from a hand that shot forward to grasp at her arm. She felt the fingers touch the linen of her sleeve, heard the breath of the one who would hold her, and then she swerved and fled, leaping and bounding like a hare without knowing which part of the wall ahead held the means of her escape.

She was tall, for a woman, but her pursuer’s legs were longer than hers and she was forced to use every device to evade him, swerving and zigzagging, ducking and doubling, hoping by these means to make him stumble. But it was she who stumbled on the rough ground that had not been cultivated for some twenty years or more, and that hesitation was enough for the man to catch her around the waist and swing her sideways, throwing her off-balance. She went crashing down into a bed of wild parsley and, before she had time to draw breath, his weight was over her, pressing her face-down into the weeds and forcing an involuntary yelp out of her lungs.

That was all she allowed herself, knowing that to reveal her identity might make her a greater prize than she already was. Let him think her a servant, a silly maid meeting her lover. It was not until he spoke that she realised how she must have appeared.

‘Now, my lad, that was a merry little dance, eh? Let’s introduce ourselves then, shall we? Then you can answer a few questions.’ The voice that breathed softly into the back of her neck was nothing like a common labourer’s, nor did he seem to be out of breath, but more like one who had enjoyed the chase, knowing he would win. He eased himself off her shoulders to kneel lightly astride her hips. ‘Your name, lad?’ he said.

Felice clenched her teeth, waiting for the persuasive blow to fall. This was something she had not reckoned on. Her face was deep in the shadow of long stalks and feathery leaves where the moonlight could not reach, her cheek pressed against the night-time coolness of the earth, which was to her advantage as soon as she felt his response to her silence.

‘All right, lad, there are other ways.’

His hands were deft around her waist, searching her lower half for weapons and hesitating over the soft fabric of the chemise tucked into the belt. ‘Hey! What’s this, then?’ he said more softly. Slowly, his hands moved upwards, spanning her back, his fingertips already well out of bounds. The next move would be too far.

Taking advantage of his shift in position, Felice twisted wildly, flailing backwards with one arm to hit hard at the side of his head with a crack that sent a wave of pain through her wrist. It took him by surprise, and although he was quick to recover his balance, it gave her the time she needed to roll beneath him and to push hard with one shoulder, using every ounce of force she could summon.

He swayed sideways but caught her again before she could free her legs from his weight, and then she fought madly, desperately, knowing that her boy’s guise was not, after all, to be her safety. In panic, she tore at his shirt and sleeveless leather jerkin, missing his face but raking his neck and forearms and finally sinking her teeth into the base of his thumb as he grabbed at her wrists. She felt him flinch at that, giving her yet another chance to twist away, kicking and beating, desperate to be free of him.

She rolled, lashing out, but he rolled with her, over and over through the spring growth of chick-weed and willow-herb and she was sure, without seeing his face, that he was actually enjoying her efforts, even while being hard pressed to contain them. At last she was stopped by an ancient half-buried wheelbarrow, and she lay, panting and exhausted, in an embrace so powerful that it hurt her ribs, immobilised by strong legs that encircled hers, her back against his chest and her wrists held fast beneath her chin by one of his hands.

She felt his chest shake in silent laughter while his free hand took her heavy plait and slipped the ribbon off the end, combing her thick hair loose with his fingers and letting fall a silken sheet of it across her face.

‘There now, my beauty. Shall we stop pretending now. Eh? Fleet of foot and sharp of claw and tooth. That’s hardly a lad’s way now, is it? You’re going to tell me who you are, then?’

Her resolve to remain silent wavered while her mind sought a quick answer to the question of his intentions; whether he would have as many qualms about violating a noblewoman as much as a village lass. Yet there was something about his persistent interrogation that suggested some other purpose behind his violent pursuit. Surely he would not have chased a lad with such ferocity if he’d had only rape in mind. But having discovered he held a woman, would he now change his purpose?

Panic, anger and dread screamed through her mind and left a sickly void at the pit of her stomach, for now his hand had come to rest upon the large silver buckle of her belt, loosening the thong in a leisurely mockery of her weakness.

‘No,’ she whispered, writhing. ‘No…please!’

The hand stopped, but the voice was smiling. ‘No? No, what? You’re not going to tell me who I’ve captured? Are you a moon-spirit, perhaps?’

‘No,’ she whispered again. Having broken her silence, it seemed necessary now to insist. ‘Let me go. Please.’

He spoke teasingly against her ear, his words touching her. ‘Then I require some kind of proof that you’re mortal, don’t you agree? Do you have any suggestion of a harmless nature? Nothing too…irreparable?’

Holy saints! What was he talking about? Suggestions of a harmless nature? Nothing irreparable? Angered, obdurate, she remained silent, now becoming aware of the throbbing in her wrist. She tried twisting to bite at any part of him, but his hand tightened its grip as she writhed, his free hand gently easing the linen chemise from the safety of her breeches.

She stopped, again paralysed with foreboding.

‘So, tell me who sent you here. Who are you working for?’ His hand was still, waiting on the bare skin of her midriff, and when she again refused to answer, he shifted slightly, settling her sideways against him and wedging her head into his shoulder with one iron forearm.

Looking back on this episode, she was to wonder why she had not screamed, why she had suddenly been aware of her heart fluttering instead of beating, or why the dread had suddenly become tinged with a shade of illicit excitement. It was dark, she was to excuse herself later, and she had not been able to see when his mouth covered hers, and then all proper maidenly resistance was obscured by longings that had lain dormant over the long dark months of autumn and winter, waiting to be rekindled.

It was no excuse, of course, but it would have to serve in the absence of anything more persuasive. What was more, it was the certainty that she would never again encounter this stranger on any level that freed her mind and body to his direction. If she had believed, even for the space of one second, that they would ever meet again, she would have killed him rather than give what he took so expertly, what she gave without further protest.

She was not inexperienced, but this man was a master, claiming her mind, her total participation from start to finish. She was hardly aware when his hand moved upwards to capture her breasts and to explore them in minutest detail while his lips held hers in willing submission, suspending all resistance with cords of ecstasy. She moaned and pushed against him, feeling the brush of his hair on her eyelids, his warm hand caressing and fondling, her own hands now freed and hanging numbly out of harm’s way, allowing him free access.

In the far distant reaches of her mind, a comparison stirred and settled again, dimly reminding her to take, while she had the chance. So she took, greedily and unsparing, surprising him by her need that, had he known it, had never before reached these dimensions. How could he have known what part he was playing in her desperation?

Responding immediately, he tipped her backwards on to the cool dark bed of greenery and lay on her, whispering to her like a voice of conscience that she must think…think. Unbelievably, he told her to think what she was doing.

It was a familiar word to her, one which she had not thought to hear again in this connection, and the senses that moments before had been submerged beneath a roaring storm of emotion now emerged, chilled and shaking, drawing her attention to the prickly coldness at her back and the pale shocked stare of the moon. Tears blinded her, shattering the white orb into a thousand pieces.

‘Let me go,’ she whispered yet again. ‘Let me up now, I beg you.’

‘Who are you? Tell me, for pity’s sake, woman.’

She turned her head away, suddenly shamed by his limbs on hers, his hand slowly withdrawing, leaving her breast bleak and unloved. ‘No, I’m nobody. Let me go.’ The tears dripped off her chin.

His sigh betrayed disappointment and bewilderment, but there was to be no return to the former roles of captor and captive. He rolled away, lying motionless in the dark as Felice scrambled unsteadily to her feet and hobbled away with neither a word nor backward glance, wincing at the pains that now beset her like demons, clutching her chemise in both hands.

She could not know, nor did she turn to see whether he followed, nor did she know how she found her way out of that vast walled space and through the stone arch that had once been closed off by wooden gates. All she knew was that, suddenly, it was there, that the rough ground had changed to cobbles that hurt her feet unbearably, and that she used the pointed finials on the rooftop to show her where the Abbot’s House was.

Predictably, Lydia scolded her mistress on all counts, especially for leaving the two deerhounds, Fen and Flint, behind. ‘Whatever were you thinking of, love?’ she whispered, anxious not to wake young Elizabeth. ‘Why didn’t you tell him who you were? He could have been somebody set to guard the site at nights. Here, hold your other foot up.’

Shivering, despite the woollen blanket, Felice obeyed but felt bound to defend herself. ‘How could he be? All those who work here would know of our arrival. He’d know who I was, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t guess, and that shows he’s a stranger to the place. Ouch! My wrist hurts, Lydie.’

‘I’ll send Elizabeth to find some comfrey as soon as it gets light. Now, that’ll have to do till we can have some water sent up. Into bed, love.’

Bandaged and soothed and with a streak of dawn already on the horizon, Felice gave in to the emotions that surged uncontrollably within her, awakened after their seven-month suppression. She had shared her heartache with no one, though faithful Lydia had been aware of her relationship with Father Timon, Lord Deventer’s chaplain and Felice’s tutor, and of the manner of his death. Now this stranger had forced her to confront the pain of an aching emptiness and to discover that it was, in fact, full to overflowing.

The revelation had both astounded her and filled her with guilt; what should have been kept sacred to Timon’s memory had been squandered in a moment of sheer madness. Well, no one would know of that deplorable lapse, not even dear Lydia, and the man himself would now be many miles away.

But try as she would to replace that anonymous ruffian with the gentle Timon, the imprint of unknown hands on her, ruthlessly intimate, sent tremors of self-reproach through her aching body that were indistinguishable from bliss. The taste of his lips and their bruising intensity returned time and again to overcome all comparisons until, once again, she sobbed quietly into her pillow at the knowledge that that memory also would have to last for the rest of her life.

By first light, the servants were already astir under the direction of Mr Peale and Mr Dawson, the clerk of the kitchen from whom Lydia had obtained buckets of hot water. Elizabeth, a blonde-haired, scatterbrained maid of sixteen and the apple of Mr Dawson’s discerning eye, had been sent off to find some comfrey for Felice’s bruises while Felice herself, examining her upper arms and wrists, found exactly what she expected to find, rows of blue fingertip marks that were visible to Lydia from halfway across the room.

‘Merciful heavens, love! I think you’ll have to tell Sir Leon of this when he returns,’ she said. ‘It’s something he ought to know about.’

‘By the time Sir Leon Gascelin returns,’ Felice replied, caustically, ‘this lot will have disappeared.’ She stirred the water in the wooden bucket with her feet, enjoying the comfort it gave to her cuts and scratches. ‘And by the sound of him,’ she went on, ‘my well-being will probably be the last thing on his mind.’

‘Lord Deventer said that of him? Surely not,’ said Lydia, frowning.

‘Not in so many words, but the implication was there, right enough. Keep out of his way. Don’t interfere with his plans. And above all, remember that he’s the high and mighty surveyor to whom we must all bow and scrape. Except that he’s not available to bow and scrape to, so that gives us all time to practise, doesn’t it? Pass me that comb, Lydie.’ Thoughtfully, she untangled the long straight tresses, recalling how it had recently been undone by a man’s fingers. ‘I should wash it,’ she mumbled.

A shout reached them from the courtyard below, then another, a deep angry voice that cracked across the general clatter of feet, hooves, buckets and boxes. Silence dropped like a stone.

Another piercing bark. ‘Where, exactly?’

The reply was too quiet for them to hear, but Lydia mouthed the missing words, pointing a finger to the floor, her eyes wide with dismay.

‘That doesn’t sound like the steward,’ whispered Felice.

Lydia crossed to the window but she was too late, and by the time she reached the door it had been flung open by a man who had to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the low medieval lintel. He straightened, immediately, his hand still on the latch, his advance suddenly halted by the sight of a stunningly beautiful woman sitting with her feet in a bucket, dressed in little except a sleeveless kirtle of fine linen, half-open down the front. It would have been impossible to say whose surprise was the greater, his or theirs.

‘Get out!’ Felice snapped, making no effort to dive for cover. If this was a colleague of the miserable steward, Thomas Vyttery, then his opinion of her was of no consequence. Yet this man had the most insolent manner.

He made no move to obey the command, but took in every detail of the untidy room as he bit back at her. ‘This is my room! You get out!’

It took a while, albeit a short one, for his words to register, for the only other person who could lay claim to the Abbot’s House was Sir Leon Gascelin, and he was known to be away from home.

The man was tall and broad-chested, the embodiment of the power that she and Lydia had facetiously been applauding. His dark hair was a straight and glossy cap that jutted wilfully out over his forehead in spikes, close-cropped but unruly enough to catch on the white lace-edged collar of his open-necked shirt. Felice noticed the ambience of great physical strength and virility that surrounded him, even while motionless, and the way that Fen and Flint had gone to greet him with none of the natural hostility she would have preferred them to exhibit in the face of such rudeness.

He caressed the head of one of them with a strong well-shaped hand that showed a scattering of dark hairs along the back, while his straight brows drew together above narrowed eyes in what might have passed for either disapproval or puzzlement.

Felice’s retort was equally adamant. ‘This house belongs to Lord Deventer and I am here by his permission. As you see, I am making no plans to move out again. Now, if you require orders to bully my servants, I suggest you go and seek Sir Leon Gascelin, my lord’s surveyor. That should occupy your time more fruitfully. You may go.’ Leaning forward, she swished the water with her fingertips. ‘Is this the last of the hot water, Lydie?’

Lydia’s reply was drowned beneath the man’s icy words. ‘I don’t need to find him. I am Sir Leon Gascelin.’

Slowly, Felice raised her head to look at him through a curtain of hair, the hem of which dripped with curving points of water. She had no idea of the picture of loveliness she presented, yet on impulse her hand reached out sideways for her linen chemise, the one she had worn yesterday, gathering it to her in a loose bundle below her chin. Promptly, Lydia came forward to drape a linen sheet around her shoulders.

‘Then I have the advantage of you, Sir Leon,’ Felice said over the loud drumming of her heart. ‘I was here first.’

‘Then you can be the first to go, lady. I require you to be out of here by mid-day. My steward tells me that you call yourself Lady Felice Marwelle, but Lord Deventer never mentioned anyone of that name in my hearing. Do you have proof of your relationship to his lordship? Or are you perhaps his mistress with the convenient sub-title of stepdaughter?’ He looked around him at the piles of clothes, pillows, canvas bags and mattresses more typical of a squatter’s den than a lady’s bedchamber. ‘You’d not be the first, you know.’

Outraged by his insolence, Felice shook with fury. ‘My name, sir, is Lady Felice Marwelle, daughter of the late Sir Paul Marwelle of Henley-on-Thames who was the first husband of my mother, Lady Honoria Deventer. Lord Deventer is my mother’s third husband and therefore my second stepfather. I am not, and never will be, any man’s mistress, nor am I in the habit of proving my identity to my stepfather’s boorish acquaintances. His message would have made that unnecessary, but it appears that that went the same way as his recollection that he had a stepdaughter named Felice. He assured me that he sent a message three…four days ago for you to prepare rooms in the guest…’ She could have bitten her tongue.

‘So you decided on the Abbot’s House instead. And there was no message, lady.’

‘Then we share a mutual shock at the sight of each other, for which I am as sorry as you are, Sir Leon,’ she said with biting sarcasm. She felt the unremitting examination of his eyes which she knew must have missed nothing by now: her swollen eyelids, her bruises, her soaking feet, all adding no doubt to his misinterpretation of her role. Defensively, she tried to justify herself whilst regretting the need to do so. ‘I chose this dwelling, sir, because I am not used to living on a building-site, despite Lord Deventer’s recommendations. Whether you received a message or not, I am here to prepare rooms in the New House next door ready for his lordship’s occupation in the autumn. And I had strict instructions to keep well out of your way, which I could hardly do with any degree of success if our two households were thrown together, could I? Even a child could see that,’ she said, looking out of the window towards the roof of the church. ‘Now will you please remove yourself from my chamber, Sir Leon, and allow me to finish dressing? As you see, we are still in the middle of unpacking.’

Instead of leaving, Sir Leon closed the door behind him and came further into the room where the light from one of the large mullioned windows gave her the opportunity to see more of his extreme good looks, his abundant physical fitness. His long legs were well-muscled, encased in brown hose and knee-high leather riding boots; paned breeches of soft brown kid did nothing to disguise slim hips around which hung a sword-belt, and Felice assumed that he had stormed round here immediately on his return from some nearby accommodation, for otherwise it would have taken him longer to reach an out-of-the-way place like Wheatley.

‘No,’ he said, in answer to her request. ‘I haven’t finished yet, lady. You’ll not dismiss me the way you dismissed my steward yesterday.’

Instantly, she rose to the bait. ‘If your steward, Sir Leon, knows no better than to refuse both hospitality and welcome to travellers after a two-day journey, then it’s time he was replaced. Clearly he’s not up to the position.’

‘If Thomas Vyttery is replaced at all, lady, it will be for handing you the keys to this house.’

‘That was his only saving grace. The keys remain with me.’

‘This is no place for women, not for a good few months. We’ve barely started again after winter and there are dozens of men on the site,’ he said, leaning against the window recess and glancing down into the courtyard below. It swarmed with men, but they were her servants, not his builders. ‘And I have enough trouble getting them to keep their minds on the job without a bevy of women appearing round every corner.’

‘Then put blinkers on them, sir!’ she snapped. ‘The direction of your men’s interest is not my concern. I’ve been sent down here to fulfil a task and I intend to do it. Surely my presence cannot be the worst that’s ever happened to you in your life. You appear to have survived, so far.’

‘And you, Lady Felice Marwelle, have an extremely well-developed tongue for one so young. I begin to see why your stepfather was eager to remove you to the next county if you used it on him so freely, though he might have spared a thought for me while he was about it. He might have done even better to find you a husband with enough courage to tame you. I’d do it myself if I had the time.’

‘Hah! You’re sure it’s only time you lack, Sir Leon? I seem to have heard that excuse more than once when skills are wanting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my feet are wrinkling like paper, and I must hone my tongue in private.’

It was not to be, however. Enter Mistress Elizabeth bearing a large armful of feathery green plants, her face flushed and prettily eager. Without taking stock of the situation in the chamber or sensing any of the tension, she headed directly for her mistress and dumped the green bundle on to her lap. ‘My lady, look! Here’s chervil for your bruises. There’s a mass of it in the old kitchen garden. There, now!’ She looked round, newly aware of the unenthusiastic audience and searching for approval.

Felice looked down at the offering. ‘Chervil, Elizabeth?’

‘Comfrey, Elizabeth,’ said Lydia. ‘You were told to gather comfrey.’

‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth, flatly.

‘You have injuries, lady?’ said Sir Leon. ‘I didn’t know that.’ His deep voice adopted a conciliatory tone that made Felice look up sharply, her eyes suddenly wary.

‘No, sir. Nothing to speak of. The journey yesterday, that’s all.’ In a last effort to persuade him to leave, she stood up, holding out the greenery to Lydia and taking a thoughtless step forward.

She went crashing down, tipping the bucket over and pitching herself face-first into a flood of tepid water, flinging the chervil into Sir Leon’s path. He and Lydia leapt forward together, but he was there first with his hands beneath her bare armpits, heaving her upright between his straddled legs. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, he lifted her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a child and stood with her in the centre of the room as the two maids mopped at the flood around his feet.

Felice was rarely at a loss for words, but the shock of the fall, her wet and dishevelled state, and this arrogant man’s unaccustomed closeness combined to make any coherent sound difficult, her sense of helplessness heightened by her sudden plunge from her high-horse to the floor.

His hands were under her knees and almost over one breast that pushed unashamedly proud and pink through the wet fabric; his face, only inches from hers, held an expression of concern bordering on consternation. He was watching her closely. Inspecting her. ‘You hurt?’ he said.

She peered at him through strands of wet hair, shaking her head and croaking one octave lower. ‘Let me go, sir. Please.’

He hesitated, then looked around the room. ‘Where?’ he said.

‘Anywhere.’

For a long moment—time waited upon them—their eyes locked in a confusion of emotions that ranged through disbelief, alarm and, on Felice’s part, outright hostility. It was natural that she should have missed the admiration in his, for he did his best to conceal it, but she was close enough now to see his muscular neck where a long red scratch ran from beneath his chin and disappeared into the open neck of his shirt. His jaw was square and strong and his mouth, unsmiling but with lips parted as if about to speak, had a tiny red mark on the lower edge where perhaps his lover had bitten it in the height of passion. His breath reached her, sending a wave of familiar panic into her chest, and as her gaze wandered over his features on their own private search, he continued to watch her with a grey unwavering scrutiny, noting her bruised wrists before holding her eyes again.

Her gaze flinched and withdrew to the loosely hanging points of his doublet that should have tied it together; the aiglets that tipped each tie were spear-heads of pure gold. One of them was missing. She took refuge in the most inconsequential details while her breath stayed uncomfortably in her lungs, refusing to move and gripped by a terrible fear that seeped into every part of her, reviving a recent nightmare. She fought it, terrified of accepting its meaning.

His grip on her body tightened, pulling her closely in to him, then he strode over to the tumbled mattress where she had lain that night and placed her upon it, bending low enough for his forelock to brush against her eyelids. He stood upright, looking down at her and combing a hand through his hair that slithered back into the ridges like a tiled roof. Without another word, he picked up the grimy doe-skin breeches she had worn in the garden, dropped them into her lap and strode past the sobbing Elizabeth and bustling Lydia and out of the room, without bothering to close the door. They heard his harsh shout to someone below them, and the two deerhounds stood with ears pricked, listening to the last phases of his departure.

Mistress Lydia was first to recover. ‘For pity’s sake, Elizabeth, stop snivelling and help me with this mess, will you? What’s that you’re fiddling with? Let me see.’

‘I don’t know. I found it under the chervil in the kitchen garden.’ She held out her palm upon which lay a tiny golden spear-head with a hole through its shaft.

Lydia picked it up, turning it over in the light before handing it to her mistress. ‘An aiglet,’ she said. ‘Somebody lost it. Now, lass…’ she turned back to Elizabeth ‘…you get that wet mess off the floor and throw it out. Plants and men are rarely what they seem: that chervil is cow-parsley.’