Читать книгу His Duty, Her Destiny - Juliet Landon - Страница 7

I n the cosily panelled solar hung with tapestries and filled with morning light from a large pointed window, the sound of bells from St Helen’s Priory next door drowned out the constant thudding of Nicola’s heart as the two young maids went about the task of tending her wound. The thick oaken door had been locked and bolted since the departure of the unwelcome guest more as a gesture of defiance than necessity, for none of the three expected him to return, though the locks and bolts of Nicola’s heart could tell a different story.

For many years, the thought of marriage into the house of Melrose had seemed too remote to be real, especially during her father’s long absences from home when, motherless, Nicola had been left to run wild with her brothers, cared for by a large household and one aged nurse. Eventually, he had sent her to York to join the household of another noble family, there to learn the manners and graces required of all such women aspiring to good marriages. Nicola’s aspirations, however, were to avoid one marriage at all costs, the one to Fergus Melrose that her father was set on. When her father had died fourteen months ago, leaving her a sizeable income from property and his comfortable house in London, she believed that at last she would be allowed to manage her own affairs.

Stripped of the lad’s clothes and sitting almost naked on her bed, she gritted her teeth at the next application of the maid’s special salve, letting her breath out slowly. ‘Mannerless churl!’ she hissed. ‘Still as full of himself as ever. I should have worn my dirk and stabbed him with it. That would’ve wiped the smug look off his face. Ouch!’ She grabbed at Rosemary’s hand. ‘Stop now.’

‘And didn’t ye notice his fine figure, then?’ said Lavender, rinsing out a pink-stained cloth in a bowl of rosewater. ‘There’s many a maid would like a wee while in the dark with such a one, mistress. I didn’t see any in York with a face as comely as that. Nowhere near.’

‘Nor in London, either,’ said Rosemary.

‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ said Nicola, pulling the fine linen chemise over her head and sucking in her breath at the touch of it upon her skin. ‘There’s nobody you’ve seen who’d have done this to me, either, and then walked away.’ The part in between was too shameful to speak of.

Yet she remembered only too well his eyes and the flood of excitement and heat that had suffused her face and neck at his shameful scrutiny, and that almost imperceptible moment when she saw him struggling to stop himself from touching, when his voice had thickened like deep velvet even while saying something stupid about a scar. It was not only her wound his eyes had examined. She knew. She had been watching them. She had seen them widen, and his lips part.

Slowly, carefully, she eased her chemise into place and then sat so still and quiet that Rosemary had to look hard to see if there were tears again. She was not weeping, but in answer to the gentle enquiry, Nicola kept her hands close against her breast while a frown deepened in the centre of her lovely brow. ‘He meant it,’ she whispered. ‘He meant to hurt me. Again. Nothing’s changed, has it? Except that now he’s bigger and stronger than ever.’

Lavender and Rosemary, their partnership being one of life’s coincidences, had been with Nicola for ten years since they were fifteen and eighteen respectively. Now they came to sit upon the soft coverlet at the end of her large curtained bed to offer their mistress some advice.

‘Of course things have changed,’ said Lavender, settling her large open blue eyes solemnly upon Nicola’s hands. ‘You’re obviously not the scruffy little lass you were when he last saw you, eleven…twelve years ago, are you?’ She reached behind her for the burnished steel mirror and passed it to Nicola. ‘Take a look. That’s a woman he’ll not have seen the like of in all his…what…thirty years, is it?’ It was twenty-nine, but addition was not Lavender’s strongest subject.

Nicola grimaced, pushing the mirror away. ‘Oh, you’re prejudiced,’ she said. ‘But it’s made no difference, has it? And if my brother has invited him here to revive all that marriage nonsense, he can think again. He knows perfectly well what I feel about it. There was no formal betrothal and I’ll not be bound to him. Nor will I ever be. Not for his father’s sake, or mine.’

‘So now,’ said Rosemary, smoothing her white apron seductively over her thighs, ‘you have to show him how you’ve changed, even if he hasn’t.’ Privately, she doubted that Sir Fergus had cut such a dash at the age of sixteen, but there was no way of knowing. ‘You have fine manners now, and you know how to give a man the cold shoulder when he doesn’t please you. And if you were to wear your finest kirtle when you go down to meet them, he’s going to get the message, isn’t he? Perhaps it was the lad’s clothing that made him behave so badly. So what will it be, the grey satin? The red? The green silk with ribbons?’

‘Not green. That’s the colour of hope. Sanguine, I think.’

Lavender’s wide blue eyes met Rosemary’s hazel ones long enough to transmit a shadow of alarm. Blood-red might be appropriate, but it was hardly the colour of compromise, was it? ‘Sanguine it is, then,’ she said.

‘And may the best man win,’ murmured Rosemary to herself.

As both Nicola and her two maids had intended, the preparations of the last hour stopped the two men’s conversation in mid-sentence, though George might have predicted the sheer amazement that Fergus betrayed before managing to marshall his features once more into the customary inscrutable mask.

The plaited hair was now quite hidden beneath an extravagant confection of floating veils that fluttered like a massive butterfly around Nicola’s head, kept in place by dagger-long pins and scattered with seed-pearls. The tomboy clothes had been replaced by a blood-red damask gown with wide floor-length sleeves and fur linings that touched the hem, sweeping the ground behind her. Beneath her breasts, a wide velvet sash revealed the contours of her lovely body and, because she had something to conceal, a richly jewelled collar covered her bosom, winking with diamonds and rubies. And for the second time, Nicola could feel Fergus Melrose looking at her without the usual disdain.

She smiled at George, holding out her arms for his greeting. ‘Lovely to see you,’ she said. ‘How are Lotti and the children?’ With a graceful arc of her body she put up her face to be kissed, touching her brother’s mulberry-brocaded arm and approving his cote-hardie with an up-and-down glance. ‘This is nice. Is it new?’

George understood the snub to their guest, exerting a gentle reproof. ‘Nick,’ he said, ‘you know why Sir Fergus has come today at my invitation. I believe you’ve already met this morning.’

She had not greeted him then, and she would not do so now. ‘Oh, I know what this is all about, George dear,’ she said, ‘though you should have given me some warning. I could have been out.’ Purposely ambiguous, she left it to them to decide on her meaning. ‘As it is, I have no intention of discussing plans for my betrothal before strangers. I’m sorry you’ve spent your valuable time for so little reward, Sir Fergus, but perhaps you’ll take a glass of malmsey before you go, and tell us all about your adventures. You must find London so very dull.’

‘Nicola,’ said George, firmly, ‘Sir Fergus is hardly a stranger to either of us and I think he deserves your consideration, now he’s taken the trouble to appear. Surely we can discuss this like adults?’

Until then, she had avoided looking at Sir Fergus, though she could have described his fashionable attire from the peacock-feathered hat down to the soft kid boots decorated with bone toggles, the jewelled dagger and the tasselled pouch at his belt. He disturbed her now as much as he had ever done, and though she had been rehearsing what to say for the past hour, the tightness in her lungs robbed them of the power she had intended. Now, she was aware that she had provoked him, for he pulled back his shoulders, frowning.

‘I can reply to that,’ he said, ignoring Nicola’s expression of bored resignation. ‘You have every right to be vexed by my long absence, my lady, but the reasons are simple enough. My life has not been exactly to do with as I pleased these last few years. I was at sea with my father until recently, putting me out of touch with almost everyone, then attending to my family since my return. You’ve not been in London long either, so I understand, and before that you were some years in York. Hardly the best circumstances to pursue that duty to our fathers, was it? No one regrets more than I that I was not able to visit my friends in the last few years, believe me.’

‘I am not in the least vexed by your lengthy absence, Sir Fergus. I only wish it could have been longer still. And it makes little difference whether I believe you or not.’ Nicola raised her eyes no further than the pea-sized buttons on his doublet. ‘The plain truth is that after years of total silence, during which you could presumably have married several times over, your sudden appearance here suggests desperation rather than commitment. You can hardly expect me to be flattered that you have been struck by a sudden call to duty. Were there no other ancient families to whom you could attach yourself, or did your so-called duty to your father suddenly acquire a deeper meaning for you? Do tell me what I’ve done to deserve this unexpected burst of attention.’

‘Nicola!’ warned George.

But now she had the man’s full heed and, while it lasted, there was yet more she could say on the subject. ‘Let us not waste any more time on such a lovely day,’ she said, bunching her long skirts into a pregnant pile before her. ‘We all have more interesting things to do than talk about duty. When I choose a man to marry, he will be a nobleman with blood the same colour as my own, not a newly knighted provincial nobody with equally new coins in his pouch.’

She had a hand on the door-latch as she delivered this last appalling insult, and it was the horrified look on her brother’s face that made her hesitate. ‘Don’t worry, George dear. Our guest won’t be demanding rapiers at dawn on this occasion. Will you, Sir Fergus?’ Her huge dark eyes blazed with scorn into the hard grey steel of her adversary, and she knew that her hit had damaged him as much as his earlier one upon her, perhaps more so, and that he would do nothing to counter it. Not then, anyway.

The sharp clack of the latch hung heavily in the ensuing silence like the distant sound of lances shattering upon armour. No man would have escaped such a volley of insults with his life, and no woman would have walked from a room without leaving behind some kind of awareness that there was more to this than mere dislike of a man’s pedigree, however deeply embedded that had become.

‘I’m sorry, Ferg,’ said George. ‘I must have forgotten to tell her about your father. But still, she had no right to…tch! This is dreadful. I wish I’d asked Charlotte to be with us.’

Sir Fergus placed a hand over his friend’s arm. ‘I think we both expected that kind of reaction,’ he said. ‘If we didn’t, then we should have done. Don’t take it too personally.’

‘Even so, it looks as if her line-up of suitors has given her big ideas. She may well prefer a title, but, if so, that’s not the Nick I know. Give her another year, Ferg, and then see. Eh?’

Walking over to the window, Sir Fergus collected the two abandoned rapiers and leaned them against the wall. ‘No, I shall not wait,’ he said.

‘Oh…well…no, I can’t blame you, of course.’

‘I shall press on with it. I’m a fighting man and she’s a courageous woman to fight me back. We shall come to terms by and by, you’ll see.’

‘Well, I’m relieved to hear it. You were never one to give up easily, were you? Nevertheless, I shall go and speak to her. I’m determined you shall have a full apology before you leave.’

‘Not necessary, George.’

‘Of course it is, man. Help yourself to Nicola’s malmsey. I’ll be with you in a few moments.’

‘Nicola! Wait!’ George, Lord Coldyngham, called to the white butterfly disappearing round the bend of the passageway, striding over the stone-flagged floor towards her, though his request was ignored.

‘Oh, George,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘not again, please. I’ve heard enough on the subject to last me a year.’

Catching up with her before she reached the door to the garden, he ushered her sideways along the gravel path and into the bright greenness of new growth and vine-clad arbours. A circular fountain held centre stage, its jet of water cutting across the sun and scattering its light into sparkling droplets that pattered down upon the darting silver shapes beneath. Yellow king-cups clustered around the edge. ‘Nicola, you’ve gone too far,’ he said, severely.

She stopped and sat upon the wide stone edge of the fountain, trailing one hand in the water and looking up at him with feigned innocence. ‘And in future, George, would you mind allowing me to issue my own invitations? Would you and Lotti expect me to invite my friends to your home without telling you?’

‘I’m sorry. I sent him a message to meet me here. He came early, that’s all. Was he so discourteous to you that you had to insult him, a guest in your own home? That was not well done, Nick. Did you not know that his father was killed at sea scarce eight months ago?’

Nicola’s eyes clouded as she took her bottom lip between her teeth, halting the prepared riposte. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘When was I supposed to tell you?’ he said, crossly. ‘I thought you’d have heard it from your noble friends. They seem to have plenty of gossip about births, marriages, deaths and—’ He stopped, abruptly.

‘Yes? And affairs, you were about to say? Don’t try to wrong-foot me, George. You forgot. Admit it. At least he now knows, as you do too, that I’ve just given him no more or less than he damn well deserves. It would hardly have penetrated his thick skull, anyway.’ She turned her face away angrily, recalling that morning’s shameful episode. ‘He’s done far more than that to me and nobody ever demanded an apology from him. Monster!’

There was a quick unseen movement of her brother’s handsome eyebrows and a tightening of the lips to prevent a smile. He reached out a hand to clasp hers, well aware that there was much more to her hostility than she was saying.

‘George,’ she said, suspecting some imminent persuasion, ‘there’s really no more to be said.’ Sideways, she observed the long mulberry brocade cote-hardie with its precise pleats beneath the red leather belt. Everything about him proclaimed wealth and good breeding with never a trace of ostentation.

‘Yes, there is.’ He kept hold of her hand, and she knew that there was indeed more to be said and that she was not nearly so dismissive as she pretended to be. ‘In spite of the insults just now, Nick, Fergus is still willing to offer for you. He made a promise to his father when he was dying. Ferg was wounded in the same skirmish. They were fighting off pirates.’

‘Promise, fiddlesticks!’ she scoffed. ‘George, what nonsense.’ Her laughter did not last long, for she felt again the hard intimate pressure of Fergus’s body upon hers and knew instinctively that it could not have been the first time he had held a woman like that. Or exposed her breast, for that matter. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Whatever he’s told you, you’ve misunderstood. He no more wants to marry me than I do him, and if he’s told you different then he’s lying. There was never a moment when he could find a civil word to say to me, and most of the time I might not have been there at all. Why would he suddenly come and offer for my hand if not for links with the Coldynghams?’

It took little effort for her to remember the time she had placed her eleven-year-old hand in Fergus’s while he was looking the other way. Without a word or a smile, he had pulled his hand away as if it had been scalded, leaving her close to tears at an insensitivity she could not begin to understand. She had never forgotten the snub, nor had she ever repeated the attempt. Even now, when she might have been expected to know how an age difference of five years will eventually close and disappear, the recurring humiliation of being a female child trying to hold her own against older lads in their own peer group had stayed in her tender young psyche and refused to fade with time. She had not nurtured it, just not forgotten the pain of rejection that accompanied each of his visits when only blind hero-worship forbade her to stop trying for his approval.

Consequently, she had made a fool of herself time and again to the embarrassed amusement of all her brothers except Ramond. He had been the one to go back for her, the one who would pick dock leaves to salve her nettle-stings, the one to help her down a tree when the others had deserted her to follow Fergus. Dear Ramond. He was the offspring of the second Lady Coldyngham; George and Daniel shared the first. Nicola and Patrick shared the third, though she had died at Patrick’s birth. When an unexpected girl had arrived to interrupt the flow of lads, the chosen name had only needed to be docked by one letter to make it suitable. Similarly with the middle names: Leonie for Leo, Phillipa for Phillip.

‘It’s not nonsense,’ said George, ‘nor do I believe for one moment that Fergus is merely seeking a connection. I’m telling you, he wants to marry you. He’s changed, Nick.’

Nicola jumped to her feet, snatching her hand away in annoyance. ‘He has not, George. He’s not changed one whit. And I’ll be damned if I’ll give myself to that…that churl just because of his father’s promises. He can go and look elsewhere for his breeding stock. I can have my pick of lords and earls any time I choose. Tell him he’s too late. Tell him I’d rather stay unmarried for the rest of my life than accept his patronising offer. Condescending…overbearing…superior…highhanded…’ Slowly, very slowly, her salvo fizzled out as she shook her head, her eyes filling with sudden tears. ‘Isn’t it ironic?’ she whispered.

Surprised, George watched the transformation from indignant woman to rueful child. ‘Come here, love,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘Tell me what’s ironic. That Fergus should want you, after all?’

She allowed him to pull her back to sit by his side again, reluctant to complete an admission she had never voiced, even to herself. ‘That when we were children, I would have done anything for him. Anything. I thought he was… Oh, this is ridiculous, George.’

‘You admired him so much?’

‘Worshipped him, more like. I would have been happy for him just to smile at me, speak kindly to me, but he rarely looked my way. All he came to Coldyngham Park for was to be with you and the others. I suppose I should have had a sister, then I wouldn’t have pretended to be one of you, would I?’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her knuckles, trying to laugh it off. ‘But then, I was a silly child. I knew no better. Now, I don’t care for anyone’s approval. I don’t need anything he has to offer.’

‘Still hurting after all these years, love?’

Unconsciously, one hand moved upwards to press a palm upon her breast where a nagging sting lay just beneath her chemise. ‘No,’ she said, so softly that George had to look to see the word. ‘No, I don’t care a fig who he marries as long as it’s not me. I know what he’s like, George. I can do better than that.’

‘You know that you insulted him.’

‘Yes. And he’ll not expect me to apologise.’

‘Oh? Why do you say that?’

‘Just take my word for it.’

George’s silence did not mean that he had nothing to say. This time, he was thinking that for both Fergus and Nicola to deny the need for an apology, Fergus must have done some insulting of his own. And the only thing George could add to the picture was a stolen kiss. That might explain their very obvious silence regarding that earlier meeting. ‘You’ll be with us for supper later on?’ he said. ‘Charlotte’s birthday. A few friends, that’s all.’

‘Yes, I’d not forgotten. You’ll allow the children to be there?’

He smiled. ‘I shall get into the gravest trouble if they miss you.’

Whether Nicola suspected that one of the ‘few friends’ might include Sir Fergus, she made no further mention of him until George asked if she would come and say farewell. ‘Excuse me this once,’ she said, placing her hand over his. ‘You invited him here, you show him the way home.’

He picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles, levering himself up from the fountain wall. ‘Until this evening then, love.’

‘George…’ she said, holding him back by a finger.

He stopped and waited.

‘George, you’re not going to insist on this…this promise thing, are you? I know it’s what Father wanted and I suppose he must have had a good reason, but I don’t think he’d have insisted, would he?’

Gently, he shook her hand, though there was no smile to make light of it. ‘Of course I shall not insist. Whatever gave you that idea and, in any case, what good would it do? I don’t have any power to hold back your inheritance because you’ve got it already. Anyway, you know what my thoughts are about women being allowed to choose their own husbands.’ He came to sit by her side again, closer this time. ‘Nobody’s going to insist,’ he said, looking into her darkly troubled eyes. ‘But…’

‘But what?’

‘Well, all Father ever wanted was for you to be safely married. For your own protection, you know. You have a large income, property, a house here in London with a large household…you know…plenty of fortune-hunters on the lookout for more. You can’t call Fergus a fortune-hunter, whatever else you might call him. Perhaps that’s what Father had in mind. Some men have ways of making themselves very agreeable until they’ve got what they want. I’d hate to see you taken along that road.’

‘Well, no one could accuse Fergus Melrose of making himself too agreeable, could they? Far from it. But the road up to Scotland is a very long one, George, and I don’t see my future up there as a breeder of Melroses while he careers off round the world. He may have stallions and mares in mind, but I want more from life than ritual mating once a year.’

Making no attempt this time to hide his amusement at her picturesque speech, George shook his head, laughing. ‘Nick,’ he said at last, ‘all I ask is that you don’t dismiss him quite so soon. People do change. You have. Give him a chance, love. Why not talk to Charlotte about it? She’s quite anxious about you.’

‘George, I’m twenty-four, not twelve. Why should she be anxious?’

‘Vultures, love,’ he said, rising again. ‘Too many vultures.’

‘What are they…something legal, is it?’

‘No, vultures are nasty big birds that the king keeps in his menagerie at the tower. They tear juicy bodies to pieces with their greedy beaks, bone, fur and all. Some men are like that, and some will protect you from vultures. Fergus is one of those. I know him better than you, and if he says he wants you it’s not because he wants your wealth or ancestral links. Why else d’ye think he came round here early if not for a sneak preview after all these years? Eh?’

‘Curiosity, I expect.’

‘Yes, and now he’s seen you, not even your insults have put him off. He still wants you, love. I told you.’

She stared at him, stuck for words. ‘I…I thought…he…’

‘He’d go off with his tail between his legs? Hah! You should know him better than that, lass. He’s got more between his legs than a tail.’

‘George!’ Her heart lurched uncomfortably, making her aware of the sharp pain of her wound.

‘Sorry. I’ll go before I say any more. See you this evening.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t look like that. You’ve got four brothers, remember. You must have seen.’

‘I didn’t look,’ she called after him.

‘Little liar.’ He laughed. ‘Swimming in the river? You too?’

Yes, she remembered that, and the time she’d followed them and got out of her depth and was rescued by Ramond long before the others even noticed, so intent were they on watching Fergus. He had always been graceful and strong, excelling at everything, leading them into risky situations, yet always emerging first, triumphant. She recalled how he had ridden bareback the stallion that none of them would go near, how the maids would giggle and ogle him, how shamefully excited and angry she had felt when she discovered he had kissed one of them. How she had longed to be the one instead of a nobleman’s chit for whom he had no time. Whatever she had done, there had always been time to dream and then to weep with forlorn childish tears. How she had hated and adored him.

Nicola had known that Fergus Melrose would be there—Sir Fergus, as she was now supposed to call him—and while she tried to convince herself that she didn’t care, that she would not dress to impress anyone, least of all him, the end result would have done justice to a Botticelli goddess floating in from the sea. Blue silk, very full, very sheer and diaphanous, very low-cut and high-waisted, very suitable for the kind of open-air feast that Charlotte enjoyed most.

Her hair, severely pulled back into a long sleek plait that reached her waist, was crowned with a garland of blue flowers echoed by a tiny nosegay tucked into the vee of her bodice to hide the top edge of an unsightly red line. Pendant pearls from her ears were the only other adornment and, if she did not quite believe the mirror that told her she looked ravishing, then she had to take account of her maids and the stares of the guests. Especially from two of them.

‘Since no one has yet offered to introduce us, my lady,’ said a personable young man to Nicola, ‘then I must needs do it myself. I asked my brother to, but he has declined.’

‘And who is your brother, sir?’ As if she couldn’t have guessed.

‘Over there,’ he said, glancing with a certain relish across to where his elder brother lounged against a marble table laden with food. ‘Sir Fergus Melrose.’

Nicola followed his glance, relieved to have a genuine excuse to look at him so soon after her arrival. Then, seeing the message that awaited her, she wished she had not done. The business of the day is not yet over, he was telling her. You’ll not get rid of me so easily.

‘My name,’ the young man was saying, ‘is Muir. I expect he’s mentioned me.’ His merry brown eyes were revealing far more than his name—his admiration, for example, his interest in every detail of her appearance as well as in some that were hidden. In that respect, he was easier to read than his brother, more affable, more extrovert in his much-padded pink satin doublet that made her wonder how he managed to squeeze through doorways. The pleated frill below his belt was skimpy enough to reveal what older men kept politely concealed.

‘Master Melrose,’ said Nicola, averting her eyes from the pronounced bulge, ‘why did your brother refuse to introduce us? Would he not approve of us being acquainted?’

‘Apparently not. In fact, he was quite specific about the problem. He said I’d get under his feet. Wasn’t that discourteous of him?’ Like a watered-down version of the original, he was almost as tall, almost as dark, but not nearly as imposing as the brother he criticised; even without the gathers, Fergus’s shoulders were wide and robust, his chest deeper, his neck more muscled, his manner more dangerously mature, less boyish.

‘Extremely discourteous,’ Nicola agreed, bestowing on Muir her most charming smile as long as the two grey eyes glared at them from across the garden. ‘Surely he must have known we’d meet, somewhere?’

‘Not if he could help it, my lady. It was your brother who invited me here. Fergus is trying to persuade me to go back home to Scotland. I came here to the capital for a wee visit, but I didn’t think it would be quite so short.’

‘And what is the purpose of your short visit? Business?’

‘Er…not quite.’ His smile was mischievously rueful. ‘An affair of the heart, my lady.’ Clapping one hand to his heart was too dramatic for it to have been genuine. ‘I had to make myself scarce.’

‘I see. In some haste, I take it.’

‘In great haste,’ he agreed, grinning.

She felt the hostile glare still upon them both and assumed that the younger Melrose was not averse to queering the pitch of his elder brother by telling her of things that ought to have been private. Also, that in revealing his own penchant for non-serious affairs of the heart, he might in fact be offering her the chance to flirt with him and thereby to annoy the arrogant Fergus. With an air that exposed intentions unashamedly several stages ahead of hers, Muir Melrose wore his virility like one who had just discovered its purpose and was ready to put it to good use.

At once, she knew what she would do, that she would have to be careful, and that between them they could make Fergus Melrose’s ambition somewhat more difficult to achieve. It would not be hard to do and must surely be more fun than today’s worsening relationships.

‘Then you cannot go home soon, can you? Not immediately.’

‘It would be a great pity—’ he sighed ‘—now we’ve been introduced. Would you allow me to call on you, perhaps?’ When she purposely kept him waiting for an answer, he pleaded, gently, ‘For the summer months?’

‘Oh, not months,’ she said. ‘Weeks…days…’

‘My Lady Coldheart,’ he said, pulling a tragic face, ‘you cannot be serious. Are you so very hard to please, then?’

‘Alas, I am indeed, Master Melrose. My standards are high, you see, and my interest appallingly short-lived. I’m afraid I send men packing, as your brother may already have told you.’ Their laughter rang like a peal of bells across the sunset garden, and this time she refused to meet the grey eyes that watched the start of yet another impediment to the day’s plans. Then she told Master Melrose of last night’s fencing wager and the way she had dealt with it this morning and together they laughed again and went to look for food with an unspoken agreement already forming between them.

Lord and Lady Coldyngham’s grand and spacious home sat securely on the bend of the Thames in one of the most desirable and attractive stretches between the royal palaces of Savoy and Whitehall. Built around a central courtyard with stables and service buildings at one side, the house extended towards the river with large gardens and orchards and a private wharf where barges were moored. For Lady Charlotte’s thirtieth birthday, the green expanse of bowers and arbours had been hung with streamers of ivy and coloured ribbons, the lawns scattered with satin and velvet cushions while musicians played and small tables were piled with food, and flagons of wine were placed up to their necks in the stone channel of water that ran from the fountain.

So Nicola allowed Master Melrose to offer her the choicest and most succulent morsels of food that came with every accompaniment and garnish, saffron-dyed and disguised, moulded to look like fish or hedgehogs, even when they were not, decorated with feathers, gilded, pounded, pureed, glazed and spiced. Nothing was meant to look like what it was, or taste like it, come to that. For Lady Charlotte, it was a triumph of a meal; for Nicola, it was utterly tasteless, but not for the world would she have said so, nor would she have said why.

Meanwhile, there were other guests to talk to, most of whom she knew, mummers to watch at their antics, jugglers to admire, a jester to avoid if one could, and musicians to applaud for the way they incorporated the duet of tin whistle and tambourine. Nicola had brought presents for Roberta, whose name had been prepared for another boy in true Coldyngham fashion, and eight-year-old Louis, the elder by two-and-a-half years. She gave the tin whistle to Roberta and the tambourine to Louis, who marched solemnly away to show the guests how it was done, though later it was observed that Roberta was rattling noisily and Louis was tunefully piping.

They played tag and blind-man’s buff, and anything else to avoid having to speak to any group of which Sir Fergus was a part and, at last, Nicola gave her garland of flowers to Roberta to take to bed. Naturally, she had to part with the nosegay from her bodice for Louis, by which time she was sure no one would notice.

It grew dark and the music changed to dance rhythms, the river sparkled with reflections from torches, and the distant sounds of Thames oarsmen echoed on the night air as they took their last customers home by wherry. Mellowed by wine, the guests joined hands to snake their way through the plots and arbours, benches and trellises, singing the two-line refrain while male soloists sang the stanzas as the rest marked time on the spot. Then off they went again, lurching and laughing, unsure whose hand they held in the darkest shadows away from the torches.

Muir Melrose pulled at Nicola and headed purposefully away from the light. ‘This way,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

His flirting, Nicola thought, had gone far enough for one day. ‘No,’ she called. ‘No…er…this way.’ She pulled, bumping into someone.

‘Come on,’ Muir laughed. ‘We shall lose them if you—’

She shook off his hand to pick up her long skirts, which were in danger of being trampled, draping them up over one arm. But again her free hand was sought as she was nudged along the line of dancers and, to escape the singing jostling bodies, she went with him, expecting to join up again when she could see what she was doing. His hand tightened insistently over hers, and the noise of the dancers’ cries was cut off by a thick screen of darkness.

‘Master Melrose,’ she said, coldly, ‘we should be going the other way. Please…let go.’ She tried to free herself, but in the dark tunnel of foliage where only pin-pricks of light filtered, his arms closed quickly around her, bending her hard into his body. Then she knew, foolishly, that all young Melrose’s attentions had been directed towards this end, a far from innocent conclusion to his gentle and inoffensive dalliance. Not even to vex Sir Fergus had she wanted it to go this far, and now she was angry beyond words that this gauche young man believed she could have as few scruples as any servant-girl against being bussed and groped in the shadows.

She struggled fiercely, dropping her skirt to beat at him and push him away, but he was remarkably strong, too strong for his size, and there was no chance for her to cry out for help before his mouth silenced her protests with a firmness that belied all his earlier frivolity and playfulness. After his teasing manner of the evening, this was certainly not what she had expected from him and, although she had understood from the start that he was probably promiscuous, she had not for one moment believed that he had intended to defy his brother so insistently, or so soon. Or without any kind of warning. This was more than flirting—this was a determined, serious and skilled performance that from the first touch had the effect of holding her mind into that one place where sensation burst into bloom like the springtime of all her twenty-four years.

Her hands forgot to beat, but clung helplessly to his shoulders, as bewildered as her mind. Obedient to the hard restraint of his arms, lured by the skill of his lips, she had no choice but to surrender to the confusing thoughts circling her mind that this did not match the rather silly, witty, shallow creature she had saddled herself with for the last few hours. It was a complete revelation, and an exciting one, but a high price to pay for a scheme that had so soon got out of hand.

For all her popularity with men since her appearance in London, and indeed before that, she had never allowed more than a chaste kiss upon her cheek. Her inexperience showed, for now anger, outrage, and something quite new and fearful combined to tell her that, however much she had wished for a kiss with someone else, this must be stopped by any means available, whether ladylike or not. With a push of superhuman strength and a twist of her body, she tore her mouth away and bent her head towards the hand that held her wrist in a grip of steel, biting hard into his knuckles and releasing all her fury, not only at his immediate behaviour but at his deception too.

She felt the resistance of bone under her teeth and the taste of his skin on her tongue before his fingers relaxed and pulled away and, though she half-expected a howl of pain from him, there was no protest and no retaliation. It was as if he had been waiting for it, deserving it, accepting it.

In uncharacteristic silence, he put his arm across her shoulders to lead her forward as if he knew the way back, but she balked at this too-easy dismissal, taking time to lash him with her tongue before they parted. ‘Don’t ever…’ she panted ‘…ever come near me again. Do you hear me? Now leave me…let go of my shoulder—’ she shook his hand away ‘—and speak to me no more of friendship, sir. You are despicable! Go away!’

It was too dark for her to witness his departure, though she felt that he bowed before he left and, in only a few more hesitant and lonely steps, she was within sight and sound of the music once again. Most of the guests had now regrouped around a male soloist whose low voice, accompanied by his own lute, was holding them all spellbound. Thankful of the darkness and their diverted attention, she waited for a moment to gather her thoughts, to smooth her hair, and to lay a cooling hand upon her mouth that still tingled from his kisses. Her pounding heart she could do nothing to moderate. Like a shadow, she glided round the edge of the crowd to see who sang and played so sweetly, experiencing such a weight of numbing disappointment that her first real kisses should have come so insincerely from a man of his small calibre, a virtual stranger and self-confessed philanderer. It had served her right. She should have had more sense. He had disappeared quickly enough afterwards with not a word of explanation or apology, not even an enquiry after her state. The man was a worm, after all.

Dazed, still furiously angry and disturbed at the violation of her emotions, she felt the dull thudding in her chest change to a stifled gasp of horror as she peered through the crowd, rooted to the spot and unable to believe what she was seeing. His dark head bent over the lute, the soloist was Master Muir Melrose and, by the soaring final chord and the warm applause at the end, it was clear he had been there for some time.

Now, with her heartbeats drowning out all other sounds, her eyes combed frantically through the group to find the one man she had avoided all evening, the one whose message had warned her that his business with her was not over. He was there, alone, standing by the fountain and holding one hand tightly clasped inside the other, not applauding. As she watched, he lifted the hand to his mouth then back to its mate for some kind of comfort, turning his head as he did so as if to seek her out.

Through the dancing shadows and the flare of torches, their eyes linked at last and held, part possession and part solace, and while her eyes communicated shock and disbelief, his message was that he was in charge, that she was not free to follow his brother’s lead, and that she would not escape him. A shiver of fear coursed through her again. Fear and excitement.

Slowly, he wound his way through the scattering crowd and came to stand beside her. She, reluctant to be seen so patently avoiding him, remained fixed to the spot, overwhelmed by the urge to flee, but hampered by legs that would not obey. ‘Barbarian!’ she growled at him under her breath.

His hand moved over the wounded knuckle, though his eyes remained upon her, searing her with their unaccustomed warmth. ‘Wildcat!’ he whispered. ‘I can tame you.’

The daunting words brought her eyes to his face again, as he knew they would. But if she hoped that the creases around his mobile mouth were formed by pain, she was forced to conclude that there was quite a different emotion on display there and that he had seen how her hand stole of its own volition to comfort a certain sharp pain of her own.