Читать книгу Regency Collection 2013 Part 1 - Хелен Диксон, Louise Allen, Хелен Диксон - Страница 49

Lily felt she had survived her first meal at Allerton with reasonable success. She had been exceedingly careful to say nothing that might reveal the gap between her dress allowance and those of the Lovell sisters when they questioned her about gowns, she had changed the subject as soon as possible when Penelope had asked about chaise-longues with crocodile legs, and she had entertained her hosts with unexceptional anecdotes about the Duchess of Oldbury’s ball without the slightest reference to challenges or quarrels.

‘And did you dance with Jack?’ Penelope demanded.

‘Yes, I have done, once or twice,’ Lily conceded. ‘Once only at that ball, but before then at another party. Lord Allerton,’ she added slyly, sliding a glance at him from under her lashes, ‘is a most accomplished dancer.’

Jack’s mouth twitched slightly. Susan laughed. ‘Is he really? I am not sure I believe you, Miss France. He is all flat feet when he has to dance with us.’

‘Dancing with Miss France is a much more inspiring matter than having to take the floor with one’s baby sisters,’ her put-upon brother retorted. ‘An elephant would dance well with Miss France.’

Lily liked the way Jack was with his family. He was obviously fond of all of them, he put up with his sisters’ teasing with humour and he was clearly a loving and attentive son. This, she found, was not helpful. The discovery that he was a short-tempered domestic tyrant would have made her feel much better.

‘Is it still raining?’ Penelope lamented when the meal was over. ‘I thought we could all go for a walk and show Lily the countryside.’

‘Miss France, Penelope,’ her mother corrected. ‘Really, our visitor will think you were dragged up with no manners.’

‘Please, I would like it if the girls call me Lily, ma’am. It is a pity about the weather, Penelope, for I would love you to show me around. Perhaps you can another day.’

‘Why not show Lily the picture gallery, Jack?’ Caroline suggested helpfully. ‘Penny, you and Susan can help me look through the journals Jack brought us and see how we would like our new muslins made up. And then later Lily can tell us whether we will be bang up to the mode or sadly dowdy.’

Lily would have been more than happy to be curled up looking at the Ladies’ Journal, but to refuse to go with Jack would have looked too pointed. She smiled politely and accompanied him up the main staircase and off down a passage she had not yet seen.

‘It is very confusing, I am lost already,’ she remarked as they turned a corner and went up a short flight of steps. That’s right, Lily, prattle away, anything but acknowledge you are alone with him. ‘I expect to have to rise at five in order to arrive at breakfast at a reasonable hour.’

‘You will get used to it. For children, of course, it is the most wonderful playground. Mama used to live in dread of one of us vanishing and being found, years later, shut in a mysterious chest or locked in a haunted tower room.’

‘She must have disliked Gothic tales then, that sort of thing constantly happens in those,’ Lily observed. ‘I enjoy them, but I am nervous of all these suits of armour. I keep thinking I can see them moving out of the corner of my eye.’ She shivered, less out of any fear of the armour than from being so close to Jack, alone.

Here, in his own home, he was almost a stranger. It was as though Jack Lovell had retreated from her behind the front of Lord Allerton. ‘Do you think I should have them polished?’

‘What? The armour? I have no idea—are they supposed to be?’ Lily went close and regarded one suit on its plinth. It had no rust, but it had dulled to an almost pewter shade.

‘I was thinking the Great Hall looked a little worn and wondered how you would transform it, Lily. If the armour was polished, we could set more of it about in there. Suits of armour up the stairs and possibly some arrangements of weapons on the wall. What do you think?’

Lily regarded him. There was mischief, carefully repressed, in the curve of his mobile mouth and his lashes were lowered over eyes that he knew would betray him. ‘I think that would look like a Great Hall in the medieval style,’ she retorted tartly. ‘As you already have a medieval hall, I can only conclude that you are teasing me by suggesting that you dress it up to be a pastiche of itself.’

With a flounce of skirts Lily marched off down the corridor. In a way, arguing with Jack felt much more comfortable than when he was being frigidly polite.

‘I miss your style of interior decoration, Lily,’ he remarked plaintively, following her.

‘No, you do not, Jack Lovell, you miss being able mock it.’ She turned to see where he was and found he was right behind her, trapping her neatly against the wall.

‘Did I mock, Lily?’ He was so close she could see the laughter lines at the corner of his eyes, the way his skin was paler where his hair had been ruthlessly cropped, the way the dark flint of his eyes had lightened into the grey of pebbles under water.

‘You laughed at my crocodiles,’ she said, breathless.

‘Only a little bit,’ he coaxed, resting one hand on the panelled wall, just by her right ear. ‘You have to admit that a chaise-longue with scaly legs is just a trifle amusing, especially when they emerge from under the ruffles on your hem.’

‘Very well, I suppose it is.’ Was he going to kiss her, or just tease her all afternoon? And what would she do if he did kiss her? Lily swallowed hard as Jack moved closer, his hand brushing the fabric of her skirts at waist level. She could feel her breathing quickening, her eyelids lowering. He smelt just as she recalled, of—

‘Careful, you’ll fall.’ Jack caught her neatly round the waist as the door she had not seen behind her opened to his touch and Lily found herself in a long gallery, lit on one side with tall windows and hung on the other with what looked like hundreds of pictures.

What a fool, to think that he had been about to kiss her—worse, to want him to. Lily smiled brightly, trying to ignore the all-too-familiar urge to reach out and touch Jack. ‘What a lot of pictures.’

Inane! Try to think of something intelligent to say, you fool! All these ancestors …

Jack obviously shared her opinion of her originality. ‘Yes, aren’t there.’ His voice was dry. ‘They are of varying interest, but that is not why I brought you here.’

‘No?’ And as it obviously is not to make love to me, or to abjectly beg my pardon for calling me totty-headed—really, that hurts more even than bird-witted!—just why are we here? Lily made a show of studying the nearest canvas. As the rain lashing down outside and the thick cloud rendered the unlit room positively gloomy, she could make out little more than a dead stag.

‘No. I want to get to the bottom of exactly what happened about the duel.’

‘Why? I told you downstairs.’ Lily tossed her head and moved on to the next picture. Now this was better—a pretty girl in an arbour and a lovely baroque frame, all ormolu curlicues.

‘As it concerns my honour, I would like to know exactly what you did and who you told about it.’ Jack was not sounding remotely amused any longer. ‘Just how many people did you approach in your attempt to stop it?’

‘I asked Lady Billington’s advice, and she said it would be impossible to stop. And I asked Lord Gledhill—you know about that—and he almost had conniptions and so I asked Doctor Ord. That is all. Satisfied?’ She glared at him over her shoulder, but his face was impossible to read in the gloom.

‘No I am not satisfied.’ Jack took several long strides down the gallery, unpleasantly reminiscent of the paces he had taken on the duelling ground. ‘How the devil did you get Ord to take you with him?’

‘I tricked him into telling me when and where and then told him I would go in my own carriage if he refused to help me.’

‘You are unprincipled, manipulative, domineering …’

‘Yes, of course I am. For a woman it is often necessary if one is to get what one wants. We do not have the freedom men have.’

‘Thank God for that! I shudder to think what the result would be if you were given free rein.’

‘You are just upset because you had successfully hidden the fact you were wounded from your family and I let the cat out of the bag. I am sorry about that, I would not have done it, truly, only I could not imagine how you could hide such a nasty gash.’

‘Just how close were you that morning?’ Jack asked softly. When he wanted to he could move like a cat, Lily had not realised he had come so near. She turned and cut around him, pretending to be intrigued by a group of smaller pictures hanging together further along the wall.

‘I was in the tangled knot of undergrowth on the lip of the depression. Very close.’

‘Close enough to be killed by a stray bullet, you little idiot!’ The next thing Lily knew, she was flat up against the wall again, this time with Jack’s hands one each side of her head, effectively caging her with his arms. Cautiously she ran a hand over the lumpy linen-fold panelling behind her; no convenient door handle this time.

‘I never thought about that,’ she confessed, shaken. If Adrian’s shot had been angled upwards, it would have whistled past her head. If she had been lucky.

‘No, of course you did not. Do you ever think through consequences, you maddening woman?’

The honest answer was, Not often enough, but Jack was perfectly capable of supplying that response for himself. Lily hung her head.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ Jack asked softly.

‘What? Watching the duel?’ Lily looked up abruptly. ‘I was worried to death before and I was physically sick afterwards.’

‘But did you enjoy it?’ There was a huskiness in his voice that stirred something deep and hot inside Lily. She was very aware of his closeness, his warmth, the male scent of him. With a burst of insight she realised that, under his anger with her, and his anxiety for her, he was aroused by the thought that she had been there and had seen him defending her honour.

‘I …’ She could not tear her eyes away from the heat in his. Their bodies were not touching, but she knew her skirts brushed against his legs, could almost feel the friction of the superfine cloth of his coat where his arms were only inches from her face.

‘Did you, Lily?’ Oh, yes. Looking back, she knew she had been stirred, immodestly, shamefully, stirred by the sight of him, the pistol in his hand, his naked, powerful torso, his control, his courage. The fact that two men fought over her.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, defeated by his will and her own honesty. ‘I am not proud of it, but, yes.’

Jack did not move his hands, only leaned forward into her, bending his head until his mouth covered hers, pinning her between the breadth of his chest and the unyielding wall.

Trapped, Lily did not try to move, or want to. Her hands spread open on the oak and she lifted her face to him. She was learning now, learning the taste of him, the way his lips felt on hers, hot and shocking. And more heated, more shocking, the response of her own body, of her own tongue tangling with his, of her breasts, peaking and thrusting against his chest, of the way her hips arched against him so that she could feel the pressure of his arousal against her belly.

Jack’s hands came away from the wall, one cupping the back of her head, holding her against the force of his kiss, as though she needed any restraint, the other moulding the curve of her buttock.

He was growling, deep in his throat, a sound that she felt almost more than she heard, a male anthem of possession. What was he seeing in his mind? What was he feeling? The cold air on his naked skin, the heat of fear in his belly, turned by courage into a steely determination? The weight of the pistol butt in his hand? Had he thought of her as he waited to kill or be killed?

Lily knew what she could see in her mind’s eye, what she felt. The movement of hard muscle under bare skin. The strength and breadth of his shoulders, the power of those narrow hips, the unflinching stance, the fear in her stomach and the pride and love in her heart.

She twisted her head against his hand, broke away from his kiss. ‘No. Stop it. This is wrong.’

‘You want me.’ His other hand still cupped her buttock, still held her against his aroused body.

‘Yes. I am not proud of it, but, yes, I want you. Are you satisfied now I have admitted it?’ Lily was panting with churning emotion; frustration, desire, anger, shame, love, all mixed and spun through her. ‘You are very attractive Jack Lovell. Very male. But you do not need me to tell you that, do you? Why should I minister to your self-esteem?’

‘Why not minister to it even more?’ His teeth gleamed white in the shadowed room. From a great distance she could hear rain against glass. ‘Do I need to tell you how much you arouse me, Lily? How much I want you? And you want me. Why fight it?’

Yes, why fight it? It seems so simple—let what we both want to happen, make love with Jack. Lily let her hands spread open on his chest, her head tip back again so she was looking up into his face again. Under her right palm she could feel Jack’s heart racing. His face seemed more sharply defined to her, etched into lines of strength and of arrogance. He was watching her like a hawk while he waited for her answer, with all the focus and intensity he had shown on the duelling ground.

And this was a duel. He was bending her to his will with no doubt that she would yield to him. It simply was not in his breeding, in his pride, to believe she would deny him. She could feel her will wavering in the face of his dominance, just as Adrian had trembled as he faced him on the heath.

She could give in to him, and give in to her own desire. But the need to make love to him was not all there was. She loved him. She could not tell him, ever, and to be his mistress, for however long that lasted, however wonderful it was, felt like a betrayal of that emotion. She would be lying to both of them.

The force with which Lily launched herself away from the wall broke his hold and sent her several steps clear of him. She could not explain, all she could do was to defend herself with thoughtless, hurtful words.

‘Oh, no! Oh, no, I am not going to fall into that trap, let my emotions be dazzled by what I think I want now, only to discover soon after that I was wrong. So wrong. I humiliated myself with Adrian Randall, thinking all I wanted was marriage and a title. I made a fool of myself by proposing to you, thinking that a business arrangement could sit with physical desire. Well, I have learned my lesson the hard way, my lord.

‘If I need a stud stallion, if I want a lover, I will find one with no complications, and if I need a husband to be a father to my heirs, I will find one who can bring his own fortune with him. And for none of those roles do I need impoverished aristocrats who cannot even look after their own inheritance.’

For a moment she thought Jack was going to reach out and yank her back into his arms. It was almost too dark in the room now to see his face, but she could hear his breathing, echoing her own panting breaths. Then he turned on his heel and stalked out, leaving the door to swing back on its hinges.

Jack did not stop until he reached his own chamber. He was breathing heavily as he entered it, but not from the winding flight of stairs he had just taken two at a time.

‘Stud stallion!’ Lily had a tongue like an adder. And she made him feel ashamed of himself, of what he felt naturally because he was a man, because he desired her. Loved her.

Stallion! Damn it, he could certainly fulfil that role for her. Just now he felt he could service every single doxy at Nell’s, Newcastle’s most notorious and largest brothel, and still be unsatisfied. When had he last had a woman? God knows, and all he was doing was working himself up into an unsatisfied lather over an acid-tongued little tease. Impoverished aristocrats indeed. What had possessed him to demand they become lovers? She excited him almost beyond reason and this was the result. Now, even if he tried to tell her the truth, that he loved her, he doubted she would believe him.

‘My lord? Did you say something?’ Denton was ordering his dressing table, polishing the silver-backed brushes with a soft cloth.

‘My working clothes, if you please. I am going to the mine.’

‘But it is pouring with rain, my lord.’

‘Not underground it isn’t Denton.’ And there it was safe from interfering sisters, reproachful mothers—and Lily.

‘You will need to take care of that arm, my lord.’ Denton, radiating disapproval, opened the chest where he meticulously segregated Jack’s working clothes. Jack was well aware that his valet considered it a disgrace that an earl should so much as set foot in a mine. If he did, it should be to view the operation only, at a safe distance and taking the advice of his manager. The fact that Jack was frequently found wielding a pick or puzzling over a problem with the ventilation shutters shocked Denton to the core and he rebelled in the only way he knew how, by insisting that Jack’s filthy, torn, clothes were always immaculately laundered, mended and pressed after every wearing.

Jack pulled off his coat, threw down his fine linen shirt on to a chair and accepted a much-patched woollen smock in return. He sat on the edge of the bed and drew on thick stockings, a pair of loose canvas trousers and thrust his feet into the stout studded boots that Denton produced at arm’s length.

‘I do wish you would stop trying to get a shine on these.’ The valet sniffed, not deigning to enter into a long-running wrangle, extracted a crisply ironed red-spotted kerchief from a drawer and placed it on the bed next to a leather waistcoat and a battered tricorne hat.

‘You will wear the oiled coat, my lord?’

Jack regarded his transformed figure in the long mirror and grinned, suddenly relaxed, anticipating a long afternoon of down-to-earth, uncomplicated, male company. ‘Yes please, Denton. Thank you. I will be returning for dinner, should Lady Allerton ask.’

‘Yes my lord. I will ensure that there is plentiful hot water: it would not do to present a begrimed appearance with a guest present.’

Fully aware that Denton was attempting to make him feel like a grubby schoolboy skipping lessons, Jack ran downstairs, whistling between his teeth, to the further scandal of his butler and a footman.

‘Jack! For goodness’ sake, you are not going to the mine now?’ It was Caroline, her arms full of fabric, crossing the landing into the room known to the staff as The Young Ladies’ Sitting Room.

‘I haven’t been below ground since I got back from London. There are things to be done, to be looked at.’

‘But where is Lily?’

‘In the Long Gallery.’ Something in his face must have betrayed him, for Caroline dumped the muslin unceremoniously into the sitting room and came back to glare at him. ‘What have you done now?’

It was on the tip of his tongue to say ‘I had a damn good try at seducing her’ and see what Caroline would do, but he swallowed the words. ‘We argued. I will be back for dinner.’

The rain had stopped, some time during her journey back to her bedchamber. Lily found she could begin to navigate about the castle, more by looking out for distinctive suits of armour, than by anything else. ‘Battle axe, sword, pointy thing on top …’ she muttered to herself. She located the stairs leading up to her room and hesitated, wondering if she should seek out Caroline. But she rather suspected she was betrayingly flushed and damp-eyed and the thought of curling up in the window seat and having a long brood over the rain-soaked landscape felt safer.

Now what to do? What had possessed Jack just now? On the face of it, that was a foolish question. He had done it out of sheer lust and frustration. The uncomfortable idea that he had done it because of her money obtruded, but she dismissed it. If Jack was cynical enough to decide, after all, that he wanted her wealth, then he would hardly have proposed they become lovers in such a way. He would have kept his temper, and his passion, in check and wooed her in a civilised, if hypocritical, manner. Like Adrian had.

What would she have done if that scene had played out differently, if they had not been angry? What would have happened if he had tried to seduce her with soft words and gentle lovemaking?

What would it be like to be wooed by Jack? The hot pulse still beat distractingly inside her, the aftermath of their violent, angry passion. Lily found the thought of gentle courtship a comforting fantasy as she gazed out from her eyrie. Flowers, hand-kissing, compliments, a little flirtation, murmured sweet nothings. All the time in the world to think about what she should do, what she should say.

‘Oh yes,’ Lily whispered, a smile curving her lips. Below, a door banged shut and a tall figure strode out across the courtyard, his black greatcoat flapping behind him in the wind. It was unmistakably Jack; his long stride, the width of his shoulders, betrayed him. Lily glimpsed trousers, boots, a battered old hat and realised he must be on his way to the mine.

A frisson like the one that had run through her on the duelling ground made her shiver: he was so strong, so masculine. His command had nothing to do with title or class, it was bred in his bones and everything feminine in her responded to it, however hard she tried for control.

‘Lily?’ It was Caroline, peeping round the door. ‘Am I interrupting? Are you resting?’

‘I was a little tired,’ Lily fibbed. ‘It was rather dark in the gallery and difficult to see the pictures. Lord Allerton has gone out.’

‘He has gone to the mine,’ Caroline said briskly. ‘He will be back for dinner.’ She sounded a trifle out of spirits—it must be the weather.

‘Oh, it wasn’t that I was wondering or anything …’ Lily could hear she was floundering and made an effort to pull herself together. ‘I would love to see the mine one day—could you take me to see it? When it stops raining, of course.’

‘Certainly.’ Caroline came and perched on the window seat beside Lily. ‘But why not ask Jack? I understand quite a lot, at least about the work above ground, but not much about the deep mine.’

‘Because he will think I want to interfere again,’ Lily replied bleakly. ‘But I am very interested. I think I might persuade my trustees to invest in mines in the Midlands, where there are canals. They are so dubious about the transport up here, or the lack of it, that is the trouble. Such old stick-in-the muds about new technologies, bless them.’ And she wanted to see the place that obsessed Jack so much, touch him in some way through it. Touch him in the only way that seemed to be safe.