Читать книгу Regency Collection 2013 Part 1 - Хелен Диксон, Louise Allen, Хелен Диксон - Страница 51

‘Certainly I am.’ Lily fished out the keys and her purse. ‘If you will open the doors, I will just pay the driver.’

Jack removed the keys firmly and handed up some coins to the jarvey.

‘I said I would pay!’

‘Do you think I cannot afford the hire of a hack?’ He had turned back to the wicket gate in the big wooden doors.

‘Of course not, but this is my business …’

‘This needs oiling, and the lock requires replacing before you put anything of value in here.’ Jack heaved the gate open with a screaming of rusty hinges. ‘Very well, you pay me back for the hackney fare, and I will invoice you for my opinion of this door. And, of course, I must work out the proportion of your time spent up here on business and charge you board and lodging for that part of your time spent at Allerton.’

He ducked through the wicket. ‘It looks safe enough in here.’

‘That is not what I meant, you stiff-rumped idiot!’ Lily scrambled through and swung irritably at Jack’s back with her reticule. Without the weight of the keys it was like swatting an oak tree with a leaf.

‘Language, Miss France!’ Jack reproved. ‘Is it big enough?’ He began to pace off the length. Lily left him to it and, with a dubious glance at the holes in the roof and some rapid mental calculation on the likely costs of repairs, went to explore the rooms at the end of the great empty space.

They had been built within the warehouse like sheds within a barn. Lily poked about inside, deciding they would have to be completely demolished, then saw the stairs in one corner. They must lead to what was effectively a flat roof. She was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this warehouse was going to need too much work to make it useable, but a view from a height might give her a better perspective on it.

The stairs creaked as she climbed, her skirts gathered up in one hand, the other clinging to what remained of a crude handrail attached to the wall. Three-quarters of the way up she was coming to the conclusion that perhaps this was not the best idea she had ever had, by the time she reached the top and stepped out onto a crude platform of worm-eaten planks, she was sure of it.

Lily turned round cautiously and put her foot down onto the top step. Some instinct warned her; she lifted it back, but too late. With a groan the rickety structure parted company with whatever rusting nails had been holding it to the wall and it fell to the stone floor beneath with a crash.

Choking in the cloud of dust and cobwebs that rose from the hole, Lily staggered back, felt the planks creaking ominously and froze where she was.

‘Lily!’

‘Here! I am all right, but I cannot get down.’

There was a sound of crashing below and Jack appeared, clambering over the ruined remains of the stairs.

‘What the hell are you doing up there!’ he demanded, craning his neck to look up at her. ‘Of all the bloody stupid, damned idiotic …’

Totty-headed?’ Lily supplied faintly, finding a rusted piece of iron sticking out of the wall and taking a firm hold on it.

‘What?’ he bellowed, making the old building echo.

‘Totty-headed. I think you forgot that. You are quite right and please do not shout any more—you are shaking the building and I do not think this floor is going to hold for much longer.’

‘You cannot come down this way, the wreckage is too fragile for you to land on or for me to climb up.’ The fury had gone from his voice and he sounded reassuringly calm. Lily began to think that she would not, after all, end up a crumpled heap on the flagstones below.

She lost sight of him and instinctively grabbed the ironwork with both hands; it broke away, leaving her with nothing but a fistful of rust. Underfoot the boards creaked ominously. ‘Jack?’

‘I am here, underneath you. I can just see you through the cracks in the floor. Can you take a big step back? Yes, like that. Now the other foot. Good. There is a bigger beam under there.’ The new patch of floor did not sag so alarmingly, that was true. Lily put her arms out and used them to keep her balance. ‘Now walk straight forward until you get to the edge.’ Like a tightrope walker, Lily teetered forward until she could look over. It seemed a long way down.

Jack appeared, foreshortened from her viewpoint, his shoulders covered with dust, which must have showered down as he moved beneath her. ‘Sit down on the edge.’

‘What?’

‘Sit down, and hang your legs over the edge.’

‘I can’t!’ It was hideously high up.

‘Why not? Lily, this is not the time to worry about a man looking up your skirts. Besides, I have seen your legs and very nice they are too.’

‘Oh!’ Lily sat down with a thump, then remembered that she was scared and shut her eyes.

‘Now jump.’

‘What!’ Her eyes flew open. ‘Are you mad? Go and get a ladder or something.’

‘There is no time. Lily, believe me, you can jump or you can fall. Jump and I will catch you.’

She stared down, thankful that she was sitting, for her legs were trembling. Jack just stood there like a rock, arms held out. ‘Lily! Jump!’

So she did, pushing off with her hands. It was endless, and yet over in a second. Jack caught her in a tumble of limbs and petticoats and took two long strides back as the beam gave way and the makeshift roof hit the ground with a rumble like thunder.

Was it worth the five minutes of absolute terror to achieve a few moments with Lily in his arms, clinging to his neck and quivering? Probably not, especially as she was presumably quivering with fear and quite patently not with the thrill of being in his embrace.

‘Lily? Are you hurt?’ A violent shake of her head and a tightening of her arms around his neck were the only responses. Jack easily resisted the thought that perhaps he should set her down and walked instead to the other end of the warehouse.

He found a crate and sat on it, holding Lily on his knee. She was still shaking, so he insinuated a hand under her chin and pushed up her face. ‘Lily?’

She was glowing with colour, her eyes were sparkling with excitement rather than the tears he was expecting and she was quivering, not with fright, but with excitement. ‘That was wonderful!’

‘It was what?’ Jack demanded. Ready to comfort, cuddle and possibly caress her, this was like a punch in the stomach.

‘Wonderful. Jumping like that. For a moment, a split second, it was like flying. I was so frightened, and then I jumped, and I wasn’t scared any more.’

‘Possibly because you knew I was going to catch you.’

‘Of course. But it was something so exhilarating. Jack, they jump out of balloons, don’t they? With things called parachutes?’

‘I think so. But ladies do not go up in balloons. Women do not go up in balloons. Full stop. Which means they do not come down from balloons, by any method whatsoever.’ Best to flatten that idea before she took it one step further. Too late.

‘Only because all the aeronauts are men at the moment—I suppose that all their patrons are too. But it is merely a question of who is paying for the ascent, sponsoring the balloon. Is not that so? If one were paying the aeronauts, they would have to take whomever their patron told them to.’

She was wide-eyed with interest and calculation. One part of him wanted to applaud, one part—most of him—wanted to bundle her up, rush her south and press her into the restraining arms of her trustees with the demand that they shut her up for her own safety. To protest was, he suspected from experience, enough to encourage her. Thankfully Lily appeared to be talking herself out of it.

‘But what would one wear? Skirts would be most impractical! To adopt breeches would cause a scandal. I shall have to think about it.’

‘Yes, do that,’ Jack urged with feeling, provoking a gurgle of amusement from Lily.

‘I am sorry to tease you. You were very brave to catch me. I did not hurt you, did I?’

‘No, not at all,’ Jack lied. Lily’s slender body arriving in his arms with such suddenness and force had jolted him back on his heels and his shoulders felt half-wrenched out of their sockets, but he realised he would have died rather than admit it. He mocked himself silently for needing to appear heroic in her eyes: first wanting to preen like a peacock because she had watched him duelling and had admitting being stirred by it, now this.

Jack looked down into the wide green eyes that were smiling up into his with amused concern and felt not just his loins, but his heart, contract. He had made love to Lily, he had fought with her, he had spurned her proposal and here they still were. He wanted her with a force that stunned him. She confessed to finding him desirable and most of the time seemed to like and trust him.

What if he tried wooing her properly, in both senses of the word? Chastely, slowly, with flowers and flirtation? Would she react as she had in the Long Gallery with anger and with words that still burned like acid whenever he thought of them?

She would have her title, he would have the woman he loved and all the money he could possibly need and the lovemaking would be … spectacular. And there could be more than that: he could assist in the business. He was not like Randall, he did not look down on commerce and he had experience that would be valuable. They had been a good partnership today, hadn’t they?

For a moment the vision of what life might be like swam in front of his eyes. And what would that make him? A kept man, that is what he would be, however much he could assist. Taking a wife with money was a sensible, practical thing to do, there was no disputing that. Men did it all the time—families allied themselves as a matter of course, with an eye to linking up lands, consolidating fortunes. But this was different, this was too extreme a difference in fortunes to be decent …

Could he do it? Could he buy happiness by selling his soul? Lily sat there, patiently waiting for him to finish his thought, her body warm and confiding against his. He focused on her face and she smiled a little so he caught a glimpse of even white teeth. His need for her must have shown somehow, for as he watched she became very still, so that he was conscious of her breathing. Her lids, heavy with sooty lashes, dropped, shielding her thoughts, but her mouth betrayed her. Her lips parted and she ran the tip of her tongue across the sweet, soft curve of her lower lip. Jack could feel himself bending towards her.

He is going to kiss me. Perhaps, after all, she had not been daydreaming and Jack truly was going to woo her with soft kisses and gentle flirtation.

‘Lily.’ His voice was husky and seemed to resonate through her. How had she lived for twenty-six years without ever hearing anyone speak her name like that before?

‘Yes?’ This time he would ask her to marry him, and she would say yes. They could work out all the problems, she would learn tact, she would learn good taste, she could even learn economy …

‘Lily, we cannot go on like this.’

‘I know.’

‘We argue a lot.’

‘Yes.’

‘We both have our fair share of pride.’

‘Yes.’

‘We seem to have a very strong physical attraction to each other.’

‘Oh, yes.’ She shut her eyes.

‘We cannot go on like this.’

‘No. You said that. I agree with you.’ Just kiss me, then ask me!

‘I think we should—’

‘Yes!’

‘Just avoid being alone together.’

‘What?’ Lily bounced to her feet, eyes wide open.

‘Behave in a proper, conventional manner. As we should have been, all along. And I blame myself.’ As she was standing, Jack got to his feet courteously. ‘We have agreed that marriage is out of the question. It would be most improper to act on the attraction between us in any other way. Your trustees have ruled out a business relationship. But I do not want to lose you Lily.’

Lily found she was regarding her hands, twisting the cords of her reticule and not looking at Jack. How could she look at him, watch his face, while he consigned whatever it was that was between them to the anodyne realms of propriety?

‘No,’ she agreed slowly, keeping every trace of how she felt out of her voice. ‘No, I would not want to lose you either. As an acquaintance.’ She looked up. For one moment she thought she saw disappointment on Jack’s face; but that was ridiculous, she was agreeing with him, it must have been a trick of the light.

‘Good.’ He was brisk, obviously relieved by her agreement: she had been mistaken about that fleeting expression of yearning. Then his face changed from serious thoughtfulness to almost laughable horror. ‘Oh, my Go … goodness. Look at the state of your clothes.’

‘And yours.’ Lily could not help laughing. ‘You look as though a building has collapsed around you and then a woman fell on top of you!’

‘Good manners prevents me from telling you what your appearance resembles,’ Jack grinned back. ‘So what, exactly, do you suggest we tell my mama we have been doing?’

‘First of all we find a hackney carriage and then we do what we can on the journey back to the inn to retrieve matters.’ Lily delved into her reticule. ‘I do have a hairbrush in here, and some pins.’

Struggling in the confines of a lurching hackney carriage to brush off dust and cobwebs, straighten clothing, pin up Lily’s hair and pluck wood splinters out of Jack’s, reduced both of them to an unfortunate state of juvenile giggles.

They got out of the carriage in the inn yard, struggling for composure in the face of Jack’s assembled family. Lady Allerton swept one comprehensive glance over the pair of them and declared, ‘We will go inside for luncheon.’

Trailing up the stairs behind Penelope, Lily whispered, ‘I feel as though I am twelve again and have been caught skipping lessons to go out scrumping apples.’

‘Me too. What happened to you? I got whipped by my tutor.’

‘I had to sit in the corner balancing a grammar primer on my head to teach me the importance of decorum.’

Jack’s raised eyebrow made it quite clear that Lily’s unfortunate governess had failed in this endeavour.

‘What on earth happened to you two?’ Penelope demanded, the moment the door was closed.

‘The roof fell off a building, very close by, and Jack rescued me,’ Lily said promptly. It was true, if misleading, and earned her an admiring look from her fellow adventurer. Her respectable acquaintance. Her lost love.

‘Outrageous,’ Lady Allerton declared. ‘One is not safe in the streets these days. As if beggars and pickpockets were not enough, now we have buildings collapsing!’

The rest of the day passed decorously enough. The combined efforts of the chambermaid and Caroline rendered their appearance respectable enough to complete the day’s business, Lily pressing the warehouse keys into Jack’s hand with a silent plea to do what he could to explain to the agent what had occurred.

The ladies completed their shopping to their perfect satisfaction and Penelope’s day was crowned with glory by being allowed to drive back again with her brother in the curricle. Caroline explained, once they had set off, that she did not feel that some of the childbed details from her visit to Mrs Hodges were quite suitable for Penny’s tender ears.

Lily was not at all certain she wanted to hear them either. Remarks such as seven pounds and eight ounces, and in labour for thirty hours made her feel quite dizzy, although Caroline and even Susan were taking these horrid revelations perfectly calmly.

‘I suppose you do not visit many lying-in mothers, Miss French,’ Lady Allerton remarked. ‘As we have many tenants, naturally the older girls and I do so quite often.’

‘Oh, yes, I can imagine you would.’ There was an entire world out there, of tenants and one’s obligations to them, that Lily knew nothing about. By the time the Lovell sisters married they would know just how to manage the domestic duties of an estate, whereas if she and Jack had been so foolish as to … Her mind baulked at the thought, then she made herself follow it through. If they had married. She would have had to learn all these things about tenants from scratch; as for childbirth, that would have had to be encountered too, very personally indeed.

The damp moorlands and solid clumps of windswept beech trees passed the carriage windows while Caroline and Susan left the subject of babies and began to bicker gently over which of the new ribbons would look best with Mama’s second-best muslin.

Lily gazed unseeing out of the window and thought about children. She had never considered them before, assuming that babies would come along as a consequence of marriage. The image of Adrian’s children had never entered her imagination, but now she found herself trying to conjure up Jack’s. Her children with Jack. What would they have looked like? Would they have had her dark red hair, or his black silk? Green eyes or flint? Her impetuosity and stubbornness or his pride and courage?

Possibly the poor little things would have had the worst characteristics of both parents and would have had red hair and a forceful chin allied to a stubborn nature and a regrettable taste for gold and glitter. She would never know.

‘A penny for your thoughts, Lily,’ Susan said brightly. ‘They must be very interesting, for you were smiling, and now you look quite melancholy.’

‘My thoughts? Only fantasy,’ Lily prevaricated. ‘I was thinking about … about a play I saw.’

‘And was it a tragedy?’

‘I hope not,’ she said earnestly, only realising, when the words were out of her mouth, that they would make no sense to her audience.

The bustle of arrival at the castle saved her from having to explain herself, although Caroline’s quizzical glance warned her that perhaps she saw more than Lily found entirely comfortable.

The footman stood patiently while the ladies tumbled out of the carriage, pressing parcels into his hands, issuing instructions on what was to go where and impressing upon him that he must be absolutely certain that Miss Susan’s new bonnet did not get crushed.

The curricle had arrived just before them and Jack was on the ground, reaching up his hands to lift Penny down. It made a charming picture: the strong big brother lifting down the pretty girl. One day he would be standing like that, lifting his daughter down, tossing her up just a little to make her squeal as Penny, despite all her pretensions to be almost a young lady, was doing uninhibitedly.

Behind Lily, Caroline laughed. ‘Jack spoils that child outrageously.’

‘I think it charming,’ Lily retorted. ‘He will make an excellent father.’

‘Indeed he will. Perhaps we should find him a wife,’ Caroline said lightly. ‘I rely on you to help me, Lily—I am sure between us we can find him a charming bride.’