Читать книгу The Silver Squire - Mary Brendan, Mary Brendan - Страница 9

‘This is a respectable house, is it not, Mrs Keene?’

‘Indeed it is, Miss Worthington. Oh, yes, indeed it is.’

‘And no gentleman is allowed within it after nine of the clock, you said, did you not? So you will insist this gentleman immediately removes himself,’ Emma prompted in a low, trembling rush.

Mrs Keene asserted nothing, simply gawked at the man to whom her lodger referred as though he were an apparition. Recovering her senses, she rolled her eyes at Emma, mouthing something completely unintelligible, before bobbing her mob cap and herself up and down as though in the throes of some palsy.

Emma watched her landlady’s ridiculously obsequious display for no more than a second. Her furious glare turned on the blond man, lounging by the mantel in Mrs Keene’s small parlour.

He looked right back. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Sir Richard Du Quesne’s jaw clenched…ached as he fought to keep his eyes from slowly stripping that virginal white nightgown from her slender body. Silver eyes returned sharply to her face and his angry attention had her valiantly, proudly tilting her chin. If it hadn’t been for small, pearly teeth sinking steadyingly into her full lower lip he might have been fooled into thinking she was perfectly composed. He read her next move as it occurred to her and artlessly showed in those lucid golden eyes. Shifting away from the fire, he made for the parlour door.

A slow pulse throbbed low in his belly, spreading to tighten his groin, and he cursed at his feet in irritated frustration. He couldn’t recall ever seeing a woman so simply attired—certainly none whose keep he was paying for and whose bed he shared. The women of his acquaintance, whether family or fancy, trailed about in lace with their hair in curls when ready to retire.

With a subtle air of disinterest he glanced at luxuriant, glossy fawn hair spilling over pristine, modestly embroidered cotton, tendrils curving into a gracefully narrow back. If her hair and eyes didn’t resemble fine cognac she might not tempt him so much, he savagely mocked himself, shoving aside any ludicrous idea that she could join those whose bed he shared.

Emma turned warily on her heel as he passed, keeping him at the corner of a watchful tawny eye. His casual entrapment complete, he halted a few paces behind, forcing her to twist about to face him. Her eyes blazed copper beneath his silver stare until she abruptly looked away.

Mrs Keene’s face was diplomatically lowered but her beady eyes were busy batting between the hostile couple. ‘Ah, but that’s no gentleman, you know, miss,’ finally worked out of one corner of her mouth at Emma, while her eyes slid in the opposite direction.

A slender white hand flew to smother a hysterical laugh. Emma agreed through her quivering fingers, ‘Yes, I do know that, Mrs Keene.’ Very graciously she added, ‘Nevertheless, on this occasion I think we shall allow him the sobriquet and insist on his immediate removal from the premises.’

‘I can’t do that, miss!’ Mrs Keene whispered, horrified at the very idea. Her eyes slid to the tall blond man, who in turn had his sardonic mercurial gaze turned on her lodger.

‘And why ever not?’ Emma bit out, wrapping her slender arms about her night-robed body to warm it and conceal its quaking.

‘It’s the silver squire,’ Mrs Keene spluttered out, so low and fast it merely emerged as a sibilant hiss and Emma could decipher none of it.

‘What?’ she queried on a frown.

‘She said I’m the silver squire,’ Sir Richard Du Quesne told her evenly. ‘Lightly translated, that means I own the freehold of this house and the rest of the street together with quite an amount of the city of Bath.’

After a stunned moment, digesting the awful news that she was actually attempting to eject him from one of his own properties, she fumed. ‘And you think that gives you the right to come here and harass me, I suppose?’

‘Your continual deceit earlier today gives me the right to come here and question you. So does a sense of duty to a close friend who cares about your welfare.’ As though just noticing the goggling, hovering landlady, an explicit flick of a bronzed hand signalled her to remove herself.

‘Don’t you dare go!’ Emma cried at the woman’s back, noting she had immediately turned to do his bidding.

Richard shrugged easily. ‘Please be seated, then, Mrs Keene, while Miss Worthington explains to me certain inconsistencies in her behaviour.’

‘I am under no obligation to account to you for one thing, sir!’

Emma’s thin hands tightened into fists behind her back. She could not believe herself to have been so stupid as to immediately race downstairs five minutes ago, on gleaning from Mrs Keene’s garbled croak that a gentleman awaited her company in the parlour. Before she could interrogate the woman further her mob-capped head had disappeared from around her chamber door.

Pulling on her heavy cotton wrap, Emma had simply bolted after her, wondering how Matthew had managed to bribe her landlady to allow him entrance at this time of the night; wondering, too, why on earth he had not waited until the morning to enquire how she’d done with her interview. Then it had occurred to her, with a scattering of icy needles about her body, that it might be something more serious than the success of her job-seeking that had brought him here so late. Perhaps something pertaining to her flight from London…and Jarrett Dashwood…And she’d fair flown below.

Not once had she dreamed that Richard Du Quesne might be irked enough by her escape to bother discovering where she lodged and immediately track her. But then the novelty of being shunned by a woman, even a modest spinster such as she, had probably been enough to inflame a need for immediate retaliation.

‘Did you walk back here?’

She glared at him, about to spit that he could mind his own business and go fly to the devil. A movement at one corner of a sensual, narrow mouth told her he was reading her mind.

‘I hailed a cab,’ she stiffly informed him.

‘Why did you run away?’

‘I was hungry,’ she returned flippantly, gazing insolently past him, ‘and couldn’t wait longer for you to return with a measly bun. I decided to make my way home for one of Mrs Keene’s delicious dinners before I faded dead away.’

He smiled at her churlishness, and at her long, slender fingers ceaselessly entwining then jerking apart.

‘Are you going to tell me why you’re here in Bath, unchaperoned?’ he asked quietly so Mrs Keene was excluded from his dialogue.

‘No,’ Emma simply said, and disdainfully flicked away her tawny head.

‘Very well. I’ll send an express to your parents tomorrow and thus find out.’ He was reaching for the door handle when she stopped him.

‘Don’t do that…please…’ was forced out as her eyes squeezed shut.

He walked back, straight past her, seating himself in a chair by the small hearth. A movement of his long, dark fingers this time had Mrs Keene beetling for the door and Emma enviously watching her.

She didn’t dare follow her landlady out, although he was taunting her with the opportunity. He had her exactly where he wanted her, she realised with impotent fury. Her face flung around, and she glowered her loathing.

He responded by smiling and settling back leisurely into the battered wing-chair, propping a booted foot on his knee. One dark hand was splayed idly against polished leather, the other against his face.

Emma sensed her teeth grinding, her fists curling. He was deliberately impressing on her just how easily he could keep her here, and that he was exercising patience in waiting for her to obediently disclose all to him. Her nails stabbed her palms as she suppressed a terrifying need to bound across the few feet that separated them and hit him.

‘Do your parents know where you are?’

‘My whereabouts are of no interest to them,’ she snapped back. ‘Why should they be? I am a spinster of twenty-seven and perfectly able to live alone.’

‘I know how old you are, Emma,’ he said softly. ‘I attended your twenty-fourth-birthday celebration…remember?’

‘Not by my invitation…’ she sniped, then twisted away and closed her eyes. Do not antagonise him, she severely, calmingly chided herself. He is of no importance whatsoever. Just use half-truths and guile. It will satisfy his base curiosity, thus enabling you to rid yourself of his damnable presence…then all will again be well. He is simply a hedonistic fool ruled by lust and alcohol…She hesitated in her unspoken censure, recalling that there had been less of an inebriated haze about this man than about Matthew on their reunion in Oakdene this week…and several times since.

‘Well?’ His mild impatience shattered the tension after several silent minutes. When she steadfastly refused to look at him or speak because she still hadn’t quite worked out which lies would serve her best, he added, ‘Have you nothing at all to say?’

‘Yes, I have something to say,’ she announced, honey-voiced, as feral eyes pounced on him. ‘And I do not think you will want to contact my parents to relay this. If you do not remove yourself this instant I shall scream and weep loud enough to wake the street and charge you with…’

‘With…?’ he prompted mildly through long, dark fingers curled against his sensual mouth, watching her from beneath heavy lids.

‘With attempting to force your vile attentions on me…with molesting me. Now what do you say, Mr Du Quesne?’ she flung at him, inclining slightly towards him in triumph.

He was out of the chair in a lithe second, making her jerk back and whirl away so fast, treacle hair flowed out thickly towards him.

‘I’d say you’re a little early with that complaint, Miss Worthington,’ he purred as he walked right up to her. Smoky silver eyes eventually reached her white face, having leisurely mounted her body.

He watched real fear dilate her pupils. He also saw that she was still itching to slap him. His teeth met, shifting his jaw aslant, as he finally accepted that he wanted it too. He was just longing for her to touch him…in any way…in that way.

He forced himself away from her, cutting off her escape route, for she was now liable to flee and damn the consequences, then he still wouldn’t know what the hell was going on. He stood with his back to her yet with her colouring, her sharp, sculpted little features imprinted on his mind. He laughed, low and private, in a way that had Emma swinging about, eyes raking the breadth of his shoulders to try and discover the reason for it.

Richard raised his sardonic dark face to the ceiling. So Yvette deemed herself a wildcat, did she? he mused ironically. Yvette was nothing more than a spiteful harlot…and spiteful in a manner that had little to do with how she liked to brand him as hers in a way easily recognisable to other women.

This was a wildcat, he realised ruefully…the genuine, un-adorned article. She even looked the part with her spare, graceful body and tawny colouring: like a small woodland creature…too beautiful to touch…too beautiful not to. And he felt a sudden drenching disgust at having resorted to subduing her with the threat of violation.

He’d never in his life done that…never needed to. Women, and plenty of them, came to him very willingly. Yet what tormented him most was, now he’d acknowledged the desire, self-discipline seemed to mock him. Angry frustration culminated in a dark fist cracking savagely against the door as he moved abruptly past it.

Emma jumped and stifled a small scream; so did Mrs Keene on the other side of the door, with one pudgy hand clamped to her mouth and the other to her battered, ringing ear.

Giddy with fatigue and hunger, Emma leaned against the wall to steady herself. She had eaten nothing since her meagre breakfast and was now ravenous. Her stomach endorsed its need for attention by growling loudly.

Richard arrowed a look at her as she instinctively pressed both hands to her flat abdomen, bending over a little as though to hide the offending noise.

‘You’ve still not eaten, have you?’

‘No.’ There was no point in lying about something this trivial and obvious, she thought wryly. Deceit would be better employed on major issues.

‘Mrs Keene…?’ Richard said quite normally.

After a momentary scuffling sound, the woman was in the doorway, her apron polishing at the brass knob as though she intended shining it away.

‘Just afinishin’ off me chores, sir,’ she explained gruffly, still managing to bob her head at him as she toiled.

‘Quite…’ he said very drily. ‘I take it you have something appetising to eat about the place?’

Emma choked a spontaneous laugh, making Mrs Keene look nervously at her and Richard arrow her a speculative look. Now why had that not occurred to her? she thought hysterically. Had she offered him one of Mrs Keene’s delicious dinners, no doubt he would even now be halfway home.

‘Why, o’ course, your lordship. I’d be happy to fetch it direct,’ Mrs Keene hastily offered, elevating Richard’s rank in her enthusiasm. ‘La, miss, you missed out on your supper, didn’t you now? You should’ve said for it slipped me busy mind. Now, there be beef silverside and vegetables roastin’. Or mutton hotpot on the hob…an’ a dumplin’…’

Richard looked at Emma questioningly for a choice but she simply held onto her newly gurgling stomach and stared at Mrs Keene in amazement. Beef? Mutton? Dumplings? Where was salt bacon and carrots?

‘Now, not that it be none o’ my concern, o’ course, as to what you choose, but the beef do look a treat an’ fit for a conasewer o’ fine fare…’

‘Fetch two plates of the beef and hurry, if you please,’ Richard clipped across Mrs Keene’s recommendations, making the choice for them both.

Mrs Keene was like a whirlwind. Within a few minutes of her leaving them alone, she was back, accompanied by the young girl who helped in the kitchens. Cutlery, bread, butter, pickles, wine and beer all decked the small parlour table while Emma watched. Then, just as she was about to get a grip on her pride and her senses, and tell him he could dine here alone for she wanted none of it, the steaming plates appeared and she was lost. The beef certainly looked and smelled as good as her landlady had lauded.

Mrs Keene hovered in the doorway with her knees bent and a piece of her skirt held daintily out at an angle in thumb and forefinger.

‘Thank you, Mrs Keene,’ Richard said graciously. ‘And your chores for the day are finished now, are they not?’

‘Yes, sir, indeed they are, sir,’ she emphatically declared, and at his peremptory nod she was gone.

Emma remained by the wall, her eyes on the table, still striving for the courage to reject it…and him. Just a chunk of that aromatic bread would suffice, she realised, if she could snatch it on the way to the door.

‘Sit down.’ His order sliced evenly through her half-hearted abstemiousness and for some reason she immediately obeyed. Approaching the table, she sank into the chair he had pulled out. Seating himself opposite, he pushed one laden plate of beef and vegetables towards her, lavishly buttered a chunk of springy warm bread and, unperturbed, started eating.

After a silent moment when Emma simply stared hatefully at the tempting savoury repast as though wishing it all to be stringy, salty bacon and carrots boiled to a mash, she picked up her knife and fork.

They ate in silence yet Emma refused to meekly avoid his eyes. From time to time, she forced proud topaz eyes to meet steady silver, desperate to match his mild, expressionless demeanour. But she knew it was impossible. Every time he pushed bread her way or refilled her glass with sweet wine she tensed, wanting to throw it back at him. And he knew it, too, she realised as her eyes again rose valiantly and swept past dark, sardonic features on the way to glare at the fire.

When she was full and simply shook her head at him as he offered her more, he finally said, with absolute calm and reason, ‘I think that it would be wise for your family to know of your whereabouts.’

‘Leave us all be,’ Emma responded with quiet civility, sensing an unspoken truce between them that she was willing to momentarily honour. ‘You will cause us more grief by interfering. No one will thank you for broadcasting this matter, least of all my parents.’

There was a new, narrow-eyed intensity to his gaze. ‘Have you been sent away? Banished from London?’

Emma averted her face, feeling it heat in indignation on comprehending his obtuse meaning. So he classed her morals as no better than those of the women he consorted with, did he? But his base imaginings might just serve her purpose, she realised, her refreshed mind back to investigating devious tactics.

Yes; why not comply? It would be sure to disgust and alienate such a hypocritical degenerate. If there was an infallible way to rid oneself of a gentleman’s presence, it must be the hint of an approaching, illegitimate birth. Speculation as to the child’s paternity was sure to be bandied about.

‘It is a very delicate matter, sir, for a lady in my position…’ Emma whispered. And at least I am a lady! she would have loved to raucously screech at him, but resisted and demurely lowered her face. ‘And I do not wish to say more. I’m sure you understand…’ she timidly concluded, pressing her lips tight to conceal a small, satisfied smile.

‘But I wish you to say more for I do not understand,’ he rejected with silky steel. ‘Have your parents sent you away to avoid a scandal?’

She remained diffidently quiet yet was aware of his absolute stillness, his absolute attention. When the silence between them dragged interminably some of her smug confidence evaporated and her stomach’s mellow satiety began to curdle.

‘Are you with child?’

‘I beg you will not press me on the matter, sir,’ she pleaded shrilly, agitatedly, swivelling sideways on her chair. He hadn’t leapt up and excused himself as she’d expected; moreover, he seemed content to simply sit and singe the top of her head with a quicksilver stare.

‘What of your lover? Where is he?’ he asked quite levelly, yet on shoving himself back from the table the chair almost tipped over.

She was aware of her body receiving a disturbingly thorough assessment. No doubt he did know of such things, she realised acidly. She’d seen him at the Fallow Buck with a child. Whether it was born of his wife or his mistress was anyone’s guess. As Victoria had never mentioned Dickie—as she affectionately termed him—marrying, the child, she presumed, must be the offspring from some base union.

She and Victoria exchanged letters quite often. Via one of those, Emma had learned that this man had moved abroad a year or more ago to oversee his foreign estates. Such a shame he ever brought himself back! she viciously thought, squirming beneath his unrelenting observation.

‘Is he married already or refusing to support you?’

‘Please, do not ask for I…I really cannot say…’

Well, how lucky can you get? Richard sourly mused. You wanted her and now it looks as though not only can you have her but another man’s bastard, too. For God’s sake, leave now! he urged himself. You’ve done your best. You’ve fed her…offered to help. She doesn’t want your aid. She’s never liked you. Even at your mannerly best, she never liked you, he mocked himself, recalling how attentively civil he’d been to her three years previously in London when he and David Hardinge had been the bane of polite society. And there, of course, lay a prime reason why he was loath to abandon her: he owed it to the best friend he had ever had to protect her, for David’s wife, Victoria, cherished this woman as a very dear friend.

In fact, he was quite surprised that she hadn’t fled into Hertfordshire to seek support from Victoria rather than head this way where she seemed friendless and alone…unless…He twisted on his heel. Of course, you fool, he silently berated himself. If she’s headed this way, that’s because her lover lives locally. ‘How long have you been in Bath?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Five days,’ Emma answered honestly, yet looked warily at him.

So she’d been here five days and was starving and seeking employment, which meant that the bastard had no intention of taking on his responsibility. If he was already married the least he could do was settle her in her own establishment somewhere as his mistress.

Oh, no! Don’t you dare give it a minute’s pause! he inwardly raged. A pregnant mistress? In three months’ time when her belly’s swollen you’ll be visiting Yvette and counting the cost of it all. A mistress with a child? You don’t even like children! You like your nephew well enough, an inner voice argued back. He likes you too. Stephen says you’re good with children. But they’re family…they share your blood. This flyblow could be sired by a criminal…drunk…gambler. Should suit pretty well, then, echoed back drily as he recalled his duelling, his long nights spent heavy-eyed at card tables and numerous drunken brawls in his misspent youth.

Besides—he swivelled on a heel to look at her—at some time she’s going to be this beautiful again…perhaps filled out a little too, he thought wryly as he discreetly surveyed delicately curving breasts and hips. ‘You need someone to care for you,’ he heard himself say. ‘Even if you manage to get employment, you’ll be put off as soon as your condition becomes apparent.’

Emma merely nodded, not knowing what else to do, for her stomach was in sickening cramps as she anticipated what would come next. But then, it had been niggling at the back of her mind since she’d stupidly threatened to cry rape to frighten him off. He’d looked at her from beneath his long, dusky lashes in a way he had three years ago…in a way he no doubt looked at all women who aroused his lust. And she knew she did that for some odd reason.

No other man had looked at her in that steady, intent way, as though the backs of his eyes were afire. Certainly not Matthew. Yet, even with so little experience of men, an innate sense warned her that throbbing, silent stare was a prelude to lechery. She slowly stood, quickly said, ‘Thank you for your concern but I have made my own plans…If you will excuse me…’

They seemed to be pacing towards the door at the same time, at the same speed yet he reached it first from further away. A solid dark fist was planted casually against it and slitted silver eyes gleamed down at her. ‘What plans?’ he asked idly.

‘Private plans,’ she returned sweetly.

‘Plans that include absconding from here as soon as I’m out of sight?’

‘I have nothing further to say, sir,’ she said with great dignity…yet alarmed, for he had a disturbing ability to read her mind. ‘I can only ask you not to cause my family further distress by…by mentioning this to anyone at all. My parents are quite ill with worry.’ And that was the truth, too, even if their anxiety stemmed from a different source entirely.

‘You can’t stay here; it’s hardly fitting. Besides, as you and Mrs Keene insist, it is a respectable house,’ he mentioned satirically. ‘I’m sure you’ll soon be asked to leave.’

‘Mrs Keene need never know!’ She realised immediately how naive that sounded. A pregnant woman was quite easily identifiable as she neared her time. ‘I shall not be here for very long,’ she quickly amended.

Richard looked meaningfully at the door. ‘Oh, I’m sure a hint of it might already have reached Mrs Keene’s ears.’

Emma glanced, horrified, at the door then actually caught a muffled shuffle of receding slippered feet.

‘You need someone to care for you, Emma.’

She felt the soft words stir the hair at her brow, sensed the distance between them close and solidify with tension. She swallowed, trying to dredge up some clever snub, but nothing came. Nothing at all. Her volatile mind was unusually lethargic.

The fist planted by the side of her head slid down the panels on the door, dark knuckles brushing against fawn hair close to them. His long fingers uncurled slowly, moved a trailing tress back from her brow, then another with a mesmeric gentleness that would have rendered objection superfluous.

Her copper eyes were slowly raised, magnetised by eyes like tarnished silver stars. ‘Let me care for you, Emma,’ he said huskily before his moon-pale head dipped and his lips touched a feather-light caress to her brow.

Entranced, her body felt immoveable, her limbs heavy. Even her ivory lids felt weighted and drooped as warm, skimming kisses trailed her cool skin from temple to cheek.

Hit him! Push him away! resounded in her mind, but hollowly, as though from far, far away. And the tantalisingly soft caress was so soothing. Suddenly, it felt as though she’d been starved of human contact and this man’s touch was as essential as the food she’d eaten.

A dark thumb traced her lower lip, a hand wound into thick tawny hair, tilting her head those necessary few inches. His mouth touched hers with infinite gentle persuasion, and Emma felt herself melting into it.

He knew it, too: unbelievably, her acquiescence seemed a mere kiss away. ‘I’ll care for you and the child,’ he murmured confidently against her mouth. ‘You’ll want for nothing, I swear. I’ll make lasting provision for you. Even if I marry at some time, you’ll want for nothing.’

A glacier of icy feeling, bright and invigorating, seemed to meander from her pulsing lips to her rigid toes. As his mouth slid forcefully on hers and his hand spanned her jaw, manoeuvring it apart, she finally wrenched her head aside, simultaneously swinging small, clawed fingers up towards his face.