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“Flora.” He took her hands in his and drew her to sit beside him on the love seat. “I have something that I must ask you.” He hesitated, frowning. The expression in his eyes was so painful, so at odds with his immaculate outward appearance, that Flora felt quite shaken to see it. She had never, ever seen Nat Waterhouse display strong emotion but now he looked grim and unhappy.
She knew exactly what she had to do.
“You wish me to release you from our engagement,” she said.
Shock flared in his eyes. “How did you know?”
She freed herself from his grasp. What was she to say now? It could not be anything that remotely resembled the truth. The truth was too personal and they had never spoken of intimate things. Their relationship had been entirely superficial.
What she wanted to say was:
“I know we cannot marry because I have always been aware that there is something between you and Lady Elizabeth Scarlet that is too powerful to be ignored, and I do not wish to play second fiddle to it for the rest of my life. I am sure she is in love with you and that you desire her in a way you never desired me…”
No indeed, the perfectly judged, beautifully behaved Miss Flora Minchin could never utter such words to her betrothed, no matter how much she knew them to be true.
“I think that we would not suit.” She smiled brightly at him. “I have thought it for a little while.”
He was looking at her as though she had taken leave of her senses, which in all probability it must seem she had. Not suit? How could they not suit when there was not sufficient emotion in their relationship for them ever to disagree on anything? How could they be anything other than perfectly matched when he had the title and she the money? He was a fortune hunter and she an heiress looking to be a countess. She knew that marriage was a business arrangement, or so her parents had told her, with their banking fortune that had bought everything they had ever wanted except, it seemed, an Earl as a son-inlaw and the prospect of a dukedom, almost the highest estate imaginable, once Nat’s father died.
Flora got to her feet and moved away from him, smoothing her immaculate skirts as she walked across the room.
“It is fortunate that you called this morning,” she said, “and that we have had the opportunity to resolve this before it was too late.”
Nat was shaking his head. He raked his hand through his hair. “I ought to explain to you—”
Flora raised a hand to stop him. This would never do. The last thing she wanted from him was that he should explain. “Please do not,” she said.
“But I cannot let you take the sole responsibility for this.” Nat sounded anguished. “It isn’t right that you should bear that.”
It was Nat Waterhouse’s tragedy, Flora thought, that he was too honorable a man to do what many other men would do in his position and cravenly accept the lifeline she was throwing him. Many a man, she was aware, would have crept out by now, abjectly grateful that she had absolved him of all responsibility.
“If you are to be free, my lord,” she said gently, “you cannot have it any other way. A lady is allowed to change her mind. A gentleman is not in honor. It is as simple as that.”
“I don’t deserve for you to make it so easy for me,” Nat said. He sounded grim. He came to her and took her hand in his, pressing a kiss on the back. Once again Flora’s heart did not flutter, but stayed beating as calmly as it always had.
“You are an exceptional woman, Flora Minchin,” he said. “I had no idea.”
“Which rather illustrates why we should have been badly suited,” Flora countered dryly. “Let us leave it at that.”
She could tell he did not want to go and leave her with the unconscionable mess of canceling a marriage on the wedding day itself. She could tell that every muscle in his body was straining to tell her the reason for his defection and to take the blame. She could even tell that he wanted her to lose her temper, to rant at him, scream and cry, because in doing so she would somehow lessen the intolerable guilt he was feeling.
It gave her a small amount of satisfaction to appear totally calm and to deny him that relief. She was human, after all.
She waited until he had gone out and Irwin, the butler, had closed the front door very firmly behind him, and then she went to find her mother and father and to tell them that their most cherished dream of seeing their daughter as a countess was over. And the relief to have been given a second chance at the future swelled in her heart until she felt as though she was going to burst.
“YOU WILL HAVE HEARD the news, of course,” Mrs. Morton, the draper, said as she wrapped up a parcel of blue spotted muslin for Lizzie. “Miss Minchin has cried off from her wedding this very morning!” She reached for the string and tied an expert knot. “I feel most distraught—a number of ladies have purchased gowns and bonnets from me for the event and now no one will see them! It is very unfortunate and most inconsiderate of Miss Minchin. And why whistle an Earl down the wind when one is only a banker’s daughter? Do you think she has had a better offer? A Duke? Are there any dukes newly arrived in the village? That is thirty-six shillings and sixpence, if you please, Lady Elizabeth. Have you taken up dressmaking? You never buy cloth here.”
“Yes,” Lizzie said. She fumbled in her purse for some coins. She felt a little strange. I am tired, she thought. I did not sleep well. That is all. She tried to concentrate on finding the money but her head was buzzing.
Flora had cried off from the wedding. That was not meant to happen. Nat was supposed to be getting married in three hours time. He was going to the Lake District and from there to Water House near York, and she was never going to have to see him again, and she could keep on pretending that the events of the previous night had never occurred…
“Thirty-six shillings, Lady Elizabeth,” Mrs. Morton said, a little sharply. “And in ready money, if you please, rather than notes. I don’t trust the banks.”
“Of course,” Lizzie said numbly. She put some coins randomly on the counter. She was feeling very hot. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come into the village. She had not wanted to sit around at Fortune Hall in case Nat had called to see her, but neither had she wanted company. She was not sure why everything felt so difficult and complicated this morning. Her mind felt weighted with lead.
“I hear that most of the fortune hunters have left the village now that almost all the heiresses are wed,” Mrs. Morton said, counting out her change. The soft clink of the coins seemed very loud and made Lizzie’s head hurt. “A pity. Your half brother’s plan to fleece all the ladies of their money was good for many businesses here because it brought in so much new custom. I suppose it is not worth a gentleman the cost of a journey from London now that there are no more fortunes to be had.”
“I imagine not,” Lizzie said. “And good riddance to them. I am glad,” she added, “that Monty has been thwarted in his plans to use the Dames’ Tax to take half of our dowries. His money-grabbing ways are a total disgrace.”
“The man’s a greedy whoremonger,” Mrs. Morton said, with great relish, “and his brother’s no better! The way young Tom treated little Miss Cole…Well, she’s never going to be able to make a respectable marriage now, is she?” Mrs. Morton shook her head. “And now Miss Minchin as well—I wonder what the scandal is there? For there has to be some, Lady Elizabeth. No girl calls off her wedding on the very morning of the ceremony unless there’s scandal afoot. You mark my words!”
Scandal afoot…
Something sharp and painful twisted inside Lizzie. She thought of Nat and of the previous night and pushed away the memory violently. When she had woken that morning she had resolved never to think on it again. But that had been before she had heard about the canceled wedding. Why had Flora cried off? Surely Nat could not have told her what had happened? It was impossible. Lizzie was desperate to know but in order to find out she would be obliged to face Nat, to talk to him, and nothing could be worse when her emotions were still so raw. Panic rose, suffocating, in her throat.
Nothing happened, she told herself. There is no scandal, for nothing happened at all.
She tried to gather up the change from the counter, but the coins slipped and scattered on the floor. Mrs. Morton was looking at her with curiosity in her darting brown eyes. “Are you quite well, Lady Elizabeth? You seem a little distracted this morning. I wondered—” she gave a little artificial tinkle of laughter “—whether you knew aught of the broken betrothal. After all, you are a great friend of Lord Waterhouse, are you not? A very great friend indeed.”
Lizzie bent to pick up her money. She did not answer. The shop felt airless. She felt a little dizzy.
“And you are the richest heiress left,” Mrs. Morton’s voice continued, above her head. “A very rich prize indeed. Will you wed, Lady Elizabeth, before your half brother steals your fortune?”
There was a ping as the door of the shop opened and the bell rang loudly. Lizzie jumped. She stood up abruptly. Nat Waterhouse had come in and was standing only a few feet away. Lizzie’s head spun with the sudden shock of his appearance when she had been thinking about him only a moment before. She put a hand out to steady herself and the smooth wood of the counter slipped beneath her fingers. Damn it, if only she did not feel so strange about everything…
Nothing happened…
Nat looked so tired, she thought. There were deep lines about his eyes, as though he had not slept, and a grim set to his mouth, but he still looked fiercely intimidating enough to make her legs feel weak.
“Lady Elizabeth,” he said, bowing.
He looked the same, Lizzie thought. He looks exactly the same as he did last week, so why do I see him differently? Why do I see him as my lover and see an answering knowledge in his eyes when I do not want to think of him like that because I still love him and it hurts…It hurts as though I am wearing all my feelings on the outside and have no protection against him.
“Lord Waterhouse!” Mrs. Morton was fluttering around. “I was so very sorry to hear about your broken betrothal—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Morton,” Nat said. He did not take his eyes from Lizzie. Nor did he offer any explanation whatsoever.
He was standing between Lizzie and the door. She realized that she could not get out—and that he had done it deliberately in order to force her to confront him. Suddenly she felt as though the walls of the shop were closing in on her and all the bolts of cloth Mrs. Morton had swathed so artfully about the place to display her wares were swooping down to smother her.
“Are you quite well, Lady Elizabeth?” Mrs. Morton sounded excited. “You look very pale. Are you going to swoon?”
“Of course not,” Lizzie said. “I never faint. It is a hot day. That is all. Thank you, Mrs. Morton. Good day, Lord Waterhouse.”
She found she could not look at him. He had moved closer to her and his very proximity seemed to hold her still, unable to speak, unable to move. Her awareness of him was overwhelming. She could sense Mrs. Morton looking from one of them to the other with an expression of most gleeful curiosity on her face.
“May I escort you somewhere, Lady Elizabeth?” Nat murmured. He put out a hand and took her by the elbow. The shivers skittered along her nerve endings. Her heart raced, bumping painfully against her ribs. Nat’s touch had never stirred her before. He must have touched her a thousand times in the past when she dismounted her horse or when he acted her friend and escorted her to a ball or on endless other occasions. Only now did he make her body ripple with responsiveness even as her mind despaired.
“Thank you, but no,” Lizzie said rapidly. “I have errands to run.”
“Then I will accompany you.”
“No, indeed—”
“I would like very much to speak with you,” Nat said. There was an undertone of steel in his voice now that brought Lizzie’s eyes up sharply to his. His dark gaze was implacable. “I believe we have matters to discuss.”
“No—”
“Indeed we do.”
Mrs. Morton’s gaze was avid. Lizzie felt the panic flare inside her and blossom through her whole body, setting her shaking. Then the door chimed again and two ladies came into the shop, and Lizzie pulled her arm from Nat’s grip, diving through the open door and out into the street.
Where to run? Where to hide?
She knew she had only a split second before Nat extricated himself from the shop and came after her.
She could not speak to him. Merely thinking about it turned her so cold that she shivered as though she had the ague. She had made a terrible, terrible mistake and the only way in which she could deal with it was to pretend that it simply had not happened. If she spoke to Nat he would make her confront it and that she could not do.
Run away, Lizzie thought. She had always run, all her life. She had seen her mother do it, too. It was all she knew.
“Lady Elizabeth!”
She spun around. Nat was coming toward her as briskly as the crowded street would allow. Saturday mornings in Fortune’s Folly were always busy. The road was crowded with carts and horses, with women carrying marketing baskets, children clinging to their skirts, with gentlemen strolling and ladies browsing the windows. Nat ignored them all, cutting a path toward her with ruthless determination. Lizzie dashed down the first arcade that she came to, past the wigmaker and the perfumery, into the china shop, where her flying skirts caught the edge of a display of fine Wedgwood plates, newly arrived from London, and sent them crashing to the floor. She didn’t stop, even at the shopkeeper’s cry of outrage, but hurried out of the back door, down a passageway, tripping over a rotten cabbage, sending a chicken running for its life. She imagined Nat stopping to pay the china merchant and knew that would buy her a few minutes. He would have to take responsibility for her breakages. That was the sort of thing that he always did.
She had a stitch. She leaned on the edge of the stone parapet of the bridge over the River Tune and tried to catch her breath. There were cabbage leaves stuck to her skirts. Across the other side of the river she could see her brother’s land agent collecting payment from the coachmen who had their carriages drawn up on the green whilst the occupants shopped, visited the spa or walked on Fortune Row. This was Monty’s latest money-spinner following the tax on dogs he had instigated the previous month. She saw a carriage with the Vickery arms drawn up outside the circulating library. Perhaps Alice was in town and was intending to call on her after she had been to the shops. For a moment Lizzie longed desperately to see her friend and then she realized that it was not possible. Alice knew her too well. She would know instantly that something was wrong and then Lizzie would tell her the truth and that would be a disaster because she simply had to pretend. If she did not pretend—if she told all, and Alice sympathized with her—then all would be lost because she would disintegrate in misery and blurt out her love for Nat and the humiliation and loss would drown her.
“Lady Elizabeth!”
Lizzie straightened abruptly. There was Nat, wending his way between the carriages on the bridge and looking cross and disheveled now—he had cabbage leaves on his jacket, too—but still very, very determined. Oh dear. Time to run.
“I don’t want to talk to you!” Lizzie yelled, startling several coach horses. “Go away!” She saw Lady Wheeler’s startled face staring out at her from one of the carriages and felt the hysterical laughter bubbling up within her.
“Hoyden!” Lady Wheeler’s lips moved. Lizzie did not need to be able to hear her to know the words. “Wild, ungovernable, a disgrace…”
If only they knew just how disgracefully she had behaved.
Would they be kinder to her because her heart was broken?
“Lizzie!” Nat bellowed.
Lizzie took her life in her hands and dived between two carriages, hearing the coachman swear and feeling the heat of the horses’ breath against her face. Over the parapet, under the bridge, along the water’s edge, up into the village on the other side of the river, into the cabinetmakers where her unkempt reflection stared back at her from an endless line of mirrors for sale, the scent of beeswax in her nostrils, the gleam of the wood dazzling her…Someone caught her as she was about to trip on the pavement outside, but even as the panic grabbed her she realized it was not Nat but another gentleman, raising his hat, an appreciative gleam in his eyes. She could see Nat pushing through the crowd. Would he never give up? She grabbed a hansom cab. “Fortune Hall, quickly!” The coachman whipped up the horse and they were away before Nat could haul himself up into the cab beside her. Lizzie saw his furious expression as they pulled away. It was twice as expensive to take a hansom these days because Sir Montague taxed half of the drivers’ charges. Well, her brother could pay his own taxes this time, Lizzie thought. Her purse was empty anyway and she had dropped the bolt of blue spotted muslin somewhere in the street. She would not go back for it. She was not really sure why she had bought it in the first place.
The important thing was that she had outrun Nat again. She did not look back.
Chapter Four
DAMN THE WOMAN! He had chased her through every back street and alley of Fortune’s Folly. He had had to pay the china merchant and soothe the outraged coachman and calm some skittish horses, and he was sick and tired of acting as Lizzie’s conscience and wallet. She was spoiled and headstrong and she never faced up to her responsibilities. She had been running away for as long as he had known her.
She was running away from him now.
Nat smoothed his hair, calmed his breath and watched the hansom cab disappear over the cobbles with a clatter of wheels and a cloud of summer dust. Lizzie did not look back. The tilt of her head, even the back of her spring straw bonnet, looked defiant. But he had seen her eyes and they had looked terrified.
He bent to retrieve the parcel of blue muslin that was resting in the gutter. Goodness only knew why Lizzie had bought it. She was the least accomplished woman in the world with a needle and had always scorned embroidery and dressmaking.
Nat felt a pang somewhere deep in his chest. He knew Lizzie so well. They had been friends for years. He cared for her. It hurt that she used to run to him for help when she was in trouble and now she was running from him. He did not even understand why she was running though he imagined that it must be because she was so shocked and scared and mortified by what had happened that she simply could not face him. But he could put all to rights if only she would let him. The first step was taken. He was free of the engagement to Flora, free to marry Lizzie instead. He could give her the protection of his name and he could claim her fortune in place of the one he had lost.
If only he could make her stay still long enough to hear his proposal.
If only she accepted it.
With Lizzie one never knew.
He twisted the brown paper parcel in his hands and heard the covering rip. He could deliver it to Fortune Hall in person and demand that Lizzie see him. Except that she would probably climb over the roof and run away into the woods again sooner than speak with him.
For a moment he toyed with the idea of going to one of Lizzie’s friends, to Laura Anstruther or Alice Vickery, and asking for their help. He rejected the idea reluctantly, for that would involve some sort of explanation and his friends were already curious about the canceled wedding. He had received notes from both Dexter and Miles, his groomsmen, demanding to know what the hell was going on. If he asked their wives to intercede with Lizzie on his behalf the speculation would explode and although none of them would ever spread gossip or scandal, he could not expose Lizzie to such conjecture. No, he would have to sort this out unaided. That was appropriate since the disaster was of his creation. If only he had been stronger, had more self-control, more restraint. If only he had not found Lizzie so damnably physically attractive, if only he did not still ache for her with a devouring carnal need that was as shocking as it was misplaced. But again, if he married her that desire would no longer be inappropriate—or unfulfilled. He could make love to her every night and all day if he wished, as much as he wanted, sating his unexpected lust in the respectable marriage bed.
Fortune Street at midday on a Saturday was an inappropriate place to be sporting a huge erection. Nat moved the muslin parcel to provide strategic cover. He had to stop thinking about bedding Lizzie until he had secured her hand in marriage. He had to do everything properly. Better late than never.
AFTER MRS. MINCHIN HAD finished having hysterics and Mr. Minchin had finished raging, Flora had summoned the hall boy, the footman and as many of the maids as could be spared, and sent them out with notes for all the wedding guests telling them that the nuptials were canceled and she deeply regretted the inconvenience. She then informed her parents that she was going out for a walk, alone, and such was their stupor at what had happened that they did not oppose her. It was the first time in Flora’s life that she had made them angry and she could tell that they were baffled as well because until now she had never given them a moment’s cause for concern, yet suddenly she had turned into a stranger to them.
She went out of the house and turned away from the village toward the moors. She did not walk with any particular destination in mind, but simply followed where her feet were taking her. She noticed that it was a beautiful early summer day, perfect for a wedding. The skylarks were calling overhead, their song fading as they rose higher and higher into the blue. The wildflowers bobbed on the verge beside the track. Presently she found herself up on the hill, high above the village. Fortune’s Folly was spread out beneath her with the church spire piercing the sky and the lazy curl of the river and the old abbey ruins and the bridge, and Fortune Row where people strolled and gossiped in the sun. She was beyond the reach of them all, even if they were all talking scandal about her canceled wedding.
She looked down. Her shoes were ruined. It was so stupid of her to have come out without putting on stout boots for even in summer the tracks were dirty and rutted. She supposed that she could at least afford another pair, or a hundred pairs, since she wasn’t giving all her money away to Nat Waterhouse anymore. She tried to examine her feelings. She was not sorry that the wedding was canceled. She would have married Nat, of course, and she would have made him a good wife because that was what she had been brought up to believe in. It was what she had thought she was going to do with her life. Yet it was odd, because all along she had known that there had to be if not something more, then something different. A dutiful marriage was one path, true—the path that society in general and her mother in particular had decreed for her and she had not struggled against it. But now…Well, suddenly she felt free and it felt rather strange.
She sat down on the wall. The sharp corners of the stone dug into her bottom and thighs and she wriggled to try to get comfortable. She was out of breath. The morning was hot and the sun was climbing high in the sky and she had come out without a bonnet or parasol as well as in her flimsy shoes.
There were men working the fields away to her right. She recognized one of them as Lowell Lister, Lady Vickery’s brother. She had seen him escorting his mother and sister to assemblies in Fortune’s Folly before Alice was wed. He had never asked her to dance, of course. He was a farmer and she was a lady and it would not have been suitable, despite the fact that his sister had inherited a fortune and gone on to marry a lord.
Flora watched idly as Lowell and his men worked the field, cutting the hay. Lowell was as fair as Alice, and deeply tanned from so much time spent in the outdoors. There was a fluid strength about the movement of his body, a supple smoothness in the way that he bent and used the scythe. Flora could see the muscles in his arms cording as he worked methodically down the field. He led his farmhands by example, she thought. He was not the sort of employer who sat watching whilst other men toiled.
Lowell straightened and pushed the fair hair back from his brow. He raised a stone flask to his lips and drank deep, his throat moving as he swallowed. Then he let the hand holding the flask drop to his side and looked straight at Flora. His eyes were the same deep blue as the summer sky. Flora’s heart skipped a beat. Suddenly she felt very, very hot indeed.
He started to walk slowly toward her. A sort of panic rose in Flora’s chest and she scrambled to her feet, catching her skirts on the sharp stone, and hearing something rip. She slid down onto the track and hurried away down the path toward the village without a word. She could sense that Lowell was still watching her—every fiber in her body told her it was so—and after she had gone some twenty paces she turned to look back. He was standing by the wall and in his fingers was a scrap of yellow muslin torn from her gown.
“Wait!” he said.
Flora hesitated. Lowell came down the line of the wall and when he had almost reached her he jumped over in one lithe movement and was standing beside her before she had barely time to draw breath. He seemed so vibrant and alive, so different from any man that she had ever known, that her senses were stunned for a moment. She could smell the grass and the sun on him and when he smiled at her she felt her heart lurch strangely in her chest.
“It’s a hot day to be walking up on the hills,” he said. He had more than a hint of the local accent in his voice. Unlike his mother and sister he had never erased it. “Would you like a drink?” He held out the flask.
Flora took it from him and looked at it dubiously. After a moment Lowell laughed and unstoppered it for her and passed it back. She placed her lips where his had been and drank deeply. The liquid was cold and deliriously refceshing and tasted of apples. She swallowed some more and saw that he was watching her with the laughter still lurking in his eyes. She felt self-conscious then and passed the bottle back to him, wondering if she should have wiped the neck first.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Miss Minchin, isn’t it?” Lowell said. “Flora?”
She liked the way that he said her name. It sounded very pretty.
She nodded. “You are Lowell Lister.”
