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‘Vaguely. I must admit my contact with her over the years hasn’t been good.’
‘No, it hasn’t. And she’s grown up. She’s made an impression.’
‘Then there is someone else, isn’t there?’
‘No one that matters, no.’
‘Then I have first call. And I’m calling, George. I intend to honour the agreement. It was my father’s last wish, and I promised him.’ Not for a moment did he expect George to be taken in by that, knowing what he did of Fergus’s resistance to his father’s control. They had not seen eye to eye until recently.
As he suspected, George was not easily duped. He put down his knife and leaned forward. ‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’ he said in a low voice. ‘Why else would you be so insistent, eh?’
Fergus’s stillness was all the answer he needed.
There was a silence between them as George, ever the merchant, assessed the balance of trade. ‘I suppose you know,’ he said at last, ‘that you’ll be starting at a disadvantage?’ When Fergus merely looked straight ahead, George felt it his duty to remind him. ‘For one thing you’ve left all this a mite too late. If you’d come when she was fifteen, Ferg, you might have found her easier to deal with. As it is…’
‘She’s been courted. Yes, but she’ll have to forget them, won’t she?’
George leaned back and took a deep breath. ‘I think, my friend, that you are forgetting something. Nicola is not your average young miss with stars in her eyes, waiting for the masterful swain to sweep her off her little feet. Far from it. She’s quite capable of keeping herself on ice until she sees exactly what she wants. And considering how she used to hate your guts when you took us all away from her on your wild goose chases whenever you came to stay, I’d say you have as much chance of winning her as you have of flying. I know she’s a beauty, Ferg, but you’ll have to do more than pull her hair and hide her pet rabbit if you want to get her into your bed. She has a long memory you know.’
Though his jaw tightened, still Fergus said nothing.
‘Did you think it was all cut and dried?’ said George.
‘No, I know I have my work cut out for me, but I have to try. I realise I want her, George. Will you help me?’ He dared not trust himself to say more, and for a moment, Fergus thought his old friend was going to refuse, so long was the pause before he replied.
‘I shall not see her hurt, Ferg. She may occasionally adopt the lad’s role when it pleases her, but that’s for a reason that’s gradually losing its validity. It doesn’t mean she’s tough or insensitive to pain. She’s not. She’s a woman now, with all a woman’s needs, and she’ll not be easily won over. The decision will be hers, believe me.’
‘I do believe you.’
‘So, you still think you have a chance?’
‘As I said, I have to try. You know my ways, George.’
George, Lord Coldyngham, leaned forward intently, placing his hands palm-down on the table. ‘Yes, I know your ways well enough, Ferg,’ he said. ‘And they may have worked on Scottish lassies or even on Cambridge whores, but they’ll not do for Nicola. She’s different.’
‘I want her, George,’ Fergus insisted. ‘I have to find a way forward. I think she’ll respond to my way, eventually.’ She was different, he knew. In every way she was rare and priceless, and the sight of her half-naked on the bed, below him, wounded, was something that would stay in his mind for ever. Heaven knows what might have happened if the maids had not returned at that moment.
‘Oh? You’ve spoken, then?’
‘Briefly.’
‘She’s still afraid of you?’
‘She’d not admit it, even if it were true. She still dislikes me, yes, but I cannot blame her for that. I gave her no reason to do otherwise, did I?’
‘Then, yes, you will have your work cut out. But I’ll help.’
‘Thank you. It’s the most I can expect after all this time. The rest is up to me.’
‘Er…no, Ferg. The rest is up to Nicola, wouldn’t you agree?’
Wincing at his own clumsiness, Fergus nodded. ‘Yes, I do agree. But never fear, George, I shall win her even if it takes for ever.’
George leaned back to watch his friend pour two more beakers of ale from a large jug with a smirking face modelled on its side. Fergus’s expression, he noted, was anything but amused, but held that grim determination he had shown as a youth when it was woe betide anyone who got in his way. Then, he had habitually won whatever he set out to win; now, George was not so sure. Nicola, he thought, might be in for a rough ride. And Fergus too.
Fergus’s thoughts went along much the same lines, though it also crossed his mind that he would be expected to pay very dearly for that string of shining rubies he had placed upon Nicola’s beautiful breast only an hour ago.
Chapter Two
I n the cosily panelled solar hung with tapestries and filled with morning light from a large pointed window, the sound of bells from St Helen’s Priory next door drowned out the constant thudding of Nicola’s heart as the two young maids went about the task of tending her wound. The thick oaken door had been locked and bolted since the departure of the unwelcome guest more as a gesture of defiance than necessity, for none of the three expected him to return, though the locks and bolts of Nicola’s heart could tell a different story.
For many years, the thought of marriage into the house of Melrose had seemed too remote to be real, especially during her father’s long absences from home when, motherless, Nicola had been left to run wild with her brothers, cared for by a large household and one aged nurse. Eventually, he had sent her to York to join the household of another noble family, there to learn the manners and graces required of all such women aspiring to good marriages. Nicola’s aspirations, however, were to avoid one marriage at all costs, the one to Fergus Melrose that her father was set on. When her father had died fourteen months ago, leaving her a sizeable income from property and his comfortable house in London, she believed that at last she would be allowed to manage her own affairs.
Stripped of the lad’s clothes and sitting almost naked on her bed, she gritted her teeth at the next application of the maid’s special salve, letting her breath out slowly. ‘Mannerless churl!’ she hissed. ‘Still as full of himself as ever. I should have worn my dirk and stabbed him with it. That would’ve wiped the smug look off his face. Ouch!’ She grabbed at Rosemary’s hand. ‘Stop now.’
‘And didn’t ye notice his fine figure, then?’ said Lavender, rinsing out a pink-stained cloth in a bowl of rosewater. ‘There’s many a maid would like a wee while in the dark with such a one, mistress. I didn’t see any in York with a face as comely as that. Nowhere near.’
‘Nor in London, either,’ said Rosemary.
‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ said Nicola, pulling the fine linen chemise over her head and sucking in her breath at the touch of it upon her skin. ‘There’s nobody you’ve seen who’d have done this to me, either, and then walked away.’ The part in between was too shameful to speak of.
Yet she remembered only too well his eyes and the flood of excitement and heat that had suffused her face and neck at his shameful scrutiny, and that almost imperceptible moment when she saw him struggling to stop himself from touching, when his voice had thickened like deep velvet even while saying something stupid about a scar. It was not only her wound his eyes had examined. She knew. She had been watching them. She had seen them widen, and his lips part.
Slowly, carefully, she eased her chemise into place and then sat so still and quiet that Rosemary had to look hard to see if there were tears again. She was not weeping, but in answer to the gentle enquiry, Nicola kept her hands close against her breast while a frown deepened in the centre of her lovely brow. ‘He meant it,’ she whispered. ‘He meant to hurt me. Again. Nothing’s changed, has it? Except that now he’s bigger and stronger than ever.’
Lavender and Rosemary, their partnership being one of life’s coincidences, had been with Nicola for ten years since they were fifteen and eighteen respectively. Now they came to sit upon the soft coverlet at the end of her large curtained bed to offer their mistress some advice.
‘Of course things have changed,’ said Lavender, settling her large open blue eyes solemnly upon Nicola’s hands. ‘You’re obviously not the scruffy little lass you were when he last saw you, eleven…twelve years ago, are you?’ She reached behind her for the burnished steel mirror and passed it to Nicola. ‘Take a look. That’s a woman he’ll not have seen the like of in all his…what…thirty years, is it?’ It was twenty-nine, but addition was not Lavender’s strongest subject.
Nicola grimaced, pushing the mirror away. ‘Oh, you’re prejudiced,’ she said. ‘But it’s made no difference, has it? And if my brother has invited him here to revive all that marriage nonsense, he can think again. He knows perfectly well what I feel about it. There was no formal betrothal and I’ll not be bound to him. Nor will I ever be. Not for his father’s sake, or mine.’
‘So now,’ said Rosemary, smoothing her white apron seductively over her thighs, ‘you have to show him how you’ve changed, even if he hasn’t.’ Privately, she doubted that Sir Fergus had cut such a dash at the age of sixteen, but there was no way of knowing. ‘You have fine manners now, and you know how to give a man the cold shoulder when he doesn’t please you. And if you were to wear your finest kirtle when you go down to meet them, he’s going to get the message, isn’t he? Perhaps it was the lad’s clothing that made him behave so badly. So what will it be, the grey satin? The red? The green silk with ribbons?’
‘Not green. That’s the colour of hope. Sanguine, I think.’
Lavender’s wide blue eyes met Rosemary’s hazel ones long enough to transmit a shadow of alarm. Blood-red might be appropriate, but it was hardly the colour of compromise, was it? ‘Sanguine it is, then,’ she said.
‘And may the best man win,’ murmured Rosemary to herself.
As both Nicola and her two maids had intended, the preparations of the last hour stopped the two men’s conversation in mid-sentence, though George might have predicted the sheer amazement that Fergus betrayed before managing to marshall his features once more into the customary inscrutable mask.
The plaited hair was now quite hidden beneath an extravagant confection of floating veils that fluttered like a massive butterfly around Nicola’s head, kept in place by dagger-long pins and scattered with seed-pearls. The tomboy clothes had been replaced by a blood-red damask gown with wide floor-length sleeves and fur linings that touched the hem, sweeping the ground behind her. Beneath her breasts, a wide velvet sash revealed the contours of her lovely body and, because she had something to conceal, a richly jewelled collar covered her bosom, winking with diamonds and rubies. And for the second time, Nicola could feel Fergus Melrose looking at her without the usual disdain.
She smiled at George, holding out her arms for his greeting. ‘Lovely to see you,’ she said. ‘How are Lotti and the children?’ With a graceful arc of her body she put up her face to be kissed, touching her brother’s mulberry-brocaded arm and approving his cote-hardie with an up-and-down glance. ‘This is nice. Is it new?’
George understood the snub to their guest, exerting a gentle reproof. ‘Nick,’ he said, ‘you know why Sir Fergus has come today at my invitation. I believe you’ve already met this morning.’
She had not greeted him then, and she would not do so now. ‘Oh, I know what this is all about, George dear,’ she said, ‘though you should have given me some warning. I could have been out.’ Purposely ambiguous, she left it to them to decide on her meaning. ‘As it is, I have no intention of discussing plans for my betrothal before strangers. I’m sorry you’ve spent your valuable time for so little reward, Sir Fergus, but perhaps you’ll take a glass of malmsey before you go, and tell us all about your adventures. You must find London so very dull.’
‘Nicola,’ said George, firmly, ‘Sir Fergus is hardly a stranger to either of us and I think he deserves your consideration, now he’s taken the trouble to appear. Surely we can discuss this like adults?’
Until then, she had avoided looking at Sir Fergus, though she could have described his fashionable attire from the peacock-feathered hat down to the soft kid boots decorated with bone toggles, the jewelled dagger and the tasselled pouch at his belt. He disturbed her now as much as he had ever done, and though she had been rehearsing what to say for the past hour, the tightness in her lungs robbed them of the power she had intended. Now, she was aware that she had provoked him, for he pulled back his shoulders, frowning.
‘I can reply to that,’ he said, ignoring Nicola’s expression of bored resignation. ‘You have every right to be vexed by my long absence, my lady, but the reasons are simple enough. My life has not been exactly to do with as I pleased these last few years. I was at sea with my father until recently, putting me out of touch with almost everyone, then attending to my family since my return. You’ve not been in London long either, so I understand, and before that you were some years in York. Hardly the best circumstances to pursue that duty to our fathers, was it? No one regrets more than I that I was not able to visit my friends in the last few years, believe me.’
‘I am not in the least vexed by your lengthy absence, Sir Fergus. I only wish it could have been longer still. And it makes little difference whether I believe you or not.’ Nicola raised her eyes no further than the pea-sized buttons on his doublet. ‘The plain truth is that after years of total silence, during which you could presumably have married several times over, your sudden appearance here suggests desperation rather than commitment. You can hardly expect me to be flattered that you have been struck by a sudden call to duty. Were there no other ancient families to whom you could attach yourself, or did your so-called duty to your father suddenly acquire a deeper meaning for you? Do tell me what I’ve done to deserve this unexpected burst of attention.’
‘Nicola!’ warned George.
But now she had the man’s full heed and, while it lasted, there was yet more she could say on the subject. ‘Let us not waste any more time on such a lovely day,’ she said, bunching her long skirts into a pregnant pile before her. ‘We all have more interesting things to do than talk about duty. When I choose a man to marry, he will be a nobleman with blood the same colour as my own, not a newly knighted provincial nobody with equally new coins in his pouch.’
She had a hand on the door-latch as she delivered this last appalling insult, and it was the horrified look on her brother’s face that made her hesitate. ‘Don’t worry, George dear. Our guest won’t be demanding rapiers at dawn on this occasion. Will you, Sir Fergus?’ Her huge dark eyes blazed with scorn into the hard grey steel of her adversary, and she knew that her hit had damaged him as much as his earlier one upon her, perhaps more so, and that he would do nothing to counter it. Not then, anyway.
The sharp clack of the latch hung heavily in the ensuing silence like the distant sound of lances shattering upon armour. No man would have escaped such a volley of insults with his life, and no woman would have walked from a room without leaving behind some kind of awareness that there was more to this than mere dislike of a man’s pedigree, however deeply embedded that had become.
‘I’m sorry, Ferg,’ said George. ‘I must have forgotten to tell her about your father. But still, she had no right to…tch! This is dreadful. I wish I’d asked Charlotte to be with us.’
Sir Fergus placed a hand over his friend’s arm. ‘I think we both expected that kind of reaction,’ he said. ‘If we didn’t, then we should have done. Don’t take it too personally.’
‘Even so, it looks as if her line-up of suitors has given her big ideas. She may well prefer a title, but, if so, that’s not the Nick I know. Give her another year, Ferg, and then see. Eh?’
Walking over to the window, Sir Fergus collected the two abandoned rapiers and leaned them against the wall. ‘No, I shall not wait,’ he said.
‘Oh…well…no, I can’t blame you, of course.’
‘I shall press on with it. I’m a fighting man and she’s a courageous woman to fight me back. We shall come to terms by and by, you’ll see.’
‘Well, I’m relieved to hear it. You were never one to give up easily, were you? Nevertheless, I shall go and speak to her. I’m determined you shall have a full apology before you leave.’
‘Not necessary, George.’
‘Of course it is, man. Help yourself to Nicola’s malmsey. I’ll be with you in a few moments.’
‘Nicola! Wait!’ George, Lord Coldyngham, called to the white butterfly disappearing round the bend of the passageway, striding over the stone-flagged floor towards her, though his request was ignored.
‘Oh, George,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘not again, please. I’ve heard enough on the subject to last me a year.’
Catching up with her before she reached the door to the garden, he ushered her sideways along the gravel path and into the bright greenness of new growth and vine-clad arbours. A circular fountain held centre stage, its jet of water cutting across the sun and scattering its light into sparkling droplets that pattered down upon the darting silver shapes beneath. Yellow king-cups clustered around the edge. ‘Nicola, you’ve gone too far,’ he said, severely.
She stopped and sat upon the wide stone edge of the fountain, trailing one hand in the water and looking up at him with feigned innocence. ‘And in future, George, would you mind allowing me to issue my own invitations? Would you and Lotti expect me to invite my friends to your home without telling you?’
‘I’m sorry. I sent him a message to meet me here. He came early, that’s all. Was he so discourteous to you that you had to insult him, a guest in your own home? That was not well done, Nick. Did you not know that his father was killed at sea scarce eight months ago?’
Nicola’s eyes clouded as she took her bottom lip between her teeth, halting the prepared riposte. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘When was I supposed to tell you?’ he said, crossly. ‘I thought you’d have heard it from your noble friends. They seem to have plenty of gossip about births, marriages, deaths and—’ He stopped, abruptly.
‘Yes? And affairs, you were about to say? Don’t try to wrong-foot me, George. You forgot. Admit it. At least he now knows, as you do too, that I’ve just given him no more or less than he damn well deserves. It would hardly have penetrated his thick skull, anyway.’ She turned her face away angrily, recalling that morning’s shameful episode. ‘He’s done far more than that to me and nobody ever demanded an apology from him. Monster!’
There was a quick unseen movement of her brother’s handsome eyebrows and a tightening of the lips to prevent a smile. He reached out a hand to clasp hers, well aware that there was much more to her hostility than she was saying.
‘George,’ she said, suspecting some imminent persuasion, ‘there’s really no more to be said.’ Sideways, she observed the long mulberry brocade cote-hardie with its precise pleats beneath the red leather belt. Everything about him proclaimed wealth and good breeding with never a trace of ostentation.
‘Yes, there is.’ He kept hold of her hand, and she knew that there was indeed more to be said and that she was not nearly so dismissive as she pretended to be. ‘In spite of the insults just now, Nick, Fergus is still willing to offer for you. He made a promise to his father when he was dying. Ferg was wounded in the same skirmish. They were fighting off pirates.’
‘Promise, fiddlesticks!’ she scoffed. ‘George, what nonsense.’ Her laughter did not last long, for she felt again the hard intimate pressure of Fergus’s body upon hers and knew instinctively that it could not have been the first time he had held a woman like that. Or exposed her breast, for that matter. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Whatever he’s told you, you’ve misunderstood. He no more wants to marry me than I do him, and if he’s told you different then he’s lying. There was never a moment when he could find a civil word to say to me, and most of the time I might not have been there at all. Why would he suddenly come and offer for my hand if not for links with the Coldynghams?’
It took little effort for her to remember the time she had placed her eleven-year-old hand in Fergus’s while he was looking the other way. Without a word or a smile, he had pulled his hand away as if it had been scalded, leaving her close to tears at an insensitivity she could not begin to understand. She had never forgotten the snub, nor had she ever repeated the attempt. Even now, when she might have been expected to know how an age difference of five years will eventually close and disappear, the recurring humiliation of being a female child trying to hold her own against older lads in their own peer group had stayed in her tender young psyche and refused to fade with time. She had not nurtured it, just not forgotten the pain of rejection that accompanied each of his visits when only blind hero-worship forbade her to stop trying for his approval.
Consequently, she had made a fool of herself time and again to the embarrassed amusement of all her brothers except Ramond. He had been the one to go back for her, the one who would pick dock leaves to salve her nettle-stings, the one to help her down a tree when the others had deserted her to follow Fergus. Dear Ramond. He was the offspring of the second Lady Coldyngham; George and Daniel shared the first. Nicola and Patrick shared the third, though she had died at Patrick’s birth. When an unexpected girl had arrived to interrupt the flow of lads, the chosen name had only needed to be docked by one letter to make it suitable. Similarly with the middle names: Leonie for Leo, Phillipa for Phillip.
‘It’s not nonsense,’ said George, ‘nor do I believe for one moment that Fergus is merely seeking a connection. I’m telling you, he wants to marry you. He’s changed, Nick.’
Nicola jumped to her feet, snatching her hand away in annoyance. ‘He has not, George. He’s not changed one whit. And I’ll be damned if I’ll give myself to that…that churl just because of his father’s promises. He can go and look elsewhere for his breeding stock. I can have my pick of lords and earls any time I choose. Tell him he’s too late. Tell him I’d rather stay unmarried for the rest of my life than accept his patronising offer. Condescending…overbearing…superior…highhanded…’ Slowly, very slowly, her salvo fizzled out as she shook her head, her eyes filling with sudden tears. ‘Isn’t it ironic?’ she whispered.
Surprised, George watched the transformation from indignant woman to rueful child. ‘Come here, love,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘Tell me what’s ironic. That Fergus should want you, after all?’
She allowed him to pull her back to sit by his side again, reluctant to complete an admission she had never voiced, even to herself. ‘That when we were children, I would have done anything for him. Anything. I thought he was… Oh, this is ridiculous, George.’
‘You admired him so much?’
‘Worshipped him, more like. I would have been happy for him just to smile at me, speak kindly to me, but he rarely looked my way. All he came to Coldyngham Park for was to be with you and the others. I suppose I should have had a sister, then I wouldn’t have pretended to be one of you, would I?’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her knuckles, trying to laugh it off. ‘But then, I was a silly child. I knew no better. Now, I don’t care for anyone’s approval. I don’t need anything he has to offer.’
‘Still hurting after all these years, love?’
Unconsciously, one hand moved upwards to press a palm upon her breast where a nagging sting lay just beneath her chemise. ‘No,’ she said, so softly that George had to look to see the word. ‘No, I don’t care a fig who he marries as long as it’s not me. I know what he’s like, George. I can do better than that.’
‘You know that you insulted him.’
‘Yes. And he’ll not expect me to apologise.’
‘Oh? Why do you say that?’
‘Just take my word for it.’
George’s silence did not mean that he had nothing to say. This time, he was thinking that for both Fergus and Nicola to deny the need for an apology, Fergus must have done some insulting of his own. And the only thing George could add to the picture was a stolen kiss. That might explain their very obvious silence regarding that earlier meeting. ‘You’ll be with us for supper later on?’ he said. ‘Charlotte’s birthday. A few friends, that’s all.’
‘Yes, I’d not forgotten. You’ll allow the children to be there?’
He smiled. ‘I shall get into the gravest trouble if they miss you.’
Whether Nicola suspected that one of the ‘few friends’ might include Sir Fergus, she made no further mention of him until George asked if she would come and say farewell. ‘Excuse me this once,’ she said, placing her hand over his. ‘You invited him here, you show him the way home.’
He picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles, levering himself up from the fountain wall. ‘Until this evening then, love.’
‘George…’ she said, holding him back by a finger.
He stopped and waited.
