скачать книгу бесплатно
‘When I’m ready. I find it interesting that you feel able to indulge in equine double-talk when you are looking down at the top of my bonnet, but it’s a different matter when your feet are level with mine, isn’t it? Now, that can mean only one thing.’
His arm still held her back against the wall, but his closeness spelt a dangerous determination, and her act of indifference began to falter as his warmth reached her face and the bare skin below her ruff. She gulped, moistening her mouth.
‘You are obviously about to tell me,’ she whispered, ‘though you must have performed this jaded ritual so many times before.’ She turned her head to one side. ‘Tell me, if you must, and then allow me to go in. I’m getting chilled here.’
It was a blunder she could hardly have bettered, but in one way it prepared her as nothing else would for what he might do. Although there was a part of her that wanted him with a desperate longing, she had never anticipated yielding to a man in the middle of an argument about the exact meaning of her signals. If she herself didn’t know what they meant for certain, how could he, for all his experience? No, this was not the way she wanted to be wooed, not like his other easy conquests; small talk, gropings in the dark, a kiss and a fall like ripened fruit into his lap. She was not like the others.
Before he could take hold of her, she had knocked his hands sideways and rammed one elbow into his doublet, swinging herself away into the darkened room to find the table as a barrier. Caught by the side of her hand, the pile of wooden roundels clattered onto the floor, halting her long enough for Sir Nicholas to reach her again with a soft laugh and an infuriating gentling tone that she was sure he used on restive horses. ‘Steady…steady, my beauty. You’re new to this, aren’t you, eh? I knew it. Scared as a new fill—’
Her hand found its target with a terrifying crack on the side of his head that shocked Adorna far more than him. Never in her life had she done such a thing before, nor had she ever needed to. The success of her assault, however, gave her no real advantage except to reinforce her anger and fear, which Sir Nicholas was already aware of. Even in the dark, he was able to catch both her wrists and pull them to his chest, holding her firmly to him, panicking her by his closeness and by her own unusual helplessness. This was not how she wanted to be wooed, either. She had never thought that fighting might be a part of it.
To fight and twist away was one thing, but a whalebone corset beneath the pink fabric of her bodice was quite another and, though she might have screamed, the breath was not in place before he spoke without a trace of the facetiousness she had dreaded.
‘Adorna…hush now. You’ve got it wrong. Listen to me.’
‘I don’t want to…be here… Let me go!’
‘I cannot let you go.’
‘Words…words!’ she hissed. ‘I’ll not be your latest conquest!’
‘Adorna, what is all this about my conquests, my long line of amours? What is it that you’ve heard? Give me a chance to refute it. I’ll not deny that I enjoy women’s company, but it’s not the way you think.’
‘I don’t think anything!’ She pushed at him, angrily.
‘Yes, you do, or you’d not be so fierce. I’m not trying to force you into a relationship. Did you think I was?’
‘Then what are you doing with my wrists in your hands, sir?’
‘Persuading you to listen to me, for you’ll not listen any other way. There, I’ve released you, see. Now, you can do whatever you wish with your hands while I tell you how lovely you are.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ she yelped. ‘Tell me that my hair is like the moon’s rays, my mouth is like a rosebud, my eyes are like—’
‘Adorna!’
‘Like two faded periwinkles, my nose…oh…whatever the best noses are like nowadays, but spare me the rest, I beg you. I’ve had all that and more, and you can have nothing to add that I’ve not already—’
Apparently there was something that he could add that, so far, no one else had ever succeeded in doing, something that stopped the flow of scorn as effectively as a gag. She tried to talk through it, but he was no amateur like the one he had identified at the Queen’s picnic, and his was not the kind of kiss that pushed and hoped for the best. Knowing that she would try to avoid him, he caught her head and turned it sideways on to his chest, wedging her there while he cut off the scolding words with a sweet tenderness that dried up her thoughts, too. This, he was telling her, was more potent than words, beyond argument, and totally beyond her experience.
Her hands, now freed, could have torn at him but lay unhelpfully upon his doublet instead, feeling nothing. She had sometimes wondered how a woman was supposed to return a man’s kiss when he was doing all that needed to be done, and now she stopped thinking altogether for, after the first startling invasion of his mouth on hers, her mind closed as effectively as her eyes, and she was swept away into the deepest, darkest, most overpowering sensation she could ever have imagined. And she had imagined, often.
Drunk with the new experience, her mind was slow to adjust and, when he paused, just touching her lips with his, her pretences had deserted her. Without any prompting, her hands knew what to do, reaching up through the darkness to touch his face and to find their own way over his ears and hair that parted under her fingers. Shadows of shattered conscience warned her of some former conflict, some contradiction, but it was too dark to identify them before they fled, and his lips returned to take what, this time, she was yielding up without protest. He was tender, carefully disturbing the surface of her desire until a moan began to rise in her throat.
Then he released her, easing her upright and supporting her in his arms while her head drooped, almost touching his chin. ‘You were saying?’ he whispered, eventually.
She shook her head, saying nothing, thinking nothing.
‘Then will you listen to me awhile?’
‘Another time,’ she whispered. ‘Please? Another time? My father…the servants will be here soon to…’ she peered about her and disengaged herself from his arms ‘…to clear up, to lock the doors.’ Unsteadily, she stepped aside, hearing a loud crack from beneath her skirts. ‘Oh, no!’
Sir Nicholas bent to lift her foot and to retrieve two halves of a roundel, placing them on the table. ‘Can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘Adorna, just one thing before I take you back.’ He took her hand and held it against his chest. ‘Whatever you’ve been hearing of me, and you know how people gossip at Court, don’t allow it to prejudice you against me. If there is no scandal, people will invent it. It’s gossip, Adorna.’
There was nothing she could reply to that except to remove her hand and hope that her cheeks and lips would be cooled by the night air before she entered the house. The last remaining guests were departing as they appeared together, though one who lingered was, to Adorna’s consternation, Master Peter Fowler. He came to greet them with some eagerness, his expression as he looked from one to the other showing that he recognised what Adorna had hoped to conceal.
‘Peter,’ she said, reading his face.
‘There you are!’ Peter said, breezily. ‘Sir Nicholas, I was hoping to catch you, sir.’
‘Me? Whatever for?’
‘I’ve been across to the palace just now. The keys, you know. Bedtime.’ He smiled apologetically. The handing over of the keys of Her Majesty’s chamber at bedtime was a ritual he could not evade. ‘And I’ve been given two messages for you. You’re a popular man, sir.’ His expression, Adorna thought, held a glint of sheer mischief as he came to her side, ready to lead her away. ‘One from his lordship’s man to say that he’d be glad if you’d take a look at the bay stallion again before you retire.’
‘Certainly. And the other?’
‘Oh, from Lady Celia Traverson’s maid. It appears her mistress was expecting you to visit her this evening in the east tower room, sir. Seemed a bit upset. I said I’d see you got the message.’ He glanced again at Adorna with a suggestion of triumph in his merry eyes. ‘Wonderful evening,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, taking the arm he offered. ‘Wonderful.’
As if to verify the effect of Peter’s ill-timed messages, she met the eyes of her former companion as he made her a formal bow and saw the anger that washed briefly across them, drooping the lids with a stifled frown. Their glances agreed that there was no explanation that he could offer to which she would want to listen, and that Adorna’s former hostility, far from being lessened, had now increased. Her coldness turned to a relentless freeze. She did not need to ask who Lady Celia Traverson was, having heard the same name that evening in connection with his last love affair. Nor was there any doubt in her mind that Lady Celia was the woman he had met in the friary paradise while she had watched, yearning for such a kiss. And now, her first kiss had turned bitter upon her lips.
Chapter Four
S ir Nicholas straightened, dropping the stallion’s hoof gently into the deep straw. He patted the sleek brown rump and looked across at his noble employer over the top of it. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘It was the same last night. He’s sound enough, sir.’ He leaned back against the stall.
The Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s favourite and the handsomest man at Court, some said, leaned against the other side of the stall and folded his arms across his wide chest. ‘Samuel Manning certainly taught you a thing or two, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘You believe it was the mare, then?’
Sir Nicholas smiled. ‘Almost certainly, sir. They can do a fair amount of damage when they’re new to it, as you know.’
‘Then we shall have to make sure he’s well padded next time, eh?’
The laughter was mutually rueful. The earl looked pointedly at the reddened skin along the left side of Sir Nicholas’s eyebrow, unable to conceal his interest. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that you need some padding, too. I’ll not believe it. Was that the problem?’
A hand went up to comfort the tender place. ‘Nothing to speak of, sir,’ Sir Nicholas smiled. ‘A misunderstanding.’
‘Not Lady Celia, surely?’ the earl said gently. He was as tall as Sir Nicholas and, even with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his graceful bearing and proud head showed him to be a man of considerable importance. He crossed his long elegant legs, well muscled and encased in brown leather thigh-boots.
‘Lord, no, sir.’ He sighed, taking hold of the stallion’s tail and slipping his hand down its silky length. ‘No, Lady Celia departs from Portsmouth today. She and her mother and sister will embark as soon as they get a fair wind, and she’s distraught, naturally.’
‘At leaving England, or you?’
‘Both, sir. Nor does she like the idea of marrying her Spanish duke.’
‘Mmm…I heard about that. Her Majesty’s not keen on the connection, but Lord Traverson is adamant about it. Says it’s too good an opportunity to miss.’
‘He would, being of a Roman Catholic family. We ended our relationship weeks ago, but she asked me to meet her, for a last goodbye. Except that it wasn’t the last, of course.’
‘Hah! Never is, man. They say a last goodbye at least three times; I could have told you that. Recriminations, then?’
‘Oh, no, sir. No bad feeling. Just a sadness. Our parting was mutual, but I’d not have wanted her to go all that way, just the same. We were friends.’
‘Sad,’ the earl said. ‘So who’s the unwilling one?’
‘Sir Thomas Pickering’s daughter, sir.’
‘Ah! The Palomino!’ A slow grin spread across his face. ‘The one you hauled out of the river the other day? Well, you’ll not get that one eating out of your hand so easily. Nor will you be the first to try.’
Nicholas was, however, reasonably sure that he had been the first to succeed in areas where others had failed. ‘No, sir. That’s what I heard, but I think now’s the time for some schooling.’ He grinned back at the earl. ‘I also think I’m in for a rough ride.’
Studying the stallion’s beautiful hindquarters, the earl leaned forward and rested his arms across the broad satin back. ‘Then you may be glad of a word of advice, my friend.’
‘Sir?’
‘Keep her guessing. You’ll get nowhere with a woman if you’re too predictable. They can second-guess you every time. And don’t be too kind too soon. Fillies like that one need to know who’s master from the start.’ To his surprise, he saw that his deputy’s chest was heaving with laughter. ‘You don’t believe me?’ he said.
‘Certainly I believe you, sir, but maybe I should tell you what this was for.’ He placed a palm upon his temple.
‘I was hoping you would.’
‘For talking to her as if she were a horse.’
Their laughter made the stallion look round, his muzzle caught by the earl’s hand. ‘So then you began to praise her beauty, I suppose?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact…’
‘Lost your wits of a sudden, man? Tch! You know better than that.’
‘I do now, sir. But I shall have to move fast if I’m to make any headway. There’s Her Majesty’s progress to your castle at Kenilworth in a few days, and young Fowler has got a foothold already.’
‘Argh! She’ll not be serious about him, man. He’s only for show. Nor would her father consider him. Anyway…’ his voice brightened ‘…she can come up to Kenilworth with Sir Thomas, if you wish. Would that help?’
‘Indeed it would, sir, I thank you.’
The earl smacked the stallion’s back and ran a hand down its tail, fanning it like tissue. ‘I’ll see she gets a royal command, then. You need to keep your hands on the reins and stay firmly in control at this stage. As for young Fowler, if he’d been attending to his business, he’d not have let her slip into the river in the first place, would he? Think on it, man. Now, let’s go and take a look at those new Irish geldings. They’re supposed to be fast-goers, too.’
There was probably no other man of Nicholas’s acquaintance from whom he would have accepted advice on such a delicate issue, never having been the kind of man to discuss his love life with others, as many did. But Lord Leicester was as experienced with women as he was with horses, though his stormy relationship with the Queen had been one of the most talked-about since her accession seventeen years ago. At forty-two, they were both as enamoured as ever, though hardly a month passed without some complication arising to set her snarling at him like a wildcat. The earl’s invitation to the Queen to make a royal progress to his magnificent castle at Kenilworth was, as Sir Nicholas knew, a last major attempt to remain permanently high in her favour after so many serious indiscretions, though if the Queen had known what Nicholas knew about his master’s extra-marital activities, she would probably have decided on a progress in the opposite direction instead. His lordship had a huge capacity for intrigue and a magnetism that few women could resist, a combination which seemed to Nicholas like a recipe for disaster.
Had he been faint-hearted, Nicholas might have viewed his own predicament in the same light, last night’s ending being as close as one comes to disaster, thanks to the help of a certain Master Fowler who knew exactly what he was doing. Although he had never before encountered the same relentless resistance in a woman as in Mistress Adorna Pickering, his experience told him that she was certainly not as immune to him as she pretended to be and that her act last evening had been impossible for her to maintain until the end. Then, she had lost it in his kiss, after which he discovered what she had been trying to conceal, even from herself. She wanted him.
With that satisfying knowledge firmly in place, he mused over his master’s advice about the tight rein and decided that a little variation on that theme would not come amiss. She had eaten out of his hand once; she would do it again. Eventually.
Adorna would not at that moment have agreed with this theory if she had known of it. Having wept with anger and other unidentifiable emotions, she had slept badly, waking up to the same reflection of how little regard men paid to the truth in order to win a woman. The truth, she told herself, would have been easier to deal with. At least it would not have left the same sour taste in her mouth as his pathetic lies had done, especially after…no…she would not think about that. But she did. What did it matter, anyway, except that she had given her first kiss to a man to whom it would mean very little except yet another trophy?
Lady Marion could not help but notice her daughter’s swollen eyelids and pink nose. ‘A cold?’ she said, looking doubtfully sideways. ‘Come here, child. I know a tearful daughter when I see one. What is it?’ She took Adorna’s hand and led her back to the cushioned stool she had just vacated. ‘You’ve had no breakfast, and it’s no good saying it’s nothing. It’s men, isn’t it?’
Adorna nodded.
‘Ah! Well, if it’s any comfort, love, there’s probably not a woman in the whole world who hasn’t wept over a man, one way or another. Which one, Sir Nicholas?’ She didn’t wait for a reply, having guessed it already. ‘Yes, well, I admit I got it wrong about having him partner Hester when it’s obvious he’s more interested in you. We can’t tell her so now, of course; that would do her confidence no good at all. But we can soon put it right. I’ll get your father to invite him—’
‘No, Mother!’ Adorna objected. ‘Please, I don’t want him to. I don’t like the man. I prefer Peter.’
‘Don’t like him, love? What is there not to like? I thought he was perfectly charming.’ She scrutinised her daughter’s face for signs, and found them. ‘Ah, I see. So he kissed you.’ Her eyes strayed through the sunlit window where the wobble of green glass distorted the banqueting house grotesquely. ‘So that’s how my best wooden roundels found their way on to the floor. We thought a fox must have got in.’
Adorna laid a hand over her mother’s puffed pink sleeve. ‘I’m sorry about that, Mother. It was my fault, I shall have to find a better hiding place next time.’
Lady Marion’s hand enclosed hers in sympathy, but not too much. ‘Well, you know, love, I’m not so sure that hiding is the answer any more. It served well enough while you were a lass, but your father and I think it’s about time—’
‘Oh, Mother! Not you, too!’
‘Listen to me, love. A determined man is not going to be put off because he can’t find you. And what are you going to do when he does find you alone, as he did last night? You cannot blame him for getting the wrong idea.’
‘Yes, I can, Mother. He should learn to take no for an answer.’
‘Did you mean no?’
Coming from her mother, the question was a surprise, and Adorna didn’t know how to answer it.
Since the calamity was not quite as serious as she had expected, Lady Marion saw no need to hide her smile. ‘One day,’ she chuckled, ‘you will see how unreasonable that is. Since when did a man ever take no for an answer? I’m glad your father didn’t.’
‘Didn’t he?’
‘Lord, no, child. Four times he asked me to marry him. I only said no just to see how long he’d keep on, but it was me who cracked, not him. Did Sir Nicholas ask you to…?’
‘To marry him?’ Dramatically, Adorna’s voice was loaded with scorn. ‘No, of course not. Men like him are not looking for marriage. He has a reputation to uphold.’
Slowly, her mother stood up as Hester entered the sunny parlour. ‘If that’s so,’ she said, ‘then I think, my child, that you could easily put an end to it. And what’s more…’ she lowered her voice for Adorna alone ‘…he might have it in mind to put an end to yours.’ She smiled at Hester.
‘My…?’ Adorna’s eyebrows squirmed, but Hester was close, having no thoughts about an intrusion on a private moment, and the intriguing subject of Adorna’s reputation had to be shelved until Maybelle was obliged to continue it in the privacy of the bedchamber.
‘Your reputation, mistress?’ Maybelle said, giving the full pink skirt a shake. ‘Well, everyone has some kind of—’
‘Oh, don’t hedge, Belle. Just tell me what you’ve heard.’
Maybelle sat on the carved pine linen-chest, deflating the pink silk like a balloon upon her knees. ‘Well, you know what the Court ladies’ maids are like.’
‘And?’ She waited for Maybelle to verify what she herself had already heard.
‘And, yes, they say that you’re hard to catch. But,’ she added hastily, ‘it could be much worse. Better than being easy to catch, isn’t it?’
Adorna had no ready answer to that as she pondered yet again on the apparent ease of her capture by a known master of the art and then, to crown it all, on her capture by default by the one she had been trying to avoid. There was no comparison, Peter’s amateurish goodnight peck being nothing like the earlier sensuous experience from which she had not, at the time, recovered. In that moment, as Maybelle watched for her seemingly artless observation to filter through, the question itself seemed to crystallise Adorna’s dilemma more quickly than all her nightly cogitations. She did want to be caught. She wanted, more than anything in the world, to be crushed against him and to feel his hard arm across her back, his lips touching hers, making her taste his and forget how to protest. And so my love protesting came…
‘Yes,’ she said, finally. ‘I suppose so.’ With one finger, she traced the sinuously entwined frond embroidered on her coverlet.
Maybelle, aged eighteen, prettily dark-eyed and as sharp as a knife, placed the pink bundle to one side and came to sit next to her mistress on the bed. ‘You suppose so?’ she whispered with her neatly coiffed head on one side. ‘Look, if you’ve discovered he has something you want, you can still have it and give him a run for his money at the same time. Why not slow down a bit and let him think he’s caught up with you? Then, when you’ve had enough of him, you sprint off again. You’re good at putting on a show when you need to, mistress. You can act your way through that, easy. You take what you want and then you can go back to Master Fowler. He’ll always be there to help you out.’
‘But that would be, well, asking for a different kind of reputation, wouldn’t it?’
‘Who’d notice? He’d hardly be likely to brag about the fact that you’d dropped him before he could do the same to you, would he? Bad for his image.’
