The Uncompromising Lord Flint

by Virginia Heath

  ‘As soon as he realises you are not in London, he will put two and two together.’

  ‘To all intents and purposes I will be in London. Gossip will be planted into the scandal sheets informing every one of my escapades in town. Reliable witnesses will vouch for my attendance at events or clubs. My name will go down in the House of Lords attendance book and the newspapers will loudly announce your arrival at the Tower. Snippets of your latest confession will be leaked. Remember—Saint-Aubin isn’t looking for me, he’s hunting you. We do this all the time, Jess. If we can feed the newspapers information that only you could possibly know, he will have no reason to doubt you are safely in the hands of the British government and have no reason to come hunting here.’

  ‘We? Exactly who is we?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Whether it was wise or not, and conscious of the need to build some bridges, Flint told her about his involvement with the King’s Elite and their quest to track down the mysterious Boss as they walked onwards. He sensed she was in dire need of some honesty if she was going to confide in him fully and probably deserved it, too, when all was said and done. The last thing he wanted was her escaping the safety of Penmor because she was afraid and he was honest enough with himself to realise that was more to do with his feelings towards her than for the ultimate good of his mission. Without her, it was true they were unlikely to bring down Saint-Aubin any time soon, which in turn meant that, if she escaped and tried to make a go of things all on her own, Jess would spend her lifetime constantly looking over her shoulder. That monster wouldn’t rest until he had silenced her and Flint would never rest knowing she was in danger and he wasn’t around to stop it.

  That was his story and he was sticking to it.

  It was odd how quickly she had crawled under his skin and made a home in his conscience. Something he ruthlessly pushed to the back of his mind, alongside her potential trial and sentence, because it was so worrying. He had spent his whole adult life avoiding meaningful attachments with women for good reason and did not want to have to acknowledge that his relationship with Jess—a wanted traitor—was rapidly starting to mean something. Aside from his body’s embarrassing but entirely understandable response to her when he had awoken with her in his arms, he really didn’t want to have to reflect upon his strange reaction to her during the night or the deep well of tenderness which had opened up as he had lain next to her. Or the fact he had gladly held her close because she had needed him and perhaps he had needed her, too, then, because holding her simply felt natural. So natural that, despite the blatant lust, the rightness of it all had made him relax, then sleep soundly for hours because she was there.

  Another thing best not dwelled on when he had a job to do and fully intended to do it in spite of what his oddly roiling, confused emotions told him. Much like his foolhardy decision to take her home, when he knew full well there were other places she would also have been safe. The garrison at Plymouth and the navy ship bound for London being two.

  But at the time, her safety had been paramount and he had listened to his gut again, even though his gut had sounded dangerously like his heart and he had blithely let it overrule his head regardless and was apparently content to allow it to continue to. Penmor would protect her, just as it had countless others in the past. His gut knew that with certainty, too.

  After he had told her as much as he dared, Flint reiterated that he could only help her in as much as she helped with the rest of the investigation. She had nodded non-committally, they lapsed back into silence. By her expression, he had clearly given her much food for thought, but he knew it would take more than a few pertinent details to gain her complete trust. Pushing her for information now wouldn’t help either of them, yet the tense silence was unnerving him.

  ‘I should probably warn you about my mother.’

  Her head turned and that adorable wrinkle appeared again. ‘She will be there?’

  ‘She and no doubt a sister or two.’ Now that he considered it, the situation was far from ideal. Not that he was worried about the exact circumstances of his bringing Jess home. His meddlesome family had unearthed the truth about his profession many moons ago. Hardly a surprise when he had reliably followed in his father’s footsteps into the murky world of espionage. His family had grown up knowing thousands of secrets and never let anything slip outside the walls of Penmor. He trusted them all implicitly. In that at least.

  However, in his haste to find a sanctuary for Jess, he hadn’t considered the possibility of bringing danger home, too. It was yet another unforeseen complication he would have to deal with and another reminder of why he usually avoided acting with his heart over his head. His mother would not take being shipped out, even for her own safety, lightly. Nor would his sisters.

  It couldn’t be helped. As soon as Gray arrived, they would evacuate them somewhere and Flint would have to suffer the inevitable fuss knowing that, for once, it was entirely his fault. In the interim—he glanced at the beautiful woman next to him and sighed, suddenly feeling much older than his twenty-seven years—in the interim who knew what nonsensical machinations would occur?

  As he had never brought a female home under any circumstances, nor shown interest in any of the women they had dragged in under false pretences, his womenfolk were likely to see Jess’s presence as significant. If he slipped and happened to cast her a heated glance when he dropped his guard or thought nobody was looking, he knew from bitter experience that one of his sisters was always looking. Then, like the banes of his life they always were, they would chatter and conspire together like a witch’s coven and meddle with impunity.

  Flint would have to be very specific from the outset and let them know in no uncertain terms that Lady Jessamine was his prisoner. One who had been arrested on charges of treason. The absolute worst of criminal charges. She was here on sufferance. Under his protection until the Crown took over.

  That might do the trick.

  And pigs might fly.

  ‘Gray mentioned you had five sisters. Do they all live at home?’

  ‘None of them lives at home, not that you’d think so by the amount of time they spend there.’ More complications. More dramatics. More details to deal with. ‘To my extreme irritation, they have all set up households locally. Not one of them lives more than ten miles away. I have no idea how my mother does it—perhaps it is some form of sorcery—but she seems to be able to summon them at will. I’ve never been able to fathom it. I arrive home and abracadabra—suddenly they are all there.’ Unthinking, he sighed again, a little too loudly, and couldn’t stop his shoulders slumping. As soon as Jess walked over the threshold, they would all appear like a plague of boils. Wild horses wouldn’t stop them. And because he was duty bound to protect them, too, they would have to stay until he could arrange their safe evacuation under guard.

  A whole house full of troublesome women. Just thinking about it was exhausting.

  ‘He also mentioned they run you ragged.’ She smiled at his downtrodden expression and all at once it was as if the sun had come out, even though it was already out and had been all day. ‘They are fervent matchmakers, non?’

  ‘Gray talks too much, but alas he is right. They are.’

  ‘And you are worried they will attempt to match us?’ This seemed to amuse her and a giggle escaped. Flint wanted to catch the infectious sound in his fist and save it for ever, before he stoutly told himself off for such ridiculous and fanciful whimsy when she was probably a traitor after all. Probably? Definitely! Good grief, he was losing the plot. Agents of the Crown should be above such things and his meddling sisters would have a field day if they knew the way his errant thoughts kept turning uncharacteristically poetic. They would see it as a sign because he wasn’t poetic. Never had been.

  ‘They might try, but I shall nip it in the bud. If that fails, please try to ignore it. They mean well.’

  ‘They must be very
desperate to see you settled if they would consider a traitor a potential wife.’

  It was said jokingly, yet her comment instantly rankled despite his thinking much the same seconds before. Almost as if somebody else had said it to insult her. Before he thought better about it, a version of the words which had been on the tip of his tongue since last night spilled out of his mouth.

  ‘I doubt they’ll see you as a traitor, Jess.’

  As soon as he said them he wished them back. Not because he had told the truth as he saw it or because it might give her false hope, although both reasons were foolhardy in the extreme when he was going by gut rather than evidential proof. But because she suddenly stood as still as a statue and gazed at him with such blatant relief and affection it humbled him.

  ‘Thank you...Peter. That means...so much.’

  When her fingers found his, his hand locked around them and squeezed. He didn’t dare say another word nor act on the overwhelming impulse to hold her and kiss her and tell her it would all be all right. He would make it all right. Instead he stared down at their joined hands, swiftly withdrew his and nodded curtly. ‘We should be at Penmor within half an hour if we get a move on.’ Which he immediately did, forcing her to scurry along behind in his wake as his legs tore up the ground. Ground decidedly less steady than it had been before.

  * * *

  Jess had no idea what to expect of Penmor. However, the sight of it shocked her nevertheless. It wasn’t so much a house as he had claimed, more a castle. The tall, central keep stood high on a sheer clifftop, a solid bastion of stone against the backdrop of the sea. On one side it was flanked by a tall round tower, while the jagged, tilted, precariously wonky remnants of another similarly ancient round tower to the left was covered in rich, emerald moss. The unintentional lack of symmetry suited it. The narrow road that led to it was carved into the rock and zig-zagged steeply until it met the wooden bridge that spanned the deep crevasse. Like the building, it looked to have been there for centuries. Craggy rocks jutted out of the grass haphazardly before the land tapered out to the smooth daisy-filled pasture where they were standing. In the distance, she could hear the waves crashing on the shore below and nothing else but the gentle, warm breeze which played with the few strands of hair poking out of her awful cap. A romantic, atmospheric tableau from a bygone era that Jess loved immediately.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘I’ve always thought so—although completely impractical as houses go. When it rains, you cannot get a carriage up the drive. On the rare occasions that we do get snow here on the west coast, expect to be trapped inside for days.’

  Just as he had been since his unexpected admission, he was more awkward in his skin than she had ever seen him. Each time he met her eye, his quickly fixed on another spot in the distance. Now they were latched on to his house. ‘It creaks, too, for no apparent reason. I thought I should warn you, in case it decides to grumble in the middle of the night and you fear we have been invaded. Although I dare say at six hundred and sixty-five years old, it’s earned the right to creak.’

  Typical English understatement that belied the pride which shone in his eyes. ‘What happened to the other tower?’ Jess pointed to the ruin.

  ‘Cromwell. He took issue with an ancestor hiding the King, so that half of the castle was slighted. That same ancestor never bothered knocking it down, although to look at it you’d think a puff of wind would send it tumbling, so it has remained a feature ever since. My mother is a keen gardener and likes to grow roses up it.’

  A charming notion. ‘Why didn’t he mend it?’

  ‘Impossible, I’m afraid. The staircase is the main support in a round tower and Cromwell blew the stairs to smithereens to make sure he couldn’t.’

  ‘Yet it still stands?’

  ‘Penmor is reliably sturdy. The keep shores it up. Besides, I like to imagine it served as the Flint badge of honour in defiance of the Republic.’

  ‘Of course he would be another loyal servant of the Crown.’ She rolled her eyes for effect. ‘Was he as vexing as you are?’

  His gaze flicked to hers, features bland but dancing emerald eyes amused. ‘According to my mother and my five harridan sisters, nobody is as vexing as I am. Whatever trait I inherited from that ancestor has apparently been condensed into the pure essence of vexatious, however I can assure you it is far more concentrated in the female descendants. You should probably brace yourself and gird your loins for what is to come.’

  He had already started up the path, which afforded her the opportunity of admiring him from behind. He cut a fine figure even in sweep’s clothing. Tall. Broad. Impossible to hate. ‘I’m sure they are all lovely.’

  ‘Oh, poor Jess. You really are naïve if you believe that. They are devious termagants. Scheming, manipulative hoydens. Eye-wateringly exasperating and terminally interfering harpies. Keep your wits about you, my lady, and remember I warned you. Until I can get rid of them, which I fully intend to do with all haste, don’t drop your guard for a second.’

  They were halfway up the steep path when a servant spotted them. To his credit, the man’s mouth gaped for a split second at the sight of his lord and master dressed like a vagrant, before he covered it and bowed. Then he dashed away, no doubt to inform the rest of the house of their arrival. Less than a minute later, a handsome, plump woman with a friendly open smile barrelled down the path towards them with her arms outstretched.

  ‘Peter! My darling! What a wonderful surprise!’ She enveloped him in a bear hug which he happily returned. That surprised Jess. The staid and reserved man who always seemed to find emotions so unseemly clearly felt a great deal of affection for his mother and was not afraid to display it. ‘Look at the state of you! Why, you are filthy, Peter! What nonsense have you been up to this time?’

  ‘Nothing a good bath won’t fix.’

  His mother fussed, brushing the last vestiges of the soot from his cheek and attempting to fix his hair. Tiny gestures of love which Jess had always yearned for, but couldn’t remember ever receiving from either of her parents. From anyone at all really. Something that caused a wave of sadness to wash over her and kindled a forlorn hope in her heart that perhaps one day someone might truly care for her and welcome her with the same beautiful enthusiasm as in this spontaneous, loving greeting.

  Watching it became awkward, so she tried to hide herself behind him and stare at nothing. The movement brought his mother’s matching green eyes to rest on her quizzically, making Jess more self-conscious. She should have insisted they stop by a stream to allow her to repair her face and remove the ugly cap from her dirty head. This was not the right sort of first impression. Not that she really was in any position to worry about first impressions. She was a prisoner. Possibly a traitor... ‘And who is this?’

  ‘Mother, this is Lady Jessamine Fane. Jess, my mother, Baroness Flint of Penmor.’

  From somewhere in her past, Jess instinctively remembered her English manners and curtsied, dropping her eyes in deference and trying not to appear mortally offended that the older woman was clearly shocked to learn she wasn’t a boy. ‘My lady.’

  ‘Lady Jessamine Fane?’ She smiled, then turned to her son with her eyebrows raised. ‘Of the Suffolk Fanes? How positively lovely.’

  ‘Mother—before you proceed with that inevitable yet wholly misguided thought, allow me to give you some background as to why we have suddenly turned up looking like...’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Peter! Where are your manners? Background indeed. Look at your pretty companion! Why, she needs a hot bath and a decent meal and plenty of rest more than you do. She’s clearly been through the wars.’ The woman’s arm slipped through Jess’s possessively while she blithely ignored her son’s scowl as if he was conveniently invisible and she had suddenly gone quite deaf in the ear closest to him. ‘Come, my dear, let’s get you settled, then my dour son can crush all my hopes once again under h
is clumsy, big boots. Have you noticed the ridiculous size of his feet? I have no idea where they came from. His father was perfectly proportioned...’

  Surrounded by a cloud of expensive perfume, Jess could only blink and listen. Lady Flint barely paused for breath. In a flash, she found herself marched across the ancient drawbridge, inside the castle and practically trotting up the sweeping staircase trying to take it all in, all the while his mother was giving her a potted history of the castle, the family and the exponential early growth of her son’s massive feet. It was surreal.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was no denying that he was rich. Very rich. Penmor was as stunning inside as it was out. Thick Persian rugs, silver candlesticks and heavy, obviously expensive fabrics draped the windows and the beds. Jess’s bed was a fairy-tale Renaissance four-poster, its mattress so soft you sank into it and were encased in the crispest, whitest sheets she had ever seen. The bathtub she was currently neck-deep in was decorated with brightly coloured enamel inlays and glass beads. Achingly feminine in its beauty like the room which surrounded it. The soap was of the finest quality, oozing with the soothing scent of lavender, the rich, creamy lather feeling sinful on her skin.

  Peter’s mother was like a whirlwind who skilfully didn’t take no for an answer. Before Jess had been able to argue otherwise, the bath had been carried in, a maid was unpinning her hair while the older woman went hunting for one of her daughter’s old gowns. A pretty, sprigged muslin was then held against her while Lady Flint issued rapid instructions to a maid who was pinning the hem and sleeves to accommodate Jess’s lack of height. Only once all that was done did she shoo out the servants and insist on helping Jess undress.