“What would you wish me to pack, my lady?” she gasped at last.
“Pack anything you like, but do it now.”
Lady Emilia swept out into the hallway and opened the door to her withdrawing room, where Lord Steal paced restlessly.
“Are you children quite ready?”
Peter looked up at the old lady. “It’s only a two-day journey, Lady Emilia. Caroline and I would go in the clothes we stand up in.”
“It’s the first time I ever heard you be indifferent to your wardrobe, young man. Nevertheless, it is expected of those in our station in life to keep up appearances, even if the sky falls.”
Caroline walked in at that moment and joined them. “I have packed clothes for Jessica. If she has nothing with her but her ball gown, I think she might be glad of a few muslins.”
“Assuming Deyncourt has found her,” Peter said glumly.
“Oh, stuff and nonsense!” Aunt Emilia cried. “The man has never failed in any adventure yet. No, I am more concerned about what he may do when he does.”
“Whatever do you mean, Lady Emilia?”
“Haven’t you eyes for anyone’s situation other than your own?” the old lady snapped. “Jessica is in love with Deyncourt and has been for these months. But she believes he despises her. The earl has discovered, I believe, reciprocal feelings, but he is such a stiff-necked idiot that he will never admit it. I’m very much afraid that he will make a complete botch of the whole situation.”
“Lady Emilia!” Peter’s eyes were as round as cartwheels.
“Oh, you have been accustomed to thinking Deyncourt everything that’s perfect, but he has had his emotions on a rein for so long, he wouldn’t recognize them if they came and bit him on the rear.”
It was Caroline’s turn to be shocked.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Whatever can we do about it?”
“Get down to Castle Deyncourt right away, before they murder each other,” Lady Emilia said. “That is where he will take her when he finds her. Now, are we all packed? Coachman has had the chaise and four ready this past hour.”
* * *
“There is nothing to get straight,” Jessica said. “We are trapped into this mockery of a betrothal. You have made your feelings perfectly clear, and I shall do nothing to disturb your independence.”
His palm lay gently on her thigh, threatening to burn right through to the bone.
“So you won’t kick up a fuss if I leave you at Castle Deyncourt to tend to our flock of children, while I take opera singers and dancers to Marchmont?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Well, devil take it, it’s not what I want.”
“It would seem to be the life you had planned with Lady Honoria.”
His fingers began to work up her back in little circles. “How true! It’s not such an unusual life for an earl. My father was an excellent example. Except that Aunt Sophy would never have allowed him to entertain his lightskirts at Marchmont.”
“Then I am to suppose that you haven’t had much respect for her memory. For that’s the use to which her home has been put ever since, isn’t it? I am probably the only female you ever took there who didn’t spend her visit in your bedroom. But perhaps it’s the normal way to go on. Apart from you, I haven’t had too many dealings with earls.”
“Then you had better get used to them.”
His long fingers had reached the neckline of her shirt. He deftly began to undo the buttons to pull open the collar. She began to melt from the inside out.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“This discussion will get us nowhere. We’re going to bed, dear Jessica.”
With a violent movement, she pulled away from him and leaped to her feet.
“Over my dead body!”
“I would much prefer it alive,” he said.
He stood up and crossed to the side of the room. There was a set of sliding doors, which he pushed back. In a kind of wood-lined cupboard a little bed was already made up with white linen sheets and wool blankets.
“This is the only bed in the house. I intend to get into it and go to sleep. I would suggest that you do likewise. However, I don’t intend to do so fully clothed.”
“Michael, you can’t.”
“Can’t what?” He kicked off his shoes and began to strip off his pantaloons.
“You can’t just take off your clothes. Where am I to sleep?”
“In this bed with me, my dear. Unless you prefer the floor?”
“Michael, stop it!”
He grinned up at her as the pantaloons fell to the floor. The tails of his shirt effectively covered him, including the clean bandage he had wrapped over his wound. He slipped between the covers and pulled his shirt off over his head.
“You are already compromised, Jessica. You might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Besides, I have already obtained a special license. We can be married in the morning.”
“Damn you! I shall never marry you.”
“Very well, but you might as well share the bed. It will get cold out there when the fire dies down.”
He lay back and gave her that devastating smile.
“You are no gentleman at all.”
“Fortunately for you, that’s not true.” He sat back up and looked at her. “I cry truce! Come to bed and go to sleep. I am in desperate need of innocent slumber. It’s not every day that I ride ventre à terre across England. I shan’t touch you. I give you my word.”
“Can I trust it?”
“You did at Tresham. My word of honor. Inviolable.”
“And once again I have no choice at all, do I?”
She was to have no reply. He turned his back and pulled the covers over his head.
Jessica paced the room for a moment. How dare he be so impossible!
At last, she was forced to concede. There was nowhere else in the cottage to sleep. The simple pine furniture of the kitchen was hard and uninviting. The rain still beat heavily at the roof. The floor was of stone.
So, dressed as she was, she slipped gingerly between the covers and lay as far from his graceful back as she was able. The earl must have fallen asleep, for he did not move.
* * *
Jessica awoke to moonlight streaming in at the cottage window. It had stopped raining.
She was in an extremely compromising position with the eighth Earl of Deyncourt, who intended to marry her in the morning.
The pale light shone softly over him as he slept. His hair tumbled over his forehead. His carved lips were slightly apart, as if he were about to whisper. The planes of his face looked softer, blurred by shadows.
No wonder he had London at his feet! Her heart gave an uncomfortable lurch.
She slipped quickly from the bed and built up the fire.
He turned over. Jessica crossed back to the bed. He still slept, silent, lost to the world. Moonlight outlined the cut of his nostril and the strong turn of his jaw.
Even the fearsome Lord Deyncourt seemed defenseless in slumber.
To go to sleep with the same person night after night in the same bed was somehow the ultimate expression of trust, wasn’t it?
Jessica swallowed hard. She loved him—and so she could never marry him. If they married, he would discover her secret only after it was too late. And that would be the ultimate betrayal.
Was there nothing that would turn him aside?
Besides, Honoria has no doubt been careful to keep her virtue intact. How could she marry an earl otherwise?
It was the only way out, wasn’t it?
Before she should lose her nerve, Jessica stepped out of the pantaloons and peeled off the stockings, then quickly pulled the shirt off over her head. The night air raised goosebumps on her thighs and arms.
Naked she slipped back into the bed. Shaking with awareness, she pushed back the covers.
Firelight flickered over his shoulder as he stirred. Jessica let her hand drift across his arm, feeling the warm strength o
f his flesh.
Desire flamed through her blood. She blinked back hot tears. To go through with this would break her heart. Yet quite deliberately she ran her palm down the smooth muscling of his chest, over the springing hair and firm skin, to the delectable tautness of his belly.
With devastation pricking painfully at her eyelids, she followed her fingertips with her lips and tongue.
His breath quickened as she moved against him, burning with her own shame and longing.
As his lashes parted, Jessica pressed her open mouth to his and felt the kiss returned with naked, hungry passion.
The earl’s word of honor would be broken. Lord Deyncourt was going to have to learn the truth.
* * *
Chapter 19
Sunlight woke him. Michael reached for Jessica, instantly aroused, a memory of her sweet body entwined with his sending fire through his blood. They had made love again and again, without restraint.
He sat up and looked about the room. She was gone.
Something sat on the table. He slipped naked from the bed and strode up to look at it.
A spray of dog roses spilled from a cup. Next to the flowers lay a note:
“I have paid my debt, Lord Deyncourt. These roses for the one I destroyed in your garden. I cannot marry you. Now you know why. Jessica.”
* * *
Lady Emilia’s carriage cracked a wheel hub near Thatcham. The three rescuers spent fretful hours at the only inn, before they could secure a repair. Peter stalked up and down the little parlor, while Caroline and Aunt Emilia calmly played cards.
“For heaven’s sake, sir!” the old lady snapped at last. “It is like being in a cage with a parrot that hops back and forth on its perch.”
“Not a parrot, Lady Emilia,” Caroline said with a shy smile. “Parrots are both as bright as day. Peter is more like a pheasant, I think, for the female pheasant is just as dull and brown as I am, and only the male struts in glorious plumage.”
Peter grinned at his fiancée. “I intend to be much more faithful than any old pheasant, Caro.”
“Well, I wish you had shown such sense earlier, young man,” Lady Emilia said. “Your absurd mooning over Jessica is part of the cause of this entire tangle.”
Peter blushed scarlet, but Caroline laughed. “I would have thought the less of him, if he hadn’t fallen in love with Jessica first. How could anyone not? None of us has ever met anyone like her.”
Lady Emilia sighed and laid down her hand.
“But will Deyncourt see it in time, my dears? That’s all that really counts.”
* * *
Michael rode up through the Deyncourt estates on a horse borrowed from a tenant. Jessica had taken the hired nag. There was no way to trace her. Yet he would find her if he had to tear England from its chalk bed, stone by stone.
How could Sir Shelby Whinburn have been such a damned bastard? Had Lady Emilia known? Perhaps she had guessed, but if so, how could she have displayed her great-niece on the Marriage Mart?
For if Jessica had wed any of those eager suitors, she would have been found out and her marriage destroyed on her wedding night.
* * *
Lady Emilia’s cavalcade turned off the turnpike. It was not more than ten more miles to Castle Deyncourt. Peter rode up on the box with the coachman.
When the carriage lurched to a halt, the old lady called up to him.
“What is it now, Steal? We shall never arrive at this rate.”
“It’s a lad, Lady Emilia. In some kind of trouble.”
She opened the window and leaned out. A boy sat at the edge of the road with his head in his hands. Beside him, a nondescript nag cropped at the grass.
“Can we be of assistance, young man?” Peter asked.
The boy looked up. His face was white against the flame of his red hair.
“Good Lord! Where on earth are your shoes, child? Caroline, quickly, it’s Jessica!”
Caroline and Peter helped Jessica into the carriage as Lady Emilia offered her handkerchief.
“Whatever is the meaning of this?”
Jessica gave her great-aunt a wan smile. “The horse went lame. Deyncourt rode him too hard yesterday.”
“And where, may I ask, were you going?”
“To London. I have sold a book of stories. It’s not much, but it’s a beginning and I can survive modestly on the proceeds. I can’t stay with you any longer and I can’t marry Lord Deyncourt.”
“Why ever not? The man loves you.”
Caroline took Peter by the elbow and steered him out of the carriage. They climbed together onto the box, out of earshot.
Jessica laughed a little unsteadily. “Do you think so? It doesn’t signify, for I shall never marry him.”
“I won’t hear another word of this, young lady, until you are warm, changed, and fed.”
“I don’t care. I couldn’t eat anything,” Jessica replied.
“Nonsense! Coachman, back to the inn!”
An hour later, Jessica sat alone with Lady Emilia in a quiet parlor at the inn. She was dressed now in one of her own muslins that Caroline had brought, but she had taken nothing but a cup of coffee.
Lady Emilia glowered at her.
“Why? What is this about, Jessica? You will tell me.”
“I cannot.”
“There is nothing in this world that cannot be faced. You are no coward, child. Why won’t you marry Deyncourt? Now, tell me the whole.”
The freckles lay stark on Jessica’s cheeks like a mockery of tears.
“Very well, I will. Then you will see that the marriage is impossible.”
Some time later, Lady Emilia gazed grimly from the window. She turned stiffly and confronted her great-niece.
“I see,” she said. “Then of course you can’t marry him, and I won’t let you be made his mistress. It would destroy you both. Will there be a child?”
“It’s not the right time. I learned such things years ago.”
“Dear God! If your father were not in his grave, I would put him there myself. Nevertheless, you must tell Deyncourt. Let him repudiate you, if he will, but to run away now is the act of a craven deserter. You will face him over this, Jessica. You made him break his sworn word last night, when he has nothing in the world but his honor to stand between him and despair. Do you think in his disgust, he’ll forget you? You leave him to think you are yet another damned burden for which he must be responsible. He won’t rest until he finds you, for he will feel obliged to provide for you and possibly a child. If you are going to leave him, you must free him from that encumbrance first.”
* * *
The coach lumbered toward Castle Deyncourt. Jessica wasn’t in the least surprised to see everything in such good order. There were no untended cottages or neglected fields. The tenants looked cheerful and dignified as they went about their work.
“There aren’t any children working in the fields,” she said suddenly.
“They are in school,” Lady Emilia replied. “Deyncourt believes that these people must have the full rights of Englishmen—the vote and a fair chance at representation in Parliament—in which case, they must read and write. He has built dame schools in each village. He pays for the costs and insists the children go.”
“And he has made Peter do the same at Tresham. Lady Steal told me.”
“Indeed, it creates some grumbling and he has to enforce it constantly. He makes it up to them in reduced rents, and I believe he is beginning to win a few hearts on the issue, but change is a hard thing for the English countryman to swallow.”
“You mean they don’t want their children to read and write?”
Lady Emilia sniffed. “Why should they? It takes a pair of hands from the field work.”
And thus they resent him! Jessica thought.
The carriage crossed a stream by an arched stone bridge.
At the top of the rise, cresting the skyline, white limestone towers gleamed serenely in the sun. The entire façade with its soaring
walls and intricately carved corbels was reflected in an ornamental lake, graced with swans. From the battlements flew a set of ancient banners. The earl was in residence.
Castle Deyncourt beckoned like the magic towers of Camelot. Jessica felt tears welling up in her eyes.
Aunt Emilia’s carriage pulled up in front of the great doorway with its Norman arch. Jessica climbed down alone and stood in her simple green muslin in front of the steps.
“I shall not return until I’m sent for,” Lady Emilia said, leaning from the coach window. “This is between you and Deyncourt, Jessica. I shall not interfere.”
She rapped on the panel and her carriage lumbered away.
Jessica looked up at the banks of gleaming windows and the magnificent walls soaring away above her head, a seat of power and prestige since the Middle Ages. His home.
Her courage drained away. Oh, dear God! She could not. She could not face him.
The door opened. The earl stood on the threshold.
“Welcome to my castle, Miss Whinburn,” he said gravely. “Please come inside.”
He stepped back as she walked up the steps, then indicated the figure of a steel-clad knight that stood in the hallway.
“The favorite garment of an ancestor. I tried it on as a lad, but I’ve outgrown it now.”
A footman appeared at his elbow. The earl said something to him, and the man scurried away.
Taking Jessica by the hand, Michael led her into a sunny parlor.
“First things first, I think.” He sounded as remote as a priest. “Have you had breakfast?”
Jessica shook her head.
Within moments he sat her down before a feast of fresh food. Jessica stared at it.
“Oh, dear Lord,” he said. “I can’t eat either. Come into the study.”
“And leave all this? What will your servants think?”
“The staff know better than to question anything I might do.”
She followed him through a stone-flagged hall into a neat study, lined with books.
“As they’re used to your bringing odd females into the house at any time without notice? Not a single eyebrow has been raised by any of your servants at my appearance.”
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