At Your Pleasure

by Meredith Duran

  Adrian considered his choices. The easiest would serve. “By all means,” he said. “The marchioness must not be inconvenienced by these matters.”

  Nora stiffened. He glanced into her eyes and found them wide and startled. The next moment her lashes fell, and all that remained to guide him was the color blooming in her cheeks.

  What this flush betokened, he could not decide. Had she expected him to oppose her cousin? Or to accuse her, before the company, of behavior ill becoming a woman promised in marriage?

  If so, she overestimated his care for propriety. He would have put his hands on her today had she been engaged to marry a king. Her misunderstanding of him, however, was all to his advantage.

  “We will leave at once, then,” said Cosmo. “We cannot wish to inconvenience you. Your hospitality has been generous.”

  “My hospitality.” Nora spoke coldly. “Hodderby is not Lord Rivenham’s estate.”

  Colville mustered a thin smile. “Indeed, indeed.”

  Hodderby would be no one’s estate but the crown’s, once David Colville was done. The family had been unusually fortunate to retain a slice of their ancestral estates when Lord Hexton had been impeached. They would not be so fortunate again.

  Nevertheless, Hodderby would remain hers. Adrian would make sure of it.

  “But you must stay for a few days,” he said to Colville, investing his words with congenial invitation. “Recuperate from your long journey.”

  “Most kind,” Colville said, “but I believe one night will suffice.” Beside him, the bride gave a telling jerk: she had not known of this plan for rapid departure. “Your trunks can follow us,” he added to her, as though her concern were merely for her wardrobe. “You understand: with the news from Scotland, we cannot trust the roads to remain quiet for long.”

  This haste was intriguing. It suggested that David Colville lingered somewhere very nearby, biding his time until his sister could be cleared of the keep.

  Adrian did not bother to repress his smile. Tonight. His instincts had never spoken more loudly. It is tonight, or never.

  He sensed Nora’s eyes on him. Catching her look, he lifted his glass to her.

  Some inscrutable emotion crossed her face. She looked into her own cup, but did not raise it in reply.

  Unfazed, Adrian turned his glass toward Colville. “A toast, then.” Good cheer roughened his voice. Anticipation grew all the sweeter as the end drew near. “To your safe journey.”

  “And to Lady Towe’s, of course,” Colville added.

  Adrian drank without speaking. After tonight, Lady Towe’s safety would not be any Colville’s concern.

  13

  Past midnight. Nora walked in silent, measured steps down the cold stone corridor, her cloak bag clutched under her arm. Such precious freight must be carried with care, for within this bag lay the articles of estate, the rent rolls and ancient deeds of land, the Bible that attested to family marriages and deaths—none of which could be left behind to chance.

  For hours she had wrestled with herself over this course. At the table, she had held her tongue when Cosmo spoke of marriage, forbidding herself by a fierce will to quarrel in the presence of enemies. Then, when Adrian had ceded so easily to Cosmo’s plan to remove her from Hodderby, her own foolish grief had almost crushed her. Evidently he had not found their interlude in the meadow worth repeating. On the contrary, it seemed to have proved to him that she was more trouble than she was worth.

  But these men, both of them, could go to the devil! In his absence, David had entrusted her with Hodderby’s care. If he had formed some new plan thereafter with Cosmo, then he should have shared it. But he had not, and she would not take her cousin’s word for truth. She would not abandon Hodderby—and she would not marry Cosmo, either. Indeed, she was done with men entirely! What a more peaceful life she would lead freed from their deceptions—and from the casual violence with which they betrayed a woman’s hopes. Idiotic hopes, unforgivable hopes—they sprang up like weeds and flourished without permission . . .

  She took a sharp breath and forced her attention to the present. Her decision had been made. There was no use in dwelling on aught else.

  The arrow-slit windows permitted only the barest ghostly glow to penetrate the gloom. With one hand she guided herself, her fingertips brushing over tapestries she knew like her own face, and the frames of paintings showing her forebears. Once this entire hall had been a gallery, and her ancestors’ images had hung side by side with great works by Caravaggio, Rubens, and Van Dyck. But the travails of the Civil War had cost the Colvilles these treasures. Nora only knew of them from her late grandfather’s tales.

  Grandfather had cherished those memories of greatness. He had seen fit to press them on her as well as David. In so many ways he had shown her that Hodderby was her legacy as much as her brother’s. David had known this, once. But he was only a man, and she could not blame him if he fell prey to the same masculine disorders of the mind that plagued his cousin and Lord Rivenham to boot.

  No matter what any of them believed, her place was here. She knew a hundred places to hide on this estate, and a hundred people, plainspoken and honorable, who would shelter her. It was unjust to ask them to risk themselves, but she would find a way to reward them for it.

  The floor abruptly slanted upward, signaling the threshold to the entresol that looked over the entry hall. She stepped across it—and gasped as a hand closed on her arm.

  The cloak bag slipped, thumping against the floor as a hard body came up behind her. The hilt of a sword stabbed her ribs.

  The hand across her mouth seemed . . . familiar.

  Adrian whispered in her ear, “Quietly.”

  He made the mistake of releasing her then. She turned to face him, calculating how best to deter his interest, to send him onward so she might accomplish her escape. He was nothing in this blackness but the faint glow of his hair and the glint of his eyes.

  A quick glance downward could not locate her cloak bag, but as she shifted, her foot came up against it. Pray God he had not noticed it, for it would be a telltale sign of her intention to flee.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered. “Why do you prowl?”

  “I could ask you the same. If you seek your cousin, you need only wait in your chambers. I wager he will soon come sniffing about them.”

  His voice was pitched so low that she might have imagined the growl in it. But his phrasing made her wary; it did not sound kind.

  When he took hold of her arm again, the flexing pressure of his hand proved more distinct to her senses. Mere inches separated them. In the surrounding chill, her body wanted to step closer to the great warmth coming off his.

  “You are armed,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She thought she saw the flash of his teeth, though it was no remark to inspire a smile. She tried to pull away. His grip tightened.

  A shadow shifted in the corner of her vision. When she looked, it was already gone.

  “One of my men,” he said. “They walk the house tonight.”

  “To what purpose?” A horrific idea suggested itself. “Mean you to slay my cousin?”

  His soft laugh raised the hairs on her nape. This strange cheer in his manner alarmed her; he all but vibrated with wild energy. “Would you weep for him if I did?”

  These were not the words of a man resigned to Cosmo Colville’s wishes. Had his merry routine at dinner been but a show? “You gave him permission to take me!”

  “I lie very well.”

  So. That answered one question. The other yet remained. “You cannot mean to harm him.”

  “Oh, I have murder in me,” he said softly. “Generally it requires provocation. Do you wish to marry him?”

  The casual tenor of his voice, so mismatched to his words, made her wary. She did not know what answer might count as the provocation he required.

  “What are you about?” she asked slowly.

  “You were mine in the meadow this morn
ing. It was not by accident.”

  She was grateful for the darkness as she felt her face flame. “This morning was . . .” Magical, she thought. A dream. Some stolen moment not meant to exist in the waking world.

  A mistake.

  “It should not have happened,” she whispered.

  “You do not lie nearly so well as I.” How strangely pleased he sounded. She did not recognize this man who held her in the darkness. “Be honest now.” His hand closed over her hip and she sucked in a breath. “Be honest,” he murmured.

  His tongue traced the curve of her ear.

  She shuddered and turned away. “Not here,” she said hoarsely. “Stop it.”

  “I mean to make you mine.”

  Though his mouth was hot, the words sounded cold. His statement held no pleasure, no passion; he spoke a flat promise to her.

  For a moment, she quailed. If he wanted to drive her away, he could not do so more effectively than by threatening to take his full liberties without her say.

  But the fear faded almost instantly. What a queer, curious idea: she knew him too well, even now, to imagine he would ever use her brutally. “Adrian . . .” What devil rides you tonight?

  But caution checked her words. His answer, she sensed, would not leave her any easy exit.

  She reached out, avoiding his sword, brushing over the stiff leather of a fighting man’s waistcoat, to find his hand. That she discovered it clenched into a fist startled forth a tenderness she did not understand. This intuitive knowledge of him did not bear scrutiny, but she yielded to it as her fingers wrapped over his knuckles.

  “You are the villain here by accident,” she murmured. “I will fight you, but I will not fear you.”

  “Then God help you, Nora,” he said softly. “For I mean to show you no mercy.”

  That such words should strike joy in her made as little sense as her instinct now to lift her face, or her lack of surprise when his mouth touched hers.

  His arms came around her and she felt the full evidence of his readiness for bloodshed: not only the hilt of his saber, but the rude butt of a dagger strapped to his thigh. Such proof should have chilled her. It was her family, her cousin, that he armed himself against.

  She was a wicked, depraved creature to want him more for it. She tightened her arms around him, pulling him as close as he might come—not close enough; she wanted no space between them. As a girl she had craved only this, to be loved without scruples or surcease, to be loved violently and against all good sense. She had not realized that the price would be to love him in the same fashion, and to pay a higher cost than he did.

  But now the knowledge made this hot kiss seem all the more wondrous. It was bound to end. It always ended. But until it did, would that every walk in the shadows, every long night of self-doubt, had such blissful dangers as its reward.

  His mouth broke from hers. “Come,” he said, taking her by the shoulders, turning her and urging her forward. To his chambers.

  Her mouth went dry.

  Could she do this? Could she lie with him? She had known it for a mistake this afternoon, but now, in the giddiness of midnight, although her stomach soared with a mix of fear and anticipation, she could not locate her doubts. “I don’t . . .”

  But she forgot the rest of her words when he directed her toward the stair.

  His chambers lay above, not below.

  She dug in her heels. “Where do you take me?”

  “To the chapel,” he said.

  The fluttering in her stomach sharpened, now flavored more by panic. “But why?”

  “A very good reason,” he said. “That is where marriages are performed.”

  For the space of a shocked heartbeat she waited for his next remark, which would clarify this joke.

  But all he said was “Come.”

  He was not asking.

  She swallowed the sudden wild urge to laugh. “Come? To—be married, do you mean?”

  “Yes, that is what I mean.” His voice was cool, evidencing no trace of shame at his brazenness nor any concern for the turmoil his proposition raised in her. “I am removing you from this unhappy bind. Your brother’s troubles will concern you no longer.”

  Now her laugh did slip out. It sounded savage. So, he would not let Cosmo take her against her will; instead, he would take her himself! But how kind he was to free her of this obligation of her brother! How kind, indeed, to inform her of her impending marriage!

  Twice now in one day she had learned such happy news. Had any woman ever been blessed with so much tender, solicitous consideration?

  “You are mad,” she said. But she sounded breathless when rage would do better. “I will not marry you for aught!” If only she might smite every man in the human race who had ever told her a single instruction for her benefit! “Simply because I trifled with you in the meadow—why, any slut might instruct you what store to set by that!”

  In the brief space of his silence, she felt her temper yield to the stirring of hope. “I know you wish to spare me,” she said more softly. “But this is not the way, Adrian. I—you and I—I cannot tell you what all is in my heart for you, but now, as matters stand, there is no clear way to see—”

  “And so I see for you,” he cut in. “In time you, too, will come to understand. Now I must bid you come. I am sorry for it, Leonora, but I will carry you if I must.”

  Disbelief splintered into shock.

  He truly did not care for her consent.

  With the pressure of his hand, he tried to marshal her down the steps.

  She drew back her fist and slammed it into his ear.

  He hissed out a breath. As his fingers flexed on her arm, she hit him again—one great shove toward the stairs. Perforce he released her to catch himself, and she did not wait for him to recover. Sprinting past him, she flew down the staircase.

  Five steps’ advantage, then four: she heard the light fall of his foot as he bounded after her. She would have cursed him—you arrogant, conceited, Lucifer’s spawn—but she saved her breath for flight. Lifting her skirts, she took the stairs two by two, reckless with her footing, giddy with some hot intoxication that might, soon enough, prove to be fury.

  He called to her, rough words, indistinct, as she leapt the last length of stairs. Marry her, would he? She had been trapped before, because of him, and she would see him in hell before he worked this trick on her! She was done with surrendering choices!

  She spun away from the main entrance, for there was no escape outside in the moonlight, on terrain where he could easily outpace her, where his men waited in watch of her brother . . . Oh, he had planned very well, had he not, to capture every Colville of interest to him!

  A hidden door stood behind a tapestry. She knocked aside the dusty cloth and struck the door with her shoulder, the pain welcome, blending into and heightening the violence inside her. Let him try to find his way in the blackness! This interior passage twisted like a snake, the stone flooring uneven; it had been paved long before the erection of the walls that now enclosed Hodderby, a remainder of the old lodge that had stood when the houses of York and Lancaster had split apart the kingdom centuries ago.

  She sprinted silently, knowing by memory when to turn. The cramped corridor curved, and she ducked as she approached the sudden drop in the ceiling, invisible in the dark. The door, now distant behind her, thumped at Adrian’s entrance. Another sharp thud and a curse announced his encounter with the buckling slant of the ancient masonry.

  Good. She hoped he bled.

  Her course dead-ended at a new door. She threw it open.

  The ancient hall blazed with light. Rivenham’s men looked up from the end of the room. The dice rolling between them reached the edge of the table and skittered onto the floor, loud in the silence of their surprise.

  “Hold!” called one as they shot to their feet. She pulled shut the door and was running again, left now with no choice but go exactly where she should not.

  Down again the path dipped, thr
ough air that grew cool and dry. Did she truly mean to do this? One wrong step—gunpowder was unpredictable—

  She slowed and put out her hands, feeling her way between the casks that cropped up all around her. Splinters of oak stabbed her palms. Carefully, carefully . . .

  “Nora.”

  His voice echoed off the low ceiling. Like a tightening noose, it halted her.

  At the far end of this chamber, a bolted door opened into the stable yard. But she could not risk leading him through these barrels. He had no idea of the dangers they contained.

  He spoke again. “If it will comfort you to know you ran . . .”

  Comfort?

  “. . . then by all means,” he said. “Run.”

  She would show him comfort! She reached into her pocket, the bottom of which she had slit open in her solar. He was not the only one carrying a weapon. She had planned well for her midnight departure. The hilt of the small knife strapped to her thigh butted into her grasp. The trembling of her fingers infuriated her. She tightened her grip until pain stabbed through her knuckles.

  Damn him.

  Damn him for making this choice for her!

  His hand closed on her arm.

  “This is the only way,” he said.

  She dared not struggle. It had been reckless to lead him here. “The only way to . . . what, Lord Rivenham?”

  Her voice sounded strange to her, low and unnaturally calm.

  “Listen well,” he said. “I see two ways for it: I kill your brother myself—here—and thereby spare you the chance to follow his treason. I save your life thereby but earn your enmity for eternity.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “So you do.”

  “Or I refrain from authoring his death, and you, doing your best to aid him, thereby author your own. No Colville will find mercy in London.”

  His grip was tightening; he was trying to turn her toward him, but the position of the casks between them put him at an odd angle that prevented him from exerting the full force of his strength.

  She could not fight, lest they upset the barrels around them. But with every muscle in her body she strained against his grip, and the effort frayed her words. “You did not speak of my brother on the stair. You spoke of marriage, and I will not have it.”