by Deborah Hale
“What happened then?” he asked. “Did the sculptor finish the job?”
“He was gone the next morning.” Felicity savored the story’s saucy conclusion. “And the master’s eldest daughter gone with him.”
“Well, well.” Thorn pulled a wry face. “I’ve heard of people paying vast sums for works of art…but a daughter? That is very dear.”
Felicity could imagine it all. The lady and her lover meeting for stolen trysts around the estate. Why, there were dozens of spots on the vast grounds of Trentwell that would make piquant venues for romantic interludes.
In spite of her herself, Felicity began to picture Thorn and her making love in some of those places.
“Let’s go inside.” Her anxiousness to distract herself from such thoughts made the words burst out of her. “We can take some refreshment while we wait for Oliver and Ivy to return from their walk in the garden.”
More images rose in her mind. Of Percy’s great-aunt wringing her hands as the day of her lover’s departure approached. Perhaps the sculptor had begged her to come away with him. How torn she must have been—to leave behind her family and a life of restrictive privilege for a free but uncertain future with the stranger she’d come to love.
“Well, Lady Lyte…are you coming?”
She stirred from her fancy to find Thorn several steps ahead of her.
“Yes, of course.” She breezed past him just as a tiny drop of rain landed on her neck. “We had better get inside before the skies open on us.”
They crossed the forecourt and climbed the broad marble steps to the front entrance. Felicity pulled off her gloves and cloak, passing them to the footman who waited inside the lofty oval entry hall.
“Shall I send some of the grounds keepers to fetch Master Oliver and his lady in, ma’am?”
She should give the order, Felicity knew. Yet she shrank from bringing her last few private moments with Thorn to an end. “No need to make a fuss. I’m certain they’ll return quickly enough once the rain begins to fall in earnest.”
The footman nodded his acknowledgement of her wishes in the matter. “Is there anything you’d like, ma’am?”
“Indeed there is. Tea for Mr. Greenwood and me in the Rajah sitting room, please.”
“Mr. Greenwood?” The footman murmured.
“Yes. Mr. Greenwood is the brother of the young lady my nephew brought with him.” Felicity’s regal tone dared the servant to make anything of it. “By the by, tell Cook to make certain the tea tray is well laden. I’m starved and I expect Mr. Greenwood is, too.”
When the footman had bowed and withdrawn below stairs, Felicity turned to Thorn who was staring around him with some wonder and perhaps a little dismay. Those certainly had been her first reactions to Trentwell when she’d come here as Percy’s bride.
She glanced from the massive sweeping staircase to an imposing portrait of the first Lord Lyte, who glowered down upon all who entered his house. “A bit imposing, isn’t it?”
“Enormous, too.” Thorn swallowed hard. “I always thought Heartsease was a very grand place, but it would barely serve as Trentwell’s gatehouse. As for poor old Barnhill, you could put half a dozen of it in here and still have plenty of room to spare.”
“That sounds a far more reasonable size.” Felicity beckoned him toward the south gallery. “I’m not sure anyone really owns a place of this magnitude. It owns them.”
Trentwell wasn’t going to own her much longer, she vowed to herself. Once this business with Oliver and Ivy was settled, she’d find a buyer for this elegant monstrosity, then acquire a nice cozy spot in the country to raise her child—one far from Thorn’s country house in Buckinghamshire.
“So what is this Rajah room?” asked Thorn as they made their way down a long windowed gallery hung with more portraits of Lyte ancestors.
Felicity stopped before an open set of double doors. “This is the Rajah sitting room. Percy’s great-grandfather made his fortune from the East India Company. Later in life, he imported all sorts of curios from India.”
That was why she’d chosen to take tea here. The room itself would provide plenty of fuel for conversation, preventing those awkward silences that cried out to be filled with words she had no intention of uttering.
Thorn obliged her, wandering around the exotic room asking pleasant, impersonal questions about the tiger skins draped over the back of the rosewood settee and the slender open-shelved teak cabinet with elaborate ebony inlay that housed ivory statues of elephants and multiarmed goddesses.
“What about this basket in the corner?” he asked at last. “The weave is very intricate, but it seems rather modest compared with all these other treasures.”
“Oh that!” Felicity chuckled, beginning to relax. She had become so engrossed in their conversation that she’d almost forgotten how soon Thorn would be gone from her life.
“They say Percy’s great-grandfather kept a live snake in there for years, until it bit one of the servants who was assigned to feed it.”
Thorn’s eyes widened as he took a step back from the basket. “For a house so much newer than Barnhill, this one certainly has its share of colorful stories.”
Before Felicity could relate any more of them, a footman entered, bearing the tea tray. He set it on a low table formed by a round slab of tawny marble resting on top of four green terra-cotta elephants.
Felicity’s mouth watered at the comforting aromas of tea and seed cake.
Through the open doors of the sitting room, a flurry of movement in the south gallery caught her eye. It looked like a young man hurrying past.
Without wasting a second, Felicity brushed past the servant and called to the person in the gallery, “Oliver? Come here at once, please. Mr. Greenwood and I have a few things we wish to discuss with you.”
The young man halted abruptly, then turned on the toe of one of his highly buffed riding boots.
For a long moment Felicity stared at his face, unable to recognize it, apart from knowing it did not belong to her nephew…and realizing it had been injured. Three bright red lines scored one swarthy cheek, while the opposite jaw bulged as if from a severely ulcerated tooth. The young man cradled his left hand in a way that suggested it was also wounded.
“Rupert Norbury?”
Felicity had never seen the most importunate of her late husband’s illegitimate children looking so unkempt. Children whose mothers claimed they’d belonged to Percy, she privately amended.
“What happened to you? And what are you doing at Trentwell? You’re supposed to be in Ireland.”
For the first time since she’d caught him swaggering around the estate as a boy and come to realize who he was—or who everyone thought he was—Felicity had never seen Rupert Norbury quite so chastened.
“Ah, Lady Lyte, what brings you to the country so early?” His attempt at bravado fell short.
Felicity’s patient stare, waiting for an answer to her questions, appeared to rattle him.
“What happened to me?” He grimaced. “Oh, this. Difference of opinion with a horse.”
Felicity sensed Thorn Greenwood hovering behind her a moment before he spoke.
“Do horses in Staffordshire sport claws?” he asked in a jesting tone subtly whetted with mockery. “If so, I’ll make sure to avoid the stables.”
The young dandy’s scowl darkened further. “Rode into some beastly branches,” he muttered as he raised his sound hand to cover the scratches on his cheek.
He’d been up to no good, as usual. Felicity could see it as clearly as the angry red swelling of his forefinger. Fighting with one of the grooms, perhaps. Or taking liberties with a scullery maid, more likely.
For all the contradictory emotions her present situation provoked, Felicity knew she would take singular satisfaction from evicting this odious pup from Trentwell once and for all. But first things first…
“Have you seen anything of Oliver Armitage or the young lady he brought with him from Bath?”
The young scoundrel looked eager to distract them from the subject of his injuries. “I did as a matter of fact. ‘Books’ said something about showing her the old dovecote and the wild garden.”
He gave a sidelong nod toward the high gallery windows and the vast estate park that lay beyond. “I shouldn’t expect them back much before dinner.”
Against all sense, the weight on Felicity’s heart lifted. She half turned to Thorn. “Oliver must have assumed we’d given up the chase and gone back to Bath. By the time they return it’ll be too late for you and Ivy to get any distance on the road.”
Thorn replied with a doubtful-sounding rumble deep in his throat.
“You really needn’t worry about Ivy and Oliver running off in the night.” Out of the corner of her eye, Felicity watched Rupert skulk away to tend his wounds. “I’ll post armed guards outside their doors, if need be. You deserve at least one decent night’s sleep before you head away. Then you and Ivy can make a fresh start in the morning.”
Those words sounded so pleasant—a fresh start.
She would be making a fresh start tomorrow, too. Hard as she tried to summon up the necessary enthusiasm for it, Felicity could not.
As he watched the battered dandy disappear down the gallery, Thorn tried to subdue the squall of emotion that gathered force inside him. It threatened to erupt unless he gave it some outlet.
“Who is that young coxcomb?” he demanded, half-afraid of the answer he would receive. “And what business has he striding about your house as if he owned the place?”
Thorn cringed at the pitiful bluster of jealousy he heard in his own voice.
Felicity rounded on him, her eyes flashing like summer lightning filtered through a thick canopy of woodland foliage. “What business have you quizzing me in such a peremptory tone, sir?”
None at all, Thorn admitted to himself. That was the problem.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the young footman who had delivered the tea tray steal out of the sitting room and slink away up the gallery.
Thorn lowered his voice. “I make it my business, the same way I made it my business to follow you from Bath. Because I care about you.”
Felicity’s expression softened, and for a moment Thorn feared she was about to weep. If that happened, he might complete his humiliation by joining in her tears.
He clung to his possessive anger like a lifeline. What did it matter if he offended Felicity, now? She had cast him off once, and he would soon be out of her life forever.
Stabbing the innocent air with his forefinger, he pointed in the direction Felicity’s young man had gone. “A swaggering puppy like that will bring you no end of trouble.”
“Why, you righteous hypocrite!” Felicity flounced past Thorn into the sitting room.
He followed, shutting the door behind them. The strange room, with its draperies of violent scarlet and provocative bare-breasted statues, did nothing to soothe him.
Felicity stood before the mantel, looking fierce, yet curiously vulnerable at the same time. And so beautiful, Thorn ached anew imagining her in the arms of any other man.
“How dare you question what company I choose to keep?” She looked ready to grab one of the heavy curios off the mantelpiece and hurl it at his head. “When you’ll be traipsing off in your own good time to wed some apple-cheeked virgin of good family and pump her full of babies to inherit your nonexistent fortune!”
“What would you have me do?” Thorn strode toward her, but she did not flinch. “Give up any chance for happiness in the future and spend the rest of my days pining for you? I’m a practical, unromantic fellow, Felicity. You know that. I’ve spent my whole life making the best of what Fate has dealt me, and I will do it again.”
His conscience smarted, though, imagining his poor second best bride, and children who would carry the unfair burden of consoling their father for the great disappointment Fate had dealt him.
Perhaps the time had come for him to put aside his accustomed practice of resignation and salvage. Time to risk his heart and his pride in a fierce struggle for what he wanted.
Felicity gazed up at him, the protective armor of her indignation shattered. “You make it sound so…bleak.”
The word brought Thorn to his knees. “A life without you will be bleak, Felicity. Now that I have seen Trentwell, I understand why you can never trust a man to value you solely for your own charms…considerable though they are.”
She replied with a rueful nod that made Thorn yearn for her more than ever. In the beginning she had enthralled him with her wit, her verve and her confidence.
His growing awareness of the self-doubt and vulnerability she took such pains to conceal had not dimmed his fascination with her—only tempered and deepened it. He loved her imperfections, for each one made her a little more accessible to a man like him.
Felicity made no protest when he took her hands in his. But her long slender fingers felt damp and cold to his touch.
For an instant, Thorn’s voice caught in his throat, but he managed to force it free. “No doubt it is even more difficult to believe from a man in my straitened circumstances, but it is the truth. I care about you, Felicity. Not your estate. Not your fortune.”
He pressed his lips to her hand. “Only your touch. Your voice. Your smile.”
The corners of her mouth curved upward, but her eyes did not crinkle in the manner of a true smile.
“My dear Thorn,” she murmured, “of course I believe you care nothing for my fortune. I have never doubted it.”
An unexpected surge of hope propelled him to his feet again and sent his lips seeking hers to kiss away that wistful mockery of a smile.
He sensed reluctance and eagerness battling within her as her lips melted against his, froze for an instant, then melted again. Emboldened by Felicity’s declaration of her faith in him, Thorn suckled her lower lip in the way he knew she enjoyed. After a final moment’s hesitation, she returned his kiss with a desperate fervor, as though she meant to devour him. The blood roared through Thorn’s veins in a fast, fevered rhythm.
Though he recalled making love with her twice during the previous night, his body now ached for Felicity as though they’d been long parted. Had it not been for the likelihood of someone blundering in on them, he might have tossed one of the tiger skins on the sitting room floor and seduced the mistress of Trentwell, then and there.
“Please be sensible, Thorn.” She averted her face and made a token effort to retreat from his embrace. “Don’t make this any harder than it must be. And don’t pretend my fortune is the only thing that stands between us.”
Deprived of her lips, Thorn set about the delightful occupation of drizzling kisses up and down her slender, sensitive neck.
“I’m tired of being sensible,” he whispered as his lips ravished one delicate ear. “I want to make it so hard for us to part that we’ll do anything in order to stay together. I don’t care what stands between us. I can’t abide the thought of any other man in your life. Nor can I abide the thought of my life without you.”
Felicity drew back from him, just enough to let their gazes meet.
The quickening wonder of a thousand springtimes glowed in her eyes. Yet Thorn sensed something else, too. The bated hope of a child watching a beautiful but flimsy soap bubble waft on the breeze.
At last she risked shattering their fragile moment with a few quiet words. “The young man you saw me talking to in the gallery, he’s not what you think he is.”
Thorn struggled to retain his composure. “What is he to you, then?”
A shadow of old pain and humiliation darkened her features. “Rupert Norbury’s mother was one of my husband’s many mistresses.”
If she had brained him with the heavy jade tortoise carving from the curio cabinet, Thorn could not have been more dazed.
He remembered the flippant reference Felicity had once made to her late husband’s illegitimate progeny. Seeing one of them, and sensing a faint echo of the anguish she h
ad suffered on their account was another matter entirely.
“Y-you let him stay here?” Made him some sort of allowance, too, if the young rascal’s wardrobe was any indication.
Felicity gave a reluctant nod. “Mister Norbury seems to think he has a better right to Trentwell than I have.”
“Preposterous!” For reasons he could not fathom, Thorn found himself no less indignant for understanding Rupert Norbury’s true position in Felicity’s household. “Why, the fellow’s a walking, talking insult to you.”
“This is the only home he’s known for many years. I hadn’t the heart to deprive him of it.” She made it sound as though she was admitting a vice. “Beneath my show of sophistication, I’m rather a sentimental ninny.”
“I warn you, madam.” He gave her nose a delicate tap with his forefinger. “I won’t stand idly by and hear the woman I love maligned.”
“The woman you love.” Felicity savored the words on her tongue and appeared to find their flavor very sweet. “She is a fortunate creature, indeed.”
“Not half as fortunate as I, if she could return my feelings.”
“She fears she does return them, Mr. Greenwood.” A faint sigh escaped Felicity’s exquisite lips. “But she fears so much else besides. You may have no designs on her fortune, but there are those who would claim you do. Could a respectable man like you abide being the subject of vicious gossip?”
Before he could stop himself, Thorn flinched.
“You see?” Felicity raised her hand to brush against his side whiskers. Not as their usual signal for lovemaking, Thorn sensed, but as a gesture of endearment and wary trust. “I would feel the same about malicious tattle that the trade heiress had bought herself another man.”
Thorn shook his head vigorously. “No one with any sense would believe that a woman of your beauty and charm needed to purchase a husband.”
The sweet beginning of a genuine smile lit Felicity’s face with a soft, rosy glow. “And no one with any judgment would believe you capable of dishonor.”
“In that case,” said Thorn, “if all the people with sense and good judgment know better, who are we to care what spiteful fools may speculate?”