Lovesong

by Valerie Sherwood

  “I had thought our night together at the inn might have served as an introduction,” he sighed on a note of amusement and Carolina gave him a look of vast alarm. For one of the young bucks who had been pursuing her so ardently had just danced his partner by very close and there was a good chance he might have overheard that remark and misconstrued it.

  “I would hardly describe it as ‘our night together,’ ” she said bitterly as he swung her away from the young buck who was now staring at her in amazement as if questioning his own ears. “And you are making me a scandal, for you were overheard in your last remark!”

  “By whom?” His dark head swung round. “Ah— that lad in buff who just danced by?”

  “Yes, the one who is giving me such an accusing look! It will be all over the countryside by morning that I am given to visiting inns with strange men!”

  Rye frowned. “Rest easy, Mistress Lightfoot,” he said and she noted that his voice had deepened and become extremely resolute. “I will see that the record is set straight. Your admirer will learn that I had never laid eyes on you before this evening. And if he chooses not to accept my word, he will find himself in need of a long convalescence!”

  She gave him an uncertain look. Almost, he had sounded like her protector.

  “It seems I have spent too much time away from England—I have forgot some of the niceties.” The music had stopped now and he bowed again before her. “Permit me to introduce myself. Rye Evistock, at your service.”

  “I am Carolina Lightfoot,” she said nervously. From a distance she could see several of the young bucks with whom she’d been dancing converging on her. “And I do hope you won’t tell anyone that you saw me at the Star and Garter,” she added quickly. “I mean—”

  “Mistress Lightfoot,” said that deep voice on a rather humorous note. “I am the soul of discretion. You may depend upon it, I will keep your dark secret to my grave.”

  Carolina flushed again. He was mocking her, indeed looking down upon her from his great height with amused delight. Oh, he was impossible! She lifted her chin and turned away from the tall figure in gray and immediately accepted the offer to dance of the first young buck to reach her side. From that dance she was promptly claimed by another. And then another. But over a variety of satin shoulders, she was constantly aware of Rye Evistock’s dark head, as he conversed first, at length, with his host—with whom he seemed to be on most familiar terms for his host ended up laughing and slapping him on the back—and then with a variety of other people. He seemed, she thought in some chagrin, quite popular here—which she was not. Pursued, yes, but not popular.

  She was not really afraid Rye Evistock would fail to keep her secret. There was indeed something very solid and reassuring about him for all that he had amused gray eyes and a wickedly wolfish grin. She really could not have said what it was about him that so disturbed her. Reba danced by deep in conversation with someone, and then Rye Evistock was dancing with her again.

  “I have learnt considerably more about you, Mistress Lightfoot,” he told her softly. “I have learnt that you are a guest of the new people who have bought Broadleigh. And are to remain there for at least a fortnight.”

  “I am to spend the Twelve Days of Christmas with them,” admitted Carolina warily, noting how easy it was to follow Rye’s lead in the dance. He had an easy grace and there was a feeling of sureness in his step and of great strength in the way he moved. He was lean, she realized, as a fencer is lean, with long arms and long legs and a muscular spring to his gait. But she still could not forgive him for his arrogant treatment of her at the inn.

  “Good,” he said. “I will hope to call upon you there.”

  His confident expectation that he would be joyfully received by her at Broadleigh nettled Carolina. She decided to take him down a peg. “There will probably be a round of outings,” she said vaguely. “I may not be at home to be called upon.”

  His dark face came alert at her offhand tone. “Surely, Mistress Lightfoot,” he remonstrated, “you cannot hold it against me that I saved your life the other night?”

  Put like that, it did seem churlish of her not to allow him to call. She let him whirl her around several times before she answered.

  “It was the manner of your saving,” she declared heatedly. “I am not used to being dragged about and treated as if I were some—”

  “Young lad who needed strong measures?” he said coolly. “But you were dressed as a lad, I’ll remind you!”

  “Yes, but you knew I was not. You knew—”

  “I wonder how I knew?” he murmured. “Could it have been the way you blushed and looked away when you met my eyes? Could it have been your feminine gestures?”

  Carolina felt stung. “My gestures were not feminine! I practiced them before the mirror!”

  “Did you now?” He chuckled. “Well, they seemed feminine to me. And no lad ever had skin like yours!” He looked down meaningfully at the lovely line of her outthrust young breasts. “I do recall you were much flatter then. I’ll warrant it was painful, binding those pretty things down so tightly.”

  “How dare you talk to me like that?” she flared. “No gentleman would say such a thing! Indeed I’ll not dance with you, sir!”

  “Ah, but perhaps I am not a gentleman,” he laughed. “Perhaps I have forgot how to be one!”

  That was his affair! She tried to fling away from him but he kept a steely grip on her hand and managed to whirl her about so that her violent motion away from him seemed to be merely part of the dance. “But if you choose to dash suddenly away from me on the dance floor, I may be called upon to explain it.” His smile was remarkably sunny. “And what then could I say but the truth?”

  He meant he would tell about that night at the inn!

  “Oh, but you promised!” cried Carolina, shocked. “And a gentleman would never go back on his promise!”

  “Ah, so I am back to being a gentleman again?” There was laughter behind his gray eyes. “Then am I to understand that your aversion to me is not so great as to leave me stranded alone upon the floor?”

  “I did not say that either!”

  She gave him a smoldering look as the music stopped and his boots came to rest beside her sinuous gray velvet skirts.

  “I will bid you good evening,” she told him crisply.

  “Ah, not so fast!” He had kept his hold on her and now that the music had started again, he swept her unwilling form out again upon the dance floor before any of the disappointed young bucks who had been heading in their direction could reach her. “I am but a visitor to these shores,” he told her. “My time is short and I must make the most of it.”

  He whirled her into an anteroom off the great hall, a curtained alcove momentarily deserted, where tall many-paned Tudor windows pierced the building wall. The draperies over the windows had not been drawn and they seemed alone in a snowy landscape. Outside the gnarled old trees bent beneath their glistening burden of white, the ancient boxwoods bore crowns of snow and the sweeping lawn was a white glitter. It was a breathtaking view.

  He had stopped dancing by the window and paused to let her admire the view—but he kept his hold on her, as he once had kept his hold on a cornered kitten.

  “It is lovely—Essex,” he said softly. “But not for me. No longer for me.”

  Curiosity overcame her antagonism. “Why not?”

  He smiled down at her. “Would you care?”

  A white moon rode the dark sky above the glittering branches. In the crisp clear air the stars were myriad and bright as flung diamonds against the velvet dark. The moonlight had softened his hard features, given depth to his eyes. Suddenly she did care for there had been an undertone of sadness in his voice. After all, he had not done anything so terrible to her—it was not his fault that she had slipped and fallen off the roof. And there had been some justification for his actions that night at the inn. He had saved her, perhaps from death, and he could have dragged her upstairs merely to keep her from ge
tting into more trouble. Something steady in his gaze had told her that.

  “Yes.” It was barely a whisper. “I think I would care.”

  He looked surprised—and suddenly vulnerable. So had a kitten won him once—by purring at just the right moment.

  “Tell me,” she said softly, “why Essex is no longer for you?”

  He looked past her, out past the snowy landscape to far distances, somewhere beyond this pleasant land.

  “We all take steps in our youth,” he murmured. “And some of them are irrevocable.”

  Such a step as she had taken with Lord Thomas. . . . Somehow the elusive Lord Thomas seemed far away tonight. And Rye Evistock was very close. She felt with him a communion of the spirit—his troubles, her troubles. . . .

  “Perhaps not so irrevocable,” she declared.

  “You think not?” he said quickly.

  “Of course not.” She tossed her head. “A man may change.” Or a maid. . . .

  “Yes,” he murmured. “A man could change . . . with the right woman.”

  It all happened very quickly. His long arms went round her and she went into them with a quick involuntary yearning. His dark head inclined, his mouth was upon her trembling one, and he brought her slight velvet-clad body close against his own. Magically she seemed to fit there as if the gods had designed the two of them as a set. In that dreamy moment Carolina did not ask herself the rightness or wrongness of what she did. She melted against Rye and her lips were soft and pliant beneath his.

  He felt the gentle yielding of her, the—almost—submission. And gave back gentleness in return. There beneath a cold moon he cradled her head in his hand and stroked her hair and let his questing lips rove lightly over her flushed face, brushing her long dark lashes, her high winged brows, her smooth forehead, the pale gleaming curls that lay so lightly, silvered by the moonlight over Essex. He took no liberties— although he sensed he might and not be repulsed—but showed her, as he felt was her due from a gentleman of Essex born and bred, all the respect owed an aristocratic maiden from a suitor.

  But Carolina was shaken by the contact and pushed away from him, trembling.

  “Mr. Evistock—” she began.

  “Oh, I think you might call me Rye at this point, don’t you?” His voice was ever so lightly mocking.

  She stiffened. “Rye then. If we are to be friends, you must not pounce upon me like this whenever we chance to be alone.”

  So a kitten had once said to him—only not being able to say it in plain English, she had said it with her sharp little teeth and tiny claws and spitting hisses. But he had persevered and the kitten had come round to purring, and this girl with her willow-gray eyes, shining in the moonlight like silver catkins, would come around too. His heart burst with the sudden knowledge of it and all the harsh years were swept away.

  “Mistress Lightfoot,” he said earnestly. “Carolina, if I may—if you will but smile upon me, I will promise not to pounce.”

  She smiled, showing a row of even white teeth. “I would I could believe you, sir,” she said archly.

  “Well, there is one amendment,” he told her in an easy voice. “I promise not to pounce unless invited.”

  The implication was clear—and delightful. For the moment, in the tumult of her emotions, she had forgotten Thomas, forgotten Reba, forgotten the man she was supposed to charm should he appear. Rye Evistock, she thought dreamily, would be an easy man to love. A woman could feel safe with him. Protected. And his lips had been intoxicating. She had not dared let herself succumb to her feelings.

  It was a very promising moment.

  “Then I may call upon you tomorrow?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said happily.

  He sensed that happiness and stood the straighter. He who had taken so many women so lightly—who had had only one love and she was gone—now found it easy to step into the role of suitor. He would make her charming speeches, he would dance attendance, he would be all that young Mistress Lightfoot desired—at least for a season. Come Twelfth Night he would have to make a decision and it would be a hard one.. He would put it off. For here was a maiden worthy of being chased, a kitten worth the taming. . . .

  Carolina liked his courtliness, for she sensed that it was out of respect for her. She liked that respect, for she sensed behind it wildness and audacity. And that he was holding himself in check meant—it meant that he held her in higher regard than Thomas had, who had pounced upon her unawares while she was naked in the tub! The memory of that brought color flooding to her face and Rye, looking down, thought that it was his kiss that had brought it on and felt a warm sense of triumph suffuse him.

  “Perhaps you will be staying in England then?” she asked quickly, conscious of his regard.

  “Perhaps,” he agreed. For who would not risk danger for such a maid?

  “We should get back—we will be missed,” she said hurriedly, for she sensed that he was about to kiss her again, and she felt that with one more kiss she would be lost.

  Without comment, Rye took her away from the alcove, back to an inconspicuous corner of the great hall where she would be shielded from view by the clustered backs of a group of gentlemen, deep in discussion. He smiled down fondly upon her. “Wait for me here and I will bring you a glass of wine and we will toast the good fortune of our meeting,” he said and strode away through the dancers.

  Reba, coming up just then, caught her arm almost as Rye departed. “I've just learnt that the Marquess of Saltenham has landed at Dover and will spend the holidays at his estate in Hampshire!” she whispered.

  “And his wife?”

  “Died in Italy.” There was triumph in her voice.

  So Reba had been right, the poor woman’s health had indeed been frail!

  “Robin will need to observe a suitable period of mourning and then of course he will come for me,” she declared confidently. “Oh, Carol, I can’t thank you enough. But you must not weaken,” she cautioned. “If only I can get through these next weeks!”

  “Well, I hope you can, but I don’t understand why you’re thanking me—I certainly haven’t done anything to merit thanks!”

  “But of course you have,” said Reba, squeezing her hand. “You’ve been distracting him.”

  “Distracting who?”

  Reba was fast losing patience. All this adulation, all these young bucks who had been clustering around Carolina all evening, must, she decided, have gone to her friend’s head. “The man you’ve just been dancing with, of course, who’s just gone to bring you a glass of wine.”

  “But that’s not—he told me his name is Rye Evistock.”

  “And so it is. Rye Evistock is Lord Gayle’s third son.”

  Carolina felt her breath leave her. Rye Evistock was the aristocratic fortune hunter who’d been arranging a betrothal with wealthy Reba? Rye? She could hardly credit it.

  But a further shock was in store for Reba gave her an amused look. “Don’t look so thunderstruck, Carol,” she said in a voice gone just slightly malicious. “It isn’t just your beautiful body he’s after.”

  “What—what do you mean?”

  Reba couldn’t resist crowing over her own cleverness. “While I was dancing with Sir Kyle early in the evening, I made a point of telling him all about your father’s great wealth. His country seat at Farview on the Eastern Shore, his forty thousand acres on the James—or was it the York? His vast income from ships and trading posts. The elegant house he’s building that will beggar anything Essex has to offer!” Her glinting russet eyes said better than any words that it had gone against the grain to have Carolina getting all the attention—and in her clothes.

  “Oh, Reba, you didn’t?” cried Carolina.

  “I did indeed,” laughed Reba. “I told him your father was far wealthier than mine, that you were his only child. I talked about your fashion dolls from Paris and your London dressmaker—”

  “Your London dressmaker,” corrected Carolina bitterly.

  “And then we
talked about Lord Gayle’s third son, and it turns out Sir Kyle’s very thick with Rye Evistock—known him since he was a lad, he said, and thinks highly of him. So of course Sir Kyle must have told him what a great fortune you possess, for here he is, plying you with wine!”

  Carolina recalled that Rye had let her go rather lightly when first they had been dancing. And then he had had a long back-slapping talk with his host and when he had come back he had said—what had he said? I have learnt considerably more about you, Mistress Light foot! Indeed he had—and most of it lies. At the moment she wasn’t sure at whom she was the more indignant—Rye or Reba. Reba for getting her into this mess, Rye for neatly changing the target of his pursuit. For had not Reba said, I told him your father was far wealthier than mine . . . ?