The mare turned sharply into deep shadow without realising how the ground raked steeply upwards into a tree-clad slope. She balked, pitching Nicola forwards over her neck, slowing and swerving, allowing Fergus enough time to come alongside and hold them at bay, purposely not allowing the horse enough space to turn round.
Nicola was breathless and not used to being brought to a standstill while in full flight, especially not by Fergus Melrose, who had always been miles ahead and uncaring of her whereabouts. His attentions still alarmed her and, with hair beautifully awry in a dark tangle around her face, she scowled at him with unconcealed resentment. ‘Leave me alone,’ she panted. ‘Just go away and leave me alone.’
It was the first time they had met since the disastrous fire, and his last sight of her had been as she rode away through the debris of her ruined house, white with shock. Now the wind had brought a flush to her cheeks and a new sparkle to her eyes, and Fergus would like to have pulled her into his arms and on to the thick carpet of wood anemones and bluebells. But he had learned some discipline during his years at sea, and so he dismounted and held the mare’s bridle, mixing persuasion with compulsion. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We have to talk some time and you’ve been avoiding me long enough now. Tell me what the problem is and I’ll listen.’
‘Listen?’ she snapped, pulling at the reins to free the mare. ‘Listen? Men like you don’t do that kind of thing, do they?’
‘Yes, when it’s necessary.’
‘For what? Your comfort?’
‘For my understanding.’ Before she could pull away, he led the mare towards a patch of level ground where a tree trunk lay across the sunlit grass. Then, looping both reins over a dead branch, he came to her side with arms ready to receive her. ‘We shall not better this for privacy, I think.’ His hands waited, and he could feel the struggle within her as she deliberated. She could, he knew, just as easily have dismounted from the other side, alone.
At last she placed her hands on his shoulders, her body leaning down, and he felt the soft weight of her fall towards him as it had done so often in his dreams since that violent meeting in her hall. He felt her sweet breath across his face and then she was weightless between saddle and grass, and he could have kept her so, feeling that, for only an instant while her eyes rested in his, she might have allowed it.
Quickly, she moved away from him, breaking the contact that could so easily have become an embrace. Years vanished in seconds, and there again was that loaded complicated hostility that they had known as children, a confusion of needs that neither of them had been able to identify. Now, they both knew what to call it, and only Nicola remembered the pain. She took another step back, tripped on her long skirt and sat down with a bump on the log. She tried to untangle her heel and stand, but was held back by Fergus’s arm as he sat astride, close to her.
‘Hush,’ he said, stopping her impending protest. ‘Be still now. Things have moved on, my lady. We’re not bairns any more. We can talk about it.’
Nicola was not so sure that she could. ‘Everything has changed,’ she argued. ‘My needs have changed, too.’
He linked his arms about her tiny waist. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course they have. It’s a woman’s privilege. And it’s my privilege to change them back again.’
She turned to face him, a three-quarters view that almost stopped his heart. There were those same defiant eyes that had once galled him so, but now riveted him with their beauty, the wide soft mouth that had never smiled at him as the maids did, the hair that was never as tidy or as prim as his mother’s. She was wild at heart, still struggling to conform, but wanting her freedom at the same time and angry that the two were not being allowed to work together as she had hoped. And now the foundations of that longed-for independence had begun to crumble. No wonder she wanted to escape them all.
‘It’s not like that. You can’t just change them back as if they were the wrong buttons on a coat,’ she said, crossly. ‘You say we can talk about it, but you’re already set on changing my mind even before you know what my mind is.’ She looked away angrily, still smarting at the curtailment of her short freedom.
‘Oh? I thought I did. I seem to recall you making it quite clear. Several times, as if I hadn’t quite got the message.’
‘I told you, my needs have changed.’
‘Ah,’ he said, softly. ‘Your needs have changed. Not your mind, but your needs. Are you going to tell me of these…er…needs?’
‘You ought to be able to guess.’ Having nowhere else to go, her hands came to rest upon the arm that lay across her lap, her fingers idly pleating the folds of his grey embroidered sleeve.
Fergus was having some difficulty with his facial muscles. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I ought. I’m being particularly stupid. Do tell me.’
Hesitation turned into delay, delay into denial. Finally, Fergus helped her forward with a typical bluntness that shed some light on his understanding of the position, but did little for Nicola’s dilemma. ‘You’ve decided to accept me, is that it? And you’re not sure how I’ll take it. Am I right?’
‘Fergus Melrose, I’ve lost both my house and my reputation, thanks to your interference, and since I have a promise to keep to my father, I must needs accept your proposal, in spite of all my objections. Better devil-you-know than devil-you-don’t-know. I realise there must be a formal betrothal to make it all legal, but I told you before that there are…some things…to do with marriage that I’m…not…not ready for. If I had been, I’d no doubt have given myself to Lord John, but I didn’t. Nor have I to anyone. I have not yet found a man to whom…’ She looked sideways at him, and Fergus knew as well as she that she had, and that she could not bring herself to lie about it.
‘That you want to go to bed with?’ he whispered. When she did not reply, he went one step further towards the truth. ‘Or perhaps that you have found one, but you feel he ought to wait. Is that what you mean? Because of what’s happened in the past? You denied once before that you were afraid I might hurt you, but I think there’s an element of that in it, too, isn’t there. Eh? You think I should wait before I take you to bed, even though we’re supposed to be betrothed?’
‘Yes,’ she said, blushing furiously. This was plain speaking indeed.
‘But wouldn’t that make a nonsense of the betrothal ceremony? Without the consummation, the vows are not valid. What then?’
‘Then we have to trust one another. I’m not saying I won’t marry you eventually. I’m simply suggesting…no, asking you to delay that part of it.’
‘Until when?’
‘Until I’m ready.’
He tightened his arms across her and pulled her to him with one hand beneath her armpit, wedging her head on to his shoulder, her hair tumbling like black-brown silk over his arm. Her mouth was soft, hesitant at first, then responding as he knew it would when she thought she had won. Moving his free hand up to her face, he held her pointed chin before sliding his fingers deep into her hair. ‘Oh, no, my beauty,’ he whispered. ‘I think not.’
Her reaction was what he expected. Incredulity. Indignation. Then the struggle, which he held easily. ‘What…why not?’ Her hand pushed at his shoulder, but he took her wrist in his grasp.
‘Why not? Because that’s not the way it will be done. I’m a Scot, my lady. We don’t leave things to chance, and, when we go through a ceremony as important as that, we like to finish it in the proper way. So if you’ve a mind to be a dutiful daughter and honour your father’s promise, which is news to me since you’ve not so far shown any inclination to do so, then you’ll have to accept all that goes with it. You can’t pick and choose which bits to take and which to delay. Why, you could claim to be unready for years, my lady. I could reach my dotage.’
Her struggles became wilder as the teasing words matched her old image of him and, when he held her half-lying across his knee, the rage in her eyes signalled the kind of challenge he found hard to resist. ‘That’s it, my Lady Coldheart, fight m
e if you will, but hear this. You can choose whether or not to accept my offer, betrothal and all, but your answer must come before the sun goes down over yon horizon. Take all day, if you wish, but you miss that deadline and you can look elsewhere for a husband. Do you understand?’ He knew she would not answer, but the scorching fire from her eyes told him that his message was clear. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now we shall return to River House and you can give me your answer before your brother and myself, before Muir and Lady Charlotte and, whether you accept me or not, there’ll be no going back on it. I shall do nothing more to persuade you. If you thought to run rings round me, my beauty, you don’t stand a chance. That’s not the way I do things.’
‘Anything else?’ she snarled.
‘Yes, one thing.’ His hand moved to her neck and was about to shift the linen down over one shoulder, but she caught at it.
‘No…don’t!’
‘Let go of my wrist. I may not get to see it ever again, and I need to recall exactly where I put my mark on you. Let go.’ He did not expect that she would obey without being forced to, but her grip on him slackened and, in truth, he did not know whether to take that as a good sign or the opposite. The fabric slid easily over her skin and this time he was less careful about not letting his hand touch her as he moved down to expose the voluptuous mound, with the slash now pink and healing.
He wanted to touch, to caress, to fondle, but this was not the time nor did he know for sure if there would ever be. So he gazed and watched the brown-ringed nipple harden with desire and then, because he felt it might be the only caress he would be allowed, he bent his head to touch the wound with his lips and to lick it with his tongue, tenderly. Her skin was like the softest silk, warm and moist, and she did nothing to stop him.
He watched her eyes as he covered her up, dark and heavy with yearning, and he wanted to insist, there and then, that she accept him once and for all, with no more delays, no more last chances. What if she refused, after all that?
Easing her upright, it seemed to Fergus that words had run out on them, that what might have been a long wrangling argument had come instead to an ultimatum of its own accord and a finale of the most paradoxical sort. Her rage might still be there, but Nicola wore her emotions close to the surface, and now he would have to put her to the test yet again and hope that the emotion she wore on the way home would stay with her a while longer, at least until sundown.
Chapter Six
Riding back to River House ahead of Sir Fergus along that wooded track, Nicola’s thoughts centred around only two things: one was her body’s craving to be near him, the other was her moral duty to keep the promises made to the prioress and to the Melrose family. The latter could not be avoided for any reason; it was now only a matter of hours before she would have to accept the inevitable, for Fergus himself was the key to discharging that duty.
The physical longing, though, had burgeoned forth like fields of flowers after rain, and the pain and bliss that followed in its wake were hard to tell apart. He had looked at her with unconcealed desire and her body had leapt at his lightest touch, but his kiss upon her breast would be his last unless she did something quickly to bind herself permanently to him. And therein lay the problem. He was skilled, experienced, and she would probably never know exactly what she meant to him personally after all the years of reticence. She could not act on desire alone, the dull ache of rejection being such a force to be reckoned with, and far from spent. She did not know how she would ever deal with that.
Nevertheless, the idea of having to make a formal declaration in front of her family at the appointed hour held no appeal for her; far better that she should tell him now and eat her words with an audience of one. To prolong the agony for the sake of it would give her little advantage.
With the words already forming—Fergus, I need you, I’ve always…no… Sir Fergus, I have decided, after all…no… Sir, you give me no choice—she slowed and pulled her horse round to wait for him to catch her up, staring in disbelief at the empty track. Fergus was nowhere to be seen.
There was the bend around which she had just raced, sure that he was only a few paces behind. Was he walking? Had the stallion cast a shoe?
‘Fergus!’ she yelled, putting her heels to the mare’s side.
It was not Fergus who responded, but three riders who swept across the track from the dark woodland, circled her like devils, grabbing at the mare’s reins and making her rear in alarm, and hauled her out of the saddle with exceeding roughness so that she fell some way on to the track under stamping hooves, dust and flying stones. ‘Fergus!’ she screamed. ‘What have you done with— No!’ Words were stifled by a black hood over her head, by hard uncouth hands that held her down into the grass, hurting her wrists and ankles with tight ropes that would have stopped a grown bull.
Shouting and fighting, she was nevertheless hoisted up into someone’s arms, then came the claustrophobic experience of being dumped heavily into a creaking space with four confining walls that she knew to be a wicker basket like the one in which she had carried Melrose. The lid went down, pushing her head into a corner, and through the sides she heard muffled shouts, none of them decipherable.
A sudden lurch shook the basket like an earthquake, and she was thrown to one side into a dark, blind world where little existed but the fear and extreme discomfort of being helpless and of not having Fergus when she most needed him. The hardest thing of all to bear, though, was not knowing what fate he had suffered. Second to that came the guilty knowledge of how, but for her attempt to best him, this would never have happened. Even at this very moment they might be dragging him down, beating him, taking the ultimate revenge for his interference at Southwark. They would have no mercy. Perhaps, even as she was being carted away to heaven knew where, he lay at the side of the track breathing his last.
Over dry ruts that had hardened during weeks of drought, the waggon bounced her along, shaking her deeper into a nightmare of agony that Nicola truly believed was the nearest thing to purgatory she was likely to get. Hurt by the ropes, gasping for air, cramped and wedged with her back and neck aching unbearably, she prayed that whoever was treating her so badly had not treated Fergus worse, though there was little room for hope.
For mile after dreadful mile the torment continued until the lurching slowed and the waggon rumbled to a stop. The sound of men’s shouts, the yelp of seagulls and the general clamour of the river wharfs penetrated the dark hood, then the slap of water and the heavy patter of raindrops upon the lid of the basket. She felt the cold steady drip of rain on knees and shoulders and, now that the wheels were still, heavy rumbles of thunder replaced the jarring rattle beneath her ears. The basket swayed and tipped, creaking into a greying light with men’s voices above it, then more bumping and shouting, the rocking of a boat, the squeak and rattle of oars and the rush of water. Where in God’s name were they taking her? She began to shiver uncontrollably as a crack of lightning lit up the inside of the hood.
The first face Nicola saw did not surprise her for, in spite of the distracting pain of being tied up, there had been moments when she could short-list those who wished her ill. One was the Oxford brothers, who might be seeking revenge on the only female member of the Coldyngham family, the other was Lord John, Earl of Rufford, whose warning had not been an empty threat, after all.
‘Ah my dear lady,’ he said, bending down to brush the damp hair out of her eyes. ‘What a sad state. I’m sorry these lads had to be so brutal, but it’s a bad old world, isn’t it?’
She had been tipped crazily at all angles to get her so far and now, at a nod from her erstwhile friend, the basket was kicked on to its side without warning, toppling Nicola out on to the floor like a bundle of laundry. Unable to right herself, she lay with her cheek on the dusty wooden planks only inches away from Lord John’s pointed toes while her eyes tried to focus after hours of disorientation. She was in a small wooden room rather like a large crate, that much she could see through several pairs of
legs.
‘Out!’ she heard Lord John say. Somebody began to argue about payment, but he was adamant. ‘Later!’ he barked. ‘Get out!’ There was more argument, then the feet and legs moved, a door opened and slammed and a pair of feet returned. ‘Churls!’ he said. ‘Now, little lady, we’re alone at last.’ He cut through the ropes that bound her feet and wrists and hauled her upright with no trace of his accustomed charm. ‘Get up!’ he said. ‘Stand.’
The effort was almost too much for her. On legs that had lost all feeling, she tried to stand and face him to find out why their friendship should have deteriorated this far. But before she could straighten, a blinding flash knocked her sideways, sending her crashing into the wooden wall, followed by a searing pain inside her head that she knew was nothing to do with the lightning outside. She lay there, stunned, shocked, hurt, uncomprehending and very angry while her ear buzzed and her cheek stung with pain. There was a taste of blood inside her mouth.
His face came down to her level and for the first time in all the months of their relationship, she saw the cruelty in the blue eyes fringed with fair lashes and a scattering of wrinkles. She had always believed these to be laughter lines. Now, she could see the other side to his complexion, the wolfish grin, the sharp canine teeth, one recently broken, the coarseness of his skin that he had told her was the result of a childhood illness, but which was more likely to be due to something more offensive than that. She had thought him good looking in an effeminate kind of way, tall and graceful, always impeccably dressed, his hair neatly bobbed, his skin fragrant, fingers tapering and attentive. Never had she thought them capable of delivering a blow like that to a woman. Never.
To guide her thoughts past the pain, she studied his clothes, rich crimson velvet, rain-soaked shoulders, pleats over a padded chest, false sleeves with silk linings and a hat with folds that helped to conceal some bruises to his face—the result, no doubt, of the fight.
His Duty, Her Destiny Page 12