Nicola Cornick Collection

by Nicola Cornick

  “I am not at my best in the morning,” Tess said, as the silence stretched. “In fact I try very hard to ignore the fact that the morning even exists.”

  “On the contrary,” Rothbury murmured. “You look lovely.”

  You look lovely….

  It was a very simple compliment to give Tess such pleasure. She imagined that Rothbury was not a man given to flattery and somehow that made her value his words all the more highly. But those same words made her nervous. She did not want his compliments. They felt too intimate. She did not seek such a relationship with him.

  “I don’t think you should say things like that to me,” she squeaked, her sense of discomfort deepening. She felt taken unawares, as though she had not had time to wake up properly and had been caught out without the facade she wore for the world, vulnerable and unprotected.

  Rothbury smiled at her. Her pulse fluttered. She grabbed the corner of the sofa and sat down. She was starting to feel hot, dizzy and confused. The last time she had experienced such perplexing emotions had been at the age of fourteen when she had developed a tendre for her piano teacher, a crush that had rendered her completely tongue-tied. She remembered that both the piano playing and the tendre had been a disaster. This had better not go the same way.

  Rothbury’s smile had deepened as he watched her. “Why should I not compliment you?” he enquired.

  Tess hesitated. “It’s not …”

  “Fashionable to admire one’s fiancée?” Rothbury shrugged his broad shoulders. “I beg your pardon. If I make any further faux pas I am sure you will be trading me in for another gentleman in your husband hunter’s charter.” He gestured to The Gazetteer on the table. “The only mystery is that, with such a broad spectrum of manhood to choose from, your decision alighted on me.”

  Tess blushed. So he had looked through the book and found her bookmark on the page for his entry. Under the circumstances she could hardly pretend it was a coincidence or that the book belonged to someone else.

  “It is unaccountable, is it not?” she said. “I am questioning that very decision myself.”

  Rothbury’s lips twitched. “Well, before you do change your mind,” he said, “I called to see if you would care to go driving with me.”

  Tess gaped. “Driving in the morning? Why on earth would anyone do that? No one will be about.”

  “You’ve answered your own question,” Rothbury said. “I’d far rather drive in the park when I don’t have to fight my way through the crowds.”

  “But the purpose of driving in the park is to be seen,” Tess said. “No one will see us.”

  “We are at cross purposes, Lady Darent,” Rothbury said. He arched a sardonic brow. “My intention is to enjoy a beautiful autumn morning rather than to see and be seen.”

  “My concept of a beautiful autumn morning involves curling up at the fireside with a copy of The Lady’s Magazine, Lord Rothbury,” Tess said. “To go outside would be most singular.”

  Amusement and surely an element of disappointment registered in Rothbury’s face. “You do not wish to come with me,” he said. “Very well.” He sketched a bow. “Good day, Lady Darent.”

  “No, wait.” Tess put out an impulsive hand. She spoke before she thought, because for some odd reason the sincere disappointment she had read in his eyes had given her a pang of regret. “I’ll come with you,” she conceded. “If you give me a half hour to dress appropriately.”

  Rothbury shook his head. “I’ll give you five minutes,” he said, “or I come and fetch you. If I have to wait as long as I did earlier we’ll arrive at the same time as all the crowds I’m trying to avoid.”

  Fifteen minutes later, he was tucking her into a chocolate-coloured curricle with the Rothbury crest on the side. It was an extremely elegant equipage, its huge black wheels mirrored in the polished coachwork. The interior was lavishly padded with buff-coloured squashy leather seats that Tess sank into with a little gasp of pleasure.

  “Good gracious,” she said. “We became betrothed under false pretences, Lord Rothbury. I was sure you were poor and yet this is the height of opulence.”

  Rothbury grinned, his teeth a flash of white in his tanned face. “All thanks to you, Lady Darent,” he said. “All on tick against my expectations.”

  “What happens if I jilt you?” Tess asked innocently, and his grin broadened.

  “Then I end up in the Fleet for debt,” he said.

  “So perhaps,” Tess pursued, “I am not quite as much at your mercy as I had thought.”

  “Touché.” Rothbury gave her a look that made the colour burn hot in her cheeks. “It seems we are already mutually entwined.”

  Tess had taken the precaution of wearing a fur-lined pelisse with matching hat, fur tippet and gloves as well as a muff. There was a hot brick for her feet and several layers of thick blankets to protect her against the cold. For it was exceptionally cold. The thick grey fog of the previous days had lifted, the sky was clear and the sun rising, but the frost still lay on the shadowed grass and the wind cut like a knife. For a moment Tess could barely breathe and certainly not speak as the icy draught filled her lungs.

  “You are trying to give me consumption,” she gasped. Her breath crystallised into a cloud in front of her.

  Rothbury laughed and the curricle dipped and swayed as he swung up beside her and took the reins. “You will soon warm up,” he said.

  “I doubt it,” Tess said, teeth chattering.

  Whilst Rothbury was fully occupied with his team, Tess peered about her at the bustling street. Some people, it appeared, did get up in the mornings, quite a lot of them in fact.

  “I had no notion it would be so busy,” she said without thinking, then realised that Rothbury had given her another laughing glance. Suddenly she felt naive and spoiled. “I do know that people have to work,” she said sharply.

  “Of course,” Rothbury said. “But I imagine that for you, marriage has been a full-time occupation.”

  Tess shot him a sharp look. The smile still lingered on his lips but his green gaze was cool now. She had the oddest feeling that he did not approve of her leisured life and she supposed that it was in stark contrast to his own career as sailor, explorer and adventurer. He, it seemed, had never stayed still, never ceased working. She wondered how he felt now that he had been obliged to give up a career at sea to take up his title.

  “I certainly worked hard at my marriages,” she said, with feeling. “So pray do not disparage my efforts. You have no notion how tiring it was accumulating three husbands.”

  “I imagine you are held up as an example of what can be accomplished by such a career,” Rothbury said in his laconic drawl.

  “On the contrary,” Tess said. “If I am held up as anything, it is as a terrible warning. You said so yourself last night.”

  “Disapproved of by those who are convinced you had more fun than they did,” Rothbury said, with a grin.

  “They should try it,” Tess said bitterly, before she could help herself.

  He shot her a sideways look. “It was not fun?”

  “Being wed to a lecher and a gambler and a man insensible with laudanum?” Tess questioned. “No, it was not.”

  “Which was which?” Rothbury enquired.

  “Darent was laudanum and drink, and Brokeby—” Tess managed to keep her voice steady “—was lechery and drink. And gambling. And laudanum. And every other vice.” For a second she closed her eyes to blot out the memory of it. She wished she had not mentioned Brokeby’s name. The cold shadows wreathed about her heart. Somewhere in her mind a door closed, trapping her in the dark. She could hear the hurried catch of her breath and feel the terrified patter of her heart. Hands reached for her, Brokeby’s face set in a mask of lust and cruelty, the laughter, the clothing stripped from her body …

  “And your first husband?” Rothbury was saying. His attention was on the horses and he had not noticed her discomfort. Thank God. Her racing heart steadied.

  Tess smiled, all
owing herself to relax into warmer memories. “Oh, Robert was a wonderful friend,” she said.

  “An interesting choice of words,” Rothbury said. Tess could see that he was leaning forwards now to try to see her expression beneath the brim of her bonnet. “Was it a love match?”

  “I did love him,” Tess agreed. But I was not in love with him….

  She turned her face away, feeling too vulnerable. Rothbury had a knack of asking very blunt questions that seemed to prompt her to divulge far too much personal information. With Rothbury, she found herself tempted into indiscretion before she had even thought about it. His presence acted on her like some sort of drug that loosened her tongue—and that was frightfully dangerous. She did not know how or why it happened, only that he was able to circumvent her defences with the greatest of ease.

  “You should tell me something of your own romantic history, my lord,” she said, “to make this a fair discussion. Have you never met a woman you wished to marry?”

  She wondered if it was her imagination or if Rothbury really had hesitated for a second before replying. There was an opaque look in his eyes. She could not read his expression at all. She wondered too if she had been insensitive in putting the question when he could not offer a woman a full marriage in every sense.

  “I’ve met women I have admired,” Rothbury said, easily enough, after a moment. His gaze was steady on some point in the distance. “But marriage is a serious business.” He turned to look down at her and smiled. “I do not wish to make a mull of it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tess said. “I have sufficient experience of the institution to count for both of us.”

  The smile Rothbury gave her made her feel quite dizzy. “An institution,” he mused. “That sounds not only frightfully dull but something one is locked into without escape.” His voice fell, the tone deep and thoughtful. “I hope our marriage may be much more than that.”

  The sincerity in his voice made Tess’s breath catch in her throat. In a society that thrived on artifice, Rothbury was a man of a very different stamp and his honesty challenged her to be equally sincere, challenged too the barriers she had erected about her guarded heart. For a moment her emotions felt terrifyingly naked.

  She fell silent as they turned into the gates of the park and the gravel of Rotten Row crunched under the carriage wheels. She was suddenly assailed by all the images of autumn. The trees were every shade of brown, the falling leaves swirling down to lie on the frozen grass in a bright carpet of orange and gold. Vivid pictures came into her mind of the watercolours she’d drawn as a child when, bored with her other lessons, she had wandered outside with her paint box and brushes. The hot summers had been full of long hazy days when she had lain in the grass, her tongue poking out with concentration as she had tried to capture in pictures the enquiring dark eye and feathered breast of a blackbird, or the flimsy beauty of a rose petal. She felt a sudden sharp pain in her chest. She had not thought of those days for a very long time and never with the warmth of memory, always with the need to escape. Yet now, as she looked at the branches of the beech and oak against the cold blue sky, she felt a pang of nostalgia.

  She realised that she had lost herself in memory. Rothbury was watching the play of emotions across her face and his gaze was disconcertingly intent.

  “You look sad,” he said. “I’m sorry. That was not my intention in bringing you here.”

  Something twisted in Tess’s heart. “I was thinking about my childhood,” she admitted, wondering as she did so how he seemed to be able to draw secrets from her that she would confess to no one else.

  “And that made you unhappy?” His voice was very quiet.

  Tess nodded. “Because it all ended so abruptly when my brother died, I suppose.” She had not spoken of Stephen’s death for years, yet now it seemed easy, natural, to do so. “You know that Garrick Farne shot him, that Stephen had been having an affair with Garrick’s wife?” Rothbury nodded. “I knew about it at the time although I never said a word to anyone. I felt terribly guilty afterwards.” Something of that guilt eased at last, now that she was finally telling someone of it. “But it made me realise how dangerous passion was, I suppose. Stephen died because of his affair with Kitty Farne.” Tess shivered. “All our lives were ruined by it. I swore I would never do anything so foolish as love blindly like that.”

  She looked up, blinking back the tears and with them the memories of the old scandals and hurts. Rothbury’s gaze was very steady on her face and she realised that his gloved hand was covering hers where it lay on the rug. Although there were two layers between them she felt a tingle of warmth and a very great deal of comfort. She did not want to move from beneath his touch.

  “I am not sure that it was like that,” he said, very gently. “Garrick told me that Stephen never loved Kitty at all.”

  “I know that now.” Tess sniffed. “Merryn told me everything after she and Garrick wed. But at the time …” She stopped.

  “At the time, you ran off and married your best friend so that you would always be safe from love, because it was too powerful an emotion,” Rothbury said.

  Tess’s heart dropped with shock. Her eyes opened very wide. “I cannot see how you could possibly know that,” she said. How could Rothbury see so much, see straight into her heart, when she had not even realised the truth herself until a second before?

  Rothbury smiled at her. “I know because you told me yourself, just now,” he said easily. “You said that Robert had been a wonderful friend. You omitted to say that you were in love with him.”

  “I loved him.” Tess knew she sounded defensive. She also knew her protestations had come too late. She had already given away far too much.

  “You did not love him with a passion.” There was something in Rothbury’s voice that made Tess burn. She turned her face away. This felt too intimate, as though she was giving away far more of herself than she had intended. She did not want to speak to Rothbury of love and passion. It felt far too dangerous and she did not understand why. She had believed that the threat he posed related purely to his ability to unmask her as Jupiter. She had not even considered that there might be other perils here, yet the powerful affinity between them made her feel extraordinarily vulnerable.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she said quickly.

  For a moment she thought Rothbury was not going to allow the subject to drop but then his face broke into a smile and her heart did a little errant skip. “I’m glad you think so,” he said, and Tess felt it again, that little shiver of pleasure that she took in his company. She seemed powerless to help it.

  “It is almost like being in the country,” Rothbury said, beside her. He had allowed the carriage to slow almost to a stop and his gloved hands held the reins idle in his lap.

  “Do you not care for London?” Tess asked.

  His shoulders moved beneath his coat as though he were trying to shrug off a weight. “London hems me in,” he said. He smiled down at her. “I’d rather be at sea.”

  “Do you still sail?” Tess enquired.

  “Only a rowing boat.” He sounded rueful. “I still have Sea Witch,” he added. “She is in dock at Greenwich. No money to pay for a crew though, and where would I go?” His shoulders lifted in a helpless little shrug. “I have responsibilities ashore now.”

  “Sea Witch,” Tess said. It was an evocative name. “Why did you call her that?”

  Rothbury laughed. “I used to claim it was because she handles like a woman in a temper,” he said, “but in truth it is because I am more than a little bewitched by her.” His voice fell. “I had thought to sell her though. She is the only asset I still possess.”

  “You can’t do that!” Tess said quickly, instinctively.

  He raised a quizzical brow. “Why not?”

  “Because we were speaking of passions just now,” Tess said. It was odd to feel envious of a ship and yet for a second envy was precisely the emotion she felt, a resentment that so much of Rothbury’s life had b
een wrapped up in sailing the world aboard Sea Witch, in adventures she could never know or even dream. “Sea Witch is your passion,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Can you indeed?” Rothbury sounded startled, then his tone warmed into amusement. “What a perceptive woman you are, Teresa Darent.”

  It was the first time that he had used her name. No one had called her Teresa since her childhood. The way Rothbury said it ruffled the edge of her nerves. Tess found that she liked it. She liked it a lot. Too much, probably, for it felt as though he was effortlessly stripping away more of the formality between them. Again it felt too intimate, threatening her defences.

  “Why do you call me Teresa?” she asked.

  There was a smile at the back of his eyes. “Because everyone else calls you Tess,” he said.

  “But not you.”

  “I’m different.”

  Tess’s stomach gave a little flip. She turned her face away. He was different. She was only now beginning to realise quite how much, and quite how dangerous it was to her.

  “At any rate,” she said lightly, “you have the promise of my money now. There is no need to sell your ship.”

  “Despite what I said earlier,” Rothbury said, “I do not like living off the expectation of my future wife’s fortune.” There was an edge to his voice.

  “You have too much pride,” Tess said.

  “How much pride is too much?” Rothbury said softly. He laughed suddenly. “If your money enables me to renovate Rothbury Chase, then I shall indeed overcome my pride and be grateful. It is a beautiful house, criminally neglected.”

  “Have you visited all your estates?” Tess asked.

  He nodded. “I’m told that legally I cannot sell any of them.”

  “Of course not!” Tess was appalled. “They are in trust for future generations—” She broke off abruptly, feeling grossly insensitive as she realised that for Rothbury there would be no begetting of another generation. The Rothbury title and the lands would have to move sideways to a cousin yet again. She wondered whom he had as his heir.