by Mary Balogh
There was no point in worrying. She had warned Nicholas the night before. He must realize the danger as well as she. It would do no good at all to make some excuse to leave Lady Thelma and go running across the countryside to the cottage to warn him again that Mr. Dalrymple and Sir Harry were out in search of him. But, oh, she wanted to go. She wished there were an excuse to go.
She had not even realized until she was safely in her room the night before, lying fully clothed on her bed, smiling up into the darkness, that they had made no definite arrangement to meet again. It was unsettling, depressing almost, not to know the exact hour and minute. He knew how to get inside the house, he had told her on an earlier occasion. He would be able to come to her at any time. She hoped, even as the thought struck her, though, that he would not try that. It would be just like Nicholas to risk something so very dangerous.
No, she supposed that she would have to go out to him. But when? Certainly not tonight. They both needed a night of sleep. And tomorrow night, she gathered, was their time for distributing those smuggled goods. Her stomach lurched with anxiety at the thought. What if he were caught? She would not think of it, And the night after that he would need to rest again. That meant that the earliest she could go to him was four nights hence. It was an interminable time!
Perhaps he would not want her to come even that soon. Maybe for him their lovemaking had not been such an earth-shattering experience. Perhaps he would not want her at all now that he had had what he wanted of her. But the thought caused Kate to smile. What an absurd idea! Of course it had been wonderful for him. She had felt that during each moment from the time he first touched her until she awoke and looked into his eyes. There had been a quite unmistakable feeling of closeness. And having been married to Giles, she was even more certain of that feeling. Giles had always been concerned solely with his own physical satisfaction. Nicholas had made love to her. It was a lovely phrase, one that she had always considered to be a dreadful misnomer.
He loved her. And she loved him. And they had become lovers. She relived again in the morning room, moment by moment, as she had done several times during the short night in her bedchamber, every kiss, touch, and movement. And she hugged herself mentally as her hand mechanically and sedately plied her needle. She looked around at the other ladies, all placidly talking and planning. She wanted to shout at them, “Look at me! Can’t you tell? I made love last night with a masked smuggler on the sandy floor of a cave, and it was the most wonderful experience of my life. I am in love and I am loved.”
She did not say any such thing, of course. She smiled at Lady Thelma and said that yes, of course she would be delighted to go down to the kitchen and make arrangements for a picnic tea to be prepared for the afternoon. She folded her work and put it away in her work basket.
Kate was smiling as she made her way down the back stairs. Why did Nicholas insist on wearing his mask still with her? It was a comical affectation. As if he could ever really disguise himself from her. Even though she had never seen any more of his face than his mouth and his blue eyes, she would know him anywhere. And even though he wore a wig. Yes, she had realized that the night before, at the moment of waking and looking up at him, in fact. It was a good wig. There was no hair of a different color showing beneath it. But she knew nevertheless. Perhaps it was because there was never a hair out of place. Her own, after such energetic lovemaking, was in wild disarray and spread all over her shoulders. Perhaps it was because she suddenly recalled that he would never let her hands roam to his hair, though it was the most natural gesture to make when one was making love.
She was intrigued by the discovery, though she had said nothing. What color was his hair? she wondered. It was probably dark if he wore such a blond wig as a disguise. But it did not matter. She would know him anyway. How could one love a man so totally, how could one have become one with him in the physical act of love and not be aware of his identity again? Her recognition of Nicholas did not depend on her eyes. She would feel his presence at any time and in any place. However, if it pleased him to keep the mystery alive by wearing the mask and the wig, she would not resent it.
It seemed that it was not only a loved one whose presence she could feel, Kate thought with a tightening of the lips as she turned at the bottom of the stairs to enter the kitchen. She seemed to have a sixth sense as far as Sir Harry Tate was concerned too. She almost knew he was there even before her eyes rested on him. He was sitting on the edge of the large wooden table, one booted leg swinging free, a partly eaten apple in one hand, talking to the elderly cook. His back was to her.
The cook looked somewhat startled when Kate appeared from the direction of the servants’ stairs. “Why, Mrs. Mannering,” she said, rather more loudly than seemed necessary, “what can I do for you, ma’am?”
Sir Harry turned slowly to face her, his free hand reaching languidly for his quizzing glass and raising it to his eye. “Ah,” he said, holding up the apple, “caught in the act. After a busy morning I found myself unwilling to wait the extra few minutes for luncheon, Mrs. Mannering, and came belowstairs to charm the cook. She has a heart of gold, as you can see.”
Kate, looking at his heavy-lidded eyes and cynically raised eyebrow, and listening to his bored, affected drawl, guessed that the cook had given the apple more out of a desire to get rid of an unwelcome visitor than out of any goldenness of heart. She said nothing but merely smiled arctically and turned to the cook.
“Lady Thelma has sent me with a request that I am afraid will put you to some trouble, Mrs. Bains,” she said, smiling more warmly.
“Well.” Sir Harry yawned discreetly behind a hand and pulled himself to his feet. “I shall take myself off and hope that no one of any significance sees me with an apple clutched in my hand. There would be a veritable invasion of your kitchen if anyone did, Mrs. Bains.”
Kate would have loved to tell him that the others were unlikely to be so ill-mannered as to raid the kitchen of a house in which they were merely guests, but she did not wish to give vent to such malice in front of an audience. She did not know why she always felt such urges to be rude to the man, anyway. She just found him impossibly irritating. She turned her attention back to Mrs. Bains.
Conversation at the luncheon table was almost exclusively male and concerned crops, drainage, enclosures, and other farming matters. Kate listened with half an ear. But Mr. Dalrymple seemed to feel the exclusion of the ladies and introduced a more general topic.
“Well, Clive,” he said to Lord Barton at the head of the table, “It seems that you were quite right in your surmise. Nicholas Seyton has indeed been living close by ever since the death of his grandfather.”
Kate felt her heart and stomach turn over inside her, and became aware of a mouthful of potatoes stranded in her mouth. It was impossible to swallow. The interest of most of those around the table was piqued.
“Indeed?” Lord Barton had himself under control within seconds of his first eager response. He smiled and looked at his sister. “You see, Alice? I knew the poor young man would find it hard to drag himself away from here. Splendid, my dear Charles. Only tell me where I may find him, and I shall ride out to greet him even before attending Thelma’s picnic this afternoon.”
“I am afraid that will be impossible, Clive,” Mr. Dalrymple said. “By some strange irony, Tate and I ran into him in Trecoombe this morning a mere half-hour before he left on the stagecoach.”
“What?” Lord Barton’s hand opened and closed convulsively on the table beside his plate.
“It seems that he lingered here out of nostalgia, as you guessed,” Mr. Dalrymple continued, “and out of some reluctance to face the unknown, I suppose. It seems he has lived very quietly with a fisherman friend of his so that no one in the area seems to have known that he was here. But yesterday, having heard that Tate was asking about him, he decided that it was time to go away and settle on his own estate.”
“I was much impressed by the man’s good sense,” Sir Harry Tate
drawled. “He understood, of course, that if his presence here were known, he would hopelessly embarrass both Dalrymple and me as former acquaintances, and ultimately you too, my lord. He realized that he would present you with the dilemma of deciding whether you should receive him or not. And he was quite right, of course. For my part, I felt somewhat uncomfortable at being seen talking to Seyton on the street.”
Kate felt a surge of anger, but she was hanging too closely on every word that passed to pay it any attention.
“But did you not explain to him that I wished to see him, to shake him by the hand, Charles?” Lord Barton asked.
“Assuredly I did,” Mr. Dalrymple assured him. “Did I not, Tate? And I begged him for my sake to stay for a few days at least so that we might renew our friendship. But Seyton was ever stubborn, as I recall. His mind was made up to leave, his box was waiting to be strapped onto the stage, and he would go. We watched him on his way, as did several village folk, all surprised to see him, apparently, when they had assumed that he had left long ago. I do hate to be the bringer of such disappointing news. I know you and Alice truly wished to see him again, Clive.”
“Poor boy!” Lady Toucher said. “And to go away on the stagecoach. What a blessing that you were there, at least, Charles, to assure him of all our good wishes.”
“I shall write to him within the next day or so to satisfy myself that he has arrived safely in Shropshire,” Mr. Dalrymple said.
“Well,” Sir Harry said, leaning to one side so that a footman could place his dessert dish before him, “I will still say that the affair is well-ended, Dalrymple. Just imagine how improper it would be for the ladies to be called upon to rub shoulders with such as he. I am sure Mrs. Mannering agrees with me. Do you not, ma’am?”
He had briefly rubbed shoulders with her as he leaned to one side. She pulled sharply away from him, though the contact was only momentary and accidental. An alarming feeling of physical awareness and hatred made it impossible for her to answer his question. She wanted to turn and scream and pound at him with her fists. She wanted to claw the complacent, bored look from his face, and scream the languid drawl from his voice.
“I quite agree with Sir Harry,” Lady Emma said. “One of the least pleasant aspects of being a person of rank is the way in which one is plagued by one’s inferiors. Do you remember, Gregory, how when poor Grandpapa died, all our poor relations came to call on Papa? I was particularly mortified to be called upon to receive a mere curate and his sister who had come to beg some boon.”
“Clearly,” her brother agreed. “But I think we do not have to concern ourselves about their repeating that visit, Emma. And I congratulate you, my lord, on having rid yourself of an embarrassment with such ease.”
“Well . . .” Lord Barton said doubtfully. “But you are sure, Charles, that he did indeed leave and did not merely pretend to do so in order to set our minds at rest?”
“Oh, no,” Charles Dalrymple assured him. “We even followed the coach along the road for a mile out of town before turning for the Abbey, Clive.”
“You have not touched your dessert, Mrs. Mannering,” Sir Harry said, turning to Kate and fingering the ribbon his quizzing glass. “Perhaps some exercise this morning would have given you more appetite.”
“Perhaps so, sir,” she said stiffly. “I really am not hungry.”
“Would anyone care for a game of billiards before this picnic?” Viscount Stoughton asked, looking around at the men. “The ladies, I suppose, will wish to rest for an hour or so.”
Kate was eternally grateful that the ladies did indeed wish to rest. Lady Thelma usually preferred to relax in her sitting room talking instead of lying down. But on this occasion she dismissed Kate, claiming that the exertions of a picnic would make it necessary for her to sleep first.
“But I will want you to come with us this afternoon, Kate,” she said. “The outing will do you good. I notice that you always stay in the background at all our gatherings, which is quite unnecessary, you know. And I noticed that you retired early last night. It is silly of you to feel inferior. You are not so at all. In fact, I think you are vastly superior to Lady Emma, for all her airs. I do not like her, Kate. Nor do I like her brother. You must make sure that I am not left alone with him for even a minute this afternoon. Will you?”
Kate retired to her own room, scarce knowing how she had got there or what she had said in answer to her employer. She felt as if she were living in the middle of a nightmare from which she would soon awake. Nicholas gone! Without a word to her? The very day after they had become lovers? And to his property in Shropshire, to settle? It could not be possible. He must have pretended to leave merely to throw Lord Barton off his scent. He would return, surely, to the cottage and carry on as before. He would not so easily give up his attempts to find his mother. And he would not give up his leadership of the smugglers. He would not leave her!
She threw herself facedown across her bed. She felt physically sick. She could tell herself over and over again that it was not so, that his leaving was merely a ruse. She could tell herself that in four nights’ time she would slip out to the cottage and he would be there waiting for her, ready to talk to her, to tease away her fears, to love her. She could tell herself these things, but all the time there was a dull certainty inside her that it was true. He had gone away.
It was what she had wanted, of course. It was what she had gone to plead with him to do. And she should be glad that he had finally seen his danger and decided to remove himself to safety. She would not have to worry about him any longer. She should he glad that he had gone. She was glad.
But no, she was not, Kate thought, grabbing a pillow fiercely and propping her chin on it. If he had left by the stage that morning, he must have planned it. He must have known last night that he was going. And he had said nothing to her. He had made love to her, knowing that today he was going away to stay. And he had not told her. That meant that she was nothing to him. She had merely provided a pleasant ending to a busy and exciting evening. He would have treated any woman so who had happened to cross his path. No, she would not believe so. She could not.
What if he had not known the night before that he was leaving? What if he had decided on the spur of the moment? What would have forced such a decision? A careful assessment of the dangers of staying? Possibly. A reaction to what had happened between the two of them? He had not, after all, expected to see her that night. It was very possible that he had reacted unthinkingly to the opportunity to take her. Did he perhaps not want such involvement? Had he taken fright, imagining perhaps that she would make demands on him now that she had given herself to him? Was he imagining that she would demand that he marry her? Was he afraid that perhaps he had impregnated her and would be trapped into marriage? He could not know, as she did, that her month had only just begun and such an outcome was not probable.
Was he running from her? The possibility was dreadfully hurtful. But it seemed so very likely. He must have lived with danger for a long time. Perhaps that danger alone would have sent him away with such little forethought. He did not love her. He had enjoyed her, and then run from the fear of being trapped by her. Kate buried her face in the pillow that she clutched to herself. She had been alone the night before after all. She had only imagined that their lovemaking had been a shared ecstasy. He was worse than Giles. Many times worse. At least Giles had never pretended an interest in her own feelings or pleasure. At least he had always been openly selfish. Nicholas had gained his satisfaction from conquering her heart as well as her body.
And how well he had succeeded, Kate thought bitterly. The night before, she had allowed him to occupy not only her body but also the very core of her being. She had fallen in love with him. And it turned out that he was worse than Giles. Giles had never let her down. He had never given her expectations whose unfulfillment could disappoint her. Or hurt her.
She hated him. Kate lifted herself away from the pillow and punched it with both fists, her teeth tigh
tly clenched. She had been right all along. She was the only person she could trust. She had been freed from the domination of one man when Giles died and had vowed never to allow any other man into her life again. Yet little more than a year later she had offered herself, body and soul, to a heartless wretch and criminal, merely because at some time during his life he had learned how to please a woman’s body. How could she have been so weak? She had reacted just like any other woman who did not know better. Well, it would not happen again. She had learned an expensive lesson, but she would learn it well this time. She hated him. She punched the pillow again.
Nicholas. Oh, Nicholas. Now she hated him worse than she had ever hated anyone in her life. No man had ever made her cry. And here she was, watching the wet drops land on the pillow and spread as they soaked in. Nicholas! She surprised and humiliated herself suddenly with a gulping sob and buried her face in the pillow again. Perhaps she was just being silly. Perhaps it was as she had thought at first. He had not really gone. He just wanted Lord Barton, Mr. Dalrymple, and Sir Harry Tate to believe that he had left.
He could not have left without a word to her.
She would die.
She hated him.
Nicholas!
Chapter 12
The well-kept lawn to the north of Barton Abbey descended gradually for a whole mile before having to divide itself into two branches in order to skirt a long, narrow lake. Wooded hillsides rose on either side of the lake and the grassy banks. In the western hillside, hidden from view among the trees, was a cave that was reputed to have been used as a hermitage in the time when the Abbey had been used as such, before the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of King Henry VIII.
Other structures had been built more recently: small stone shelters with benches to accommodate two persons, imposingly structured with pedimented roofs and tall Grecian columns. Several of these had been built on the slopes, where they could afford the energetic climber a picturesque view of the lake and valley below. One, somewhat larger than the others, had been set on the very top of the eastern hillside. At the end of the lake closest to the house was a rotunda, also designed as a resting shelter. Its roof was domed, and supported on slim columns. It had a waist-high wall, around the inside of which was a stone bench.