by Janet Woods
Matthew grinned. ‘If you say so, My Lord.’
John murmured, ‘I’ll provide a purse of twenty guineas. My money is on the old tom cat.’
Alex disagreed. ‘There is more to the pigeon named Freddie than meets the eye. If he’s waited several seasons to get the flirty Adelaide into his bed, he isn’t about to hand her over to Statham at this stage of the game.’
They both gazed at Matthew.
‘Dare I say there is a wild card called Sophia Mortimer …’
Nineteen
Shocked by her appearance, Jane Bessant hugged Vivienne too warmly for comfort.
Vivienne swooped in a breath. ‘Not so tight, I beg you, Jane. There are bruises you can’t see.’
Jane released her. ‘I’m so sorry, dear. When Ambrose told me about the attack on you I didn’t expect you to look quite so … battered. You must allow me to treat those bruises with witch hazel.’
‘There is no need, Jane. I have a maid. Her name is Maria and she tends to the bruises.’
‘A maid? Why would you need a maid in the country? Surely the fortune you inherited would be better spent supporting your immediate family and charitable works. I must admit to a slight disappointment in you.’
Goodness, her father seemed to have spread the news of her financial business far and wide. Was everyone going to be allowed to have a say into how her fortune was to be managed?
Vivienne said, more curtly than she intended, ‘Maria was chaperoning me, and was injured during the incident. The least I can do is offer her employment. As for my inheritance, it is in safe hands, and I have yet to take informed advice. However selfish it may seem to others, I intend to place my future and those of any children I may bear, first.’
Jane looked stricken. About forty, she’d been widowed for three years and had a grown-up son and one granddaughter. Her calm but busy demeanor hid a tender heart. She lived but an hour away in the next village.
Now her soft brown eyes flooded with tears as they took in the visible evidence of the beating. ‘Oh my dear girl. I didn’t mean to sound as though I was interfering … and of course you aren’t selfish, and I didn’t mean to imply that you were. Nothing could be further from the truth.’
‘I know, and I’ve been short-tempered since this awful attack on me. The worst thing I can do is to ignore expert advice and give everything away on a spur of the moment decision.’
‘Of course it is, and you must not. I cannot think of one piece of advice. In fact, words fail me. I cannot imagine what you went through … I don’t think I really want to know.’
‘Which is good because I don’t want to repeat it all over again.’ She was about to ring for some tea when she remembered it was Mrs Tilly’s day off. ‘I’ll go and make us some tea and when I come back you can tell me how your baby granddaughter is getting along.’
‘And you will tell me about this titled country gentleman who is championing your cause. Your dear papa is quite taken with him. Am I to understand there is a betrothal in the offing?’
She sighed. ‘My dear papa should stop meddling in my life, and so should my country gentleman. He is a friend.’
‘Your father considers him to be more than that. He is looking forward to reading the marriage vows over you.’
She gave an unladylike snort. ‘Do I advise him it’s about time he took you down the aisle? No … well, not very often. I simply mind my own business and hope the pair of you are old enough to know what you’re doing.’
Jane coloured. ‘How long have you known?’
‘About a year.’
‘We decided to wait until—’
‘I know … until I’m wed and off his hands. Well, you won’t have to worry about that much longer—’
‘You have accepted your earl – that’s absolutely wonderful!’
‘I haven’t accepted anybody. I was about to say that now I have some money of my own, if I don’t become a wife I can purchase my own home and live independently. I might even go overseas.’
‘Your father will not approve.’
He didn’t have to approve since she was of an age to run her own life. ‘When he asks you what I said, tell him it’s about time he realized I am grown up. Now you have done your duty I’ll go and make the tea, and will then show you the tapestry I’m working on.’
Vivienne had enjoyed Jane’s visit on the whole, but nothing had been achieved by it except for an unspoken reminder that she was keeping her father from his true love.
That had been three days ago. Now she felt like a caged tiger. Deep down she was still scared and prone to weeping over nothing. If anything, the face that gazed back at her from the mirror earlier that morning was in a worse state than the day it had been redesigned by Simon Mortimer.
The original bruises had deepened and new ones had appeared. What’s more, she was almost cross-eyed with fatigue from working on her tapestry. When finished, it would depict an intricate flower garden, and a lady on a swing being pushed by a nobleman with a couple of leaping brown dogs by his side. Goodness knows why she’d picked such a complicated pattern.
She had disliked her appearance before the attack. Her eyes were neither green nor grey, her nose was too straight to be pretty and her mouth erred a little too much on the generous side.
Alex likes your mouth.
She ignored that.
He likes your eyes, too.
She liked his. A flame grew inside her and she began to tingle. She touched her mouth and wished she were in his arms, pressed against his warm body, aware of his smell and the tiny bristles that sprouted on his chin when he needed to shave, his taut stomach, and the parts that made him a man. She had felt him harden against her and experienced a little of the desire in him – he would use that desire to excite her, and it would need only a little of his strength to fuse them together, a nudge or two.
She could hardly breathe; just thinking of it the way she did was almost indecent, yet so natural. Nature was wonderfully inventive and extremely urgent!
Not that he’d actually proposed marriage because he loved her … he’d just skirted around it as a way to save her reputation.
Did all spinsters walk around in a frustrated ferment of mind and body?
She pushed the tapestry aside and sighed as she crossed to the silver-framed mirror on the mantelpiece. Her pale complexion was now patched with several shades of black, grey, purple, yellow and deep red.
She would have given anything to have her much-maligned normal face back. Her eyes could see, she could hear, and her nose inhaled and exhaled the air to keep her alive. What more did she need? ‘I will never complain about my appearance again,’ she vowed.
Her father’s face appeared beside hers and she turned.
‘You never had any reason to complain before. Be thankful your teeth are still intact and no bones were broken.’ He offered her a smile.
‘I am thankful … I was just having a private moment that was all about misplaced vanity, while you were observing me through eyes filled with fatherly pain and love.’ She turned and kissed him. ‘The messenger has been. There were two letters for you … one had the bishop’s seal on it. I’ve put them on your desk. There was nothing for me.’
Was that a twinge of self-pity in her voice?
‘Were you expecting some letters … from the earl perhaps?’
There was no need to deny it to her father now. She was in love with the earl and he knew it. Nevertheless, she found herself sidestepping the question. ‘I thought my cousin might have written to me with news of what’s been going on in my absence.’
‘Does it matter very much? I’m sure London society is managing the season without you, and the earl will have it all in hand.’
‘As you know, Papa, I prefer to manage my own affairs. He has almost forbidden me from confronting my attackers – and we are not even connected. How dare he?’
‘The earl has my permission to act on our behalf. His title gives him authority. People will th
ink you are connected, and that will dampen down the speculation considerably.’
Or it would merely send it flying in another direction, like the spread of a summer cold from a careless cough or a sneeze that had found a new body to inhabit. She would become even more notorious when their false engagement was exposed. People would put two and two together and make six out of it.
‘You are too sensitive and your feelings bruise too easily, my love. Lord LéSayres is a capable young man who appears to be a good judge of character. Trust him. He will do what he feels he must to secure your reputation.’
She touched a fingertip against the ring hanging at her throat. Yes … she must trust him. She had no choice. ‘I’m worried he’ll be injured trying to defend my reputation, and all this came about because I believed that letter. It wasn’t even in your handwriting.’
‘But then, if I had been desperately ill and you’d ignored the missive, how badly would you have felt about yourself then?’
That hadn’t even entered her head. ‘Have I disgraced myself so badly, Papa? I’ve never pushed myself forward or sought notoriety. I’ve been over and over it in my mind and my only crime seems to be that of having too much trust in people.’
‘Without trust and love we have nothing. The disgrace is not yours, Vivienne. Money attracts the greedy. Some people will do anything to obtain it, and they don’t care who they hurt in the process. If it’s any consolation, I now think you were right in trying to keep the matter quiet … a pity someone who knew or heard of it didn’t keep their counsel.’
It was too late now. Someone had let her secret out, right down to the sum of it. It was obviously one of the people who had been trusted with her deceased relative’s will.
‘We will not confirm the existence of the inheritance. Mr Howard has been instructed as to that. He has assured me he’s not in the habit of discussing his clients’ advice, else he wouldn’t be in business for long. This other letter might be from him.’
Her father hadn’t considered that his interference might have been part of the trouble. She hugged him, loath to condemn him, even in her thoughts. ‘You always make me feel better. Shall we go for a walk?’
He extricated himself with a smile. ‘Much as I’d like to, I’m going to work on my sermon for Sunday. Why don’t you go and visit Mrs Owens and her new baby.’
‘Oh … I don’t feel like showing my face to the public just yet. Besides, my face would likely frighten the baby. I’ll walk to the meadow and find a spot to read. Perhaps I’ll ask Maria to come with me.’
‘She’s gone to the market with Mrs Tilly.’
‘Oh … I shall go back to the tapestry then, though it’s not my favourite occupation.’
‘You haven’t got the patience for it. You should find the courage to go out by yourself again, Vivienne. A young woman who was brave enough to fight off her attackers certainly has the courage to face up to her fears. Nobody can do it for you. When you’ve mastered that particular fear once, you’ll be more confident the second time.’
Sound advice. She would start by walking around the meadow to pick a bunch of poppies. She secured a chiffon scarf over her head and face and placed her bonnet on top. She could always tuck the scarf up if anybody was about. Not that many people would be since the villagers would be gathering in the last of the hay.
She fetched a basket. In it she placed a stone bottle filled with ginger ale, a ripe, juicy pear, her drawing tablet and a book of poetry.
Summer was nearly at an end. Already the leaves on the trees were beginning to yellow, and the berries on the rowan tree were turning a cheerful red that invited the thrushes to feed. She seated herself in the long, dry grass that sloped down towards the river and flipped the book open at a random page and read a couple of verses out loud.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye,
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She began to laugh. It was as though Wordsworth had written it just for her. After a while, the warmth of the sun made her drowsy and she sought shade under a horse chestnut tree, her back against the trunk. She began to sketch the meadow flowers, the golden rod covered in glowing petals, delicate blue hare-bells, the daisy-flowered mayweed and the black-throated scarlet flamboyance of the remaining poppies. She kept a record of the colours in her mind and would paint them in when winter had set in, to remind her of the warmth of the previous summer.
Some of the leaves were curling and they crunched into brown dust and fluttered from her fingertips, flying on the breeze, as if set free from restraint by their destruction. Their prickly cases were plumped and ready to release nuts as polished and shining as her father’s eyes.
Beyond the hedge a cart trundled slowly by. The rhythm of the wheels had a regular squeak to them. Not long after came the sound of horses and a carriage, the deep growl of men’s voices and laughter passed in an instant, never to be heard again. They were like ghosts through time, though she couldn’t quite make out the words.
What was this tree like a hundred years past, a sapling growing from an acorn, pushing deep into the earth to nourish its life, and thrusting its limbs to embrace the wind? How long did oak trees live? She must ask her father.
A single horse went by. There was a moment of alarm in her, a breath held tightly inside so no hunter could hear it. Deprived of a fresh breath of air her heart began to bang against her ribs like a lively frog, betraying her to those with sensitive ears.
The rumble of a cart came and went. The voices faded into the distance. Her held breath exhaled in jerks and shudders as if it didn’t want to leave the safety of her body. She was left with a momentary dizziness, like a top spinning on its last pirouette.
She would not give in to fear – she would not!
Closing her eyes she thought of Alex, her lord of calm, and the nature of the day no longer threatened. She slipped into a state of drowsiness, as if the summer perfume of the flowers had drugged her senses. Now her mind had turned to Alex, so fully engaged was it that she could think of no one and nothing else.
What was he doing at that moment? Sitting in a drawing room of some beautifully groomed young lady – Miss Cresswell perhaps, upright and well trained – sipping tea and chatting politely about nothing in particular while his brain calculated the sum of her worth, both to him and to his precious King’s Acres estate.
She consoled herself by thinking – hoping really – that Alex would be bored half to death. No matter, he would put his estate first. What was it he’d said … he would place his wife above all others.
She brushed an insect from her nose.
Would Miss Cresswell’s body react like her own at the sight of him? Would she send silent messages of desire across the space between them, like arrows with honeyed tips? Perhaps Miss Cresswell was too refined to allow her hands to shake and the tips of her breasts to swell and graze against her bodice until the need to caress was intolerably uncomfortable? Vivienne doubted the young lady would yearn for his touch, like she did. Would she blush and tingle at the thought of him, at the smell and taste of him, from every hair on his head to his little toe. Did she think of the incursion of the wedding night when he would penetrate all her defences and make his bride a woman?
An insect landed gently on her cheek, danced about her face. She waved it away. Her nose was its next stop. She wrinkled it and it flew away. She’d barely relapsed back into her daydream when it landed on her nose again, and tickled its way down the length.
The bruises must have attracted it. When it crawled along the separation of her mouth she spluttered and waved her arms around her head, crying out, ‘Stop that, you pest.’
A low chuckle reached her ears. ‘I’ve never been called a pest before.’
Prope
lled by a stab of alarm, her eyes flew open, and she didn’t know whether to scold him or smile. She did both. ‘Alex! How long have you been there?’
His eyes captured the sky as he tickled her chin with the long frond of ripened oats he held. ‘I’ve been here long enough to find the pear in your basket and eat it. It was delicious.’
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘Your father told me.’
Snatching the frond from his hand she threw it aside. ‘I must have fallen asleep. Why didn’t you wake me?’
‘I liked the way your nose twitched when I tickled it, and you smiled in your sleep. I thought you might be having a pleasant dream so didn’t want to disturb you.’
Her face warmed at that. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I’ve brought your luggage and I’m in company with your relative, John Howard … who has some business to discuss with your father, so I came in search of you.’
Rising to her feet she straightened the skirt of her gown. ‘Oh … my goodness. I must go and find some extra food and prepare your rooms.’
‘There is no need, since we are staying at the inn overnight and travelling back in the morning. We have business to take care of in London.’
‘Not on my behalf, I hope.’
‘What makes you think that?’ He gazed at her for a moment, eyes searching her face and head cocked to one side, then he leaned forward and captured a kiss from the mouth he’d just tickled.
It was only a dab of a kiss, and it tasted deliciously of pear juice.
‘Stop teasing and kiss me properly,’ she said, astounding herself – and him as well, by the expression on his face.
Twenty
It was not just a kiss … it was a wonderful kiss … one she didn’t want to part with. She went up on tiptoe, her arms slid round his neck and her fingers splayed through his curls.
When they came apart she gazed at him, and he laughed and pulled her down into the long flowers and grasses of the meadow. Smoothing his hands down over her buttocks he held her against him. He kissed her again, and then he rolled her over on top of him in a shockingly intimate matter.