The Return of Lord Conistone

by Lucy Ashford

  And she was daring to play high and mighty with him?

  ‘Humiliating?’ he grated. ‘You speak of—humiliation, when, good God, the moment I arrived, you were outrageously flirting with that witless army boor?’

  Her eyes flew up to clash with his. ‘I was not flirting! And do not speak of him like that!’

  ‘I’ll speak of him exactly as I like! What is that man doing here? Why isn’t he with his regiment?’

  ‘You may as well ask the same of your friend Captain Stewart!’ Verena cried. ‘For his—reputation leaves a deal to be desired!’ It was true; she knew it was a long-standing joke that Alec Stewart, a year or so younger than Lucas, spent a good deal more effort on hunting heiresses than he did on hunting the French. ‘Besides,’ she went on furiously, ‘Captain Bryant is not a boor, he is our friend! He was injured at Talavera, and his wound is not yet completely healed. So he makes himself useful. He helps the Revenue men watch this part of the coast for smugglers and—French spies!’

  She saw him almost sneer. ‘French spies? Things have been busy at Wycherley’.

  ‘Meaning?’ she snapped.

  ‘I also heard that four weeks ago there was a burglary here’.

  She went very still. ‘How do you—?’

  ‘Gossip travels’.

  She seemed to sag. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I, of all people, should know that…’. Her voice faltered, then recovered again. ‘Indeed, there was evidence of an intruder. But—’ again, that toss of the head ‘—nothing at all was taken, my lord! And even if it had been, what business is it of yours? Besides, Captain Bryant himself has offered us his protection’.

  ‘Protection!’ Now his scorn was rampant. ‘That spineless fellow couldn’t fight off a damned flea’.

  Her eyes whipped up to his, flashing with defiance. The rain was starting to fall all around them in the courtyard, the thunder rumbling; she had to raise her voice to be heard.

  ‘You are wrong, quite wrong! Captain Bryant is not spineless! And—and he has asked me to marry him!’

  He found himself horrified. Furious. ‘My God. You will not do so?’

  ‘Why not?’ she declared bitterly. ‘Does anyone have a prior claim?’

  Damn it, me. I do. He wanted to crush her in his arms, and feel those sweet, full breasts against his chest. Wanted to drown his aching arousal in the slender lushness of her body. He wanted.

  Look after her for me, will you, Lucas?

  The words that haunted him, every minute, every day. His mouth set grimly. Easier to let her continue to hate him. Though—utterly abominable for him.

  But Bryant—her suitor? ‘Very well,’ he said in an iron-hard voice. ‘Very well. I can see, Miss Sheldon, that your troubles are overwhelming. I can see the lure of any port in a storm’.

  Her eyes blazed. She tilted her chin. ‘Lord Conistone. I would be obliged if you would leave our home this instant. Now’.

  ‘Oh, I’m going,’ he said. ‘But before I leave, I thought you might want this back’. He reached into the inside deep pocket of his coat. And pulled out—the little silver music box.

  She gazed at him in utter disbelief.

  ‘I saw someone leaving with it’. He shrugged. ‘I gave him twice what he’d paid in the sale. Sell it again if you wish. But this time—’ and his lip curled ‘—ask more for it. You shouldn’t find it difficult. You’re on the way to becoming a mercenary creature, Miss Sheldon’.

  And Verena felt that her heart was breaking anew as she took the box in hands that were as numb as her heart.

  Her despairing eyes flew up to his. Dear God. He was still—Lucas. But he despised her.

  Perhaps he always had. And now, she’d as good as told him she might accept Martin as a suitor…. ‘Lucas!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I—I never believed you were a coward, Lucas,’ she whispered. ‘Never that!’

  The falling rain intensified every feature of his starkly masculine face. ‘Ah. Playing hot and cold with me now, are you, Miss Sheldon?’ he said softly. Suddenly he cupped her chin with one strong hand. ‘Hoping, perhaps, that if your gallant Captain realises he has a rival, he might rush you to the altar?’

  She gasped with fresh pain. ‘That is despicable—’

  Before she could say more, Lucas had pulled her close. She felt the light caress of his hands on her back; then he touched her scalloped silk chemise, her half-exposed breasts, running one tantalising thumb over her tightening nipple so she arched yearningly, helplessly towards him.

  ‘I can see for myself,’ Lucas Conistone grated, ‘that as well as selling your house’s contents to the highest bidder, you’re also selling yourself. A pity that the best offer you can get is from an utter nonentity like Martin Bryant’.

  For a moment she was too frozen even to move. Too numb even to hate him as she should. Then she pushed him away and ran inside, still clutching the little music box, as her life fell to pieces around her.

  * * *

  Lucas stood very still as he watched her disappear into the house. Desire, frustration and black despair surged through every muscle of his powerful body.

  Parting after that sweet autumn almost two years ago was for the best, he told himself bitterly as he walked slowly in the direction of the stables. It was the only thing to do. You knew that.

  And yet he hadn’t expected to still want her so badly. Hadn’t expected her to be so damned beautiful. And he hadn’t expected her to look up at him with those wide, beautiful eyes, as if he were the devil himself.

  Who could blame her? He’d lied to her. Deceived her.

  His visit to Wycherley had not been a matter of chance, far from it. Five days ago in London he’d seen the notice in the newspapers of the Sheldon family’s dispersal sale. And then he’d heard of the attempted burglary.

  His good friend Captain Alec Stewart, in London also, had tried to warn him. ‘For God’s sake, man. She’s no fool. Why all this “passing by” pretence? Can’t you trust her with the truth?’

  ‘The truth?’ Lucas answered sharply. ‘How much of it—how little of it will she be able to bear? And why should I expect her to believe a word I say?’

  Well, he’d lied to her and achieved—nothing.

  Lucas Conistone was aware of the occasional whispers that he had left the army because he had no stomach for war. But most people gave no thought to his resignation. The fact that, since his father’s early death ten years ago, he was heir to his grandfather’s earldom, with all the responsibilities that entailed, meant that many people had thought him irresponsible to have joined the army in the first place.

  Verena clearly thought otherwise. He just hadn’t expected her to actually despise him.

  Now Alec was approaching from the stableyard, with the reins of both their horses in his hand. ‘Everything’s sorted, Lucas—horses watered, curb chain fixed—but other than that,’ commented Alec drily, ‘I’m saying nothing. Nothing at all’.

  Lucas took the reins from him. ‘I know,’ he said tersely. ‘You told me. I’m not welcome here, and I should have realised it. I’ll go on to wait for Bentinck, at the place and time we arranged, and you—will you set off back to Portugal?’

  Alec, already mounting his horse, nodded. ‘Portsmouth first, then Lisbon—I should be back there in ten days. Any messages?’

  ‘Yes. Let them know in Portugal, Alec, that I still believe what I’m looking for could be here’.

  ‘At Wycherley?’ Alec’s face creased in doubt.

  ‘At Wycherley,’ Lucas emphasised.

  And it was true—he did.

  The diary. A year and a half ago, Lucas had followed Wild Jack across the mountains in hopes of getting that diary. Thought he’d seen Jack clutching it, as he faced death.

  But now the body had been found, the diary with it—and it was the wrong one. Which meant that what Lucas really wanted must be here, somewhere, at Wycherley.

  And he cursed the fate that had brought him here.

 
‘The girl will have nothing to do with you,’ Alec warned as he started gathering up his reins.

  ‘There are other ways’.

  Alec’s pleasant eyes narrowed just a little. He said quietly, ‘In that case, I’m glad, for her sake, that she’s over you’.

  Lucas watched him ride off towards the Chichester road before mounting his own horse. Alec was right. But for her to throw herself away on Bryant….

  Something inside him twisted like a knife as he remembered the Verena he’d known. She’d been young and beautiful, and full of hope and, yes, love, for him. And he’d thought, this is the one.

  But now, she hated him. And, by God, it was as well.

  Chapter Three

  Swiftly Verena, up in her bedchamber, pulled on an old cotton shift instead of the silk chemise, and then over it a shabby print gown, which did an excellent job of disguising her full breasts and narrow waist. Not even Lucas could accuse her of playing the whore in this.

  She pulled it up viciously high at the neck, then, turning to her looking-glass, began to tug a comb through her rippling chestnut curls, which were damp from the rain. She stopped and gazed at herself. Her eyes were still bright with emotion, her skin still tingled from Lucas’s insultingly casual caress.

  Meu amor. My love. That was what he had once breathed to her. One of his many damnable lies.

  She pulled on a shawl and hurried to knock on the door of a nearby room. No answer—but she thought she heard the sound of sobbing. ‘Deb. Deb? It’s me—Verena’. She pushed the door open, and saw her sister sitting on the edge of the bed, her head bowed. When Deb looked up, her blue eyes were brimming with tears.

  Verena quickly shut the door. ‘Oh, Deb!’ she cried, and rushed to embrace her, but Deb shrank away.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?’ she whispered. ‘I will not, I will not face him!’

  Dear God. Had her sister observed that insult of a caress? ‘Did you—did you see him out there?’

  ‘No, but Izzy told me! She saw him and his friend Captain Stewart riding up the drive, and was full of it…’.

  Be grateful for small mercies. Verena drew a deep breath and sat down beside her. It had been the final blow—almost laughable, really, were it not so cruel—to find out that less than one year ago Lucas had tried his luck with Deb also. What fair game her family must have seemed.

  ‘Deb, listen to me,’ she urged. ‘Lord Conistone is leaving. He only called here because he was on his way to Stancliffe Manor’.

  ‘You mean—’ Deb shivered ‘—he said nothing about me?’

  ‘Nothing at all’. Verena sighed. ‘Look, he will have gone already. Deb, you must forget him. You must be strong’. And so must I.

  ‘Oh, Verena’. Deborah flung herself into her arms, in a fresh storm of weeping.

  And Verena did her best—an almost impossible task—to soothe her, then left her sister at last, returning to her own room to endure fresh heartbreak herself as she remembered how nearly two years ago she herself was fool enough to fall in love with Lucas, Lord Conistone.

  * * *

  In the early August of 1808, all of Hampshire was deluged by heavy rainfall, and the harvests were ruined. Verena’s father had gone away again on his travels—from which, in fact, he was never to return—and Verena, young as she was, found that their tenants and villagers were coming to her for help, since their mother, Lady Frances, could do nothing but bewail their troubles.

  Verena had been supposed to be preparing for her come-out the following Season. The dressmaker had even completed part of her new wardrobe, of which the silk chemise was a sad relic. But instead of looking forward to parties and balls, she had found herself having to discuss their woeful finances with Mr Mayhew, her father’s attorney.

  With Mr Mayhew’s help that summer she had dug deeper into the dwindling family coffers to save the home farm—save the estate, in fact; during discussions with the estate’s tenant farmers, she struggled to comprehend all the talk of crop rotation, winter fodder and seasonal plantings.

  She still dreamed of going to London, with its theatres and fashionable parties. When her father returned, she told herself, everything would be as it should be once more! The last week of August seemed to echo her optimism, with days suddenly full of sunshine. Though Verena, riding back on an old pony from a meeting with some of the tenant farmers to discuss, of all things, the virtues of planting turnips as a fodder crop, knew that her return to Wycherley would be greeted by her mother with near hysterics.

  ‘Verena! You have been riding about the countryside like—a farmer’s wife! Oh, if any of our neighbours should see you!’

  It was hot, it was beautiful outdoors, and the larks were singing above the meadows. And so, in a sudden impulse of rebellion, Verena had jumped off her pony near a haystack and let it amble towards some grass. Then, after pulling a crisp red apple and two books from her saddle bag, she sat with her back against the sweet-smelling hay.

  With her spectacles perched at the end of her nose, she started on Miss Bonamy’s Young Lady’s Guide to Etiquette, a parting gift from a former extremely dull governess that her mother was always urging her to read. She tackled the first few pages. A young lady never rides out without a chaperon. A young lady always dresses demurely and protects her complexion from the sun.

  ‘Oh, fiddle!’ Verena had cried, and flung Miss Bonamy’s tome at the hayrick, turning instead, with almost equal lack of enthusiasm, to the treatise on agriculture that David, her brother-in-law, had lent her.

  It was actually not as boring as she’d expected. She read through it, frowning at first, then with growing interest, until—

  ‘Oh!’

  He was riding towards her along the track, and the sound of his horse’s hooves had made her start.

  Lucas, Viscount Conistone. Of course, as she grew up she’d seen him from afar. Dreamed about him from afar, like her sisters, like most of the girls in the entire county, no doubt. She’d even met him occasionally, because her father had been a friend of his grandfather, the old Earl, and the Earl was her godfather. She dropped the treatise on turnips and dragged herself to her feet, snatching off her spectacles, pushing back her tumbled hair; then she just said, with utter gladness, ‘You’re safe! I was so afraid!’

  He’d dismounted, and stood lightly holding his big horse’s reins, smiling down at her. He would be—yes, twenty-four years old, four years older than she was. He was hatless, and his thick black hair, a shade too long for fashion, framed a striking, aristocratic face that was tanned now by the sun. He wore just a loose cream shirt—no coat, in this heat—riding breeches and dusty leather boots.

  ‘Very much alive,’ he agreed heartily. ‘Did you hear news to the contrary, Miss Sheldon?’

  She coloured. ‘They said you’d gone overseas, with the army. And I heard there were some terrible battles…’.

  That was when he told her he was untouchable, and the bullets just flew past him. She wasn’t going to tell him that every time she read the news sheets, or overheard talk of the war, she thought of him.

  ‘I did not know you were coming home,’ she said simply.

  He’d smiled down at her again. Since she’d last seen him—it was at a gathering of local families at Stancliffe Manor several years ago—he’d changed, become wider-shouldered, leaner, yet more powerful. His face, always handsome, was more angular, his features more defined. And there was something—some shadow—in his dark grey eyes that she was sure had not been there before. A soldier now. He would have lost friends in battles, she thought. He would have killed men.

  Lucas said lightly, ‘Even my grandfather didn’t know I was returning till I turned up on his doorstep yesterday. I was intending to call on you all at Wycherley, but I’m glad to find you on your own’.

  It means nothing, he means nothing, don’t be foolish….. She suddenly remembered, and her heart sank. She said, ‘You must have heard from your grandfather about—the matter with my father. I wouldn�
�t have been surprised if you’d decided not to call on us, my lord’.

  His eyes were still gentle. ‘They had an argument, I’m afraid, as old friends will’.

  ‘It was more than an argument, I fear!’ she answered.

  ‘And your father’s away again? On his travels?’

  ‘Indeed, yes’.

  ‘And you—’ his eyes were scanning her, assessing her in a way that made her blush ‘—you, Verena, should be in London, surely, enjoying yourself, surrounded by flocks of admirers!’

  At that moment, with Lucas smiling down at her, she would not have been anywhere else for the world. ‘Oh, there’s time enough for all that,’ she said airily.

  ‘Time enough, indeed. Though this…’. he picked up the book that lay where she had dropped it ‘.….is hardly everyday reading for a young lady’. He flicked through it, eyebrows tilting. ‘The cultivation of—turnips? ‘

  She blushed hotly. He must think her a country clod, for no London lady of fashion would ever glance at such a thing!

  ‘It belongs to—someone else, and, yes, of course you are right, I wouldn’t dream of reading about—farming! Turnips!’ She laughed. ‘Ridiculous!’

  He put his head on one side, not smiling back, and said seriously, ‘I have heard that since your father last went away, you’ve had to take on responsibility for the estate yourself, Verena’.

  She bit her lip, then, ‘What nonsense people do talk!’ she declared. ‘Why, soon Mama and Deb and I will be going to London, and we will have such fun—going to the theatre, attending parties…’. She casually picked up her copy of the Miss Bonamy’s book and fanned her warm cheeks with it, so he should see it and consider her a lady.

  He cut in, ‘I heard there was a bad harvest. And that you’re short of labourers to plant the winter crops’.

  She was mortified. ‘It’s true that the summer rains did great damage. But by next spring all will be right again at Wycherley!’ I wish, I wish he hadn’t seen me like this, in my old print dress that must be flecked with dust and straw. He will be used to the company of such beautiful women, and I must look like a farm girl…..