Bea had married the eldest son of a fellow mill owner less than a year later, whom she’d declared, in one of her frank letters to Deborah, at that time once again incarcerated in her guardian’s house, would do very well. Deborah’s correspondence with her friend—with all of her friends—had been one of the many things Jeremy had taken from her. It was not that he had forbidden her to write, but that she had no longer been able to bear to paint a bright gloss on the dreadful reality of her own marriage. And now, though Jeremy had been dead two years, it was too late.
The melancholy which had been haunting her these last months and which had intensified, as ever, during her annual visit to Kinsail Manor settled upon Deborah like a black cloud. Jeremy’s death had been far from the blessed release she had anticipated. Of late, she had come to feel as if she had simply swapped one prison for another. Loneliness yawned like a chasm, but she was afraid to breach it for she could not bear anyone to know the truth—even though that meant eventually the chasm would swallow her up.
She was not happy, but she had no idea what to do to alter that state—or, indeed, if she was now capable of being anything else. Isolated as she was, at least when she was alone she was safe, which was some consolation. No one could harm her. She would not let anyone harm her ever again.
A breeze caught at her mantle, whipping it open. Goosebumps rose on her flesh as the cool night air met her exposed skin. She had been lost in the past for far too long. She would not sleep, of that she was certain, but if she did not get back into the house she would likely catch a cold and that would of a surety not do. It would give Lady Margaret, the Earl’s downtrodden wife, whose desperation made her seek any sort of ally, an excuse to beg Deborah to prolong her stay.
Head down, struggling to hold her cloak around her, Deborah made haste towards the side door to the east wing and was directly under the long drawing room when a scuffling noise gave her pause. She had no sooner looked up and caught sight of a dark, menacing figure, seemingly clinging to the sheer wall of the Manor, when it fell backwards towards her.
* * *
The bracket holding the drainpipe loosened as he was still some fifteen feet or so from the ground. Deciding not to take a chance on the entire thing coming away from the wall, Elliot let go, trusting that his landing would be cushioned by the grass. He did not expect his fall to be broken by something much softer.
‘Oof!’
The female’s muffled cry came from underneath him. Her ghostly pale face peered up at him, her eyes wide with shock, her mouth forming a perfect little ‘o’ shape.
Elliot felt the breath he had knocked out of her caress his cheek before he quickly covered her mouth with his hand. ‘Don’t be afraid, I mean you no harm, I promise.’
Delicate eyebrows lifted in disbelief. Heavy lids over eyes which were—what colour? Brown? He could not tell in this light. Fair brows. Her hands flailed at his sides. Her body was soft, yielding. He was lying on top of her—quite improperly, he supposed. At the same moment he realised that it was also quite delightful. She seemed to be wearing nothing but a shift beneath her cloak. He could feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest. Her mouth was warm against his palm. For a second or two he lay there, caught up in the unexpected pleasure of her physical proximity before several things occurred to him at once.
She was most likely the Countess of Kinsail.
She would definitely raise the alarm as soon as she possibly could.
If he was caught he would go to the gallows.
He had to leave. Now!
In one swift movement Elliot rolled on to his feet, pulling the distracting female with him. Still with one hand covering her mouth, he put his other around her waist. A slim waist. And she was tall, too, for a lady. The Earl was a fortunate man, damn him. ‘If I take my hand away, do you promise not to scream?’ he asked, keeping his voice low.
A lift of those expressive brows and an indignant look which could mean no or it could mean yes.
Elliot decided to take the risk. ‘Did I hurt you? I wasn’t expecting you to be there—as you can imagine,’ he said.
‘That makes two of us.’
Her voice was husky—but then it would be, for he’d just knocked the wind out of her. She had an unusual face, an interesting face, which was much better than beautiful. A full mouth with rather a cynical twist to it. No tears nor any sign of hysterics, and her expression was rather haughty, with a surprising trace of amusement.
Elliot felt the answering tug of his own smile. ‘Delightful as it was—for me, at least—I did not intend to use you to soften my landing.’
‘I am happy to have been of value.’ Deborah looked at him through dazed eyes. ‘What on earth were you doing?’ she asked, realising as she did so that it was an amazingly foolish question.
But he didn’t look like a common housebreaker—not that she knew what housebreakers looked like! She should surely be screaming out for help. Of a certain she should be afraid, for she held his fate in her hands and he must know it, yet she felt none of those things. She felt—a dreadful, shocking realisation, but true—she felt intrigued. And unsettled. The weight of him on top of her. The solid-packed muscle of his extremely male body. The touch of his hand on her mouth.
‘What were you doing, halfway up the wall of the Manor?’
Elliot grinned. ‘Exactly what you suspect I was doing, I’m afraid, Lady Kinsail.’
Now was definitely the time to cry for help, yet Deborah did not. ‘You know me?’
‘I know of you.’
‘Oh.’ Conscious of her curl papers and her nightshift, she struggled to pull her mantle back around her. ‘I didn’t dress for—I did not expect to meet anyone,’ she said, feeling herself flushing, trusting to the gloom that it would go undetected.
‘Nor did I.’
The housebreaker chuckled. A low, husky growl of a laugh, distinctively male, it sent shivers over Deborah’s skin. He had a striking face, strong-featured, with heavy brows, deep grooves running down the side of his mouth, and eyes which looked as if they had witnessed too much. A fierce face with a discernible undercurrent of danger. Yet those eyes suggested compassion and even more improbably, given the circumstances, integrity. A memorable face, indeed, and an extremely attractive one. She met his gaze and for a few seconds the air seemed to still between them. A connection, a frisson, something she could not name, sparked.
‘I’m sorry to have alarmed you,’ he said finally, ‘but if you must blame anyone for my presence here you must blame your husband.’
Deborah began to wonder if perhaps she was dreaming. ‘But Jeremy—my husband—is…’
‘A most fortunate man,’ Elliot said with a twisted smile. ‘I must thank you for not calling out. I am in your debt.’ He knew he should not, but he could not resist. ‘Let me demonstrate my gratitude.’ When he pulled her to him she did not resist. The touch of her lips on his was warm, sweet and all too fleeting. He released her extremely reluctantly. ‘I must go,’ he said roughly. ‘And you, madam, must do as you see fit.’
‘Wait a minute. I don’t even know what your name is.’
The housebreaker laughed again. ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’
He was already fleeing across the lawn. Staring after him in utter bemusement, Deborah remained stock still, watching the shadowy figure melt into the darkness. The stable clock chimed the hour. Above her, she could hear the sharper chimes of another clock. Looking up, she saw the window of the long drawing room was wide open. The French clock—it must be that she could hear. She touched her fingers to her mouth where the housebreaker had kissed her. Kissed her! A common thief!
No. Housebreaker he might be, but he was most certainly not common. His voice was that of an educated man. He had an air about him of someone used to command. The greatcoat which enveloped him was of fine wool. And, now she thought about it, his boots were of an excellent cut and highly polished. He smelled of clean linen and fresh air and only
very slightly of sweat and leather and horse. She supposed he must have tied his steed up somewhere close by. She listened intently, but could hear nothing save the rustle of the breeze as it tugged at the bare branches of the trees.
She should wake the Earl. At the very least she should alert the servants. Deborah frowned. Whatever the man had stolen must have been concealed about his person, for he’d carried no sackfull of loot. Papers, perhaps? Despite the arduous task of setting Jeremy’s estates to rights—a task which his cousin never ceased to complain about—Lord Kinsail continued to play an active role in the government. Was the housebreaker a spy? That certainly made more sense, though the war was so long over there was surely no need for such subterfuge. And he had neither looked nor sounded like a traitor.
Deborah’s laugh, quickly stifled, had an unwelcome note of hysteria in it. She had no more idea of what a spy should look like than a housebreaker.
None of it made sense. It occurred to her rather belatedly that the thing which Lord Kinsail would consider made least sense of all was her own presence in the grounds, in her night clothes, at four in the morning. He’d want to know why she’d made no attempt to raise the alarm immediately—what could she say when she didn’t know the answer to that question herself? It wasn’t as if the thief had threatened her. She hadn’t felt scared, exactly, more…what?
The thought of having to suffer Jacob’s inquisition made up her mind. She would not give him any more reason to treat her with disdain. In fact, Deborah decided, making her way hurriedly to the side door, the time had come to break free from Lord Kinsail and this blighted place. Small consolation—very small—but her failure to provide Jeremy with an heir had one advantage. She had no real obligation to maintain close ties with his family. Lord Kinsail might grudge her every penny of the miserly widow’s portion which he doled out irregularly, and only after several reminders, but she doubted he could ultimately refuse to pay it. In any case, she was determined to find a way to survive without it. This would be her last visit to Kinsail Manor and damn the consequences!
Feeling decidedly better, Deborah fastened the door carefully behind her and fled up the stairs to her chamber on the third floor. Whatever it was the bold housebreaker had taken would be discovered in the morning. He was already gone, and her rousing the household now would not bring him back.
She yawned heavily as she discarded her mantle and unlaced her muddy boots, pushing them to the back of the cupboard out of sight of the inquisitive maid. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she made a face. Despite her hair curlers, that look on the housebreaker’s face just before he kissed her had been unmistakable. Not that she was by any stretch of the imagination an expert, but she was sure, none the less. He had wanted her.
Heat washed over her. What would it be like to submit to someone like that? Deborah pulled the bedclothes up around her, too beguiled by this thought to notice the cold. Desire. She wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes and recalled the velvet touch of his lips on hers. Beneath her palms her nipples budded. Behind her lids wanting flared the colour of crimson. Desire. Sharpened by its very illicitness. Desire of the dark, venal kind which roused Bella Donna, the heroine of the novels which were currently scandalising the ton, to shocking heights of passion. Desire such as she had never shared.
Desire. Deborah slipped down into the welcoming dark embrace of the bed, her hands slipping and sliding down over the cotton of her nightdress. And down. Closing her eyes tighter, she abandoned herself to the imagined caresses of a virile and skilled lover.
* * *
She awoke much later in the morning than usual, dragging herself up from the depths of slumber to the hue and cry of a household in a state of pandemonium. Slipping into a thick kerseymere gown, for Kinsail Manor, owing to a combination of its age and its current incumbent’s frugality, was an uncomfortably draughty place, Deborah sat at her mirror to take out her curl papers. Her straitened circumstances meant she could not afford the luxury of a personal maid, and, though Lady Kinsail had begged her to make use of her own dear Dorcas, Her Ladyship’s ‘own dear Dorcas’ was in fact an exceedingly dour creature, who believed a widow’s hair should be confined under a cap and kept there with a battalion of hairpins—the sharper the better.
Since she had perforce been attending to her own toilette for most of her adult life, Deborah made short work of gathering her long flaxen tresses high on her head and arranging her curls in a cluster over one shoulder. Her gown she had fashioned herself, too, in plain blue, with not a trace of the French work, furbelows and frills so beloved of Ackerman’s Repository.
She had resented her blacks when Jeremy died, resented the way they defined her as his relic, but it had taken her a full six months after the designated year of mourning to cast them off all the same, for she had come to appreciate the anonymity they granted her. It was then she had discovered that she lacked any identity at all to fill the gap. Like the anonymous gowns of blues and browns and greys she now wore, neither fashionable nor utterly dowdy, she felt herself indeterminate, somewhat undefined. Like an abandoned canvas, half painted.
An urgent rap at the door interrupted this chastening thought. ‘Please, Your Ladyship, but His Lordship asks you to join him in the long drawing room urgently.’ The housemaid, still clad in the brown sack apron she wore to lay the morning fires, was fairly bursting with the important news she had to impart. ‘We’ve all to assemble there,’ she informed Deborah as she trotted along the narrow corridor which connected the oldest—and dampest and coldest—wing of Kinsail Manor with the main body of the house, built by Jeremy’s great-grandfather. ‘The master wants to know if anyone heard or saw him.’
‘Heard who?’ Deborah asked, knowing full well that the girl could only mean the housebreaker.
She should have woken Jacob, she knew she should have, but she could not find it in her to regret this oversight. If she was honest, there was a bit of her—a tiny, malicious, nothing-to-be-proud-of bit of her—which was actually quite glad. Or, if not glad, at least indifferent. Jacob had taken everything from her that Jeremy had not already extorted. Whatever precious thing had been stolen, she could not care a jot. What was more, she decided on the spur of the moment, she was going to continue to keep her mouth firmly shut. She would not admit to wandering the grounds. She would not provoke one of his sermons. She would not!
‘I’m sorry—what were you saying?’ Deborah realised the maid had been talking to her while her thoughts had been occupied elsewhere. They were outside the drawing room now. The door stood wide open, revealing the gathered ranks of Lord Kinsail’s household. At the head of the room, under his own portrait, stood the man himself.
‘Best to go in, My Lady,’ the maid whispered. ‘We’re last to arrive.’ She scuttled over to join the rest of the maidservants, who were clustered like a nervy flock of sheep around the housekeeper. Mrs Chambers, a relic from Deborah’s days as chatelaine, cast her a disapproving look.
Inured to such treatment, Deborah made her way to the top of the room to join the Earl. The frame of the portrait swung open on its hinge to reveal the safe. Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. Jeremy had shown it to her when they were first married, though in those days it had been concealed behind a portrait of his father.
‘Empty coffers,’ Jeremy had said to her. ‘Though not for much longer—thanks to you, my darling wife.’
The revelation that the terms of her inheritance would force him to wait several years for her to attain her majority and gain the larger part of her fortune had not been the beginning of his change in attitude towards her, but after that he’d ceased to pretend.
She should never have married him. But there was no time for her to become entangled in that morass yet again. Lady Kinsail, even more palely loitering than ever, was seated on a gilt chair almost as frail as herself. Deborah went to her side.
‘Cousin Margaret,’ she said, squeezing Her Ladyship’s cold hand between her own. Though she persiste
ntly refused to grant Lord Kinsail the appellation of cousin, she had conceded it to his wife. They were not related, but it rescued them from the hideous social quagmire of having two Countesses of Kinsail in the one household. ‘What, pray, has occurred?’
‘Oh, Cousin Deborah, such a dreadful thing.’ Lady Kinsail’s voice was, like her appearance, wraith-like. ‘A common housebreaker—’
‘No common housebreaker,’ her lord interrupted. Under normal circumstances Lord Kinsail’s complexion and his temper had a tendency towards the choleric. This morning he resembled an over-ripe tomato. ‘I don’t know what time you call this, Cousin,’ he fumed.
‘A quarter after nine, if the clock is to be trusted,’ Deborah replied, making a point of arranging her own chair by his wife and shaking out her skirts as she sat down.
‘Of course it’s to be trusted. It’s Louis Quatorze! Say what you like about the French, but they know how to turn out a timepiece,’ Lord Kinsail said testily. ‘I have it upon good authority that that clock was originally made for the Duc d’Orleans himself.’
‘A pity, then,’ Deborah said tightly, ‘that such an heirloom is no longer in his family. I abhor things being taken from their rightful owners.’
Lord Kinsail was pompous, parsimonious, and so puffed-up with his own conceit that it was a constant surprise to Deborah that he did not explode with a loud pop. But he was no fool.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘If you had served my cousin better as a wife, then the estates which you allowed him to bring to ruin upon that ill-fated marriage of yours would not now be my responsibility, but your son’s. If you had served my cousin better as a wife, Cousin Deborah, I have no doubt that he would not have felt the need to seek consolation in the gaming houses of St James’s, thus ensuring that his successor had hardly a pair of brass farthings to rub together.’
Outrageous Confessions of Lady Deborah Page 2