He really was the most impressive man Henrietta had ever met. There was an indomitable pride chiselled into his handsome face, determination in the jut of his chin, arrogance in his jaw and intelligence in every feature of his face. There was an aloof strength and a powerful charisma about him that had nothing to do with his tall, broad-shouldered physique. He was also an experienced man of the world and all those experiences were locked away behind a lazy charm and piercing blue eyes.
And therein lay his appeal. The challenge.
Stealing another look at his profile her heart turned over. She gave herself a mental shake. What did all that matter? Simon Tremain was nothing to her and never could be. All that mattered was that she reached her uncle with her heart, her mind and body intact. She must not allow herself to succumb to Simon’s charm. He was a Jacobite, like her father, and only misery and suffering could result from knowing him. He would rend her heart in two—as her mother’s had been broken by her father, which had sent her to her grave.
Henrietta would not ignore what her common sense was telling her. She would not allow that to happen to her. Not again. Not ever!
* * *
Having no notion of the paths along which Henrietta’s mind wandered, from where he sat Simon couldn’t help but admire the depth of her composure and the delicate, almost ethereal beauty in the young face. She had been gently reared in a well-to-do household. He could see it in the way she walked and carried herself. She had the confident, refined elegance of one who has been well tutored and instructed in the social graces. In repose she was the quintessence of the beautiful female animal, her face and body as perfectly formed as they could be. Her sensuality was so beguiling that the gentlemen’s eyes seemed to burn with unconcealed pleasure as they sought and lingered on her.
He gritted his teeth in what might have been jealousy as he watched these men covet her. He watched the appreciation in their eyes as they regarded the creaminess of her skin and the simple elegance of her gown, the scooped neckline offering a tantalising view of smooth flesh. He wondered how they would have reacted had they come upon her as the unkempt youth.
He was not sorry when his guests got up to leave. Excusing himself to Henrietta he went with them, but he was impatient for the time when he would return.
* * *
It was nightfall when Simon arrived back at the house. Having eaten, Henrietta was on the terrace, about to take a stroll before retiring to her chamber for the night. The air was chilly and she drew her shawl tighter around her.
Simon emerged quietly from the house. Henrietta had one arm draped loosely round a stone urn brimming with flowers. He paused to watch her for several moments, the moonlight playing over the planes of her face as she stared off into the distance with a melancholy look.
‘Here you are,’ Simon remarked at length, joining her.
Henrietta lifted her face and smiled at him. For Simon it was as if a shutter had been flung open and the sunlight had rushed in. Her smile was compounded of a luminous gentleness in her eyes. Her fine-boned face, framed by a halo of red and gold stirring in the flower-scented breeze, was a dainty image of fragility as she stood before a man who dwarfed her. Tenderness washed over him and he wanted to pull her into his arms.
Henrietta’s pulse rate quickened when she met his dark blue gaze. Her gaze shifted and took in the whole of him. The muscles of his body rippled beneath his coat as he moved, and the sense of his physical power struck her like a blow. She noted the swell of his powerful shoulders concealed by the cloth with a fascination that was disturbing, a little frightening. His body seemed so honed to be perfect—tough and hard as his mind. Standing close, he was looking at her intently. The effect of that look was physical. At that very moment it was as though her heart expanded.
‘I was about to walk to the river before retiring. Will you accompany me?’
‘I would like that.’
He took her arm as they descended a flight of narrow stone steps to the garden below. His was such an easy, graceful strength, lazy as a big cat stretching in the sun, alert as a cat to spring and strike. His touch and the clean, masculine smell of him, all combined to form a warm, thoroughly intriguing essence that quickened Henrietta’s awareness of the man. She realised she was affected in ways she had never dreamt possible, for her womanly senses responded to his gentle touch.
Preoccupied with his thoughts, Simon didn’t speak as they walked. On a sigh Henrietta gazed up at the clear expanse of sky.
‘It’s a full moon,’ she murmured, looking up at the huge yellow orb. When Simon didn’t reply, she cast about for something else to say. ‘I can’t quite believe I’m really back in Scotland.’
‘Whatever happens, Henrietta, whatever you decide, you do realise that you must go back.’
‘Home,’ she murmured. ‘How can it be home when I am a stranger there? There was a time not so very long ago when I believed I could make my own destiny. Suddenly I feel that I am at the mercy of fate.’
‘Maybe it’s a bit of both. Sometimes, when we’re forced out of the protective walls of the homes we grew up in, we have an opportunity to become instrumental in determining our own fate. We are born with things that define us—personality, humour, resilience—but we can make our own future, too.’
‘What you say might be true, but now that I have been thrust out, I have no greater ambition than to return.’
‘What is he like, your uncle?’
She thought for a moment, then she said, ‘Uncle Matthew is tough—like my father—eccentric, a scholar, perhaps unorthodox. When my father was executed he went away. I don’t think he could bear it. I wish he hadn’t.’
‘And your mother?’
She averted her eyes. ‘Mother needed someone very badly after... She bore it as best she could. Before the tragedy, I never knew anyone who had so much self-discipline, such control over herself as my mother. Afterwards she—she lost her mind. There was a lot I couldn’t understand when my understanding was that of a child. I learned that what couldn’t be cured had to be endured and to endure was unrelenting and doomed from the start.’
Shifting her gaze to the river ahead of them, she became quiet, so quiet and so still that a white moth drifted close, but she continued to stare at the water, deep in her own thoughts. Simon watched her, filled with compassion, for she spoke in a tone of unutterable sadness. He sensed there was more she wasn’t telling him, but he wouldn’t ask.
After a moment she spoke again, her voice sorrowful, almost vague. ‘There was some kind of fatalism about my mother. One thing I learned about her was that something deeper and more complex was involved, that it was the hardiness of her spirit that drew sustenance from her memories of my father. I didn’t understand her. I felt so inadequate.’
‘Why? Because you were afraid of letting her down?’
‘I don’t know. But I never aroused in her the same kind of feelings she had for my father.’
Simon thought he had never heard such desolation, or felt it. He felt a surge of admiration for what she had achieved, for what she had overcome, and his admiration was enforced by the pain and loneliness she had endured as a child.
‘Do you regret coming back to Scotland?’ he asked in an attempt to draw her back to the present.
They were approaching the river’s edge and behind them the lights from the house faded and then vanished completely.
‘No. I had no choice.’
Suddenly there was nowhere else they could walk, nothing in front of them but the river. They stopped and Simon shoved his hands into his pockets, staring at the river where it meandered into the distance.
Chapter Five
Uncertain of Simon’s mood, Henrietta wandered a few paces away from him. It seemed colder here by the water and she pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders, stealing a surreptitious look at
him. In the moonlight his profile was harsh and he lifted a hand, rubbing the muscles in the back of his neck as if he was tense.
‘I suppose we ought to go back,’ she said after a long minute’s silence and his silence became unsettling.
In answer Simon tipped his head back and closed his eyes, looking like a man in the throes of some deep, internal battle. ‘Why?’
‘Because we’ve reached the river and there’s nowhere else to go.’
‘If only that were true,’ he murmured.
She gave him a questioning look. ‘What is it, Simon? Have those men you were with earlier upset you in some way?’
He turned his head towards her and his relentless gaze locked with hers. ‘No. We are all of the same mind.’
‘You will offer your support to Charles Stuart?’
‘I offered my support to his father James Stuart’s claim a long time ago. Ever since the rising back in fifteen, he has worked tirelessly, reiterating his claim to the throne of Scotland and England, and the position of his son Charles as heir to that throne. I was in France with Prince Charles for many months—to smooth his path as much as may be with those men who will be of use to him should he head an army of restoration. Restoring kings takes money and he was biding his time in Paris while awaiting King Louis and the French bankers’ generosity. But Louis couldn’t afford to fight the wars in Brussels and finance invasions in England.’
Simon looked at Henrietta with darkly troubled eyes. He hated conflict of any kind, for though he was confident in his skill with the sword, had trained with it most of his life, he hated the thought of plunging that sharp steel into another man’s flesh. ‘Don’t judge me, Henrietta,’ he said quietly.
‘I don’t. You will do what you feel is right—where your conscience leads you. It’s not for me to say whether what you do is right or wrong, only to ask you to think carefully of the consequences should you fail. Because should you fail, the English will give you no quarter. You will be arrested and executed for treason. It seems a dangerous thing you do to me.’
‘Aye, but if I die in the process, I’ll die knowing I did my best for the cause.’
Suddenly angry at the pressure Charles Stuart was inflicting on men like Simon all over Scotland, Henrietta turned from him, her shoulders tense. ‘I hate this. I wish Charles Stuart would take ship back to France. If you must know, the glimpse you and your friends gave me on the heath that night of secret communications and clandestine meetings repelled me. To me it was another world—one that I had supposed to be long gone.’
‘But it isn’t, is it, Henrietta?’
Her eyes lit with anger. ‘No. There will be conflict—it is inevitable, but I want no part of it. I cannot forget the misfortunes that fell upon my family because of Jacobites and my father’s treasonable activities. The circumstances have blighted my whole life. I would be mad to associate with them—with you.’
‘But you did and you are. I am no traitor, Henrietta.’
‘Tell that to King George. If this business is to come to a head, let it burst and be done with it.’
‘Which is why I would persuade you to remain at Barradine if I could. I would like to know that you are safe.’
‘I can’t do that. I have issues of my own to take care of that have nothing to do with your prince. When do we leave for Perth?’
‘In the morning.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. ‘What if I said that I wanted you to stay here?’ His voice was husky and there was such intensity in his gaze that Henrietta felt her heartbeat slow. He was a handsome man and in the days they had been together she had become extremely fond of him, more than she was prepared to admit.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t. I shall miss you when we part,’ she whispered.
‘Then stay.’
‘No, Simon.’ She was startled at how difficult it was for her to form the words. The regret in his eyes was sincere. She pressed a hand to her lips, her eyes closing at a renewed sense of loss.
On a sigh he stepped back, but his eyes remained fastened on hers. ‘You will forgive me if, for the time we have left at Barradine, I use my powers of persuasion to get you to change your mind.’
‘As you like, but my own powers of persuasion are often to be reckoned with.’
Simon grinned. ‘You certainly appear to have worked wonders on my neighbours earlier. They scarcely removed their eyes from your face throughout the repast. It’s amazing what effect a beautiful and talented woman can have on men—even men such as they, whose heads are filled with conflict. Before too long you’ll have every one of them eating out of your hands—and may well break several hearts—as you did mine, when I witnessed you in your bath.’
‘That night there was only one particular heart I would truly have liked to render into little pieces for your audacity,’ she said quietly, a hint of savagery in her tone.
Simon laughed softly, chucking her under the chin. ‘I fear you are going to need to keep your wits sharp and all your courage in future dealings with me. So take heed. You might find yourself out of your depth—and you will not be the first woman to do so.’
Henrietta’s eyebrows flicked upwards. ‘I think I have made an accurate assessment of your character, my lord,’ she said, speaking with confidence, for it did not occur to her that she was already falling under the spell of a practised seducer, such men being beyond the realms of her experience.
‘You are proving to be the most charming diversion, Henrietta. I’d be willing to wait a while longer before joining the prince if it allowed us to become better acquainted.’
Simon looked at her, his eyes softening at the tantalising picture she presented in her pale green dress, the fabric shaking like a leaf in the breeze blowing off the river. Her cropped hair made her face look naked, giving it the appearance of fragility and wantonness, a striking contrast that touched him. The tender pink flesh of her lips looked so appealing that he was tempted to savour them.
The colour on Henrietta’s cheeks was gloriously high. Her eyes were sparkling like twin orbs. They were the most brilliant eyes Simon had ever seen, of a green so bright they seemed lit from within. He was not a man of such iron control that he could resist looking down at her feminine form. Noticing things such as how her gown clung to her round curves so provocatively, concealing the sweet treasures beneath, gave him a clear sense of pleasurable torture. Now she was so close he could feel her warmth, smell the sweet scent of her body, all in such close proximity. The explosion of passion that erupted in his body surprised him and sent heat searing into his loins.
Wary of the look she saw in his eyes, Henrietta stepped past him, but he caught her arm and pulled her back. She stood close to him, momentarily stunned by the force of his assault. He stood poised above her, blocking out the night sky, her surroundings, so that she felt a rush of helplessness and was aware of nothing else but his overwhelming presence. His eyes held a burning glow of intent, but deep in their depths there was something else she had never seen before, something that defied analysis and made her afraid.
‘Let go of me, Simon,’ she whispered. ‘I think we should go back.’
‘Why? Do not turn from me.’ His voice had softened to the timbre of rough velvet and made Henrietta’s senses jolt almost as much as the strange way he was looking at her. ‘I’ve known many women, Henrietta, and ventured far and wide, but no maid has provoked my imagination to such a degree as you do. You are a temptress, dangerous and destructive in your innocence. ’Tis hard for me seeing you day after day, knowing you are almost within my arm’s reach night after night, and not touching you as I want to. I want to kiss you now—which I am sure you will find pleasurable,’ he murmured, his eyes fastened on her trembling lips.
With her heart pounding in swift beats, she swallowed audibly. ‘I don’t think I will.’
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��How can you be sure—until you’ve sampled it?’
Panic seized her but she was powerless to escape. ‘Please, Simon. Let me go.’
‘Not a chance,’ he murmured huskily, his face lowering to hers, the subtle fragrance emanating from her body firing his desire.
Simon’s face was poised above hers, close, looking deep into her eyes, his warm breath caressing her face. Lowering his head, he covered her mouth with his own, his lips insistent, parting her own and kissing her slowly, long and deep. She strained to resist the feel of his hands on her body, his mouth on hers, but her weak flesh began to respond and at last she yielded, her lips answering his in mindless rapture.
She became languid and relaxed with sensuality, uttering a moan and a sigh of pleasure. Sensations like tight buds were opened and exploded into flowers of splendour, growing stronger and sweeter. She felt the hardness of his body pressed close to her own and a melting softness flowed through her veins, evoking feelings she had never experienced before or thought herself capable of feeling.
Simon lifted his head and looked down at her with burning eyes before his mouth claimed hers once more. There was nothing gentle about this kiss, not like the first. This time it was hard and brutal, making her realise the tender kiss had been but a ploy to what would inevitably follow if she remained.
Henrietta struggled in the circle of his arms to get away, but she was filled with a like need, wanton and shameless and, closing her eyes, her treacherous woman’s body cleaved to his. Her fear was gone and she was devoid of will as she threw her head back so that he could bury his lips, warm and soft, in the creamy hollow of her throat, trailing them down to the partly naked, gentle swell of her breasts above the bodice of her gown before finding her lips once more, sending her soaring into a void of violent pleasure. Time ceased to exist and nothing that had gone before mattered to her then. Her body glowed and throbbed with delicious need and she was drowning in a sea of pleasure.
Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Unwed and UnrepentantReturn of the Prodigal GilvryA Traitor's Touch Page 55