She took a sharp breath. “Yes, well. It served you very nicely not to think of me. What would your fine friends have thought, had the court discovered you once confessed your love to the woman they ridiculed?”
The corners of his mouth tightened. “Indeed. A proper fool I would have looked, to prate of my affections for a woman who had gone so willingly into her very happy marriage.”
The injustice of it struck through her like fire. “Yes, God forbid! And God forbid you had decided to offer me your friendship instead. I suppose that, too, would have mortified your pride!”
“No.” He looked her squarely in the eye. “It would not have served either of us, would it?”
In the silence she fought to hold his regard—and to hold on to her anger, too. He spoke truly: they could not have been friends. Her husband would never have allowed it.
“And at any rate,” he said, “I was never your friend, Lady Towe. And you were never mine.” The ghost of a smile chased across his lips. “Never mine,” he repeated lightly. “Indeed.”
He gathered back the reins, pulling his horse’s head around. “Tell me,” he said in a different, more impersonal voice, “what you are doing in the woods.”
She tried to breathe past the knot in her throat. “I told you—”
“You have a twig in your hair,” he said. “A leaf stuck to your skirt. You’ve been climbing. Why?”
She gripped the basket harder. His harsh manner sent a flutter through her stomach: no longer did she speak with her former lover. Now she answered to his majesty’s agent. “I thought to collect fruit for the Plummers. Their boy’s leg is broken.”
He laughed, an unkind sound. “Do you think me an idiot, or are you become one yourself? A difficult question to judge.”
He spoke to her like a peasant caught poaching on the master’s lands. “Mind your tongue, sir!”
All at once he was in front of her, his hand closing like a vise on her elbow, his face like stone. “Mind your tongue,” he said. “I will admit to a small, godforsaken corner of my brain that remains intent on the notion of sparing you discomfort during the coming days. You may call it errant idiocy or you may call it nobility, but something within me does protest at the notion of consigning a woman I once loved to the flames. For that is what a woman suffers for treason, Leonora: only once in a very great while is Parliament kind enough to grant her the axe, and I assure you, there is no kindness in Whitehall at present for the children of the former Lord Hexton.”
He let her go. When she nearly stumbled, she realized she had been pulling, pulling at his grip, and her flesh ached where he had held her.
“No one compels you,” she managed. Her lips felt numb. “No one forces you to do this to us. Do not pretend you do not enjoy it! You have waited years to make my family pay! To make me pay!”
His smile was a terrible thing. “Pay for what, Nora?”
Her throat closed. Yes, pay for what? He had spoken of marriage so often, but never once had he approached her father for her hand. What cause for complaint did he have against her family for wedding her elsewhere?
“For the pleasure of it,” she spat. “For your wounded vanity at the way my brother beat you within an inch of your life.”
“I recall that,” he said in a bored voice. “He does an excellent job of thrashing a man who does not lift a hand to oppose him. But no, you misguess my motives. You, more than anyone on this earth, should understand what I mean when I say I am driven to this task by duty.”
Duty: that was the ideal she had defended, once, when refusing to run away with him. If my father forbids our marriage, I will go with you. But it is our duty to speak plainly to him first.
She felt something hot rising in her, scalding away everything but hate. How talented he was at drawing barb upon barb from a history that she had once viewed as the sweetest chapter of her life.
“If you wish to lock me in my rooms,” she said, “to keep me indoors against my will, do not expect me to play the jailer. Find the guts to turn the key yourself!”
“And so I will,” he said immediately, and held out his hand.
She looked at it wonderingly. He expected her to touch him now? To sit behind him on his mount and willingly be taken to her prison? “I would not put my hand in yours for all the king’s gold!”
Instantly she recognized it for a childish remark. At least it afforded her the satisfaction of seeing him scowl.
He swung back onto the horse. “Then your preference is for rough handling?” he asked from the height of his saddle. “Very well. You may try to run, if you like.”
She stood rigid. “I will deliver the basket first.”
“One of my men will deliver it.”
He was not going to concede. Her anger swelled. She set down her basket. “You will have to bully me, then.” She spread her arms, showing him her palms. “Come, give me bruises to show my maidservants. Let them see how the king’s justice is done.”
“Do not test me,” he said quietly. “I will give you something more than bruises. If I lay my hands on you, Nora, you will regret it extremely.”
“How like a man,” she cried, “to threaten with his fists! I have lived with a brute before, sir; I have nothing to fear from you that I have not survived before—”
Her voice broke as he leapt off his horse. She told herself she would not retreat, but as he stalked toward her, she betrayed herself with a quick step backward.
His grip closed on her shoulders and she tried to jerk free. “You are cowardly,” she spat, “to abuse a woman half your strength—”
His mouth came down over hers.
4
He backed her into a tree, not gently. Nothing in his manner asked for permission as his body pinned hers in place. This could not be happening.
It was happening. His hands slid through her hair, gripping her head as his tongue penetrated her mouth. The taste of his mouth was sweet, bilberries and sugared tea; he had broken his fast before riding out. She sagged into the rough bark, surprise giving way to alarm as she realized her own helplessness.
Worse yet, she was not numb to him, not indifferent at all. Her body remembered the way of it. His mouth on hers awoke hot sparks in her blood, currents that knocked her heart into a hard rhythm.
I cannot allow this.
But he held her motionless, taking all choices from her as his mouth stroked hers. She found herself fighting her own bodily instincts, against which her wits had no purchase. Her hands: what to do with her hands? They remembered gripping his shoulders, sliding down the bulk of his upper arms, cupping his elbows, feeling the hard flex of the muscles beneath his skin. They wanted to retrace that path.
Instead she made them into fists at her sides, but then her eyes disobeyed her. They closed and the world contracted to his heat against her, the stroke and play of his mouth, the fragrance of the apple blossoms and the touch of the sun.
She did not love him anymore! But it made no difference: the smell of his skin had not changed. It kindled old hungers; she was still on her feet but felt as though she were falling. His kiss was so skilled. She remembered now that rude revelation when Towe had first kissed her: she had known in a moment that there would never be a comparison to Adrian’s mouth. What could ever rival it? Her flesh felt riveted to his, alive to it, intuiting the muscled contours beneath his clothing, the dense breadth of his thighs, coming alive bit by bit. Her body had always known the language of his; she had learned it in the manner of a native recovering the mother tongue.
Panic twisted with a deepening hunger. The longer he ravished her with his kiss, the more she remembered of how it had been between them, how sweet and hot and drugging, and she grew weaker, years of accumulated, repressed longing breaking free to crush her all at once.
His hand slipped free of her hair. Her breath faltered as he traced the line of her cheek. His touch seemed . . . tender. Not a stranger’s. He touched her confidently, as though he remembered as clearly as she wha
t she had liked; and patiently, caressingly, as though this touch meant something more to him than lust.
His knuckles brushed down her throat, the lightest whisper over her collarbone, down to her bodice, the lace that veiled the tops of her breasts.
A groan slipped from her. Once, long ago, here in the shade of these trees, he had put his mouth to her nipples and sucked. She wanted him now to do so again.
As though he heard her thoughts, his mouth dipped to find the top of her breasts.
The note.
In another second he would find the note!
Dread commanded her. Her fist came up and slammed into his ear.
He released her as though scalded.
His lips were wet from hers, his eyes green as the leaves behind him. Locked in his hot look, she felt herself flush, then go cold. So close she had come to forgetting herself! If he had found the note . . .
Dear God. She was no girl any longer, and this man was not her tender lover. The only promises he made to her were threats.
“You must confuse me with someone else,” she said, her voice broken. “One of your London women.” There had been so many of them. They had seemed to keep him well entertained. “I have no interest”—oh God, what horrifying words to recognize as a lie—“no interest in playing whore to my jailkeep.”
Something flashed over his face—disbelief, she might have said. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He looked away, showing her his profile as he drew a long breath. A humorless smile twisted his lips as he looked back to her.
“Your tongue is too sharp to belong to a whore,” he said. “You would leave your clients bleeding.”
She tried to steady her breath. Her blood still hummed. “I doubt that. For a woman’s words to wound would require a man to listen, first!”
The moment the remark left her she recognized it as a mistake—a strange thing to reply to his insult.
His expression altered, becoming thoughtful. He studied her a long moment in which her face grew hot and she finally glanced away.
“Have men used you so roughly?” he asked. “Did I use you so roughly, Nora?”
She ground her teeth, her skin crawling. Why had she said such a thing? Did she wish him to comfort her? To assure her that he had listened, in those long ago days when they had spoken so freely together?
Worse yet, to know he was pondering her words, that he had given them enough thought to produce his own interpretation—this knowledge made her shudder from a strange mixture of humiliation and . . .
Pleasure. Could it be pleasure? God above, was she so desperate that she should be gratified for a moment of his neutral consideration?
She forced herself to speak—stiffly, hoarsely. “I will not be treated with disrespect by you. I will not allow you to—”
To treat me as you might any other woman.
Her eyes closed. There was the truth of it. When he had kissed her in years past, it had been with love. But now he turned so quickly from anger to kisses because these were simply the ways in which men handled a woman—any woman. Love had nothing to do with it.
Why, why did that wound her? What profit had she or any woman ever gained by a man’s love? Disgrace or marriage: these were the only outcomes. Neither had suited her.
Her silence discontented him. He made some noise of disgust and turned away to attend to his mount. She watched him with a misery that did not abate. His body was fashioned beautifully, tall and strong, with long legs muscled from sport. Men were not the only creatures governed by base appetites. He had reminded her so today.
If only his body had belonged to some other man—one who did not remind her, so strongly and so painfully, of all the dreams for herself that had not come true. Then she might have pondered disgrace with him. Her body could no longer betray her. Only her soul would be jeopardized by the pleasures of his embrace.
The prospect made her mouth go dry, and her misery pitch higher.
Not he. Never again.
He pivoted back and ran a disinterested glance down her body. “My mistake,” he said, as if his survey of her had convinced him of it. “I offer you my apologies, madam. It will not happen again.”
The fresh pain that lanced through her made her realize that she had been hoping for a different answer—a denial of the words she’d not even spoken aloud.
Those women in London were nothing to me, she had wanted him to say. You were different, Nora. You were special.
God, what a fool she was!
“Will you ride, or will you walk?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It makes no difference,” she said dully.
Adrian held the gelding to a walk as they exited the grove. Emerging from the dappled light into the blaze of the midday sun, he felt as though he were coming awake. The feeling was akin to a drinker’s regret after a night spent too deep in his cups. His head ached, and he raged at his own stupidity.
Nora—Lady Towe—rode pillion behind him, her shoulder nudging his spine with each stride. Her thigh pressed against his lower back, full and soft beneath her skirts.
A violent feeling leapt through him: loathing for her and for himself. There was something ridiculous and abominably comic about the bodily appetites. That this stubborn, prideful termagant could be his weakness—that her temper might spur him to passion—when he had forgotten a dozen clever-tongued beauties the morning after bedding them: was this a recipe for self-respect?
She had rejected him time and again. How many lessons would it take to educate him?
The horse loosed a snort and shook its head in protest. He relaxed his grip on the reins, fully in accord with his mount’s opinion of him.
When his majesty had put this task to him, he’d agreed at once. He knew the danger of failure, but not accepting held a greater risk. One wonders that he scruples to hunt Jacobites, his enemies would have whispered. Perhaps he still harbors an affinity for popish causes.
Since his childhood he had watched his family be harassed and punished for their faith. He had been forced abroad by laws that denied English Catholics an education, and in his years of absence, a younger brother and sister had come into the world and died as strangers to him. He had missed years of his family’s lives. For a time, after his return, he had managed to accept this. Trusting to the goodness of the world like all innocent fools, he had hoped for contentment.
But then Nora’s family had done him a favor. They had shown him the cost of his naïveté. They had taught him very neatly how a Catholic, no matter his station, might be abused and discounted with no fear for repercussions.
His own father, who had seemed like a giant to him as a boy, had counseled him to flee like a mouse in the night. You fool, he had spat. Think you we can afford such enemies? Know you nothing of the world? Our safety lies in keeping unto ourselves!
Adrian’s mind had changed then. He would not spend his life skulking for fear. He would not place his head in the yoke and meekly labor on, content to be abused and ignored as a popish idolater.
He would pursue power instead. He would amass enough of it to ensure that nobody ever again thought it safe to spit on the Ferrers.
The first step had been to conform to the High Church. He had waited until his father’s death to do it. His brother had reviled the decision; his mother had given him up for damned. He had held fast against tears and threats, with no moment of doubt, and he had profited by it greatly. Before her death, the queen had promised to see him made Captain of the Gentleman Pensioners—a position of no mean power, last held by the dukes of Beaufort and St. Albans.
Her death had foreclosed that future. But he was not dissuaded. Having gambled with his soul, he would not rest until he realized his ambition—and the matter of David Colville could be as helpful in that regard as dangerous. Bringing new shame upon the Colvilles would cement the friendships of those in Parliament who had brought about Lord Hexton’s downfall earlier this year. And then there was the simple fact that the Colvilles??
? land adjoined his own. Any disturbance of their making would provoke and trouble his own people sorely.
What reason to scruple, then? This task recommended itself in all aspects. Even had Adrian foreseen that she would be here, it would have made no difference to him. He had achieved indifference to her in London. Why not here, too?
But here was where he had loved her.
Here was where she came alive.
Encountering her in the woods, Adrian had seen beneath the mask that London life had forced upon her. Flushed, breathless, her black hair coming loose of its pinnings, she had stepped from behind the tree and his breath had gone.
In that moment, she had seemed a girl again. And for a fleeting length of heartbeats, he had felt . . . alive. Vibrantly, ferociously aware.
Womanish. She had called him womanish, and it blackly amused him to realize she was right. When he had come down from his horse, she had cringed in expectation of a blow. But striking her had never entered his mind.
Cold logic, he reminded himself.
It faltered in her presence.
Her voice came at his ear. “I must see to the running of the household, Lord Rivenham. I cannot do so from my chambers.”
How coolly she spoke after kissing! It showed how his memories could not be trusted. He remembered soft sighs, soft lips, warm hands, laughter.
He also remembered how such interludes had ended: furtively and hastily, in fear of discovery.
He had always been only a diversion to her—a temptation and distraction from the men whose opinions mattered most, and from the role she was determined to play for them. That had been made clear enough, the day he had arrived at Hodderby to ask for her hand, and found her father and brother waiting, forewarned by her—and forearmed.
He still wondered if she had watched from a window above as David Colville had tried his hand at murder.
She spoke again. “I must—”
“One of my men will attend you in your duties,” he said. “But your days of roaming are over.”
That seemed to satisfy her, for she made no further protest. The only noises now came from the buzzing of bees and the wind whispering through the tall grasses through which they rode. A butterfly danced across their path. Above the pink sandstone face of Hodderby, the sky was so brightly blue that it seemed to ripple and shiver.