SHE BACKED AWAY A FEW STEPS.

“The nickname…silver squire…is it because of how you look?” Emma blurted out chattily.

“How do I look?” Richard echoed with a smile.

“Your blond hair and gray eyes…”

She rattled off her observation so fast and quietly, she hoped he would dismiss it and change the subject, but his amusement increased.

He teased her very gently.

“You’ve looked at me long enough to notice

I have gray eyes. I’m amazed!”

Emma flushed in earnest.

All she’d intended was a little civil dialogue!

Mary Brendan was born in north London and lived there for nineteen years before marrying and migrating north into Hertfordshire. Always a keen reader of historical romances, she decided to try her hand at writing a Regency novel during her youngest son’s afternoon naps. What began as a lazy lunchtime indulgence soon developed into a highly enjoyable occupation. Presently working part-time in a local library, she dedicates hard-won leisure moments to antique browsing, keeping up with two lively sons and visiting the local Tandoori for a prawn damask and a glass or two of red wine….

The Silver Squire
Mary Brendan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

‘You little fool! You will speak to Mr Dashwood and what’s more you’ll show gratitude and a little grace in your address when you accept!’

Margaret Worthington’s thin fingers locked with surprising strength onto an elbow that was ceaselessly jerking to free itself.

‘You are wasting your time, Mama, and that of our…guest.” The epithet was spat through gritted white teeth. ‘I will not marry him, nor will I even deign to sit in the same room as that despicable roué.’ Emma Worthington picked at her mother’s clawed digits. The restraint was soon reapplied and Emma wearily sighed. ‘Please let go of my arm.’

‘I shall not! If you do not enter the drawing room of your own volition, you will enter from mine, or your papa’s…or perhaps even Mr Dashwood’s. He demands a biddable wife and one of unimpeachable virtue. Well, the latter condition you honestly meet, the former I own I’ve embellished upon. He might have to encourage that quality…And I’m sure he will now he’s laid down two thousand pounds on your father’s account.’

‘Two thousand pounds?’ The fury and disbelief in Emma’s tone rendered her voice little more than an outraged squeak. ‘You have allowed that…that vile man to purchase me for two thousand of his disgusting, blood-stained pounds?’

‘Don’t be so ridiculously melodramatic, Emma,’ Margaret Worthington hissed. ‘Besides, there should be another sixteen thousand of those disgusting notes to follow, when you are wed, and that should just about set your papa’s finances to rights. How can you be so stubborn and selfish? Are you so determined to rip a modest comfort from your doting parents in their twilight years? I tell you, it’s not to be borne!’

Taking abrupt advantage of her daughter’s momentary daze, Margaret managed to swing open the drawing-room door with one determined hand whilst the other propelled Emma, with an ungentle shove, into the room. Margaret reclined daintily against the mahogany panels; a sturdy, unseen hand was planted at her daughter’s back, preventing her retreat. It prodded her forward.

Emma tilted her chin, endeavoured to separate her grinding teeth and walked purposefully towards the gentleman who had gained his expensively shod feet at their ungainly arrival.

Tawny eyes of the most exquisite shade and oval shape met the dark gaze watching her. She politely extended pale, slender fingers to him and bobbed a curtsey. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Dashwood. Unfortunately, there appears to have been a misunderstanding between myself and my parents on the matter of your marriage proposal. I can only apologise to you for the confusion and beg you forgive us for detaining you.’

Emma just caught her mother’s shocked gasp from behind but she kept her sooty-fringed amber eyes on the gentleman balancing the tapered tips of her ivory fingers on the swarthy blunt pads of his. His dark head angled out of his courteous bow a little and assessing olive eyes arrowed sideways at her.

Something in that low-lidded gaze slew her attention to where they held bodily contact. She curbed a shudder as she noted a few wiry hairs sprouting from sturdy knuckles. Jerkily, her hand recoiled to the folds of her skirt.

Jarrett Dashwood gave a low, unamused chuckle as he straightened into stiff-backed stillness. A piercing glance sliced over the top of Emma’s honey-brown head to her mother’s stricken countenance. ‘I appear to be missing something here, Mrs Worthington,’ he began, so smoothly amused, it almost belied the fierce glint in his eyes. ‘On meeting with you and your husband earlier this week, I could have sworn you both gave me to believe your daughter was not only agreeable to my offer but “happy and honoured’ was, I recall, the phrase you used…? Perhaps you have another daughter? One who more resembles your description of a shy spinster of advanced years with an amenable nature…ah, yes, and a fondness for reading frivolous romantic fancies penned by Jane Austen.’ Barely pausing for breath, he drawled, ‘Well, to bastardise that good lady’s wise words: it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man with a good fortune must be in want of a wife: most assuredly so once a little of said fortune has been transferred to his insolvent prospective in-laws.’ With the same oiled ease, yet through lips that seemed motionless, came, ‘Where is your husband? Fetch him, if you please.’

‘My husband is unwell, sir.’ The words were faint and breathy. ‘I beg you will excuse him this afternoon. I beg, too, you will allow me a few moments alone with my daughter. She, too, I believe must be suffering the same malaise: confusion…muddled thoughts…’

‘Your husband’s usual complaint, then, Mrs Worthington? Your daughter, on the other hand, seems remarkably sober.’ Jarrett Dashwood’s silky sarcasm had Margaret squirming and blushing, then his disdainful olive gaze pointedly turned on Emma’s dowdy appearance.

Despite her resolution that she would not, Emma also flinched beneath his distaste. She snapped her face up, unwilling to be intimidated, even by a man whose reputation as a black-hearted roué was unsurpassed. Their eyes clashed before his heavy lids drooped lower and an insolent look slid over her thin frame.

Emma bridled, clenching her hands at her sides. Let him check her over. He was sure to shortly be congratulating himself on a lucky escape!

She had never been praised as a beauty, even in her heyday nine years ago. When launched into society at eighteen she had found the superficial friendships and earnest rivalry between debutantes competing for male attention degrading and boring. She had never preened and primped at her appearance as other young ladies did, curling and rougeing and poring over the latest Paris fashions, even when her mother fair frothed at the mouth insisting that she did.

With her unusual fawn hair and eyes, creamy complexion and sculpted elfin features, she was never going to be a ‘rage’. There was nothing extreme enough in her looks and colouring. She was only fair to middling in every way, as her mother had dispiritedly pointed out on numerous occasions. If only, her mother sighed, she were a petite, pink-cheeked blonde like Rosalie Travis who had had slavish gentlemen trailing in her wake for some twelve months before she’d settled on a Marquis; or she resembled Jane Sweetman, a tall, porcelain-complexioned redhead, who attracted beaus as bees to acacia. For her own part, Emma praised the raven-haired, grey-eyed perfection of her dearest friend, Victoria Hardinge.

Victoria was now Viscountess Courtenay, married to a man of her choosing, a man she loved, a man who adored her in return. And that was what Emma wanted. She was determined to settle for nothing less. And since the only man she had ever wanted to beguile had been totally impoverished, totally unsuitable and totally obsessed with someone else she had become reconciled to her quiet life in Cheapside, socialising on the fringes of polite society with a few sedate friends of similar tastes and circumstances. And she had believed that her parents had reconciled themselves to allowing her that simple, unassuming existence.

For affection and romance, Emma fantasised of fictional heroes: they were so much more reliable in providing her requisite perfectly happy ending.

Aware of Jarrett Dashwood jerking her a wooden bow, she returned a cursory bob, then he strode past and was speaking in a driven undertone to her mother by the door. Emma spun on her heel to watch. Her stomach tumbled as her mother’s heightened colour seeped away, leaving her pasty-faced. The woman gestured in feeble apology, looking close to tears, and Emma’s eyes closed in consternation.

She must not be browbeaten! she exhorted herself. She deserved better! Marriage to a man such as this would destroy her. The very idea was galling when she knew she could have attracted a worthier gentleman had she, in her prime, taken pains to court attention and flirt as other debutantes did. She had rebuffed several adequate suitors because she felt incapable of loving them. With arrogant idealism, she had determined to settle for nothing less than absolute bliss.

A few paying court had been pleasant enough and would have shown her kindness and respect. A sharp stab of guilt and regret…and ultimate understanding…pierced her. She now knew why her mother had ceaselessly nagged about security and status and marriage. It had been to protect her only child from a time such as this, when the only thing of value her irresponsible husband had left was his daughter.

Emma’s tawny gaze raked over the side of the dark profile presented to her. Oh, Jarrett Dashwood was handsome enough in his way, if rather swarthy of countenance. His black hair was glossy and neatly styled. He was of medium height and a little stocky but his shoulder breadth was derived from muscular strength rather than portliness. His nose was a little sharp and hooked and his mouth too sensually fleshy, but overall he held the appearance of a dignified gentleman in his thirties. No stranger would have guessed that his wealth had come from plantation crops produced with barbaric slaving or that nearer to home he had a reputation as an insatiable lecher whom, gossip had it, beat inept mistresses. Even within the small, staid circle in which she socialised, Dashwood’s meanness, his ruthlessness, his wealth were discussed with terrified curiosity and censure.

She had been reared with the consequences of her father’s drunken antics, listening to her mother’s sibilant stricture as yet another pile of merchants’ bills went unpaid. Yet always they had survived. A business deal came good, a wager turned up trumps, a sympathetic friend loaned money at a good rate. Teetering on the brink of disaster, they had always managed to sidestep the abyss and find solid ground again.

To her shame, she realised she, too, had become complacent. When recent arguments between her parents had become exceptionally heated, she had simply retreated to the sanctuary of her room and a book. When meals had become meagre, she’d eaten less. When her maid had been dispensed with last month she had sadly bidden Rosie farewell with a small gift and tended to her own needs. Part of her had known disaster was again threatening but subconsciously she had trusted fate would again make it right.

Two nights ago when her parents had sent for her to join them in the parlour, she’d realised Lady Luck had finally deserted them. Her papa would not meet her eyes. Her mother had fidgeted ceaselessly on the chair-edge, and their unease had chilled her skin. Yet never had she imagined they would sacrifice her so callously in a bid to buy her father’s extravagance another reprieve.

A marriage must be made, her mother had firmly decreed, while her papa had mumbled incoherent assent and blotted at his face with his handkerchief. Nothing Emma had suggested about further economies or a little time to think had made the slightest difference. And now she knew why: the marriage contract was already sealed and money had changed hands.

The sound of the door cracking closed as Jarrett Dashwood left started Emma from her miserable memories.

‘Well, miss, you’ve done your work well!’ was hissed shrilly at her. ‘Do you know what awaits us all now? Your spurned suitor has just promised your father an indefinite sojourn in the Fleet…and for us an indefinite sojourn in the nearest gutter. We are ruined…finished!’

‘Mama, how could you consider turning me over to such an odious individual?’ was Emma’s broken, soft rejoinder. ‘A marriage I would have agreed to. But you must allow me a man of my own choosing: someone I can at least respect, if not love. You know of Dashwood’s reputation…assuredly better than I. He is reviled as a slave-master…and a whore-master. Yet you would force me to live my remaining years with him?’

‘Some of the noblest, richest families in the land are built out of Jamaica, and have philanderers at their head. Are you to find fault with all of those too?’ her mother impatiently snapped. ‘You quibble unnecessarily, Emma!’

Margaret’s tone honeyed persuasively. ‘As his wife you would enjoy a life of pampered luxury. He would treat you well: after all, we all know how greatly he believes he has appearances to keep. Why do you think such a man would settle on purchasing himself a sedate spinster? He wants her virtue and gentility and the assurance she is never likely to humiliate him by shamelessly gadding about. Once you had provided his required heir or two, what more use would he make of you? A man so rich has his pick of beautiful courtesans to quench his lust.’ A derisive, summarising stare preceded, ‘You are fortunate to get any offers when you have so little to recommend you. You’re too thin, you’re too old—despite the fact you look like a gauche adolescent with your scrubbed complexion and buttoned-up gown. Even your hair has lost its rich hue as you’ve aged…your eyes too. I swear you’re now all tea when once you were chocolate. Your musical accomplishments, I suppose, are adequate…’ she allowed on a sniff.

‘I hardly think Jarrett Dashwood is to be swayed to stay home by cosy musical evenings about the pianoforte, Mama,’ Emma mentioned on a sour laugh.

‘How fortunate for you! In his absence, you could nestle into domesticity with a child on your lap and one of those soppy romantic novels in your hand.’

An impatient sigh escaped Emma at the ridiculously wholesome imagery. ‘It might not be all so bleak for us, Mama,’ she cajoled. ‘You are right—Mr Dashwood does covet status and respectability. He will never sue Papa for fraud. Papa is known to be ailing. Dashwood would hate being seen as vindictive enough to dun a sick man without conceding him time to make amends. He will allow us a while to repay him…you’ll see.’ Warming to her theme, she enthused, ‘I can work. I am educated well enough to be a governess…or a companion to a wealthy lady…or a housekeeper…’

‘Housekeeper?’ her mother choked, outraged. ‘You have been gently reared! The success of your twenty-fourth-birthday ball was the talk of the ton for months afterwards. Had you deported yourself more…more becomingly to the gentlemen present that evening, you would have been wed these past three years or more and no longer draining us with the expense of your keep.’

As though unable to contain her fury or bitterness, Margaret’s lips and eyes narrowed in exasperation. She approached her daughter on wobbly, stiff legs in the manner of a mechanised rickety toy. As she passed a side-table something caught a glaring eye and she grabbed up the leather-bound volume and looked at it with intense loathing. ‘All this ridiculous daydreaming you do of love and heroes and happy endings…it is a shameful indulgence and not to be borne, Emma.’ She snorted a sour laugh. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ she parodied in a shaking voice, ‘that a wilful, selfish daughter of seven and twenty will prove to be a tiresome burden on her parents. Her presence should no longer be tolerated!’ The volume of Jane Austen’s work was skimmed abruptly towards her, and with chance accuracy smacked a hefty blow on a slender shoulder.

With a moan of recalled pain, Emma Worthington pushed herself upright in bed, her breathing fast and erratic and a pale hand instinctively seeking the tender bruise below her collarbone. Her head drooped forward, thick tan hair coating the sides of her face, as she waited for the pounding of her heart to steady and the vividness of the dream to recede a little.

A hand fumbled out to the unfamiliar table at the side of the alien bed and sought the candle, drawing it close to gain its weak, guttering light. She held it aloft in an unsteady hand. As she shook back tresses from her blanching face, wide, darting eyes surveyed the moon-striped tavern chamber, every gloomy nook scoured for spooks and intruders. But she knew it was nothing other than inner demons that had startled her awake.

The dream had so sharply, so accurately retraced events of two days ago that she might have been back in the drawing room of Rosemary House, facing her mother’s spite and Jarrett Dashwood’s menacing presence.

She drew her knees up close to her body, her slender arms hugged about them for warmth and comfort and she laid a cold shivering cheek atop them. A bar of silver light bathed her bent head as the moon again escaped scudding cloud. It shifted to incorporate her entwined fingers and she stretched them towards the pearlescence. Replacing the candle on the table, she quit the hard bed and padded softly over cold wood to the small leaded window.

A velvet night sky was visible through a net of shimmering nimbus. Her gaze swept the courtyard below. Immediately she shrank back. Her eyes had, by chance, located a courting couple by an outbuilding, their faces and bodies fused together. Compelled by an uncontrollable fascination, Emma slipped back, seeking again the shadowy outline of a tall man and a woman wedged between his sturdy body and the stable brickwork. She whirled away, her face stinging with hot self-disgust, and scrambled back into bed.

Shifting backwards against the crude wooden headboard, she distractedly picked up her book with one hand and the candle with the other. After a few minutes of mindless reading, she accepted that balancing the thin candle-flame this way and that to try and illuminate the pages was a pointless task. Her eyes were strained from deciphering print which seemed to merge into shapes like entwining lovers. Abruptly, she replaced the book and candle on the table and slowly sank down into the bed with a weary sigh.

Turning on her side, she stared wide-eyed and sightless at the perfect full moon as it emerged from cloud. She thought of Matthew and wistfully smiled as she wondered how he would react to her unexpected arrival; after all, they had seen nothing of each other for two years and she was still awaiting a reply to the last letter she had sent to him some six months ago now.

Perhaps it had been undelivered… ‘Please God, don’t let him have moved away,’ she whispered at the silver orb. Doubt and guilt trembled through her as she thought of her parents in Cheapside. Were they anxious? Furious? Remorseful? She should have left a proper note…not just a few lines that begged them not to worry…or to try and find her.

She twisted restlessly on the soft mattress, frowning at shadows on the ceiling, while thinking of unrequited love and a man who had buried his heart with his first wife and of whether she would ever come to love step-children.

‘Not been bit by the bed bugs, I ‘opes,’ the young man said. ‘I seen folks wi’ legs swole up an’ as red as can be from the nasty blighters…’

‘No, I’m quite well, thank you. Just a little tired still.’ Emma responded to his query as to whether she had slept well. ‘You seem very busy today.’ A look through the window indicated the bustling courtyard.

The young potman inclined his dark head to conspiratorially impart, ‘Quality wi’ a queer name turned up late last night. His nibs be travelling on early wiv ‘is family to Bath, so I ‘eard. Get you anythin’ else from the kitchens?’ he offered cheerily, stacking Emma’s plate and mug neatly together.

Emma returned him a smiling shake of the head. He swaggered off with a lewd wink for a girl sluicing tankards, and it was then that Emma, with pinking cheeks, recognised the young couple she had seen through her window.

Just as the sun was gilding the horizon, she had given up hope of sleep and made her way downstairs and into a small taproom. The cheerful landlady had served up tea and buttered crumpets, refusing to take payment, while patting at Emma’s hand in such a knowing, sympathetic way, Emma had swallowed her protestations and pocketed her coins. She had savoured the delicious crumpets as she viewed unfamiliar sun-dappled countryside through dusty square panes, and pondered the woman’s unexpected generosity. Was her unfortunate predicament so obvious? Was there something about her demeanour which branded her an impecunious spinster absconding from mercenary parents and a detested suitor? Or was the landlady simply a kind soul and, having been in the company of very few of those lately, she’d become cynical?

Collecting her carpet bag from beneath the rustic oak table, she made her way out into the fresh September morning to await the arrival of the coach and newly shod horses. She hoped the poor beast that had forced them to overnight at the Fallow Buck would be allowed to rest—one of its front legs had looked badly swollen as though more than just a blacksmith’s skills might be needed for it to continue pulling the cumbersome coach.

She was now keen to be travelling on. Even if her mother had at first dismissed her absence at mealtimes as a fit of sulks in her room, she surely would, by now, have found the brief note she had left on her dresser.

She doubted they would search for her. They had neither the resources nor, she imagined, the inclination to send investigators after her. She was, after all, a spinster of twenty-seven, not a child in need of protection. Besides, her mother had declared her presence was no longer to be borne. Far from arousing anxieties, the reverse might be true, and her removal from Rosemary House deemed a relief. How they dealt with the odious Mr Dashwood and his recompense was their own concern. She would not dwell on it…nor feel guilty! The predicament was not of her making!

September morning mist was wreathed about the low brick and wood stables of the Fallow Buck posting house and with quiet appreciation she lingered to watch a spider, stealthy on the edge of its dew-beaded gossamer web.

As she strolled to the perimeter of the dusty gravel courtyard, her wide golden gaze roamed the recently harvested cornfields. Even denuded, they had a spare barren beauty to her unaccustomed town eye. She breathed deeply of the cool morning air, now mingling with a warm aroma of baking bread wafting from the kitchens, feeling unaccountably optimistic and uplifted. Sighing contentedly, she turned from the fresh, sun-dappled vista back towards the tavern.

Her confident step forward faltered, ground into gravel, halting her so abruptly she stumbled. Yet her eyes never relinquished the man. Something in his height, his breadth of shoulder and confident stature was unnervingly familiar, yet, try as she might, in those few, breathless seconds, she couldn’t recall why. But whatever association it was produced an odd, terrified exhilaration that knotted her stomach and started her heart hammering.

Her eyes flicked over immaculate dark clothes to a silver-blond head, so unusual a shade that it ought, immediately, to have solved the mystery.

He was a wealthy, influential gentleman; that much was apparent from his attire and bearing. She was watching, analysing him with such rapt attention that she hadn’t immediately noticed the child approaching. The boy clung to long, charcoal-grey legs and was immediately swung into his arms. She had sight of his profile now. His cheekbone and jaw were lean and angular and deeply tanned…an exotic contrast with his lengthy white-blond hair. He laughed at the boy in his arms, turning with him towards her…

Emma instinctively dipped her head and tilted her bonnet over her face before swivelling towards the fields she had recently admired.

Don’t be so idiotic! she silently berated herself as she tried to steady the frantic pulse leaping in her throat. He was a stranger…probably a foreigner, judging by his sun-bronzed appearance. She immediately recalled the potman telling her of a nobleman with a queer name who had arrived late last night and was travelling with his family to Bath.

He was a French count, she dreamily decided. And the fact he seemed familiar was no doubt due to him resembling some romantic character in a novel she had read. Cocking her head to one side, she crossed her arms about her middle and sifted through plots and people, searching for a tall blond hero of devastating good looks. Possibly he was the villain, she mused, recalling how oddly apprehensive the sight of him had made her feel.

Long oval fingernails scored deep ridges vertically, horizontally, into bronzed skin and, with an impatient grunt, the man rolled them both sideways plunging hard and fast, at the same time unlocking gripping, silky legs from about his muscular brown thighs.

He ignored her frustrated squeal as she tried to drag his hips back to hers with her calves and make him shed his seed within her. With an easy shove he tipped her away onto her back and within seconds was seating himself on the edge of the tumbled bed. Tanned fingers swept across his shoulder and came away red and sticky. He looked dispassionately at the blood. ‘Trim those talons, sweet…’ he ordered with very little inflexion, yet the quiet, casual words brought her blonde head up off the pillow and she caught her full lower lip between small teeth.

Yvette Dubois narrowed blue eyes on angry weals tracking skin that looked like cold bronze and felt like warm satin. ‘I can’t ‘elp it, chéri,’ she purred breathlessly. ‘You excite the wildcat in me, you know that. ‘Ow can I be thinking and sensible at such a time?’ She pouted at his broad shoulders, trailed a moist, apologetic kiss across the welts and then, still ignored, she huffed and flung herself back onto the sheets.

He picked up a tumbler, downing the few remaining inches of cognac in a swallow. ‘A wildcat with sheathed claws is fine,’ he commented drily, collecting his breeches from the floor in a fluid movement as he stood.

‘Why won’t you give me all of you?’ she husked at him, casually lowering the sheet seductively away from her breasts as he finally turned to look at her. She peeked up through dusky lashes into cool silver eyes and knew he understood her perfectly.

‘A swollen belly and sagging breasts?’ he mused with ironic deliberation. ‘I think I prefer you this way, Yvette.’ His grey gaze swept down her curvaceous figure to where the sheet just exposed a tantalising rosy nipple.

Aware of his observation, she stretched sinuously, arms raised above her head. Small fingers clenched on the bedhead, making the thrusting perfection of her full, firm breasts impossible to ignore and openly available to him.

A tanned hand came out, fondling first one then the other until she was arching and moaning, her hands clenching rigidly on the brass bedstead. He choked a laugh, stepped into his breeches and was buttoning them by the time he reached the window and stood staring out.

‘Richard!’ Yvette furiously screeched from the bed. “Ow can you go now? I want you…’

‘Cut your nails…’ he mentioned impartially as he drew a cheroot from his pocket, lit it, and stood staring absently into the dusk. He sensed he was irritated and that irritated him further for there was no reason to be.

It was nothing to do with Yvette Dubois or her savage passion or her transparently mercenary desire to make him impregnate her so she’d have a lasting role in his life. She was wasting her time on all counts: he had no desire for an enduring liaison or for children. He slanted a glance at her, a quirk of a smile softening his finely chiselled narrow mouth as he noticed how she immediately perked up with his attention.

A long blonde ringlet was slowly worked about a small finger and she rolled onto her back, impatiently kicking away the tangling sheet from her shapely long legs so the dark blonde curls between her thighs were displayed.

She was very good, very adept: the pulse in his loins was picking up tempo already, just as she was calculating it would. He drew deeply on the cheroot and reached for his shirt on the chair. If he hadn’t promised to return to Silverdale in time for supper with his visiting relations, he probably would have stayed longer and let her earn her keep.

The irritation niggling at him intensified with that callous thought and he raked five brown fingers absently through his thick white-blond hair, unwilling to actually acknowledge that something so insignificant…so idiotic could disturb him so.

His mind returned to the Fallow Buck posting house and the image of a dowdily dressed woman standing with her back to him. There was nothing about her that could have possibly interested him. On first glance he would have guessed her to be perhaps a high-ranking servant—a governess or housekeeper travelling alone on business. What irked him was the unshakeable notion that, despite seeing nothing of her apart from an unattractive bonnet and dismal brown travelling cloak, he felt he knew her.

He was certain she had concealed her face just as he’d turned towards her, and that compounded the mystery. He’d been curious enough at the time to start walking towards her but had managed only a pace or two when his brother had distracted him to settle the landlord’s bill. On returning to the courtyard, the Bath post was just pulling out into the road and he’d just known the woman was on it. He’d shrugged and walked away and forgotten it…for all of a few hours. Now, for some insane reason, not having crossed to the fields to look at her was a major aggravation and the sheer farce of it was killing him.

‘I don’t want you to go yet. You leave me too much…too soon. It’s not fair…’ was called softly from behind, breaking into his reverie.

Even white teeth clenched on the cheroot and he drew on it steadily, but he turned towards her with a smile. ‘So what do you intend to do about that?’

Yvette swung long legs off the bed and posed with deliberate provocation on the edge. Her throat curved archly, her blonde head tilted as she viewed him between barely parted porcelain lids. Pushing herself slowly upright, she undulated towards him, each sinuous step swaying her pouting breasts. ‘I think I shall make you change your mind about leaving…about a lot of things…’ she purred as she came right up against him and grazed her naked belly against the hard proof of his full attention. A long fingernail trailed up his thigh, scoring into fine cloth as it neared his groin.

He caught at her hand inches from its target, brought her palm to his lips and dropped a brief kiss on it. Turning her away, he gave her a gentle push towards the bed. ‘I have to go…’

‘Business…business…all the time business,’ she flung at him, whirling back in a cloud of shining blonde hair. ‘I am sick with this business all of the while,’ she complained, her accent thickening in her rage. ‘I am alone too much. I need some company…I need you…’

‘You can’t have me, Yvette. Understand that,’ he said with slow deliberation so that she digested all his meaning, then endorsed it with a smile that didn’t warm his metallic eyes. ‘If you’re lonely, get yourself a companion,’ he added carelessly as he moved past her and towards the door.

‘What…?’ she screeched. ‘How shall I? A friend just drops from the sky?’

‘Advertise in the Herald…’ he suggested with an infuriating smile as he closed the door behind him.

Chapter Two

With a deep, inspiriting breath, Emma took another determined peek around the hazel hedge.

The dilapidated exterior of weatherbeaten boarding and slipping roof tiles had her optimism again ebbing. The cottage looked deserted. Perhaps he had moved away. Please no, don’t let that be! she silently prayed. The London post was already lost to view as the road dipped below the shadow-racing field, and would be well on the way to Bath, some two miles further on.

She had been dropped in the village of Oakdene and had wandered the narrow, rut-scored lanes looking for Nonsuch Cottage with many a villager’s curious stare following her. A bramble embedding in her skirt had quite literally brought her stumbling upon what she sought: it was an aptly named little place, she smilingly realised as her honey gaze weaved past the crude wooden name-plate on the gate, through foxgloves and scarlet roses entwined with bellbind and cow parsley, and on to the crooked door.

Gently reared behind the graceful brick façade of Rosemary House in Cheapside, she had hardly realised that such ram-shackle-looking dwellings existed, let alone expected ever to enter one. As for gardening, nurturing delicate hothouse blooms had been her only experience of the demands of horticulture. The association of a conservatory and exotic plants and happier days with friends evoked a flash of memory, puzzling and niggling at the periphery of her consciousness. She gave it barely a further moment’s concentration before again focussing on the grimy whitewash of the cottage.

On closer inspection it seemed structurally sound. In fact, she decided, it held a definite rustic charm. The interior of the building might be quite neat and tidy; one couldn’t expect a widowed gentleman of straitened means to bother about weeds when he had to attend to the needs of his small children. Curtains were visible at dusty windows high under the eaves, she gladly noted, yet it was so quiet it could have been deserted.

As though to settle that anxiety a female voice shrieked out something unintelligible; there followed a child’s thin wailing. So the property was inhabited, and by a Billingsgate fishwife by the sound of it! A sudden awful suspicion stopped her heart, and she wondered why it had never occurred to her earlier: had Matthew not replied to her letter of six months ago because he had remarried? Before she could torture herself further on the subject, the white-boarded cottage door was flung open. A small mongrel dog hurtled, whining, close to Emma’s skirts then scampered out into the lane.

‘Blasted cur!’ the young woman barked, and was about to slam the door shut when she noticed Emma. Slack-mouthed surprise was soon replaced by a stony expression. ‘Whatever you be sellin’, we don’t want none. Be off with you. We’ve got Bibles aplenty ‘n sermons ‘n pills ‘n potions…’

Emma wasn’t sure whether to laugh or display outrage that this young woman’s first impression of her was as some sort of pedlar! Was her appearance really so drab that she was deemed to be touting from door to door? Her own impression now of this young woman was that she wasn’t Matthew’s wife but his housekeeper, a judgement backed by her rough local dialect and faded black uniform.

Aware of the woman still staring aggressively, Emma finally detached herself from the bramble with a tear to her skirt, a prick to her finger and a spattering of mauve berry juice to her palm. Drawing herself up to her full height, her slender shoulders back, and topaz eyes glass-cool, she haughtily informed the woman, ‘I have just alighted from the London stage and would like to speak to Mr Cavendish. Is he at home?’

Emma’s unexpectedly refined accent had the woman’s jaw dropping again and a keen-eyed scrutiny slipping over her from serviceable tan bonnet to dusty, sturdy shoes.

‘Close that blasted door, will you, Maisie? The draught is taking these papers all over the desk…’ was bellowed from within.

‘Matthew…’ Emma whispered to herself at the sound of that well-modulated, if deeply irritated tone. But the relief she was sure would drench her at the first sight or sound of him was slow in coming. ‘I should like to speak to Mr Cavendish,’ she repeated firmly, with a nod at the door.

‘Wait there,’ the woman snapped discourteously, dark eyes skimming over Emma’s modest attire, then the door was shut in her face. Within what seemed a mere second a tall man was stepping over the threshhold onto the grass-sprouting cobbled pathway. A hand was wiped about his bristly chin and across his eyes as though he was fatigued.

‘Emma…?’ Matthew Cavendish murmured disbelievingly as his fingers pushed a tangle of brown hair back from his brow for a better view of her. A white grin split his shady jaw and, with a cursory straightening of his shirt-cuffs and waistcoat, he was rushing towards her.

‘Emma! How wonderful to see you!’ He gripped her by the shoulders and warm hazel eyes smiled down into her upturned, uncertain face. ‘Why didn’t you send word you were coming? Oh, I’m so sorry…come inside…please. What an oaf you must think me, leaving you planted amongst the weeds! As you can see,’ he added ruefully, gesturing at snaggled greenery, ‘tending the roses isn’t a fond pastime.’ After drawing one of her arms through his they proceeded out of breezy late summer sunlight into the cool, dim interior of the cottage.

‘Maisie will fetch some tea,’ he directed at the woman while helping Emma to slip out of her cumbersome cloak.

Emma’s eyes flicked to the small brunette and noted an odd, insubordinate stare arrow from servant to master. Then, with a twitch of her faded black serge, Maisie was gone.

After a brief pause during which only polite smiles passed between them, there was,

‘I must apologise…’

‘I should explain…’

They had spoken together and simultaneously laughed, embarrassed, too.

‘You first,’ Matthew invited, ushering Emma towards a comfortable-looking chintz-covered fireside chair and pressing her into it. As he leaned towards her and gripped her hands, displaying his pleasure at seeing her, a recognisable sweetish aroma assailed her nostrils. She had too often been about her intoxicated papa not to instantly recognise the smell of strong alcohol about someone’s person. There was a hint of red rimming his eyes too, she noted, with a hesitant smile up into Matthew’s undoubtedly hung-over face.

‘I was about to say, Matthew, I must apologise for visiting you without proper warning. But I had no time to write, or wait for your reply.’ She gave him a wry look. ‘After all, it has been six months since last I wrote and still, daily, I expect your letter…’

Throughout the uncomfortably sultry atmosphere in the coach jolting its way to this village, all that had dominated her mind was Matthew: how she longed to unburden herself to him, beg him to reinstate his marriage proposal of five years ago. Now, oddly, the desperation had evaporated. What remained was simple relief that she had distanced herself from Jarrett Dashwood.

‘You must rest awhile after your journey, then dine with us,’ Matthew said with an emphatic squeeze at her small hands within his.

Emma smiled her thanks; she was hungry; she was also grateful that Matthew was exercising tactful restraint. He had obviously sensed she needed a little time to compose herself before revealing the catastrophe that had forced her to break all codes of etiquette and arrive uninvited and unchaperoned at the home of an unwed man. Acknowledging that impropriety brought another to her attention: remaining with Matthew overnight as his guest, even if he had a female servant and children, was completely out of the question. She would need to find lodgings.

Emma glided small, unobtrusive glances at him as she looked about the untidy small parlour. Oh, he still appealed to her. He hadn’t aged. But his unruly hair was tangled, his skin tone unhealthy and his attire dishevelled.

‘I’ll apologise for my appearance.’ He shrewdly anticipated the reason for her eyes lingering on his unshaven jaw. A sheepish smile preceded, ‘I attended a debate at the village hall last night. It was after midnight when I found my bed.’ He made a determined effort to neaten his hair and clothes with slightly vibrating hands.

‘Was it a literary debate?’ Emma asked quite interestedly.

‘Er…no,’ Matthew laughed. ‘Nothing quite so highbrow, I’m afraid, my blue-stocking Emma. It concerned the siting of a new water pump in the village and how division of the cost is to be made between tenants. Of course, once universal agreement was reached, we had to drink to it…’

‘Of course,’ Emma smiled, pleased and relieved that such an amusingly improbable incident was responsible for his hangover. ‘And as the pump is not yet operative you were forced to settle for whisky rather than water.’

Matthew laughed. ‘That’s my Emma,’ he said, with a gentle touch at her face. ‘Actually, the toast was with ill-gotten geneva,’ he revealed, sliding a finger to cover her lips.

Emma sensed her heartbeat quickening as their eyes held. She smiled against the light caress, then asked quickly, ‘And how are your children? I believe I’ve already had a quick brush with your little dog.’

‘Ah, Trixie…’ Matthew muttered with a laugh. ‘I heard Maisie chiding Rachel for allowing the dog back onto her bed. She’s a rapscallion…’

‘Your dog, your daughter, or your servant?’ Emma asked with a laugh.

‘All three at times…but thankfully not usually together,’ he answered, with a rueful shake of the head.

Their tea arrived and Maisie poured and distributed it all the while sending brooding glances at them both. Reproof, almost warning was apparent in Matthew’s glassy hazel eyes as he and Maisie exchanged a look before she quit the parlour.

‘My apologies for Maisie keeping you on the path,’ Matthew smoothly said. ‘She is a little wary of strangers. But she’s a good girl…’

Emma’s tawny head turned, alert to a muffled noise…a snort of humour or anger from the hallway. Matthew gave no sign he’d heard yet, passing idly by the door, he pressed it firmly shut.

‘Well, Emma,’ Matthew said with a distracting smile. ‘Drink up your tea for there are things to be taken care of: the children above stairs, the dinner, but most importantly, you…’

‘Well, do you think Rachel and Toby much grown?’

‘Indeed. I should never have recognised either of them,’ Emma truthfully admitted. Then, finding nothing positive to add, fell silent again. She gathered her cloak about her as the breeze stiffened and turned her head to gaze out over darkening hedgerows and fields.

The dogcart shuddered and swayed over potholes as they travelled on towards Bath, and her evening’s lodgings. Matthew had not quibbled when, over dinner, she’d informed him that she must seek a place to stay. He had simply asked, quite gravely, whether she had the means to pay for her board. Learning that she did had seemed to relieve him.

Mrs Keene’s rooms in Lower Place, on the outskirts of Bath, were the most fitting place for a gentlewoman to overnight, he had then decisively informed her. But now, as they journeyed on in amicable quiet, she knew Matthew was hoping for some complimentary comment about Rachel and Toby. Yet, on meeting the children again today, Emma had been surprised and disappointed.

Rachel was now nine years old and Toby seven and they no longer bore any resemblance to the bonny children she recalled meeting two years ago.

One mild autumn afternoon the Cavendish family had joined her in Hyde Park for a last stroll together before they quit London for Bath. She and Matthew had exchanged good wishes, reluctant farewells and promises to write, while two fair-haired children, neatly dressed in navy blue clothes, had refused to scrunch through the glorious red-gold carpet underfoot as others were, and stood quiet and solemn. On cue, they had politely shaken her hand before their father led them away.

Today, she had uneasily watched Matthew half-heartedly chiding two grubby-faced urchins for failing to wash or neaten their attire before they sat down to dine with their guest. Reluctantly, almost surlily, they had stamped away to be returned by Maisie some few minutes later in a slightly improved state.

Emma had freshened herself for dinner in a small upstairs chamber, thanking Maisie for the washing water and cloth and receiving little more than a terse grunt for her courtesy.

The meal, prepared by Matthew’s cook—an elderly widow who lived but a few yards along the lane, he had conversationally told her as they ate—had been plentiful and delicious. Roast mutton and veal and a boiled chicken had joined dishes of steaming vegetables and sweet blackcurrant tarts on the dining table. Wine had been set out and although Matthew had poured a glass for both Emma and himself, his own goblet had remained virtually untouched—something Emma had found inordinately reassuring.

Despite Emma’s attempts to talk to the children they’d seemed reluctant to cease chewing for the few moments a response would take. On asking about their lessons, Rachel had informed her with a grimace that Miss Peters at the Vicarage tutored them. As for a friendly enquiry on special aptitudes, neither had given the matter much thought before admitting to knowing of none.

Their fond father had then deemed them too modest and defended their ignorance with recalled good marks in English or arithmetic. But with lowered heads they’d simply set enthusiastically about their meals with an air of concentration that precluded further questions or table manners.

The elderly dun mare pulling Matthew’s dogcart stumbled into a rut, throwing them together. Matthew steadied Emma with a sturdy hand, then raised her slender fingers, touching his lips briefly to them. ‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said softly.

It was his tactful way of saying that an explanation for her presence was long overdue, she realised. ‘I have quit London to avoid being married to a detestable man,’ she informed him simply, gazing over a flat, dusky vista. Instinctively her fingers tightened about his, at the oblique reference to Jarrett Dashwood, as though drawing from his strength.

‘I guessed it to be something like that,’ Matthew said softly, reining back so that the mare slowed its steady trot.

Emma looked at her fragile hand resting in his large fingers. ‘My parents have arranged for me to wed someone in the hope he will set to right my father’s debts. The man is a notorious blackguard.’ Her voice shook with strengthening outrage. ‘I had never believed they would act so brutally. The matter was concluded before I had even a hint of it. I will have none of their plots. They have treated me shabbily…abominably…’

‘They must be in grave trouble to do so, Emma, I’m sure.’ His thumb smoothed gently at her wrist. ‘I’m very happy and flattered that you felt you could turn to me for support.’ His voice became husky. ‘Does this mean that you would now reconsider my offer of marriage?’

The air between them seemed to solidify. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She had fled Rosemary House late at night instinctively to seek him and these were the words she had prayed he would utter. She heard herself say, ‘I need time to think, Matthew. I’m confused…plagued by ambivalence. I feel guilty for abandoning my parents, yet, at times, I’m sure I despise them almost as much as Jarrett Dashwood.’ Even with the lowering dusk, Emma could discern Matthew’s abrupt pallor. The cart jolted as he reflexively tightened his grip on the reins and the mare pranced.

‘Dashwood? Dashwood wants to marry you?’

The disbelief was plain and made Emma smile a trifle wryly. ‘He has expressed a desire for a sedate, mature spinster to wed. She must be biddable and, I’ve no doubt, so grateful to attain the marital state, she will not challenge him about any of his disgusting goings-on. I imagine he has no more use for her than as a brood mare.’

Matthew gave her an ironic, sideways smile. ‘Biddable? You, Emma?’

‘Exactly,’ Emma agreed, matching his rueful tone. ‘My mother has a persuasive way with my attributes when she scents a bachelor…whatever his character.’ She sobered and gazed into the distance. ‘Thank you for your proposal, Matthew. I will give it very serious thought in the next few days. And thank you for your kind hospitality and for bringing me to my lodgings tonight. I was so relieved on finding you still resided at Nonsuch Cottage and were not now…remarried.’ An amber glance arrowed at his profile. ‘I know you were keen for your children to have a mother’s care and as I had not heard from you for so long…’

‘I’m sorry not to have replied to your letter. I seem to find so little free time. A pathetic excuse, I know,’ he admitted on a shake of the head. ‘And there has never been anyone else that I’ve met who would suit the children so well as you. You’re so kind and dependable. You’re a genteel lady and educated to such a degree you could tutor them yourself,’ he enthused.

‘And what of you? Do I suit you so very well?’ Emma asked softly, sadly.

‘But of course! That goes without saying, Emma.’

‘This is a respectable house and we keep reg’lar hours. No gentlemen allowed in the parlour after nine o’ the clock. No gentlemen allowed in the upper chambers at any time. Breakfast afore eight or none. Dinner in the parlour if you wants at a shillin’ for a plate o’ hot ordinary.’

‘Yes, I understand,’ Emma told Mrs Keene wearily as she glanced about the spartan room. But at least it looked clean and the bedlinen fresh.

‘So wot’s a nice young lady like yourself doin’ alone in Bath?’ the woman asked with friendly inquisitiveness, now she had laid down the rules of the house. ‘Kin in the area, have you, wot won’t board you?’ The plump woman shelved her crossed arms on her ample bosom. A knowing nod preceded, ‘I gets plenty o’ such spinsters. Poor relations an’ all they’ll get off them wot’s better sitchwated is mutton ‘n porter once or twice a week an’ a faded gown or two. Not that it’s none of my concern, ‘o course, or I’m complainin’, like…for it suits me…’ She wagged an emphasising finger.

‘I’m seeking employment. I have no local family. Just a friend.’ What had she said? Seeking employment? Why had she said that? Why not? echoed back. The logical answer to every pressing problem had helpfully presented itself. She had very little cash; she needed some time to think while she mulled over Matthew’s proposal and meanwhile she needed somewhere to stay. There was little doubt in her mind that Mrs Keene would show her the cobbles as soon as she showed Mrs Keene an I O U.

Her landlady sucked at her few yellowing teeth. ‘Seekin’ employment, are you, miss? Well, not that it’s none of my concern, o’ course, but I’ll keep me eyes and ears open for you. I’m known to run a respectable lodgin’s for genteel ladies wot’s on ‘ard times, and it’s not unknown for those as wants to take on to come to me first for their quality staff. No agency fees, you see. ‘Course I accepts a small consideration—’

‘Thank you…I should be grateful for help…’ Emma cut the woman off. Undoing the ribbons of her bonnet, she dropped the dusty tan-coloured article onto the bed. She shook free her thick fawn hair, raking it back from her creamy brow, aware of the woman’s gimlet eyes on her. Opening her carpet bag, she studiedly hinted, ‘I’m a little tired…’

‘O’ course you are, miss. Will you be wantin’ any supper?’

‘No, thank you. I’ve already dined.’

‘Tomorrow will you be wantin’ any supper?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Seven o’ the clock in the downstairs parlour. Tomorrow’s bacon ‘n carrots. That’ll be a shillin’ an’ you pay afore you eat.’ With a gap-toothed smile at Emma, Mrs Keene was closing the door.

‘You’re late!’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

‘Richard, you are becoming quite a trial to your mother,’ Miriam Du Quesne stiffly informed her eldest son.

He seemed unmoved by her complaint and gave her an impenitent smile as he made for the stairs and took them two at a time.

‘Come back! We have guests!’ was hissed in a furious undertone at his broad, dark-jacketed back.

‘And you’re a wonderful hostess, my dear,’ trailed back, bored, over his shoulder as he neared the top of the graceful sweep of mahogany bannisters.

‘If you’re not down these stairs and in the drawing room in ten…fifteen minutes,’ she generously amended, in an enraged choke, ‘well, I shall…I shall just…’

Sir Richard Du Quesne sauntered back to the top of the curving stairwell and looked past the priceless Austrian crystal chandelier, suspended low, at the top of his mother’s elegant coiffure. ‘You shall what?’ he jibed fondly. ‘Beat me? Shut me in my room? Make me go without my supper?’

‘Richard! This is no joke!’ his mother screeched, small fists scrunching her elegant lavender skirts in her rage. Aware that she was creasing the satin, she flung it away and tried desperately to smooth it. She resorted to stamping a small foot instead, while almost jigging on the creamy marble in exasperation. Abruptly changing tack, she stilled, gave him a bright smile and wheedled, ‘Please, dear, don’t keep us all waiting longer. Dinner has been on the warm since eight o’clock. It is now nine-thirty and we are all quite ravenous.’ A tinkly laugh preceded, ‘I’m quite wore out with finding conversation to amuse us all. Besides,’ gritted out through pearly teeth, ‘nothing much is audible over the growling of empty stomachs.’

Her son gave her a conciliatory smile. ‘I’ll be but a few minutes. I’ll just freshen up…’

‘Oh, you look well enough,’ she said irritably, gesturing him down the stairs. He did too, she realised as her blue eyes lingered on her tall, handsome son’s appearance. His sun-streaked blond hair was too long, but suited him that way, she grudgingly allowed. His charcoal-grey clothes were expensive and well-styled; nothing she said or slipped to his valet seemed to make him dress in brighter colours. The bronzed skin tone he had acquired abroad had at first horrified her but, she had to admit, gave him a wickedly foreign air, and those cool grey eyes…A delicious shiver raced through her for they so reminded her of her darling John.

Miriam focussed her far-away gaze back on the top of the stairs to note that, while daydreaming of her late husband, their son had disappeared. She pouted, flounced about and stalked back towards the drawing room with the welcome tidings for their graces the Duke and Duchess of Winstanley and their daughter, Lady Penelope, that dinner was now, indeed, very nearly served.

‘I know where you’ve been, you lucky, randy dog.’

Richard dried his face with the towel, lobbed it carelessly towards the grand four-poster on a raised dais and glanced at Stephen. ‘Where have I been?’ he asked as he fastened his diamond shirt studs and walked to the mirror to inspect his appearance.

‘Come on, this is your dribbling sibling you’re talking to. She must have a jolie amie for your best brother. Preferably blonde but I ain’t fussy.’

‘You’re married.’

‘I’m bored.’

Richard’s icy grey eyes swerved to the reflection of his younger brother’s shrewd, smiling face. ‘You’re married. You’ve got a lovely wife and two beautiful children. What more do you want, for God’s sake?’

Stephen Du Quesne shrugged himself irritably to the window and gazed into the dusk. The fluttering silver-leaved whitebeams that lined the mile-long drive to Silverdale swayed like sinuous, ghostly dancers in the light evening breeze. ‘A little excitement…that’s what I want. A little of what you’ve got…that’s what I want. You get risqué women and I get responsibility. It ain’t fair, I tell you. You’re seven years older than me.’

‘No one forced you to propose to Amelia when you were twenty-one. As I recall you wanted her and nothing was going to stand in your way. Not even her constant rebuffs. You finally won her over and the proof that you were lucky to get it so right is just along the corridor, asleep in the nursery. Grow up.’

‘That’s rich coming from you,’ Stephen moaned as he stalked his elder brother to the head of the stairs. ‘You’re thirty-three and still gadding around as though you’ve dropped a decade somewhere. Even that reprobate of a best friend of yours has been wed these past three years and is now as dangerous as a pussy-cat by all accounts.’

Richard turned a smile on him, knowing immediately to whom he referred. ‘That’s love for you, Stephen,’ he said. ‘It can creep up on you when you’re least expecting it…even when you’re twenty-one and nowhere near ready. There’s no shame in giving in to it.’

‘Such an eloquent expert on finer feelings, aren’t you?’ Stephen ribbed him with a grin. ‘Hard to believe most of your intercourse with the fairer sex is so basic and carried out while you’re horizontal.’

‘Shut up, Stephen, you are drooling,’ Richard said, with a clap on the back for his sulking brother.

As they hit the marble-flagged hallway, Richard swung his brother about by the shoulder and studied him gravely. ‘Look, if you’re desperate for a little illicit entertainment, go ahead. But don’t expect me to arrange it for you, or clear up the mess when it all goes horribly wrong. Amelia might just decide that what’s sauce for the gander…’ He trailed off with an explicit raising of dark brows.

‘She wouldn’t dare!’ Stephen exploded, his face draining of colour. ‘Besides,’ he blustered as his older brother choked a laugh at the terror on his face, ‘she’d never know…I’d be discreet.’

‘Of course she’d know, you fool,’ Richard scoffed. ‘There’d be plenty of concerned ladies just itching to break the news. For her own good, of course. If you want a mistress, go and stand in the Upper Assembly rooms and look available. In five minutes you’ll be knee-deep in frustrated wives, impoverished widows…’ His long fingers tightened emphatically on his brother’s shoulder. ‘You’re both envied, you know. You’ve a good marriage: you love your wife and she adores you and that’s not easily found. It makes for a lot of green eyes and spiteful intentions. If you want to know the truth, I envy you.’

‘Good,’ Stephen said with slightly malicious relish. ‘I think our dear mama is under the impression it’s definitely time you were jealous no more.’

Sir Richard Du Quesne stopped dead and spun on his heel. ‘God, she’s not matchmaking again! Who’s here? Not the Petershams?’

Stephen swayed his fair head, blue eyes alight with merriment. ‘But of course not. We’re aiming so much higher, dear one, now you’re so much richer. Now you’ve added another million to the Du Quesne coffers, dear Mama scents a ducal connection…and as they were visiting in the neighbourhood…’

Stephen’s drawling teasing came to an abrupt halt and the laughter in his eyes was replaced by horrified entreaty. For no more than a second he watched his brother striding towards the double oaken doorway, an exceedingly loud and awful curse flying in his wake.

Scooting after him, Stephen grabbed at his elbow and started dragging him backwards. ‘If you disappear, so do I. I’ll go and stand in the Upper Assembly rooms; you see if I don’t. Mother will kill me if I let you escape!’

‘I will kill you if you do not let go of my arm,’ his brother sweetly informed him.

Stephen removed his hand and made a show of straightening the crumpled charcoal material of Richard’s sleeve. ‘Come on, Dickie,’ he wheedled. ‘Just smile and make them swoon a little.’ Richard’s grim countenance was unaltered. ‘Well, just tell them about your money; that’ll make them swoon a little.’

Richard tried to suppress a smile. He gazed at the rust watered-silk wall then back at his brother’s anxious face. ‘If I wasn’t so damned hungry, I’d be out of here.’ A tanned hand settled amicably on Stephen’s shoulder as they turned towards the dining room. ‘I suppose I should suck up a bit to his grace: I want the old bastard to grant me a lease on the land just east of the Tamar. There’s a fortune in that clay-slate; I’ll stake my life on it.’

‘Better suck up to his daughter, then. You know the way to a fond father’s heart is through his darling spinster offspring. And she is sweet on you, you know. You also know the old goat’s concerned for his pheasants and won’t let you disturb them with your noisy mining.’

‘There’s a fortune in copper there and I will have it some day. But don’t tell Ross,’ Richard laughed. ‘He’s convinced it’s on the Cornish side in granite. Fool! Sometimes he lets his Celtic pride get in the way of his common sense.’

‘Rival adventurers!’ Stephen proclaimed. ‘You’ll bring him in on the deal, in any case. Me too, I hope! I’ve a growing family to support.’

‘Make sure it’s just the one legitimate family to support,’ Richard told his brother, ‘and perhaps I’ll do that.’

Richard scowled at the ceiling. It was time he thought of marrying and producing an heir. A duke’s daughter was soft on him. She was attractive enough to bed. The fact that she irritated the hell out of him with her vanity and her vacuous giggling was of little consequence: once she was breeding they need have little to do with one another other than on formal family occasions. Apart from exercising a little more subtlety, his licentious lifestyle need not alter. If Penelope found herself a beau it would not unduly worry him so long as she was reciprocally discreet. He could afford to be generous: her father was sitting, he was sure, on one of the richest copper lodes ever. And he was determined to mine the area.

The two brothers exchanged a rueful grimace before fixing smiles and entering the dining room. Richard’s grin sugared for his mother as he saw her glower at him. Then he looked at the brunette, her face coyly concealed behind a fluttering fan. Brown eyes peeked at him over the top of ivory sticks. His teeth met but he bowed gallantly.

Damn you, David! he inwardly groaned as he thought of his best friend and his wedded bliss. He’d set a vexing precedent by marrying for love and being so nauseatingly happy and faithful. And he and David were too close…too alike…always had been since childhood.

Richard knew that aching void deep within David that only Victoria could fill sometimes yawned wide in him too. And the restlessness, the emptiness just wouldn’t go away no matter how hard it was ignored or crammed full of commerce or self-indulgent lust.

Think of the copper…and beating Ross to it, he encouraged himself as he proceeded into the room, with a wry, private smile. He pulled a chair close and sat beside his grace the Duke of Winstanley. ‘How are the pheasants?’ he asked gravely.

Chapter Three

‘What is for dinner today, Mrs Keene? Not bacon and carrots again, surely?’ Emma frowned and sniffed delicately at the wafting salty aroma.

‘Not at all, my dear.’ Her landlady shuffled into her room, apparently unruffled by this aspersion on her unvarying menus.

Emma’s tawny eyes brightened and she let her novel drop. She had been perched on the window seat for the past hour, hoping that perhaps Matthew might call again today to take her for a walk or a drive into the countryside. But it was nearly six o’clock and unlikely he would come now.

‘What is for dinner, then, Mrs Keene?’ Emma asked, her mouth watering in anticipation of some tempting mutton later.

‘Er…it’s hashed pork, my dearie. With a little herb and stock ‘n so on.’

‘Is it cured pork, Mrs Keene?’ Emma asked on a sigh.

‘I believe it is at that, Miss Worthington,’ Mrs Keene admitted with a jovial smile. ‘Now, I’ve got some good news. An’ I expect, ‘cos it is such a piece o’ luck for you that a busy soul like meself’s managed to put herself out on account of a nice young lady, that you’ll be insistin’ on showing me a small consideration for me pains. Now, not that it’s none o’ my concern, o’ course, but I know for a fact you’ve been scourin’ that Gazette for a position as would suit. Well, now—’ chubby hands were planted on fat hips ‘—what did I hear today from a friend wot’s been speakin’ to a lady’s maid?’ She inclined forward from the waist and beady eyes rolled between fleshy folds.

After a silent moment when Emma realised either she guessed, enquired, or never learned, she obligingly said, ‘I’ve no idea, Mrs Keene. What did you hear?’

With a flourish, a scrap of paper materialised from a greasy pocket. ‘My dear young lady, the good news is that a gentlewoman in Bath is seekin’ a genteel and modest companion. She is a pampered lady and bored…’ Mrs Keene acted the part, shielding a yawn with a fat hand then simpering behind it. ‘Soon as I heard I put meself out to speak to me friend and sing your very praises. She in turn spoke to the maid who had words with her madame. The lady has sent you this little note with her address. Now, what do you say to that good luck and good friends like meself?’

Emma’s small white teeth caught at her full lower lip. What did she say to that, indeed? She had been at Mrs Keene’s lodging house for a few days and had certainly been curiously flicking through the Gazette for local positions.

But it had been a half-hearted investigation: she had little idea where to start, or if indeed she wanted to start at all. She had been gently reared and nothing in that refinement had prepared her for at some time toiling for a living. She balked at the idea of being an assistant to a mantua-maker or a haberdasher and she had seen little else advertised.

Stung by her boarder’s lack of effusive thanks and enthusiasm, Mrs Keene huffed, ‘Well, if it don’t interest, I’ll give this appointment to the new lady as arrived yesterday. She’s fair desperate for a position and workin’ for a foreign madame in quite the best part of Bath will probably seem like heaven dropped in her lap.’

‘It’s very good of you to remember me, Mrs Keene. I am very grateful.’ Emma gave the woman a conciliatory smile as she held out a slender hand for the note. Interview details were written in an elaborate script. ‘I shall attend and if it seems the position will not suit I can try elsewhere…’

‘O’ course…but I reckon it will suit, an’ I reckon you’ll always remember wot good friend managed to winkle it out for you.’ Mrs Keene nodded good-naturedly at the subdued young woman smiling vaguely back at her. Sharp eyes dissected her waif-like appearance: a slender body that looked too delicate to tempt a man but such rich caramel hair and liquid honey eyes set in a complexion that was pure peaches and cream. Not that it was none of her concern, o’ course, but it was puzzling for a body to decide if she was a raving beauty or plain as a pike-staff. Pike-staff, she plumped for; the pretty foreign madame wouldn’t like a rival.

‘Do you know what you’re doing, Emma?’ Matthew demanded shortly.

‘No,’ Emma admitted with a nervous smile as she straightened her bonnet and pulled on her gloves.

Matthew had called earlier that morning and on hearing she had an interview for employment looked startled and then disapproving. But he had offered to convey her in his little trap to South Parade on the opposite side of Bath to where Mrs Keene’s lodging house was situated.

On now alighting at the top of a quiet, elegant crescent, Emma squeezed Matthew’s fingers in thanks and affection. ‘I need a little income while I decide what I must do.’ She slid a glance at his tense profile and again lightly pressed his hand. ‘And seeking employment doesn’t mean that I am rejecting your proposal. Please understand that I need more time…’

With a slightly martyred air he offered, ‘Shall I wait?’

Emma shook her head. ‘I shall hail a ride. I’ve no idea how long I might be—perhaps only a few minutes, if Madame hates me on sight.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps an hour or two if Madame tests my good nature with a protracted wait while she prepares to interrogate me.’

She had been jesting when she’d told Matthew she might be kept waiting. Emma raised her wide golden gaze to the sonorously chiming clock as it marked the half-hour she had been seated in a cool hallway on a hard-backed chair. It was now after three-thirty in the afternoon and she was becoming increasingly disillusioned and restless. She peered about for the dour-faced butler who had allowed her into the house. Madame Dubois was expecting her, he had intoned as he’d shown her to a seat, and had then disappeared with a stiff-legged gait.

Emma abruptly stood up and flexed her shoulders. She took a few tentative steps and peeked along the hall. When all remained still and silent, she meandered, admiring the tasteful decor, to the huge gilt scrolled mirror and studied her appearance. She straightened her bonnet this way and that, then glanced down at her fingertips trailing a glossy satinwood star inlaid into a rich rosewood console table. Swishing around with an impatient sigh, she returned to her chair. She would tarry just another few minutes then depart. A person inconsiderate enough to leave her totally ignored for so long would not make a good employer in any case, she impressed upon herself. She was on the point of reseating herself when a door along the corridor opened.

The figure that emerged was male and tall and very blond and had her gawping idiotically at his handsome profile. She had very recently seen those chiselled bronze features just visible beneath a fall of lengthy sun-bleached hair: it was the foreign count she recalled had been travelling on to Bath from the Fallow Buck posting house.

She quickly sat and folded her hands neatly on her lap, her thoughts racing. Of course! She had never made the connection that the madame in question might be this French nobleman’s wife. The memory of the small blond boy he had lifted in his arms had her frowning at her hands. Would she be expected to nursemaid children? She had no experience of young people…but she could no doubt tutor, if need be…

Firm footsteps echoing against polished mahogany had her attention with the man approaching although her eyes stayed with her entwined fingers. His pace slowed and she knew he’d noticed her.

She glanced up demurely, politely, from beneath the shielding brim of her bonnet. Her face swayed back at once and she felt as though ice had frozen her solid to the chair. Her ivory lids drooped slowly in horrified, disbelieving recognition. French count! Her fingers spasmed as she sensed a hysterical laugh bubbling. No wonder he had seemed familiar! No wonder she had thought she knew him! She did!

But he had changed. It wasn’t surprising she had not immediately been able to place him. His hair was no longer fair and stylishly short but long and white-blond, his complexion no longer city-pale but a deep golden-bronze.

An ostler at a rustic tavern had described him as Quality with a queer name…well, it had been perfectly correct. It was her whimsical romantic imagination that had concluded he must be a French nobleman instead of an English one.

On a misty September morning four days ago she had sensed meeting him somewhere before and fancied it to be in fiction rather than fact. Oh, how she wished that were so! For she had indeed seen him before. And on each occasion she had made it her business to insult him. Now she found herself sitting meekly in his house, hoping to be taken on. The sheer farce of it had the back of a hand pressing to her mouth to stifle a horrified choke.

She was aware of impeccably styled black hessian boots drawing into her line of vision. Please don’t let him recognise me, she silently prayed, casually swivelling sideways on her seat, away from him.

He changed direction, veering off to the console table she had recently admired. From beneath the brim of her bonnet she watched long buff-coloured legs turn, the toes of his boots point towards her again and knew he was studying her.

It’s been three years! she exhorted herself while an unsteady hand shielded her face by tidying stray tendrils of light tan hair into her dark tan bonnet. He’ll never recognise you. Or if he does…he’ll pretend he doesn’t. They weren’t married! This jolted into her consciousness at the same time. The woman’s name was French-sounding, too, but not the same as his! God in heaven, she was auditioning as a companion to one of his…his women! Perhaps also as tutor to one of his bastards!

She sensed a writhing, seething indignation mounting. Three years ago when they had come together in London as social equals he had managed to instil in her just the same angry emotion. The fact that he had always been perfectly civil whilst with her, never meriting her hostility and sarcasm, had always flustered and shamed her. She could neither justify her aggression to him, when he’d casually enquired why she liked to insult him, nor to herself, nor to her best friend, Victoria.

She explained it away easily to herself now: it had been simple disgust at his hypocrisy and his condescension. Suavely charming he might have been to such homely spinsters as she, who he no doubt believed secretly swooned at the memory of his smile, but she knew him for a lecherous degenerate and had not been too coy to hint as much. She would have told him outright, in no uncertain terms, had the opportunity ever arisen.

Much to her mother’s delight, he had seemed to show a friendly interest in her, but Emma knew it was all designing and insincere. For at that time his friend, Viscount Courtenay, had been laying siege to her own dear friend, Victoria Hart, and David had wanted Emma occupied so he could trap Victoria alone.

Despite the two men having infamously shocking reputations, they had been polite society’s most popular bachelors, keeping the ton in a constant state of fascinated curiosity as to their philandering and drunken brawling. No scandal had seemed base enough to deter top society hostesses from fawning over them and sniping at each other to secure their coveted presence at balls and soirées. Once they were lured across the threshold, no freshly circulating gossip regarding that week’s carousing had deterred ambitious mamas or their debutante daughters from beelining towards them with seriously immodest intent.

Emma felt her face stinging with heat on recalling how, at her twenty-fourth-birthday ball, her own mother had gladly foisted her upon this man as though she had been so much unsaleable baggage. Yet even now, despite that mortifying memory…or perhaps because of it…she could feel again the aggravating need to throw back her head and antagonise him. Perhaps acidly comment that it was obvious his morals hadn’t improved along with his looks since last they’d met. What? What concern or consequence were his looks?

Her lids pressed closed again as the still silence throbbed with more intensity than the cased clock in the corner. Why won’t he go? Why won’t he say something? I know he’s staring, she fretted.

‘Are you waiting for Madame Dubois?’

His low, level tone was exactly the same; still it resulted in a jump and fluttering stomach. Her bonnet nodded at him. ‘Yes, sir,’ was stiltedly muttered in a voice even she didn’t recognise. He remained quiet on learning that. Relief sang through her. Had he remembered her he would surely have mentioned the fact or swiftly removed himself.

Dainty footsteps tripped along the corridor and Emma managed to face the woman approaching without once revealing her face to the man standing opposite.

‘So sorry to ‘ave kept you waiting, mademoiselle…Are you still ‘ere, chéri?’ The woman interrupted her address to Emma on noticing the man, her voice taking on a completely different, husky inflection. The hem of a rose-pink gown was immediately sweeping away again as, ignoring Emma’s presence, Yvette Du-bois diverted her attention to him.

Involuntarily, Emma’s head raised a little to watch them. She stared at the blonde woman’s pretty profile, a delicate, pleased flush on a softly rounded cheek as she talked in a quiet, pouty way to her lover. An arch smile, then Yvette was onto tiptoe to whisper in his ear while a small finger trailed his dark sleeve.

Richard Du Quesne frowned at his mistress as though this untimely display of intimacy irritated him, then an icy grey glance shifted sideways. Emma was too late to avert her face and their eyes met and held.

He didn’t know her! There was nothing at all in his expression that showed the least interest or recognition. The release was enervating, as was the desperation to be away from this house, these people. She glanced at her nervous hands on her lap, wondering how on earth she could extricate herself.

Yvette realised straight away that she had failed to lure Richard’s eyes from the mouse-like creature seated on the hall chair. She was incessantly alert to a possible rival deposing her. Within a second a very female assessment had raked her prospective employee from head to toe. With intense satisfaction she concluded that the woman was as drab as she could possibly have wished, and no threat whatsoever.

A tilted blonde head draped ringlets over a pretty pink shoulder and a tight, malicious smile formed a rosebud of pink lips. Richard was unused to being in the company of such dowdy women and probably feeling some curiosity and sympathy for the thin little thing. La pauvre looked as though a nourishing meal would go down well, Yvette spitefully noted as her blue eyes narrowed on those fragile white wrists resting neatly on the girl’s duncoloured lap. It made her happily examine her own plump, bejewelled hands as she said sweetly, ‘I must apologise for the delay, ma’mselle, and for ‘aving forgotten your name. A moment ago I ‘ad it and yet now…it is gone.’ She gave a careless, continental shrug. ‘Miss Woodman, is it, per’aps?’ she guessed a trifle impatiently when Emma didn’t immediately offer up her identity.

‘Yes,’ Emma confirmed after a further silent second. ‘Miss Eleanor Woodman,’ she quietly, firmly lied, and raised her face to them both.

The doorbell clattered shrilly, making Emma start and the butler appear from nowhere. He opened the door and received the post.

An enticing glimpse of sun and sky and a rattling coach drew Emma to her feet and towards freedom. ‘I’m sorry, I have another appointment and am already a little overdue. If you will excuse me…’ The words tumbled out breathlessly, for she was obliquely aware of the butler starting to push shut the large white door, cutting off her escape route. She also glimpsed Madame Dubois’s pout slackening as she realised she had been summarily rejected. But it was Richard Du Quesne’s pitiless grey gaze following her that hastened her nimble dodge through the shrinking aperture.

Once in the air, she sped down the elegant steps and, skirts in trembling fists, was running without thought for direction. What halted her several streets away was the need to gasp in more breath to put further distance between herself and those narrowed silver eyes. She backed against a wall and wrapped herself concealingly into her cloak as though still afraid she might be exposed as an impostor. A trembling hand went to the coldness on her face and came away wet. She angrily scrubbed away the bitter tears and slowly, sedately walked towards an area of railed park she could see in the distance.

She had no idea where she was but had a depressing, sinking feeling that Mrs Keene’s boarding house in Lower Place was some considerable way away and probably in the opposite direction. As she took a second slow turn around the small recreation area, she slipped unobtrusive glances at fashionable people promenading; nurses tending their young charges, while taking the late afternoon air. Most were now making for the exit, mentioning teatime or the need to be home now the air was cooling.

Emma scoured the skyline for a familiar spire or rooftop that would point her home. She sighed on finding nothing but lowering storm clouds in the west. She should really ask someone for directions but was loath to bring herself to anyone’s attention.

She approached a small wooden bench as a young couple vacated it and strolled away arm in arm. Seating herself, she drew her cloak tight about her. The sun was setting behind that purply-grey nimbus, spearing golden rays into the chilling atmosphere. She’d obviously been lost for some while. She should have accepted Matthew’s offer to wait and deliver her home, she inwardly chided herself. She would, by now, have been back at Mrs Keene’s with the prospect of eating soon.

Thinking of food made her stomach grumble. The exertion of sprinting so fast and so far had sapped her energy and left her quite light-headed. She would be late and miss her dinner…and she had already paid her shilling for it. Well, it would be salt bacon again, she wryly consoled herself.

She searched in her pocket and drew out her small pouch. Tipping the coins into her palm, she carefully counted, wondering whether she could afford to purchase something to eat on the trek home. The idea of something tasty and different made her stomach roll hollowly again, yet even that consuming thought couldn’t completely drag part of her mind out of that opulent, cool hallway and away from a man with piercing metallic eyes.

The shock and humiliation at meeting him again under such degrading circumstances were receding, allowing another worry to compete for notice. If Richard Du Quesne had recognised her but had been unwilling to embarrass himself in front of his mistress by saying so, he might not display such reticence in London on his return there.

He owned a smart residence in Mayfair; she knew that. Should he soon go to London and mention he’d seen her in Bath and Jarrett Dashwood came to hear of it…She recalled dark olive eyes sliding over her body with sly, nauseating inspection. That blackguard would make a vicious and vengeful enemy; of that she was absolutely sure. She swallowed a bitter lump in her throat, pocketed her coins and fairly bolted up from the seat as though the vile man might even now be on his way to fetch her. She would forgo food this evening and use her money for the safety of a carriage ride home, she decided.

‘Miss Worthington?’

She stopped dead, her complexion paling in terror as she slowly turned.

Richard Du Quesne walked the path towards her and, as she instinctively stepped back, he gestured appealingly.

‘Please, don’t run away again…’ he said, with a flash of a rueful white smile. ‘It’s taken me hours to find you as it is.’

Emma swallowed, still slowly retreating, even though her eyes had swept past him, taken in the plush phaeton visible beyond the railings that bordered the small park and digested the fact that it was, of course, his.

‘I’ve no intention of running, Mr Du Quesne,’ she lied quietly, while silently vowing that should the opportunity arise she would flee him with her last breath. ‘How are you? Well, I trust? I’m sorry but I have no time to chat today, sir,’ she fluently apologised, without waiting to discover how he did. ‘I have to be going now. I have an appointment and am a little late.’ She sketched a curtsey then spoiled all her confident ease by dithering over whether to walk back past him or turn and make for the opposite end of the empty park and thus enter yet more unknown territory. She settled for the unknown, whirled about and walked away.

A firm hand on her arm halted her and gently turned her about. ‘Aren’t you going to now allow me the courtesy of enquiring how you do?’

‘Why? You know I don’t associate you with civilised behaviour. I’m sure you’re little interested in how I do…as, truthfully, I’m little interested in how you do.’ She swallowed, bit her unsteady lower lip, ashamed of her unnecessary rudeness. All she had needed to say was that she did tolerably well, thank you.

She watched his light eyes darken behind lengthy, dusky lashes, then he laughed. ‘For a while, I just couldn’t conceive it to be you, Miss Worthington. Now I’m convinced it is. In three years you’ve not changed a bit.’

‘Oh, but I have, Mr Du Quesne,’ she said heartbreakingly huskily yet with a bright, courageous smile. ‘I really have changed so much.’ She felt a horrible, hot stinging behind her eyes. Please don’t let him reminisce, she silently entreated; don’t let him talk of their dear mutual friends, David and Victoria Hardinge; don’t let him mention her darling goddaughter, Lucy, or any of those things that always brought a poignant mingling of gladness and envy to torture her.

Distraction came in the shape of a raucous cry that minutes before would have drawn her towards it. Her soulful amber eyes followed the progress of a woman hawking Sally Lunn’s tea-cakes, a sweetish aroma strengthening tormentingly in the stirring evening air.

‘Are you hungry?’ Richard asked quietly, noting her exquisite eyes were fixed on the pedlar.

Emma shook her head and looked away immediately. ‘The light’s fading. I want to be home. I will be missed,’ she lied again. She almost laughed. Who on earth was there here to miss her?

‘I take it your mother is with you in Bath. Where are you staying? Why are you seeking employment?’ His staccato questions were fired at her.

She avoided his eye. ‘I…I’m not seeking work, sir,’ she said slowly, while her mind raced ahead for plausible explanations. ‘I must beg you to convey my apologies to your…friend. It was just a wager…a joke in very bad taste. Some acquaintances laid a bet that I should never have the audacity to seek a position or attend an interview. It was a stupid, inconsiderate thing to do. I bitterly regret getting involved at all.’ She gained little solace from that small truth after such fluent lies and felt her face flame betrayingly.

When he remained silent, and all she was conscious of was his muscular height and the moonlight sheen of his hair in the enclosing dusk, she began backing away again. ‘Good evening to you, sir,’ she tossed back at him as she twisted around and hurried on.

He didn’t touch her this time, merely strolled unconcernedly behind her. It was as good as any physical restraint. Emma swirled about, continued backwards for a few paces then halted. ‘Go away!’ she snapped furiously yet with a hint of pleading.

‘No,’ he said easily. He passed her, circled her, examining her minutely then hovered close, like a patient predator awaiting the right moment to close in for the kill. ‘Tell me where you’re staying. What you’re doing here in Bath.’

‘It’s none of your concern! Leave me be!’ she raged in a hoarse whisper, yet with a lowered face as she sensed her exhaustion, her hunger, her fear of not getting back to her lodgings before it was really dark undermining her composure.

‘Of course it’s my concern,’ he drily contradicted her. ‘You know how upset Victoria will be if she hears I’ve neglected your welfare whilst you were with me. And when Victoria’s upset David’s unbearable…which upsets me.’

‘I am not with you!’ Emma flung at him desperately. ‘Besides, they won’t ever know. No one must ever know.’ She looked up slowly, realising she had just, stupidly, given him all the information he needed.

‘You’re here alone…and in trouble.’ The words emerged quietly, as though he couldn’t quite believe it himself.

As the hawker retraced her noisy way along the street, still loudly advertising her wares, Emma’s frantic tiger eyes flicked to Richard. If she could just get him to go away for a moment…all she needed was an unguarded moment. ‘I am hungry,’ she stated breathily. ‘And feeling a little faint.’

He held an arm out to her. ‘Come…’ he urged gently. ‘We’ll find somewhere to dine, on the one condition,’ he mock-threatened, ‘that you tell me what problems bring you here, so they can be dealt with.’

‘That’s very good of you, sir,’ she meekly thanked him. ‘But I’m a little giddy and nauseated. Perhaps a quick bite of something now and a short rest on this bench…’ Emma approached the seat and sank gratefully, gracefully onto it, her elfin features drooping into supporting hands.

Richard glanced at the vendor almost opposite them now on the other side of black iron railings. Then he arrowed a shrewd look at Emma. Either she was a consummate actress or she really was famished. The vision of a thin, pale young woman sitting in the hallway of his town house haunted him. He certainly didn’t want her passing out on him.

A large hand rested solicitiously on one of her shoulders, an instinctively cautious caress skimming over fragile shoulder bones beneath the enveloping cloak. Resisting the urge to simply swing her up in his arms and carry her to his phaeton, which he knew with a wry inner smile would no doubt earn him a slap for his pains, he said, ‘I’ll be but a moment. I’ll fetch you a bun and a flask of brandy from my carriage.’

From beneath the brim of her bonnet, Emma slanted feline eyes at his powerful, retreating figure. He wasn’t fooled at all, she realised. He turned, vigilantly, several times, walked backwards, giving himself the chance to return to her in a second. Her heart squeezed, lead settling in the empty pit of her stomach as she noted his crisp, athletic step. Should she not time it exactly right, she knew he’d catch her before she’d managed a few yards.

Apparently satisfied, finally, with her air of slumped-shouldered debility, Richard swung away towards the gate. As soon as the railing was between them and he was heading in the direction of his phaeton, she rose stealthily and, with never a backward glance, sped off into shadowy trees bordering the lawns.

‘Ah, Frederick, so you are up and about today. How very nice to see you at last. How long has it been now?’ Jarrett Dashwood mimed concerned thoughtfulness. ‘A sennight, perhaps, since last we had dealings together?’ The darkly suave man sauntered further into the drawing room of Rosemary House. Without waiting for an invitation, he flicked back his coat-tails and seated himself on a gilt-framed chair.

Margaret Worthington looked at her husband, looked at their tormentor and closed her eyes. ‘Do have some tea, Mr Dash-wood,’ she urged in a thin, trembling voice, while thin, trembling fingers fumbled at the silver pot on the tray. ‘It is freshly made in readiness for your arrival.’

‘More tea, Mrs Worthington? I believe I am awash with your tea, dear lady.’ His wide, sensual mouth smiled at her, his olive eyes did not. ‘Now were you today to offer me, say, two thousand pounds, or a private interview with that intriguing daughter of yours, I would certainly be tempted to partake. As it is, I am heartily tired of trailing here each afternoon to meet with her only to be fobbed off with tea and excuses.’ Leaning back into the chair, he stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. ‘Where is your daughter? The longer we are apart, the more desperate I am for some time alone with her. It is said, is it not, that absence makes the heart grow fonder?’

Margaret and Frederick Worthington exchanged nervous glances.

‘She is visiting her aunt…’

‘She is ailing in her room…’

The couple glared, horrified, at each other at these conflicting versions of Emma’s lengthy absence, each sure that they had voiced the correct one for today. Both shifted uneasily back into their chairs and, apeing their sinister guest’s lead, examined their manicures.

Jarrett Dashwood used a fleshy thumb to shine a perfectly trimmed set of fingernails. ‘Well, what’s it to be? Is she visiting? Lying abed with her smelling salts or Miss Austen’s romances? Shall I go above stairs and discover for myself how my poor, ailing fiancée fares?’

‘Please, sir, do not term her so,’ Margaret forced out in a high, wheedling tone. ‘She refuses you; you know that. You have our sincerest apologies.’ Margaret looked at Frederick, hoping for a modicum of assistance in dealing with this frightening man. Her perspiring husband simply gazed glassily into space. ‘There is nothing to be done, Mr Dashwood.’ Margaret emphasised her despair by crushing her handkerchief to her mouth. ‘We cannot force her to wed against her inclination. Everything in our power…my power,’ she gritted through the muffling linen, stabbing a glance at her florid husband, ‘has been done to make the selfish ingrate see sense. But she is a woman grown and so stubborn she will take no heed of her fond parents’ good advice.’

‘Perhaps she will then take heed of me, madam,’ Jarrett Dash-wood smoothly said. ‘Perhaps you both will do likewise. For this whole matter has now the stench of premeditated fraud about it. I have been fleeced, I believe, of my two thousand pounds, not only by you, good sir,’ he mocked Frederick with a bow of his raven head, ‘but also by you, madam, and your daughter. How many fiancés have you accepted for the chit in return for a little aid with pressing debts, only to find that she’s turned coy afore the altar?’

Margaret’s handkerchief dropped to her lap, her chalky complexion adopted a greyish-green tinge and her mouth worked like that of a beached fish. ‘I beg of you, Mr Dashwood, never think it!’ finally exploded from her. ‘My daughter has received no other firm offers at all. She is accomplished at deflecting any gentleman’s attention far sooner than that. It would be heaven indeed should she encourage just the one to come a-courting.’

‘But I’m not convinced,’ Jarrett Dashwood said easily, with a final lingering look at his flexing fingers. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged…’ He laughed lightly. ‘There…you see how the dear girl has affected me. I find I can continually bring to mind passages from her favourite books…Now, where was I? Ah, yes, with odd truths. Indeed, it is strange that the more one is denied something, the further it seems from one’s grasp, the sweeter finally possessing it becomes. I believe I am developing a tendresse for your daughter which makes the money quite irrelevant. Even were you in a position to repay it, I would not accept. I want that spirited hussy as my wife. The documents pertaining to the marriage contract are signed and sealed. The marriage must go ahead.’

Finally bored with this polite charade, he said in a guttural voice, ‘Find out to wherever it is she has absconded and furnish me with the news; I’m sure I can make her see sense. If you do not….’ He smiled grimly at Margaret ‘…I understand that the Fleet is able to accommodate families…’

Chapter Four

‘This is a respectable house, is it not, Mrs Keene?’

‘Indeed it is, Miss Worthington. Oh, yes, indeed it is.’

‘And no gentleman is allowed within it after nine of the clock, you said, did you not? So you will insist this gentleman immediately removes himself,’ Emma prompted in a low, trembling rush.

Mrs Keene asserted nothing, simply gawked at the man to whom her lodger referred as though he were an apparition. Recovering her senses, she rolled her eyes at Emma, mouthing something completely unintelligible, before bobbing her mob cap and herself up and down as though in the throes of some palsy.

Emma watched her landlady’s ridiculously obsequious display for no more than a second. Her furious glare turned on the blond man, lounging by the mantel in Mrs Keene’s small parlour.

He looked right back. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Sir Richard Du Quesne’s jaw clenched…ached as he fought to keep his eyes from slowly stripping that virginal white nightgown from her slender body. Silver eyes returned sharply to her face and his angry attention had her valiantly, proudly tilting her chin. If it hadn’t been for small, pearly teeth sinking steadyingly into her full lower lip he might have been fooled into thinking she was perfectly composed. He read her next move as it occurred to her and artlessly showed in those lucid golden eyes. Shifting away from the fire, he made for the parlour door.

A slow pulse throbbed low in his belly, spreading to tighten his groin, and he cursed at his feet in irritated frustration. He couldn’t recall ever seeing a woman so simply attired—certainly none whose keep he was paying for and whose bed he shared. The women of his acquaintance, whether family or fancy, trailed about in lace with their hair in curls when ready to retire.

With a subtle air of disinterest he glanced at luxuriant, glossy fawn hair spilling over pristine, modestly embroidered cotton, tendrils curving into a gracefully narrow back. If her hair and eyes didn’t resemble fine cognac she might not tempt him so much, he savagely mocked himself, shoving aside any ludicrous idea that she could join those whose bed he shared.

Emma turned warily on her heel as he passed, keeping him at the corner of a watchful tawny eye. His casual entrapment complete, he halted a few paces behind, forcing her to twist about to face him. Her eyes blazed copper beneath his silver stare until she abruptly looked away.

Mrs Keene’s face was diplomatically lowered but her beady eyes were busy batting between the hostile couple. ‘Ah, but that’s no gentleman, you know, miss,’ finally worked out of one corner of her mouth at Emma, while her eyes slid in the opposite direction.

A slender white hand flew to smother a hysterical laugh. Emma agreed through her quivering fingers, ‘Yes, I do know that, Mrs Keene.’ Very graciously she added, ‘Nevertheless, on this occasion I think we shall allow him the sobriquet and insist on his immediate removal from the premises.’

‘I can’t do that, miss!’ Mrs Keene whispered, horrified at the very idea. Her eyes slid to the tall blond man, who in turn had his sardonic mercurial gaze turned on her lodger.

‘And why ever not?’ Emma bit out, wrapping her slender arms about her night-robed body to warm it and conceal its quaking.

‘It’s the silver squire,’ Mrs Keene spluttered out, so low and fast it merely emerged as a sibilant hiss and Emma could decipher none of it.

‘What?’ she queried on a frown.

‘She said I’m the silver squire,’ Sir Richard Du Quesne told her evenly. ‘Lightly translated, that means I own the freehold of this house and the rest of the street together with quite an amount of the city of Bath.’

After a stunned moment, digesting the awful news that she was actually attempting to eject him from one of his own properties, she fumed. ‘And you think that gives you the right to come here and harass me, I suppose?’

‘Your continual deceit earlier today gives me the right to come here and question you. So does a sense of duty to a close friend who cares about your welfare.’ As though just noticing the goggling, hovering landlady, an explicit flick of a bronzed hand signalled her to remove herself.

‘Don’t you dare go!’ Emma cried at the woman’s back, noting she had immediately turned to do his bidding.

Richard shrugged easily. ‘Please be seated, then, Mrs Keene, while Miss Worthington explains to me certain inconsistencies in her behaviour.’

‘I am under no obligation to account to you for one thing, sir!’

Emma’s thin hands tightened into fists behind her back. She could not believe herself to have been so stupid as to immediately race downstairs five minutes ago, on gleaning from Mrs Keene’s garbled croak that a gentleman awaited her company in the parlour. Before she could interrogate the woman further her mob-capped head had disappeared from around her chamber door.

Pulling on her heavy cotton wrap, Emma had simply bolted after her, wondering how Matthew had managed to bribe her landlady to allow him entrance at this time of the night; wondering, too, why on earth he had not waited until the morning to enquire how she’d done with her interview. Then it had occurred to her, with a scattering of icy needles about her body, that it might be something more serious than the success of her job-seeking that had brought him here so late. Perhaps something pertaining to her flight from London…and Jarrett Dashwood…And she’d fair flown below.

Not once had she dreamed that Richard Du Quesne might be irked enough by her escape to bother discovering where she lodged and immediately track her. But then the novelty of being shunned by a woman, even a modest spinster such as she, had probably been enough to inflame a need for immediate retaliation.

‘Did you walk back here?’

She glared at him, about to spit that he could mind his own business and go fly to the devil. A movement at one corner of a sensual, narrow mouth told her he was reading her mind.

‘I hailed a cab,’ she stiffly informed him.

‘Why did you run away?’

‘I was hungry,’ she returned flippantly, gazing insolently past him, ‘and couldn’t wait longer for you to return with a measly bun. I decided to make my way home for one of Mrs Keene’s delicious dinners before I faded dead away.’

He smiled at her churlishness, and at her long, slender fingers ceaselessly entwining then jerking apart.

‘Are you going to tell me why you’re here in Bath, unchaperoned?’ he asked quietly so Mrs Keene was excluded from his dialogue.

‘No,’ Emma simply said, and disdainfully flicked away her tawny head.

‘Very well. I’ll send an express to your parents tomorrow and thus find out.’ He was reaching for the door handle when she stopped him.

‘Don’t do that…please…’ was forced out as her eyes squeezed shut.

He walked back, straight past her, seating himself in a chair by the small hearth. A movement of his long, dark fingers this time had Mrs Keene beetling for the door and Emma enviously watching her.

She didn’t dare follow her landlady out, although he was taunting her with the opportunity. He had her exactly where he wanted her, she realised with impotent fury. Her face flung around, and she glowered her loathing.

He responded by smiling and settling back leisurely into the battered wing-chair, propping a booted foot on his knee. One dark hand was splayed idly against polished leather, the other against his face.

Emma sensed her teeth grinding, her fists curling. He was deliberately impressing on her just how easily he could keep her here, and that he was exercising patience in waiting for her to obediently disclose all to him. Her nails stabbed her palms as she suppressed a terrifying need to bound across the few feet that separated them and hit him.

‘Do your parents know where you are?’

‘My whereabouts are of no interest to them,’ she snapped back. ‘Why should they be? I am a spinster of twenty-seven and perfectly able to live alone.’

‘I know how old you are, Emma,’ he said softly. ‘I attended your twenty-fourth-birthday celebration…remember?’

‘Not by my invitation…’ she sniped, then twisted away and closed her eyes. Do not antagonise him, she severely, calmingly chided herself. He is of no importance whatsoever. Just use half-truths and guile. It will satisfy his base curiosity, thus enabling you to rid yourself of his damnable presence…then all will again be well. He is simply a hedonistic fool ruled by lust and alcohol…She hesitated in her unspoken censure, recalling that there had been less of an inebriated haze about this man than about Matthew on their reunion in Oakdene this week…and several times since.

‘Well?’ His mild impatience shattered the tension after several silent minutes. When she steadfastly refused to look at him or speak because she still hadn’t quite worked out which lies would serve her best, he added, ‘Have you nothing at all to say?’

‘Yes, I have something to say,’ she announced, honey-voiced, as feral eyes pounced on him. ‘And I do not think you will want to contact my parents to relay this. If you do not remove yourself this instant I shall scream and weep loud enough to wake the street and charge you with…’

‘With…?’ he prompted mildly through long, dark fingers curled against his sensual mouth, watching her from beneath heavy lids.

‘With attempting to force your vile attentions on me…with molesting me. Now what do you say, Mr Du Quesne?’ she flung at him, inclining slightly towards him in triumph.

He was out of the chair in a lithe second, making her jerk back and whirl away so fast, treacle hair flowed out thickly towards him.

‘I’d say you’re a little early with that complaint, Miss Worthington,’ he purred as he walked right up to her. Smoky silver eyes eventually reached her white face, having leisurely mounted her body.

He watched real fear dilate her pupils. He also saw that she was still itching to slap him. His teeth met, shifting his jaw aslant, as he finally accepted that he wanted it too. He was just longing for her to touch him…in any way…in that way.

He forced himself away from her, cutting off her escape route, for she was now liable to flee and damn the consequences, then he still wouldn’t know what the hell was going on. He stood with his back to her yet with her colouring, her sharp, sculpted little features imprinted on his mind. He laughed, low and private, in a way that had Emma swinging about, eyes raking the breadth of his shoulders to try and discover the reason for it.

Richard raised his sardonic dark face to the ceiling. So Yvette deemed herself a wildcat, did she? he mused ironically. Yvette was nothing more than a spiteful harlot…and spiteful in a manner that had little to do with how she liked to brand him as hers in a way easily recognisable to other women.

This was a wildcat, he realised ruefully…the genuine, un-adorned article. She even looked the part with her spare, graceful body and tawny colouring: like a small woodland creature…too beautiful to touch…too beautiful not to. And he felt a sudden drenching disgust at having resorted to subduing her with the threat of violation.

He’d never in his life done that…never needed to. Women, and plenty of them, came to him very willingly. Yet what tormented him most was, now he’d acknowledged the desire, self-discipline seemed to mock him. Angry frustration culminated in a dark fist cracking savagely against the door as he moved abruptly past it.

Emma jumped and stifled a small scream; so did Mrs Keene on the other side of the door, with one pudgy hand clamped to her mouth and the other to her battered, ringing ear.

Giddy with fatigue and hunger, Emma leaned against the wall to steady herself. She had eaten nothing since her meagre breakfast and was now ravenous. Her stomach endorsed its need for attention by growling loudly.

Richard arrowed a look at her as she instinctively pressed both hands to her flat abdomen, bending over a little as though to hide the offending noise.

‘You’ve still not eaten, have you?’

‘No.’ There was no point in lying about something this trivial and obvious, she thought wryly. Deceit would be better employed on major issues.

‘Mrs Keene…?’ Richard said quite normally.

After a momentary scuffling sound, the woman was in the doorway, her apron polishing at the brass knob as though she intended shining it away.

‘Just afinishin’ off me chores, sir,’ she explained gruffly, still managing to bob her head at him as she toiled.

‘Quite…’ he said very drily. ‘I take it you have something appetising to eat about the place?’

Emma choked a spontaneous laugh, making Mrs Keene look nervously at her and Richard arrow her a speculative look. Now why had that not occurred to her? she thought hysterically. Had she offered him one of Mrs Keene’s delicious dinners, no doubt he would even now be halfway home.

‘Why, o’ course, your lordship. I’d be happy to fetch it direct,’ Mrs Keene hastily offered, elevating Richard’s rank in her enthusiasm. ‘La, miss, you missed out on your supper, didn’t you now? You should’ve said for it slipped me busy mind. Now, there be beef silverside and vegetables roastin’. Or mutton hotpot on the hob…an’ a dumplin’…’

Richard looked at Emma questioningly for a choice but she simply held onto her newly gurgling stomach and stared at Mrs Keene in amazement. Beef? Mutton? Dumplings? Where was salt bacon and carrots?

‘Now, not that it be none o’ my concern, o’ course, as to what you choose, but the beef do look a treat an’ fit for a conasewer o’ fine fare…’

‘Fetch two plates of the beef and hurry, if you please,’ Richard clipped across Mrs Keene’s recommendations, making the choice for them both.

Mrs Keene was like a whirlwind. Within a few minutes of her leaving them alone, she was back, accompanied by the young girl who helped in the kitchens. Cutlery, bread, butter, pickles, wine and beer all decked the small parlour table while Emma watched. Then, just as she was about to get a grip on her pride and her senses, and tell him he could dine here alone for she wanted none of it, the steaming plates appeared and she was lost. The beef certainly looked and smelled as good as her landlady had lauded.

Mrs Keene hovered in the doorway with her knees bent and a piece of her skirt held daintily out at an angle in thumb and forefinger.

‘Thank you, Mrs Keene,’ Richard said graciously. ‘And your chores for the day are finished now, are they not?’

‘Yes, sir, indeed they are, sir,’ she emphatically declared, and at his peremptory nod she was gone.

Emma remained by the wall, her eyes on the table, still striving for the courage to reject it…and him. Just a chunk of that aromatic bread would suffice, she realised, if she could snatch it on the way to the door.

‘Sit down.’ His order sliced evenly through her half-hearted abstemiousness and for some reason she immediately obeyed. Approaching the table, she sank into the chair he had pulled out. Seating himself opposite, he pushed one laden plate of beef and vegetables towards her, lavishly buttered a chunk of springy warm bread and, unperturbed, started eating.

After a silent moment when Emma simply stared hatefully at the tempting savoury repast as though wishing it all to be stringy, salty bacon and carrots boiled to a mash, she picked up her knife and fork.

They ate in silence yet Emma refused to meekly avoid his eyes. From time to time, she forced proud topaz eyes to meet steady silver, desperate to match his mild, expressionless demeanour. But she knew it was impossible. Every time he pushed bread her way or refilled her glass with sweet wine she tensed, wanting to throw it back at him. And he knew it, too, she realised as her eyes again rose valiantly and swept past dark, sardonic features on the way to glare at the fire.

When she was full and simply shook her head at him as he offered her more, he finally said, with absolute calm and reason, ‘I think that it would be wise for your family to know of your whereabouts.’

‘Leave us all be,’ Emma responded with quiet civility, sensing an unspoken truce between them that she was willing to momentarily honour. ‘You will cause us more grief by interfering. No one will thank you for broadcasting this matter, least of all my parents.’

There was a new, narrow-eyed intensity to his gaze. ‘Have you been sent away? Banished from London?’

Emma averted her face, feeling it heat in indignation on comprehending his obtuse meaning. So he classed her morals as no better than those of the women he consorted with, did he? But his base imaginings might just serve her purpose, she realised, her refreshed mind back to investigating devious tactics.

Yes; why not comply? It would be sure to disgust and alienate such a hypocritical degenerate. If there was an infallible way to rid oneself of a gentleman’s presence, it must be the hint of an approaching, illegitimate birth. Speculation as to the child’s paternity was sure to be bandied about.

‘It is a very delicate matter, sir, for a lady in my position…’ Emma whispered. And at least I am a lady! she would have loved to raucously screech at him, but resisted and demurely lowered her face. ‘And I do not wish to say more. I’m sure you understand…’ she timidly concluded, pressing her lips tight to conceal a small, satisfied smile.

‘But I wish you to say more for I do not understand,’ he rejected with silky steel. ‘Have your parents sent you away to avoid a scandal?’

She remained diffidently quiet yet was aware of his absolute stillness, his absolute attention. When the silence between them dragged interminably some of her smug confidence evaporated and her stomach’s mellow satiety began to curdle.

‘Are you with child?’

‘I beg you will not press me on the matter, sir,’ she pleaded shrilly, agitatedly, swivelling sideways on her chair. He hadn’t leapt up and excused himself as she’d expected; moreover, he seemed content to simply sit and singe the top of her head with a quicksilver stare.

‘What of your lover? Where is he?’ he asked quite levelly, yet on shoving himself back from the table the chair almost tipped over.

She was aware of her body receiving a disturbingly thorough assessment. No doubt he did know of such things, she realised acidly. She’d seen him at the Fallow Buck with a child. Whether it was born of his wife or his mistress was anyone’s guess. As Victoria had never mentioned Dickie—as she affectionately termed him—marrying, the child, she presumed, must be the offspring from some base union.

She and Victoria exchanged letters quite often. Via one of those, Emma had learned that this man had moved abroad a year or more ago to oversee his foreign estates. Such a shame he ever brought himself back! she viciously thought, squirming beneath his unrelenting observation.

‘Is he married already or refusing to support you?’

‘Please, do not ask for I…I really cannot say…’

Well, how lucky can you get? Richard sourly mused. You wanted her and now it looks as though not only can you have her but another man’s bastard, too. For God’s sake, leave now! he urged himself. You’ve done your best. You’ve fed her…offered to help. She doesn’t want your aid. She’s never liked you. Even at your mannerly best, she never liked you, he mocked himself, recalling how attentively civil he’d been to her three years previously in London when he and David Hardinge had been the bane of polite society. And there, of course, lay a prime reason why he was loath to abandon her: he owed it to the best friend he had ever had to protect her, for David’s wife, Victoria, cherished this woman as a very dear friend.

In fact, he was quite surprised that she hadn’t fled into Hertfordshire to seek support from Victoria rather than head this way where she seemed friendless and alone…unless…He twisted on his heel. Of course, you fool, he silently berated himself. If she’s headed this way, that’s because her lover lives locally. ‘How long have you been in Bath?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Five days,’ Emma answered honestly, yet looked warily at him.

So she’d been here five days and was starving and seeking employment, which meant that the bastard had no intention of taking on his responsibility. If he was already married the least he could do was settle her in her own establishment somewhere as his mistress.

Oh, no! Don’t you dare give it a minute’s pause! he inwardly raged. A pregnant mistress? In three months’ time when her belly’s swollen you’ll be visiting Yvette and counting the cost of it all. A mistress with a child? You don’t even like children! You like your nephew well enough, an inner voice argued back. He likes you too. Stephen says you’re good with children. But they’re family…they share your blood. This flyblow could be sired by a criminal…drunk…gambler. Should suit pretty well, then, echoed back drily as he recalled his duelling, his long nights spent heavy-eyed at card tables and numerous drunken brawls in his misspent youth.

Besides—he swivelled on a heel to look at her—at some time she’s going to be this beautiful again…perhaps filled out a little too, he thought wryly as he discreetly surveyed delicately curving breasts and hips. ‘You need someone to care for you,’ he heard himself say. ‘Even if you manage to get employment, you’ll be put off as soon as your condition becomes apparent.’

Emma merely nodded, not knowing what else to do, for her stomach was in sickening cramps as she anticipated what would come next. But then, it had been niggling at the back of her mind since she’d stupidly threatened to cry rape to frighten him off. He’d looked at her from beneath his long, dusky lashes in a way he had three years ago…in a way he no doubt looked at all women who aroused his lust. And she knew she did that for some odd reason.

No other man had looked at her in that steady, intent way, as though the backs of his eyes were afire. Certainly not Matthew. Yet, even with so little experience of men, an innate sense warned her that throbbing, silent stare was a prelude to lechery. She slowly stood, quickly said, ‘Thank you for your concern but I have made my own plans…If you will excuse me…’

They seemed to be pacing towards the door at the same time, at the same speed yet he reached it first from further away. A solid dark fist was planted casually against it and slitted silver eyes gleamed down at her. ‘What plans?’ he asked idly.

‘Private plans,’ she returned sweetly.

‘Plans that include absconding from here as soon as I’m out of sight?’

‘I have nothing further to say, sir,’ she said with great dignity…yet alarmed, for he had a disturbing ability to read her mind. ‘I can only ask you not to cause my family further distress by…by mentioning this to anyone at all. My parents are quite ill with worry.’ And that was the truth, too, even if their anxiety stemmed from a different source entirely.

‘You can’t stay here; it’s hardly fitting. Besides, as you and Mrs Keene insist, it is a respectable house,’ he mentioned satirically. ‘I’m sure you’ll soon be asked to leave.’

‘Mrs Keene need never know!’ She realised immediately how naive that sounded. A pregnant woman was quite easily identifiable as she neared her time. ‘I shall not be here for very long,’ she quickly amended.

Richard looked meaningfully at the door. ‘Oh, I’m sure a hint of it might already have reached Mrs Keene’s ears.’

Emma glanced, horrified, at the door then actually caught a muffled shuffle of receding slippered feet.

‘You need someone to care for you, Emma.’

She felt the soft words stir the hair at her brow, sensed the distance between them close and solidify with tension. She swallowed, trying to dredge up some clever snub, but nothing came. Nothing at all. Her volatile mind was unusually lethargic.

The fist planted by the side of her head slid down the panels on the door, dark knuckles brushing against fawn hair close to them. His long fingers uncurled slowly, moved a trailing tress back from her brow, then another with a mesmeric gentleness that would have rendered objection superfluous.

Her copper eyes were slowly raised, magnetised by eyes like tarnished silver stars. ‘Let me care for you, Emma,’ he said huskily before his moon-pale head dipped and his lips touched a feather-light caress to her brow.

Entranced, her body felt immoveable, her limbs heavy. Even her ivory lids felt weighted and drooped as warm, skimming kisses trailed her cool skin from temple to cheek.

Hit him! Push him away! resounded in her mind, but hollowly, as though from far, far away. And the tantalisingly soft caress was so soothing. Suddenly, it felt as though she’d been starved of human contact and this man’s touch was as essential as the food she’d eaten.

A dark thumb traced her lower lip, a hand wound into thick tawny hair, tilting her head those necessary few inches. His mouth touched hers with infinite gentle persuasion, and Emma felt herself melting into it.

He knew it, too: unbelievably, her acquiescence seemed a mere kiss away. ‘I’ll care for you and the child,’ he murmured confidently against her mouth. ‘You’ll want for nothing, I swear. I’ll make lasting provision for you. Even if I marry at some time, you’ll want for nothing.’

A glacier of icy feeling, bright and invigorating, seemed to meander from her pulsing lips to her rigid toes. As his mouth slid forcefully on hers and his hand spanned her jaw, manoeuvring it apart, she finally wrenched her head aside, simultaneously swinging small, clawed fingers up towards his face.

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