spluttering ensued, and a further reddening of those already pink cheeks. ‘Don’t you give orders to me, you—you—’
‘Let’s call it a polite suggestion, shall we?’ said Lucas softly. ‘After all, we’re not on the army parade ground now, are we?’
‘So you actually remember the parade ground, do you?’ retorted Martin Bryant bitterly. ‘My God, you got out of the army just about as quickly as you could, didn’t you, Conistone? Before the bullets flew too close?’
‘Martin!’ cried Verena.
Alec Stewart, at Lucas’s side, had taken a step forwards, muttering, ‘Too far, that, Lucas. Pray, let me sort the blackguard!’
But Lucas stopped him with a calm, restraining hand, and said directly to Martin, ‘Perhaps I left the army because I became weary of idiots like you’.
Martin lunged. Verena let out a low cry. Alec Stewart was swearing. But Lucas had already moved swiftly to one side, and his right fist flew. Martin staggered, then pulled himself up dazedly, wiping at the blood on his lip. ‘Damn you, Conistone!’
Lucas towered over him, powerful shoulders still braced, his eyes hard as iron. He said curtly, ‘That was just a warning, Bryant. Stop being a damned idiot. You’d best go and clean yourself up, before someone—and I assure you it won’t be me—receives a more serious injury’.
Still Martin hesitated. ‘Captain Bryant,’ Verena pleaded. ‘Do as he says. Please’.
‘I’m not leaving you alone with—’
‘Lord Conistone and his friend are going,’ interrupted Verena quietly, wretchedly. ‘Now’.
Alec said tersely to Lucas, ‘I’ll get someone to see to our horses. Then—I think you’ll now agree—we’d best be on our way’.
Martin Bryant had already hurried off, holding a handkerchief to his bleeding lip after shooting a look of hatred at Lucas. Alec turned to Verena, saying, ‘Do you still have your man Turley, Miss Sheldon? The horses need water and I must adjust my mare’s curb chain. Then we can ride on’.
She was fighting back the bitter mortification. What could she do? What could she say, that would not make things a thousand times worse than they were already?
Nothing, except speed their exit.
‘I will find Turley for you, Captain Stewart!’ she said. ‘We wouldn’t want you—detained for any longer than necessary!’
Alec hesitated. ‘Very well. I’ll take the horses to the stables, if I may?’
She nodded and turned for the house.
But she was too late. As Alec disappeared, a strong hand stretched out, almost casually, to grip her. ‘Wait,’ Lucas commanded.
This was—intolerable. Her whole body trembled with rage. With shock. With the longing—the treacherous longing—to be in his arms again, to feel his body pressed against hers, his warm lips caressing her skin.
Harlot. Fortune-hunting harlot, that letter had said. She spoke in a tight voice, staring into the distance. ‘Will you please let go of me, my lord?’
‘Oh, Verena,’ Lucas said tiredly. He had turned her to face him. She would not, she would not meet his eyes! But his long coat had fallen open, so she could see all too clearly how his cream shirt moulded itself to his powerful shoulders and chest, against which he had once cradled her so close that she could hear his heart beating….
‘Turley,’ she said blindly, ‘I must fetch Turley’.
‘Alec will sort all that’. Lucas Conistone’s voice was harder now. ‘Deuce take it, Verena, if you’re in difficulties of some kind, why didn’t you ask me for assistance? Why didn’t you write?’
‘Oh, pray forgive me, my lord!’ Her eyes flashed up to his now. ‘But, absurd as it seems, I did not once think, “Dear me, we are in trouble, I must ask Viscount Conistone for help!‘”
He had always been stunningly handsome. But now there was something different, a dangerous cold light in those inscrutable grey eyes. Only perhaps it had always been there, and she’d been too much of a lovesick fool to see it.
He said in a quiet voice, ‘I suppose I cannot blame you if you have come to hate me’.
She swallowed hard, suddenly aware that the air out here was oppressive with heat. As the shadows deepened, she heard a rumble of ominous thunder. And his eyes were already as dark as night. ‘Hate you?’ she replied, summoning false brightness. ‘No such powerful emotion, my lord; you see, the thought of you simply never crossed my mind! Though, may I say, I do not warm to your idea of arriving here, unannounced, to gloat over our misfortune’.
‘Verena. Stop it. Stop it,’ he grated out, so savagely that she flinched. Then he raked his hand through his dark hair and said, almost tonelessly, ‘I’m sorry if I ever gave you cause to think that I might find your plight—amusing’.
His hands. His long, beautifully shaped fingers. The way he used to caress her….. ‘No apology needed, my lord!’ Somehow she managed to keep a smile fixed to her lips. ‘You see, you never gave me any cause to think of you at all!’
She turned resolutely back to the house; but again he caught her, swinging her round to face him. ‘Verena’. His voice was almost a growl. ‘Wait. Please, I beg you. You must speak with me’.
She stood, unable to ignore the pressure of those warm fingers on her shoulders—a pressure that cruelly awakened feelings she’d thought long since dead. ‘What is there to say?’ she whispered. The thunder rolled nearer. A heavy drop of rain splashed on the ground by her feet.
‘Verena,’ he murmured, his fingers tracing tiny circles on her bare skin just above her collarbone—oh, no, she could feel her pulse racing at his merest touch. ‘You haven’t really forgotten me, Verena. You can’t have…’.
She jerked herself away from his treacherous hand and crossed her arms over her bosom. Dear God. Less than two years ago this man had walked out of her life, leaving her utterly bereft, and a target for the sneers of the whole county. Now he was here again. Why? She said with passionate defiance, ‘I have succeeded in forgetting you completely, my lord! And as for your sympathy—I can live without it, I do assure you!’
‘I was hoping to offer more practical help,’ Lucas Conistone said flatly. He looked up at the dark clouds, and a flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the hard line of his jaw. ‘Perhaps we could go inside and talk?’
‘Inside? The house?’ She looked as though he’d suggested they torch the place. ‘But—my mother is in there! Deb is in there!’
‘Deb?’ Lucas repeated the name almost blankly. Then he remembered that Deb was one of her three younger sisters, the foolish blonde one, the one he had least time for. He frowned. ‘Of what account, pray, is she?’
And Verena’s face, where before it had been anguished, was frozen into first shock, then shuttered coldness. ‘Oh, Lucas,’ she whispered. ‘Enough of this. I never expected to see you again. I never
