was provoked to scoff again. ‘Oh, of course. That’s what it’s all about. First you pretend to be concerned with duty, yours and mine, and then you try threats. But after all that, it’s a challenge, a silly challenge you men can never resist, can you? How pathetic! What a victory in the eyes of your peers when they hear how you took on a woman single-handed. How they’ll applaud you. And how the women will sneer at your hard-won victory. Did you not know, Sir Leon, that a man can only make a woman do what she would have done anyway?’ She had never believed it, but it added some small fuel to her argument.
‘Ah, you think that, do you? Then go on believing it if you think it will help. It makes no difference, my beauty. Deventer sent you down here with more than his new house in mind, and somewhere inside that lovely head you have some conflicting messages of your own, haven’t you, eh?’
Frantically, she struggled against him, not wanting to hear his percipient remarks or suffer the unbearable nearness of him again. Nor could she tolerate his trespass into her capricious mind. ‘Let me go!’ she panted. ‘Loose me! I want nothing to do with you.’
‘You’ll have a lot to do with me before we’re through, so you can start by regarding me as your custodian, in spite of not wanting me. Deventer will approve of that, I know.’
‘You insult me, sir. Since when has a custodian earned the right to abuse his charge as you have abused me?’
‘Abuse, my lady? That was no abuse, and you know it. You’d stopped fighting me, remember.’
‘I was exhausted,’ she said, finding it increasingly difficult to think with his eyes roaming her face at such close quarters. ‘You insulted me then as you do now. Let me go, Sir Leon. There will never be a time when I shall need a custodian, least of all a man like you. Go and find someone else to try your so-called skills on, and make sure it’s dark so she sees you not.’
‘Get used to the idea, my lady,’ he said, releasing her. ‘It will be with you for as long as it takes.’ He picked up her shoes and held them by his side. ‘Fight me as much as you like, but you’ll discover who’s master here, and I’ll have you tamed by the end of summer.’
‘A most unseemly summer, Sir Leon, if I intended to stay. But, you see, I don’t. Now, give me my shoes.’ She would have been surprised and perhaps a little disappointed if he had obeyed her, yet the temptation to nettle him was strong and her anger still so raw that she would have prolonged even this petty squabble just to win one small point. As it turned out, the victory was not entirely hers.
‘Ask politely,’ he said.
‘I’ll be damned if I will! Keep them!’
Her moment of recklessness was redeemed by voices that reached them through the open arch that had once been a doorway, the way she had entered. Lydia and Elizabeth were looking for her. ‘My lady?’ they called. ‘Where are you?’
‘Here,’ she called back. ‘Elizabeth, ask Sir Leon prettily for my shoes, there’s a dear. He’s been kind enough to carry them for me.’ Without another glance at her self-appointed custodian, she held up one foot ready for its prize. ‘Such a gentleman,’ she murmured, sweetly.
It was better than nothing. But she could not bring herself to elaborate on the scene to Lydia, who was not taken in by Sir Leon’s stiff bow or by her mistress’s attempt at nonchalance, her blazing eyes and pink cheeks.
‘We’re staying, then,’ said Lydia, provocatively.
‘Certainly not!’ Felice told her, surreptitiously probing along her arms for more bruises. ‘We’re getting out of here at the first opportunity. Why?’ She glanced at her maid’s face. ‘Don’t tell me you’d like to stay.’
‘Well…’ Lydia half-smiled ‘…I’ve just discovered that he has a very good-looking valet called Adam.’
‘Oh, Lydie! Don’t complicate matters, there’s a love.’
Another reason for Felice’s reserve was that her discord with Sir Leon had now acquired a sizeable element of personal competition in which the prize was to be her pride, a commodity she was as determined to hold on to as he apparently was to possess. Removing herself from the field of contest would indicate that it was probably not worth the fight, leaving him to be the victor by default. And naturally, he would believe her to be afraid of him.
Perhaps even more serious was his threat to make Lord Deventer aware of their first encounter from which she had emerged the loser. While her stepfather would undoubtedly clap his surveyor on the back for taking advantage of such a golden opportunity, not to mention his night-time vigil, she herself would be severely censured for such conduct, irrespective of its initial purpose. The thought of Lord Deventer’s coarse laughter brought waves of shame to her face enough to make any castigation pleasant by comparison. He would find her a husband, one who was more concerned about the size of her dowry than her reputation.
As for Sir Leon, any man who could use such an intimate and enigmatic incident as a threat was both unprincipled and despicable; he must know that that alone would be enough to keep her at Wheatley. Still, there was nothing to stop her making him regret his decision, though she expected that future encounters would be both rare and brief. Except to Lord Deventer, the man had absolutely nothing to recommend him.
The news that men had been seen traipsing through the kitchen garden had intrigued her until she discovered at suppertime that they had been repairing the gap in the wall by the side of the river path. And when she had asked by whose orders—it was, after all, in her domain—she had been told it was by Sir Leon’s.
She might have let the matter rest at that; it would not do to display an inexplicable curiosity. But in the comforting darkness of her curtained bed, the soft images of the previous night took unnatural precedence over the day’s conflicts and would not leave her in peace. It was as if, in the darkness, they were beyond regret. She had now seen the man with whom she had been entangled and, although hostile, it was not difficult for her to recall the way he had held, caressed and kissed her, nor to remember how her own body had flared out of control before the sudden quenching of prudence. In the dark, shame did not exist.
With only the moon to watch, she took Flint and Fen quietly downstairs out of the front door and round through the kitchen courtyard to the back of the house, the reverse of last night’s frantic journey. At the entrance to the garden she stopped, confronted by the derelict place washed by moonlight where dear Timon’s memory had been cruelly disturbed by one insane moment of bliss, the like of which she had never known with him. Was it because of his absence? Her longing? She thought not, but no one need know it. She need not admit it again, even to herself.
One of the deerhounds whined, then the other, both suddenly leaving her and bounding up the overgrown path into the darkness. Incensed by their preference for rabbits rather than her, she took a step forward, yelling into the silvery blackness, ‘Flint! Fen! Come back here, damn you!’
They returned at the trot, ears flattened and tails flailing apologetically, but shattering her reminiscences and making her aware of their absurdity. ‘Come!’ she said, severely. ‘Stupid hounds.’
This time, her return was unhurried and more thoughtful.
Had the next day been any other but Sunday, there would have been a good chance of avoiding the cause of her sleepless moments, but churchgoing was never an option unless one intended to attract the disapproval of the vicar and his church-wardens. Furthermore, as a close relative of the abbey’s owner,
