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
