a little as she had seen her cousin Helen do when she visited her and wished to attract one of the gallants whose attentions Bess always avoided, she being a married woman.
Also present was the gleeful thought, How shocked he will be when he learns who I really am, and that he was offering to seduce his own wife!
She watched him stand up with Tib’s help, which he did not really need, although he courteously accepted the proffered arm. By his manner and expression he was about to continue his Arcadian wooing, but, alas for him, even as did so he heard in the distance a troop of horse arriving.
Drew stifled a sigh. It was almost certainly part of his household who had followed him at a discreet distance to ensure his safety, even though he had repeatedly told them not to.
“Yes, it must be another time, I fear, that we dally among the spring flowers,” he said regretfully.
His cousin Charles Breton, his mother’s sister’s son, arrived in the small clearing, at the head of his followers, exclaiming as he did so, “So, there you are, Drew. But where is your horse?”
“He unshipped me most scurvily,” Drew told him, no whit ashamed, Bess noted, at having to confess his failure to control his errant steed. “But I have been rescued by the shepherdess you see before you—and her brother,” and he waved a negligent hand at Tib. “They have not yet had time to offer me a share of their picnic, else my pastoral adventure would be complete. Ah, I see that they have even rescued Cicero for me.”
So they had, for Roger rode up, his face one scowl, with Cicero trotting meekly along beside him, apparently unharmed.
“Here is your horse, young sir,” he growled, “and another time show the forest a little more respect. It is not like the green lanes of the south where a man may gallop at his will!”
“How now, sirrah?” exclaimed Charles. “Do you know to whom you speak? Show a proper humility towards your betters!”
Roger opened his mouth, ready to inform him that he knew who his betters were, and furthermore, that they included Lady Exford who stood before them, and around whom Drew had now placed a familiar arm. In vain, before he could speak, his lady forestalled him.
“Oh, my groom has a free spirit, sir, as all we dwellers in these parts have. And now I must bid you adieu, for my duties await me. The cows must be fed, and the day wears on.”
Adroitly, she wriggled out of Drew’s half-embrace and, without either Tib or Roger’s assistance, swung athletically on to her horse. Seeing Roger about to speak again, she said smartly, “Silence, man. You must not offend these great ones. And you, too, brother.”
Tib’s answer to that was a grin. He possessed to the full the countryman’s desire to make fools of townies and, by God, these were townies indeed, with their fine clothing and their drawling speech. Particularly the one whose horse had thrown him, who had been so busy making sly suggestions to his mistress.
He and Roger mounted their horses, whilst Drew, seeing his nymph ready to abandon him—rather than simply turn herself into a tree, as Daphne had done when pursued by Apollo—seized the bridle of Bess’s horse, and exclaimed, “Not so fast. I am Drew Exford, and I would know who you are.”
Bess looked down into his perfect face, and, giving him a smile so sweet that it wrenched his heart, she said softly, “But I have little mind to tell you, sir. You must discover it for yourself. Now, let me go, Master Drew Exford, for I have no desire to be behindhand with the day.”
He could not be so ungallant as to insist, especially with Charles’s amused eyes on him, and the snickers of her two companions, who were enjoying his discomfiture plainly audible. There was nothing for it but to stand back and watch her tap her whip smartly on her horse’s flank and ride off, the two men behind her, leaving Drew to gaze after her.
“Was she real, or are we dreaming?” he said, turning to Charles, who had dismounted and was staring at him as he added energetically, “Come, let us follow them.”
Only for Charles to place an urgent hand on his sleeve. “Nay, Drew. You have had a fall, the day grows old and we must ready ourselves to be at Atherington on the morrow. You do intend to visit your wife, do you not? Hardly the perfect start to your visit, to seduce one of her tenant’s daughters before you even bid her good day.”
Drew nodded his head reluctantly. “I suppose that you have the right of it. But have you ever seen such a divine face and form? Dress her in fine clothing and she would have half London at her feet.”
“Now, Drew, you do surprise me,” drawled Charles as the pair of them remounted. “I had thought that your wish would be for her to have no clothes on at all!”
Chapter Three
“So, he is here, at last,” twittered aunt Hamilton, shaken out of her usual calm when a courier arrived with m’lord Exford’s letter for her husband, Sir Braithwaite Hamilton, informing him that he was lying at an inn nearby and proposed to arrive at Atherington House shortly after noon. He would be grateful if Sir Braithwaite would apprise his niece, Lady Exford, of the news, and also make Atherington House ready to entertain his train.
She continued excitedly, half-expecting her niece to refuse to do any such thing, “And when you meet him you must be dressed in something more appropriate to your station than that old grey kirtle you have seen fit to wear today.”
“Indeed, indeed,” agreed Bess equably and surprisingly. She had every intention of being as splendidly dressed as possible to receive her husband, if only to disconcert him the more when he realised who the nymph of Charnwood Forest really was.
“Does he not know that my poor husband has been unfit to arrange anything these past five years?” aunt Hamilton continued, still agitated, and quite unaware that Bess had kept this interesting fact from her husband lest he send a steward—or, worse still, arrive himself—to manage Atherington’s affairs. He was quite unaware that Bess had been in charge since Sir Braithwaite had lost his wits after his accident—another surprise for him, and perhaps not a welcome one, was Bess’s rueful thought.
He was sure to demand that some man should replace her, even though Bess had managed Atherington lands more efficiently than her uncle. In that she was similar to another Bess, she of Hardwick, who was also Countess of Shrewsbury, and who ruled her husband as well as their joint estates.
“He has probably forgotten,” prevaricated Bess, who had long developed a neat line in such half-truths. “He has such a busy life about the court—and elsewhere,” she ended firmly, although she had not the smallest notion what her husband had been doing during the long years of his absence.
“Nevertheless…” Her aunt frowned, prepared to say more had not a well-known glint in Bess’s eye silenced her. She decided to concentrate instead on arranging for her usually wild niece to look, for once, like the great lady which she was by birth and marriage.
“And you will receive him in the Great Hall as soon as he arrives, I suppose?”
“Nay.” Bess shook her head. “I am sure that he and his train will wish to change their clothing and order themselves properly after their long journey. Only after that shall I welcome him—and then in the Great Parlour. I have given Gilbert orders to lay out a meal in the Hall for a score of us. Lord Exford—” she would not say “my husband” “—writes that he is bringing six gentlemen
