before, and the portrait of her father, which had hung over the dresser, and the miniatures of her mother and herself on its surface, had been removed.
Who was responsible for the alterations and why? On one of the bedside tables was a leatherbound book by the sixteenth-century popular dramatist Christopher Marlowe. A scent hung in the air. It was a scent that was unfamiliar to her, a masculine scent. She was more bewildered than ever, for there was something intensely personal about the scent and the changes. Moving slowly round the bed, on the other bedside table there was a pistol. Holding her riding crop in one hand, she picked the weapon up with the other and gazed at it in confusion. She was curious, but had no time to dwell on the changes, for at the sound of several horses clattering into the courtyard, she hurried to a window and looked down.
Three horsemen had drawn up in front of the house, but only one dismounted. Turning back towards the stairs she scowled, in no mood for visitors. What did they want? Treading quietly, she paused halfway down the stairs to observe the man who had entered, removing his hat, the heels of his wide-topped boots sounding loud on the stone floor. His presence seemed to fill the hall with authority. He went to the large hearth where a fire struggled to blaze. In an attempt to bring it back to life, he kicked a log into the centre of the dull glow, moving back when it sprung to life.
From where she stood, Jane’s attention was entirely focused on him. The stranger’s imposing presence seemed highly inappropriate in her late father’s home. Tall and well built and perhaps thirty years old, he was wearing severe black, but he had loosened his plain white stock and removed a leather glove from his left hand. The sun slanting through one of the high windows shone on his curly dark brown hair springing thickly, vibrantly, from his head and curling about his neck. His face was not handsome but strong, striking, disciplined and exceptionally attractive, the expression cool. He was also one of Cromwell’s Roundheads, a man who was familiar to her, a man she had once risked her life for.
The tender feelings that had governed her actions all those years ago had vanished when Cromwell’s Roundheads had killed her father. And now, finding one of them at Bilborough Hall, his very presence defiling the beloved walls, made her shake with anger. Damn them all, she thought. They had descended like a plague of locusts on every Royalist house in England, stealing whatever they could get their hands on, and in most cases abusing the inhabitants and leaving them to starve.
She continued on down the stairs, finding it difficult to conceal the sense of outrage that possessed her on finding this Cromwellian in her home, treating Bilborough Hall as if he owned it. Sensing her presence, he spun round, all taut muscle, lean power and pulsing strength. His gaze was fixed on her as she crossed towards him. A well-defined eyebrow jutted upwards in what could only have been astonishment, and then his eyes narrowed, half-shaded by his lids as he coolly stared at her. There was a barrier of aloofness about him, an hauteur, which was intimidating. He had the healthy glow of one who liked to be in the open, and the air of someone who was not happy to be confined indoors all the time.
In that moment Jane noticed the startling, intense blue of his eyes, and again she thought how extraordinarily attractive he was. His face was hard, but around his eyes there was the tracery of lines from his ready smile. Her heart seemed suddenly to leap into her throat in a ridiculous, choking way and she chided herself for being so foolish. Their paths might have crossed many years ago, but he was, after all, still a stranger to her, and a Roundhead at that. The hounds had got to their feet and taken up what had every appearance of a protective stance on either side of him. No reasonable explanation could be found for their acceptance of this stranger, at least none of which Jane was aware.
‘You are a stranger here, sir,’ she said calmly, having no intention of reminding him that they had already met for at that time, despite having helped him, they had still been enemies and she wondered how he would react to her if she did.
He bowed and answered in a deep, rich voice, ‘Colonel Francis Russell at your service.’ He straightened to his full height and studied her closely, because, apart from recognising her as the young woman he had seen riding her horse earlier, there was also something vaguely familiar about her and he couldn’t think what. He was moderately sure they had never met before, and yet … No, surely he would not forget a face as lovely as this. Her beauty fed his gaze and created in his being a sweet, hungering ache that could neither be easily put aside nor sated with anything less than what he desired. It was the natural desire a man felt for a woman, a desire Francis had not felt in a long time.
Jane knew instinctively that he was just as aware of her as she was of him, and she bent her head so that he should not see her confusion or the anger in her eyes.
‘Kindly explain why it is that you should be holding a pistol in such a way as it could do much harm,’ he said.
She lifted her eyes, not realising until now that she was still holding the weapon. He was studying her closely and she was aware of the tension in herself. ‘I am Jane Lucas, daughter of the late Sir John Lucas.’
‘And the pistol?’ He indicated the gun in her hand.
The amazing eyes were still focused on her as he waited for an answer. She drew a breath. ‘I picked it up when I was upstairs.’
‘And were you going to use it on me?’
She lifted her chin as her eyes caught him running a surreptitious eye over her appearance, the expression on his face condemning as it settled on the naked flesh at her throat. ‘No, I was not, Colonel Russell. I was merely going to place it out of harm’s way.’
‘Harm being?’
‘How would I know that, since I have only just now returned home?’
‘Home?’
‘Bilborough Hall, of course.’
Francis gave her a long, slow look, a twist of humour around his beautifully moulded lips. He had been aware of who she was from the moment he had set eyes on her. He recognised her from some of the Lucas family paintings he had seen on his arrival at Bilborough Hall, painted when she had been a girl. Her dark beauty had startled him. There had been a plumpness to her features, and in her eyes the artist had captured an over-boisterous girl. With the passing of the years she was much changed. At thirty years of age, he had known many beautiful women, selecting those of fire and passion, and yet he’d had no desire to form a long-standing relationship with any one of them. He had not expected to find the girl in the painting to have blossomed into such an exotic creature.
No man could remain unmoved by this young woman’s beauty. With hair as black as ebony and as sleek as silk, high cheek bones and slanting eyes as dark as two shining blackberries, a figure to rival Venus and full, ripe lips that betrayed her sensuality, she was all temptation—a bewitching, exotic creature. Her neck was long and there was a certain grace in her movements that reminded him of a swan. He was conscious of the musical resonance of her voice when she spoke, and when he lowered his eyes he saw tiny beads of perspiration in the V of her dress, open at the throat, and the thrust of her high, firm breasts straining against the fabric.
The smile building about his mouth creased the clear hardness of his jaw and to Jane, it made him appear in that moment the most handsome man in the world. The flame in his gaze kindled brighter, burning her with its intensity. Then, suddenly, his direct, masculine assurance disconcerted her. She was vividly conscious of how close he was to her. She felt an unfamiliar heat flushing her cheeks that she had never experienced before.
Instantly she felt resentful towards him, threatened in some way. The glow in her face now faded. He had made too much of an impact on her, this Roundhead, and she was afraid that if he looked at her much longer he would read what was in her mind with those, clever, brilliant blue eyes
