she whispered. ‘Anything at all’.
He was quiet for a few moments as they stumbled along. Somewhere in the woods an owl hooted. She jumped and his arm tightened around her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered.
‘Sorry?’ Somehow they had come to a stop. ‘Maybe I’m the one who should apologise. My blood is ruining your gown and cloak’.
‘Do you think I care? Please, keep going…’.
His arm was heavy and warm on her shoulder. ‘You’ve already had one gown ruined tonight. Do you usually get through them at such a rate?’
She caught her breath. Those buttons. That scandalous silk chemise. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry; she wanted to nestle into the warmth of him and cherish him and never, ever let him go.
‘It’s all part of the excitement of country living,’ she said crisply. ‘We run up such a bill at our dressmakers in Chichester, you really cannot imagine. Lucas. Please hurry, it’s not far now…’.
Trudging and slipping lopsidedly, they’d almost reached the lawns—only a few hundred yards to go.
‘I’d like to buy you a new gown,’ he muttered as the night-time fragrance of the rose gardens enveloped them. ‘A new gown, in pink, or jade, or lilac, for my amber-eyed girl. You wore lilac at that harvest dance but your skin was scented with lavender. Oh, God’. He stopped suddenly. ‘I’ve missed you, Verena’.
He was wandering. He must be. Her heart was thumping. ‘Lucas,’ she begged, ‘you must stop talking. You must concentrate on getting back to the house. Please…’.
But he didn’t move. His grey eyes, suddenly molten with flecks of gold, burned down into her anxious face. Then he lifted his left hand and let his fingertips trail down her cheek. His touch was like a flame searing through her.
‘I’d rather concentrate on something else,’ he murmured, his fingertips still stroking her skin in that wicked caress. ‘And this time, you will not push me away’. Then everything faded, as he pulled her close with his sound arm and captured her mouth in a kiss that jolted the breath from her body. A whimper of protest rose, then died in her throat.
For in spite of her fear and exhaustion, there was suddenly nothing else but Lucas. Nothing but the strength of his powerful body against hers; the taste of his warm, silken mouth as he brushed his lips over her lips and coaxed them apart; nothing but her own wildly instinctive response to the sensual thrust of his tongue and all that it promised.
It could not be happening, it should not be happening, but somehow she’d wound her own hands round his neck and arched her body into his. And with a groan he was drawing her nearer, his thighs pressed against hers, as he kissed her more deeply, his tongue twining with hers. Verena felt the need spiralling from deep within as she opened to him, revelled in his hard maleness, wanting more, needing more as he withdrew, only to feel his lips trailing down to her throat, to the swell of her bosom where her cloak had fallen apart….
She dragged herself away. ‘No. Are you out of your senses?’
‘Not for what I just did,’ he answered quietly. ‘But I was mad to ever let you go’.
A sudden wave of despair all but overwhelmed her. ‘Lucas’. She struggled to make her voice steady. ‘Lucas, you did not let me go. There was nothing between us. Ever’.
‘If you say so,’ he answered in a low voice, his eyes opaque again. ‘And, of course, you’re betrothed’.
‘Stop it!’ she cried desperately.
‘Why?’ His arm was still tight around her waist.
‘Because—because I’m not marrying Captain Bryant!’
He gazed down at her, his brows gathering. ‘Not….?’
She swallowed hard. ‘I’m not betrothed to Captain Bryant,’ she muttered. ‘I—apologise if I let you think it’.
His grey eyes were hooded, inscrutable. After a long moment he said quietly, ‘And what did I do to provoke this—setting up of Bryant as a suitor?’
She sought the words, desperately. ‘He did ask me to marry him! I only told you of it, because—because you were so hateful about him!’
Because you left me, Lucas.
Because you were not there when I needed you. When I trusted you with all my heart…..
He said at last, letting his hand drop from her waist, ‘It is, after all, none of my business, I know’.
She nodded, blinking hard. ‘Indeed, my lord, it’s not!’ But inside she was shaking. He had kissed her. He had said, I was mad to ever let you go.
Silently they trudged on. It was as if Lucas Conistone had wiped the last two years from his mind, thought Verena blindly, and the wrongs he and his grandfather had done to her family.
Oh, Verena, she told herself bitterly, he only came here today by utter chance. Just passing, on his way to the vast house he will one day inherit. Yet his presence is—lethal. You are going to have to be stronger than this.
And she was not sure that she could, because once more she was fighting her own stupid physical longing for a man she should have kicked out of her heart long ago.
‘Verena! Verena!’
David Parker’s voice. Help was coming. A search party with lanterns was hurrying in their direction across Wycherley’s lawns, headed by David and Turley. As they came close, they explained they’d heard gunfire.
‘Miss Sheldon was attacked by robbers and they fired at me when I went to help her,’ she heard Lucas explain swiftly; Verena said nothing, simply glad to leave the care of the injured Lucas to David and Turley.
But there was someone else there. Someone who had materialised out of thin air as they reached the courtyard; a thickset man with roughly cut black hair, who looked faintly familiar, and who rapidly seemed to be taking charge of Lucas’s well-being with a sharp command to all and sundry. ‘Now, then. We’ll be needin’ a nice private room on the ground floor for his lordship, if you please! Some clean sheets and hot water. With a good log fire…’. Already he was helping Lucas into the house.
Where had she seen him before?
Then David was next to her. He must have seen her staring at the man, because he took her aside to explain. ‘He’s Lord Conistone’s valet, apparently. His name is Bentinck. Looks like we’ll need his help’.
‘Really?’ she breathed bitterly. ‘Really?’ Because she had suddenly remembered. He was the man who had been at the sale this afternoon. Opening drawers, looking around in an odd and shifty manner.
Oh, no. This meant Lucas had been lying to her—yet again—when he had told her he was just passing on his way to Stancliffe, because Bentinck had been here at least two hours before his master arrived! Did he take her for a complete fool?
Oh, she
