At Your Pleasure (23 page)

He did not think it was their interlude in the meadow
that accounted for her gloom. Or perhaps he indulged a weakness by telling himself the cause must be otherwise. Having touched her again—having felt the beauty of her willing flesh, and the triumph of watching her defenses tremble and yield to him—he could not imagine a force on earth that might stop him from having her again.

But her distress might suffice. To his own displeasure, he could not detach himself from his awareness of it, though it would have done him better to focus solely on her cousin, whose idle remarks might prove revealing if carefully attended. Concern was a mistake. Compassion for her would not serve his aims. Far wiser to use her weaknesses against her than to wish to protect her from them.

He could not afford to protect her from them. Loyalty, duty, courage—these were what he must exploit in her.

Could Cosmo Colville be the cause of her distress? Perhaps Adrian had surmised incorrectly, and the man had brought news not of her brother’s approach, but of some other misfortune.

He watched them for clues: she, wooden-faced, and Colville, ruddy and jolly, a man with no cares . . . or a man pretending with great effort that he had none. He drank deeply, laughed loudly, and traded increasingly vulgar quips with Lord John, who had begun the meal in sullen silence but had been steadily drowning his reserve in glass upon glass of canary.

“But there is no place sweeter than home, surely,” Cosmo was saying to the boy. “No matter the wonders of town life.”

“You Colvilles must have dirt in your very blood,” the boy replied. “I cannot fathom any comparison that would find London lacking! It would take a great want of taste.”

Colville seemed peculiarly deaf to the boy’s jibing. With a grin, he turned toward Nora. “What say you, my lady? Have we dirt in our blood, or will you support my contention that Askham Manor would awe even the brightest young spark?”

Her attention remained fixed on her plate. “I could not argue it either way. After all, I have never been to Askham.”

The footman was ready to refill Adrian’s glass. He covered it with his hand. Some tension that he did not understand infused this exchange, and he required all his senses for it.

“Ah, true enough,” Colville said, his gaze lingering on his cousin with something more complex than affection. “I had forgotten. Well, I promise you it will not disappoint—though I suppose that even Askham will profit from your gentle ministrations.”

The implication slammed into Adrian as a hammer might. Only as a wife would it make sense for Nora to administer her cousin’s household.

Nora’s expression betrayed no surprise at Cosmo’s remark. Evidently she had kept more secrets from Adrian than those concerning her brother.

She had kept this secret even as he pleasured her in the meadow today.

He sat back, releasing a harsh breath. One pointed glance brought Braddock from the corner, where he had been attempting to play footman.

“Fetch your late-come guest from the high road,” Adrian told him quietly. “Install him in my rooms and keep him in wine.”

With a nod, Braddock slipped out.

Lord John was asking the obvious question. “Is there to be a happy event, then?”

“I am the most fortunate man alive,” Colville affirmed. He reached out to take his cousin’s hand and she shifted subtly away.

If Colville noticed this rebuff, he gave no sign of it. “The betrothal contact has been drawn,” he continued. “Only the date remains to be determined.” He turned to Adrian. “In fact, my lord, we touch on the true cause of my visit now. I think you will agree that in these uncertain times, and with the nature of the disagreeable task upon you, Hodderby is no fit place for the marchioness. I mean to take her to my estates, where she will shelter among family and friends.”

This news did not surprise Adrian. Should David Colville wish to retake Hodderby, it would profit him to have his sister removed from the premises. Otherwise she would prove a worry in combat.

Adrian considered his choices. The easiest would serve. “By all means,” he said. “The marchioness must not be inconvenienced by these matters.”

Nora stiffened. He glanced into her eyes and found them wide and startled. The next moment her lashes fell, and all that remained to guide him was the color blooming in her cheeks.

What this flush betokened, he could not decide. Had
she expected him to oppose her cousin? Or to accuse her, before the company, of behavior ill becoming a woman promised in marriage?

If so, she overestimated his care for propriety. He would have put his hands on her today had she been engaged to marry a king. Her misunderstanding of him, however, was all to his advantage.

“We will leave at once, then,” said Cosmo. “We cannot wish to inconvenience you. Your hospitality has been generous.”

“
My
hospitality.” Nora spoke coldly. “Hodderby is not Lord Rivenham’s estate.”

Colville mustered a thin smile. “Indeed, indeed.”

Hodderby would be no one’s estate but the crown’s, once David Colville was done. The family had been unusually fortunate to retain a slice of their ancestral estates when Lord Hexton had been impeached. They would not be so fortunate again.

Nevertheless, Hodderby would remain hers. Adrian would make sure of it.

“But you must stay for a few days,” he said to Colville, investing his words with congenial invitation. “Recuperate from your long journey.”

“Most kind,” Colville said, “but I believe one night will suffice.” Beside him, the bride gave a telling jerk: she had not known of this plan for rapid departure. “Your trunks can follow us,” he added to her, as though her concern were merely for her wardrobe. “You understand: with the news from Scotland, we cannot trust the roads to remain quiet for long.”

This haste was intriguing. It suggested that David Colville lingered somewhere very nearby, biding his time until his sister could be cleared of the keep.

Adrian did not bother to repress his smile.
Tonight
. His instincts had never spoken more loudly.
It is tonight, or never.

He sensed Nora’s eyes on him. Catching her look, he lifted his glass to her.

Some inscrutable emotion crossed her face. She looked into her own cup, but did not raise it in reply.

Unfazed, Adrian turned his glass toward Colville. “A toast, then.” Good cheer roughened his voice. Anticipation grew all the sweeter as the end drew near. “To your safe journey.”

“And to Lady Towe’s, of course,” Colville added.

Adrian drank without speaking. After tonight, Lady Towe’s safety would not be any Colville’s concern.

13

P
ast midnight. Nora walked in silent, measured steps down the cold stone corridor, her cloak bag clutched under her arm. Such precious freight must be carried with care, for within this bag lay the articles of estate, the rent rolls and ancient deeds of land, the Bible that attested to family marriages and deaths—none of which could be left behind to chance.

For hours she had wrestled with herself over this course. At the table, she had held her tongue when Cosmo spoke of marriage, forbidding herself by a fierce will to quarrel in the presence of enemies. Then, when Adrian had ceded so easily to Cosmo’s plan to remove her from Hodderby, her own foolish grief had almost crushed her. Evidently he had not found their interlude in the meadow worth repeating. On the contrary, it seemed to have proved to him that she was more trouble than she was worth.

But these men, both of them, could go to the devil! In his absence, David had entrusted
her
with Hodderby’s
care. If he had formed some new plan thereafter with Cosmo, then he should have shared it. But he had not, and she would not take her cousin’s word for truth. She would not abandon Hodderby—and she would not marry Cosmo, either. Indeed, she was done with men entirely! What a more peaceful life she would lead freed from their deceptions—and from the casual violence with which they betrayed a woman’s hopes. Idiotic hopes, unforgivable hopes—they sprang up like weeds and flourished without permission . . .

She took a sharp breath and forced her attention to the present. Her decision had been made. There was no use in dwelling on aught else.

The arrow-slit windows permitted only the barest ghostly glow to penetrate the gloom. With one hand she guided herself, her fingertips brushing over tapestries she knew like her own face, and the frames of paintings showing her forebears. Once this entire hall had been a gallery, and her ancestors’ images had hung side by side with great works by Caravaggio, Rubens, and Van Dyck. But the travails of the Civil War had cost the Colvilles these treasures. Nora only knew of them from her late grandfather’s tales.

Grandfather had cherished those memories of greatness. He had seen fit to press them on her as well as David. In so many ways he had shown her that Hodderby was her legacy as much as her brother’s. David had known this, once. But he was only a man, and she could not blame him if he fell prey to the same masculine disorders of the mind that plagued his cousin and Lord Rivenham to boot.

No matter what any of them believed, her place was
here
. She knew a hundred places to hide on this estate, and a hundred people, plainspoken and honorable, who would shelter her. It was unjust to ask them to risk themselves, but she would find a way to reward them for it.

The floor abruptly slanted upward, signaling the threshold to the entresol that looked over the entry hall. She stepped across it—and gasped as a hand closed on her arm.

The cloak bag slipped, thumping against the floor as a hard body came up behind her. The hilt of a sword stabbed her ribs.

The hand across her mouth seemed . . . familiar.

Adrian whispered in her ear,
“Quietly.”

He made the mistake of releasing her then. She turned to face him, calculating how best to deter his interest, to send him onward so she might accomplish her escape. He was nothing in this blackness but the faint glow of his hair and the glint of his eyes.

A quick glance downward could not locate her cloak bag, but as she shifted, her foot came up against it. Pray God he had not noticed it, for it would be a telltale sign of her intention to flee.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. “Why do you prowl?”

“I could ask you the same. If you seek your cousin, you need only wait in your chambers. I wager he will soon come sniffing about them.”

His voice was pitched so low that she might have imagined the growl in it. But his phrasing made her wary; it did not sound kind.

When he took hold of her arm again, the flexing pressure of his hand proved more distinct to her senses. Mere inches separated them. In the surrounding chill, her body wanted to step closer to the great warmth coming off his.

“You are armed,” she said.

“Yes.”

She thought she saw the flash of his teeth, though it was no remark to inspire a smile. She tried to pull away. His grip tightened.

A shadow shifted in the corner of her vision. When she looked, it was already gone.

“One of my men,” he said. “They walk the house tonight.”

“To what purpose?” A horrific idea suggested itself. “Mean you to slay my cousin?”

His soft laugh raised the hairs on her nape. This strange cheer in his manner alarmed her; he all but vibrated with wild energy. “Would you weep for him if I did?”

These were not the words of a man resigned to Cosmo Colville’s wishes. Had his merry routine at dinner been but a show? “You gave him permission to take me!”

“I lie very well.”

So.
That answered one question. The other yet remained. “You cannot mean to harm him.”

“Oh, I have murder in me,” he said softly. “Generally it requires provocation. Do you wish to marry him?”

The casual tenor of his voice, so mismatched to his words, made her wary. She did not know what answer might count as the provocation he required.

“What are you about?” she asked slowly.

“You were mine in the meadow this morning. It was not by accident.”

She was grateful for the darkness as she felt her face flame. “This morning was . . .”
Magical,
she thought.
A dream
. Some stolen moment not meant to exist in the waking world.

A mistake.

“It should not have happened,” she whispered.

“You do not lie nearly so well as I.” How strangely pleased he sounded. She did not recognize this man who held her in the darkness. “Be honest now.” His hand closed over her hip and she sucked in a breath. “Be honest,” he murmured.

His tongue traced the curve of her ear.

She shuddered and turned away. “Not here,” she said hoarsely. “Stop it.”

“I mean to make you mine.”

Though his mouth was hot, the words sounded cold. His statement held no pleasure, no passion; he spoke a flat promise to her.

For a moment, she quailed. If he wanted to drive her away, he could not do so more effectively than by threatening to take his full liberties without her say.