At Your Pleasure (28 page)

Her cloak bag sat open by Adrian’s feet.

The documents spread before him assumed new, shocking significance. He was inspecting the deeds and rent rolls! No wonder Montrose looked at her with hangdog eyes!

“Those are not for you,” she burst out. “What business have you with those?”

“I suppose that depends,” Adrian said, leaning back in his chair. “Where did you mean to take them?”

“Away,” she said. “To safety. They are no business for outsiders!” She cast a sharp look toward Montrose, who busied himself in a close scrutiny of his own hands.

“And where did you think to find this safety?” Adrian asked.

If the softness of his question was intended to convey a warning, it worked the opposite effect. His presumption was stupendous; she would not be cowed in her correction of it. “That does not concern you! A soused parson might give you possession of me, but he cannot put Hodderby into your hands!”

He laid down the ancient parchment and stared at her. “Indeed. And yet, still I wonder: to whom did you seek to carry this proof of Hodderby’s possession?”

Oh, ho. Did he think he had gained the right to know everything in her brain? “You may deprive me of sleep again, if you like. You may demand the answer after two or three nights of my misery. But I promise you, you will receive the same answer as you did before. It does not concern you!”

He lifted a brow. “It was no demand, only a question. I hadn’t imagined that the answer might be so interesting as to merit your circumspection.”

“Demand or no, you overstep yourself. Merely because I—” She cast a glance toward Montrose, unwilling to speak so plainly in the steward’s presence.

Adrian understood. With a nod to the man, he said, “I will finish here.”

Montrose rose.

“I have not given you permission to leave,” she said sharply.

The steward divided a miserable glance between them. In a flash of bitter, black humor, she foresaw how
it would go next: Adrian’s imminent nod would send her steward stumbling out, his quick exit further undercutting her authority.

She did not wait for it.
“Go,”
she said.

Montrose fled, tugging the door closed behind him.

In the opening silence, she turned away from Adrian’s laconic regard and went to the window. The sight of orderly fields could not soothe her, but the rain dappling the glass, and the gray sky overhead, matched her mood perfectly.

On a deep breath, she tried to collect herself. This marriage was a fact. What she said next would be crucial to how it developed. She had held her tongue a thousand, thousand times with Towe, but she could not learn to break her own spine again.

Not for him.

Not for a man who managed, despite her own best efforts of resistance, to make her long for his presence when he was absent.

Towe’s opinion had never mattered to her. But to crush her own will and spirit for Adrian’s sake—it would destroy her. She would never recover any measure of independence.

“Do me the favor of completing your remark,” he said behind her. “I expect to find it instructive.”

His composure pricked her own temper sorely. She turned on her heel. “I let you have your way in the marriage bed,” she said through her teeth. “That does not mean you may trammel me in aught else. I am still the mistress of this household, and in its service I do not answer to you!”

“Trammel?” He rose, his chair scraping over the stone. “And
was
it a trammeling, then, that I delivered in that bed?”

She retreated a pace, her hips colliding with the sharp ledge of the windowsill. “Leave that be,” she said, for his intent expression now threatened, with the promise of touches and kisses, to undo her purpose here. “We must come to an understanding!”

“I believed we had come to one,” he said. “With my mouth on your quim, you seemed agreeable to the prospect of mastery. Shall I remind you of it?”

A strangled sound escaped her. He should not speak of such things. He was—more than wanton; he was pagan! In his face as he walked toward her now she saw his intentions very clearly.

He would take her here, in her own steward’s office.

“Stop!” She threw up a hand to halt him—physically, if need be—but the gesture was unneeded, for he did pause, just out of reach.

The stamp of his features, the new tension in his face, did not require interpretation. An entrant now might have scented it in the air, this lust that leapt between their bodies and stifled her wits. The longer their eyes held, the looser felt her bones and joints.

She swallowed hard. “I did not come here to trifle with you. I did not come here expecting you at all! You have no right to interrogate my steward—”

“So many interrogations,” he purred. “You seem enamored of the exercise. I do wonder, Nora, where your imagination takes you.”

Her mouth went dry. It would be a girl’s mistake to
think his effect on her boded well for their future. Instead of wondering at the desire she felt for him, she should deplore it as a singular weapon he alone held against her. “I must—” She paused, wanting her voice to be steady. “I must have your respect, Adrian. I must feel—I must feel as though I am not only a woman to you, but a person, a . . .” Her fists knotted in her skirts. It did not require his baffled silence to know how nonsensical she sounded. She shook her head, too dispirited to continue.

“Go on,” he said quietly.

She remembered suddenly their conversation in the beehouse. Then, too, she had hesitated, and he had prompted her. He was not . . . indifferent to her opinions.

He was not Towe.

“I am your wife,” she said slowly.
God above
. How strange it seemed. “But I am my own, as well. I must remain so. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I believe so,” he said, just as slowly.

She took a deep breath, knowing her next words were an open invitation for his mockery. “Then . . . can you think of
my
needs? Can you . . . respect them, as much as your own?”

“But your needs are precisely my concern here,” he said.

Hearing in these words a lewd double meaning, she felt her heart sink. But then, studying her, he frowned and turned to fetch the stack of documents. “Hark,” he said as he turned back. “The tallies of your harvest. The number of dependents who rely on those stores, and the names of families whose yields may not suffice for
the winter months. I was calculating with your steward what aid you and yours might require. As I told you, Beddleston has more than it requires.”

This speech left her dumbfounded. She had not imagined such a motive. This was nothing but a kindness, for what difference did it make to him how Hodderby fared?

I have loved you for a very long time,
he had said.

Wonder prickled through her. Perhaps . . . perhaps he meant those words.

Ah, God, but were these not the most dangerous words to hear from him? For now he had put them into her brain, they would lurk there forever, waiting for moments such as these to seduce her into forgetting what he had
done
rather than said.

“That is a most thoughtful and generous offer,” she said softly. “But you should have put it to me, not to my man.”

He laid the documents back on the table. “So I intended. But before I offered, I wished to make certain that Beddleston’s stores could meet your whole need. Otherwise it would be a churlish thing to hold out hope to you for nothing.”

She hesitated, torn between pressing her point again and the more immediate question, to which she surrendered with a sigh. “And what did you discover? Can you supply our requirements?”

“Happily, yes. No one need starve in the coming year.”

The news overwhelmed her. Pressing her lips together, she nodded once. Not knowing what showed
in her face, she turned away from his close regard and stared blindly into the fields.

This was . . . an unexpected boon, indeed. Until this moment she had not realized what a great weight these harvest worries had put upon her.

His footsteps approached; his hands closed on her shoulders, massaging them.

It felt then as though something inside her broke open. A shiver passed through her.

This was how she had imagined it would be between them, so many years ago. Tender consideration. A partnership of equals.

She felt cast into a dream.
A dream.
He had come here hunting for her brother. This dream would not end happily.

“I have every respect for you,” he said quietly. “But where lies disrespect in my offer of aid? Your worries are mine own now, Nora.”

What a seductive idea. His hands felt blissful. She recognized the tension she had carried only as it began to ease away under the strength of his grip. A man in love might indeed make a woman’s worries his own.

But she could not surrender
all
her cares to him. “My brother’s welfare does not worry you,” she whispered.

His hands paused. “Must we revisit this question?”

That he needed to ask boded ill. Could she not make him see what an impossible position he had made for her, in seeking to remove her from her
bind?

She laid her hand over his where it closed on her shoulder. “Where is my cousin Cosmo? As his host, I find it odd that he has not offered his felicitations to me.”

“Your cousin felt the need to start his journey very early. He conveys his best wishes to you.”

She shrugged out from his touch and turned on him. He had come so close that her body brushed his; she was trapped between his chest and the deep ledge of the window. He made no move to retreat, forcing her to hike her chin to meet his eyes.

“You mean you ordered him to depart,” she said calmly. “Yes, I believe we must revisit these questions of my family. This matter will not vanish merely because we wish it.”

Lightly he ran his thumb across her lower lip, so she tasted the salt of his skin. “And so you do wish it? There, at least, is a start.”

She would not be distracted now by caresses. “This land is precious to me. These people . . .” She took a breath. “But they are all of a part with my family. And this estate you propose to grace with your generosity—it is only mine to care for so long as its master is absent. If I accept your aid, it will be in my brother’s name.”

His eyes narrowed. “You choose now to speak of matters where silence might serve you better.”

“Is that a warning?” She would not look away, would not so much as blink. “Am I to hold my tongue when its tune does not please you?”

With his thumb remaining at the center of her lip, his hand turned to grip her cheek. He stared down at her an unspeaking moment. “I would have thought you knew me better.”

“I know you think of my welfare. But what you cannot
imagine is that I value my honor as much as you do your own.”

His mouth twisted. “I see you do misunderstand me—for I find that questions of honor are better left to those who lack more pressing concerns to occupy them. And where your brother is concerned”—he made a scornful noise—“there is no honor to speak of. Any man who asks a woman to run his risks for him—”

“So you say,” she cut in. “But saying it does not make it so. I say differently, you see.”

He regarded her silently. It seemed he had reached the end of his willingness to argue. “Then what do you propose?”

“I know not. But of one thing, I am certain.” She knocked away his hand. “You may collar me like a dog. But I will not heel, Lord Rivenham.”

Sliding past him, she walked quickly out of the room.

16

N
ora half expected Adrian to pursue her. When he did not, she found herself wandering the halls like a ghost in search of a haunt.

In her refusal to be distracted by his wooing, she had thought to salve her pride and teach him a lesson: he had married her indeed, and he had given her pleasure she could not deny. But he had not won her heart. Even if it inclined to him, she would not hand it over if the cost was her own self-regard.

But as she walked the house, she began to wonder at the wisdom of provoking him. Twice she encountered Adrian’s men—and both times, their low conversations ended at the sight of her. She sensed some new mood among them, tense, expectant.

Perhaps, instead of reproaching Adrian, she would have done better to play the blushing bride, and woo
him
for what information he might be persuaded to share.

So unsettled, longing to cast off such worries, she
went into her solar and lifted her lute from the wall. The bench by the window afforded a good survey of the parkland, and she could not shake the intuition that Adrian’s men very soon expected to see something of interest there. Taking a seat, she put herself to the methodical task of tuning and tightening the strings, then launched into a melody.

Every time the wind shifted the trees, she caught her breath. But her hands never faltered.

She had run through all her favorites and turned to less familiar melodies when a voice came behind her. “‘Old Sir Simon the King,’ is it?”

She turned to find Lord John hovering in the doorway.