One Snowy Night (7 page)

His voice
tailed away. He had started his speech full of confidence, but at the word
"mistress" the atmosphere had changed, and a deadly silence now
filled the room.

Lacy glanced
nervously at Joshua and backed away.

There was a
moment of tense silence. Then, ‘Tell me, Lacy,’ said Joshua. ‘How are you with
a pistol?’ He spoke conversationally, but the air suddenly felt as tight as a
drum, as though one wrong word or gesture would rupture it.

Lacy felt it.
He fingered his collar nervously, as though he was finding it difficult to
breath. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, that
if you blacken Miss Foster’s name in any way, you will find yourself needing
one,’ said Joshua levelly.

Lacy gave a
bark of laughter, but it was forced. ‘You wouldn’t fight a duel over her,’ he
said with bravado. ‘She’s not your wife. She’s nothing but your strumpet.
Besides, duels aren’t for your kind.’ He sneered again. ‘You’re in trade,
Kelling. You’re not even a gentleman.’

‘I count four,’
said Joshua calmly.

Lacy looked at
him suspiciously.

‘Four reasons
for calling you out,’ Joshua elaborated. ‘One, your attack on Miss Foster; two,
your threat to spread gossip about the lady and myself; three, your slur on the
lady’s character; and four, your slur on my right to call myself a gentleman.’

Lacy licked
his lips.

‘You are the
only person to know of the incident at
The Queen’s Head
,’ went on
Joshua, his eyes hard. ‘If I discover that anyone else knows about it, I will
know who has been spreading the rumour. And I, Lacy, am a very good shot.’

Lacy looked
from one to the other of them, as if trying to decide whether it would be worth
his while to resort to some kind of blackmail. But one look at Joshua’s implacable
features decided him. ‘Very well,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘I will keep
quiet.’

‘A wise
choice,’ said Joshua evenly. He strode over to the door and held it open.

Lacy, with a
last furtive look, slipped out of the room.

With his
departure, some of the tension that had filled the room began to dissipate.
Rebecca let out sigh of relief. Without realizing it, she had been holding her
breath.

Joshua, whose
eyes had followed Lacy out of the room, turned to look at her.

As she felt
his eyes on her, Rebecca felt suddenly awkward. He was taking in every detail
of her: the flush on her cheeks; her rapid breathing; and the rise and fall of
her breast.

‘Did he hurt
you?’ he asked, his eyes returning to her own.

‘No.’ She
remembered Lacy’s attack on her, and was thankful that Joshua had arrived when
he did - although she had given a good account of herself before he had entered
the room. In an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, which was still tense,
though now in a subtly different way, she gave a weak smile and said, ‘Though I
believe I hurt him. I stamped on his foot when he tried to kiss me.’

He smiled,
too. Then his eyes mellowed, and the hard line of his mouth softened. ‘I hope
you would not stamp on my foot if —’ he began; before cutting himself off.

There was a
heart-stopping moment and everything was suddenly very still. Rebecca could
hear the coals shifting in the hearth. As if some unseen force was compelling
her to do so, she turned her eyes up to his. ‘If —?’ she whispered. Her voice
trembled, but the rest of her was rigid. It was as though she was waiting for
something. But what?

‘If . . .’
said Josh, his voice suddenly husky.

He was looking
incredibly desirable. Standing there before her in the candlelight, with the
flames painting gold highlights into his hair and with copper sparks flashing
from his eyes, he was the most devastatingly attractive man Rebecca had ever
seen. But it was not just his mane of dark blond hair and his copper eyes that
made him so attractive, it was the force of his character; a force which echoed
her own. He crossed the space between them and took her hands between his,
whilst all the time his eyes never left hers. He stroked his strong fingers
over the backs of her hand then turned them over and stroked the palms.

He dropped one
of her hands, and she felt torn, both relieved that he had let it go, and yet
devastated that he had done so.

But he kept
hold of her other hand. He kissed the back of it, then stripping off her long
white evening glove he kissed it again, turning it over and kissing her palm.
She gave a long, shuddering sigh, and as if it released something inside him he
abandoned convention entirely and pulled her roughly into his embrace.

His eyes bored
down into her own. It was as though he was looking through them into her very
soul. His mouth came closer and her lips began to part. She could feel the heat
of his breath, clean and sweet, and her eyelids, heavy, started to close. She
felt his arms drawing her closer, crushing her against him in a virile embrace;
she could almost taste his lips, and then —

A loud crash
from just outside the room penetrated the spellbinding aura that surrounded
her. She became gradually aware that there was a world beyond the one encircled
by Joshua’s arms, and knew that she must rejoin it.

He knew it,
too. He was pulling away from her, dropping his arms, letting her go . . . .

She swayed for
a moment, not yet able to stand without his support, then made a great effort
and managed to steady herself. As she did so she began to remember where she
was, and to realize what had just happened.

Oh, no!
she thought, overcome
with mortification. Despite all her resolutions to the contrary she had almost
succumbed to Joshua’s powerful attraction.

‘I . . . I
must go,’ she said, wondering what had come over her. How could she have become
so lost to all sense that she would allow Joshua to pull her into his arms? She
picked up her glove and pulled it on with shaking fingers. ‘Hetty will be
wondering where I am.’

‘Of course.’
His voice was husky.

To Rebecca’s
relief he stood aside so that she could pass.

‘But you will
not find Hetty in the ballroom,’ he said. ‘She has had to retire to the ladies
withdrawing-room. Mr Korbett stood on her gown in the boulanger and ripped the
hem. She asked me to explain her absence and tell you she will return to the
ballroom as soon as her dress has been mended.’

‘So that is
what brought you here at such an opportune moment,’ said Rebecca.

‘That. Or
fate.’ He looked down at her with an enigmatic expression on his face.

Her eyelids
drooped. The atmosphere was again becoming charged. She must leave. At once. Whilst
she still could.

With a great
effort she stirred herself. She gave herself a moment to gather her wits. Then,
smoothing her skirt, which had become crushed when Joshua had pulled her into
his arms, she went out into the hall.

As she did so
she caught sight of a wisp of white muslin whisking round the corner. She
noticed that one of the chairs lining the corridor was a little out of place,
and guessed that one of the young ladies at the ball must have knocked it over,
causing the crash she and Joshua had heard.

For a worrying
moment she wondered if the young lady could have overheard her conversation
with George Lacy. But then she dismissed the idea. What well bred young lady
would listen at a door?

She patted her
hair, unfurled her fan, and then making an effort to appear calm and unruffled,
she returned to the ballroom. Just before she went in she took a moment to
glance at herself in a gilded looking-glass hanging on the wall.

To her
surprise - and her profound relief - no trace of what had just passed between
her and Joshua could be seen. She had thought it must be clear to all the world
that he had pulled her roughly into his arms, and that she had turned up her
face in willing expectation of his kiss. But she looked serene. No one would
guess, from looking at her, that inside, her emotions were a conflicting mass
of unresolved feelings.

Why had Joshua
kissed her hand? Why had he stripped off her glove? Why had she let him? Why
had he dragged her into his arms? And why had she not recoiled in horror when
he had done so, instead of melting into his arms as though she had been born to
do it?

These were
questions she could not answer. They disturbed her deeply, and shook her to the
roots of everything she knew - or thought she knew - about herself.

Her aplomb was
gone, leaving nothing but confusion in its wake.

But this was
not the time or the place to think about it. No matter how difficult it was,
she must push those thoughts aside. She took a deep breath and then she went
through into the ballroom.

Fortunately
she had not been missed. Hetty had not yet returned to the ballroom, and
Charles was partnering an elderly dowager on the dance floor. By the time Hetty
returned, Rebecca was able to laugh and dance, and it appeared as though
nothing untoward had happened.

Joshua remained in the
morning-room in order to give Rebecca time to rejoin their fellow guests. It
would not have done for them to return together in case their joint return had
given rise to speculation about their absence. The situation was difficult
enough, with George Lacy having seen them together at
The Queen’s Head
.
The last thing Joshua wanted to do was to expose Rebecca to any more harmful
gossip.

But that was
not the only thought to plague him. Whilst he waited in the morning-room he
asked himself what he had been thinking of in taking Rebecca into his arms. As
soon as he had rescued her from the clutches of George Lacy he should have
encouraged her to return to the ballroom. Instead of which he had given way to
his feelings, dragging her into his embrace. It was only the timely
intervention of the crash from outside the room that had prevented him from
kissing her.

And oh! how he
had wanted to. He had never been so tempted in all his life. It had been bad
enough when he had kissed her hands - and what madness had induced him to strip
off her glove? - but when he had felt her soft body pressing against him as he
had embraced her, when she had turned her face up to his, the temptation had
been overwhelming.

That she had
not known what she was doing had been clear enough. If he had not known that
she was an innocent in the ways of men and women from hearing Jebadiah speak of
her, he would still have recognized it for himself. She had led a protected
life, and despite her spirit, her innocence was palpable. And yet when she had
turned up her face it had almost undone him.

He shook his
head in bewilderment. How had it happened? She roused in him feelings the like
of which he had never known. Feelings that were too strong to deny.

He paced the
room. His encounter with Rebecca had left him filled with a restless energy,
and he needed to do something to dispel it.

He still could
not believe that he had almost kissed her. If he had done so . . . .

He did not
want to think about it.

Fortunately he
had been saved from taking such an irrevocable step by the crash outside.
Because if not for that he would have kissed her and then his fate would have
been sealed. For having kissed her he would have had to offer her marriage.

Marriage!

He shuddered
as he thought of it.

Marriage was
not for him.

When he was
eight-and-thirty, perhaps, and had a dynasty to found. But not at
eight-and-twenty.

As his
thoughts returned to George Lacy, however, he began to realize that he must
offer her marriage anyway, whatever his personal feelings might be. Because if
Lacy had seen them together at
The Queen’s Head
then someone else could
have seen them there as well.

He had never
even considered this complication after he had spoken to her at the inn. It had
never occurred to him that by being alone with her, however unwittingly, in one
of
The Queen’s Head
’s bedrooms, he had compromised her. And if it had
occurred to him at the time he would not have cared. Rebecca had been nothing
to him then; no one; and he would not have felt obliged to offer her marriage.
Society, he knew, would have expected it, but he had never allowed himself to
be dictated to by anyone, and certainly not by Society.

But now that
he knew who she was, and realized that they had been seen, he would have to
offer her marriage anyway. It was not because of Lacy - Lacy would not talk, he
was too much of a coward - but someone else might have seen them, and he would
do nothing to risk the reputation of Jebadiah’s granddaughter.

His face
softened as he thought of his godfather. It was Jebadiah who had supported him
in his desire to learn about the cotton mills that were springing up in the
north, bringing wealth to the area and the country as a whole; Jebadiah who had
reasoned with Joshua’s family, telling them that trade did not sully the hands
of a gentleman, but instead encouraged enterprise and self-reliance; and
Jebadiah who, sensing a kindred spirit in Joshua, comprising a ruthless
determination and a sharp ambition, had helped him achieve his goals.