The Major and the Pickpocket (14 page)

Lord Sebastian Corbridge allowed a cold smile to lighten his features. ‘Really, Silas? That is convenient indeed,’ he breathed.

A
fter his argument with Tassie, Marcus had stormed downstairs in a turmoil of fury and scarcely restrained arousal, cursing himself bitterly for sending the girl here. He joined his godfather and Hal, who were seated at the big dining table ready to begin their evening meal. Savoury scents wafted enticingly from the joint of sizzling mutton that Sir Roderick was starting to carve; Peg was bringing in a dish of golden roast potatoes and a jug of gravy, but Marcus hardly noticed them. It was some moments before he started to listen properly to the conversation around him.

‘She’s a real treasure, that girl,’ Sir Roderick was saying to Hal as he passed him a thick slice of meat. ‘Yes, from the minute she arrived, she’s been cheerful, helpful, polite. The only trouble is that when she leaves, Peg’s going to demand a girl to replace her!’ He chuckled.

‘She’s a treasure indeed, sir,’ echoed Peg, beaming as she lowered a bowl of buttered parsnips to the table. ‘And she’s proved a proper little helper to my brother Dick Daniels at the farm, and to young Will, his son as well.’

‘That’s true enough,’ nodded Jacob sagely as he set
down a decanter of claret. ‘Farmer Daniels says she knows everything as well as his Will, who was brought up to the life! She helps with the milkin’, and the feedin’, and even helped stable the beasts the other night when Will was out with the sheep.’

Marcus, astonished, gazed at Hal, who looked back, his fair eyebrows faintly raised in echoing surprise.

‘Tassie?’ Marcus was saying incredulously. ‘Tassie knows about milking, and livestock?’

‘Indeed, sir!’ responded Jacob. ‘Why, only an hour before you arrived, Major Forrester, she went a-dashing off at full tilt, not even bothering to cover her pretty head against the rain, to help Will bring in some heifers that had broken loose—just as well, because otherwise we’d have lost ‘em for good, I’m thinking.’

Marcus, his plate heaped with succulent mutton, suddenly realised he’d lost his appetite completely.
‘Heifers ?’
And then Sir Roderick joined in.

‘Yes, Marcus, I suppose I shouldn’t have let her go, really; but Tassie was so anxious to help. She’s an excellent rider, so I wasn’t worried about her, though it was unfortunate that her palfrey cast a shoe…I was glad, though,’ he added quickly, ‘that you sent her upstairs straight away to get changed out of those wet things. So often, she has no thought for herself.’

Marcus was allowing Peg to pile potatoes on to his plate without even seeing them. As Peg moved on, Hal took the opportunity to lean quickly over to Marcus and whisper, ‘Weren’t too hard on her, were you, dear fellow? For galloping round the countryside, looking like a rather delectable country maid?’

‘Yes,’ replied Marcus rather bitterly, ‘yes, I’m afraid I was.’

Just then Peg mused, ‘Now, I’m wonderin’ where our
Tassie is. It’s not like her to miss her food, especially when she peeled all those potatoes herself.’

Marcus could stand no more. Feeling as if heaps of burning coal were being piled on his head, he jumped up and said abruptly, ‘I’ll go and see what’s happened to her.’

He took the stairs two at a time and rapped hard at her door. ‘Tassie. Are you there? Look, Tassie, I’m sorry. I was an idiot and a brute to speak to you as I did. Come down to dinner, Tassie, please.’

No reply. He knocked again, his heart sinking, for silence was the only response. Then he opened the door to her room, knowing he would find it empty. Her still-damp shirt and breeches lay forlornly across her little bed, reproaching him. Even her damned parrot was silent, gazing at him with beady, implacably hostile eyes. Of Tassie herself, there was no sign.

And then, on the floor, he saw it. Hanks of curling golden hair lay scattered on the scrubbed floorboards, reproaching him with their brightness. Dear God.

He went back downstairs quickly. ‘She’s gone,’ he said curtly to their expectant faces. ‘It’s my fault. I—I was harsh with her.’

‘Gone?’
Their faces were astonished; Sir Roderick looked the most upset of all. ‘You mean you think she might have run away? But wherever to, Marcus, at this time in the evening?’

Jacob said suddenly, ‘Beg pardon, Major, but I wonder if she might have gone over to the Hall, to Lornings, I mean? She’s been with me several times when I do my rounds—likes looking at the pictures and things, she does.’

‘But the Hall will be locked, surely,’ said Sir Roderick. ‘And I have the only key.’

Marcus said slowly, ‘Keys and locks have not
hindered Tassie before. I’ll walk over to the Hall and take a look.’

Hal said anxiously, ‘Do you want me to come with you, Marcus?’

Marcus shook his head. ‘My thanks, Hal, but if she’s there, I want to speak to her alone. I have certain amends to make.’

He took the key, and pulled on his greatcoat, and set off by himself up the lane that led to the Hall.

How many memories this place brought back for him. The rain had stopped, but black clouds still drifted raggedly across the moon, and all around him the bare-branched beeches moaned softly in the night breeze. Lornings Hall stood before him, its stark turrets etched against the sky. He gazed at the big old house, recalling every door, every staircase, every room, like the back of his hand.

By September, all this would belong to Sebastian Corbridge. ‘Not if I can help it,’ Marcus breathed aloud. ‘Not if I can damn well help it.’

Here, in Lornings’ expansive grounds, he had learned to ride and to shoot under Farmer Daniels’s eagle eye. He remembered Peg, the housekeeper, up to her arms in flour in the kitchen; black-bearded Jacob, too, grumbling but loyal. There’d been an army of under-servants to look after the great Hall then; he remembered parties, at Christmas and in the summer, with carriage after carriage rolling up the long drive, and the house filling with laughing, glittering people, including Philippa and her parents, who came over often, from their nearby estate at Caytham. The house was a part of his life.

And was all this justification for what he was doing to Tassie? a little voice suddenly asked him. He remembered
the stark pain in her expressive eyes as he chided her so sharply. Yes! Yes, of course it was. They’d made a bargain, hadn’t they? She was getting exactly what she wanted—her fifty guineas. It was just that he, Marcus, hadn’t bargained for the surges of swift, almost violent emotion she stirred in him whenever he got too close to her…

Don’t be deceived by her,
he told himself grimly.
She knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s travelled wild with her tinker friends for years, and you’re deceiving yourself if you think she’s been protected from the realities of that kind of life.
Yet her kiss had been wild and sweet, her wide eyes full of innocent wonder—and she had aroused him more than he would have believed possible.

He climbed the wide steps to the imposing front door—only to find it locked. There was no tell-tale flicker of light, no sign of life. If Tassie had got inside, then she was lying low. Carefully he undid the iron-studded door with the big key, swung it open, and stepped into the vast, stone-flagged hall. Lighting one of the candles that stood in a holder on a brass-bound oak table, he picked it up and slowly mounted the double-branching staircase to the long gallery, where the flickering light sent dancing shadows across the dark-panelled walls, the dusty coats of arms, the ancient tapestries depicting hunting scenes and battles of long ago.

Suddenly, he saw a taper burning at the far end of the gallery, where it opened out into the adjoining banqueting hall. Tassie was there, gazing up at the oil portraits that lined the walls; her dark green cloak was draped across the nearby balustrade. If she knew he was there, she pretended not to. She looked pale, but composed.

Which was more than Marcus could say for himself;
because as soon as he saw her he felt his body jar with shock. She’d changed into one of the dresses she’d purchased with Caro; and as if to highlight the enigma she was, the green velvet gown with its elegant tapered sleeves and sweeping skirts reminded him that she would pass anywhere as a lady of gentle birth.

But her hair!

Marcus felt a stab somewhere in the region of his heart when he saw how it clung to her head in ragged, rebellious golden curls. She must have hacked it off herself, savagely, in minutes. Yet she still, somehow, looked so vulnerably, achingly lovely that he felt his heart wrench dangerously within his breast.

Marcus knew, in that moment, that if Lornings were ever to be removed from Sebastian’s clutches by using this girl as his weapon, then he must take care lest the weapon turn on himself.

Tassie turned to gaze at him, outwardly composed, although in fact her heart was thudding against her chest, because something about Marcus’s harshly masculine figure, the gleam of the candlelight on his purposeful features as he strode up those wide stairs, unsettled her badly.
He will not cancel our agreement,
she told herself shakily. He will not send me away; I am too useful to him.

She drew herself up and tilted her chin. ‘Well, Marcus?’ she enquired calmly. ‘What have you come to chide me about this time, pray?’

Marcus put down the candle on a nearby oak chest. She spoke so well when she’d a mind to it! Where did she learn to talk like that? Not from her vagabond friends, that was for sure. ‘Well, minx,’ he answered with equal calmness, ‘you gave them all a fright, over at the Dower House. Roderick said you never, ever
missed your dinner, which is something I can well believe. So, as they all blame me for your disappearance, I thought I’d better come and look for you.’ He kept his voice deliberately light, though there was a curious ache in his throat, because of her shorn hair.

‘How did you guess I was here?’ Her eyes were dark with wariness, her voice cool—but what else had he expected?

‘Jacob told us you sometimes came over here with him. Roderick was worried that you hadn’t a key, but I told him I didn’t think that would be a problem.’

A flicker of guilt crossed her face, followed quickly by defiance, and he saw something of the old, vagabond Tassie re-emerging. He was astonished at how glad he felt.

‘Fie, it’s scarcely my fault if the catch on the pantry window needs fixing!’ she responded tartly. She added defensively, ‘Oh, I secured it again once I was in. I always do.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he responded with suitable gravity, though his mouth twitched a little at the thought of her scrambling, in that velvet gown, through a pantry window. ‘I’ve come to escort you back, Tassie. They’re keeping your dinner hot for you.’

She hesitated, then said with an effort at nonchalance, ‘I rather thought you’d come to tell me our bargain was off, Marcus.’

He shook his head. ‘Far from it. I’ve come to say I’m sorry, Tassie, for my behaviour earlier. It was stupid of me.’ He ran his hand over his thick dark hair. ‘A simple physical reaction, I fear, a mindless male response. That is no excuse, I know—but at least it’s an apology. And I assure you it won’t happen again.’

Tassie’s eyes flashed. ‘Then you’d better remind
yourself, Marcus, the next time you’re overcome by your—your
mindless male response
—that really you much prefer your women to simper, and wear pink ruffles, and send you scented love notes with locks of their hair—’

‘God’s blood, woman!’ roared Marcus, ‘I came here to
apologise,
don’t you understand? Why do you always make everything so damned difficult?’

She clenched her fists and blazed back. ‘An apology? You call this an apology, when all you do is hurl insults at me?’

Marcus drew a deep, steadying breath. ‘Very well. I will say it again, as plainly as I can. I am sorry. For so misjudging you, for scolding you, for reacting in such a crudely masculine way.’

She contemplated him coolly. ‘You must want Lornings very badly, to grovel so to someone like me.’

‘I don’t want to see my godfather ruined, and Sebastian getting his grasping hands on his estate. I am doing all this for Roderick.’

‘But of course,’ she murmured witheringly.

He controlled himself with an effort. ‘I have told you, Tassie. I will release you from our bargain whenever you wish.’

‘No, you won’t,’ she replied softly, with a challenging gleam that threw him completely. ‘Because I don’t
want
to be released. I want the fifty guineas you promised me. After all, I’m nothing but a greedy, rough vagabond—
ain’t I?
Fifty guineas, Marcus. That’s the only reason I’m here.’

‘Well,’ said Marcus, his eyes the colour of rainwashed slate, ‘well, at least we know where we stand.’

‘Yes, we do, don’t we?’ Tassie answered brightly. ‘And now, do you think you had better escort me back
to the Dower House? Before your friends begin to think that perhaps I am—in the brazen way of a
temptress
—trying to seduce you?’

He gritted his teeth. ‘By God, minx, you’re enough to try the patience of a saint! I wish I had taken my hand to you back there!’

She laughed, but her emerald eyes flashed warningly. ‘Now, now, Marcus. Control yourself. In case you succumb to—what was it?—your mindless male urges again.’

He was momentarily speechless. Then he picked up the candlestick and said, ‘It’s time to go back. Perhaps you would deign to accompany me in the conventional fashion this time, Tassie. Through the front door, that is.’

‘I will, and gladly,’ she replied tartly, picking up her cloak and slipping it on. ‘Though I would suggest you move rather quickly, Marcus, because that dripping candle wax is about to burn your fingers.’

‘Damnation
—’ Quickly he put down the dying taper and lit another from its dwindling flame. Then, still grim-faced, he gave her a formal little bow and escorted her downstairs, and out through the front door. After locking it, he left her briefly to go round the back. ‘Just to check everything’s secure,’ he said pointedly.

‘I told you, I locked the pantry window once I was inside,’ she retorted. ‘But check if you must.’ And, perching herself on the low stone wall that bordered the courtyard, she pulled her cloak more tightly round herself and began to whistle ‘The Bold Ploughboy’ as loudly as she could, just to annoy him.