The Major and the Pickpocket (15 page)

But as soon as he was out of sight and out of hearing, she stopped, and gazed up at the cold moon as the clouds danced across its pale, pure light. Her heart
ached so badly it felt as though someone had taken it out, and bruised it, and given it back to her with ‘Marcus’ etched scornfully all over it. Darling Marcus.

She stared with wide, unseeing eyes into the darkness. He had dismissed the kiss that had shaken her to her very core as nothing. And yet she had never in her life dreamed that she could feel as she did when Marcus took her in his arms, when he pressed his lips to hers…

She realised, with a stabbing pain at her heart, that she was in love with a man who, if he felt any emotion for her at all, despised her for the way she had lived. For being what she was.

Then she jumped to her feet, because she could hear footsteps coming back around the side of the house. ‘Saints and fiddlesticks, Marcus, what took you such an age? I am almost freezing to death out here…’

But the words died in her throat, because the man she was looking at was not Marcus at all, but—Lemuel!

She blinked. ‘Lem—what on earth—?’

He put his fingers to his lips. ‘Hush, Tass,’ he breathed. ‘Thank God you’re safe!’ He pressed a scrap of paper in her hand, and then he scuttled off on his long legs into the blackness of the overgrown shrubbery. Tassie, startled beyond measure, gazed after him. In the name of Methuselah, what was
he
doing here? Were Georgie Jay and the others with him? How on earth had they found her here at—
Lornings?

She jumped again as she saw Marcus approaching, with that slightly uneven stride that was the only vulnerable part of him. She crumpled the note quickly and thrust it beneath her cloak.

He looked at her, frowning. ‘Are you all right, Tassie? You look very pale.’

She shrugged. ‘No wonder. I’ve probably caught my
death of cold, waiting for you. And that wouldn’t fit in with your plans at all, would it, Marcus?’

He suppressed an exclamation of annoyance; then he set off towards the Dower House, and she sauntered along behind him. But inwardly she was badly shaken by this new complication. She dreaded to think how Marcus would react if he knew her London friends were close by. Her fingers tightened round the note in her pocket; she longed to read it, yet feared what it might say. What were they
doing
here?

Such was her consternation that she quite forgot to tell Marcus what she’d been meaning to tell him. That since her last visit to the Hall a few days ago, some of the paintings from the banqueting hall had disappeared.

Marcus was not the most popular of people at the Dower House that night, whereas Tassie was warmly welcomed to the table to eat her own belated meal. She merrily pretended to everyone that she’d cut her hair on a whim. But Peg kept glancing at her cropped curls as she cleared away the dishes, clucking under her breath, ‘Like a shorn lamb, she be. A shorn lamb…’

After dinner, the four of them played whist. Apart from Tassie’s brittle gaiety, the atmosphere was forced; and Marcus knew, when everyone but he and Hal had retired for the night that he was in for a rough ride.

‘Ye gods, Marcus,’ exploded Hal as he paced the room, ‘what did you say to her? What did you do, to make the girl hack off all her lovely hair?’

Marcus spread out his hands. ‘All right, it’s my fault. I accept it. I scolded her for riding around in unseemly attire, and she took it ill, and cut it off in a fit of pique.’

‘You—
scolded
her. Is that all?’ queried Hal suspiciously.

Marcus stopped and faced his friend. ‘I was harsh with her, Hal. I told her she looked like a strumpet, and could expect to be treated like one if she went around galloping pillion to a farm hand.’

‘A strumpet…’ Hal shook his fair head. ‘All right, so she was in breeches, and clinging on to that farm lad to stop herself falling off—but she looked so genuinely pleased to see us, Marcus! Until you started to go on at her, that is! I’d swear she didn’t realise that—that…’

‘That she was revealing her feminine charms in a rather obvious manner?’ intervened Marcus harshly.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Hal, perplexed. ‘You’re the expert on the fairer sex, Marcus. Does she seem to you like a woman of experience?’

Marcus ran his hand tiredly through his hair. No. No, she didn’t in the slightest. And that was just the trouble. She’d lived in the company of travelling rogues for years, with no such thing as a guardian or chaperon to protect her blossoming beauty. And yet—when he’d kissed her, when he’d drawn her close against him and moulded her soft curves to his own hard frame, she’d trembled at his every caress, as if he was revealing dark and delectable secrets to her for the very first time…Dear God, she was a mixture of innocent and temptress that haunted his senses! Normally, Marcus was well able to control his passions. He wasn’t some ardent green lad, wildly excited by a fumbling kiss. Yet if it hadn’t been for a supreme effort of will on his part, he’d have been tumbling her to the bed, all caution thrown to the winds. He had a sudden vision of her clouds of golden hair shimmering around her naked, lissom body; of her slender arms clinging to him as he pleasured her; of her tender breasts peaking in his mouth, and her soft lips murmuring his name…He groaned inwardly.

‘Look,’ he sighed at last. ‘She’s either totally naïve, or possessed of a cunning that makes fools of both of us. Either way, it’s no use getting sentimental over the girl. I need to get on with this business as soon as possible, and prepare her for her encounter with Corbridge.’

Hal frowned. ‘Your damned card game. What if she doesn’t beat him?’

‘Of course she will. Do you remember how easily she duped
you,
at the Angel?’

‘Must say I’d prefer not to,’ acknowledged Hal ruefully. ‘But I still don’t like it, Marcus! Even someone with her skills is subject to the vagaries of fate; some day her luck will run out for certain.’

Marcus, suddenly exasperated, lifted his head up at that. ‘Luck, you call it? Did you notice, Hal, how thoroughly Tassie and Roderick trounced us at whist this evening?’

‘I did, but of course that was because you and I constantly had the worst of the cards!’

‘Not a bit of it, my friend. The girl you feel so sorry for was using the Kingston Bridge trick in as polished a fashion as I’ve ever seen—bending all the trumps very lightly each time they passed through her extremely nimble and not so innocent hands.’ Marcus’s face suddenly broke into a grin. ‘I didn’t mention it, partly because her partner—Roderick—was enjoying winning hugely, and partly because I’d no desire to add further to my reputation as a persecuting monster of innocent females.’

Hal’s blue eyes danced with amusement. ‘Maybe you’re right about her twisting us all round her little finger.’

‘I am right about her, believe me. She’s completely charming, I know, but the scheming little minx knows exactly what she’s doing. Even the cutting of her hair was
done to make me appear a black-hearted oaf. She’s enjoying all this, Hal, enjoying sharpening her wits on us.’

‘Two guineas,’ Hal was breathing. ‘Two guineas I lost in that game this evening…’ He looked with sparkling eyes at Marcus. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe she is a match for anyone, even Sebastian. Yet—you’ll take care of her, Marcus, won’t you?’

‘I will,’ said Marcus, in an unexpectedly gentle voice.

But Tassie, who had been listening at the door, didn’t hear this last bit, because she couldn’t bear to hear any more.
Scheming minx…looking like a strumpet…

Her cheeks burned as Marcus’s insults rang in her head. In the darkness she swiftly found her way to the stone-flagged kitchen and pulled open the heavy door that led out into the yard, where the night air cooled her heated skin. Closing the door behind her, she hurried across the yard and hitched up the heavy skirts of her green velvet dress so she could sit on the stone wall that linked house and stables. Confound the man. She’d only helped Sir Roderick win the game because she thought it would make him happy! She ran her fingers rather distractedly through her ragged crop of golden curls. ‘I do believe,’ she said softly into the darkness, ‘that I have had enough of this miserable bargain.’

She pulled out the little note Lem had given her from the pocket of her gown and read it once again.
Tassie. We are staying near the village they call Hockton. If you are able to get away, then come to the big oak at the crossroads there, behind the churchyard. We will keep watch for you every night, after dark.

She would go to them now. It would take her only minutes to run to her room and change into her old, comfortable clothes; then she would pick up Edward, and ride to Hockton, and beg her friends to take her
away. The occupants of the Dower House would not even notice she was gone till the morning; Marcus would rant and rave, perhaps, for a while, but he would soon get over her loss. Nay, she thought, he would be
relieved.

There were slow footsteps coming across the courtyard towards her. Scrambling from the wall, she pushed the crumpled note back in her pocket. Don’t let it be Marcus. Please don’t let it be Marcus.

It was Sir Roderick. He saw her and stopped in surprise, then smiled at her, resting one hand on his stick. ‘Why, my dear. You should not be out here, in this chill wind, all alone.’

Tassie said quickly, ‘I was over-warm inside. I just needed some fresh air.’

He nodded sympathetically. ‘I understand. I come out here every night, to look out over the valley and take my fill of the Hall yonder. Don’t you think it is the most beautiful house?’

‘Yes,’ said Tassie with heartfelt emotion. ‘Yes, Sir Roderick, it truly is.’ Watching him as he gazed at the moonlit mansion through the trees, she saw how his faded blue eyes were warm with memories.

‘It has been my life, you know, that house,’ he said. He turned towards Tassie. ‘Marcus tells me that he has a plan to save Lornings for me. I do not know the details, but he has given me hope; and I am so very, very grateful to him.’

Tassie caught her breath. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Marcus wants to see you back in your rightful home, Sir Roderick.’

He smiled. ‘He is the very best of godsons. And having you here as well does me so much good, my dear. Will you play one last game with me, before I retire?’

An owl hooted somewhere in the darkness, an omen, as Tassie felt the trap closing around her.
‘Now,
Sir Roderick?’

‘Yes, now.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s a good time for you to teach me some of your tricks, for Hal and Marcus are at present shut in my study trying to untangle the estate’s accounts for me. The dear boys, I would so love to beat them again. Unless, of course—’ he looked anxious ‘—you are weary of my company, which I would quite understand.’

‘Of course not,’ Tassie declared. Then her mouth dimpled in a smile. ‘If you like, Sir Roderick, I’ll teach you some of my—
special
tactics.’

‘Really? What tactics, my dear?’

‘Well,’ Tassie began to explain, as arm in arm, they walked back towards the Dower House, ‘next time we play Marcus and Hal you must watch my right hand.’

‘Your right hand. Yes.’

‘And if my first finger is outstretched, you must put down a diamond. If it’s my second finger, then play a club, my third a heart, and my fourth, why, then, a spade!’

Sir Roderick’s eyes gleamed with mischief as they crossed the yard. ‘High or low, m’dear?’

‘When I raise my eyebrows, thus…’ she arched them delicately ‘…high. If my glance is cast down at the table, then—low. You see?’

‘Diamond, club, heart, spade,’ he was muttering gleefully. ‘Diamond, club…’

Tassie grinned as they reached the door. ‘Tomorrow we shall wipe the floor with them, dear Sir Roderick!’

He chuckled with delight. And Tassie followed him back inside, all thoughts of flight dismissed for now, because how could she break her bargain, and all but
destroy the kindly old man who had taken her in, who trusted her?

She had cast deep. She would have all on, now, to play her way out of this one; and in the meantime she had to get a message to Georgie Jay and his band, to tell them where her present duty lay.

O
n rising the next morning, Tassie dragged a brush through her shorn curls and tussled impatiently with the side fastenings of her plain morning gown of grey dimity, smoothing the skirts awkwardly over the hoop. Saints and fiddlesticks, what a stupid garment, she muttered, casting a longing look at her breeches, which lay over a chair nearby. The grey gown enveloped her securely from ankle to neck, giving little hint of the slender figure beneath; perhaps that was just as well, for no man, not even the objectionable Marcus, could accuse her of setting out to be a whore in
this.

Feeling ready, almost, to face the person who was the cause of her wretchedly sleepless night, Tassie went downstairs, drew a deep breath, and entered the low-beamed breakfast parlour. The morning sun shining through diamond-paned windows dazzled her for a moment, then she saw Hal and Marcus, already tucking with soldiers’ appetites into the thick slices of fried ham and freshly baked bread that Peg had laid out on the big oak table.

Relieved that she was not alone with Marcus, Tassie nodded to them both as they quickly got to their feet.
‘Good morning to you, Hal. Good morning, Marcus.’ She was pleased to see some astonishment on their faces. Excellent. She had wrong-footed them already, with her ladylike attire and her polite greeting. ‘I trust you have both slept well?’ Then, before they could even catch breath to reply, she held out her hands, and deposited several shillings on the table. ‘’Twas a little jest of mine, to assist Sir Roderick in trouncing you both at cards last night. I hope you bear me no ill will?’

Hal laughed. ‘No ill will at all, dear girl. I’m glad to know that your talents have not deserted you. As, I am sure, is Marcus.’ Marcus frowned as Hal hurried quickly round the table to pull out a chair for the waiting Tassie. ‘Allow me to help you. Some breakfast? A dish of tea?’

Marcus had sat down again, and was pouring himself more coffee. He watched all this suspiciously, expecting to see Tassie carve for herself a great hunk of crusty white bread, and smear it thickly with butter before cramming it greedily into her mouth. But instead, she said, with the merest flicker of her demurely lowered eyelashes, ‘Tea, yes; and perhaps you will just cut a small—a very small—slice of bread for me, if you please, Hal. A lady never has much appetite, you see, first thing in the morning.’

Marcus almost choked over his coffee. ‘Tassie,’ he said, ‘Tassie, it’s only us, you know. Are you sure you’re feeling quite well? Normally you devour half a loaf at breakfast.’

She flashed him a look that held daggers. ‘You wish me to be a lady,’ she said coolly. ‘And so I would thank you, Marcus, not to mock my efforts. Would you pass the dish of butter, Hal? My thanks.’

She ate a few tiny sparrow-like mouthfuls and sipped her tea while Marcus and Hal watched, dumbstruck.
Then she dabbed at her lips with the damask napkin and said airily, ‘I have a fancy to go out for a brief morning ride, Marcus. I take it you will not object?’

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. Ah, now, this was more like it. The wench was planning something—he’d wager a soldier’s monthly pay on it. ‘Not at all,’ he said smoothly, ‘I take it you’ve no objection if I accompany you?’

He knew, by the flash of disappointment that crossed her expressive face, that his guess was right. He’d foiled her in some way. But she merely said, ‘Then I had better go and change into my riding habit.’

He stood and gallantly pulled back her chair, giving a slight bow as she rose from the table and left the room. Hal, grinning, pointed out, ‘She’s up to something, Marcus. Watch your pockets, my friend.’

‘You think I didn’t realise that?’ Marcus sat down again, a little apprehensively. ‘Dear God, sometimes I wonder what I’ve let myself in for.’

He wondered that even more when Tassie rejoined him, still pale, but looking bewitchingly, dangerously pretty in her burgundy velvet riding habit, with the matching feathered hat perched on her cropped golden curls. Her air of slight self-consciousness, her shyness, made her all the more endearing. He cautioned himself inwardly as he led her out to the stable yard.

‘Your hair looks well,’ he said.

‘Oh, that.’ She shrugged. ‘Peg followed me upstairs just now and neatened it up with a pair of kitchen scissors.’ She turned her bright gaze on him. ‘Do you want a curl of it, Marcus? Tied up in a blue silk ribbon?’

He caught his breath. ‘I’ll let you know,’ he said. ‘I don’t actually keep a collection.’

Jacob had the horses ready for them. Marcus, of course, was to ride his big roan, Dancer, while an elderly bay mare had been fitted with a side saddle for Tassie.

He saw her face fall. ‘Is that for me?’ she exclaimed. ‘But I cannot possibly ride in that silly fashion!’

Marcus said, with dangerous patience, ‘You must accustom yourself to riding side saddle, Tassie, as every lady should.’

She tapped her full velvet skirt impatiently with her riding crop. ‘Oh, of course. What else?’ she said, smiling sweetly up at him. But he heard her cursing rather colourfully under her breath as Jacob led the saddled mare to the mounting block and held it steady as Tassie swung herself up into the unaccustomed perch. ‘Fie and fiddle, Marcus,’ she exploded, ‘how on earth is one supposed to gallop in a contraption such as this, pray?’

Marcus, comfortably astride his own big horse, stifled his grin and said, ‘In Hyde Park, Tassie, ladies do not gallop. They walk, sedately, so they may talk genteelly to their companions. At the very most, they trot.’

‘It sounds,’ Tassie said, gritting her teeth as she struggled to position her right leg more comfortably, ‘like the most drattedly boring thing I have ever heard of.’

‘Dratted is not a term a lady would use, Tassie.’

She turned her calm, unsettling gaze on him. ‘But I am not a lady, Marcus. As you keep reminding me.’

Marcus, tight-lipped, led the way out of the yard. Why did she always make him feel so damnable guilty, when she was here of her own free will, when she’d openly admitted that she was motivated purely by his money? He sighed. At least the girl had spirit; she was
urging on her slow mare with some skill, managing even to get a trot out of the old beast. As he allowed her to draw ahead of him, Marcus assessed her with a practised eye, approving the neat clinched-in velvet jacket, the full, flowing skirt, the little laced-up half-boots that peeped out from beneath the hem. Then he reined in his roving thoughts abruptly as he realised he was seeing not the clothes, but the delectably slender female body that lay beneath it. He remembered how it had felt to hold her in his arms. Damn it, he told himself angrily, but the minx would be enticing half London at this rate, let alone Corbridge!

He felt his blood run cold at the thought of Sebastian. What if the loathsome creature tried to seduce her? That, Marcus would not tolerate. The girl was to relieve Sebastian of Sir Roderick’s fatal letter promising him Lornings—no more. If his treacherous cousin laid one jewelled finger on her, Marcus would shake him by the throat until his snake-like face turned puce and his diamond buttons rattled…

The force of his reaction startled him. He tightened his hands on the reins and concentrated on the morning ride.

Tassie led the way up to the ridge of the nearest hill, from whence the whole, glorious estate could be viewed. On the far side of the winding silver river, Lornings Hall glittered in the morning sun, nestling amongst the winter-bare trees as if it had been there for ever. Tassie found momentary relief in the beauty of the scenery, the illusion of freedom; but it was an illusion, because really she was trapped. And the nearness of Marcus, who’d told her that last night’s kiss meant nothing, disturbed her more badly than she’d have believed possible.

Think of the time after this. When Marcus is no longer
in control of your life. For you have plans of your own, too long laid aside, that can then be acted upon…
He was catching up with her now; she drew a deep breath and turned calmly towards him, holding on to her hat with one hand as the light breeze threatened to dislodge it.

‘In which direction does Hockton village lie, Marcus?’

He pointed eastwards. ‘Two miles or so yonder, beyond the woods. Why?’

She said airily, ‘Oh—nothing.’

Marcus drew up his restless roan and said flatly, ‘I trust you’re not thinking of going
anywhere
by yourself, Tassie. You’re in my care, and I intend to keep it that way. Jacob says there are a few unsavoury vagrants around the area at the moment, quite possibly up to no good.’ Tassie had opened her mouth to argue, but he’d already swung his horse round as if that finalised the matter. ‘Time to head back,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘It looks like rain.’

Tassie gazed at him rather bitterly and turned her own mare after him. ‘Sometimes you are such a confounded prig, Marcus. Those vagrants you dismiss so cruelly are probably just looking for work. They’ll have been pushed off their own land and have nowhere to go.’

‘Whatever the case,’ said Marcus firmly, ‘I don’t want you riding about by yourself.’

She gave him a stony look. ‘What, I wonder, will you do with yourself when you no longer have me to order around? Please remember I’m not one of your infantry,
Major
Forrester!’ Then she urged her horse on ahead of him, whistling loudly just to annoy him. She succeeded; Marcus told her off, then wished he hadn’t, because she became icily silent, and he was sorry for it. He found himself mentally resolving to let her take Dancer out, soon. That should liven her spirits again.
She was a gallant little rider, whether perching sidesaddle or—clinging on behind a farmer’s boy.

By the time they were back in the stable yard, Marcus was finding her silence increasingly oppressive. ‘A lady is permitted to smile, you know, Tassie,’ he reminded her as he lifted her down out of the saddle. Almost instantly he wished he’d summoned old Jacob to attend to the task, because the slenderness of her waist within his hands, the close softness of her wind-flushed cheek beneath that absurd little hat—all these things were in danger of unsettling him completely.

As he set her down on the cobbles of the yard, she looked up at him, her emerald-green eyes wide and haunted. ‘Even ladies, presumably, only smile when they have reason to be happy about something. Don’t they?’ she whispered.

She smiled with Hal, Marcus noted. And she continued to maintain her model behaviour throughout the afternoon, by settling herself in Roderick’s parlour by the fire with a piece of embroidery Caro had given her. But this was one skill she did
not
possess; Marcus, who was trying to explain to Sir Roderick his accounts for the last year, had to conceal his amusement at her smothered oaths as she stabbed, sometimes furiously, at the cloth in her candle-lit corner.

They dined at six, and afterwards, when the chill spring wind swept around the rambling old Dower House, and the windows rattled in their casements, and the log fire in the inglenook hearth leaped and danced as the draught whistled down the chimney, Hal and Tassie played at piquet—a pursuit far more to her taste than embroidery—while Sir Roderick
questioned Marcus about his soldiering days; though truth to tell Marcus’s attention was not entirely on the conversation, for he kept being distracted by a girl’s merry laugh, and by the sight of a charming golden head bent with determination over the swift-moving cards.

After a while Peg brought in a tray of tea and some gingerbread still warm from the oven. Hal and Tassie paused briefly for refreshment, then returned, avidly, to their game. Sir Roderick was watching them now, enjoying the sight of them laughing and talking beneath the soft light of the candelabra. He said quietly to Marcus at his side, ‘You say the girl is a distant relative. Is there really no one but you to look after her?’

‘She’s an orphan,’ replied Marcus truthfully.

‘What have you got planned for her, then, Marcus?’

Marcus caught his breath. What
had
he got planned for her? He was going to use her to trick his dastardly cousin, and win back Lornings for Sir Roderick, just as it had been lost, at the gaming table. But he couldn’t tell his godfather that, because he guessed that Roderick would detest the idea of putting the girl at risk.

‘She is under my protection, sir,’ he replied quietly. ‘And I mean it to stay that way.’

He was interrupted by a fresh gurgle of amusement from Tassie, as Hal, with some clumsiness, bungled the attempt he was making at the Kingston Bridge trick and sent the cards flying across the table. Her laugh was merry as Hal made some typically droll comment about his own ineptitude, and Marcus realised that she looked happier than he had ever seen her. Marcus went restlessly to put more logs on the fire, and when he returned to his seat, his godfather said to him, ‘She needs a good man, that one. A kind, brave man with enough strength
to give her all the tenderness she needs. She would repay him a hundredfold.’

Yes, thought Marcus, she needs a man. Even as he thought it, he saw Tassie suddenly looking at him, so wistful and defenceless, yet so beautiful that she took his breath away. He thought, rather dazedly,
I must press on. I must press on, with my plan…

They all played whist together after that. Tassie told them she would on no account be cheating; but Roderick, her partner, looked so crestfallen that she must have relented, for together they beat Marcus and Hal quite soundly, much to Sir Roderick’s delight. Afterwards Tassie insisted on helping old Peg wash up the supper dishes, then she came back into the parlour where the others were gathered, to plead weariness and announce that she was going to bed early.

Sir Roderick and Hal expressed immediate concern. Tassie, making swiftly for the door, did not notice that Marcus’s expression had suddenly changed. His eyes narrowed, in a familiar, speculative look that the soldiers in his command had come to know only too well. A few moments after Tassie had gone, he stood up and said casually, ‘Think I’ll just take a turn in the fresh air, Hal.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ said his friend quickly.

‘No,’ said Marcus. ‘I won’t be long.’