Helen Dickson (12 page)

Forcing herself to keep calm, she put her chin up defensively. Her eyes were scornful and she spoke in a controlled voice. ‘How can you ask that of me? Edward has never, whatever he might have told you, been my lover! You cannot imagine what it was like for me when I waited for you in Portsmouth, only to be told after days and weeks of uncertainty that you were dead.’ She was silent for a moment, waiting for the emotion which the memory of that awful time still evoked in her to pass. Then she went on bravely, ‘When I returned to Roslyn I had no idea what I would do. It was only after a long period of mourning—’

‘When you wept copious tears of grief and said a prayer for my departed soul,’ Lucas cut in with biting sarcasm.

‘Yes—yes, I did,’ Laura confessed quietly, and with a look so touching that her husband’s hard expression momentarily softened. But with his angry encounter with Edward Carlyle still fresh in his mind, he was not ready to be touched as yet, and refused to be distracted along the flowery paths of persuasion by his lovely young wife.

‘After that,’ Laura continued, ‘I could see no fault in appearing in public escorted by a man I believed was a very gallant gentleman.’

‘’Tis obvious to me you need serious instruction on the definition of a gentleman,’ Lucas uttered scornfully.

‘Perhaps you’re right. But I owed Edward my gratitude for the kindness he bestowed on me at a very difficult time in my life.’

Lucas’s mouth twisted in sardonic amusement. ‘Indeed? Apparently, I haven’t given Carlyle the credit he deserves.’

Laura ignored his intended sarcasm, while her palm positively itched to slap that mocking, saturnine grin off his face. She already knew Lucas could be a harsh man when angered, and it was obvious he was extremely angry about what Edward had told him. What was the point in arguing with him, she told herself, when he didn’t believe her, and
would only twist her words to suit himself? But she battled on.

‘Edward was kind and protected me, and eventually said he wanted to marry me.’

‘And you were only too eager to oblige, I suppose.’

‘No—at least, not at first. Believing you dead, being only nineteen years old and a widow, having no desire to spend the rest of my life alone, having no one to protect or advise me and completely unaware at that point of the true nature of Edward’s character, I was tempted to accept, seeing no wrong in this.’

‘A fine and touching tale,’ Lucas remarked bitterly. ‘How staunchly you defend him, and I appreciate the ardour with which you spring to your own. But tell me, Laura, was there not a time when you were tempted into his bed?’

‘No, there was not,’ Laura burst out with furious indignation, unable to calm her rampaging ire. ‘And before you arrived back on the scene I swear before God that when I learnt of his activities, unable to face a future that was suddenly repugnant to me, I was already thinking of ways to break off relations with him.’

‘And I am to believe this?’ Lucas said drily.

Lifting her chin, Laura looked directly into his enigmatic eyes. ‘Oh—believe what you like!’ she cried. ‘Perhaps you would feel better if I admitted everything that Edward said about me—regardless of the fact that it is without one iota of truth.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Ridiculous? It is you who are being ridiculous, Lucas. I find your inquisitorial and aggressive manner both unreasonable and unacceptable. You are playing the role of outraged husband whose honour has been besmirched a little too well for my liking—demanding explanations, casting accusations, and ignoring the opportunities you so generously give me for denial. Perhaps if you stopped displaying
so much bitterness and wounded pride you would forget what Edward told you and listen to me—your wife.’

‘Thank you for that edifying piece of advice,’ Lucas clipped.

‘You’re welcome,’ she retorted.

Looking at the tempestuous young woman standing before him, her hair being tugged this way and that by the wind, her eyes flashing like angry jewels, and her breasts rising and falling with suppressed fury, beneath his anger Lucas felt a stirring of reluctant admiration for her courage and honesty.

Drawing a deep, suffocating breath, with her hands clenched by her sides Laura fought with all her strength to keep back the tears which started to her eyes from a heart overflowing with unhappiness. Her hurt went so deep that she could not see that his words had sprung from a bitter, yet reassuring, jealousy.

‘If you are going to behave like this—bringing up old grudges every time Edward’s name is mentioned—then I can see that the battle will be fierce indeed. I am not that complaisant, naïve, pathetic young thing you thought you married, Lucas. If you cannot trust me or believe what I say, then the course of our future together looks extremely bleak to me.’

Turning on her heel, she stalked quickly away from him, overwhelmed with anguish, and unable to believe the scene that had just taken place. Her thoughts ranged in a confused circle of humiliation, pain and loss, misery and anger. When she thought of what Lucas had said to her, what he had accused her of, bitter bile rose up in her throat. How could he believe Edward’s words against hers? How could he?

Choking on tears she was no longer able to hold back, she wished, very sincerely, that she were dead. It would be far better than being condemned to a marriage with a man
who considered her too soiled and unfit to be his wife—a man who would more than likely move heaven and earth to divorce her in order to wed the woman he had ensconced under his roof.

L
ucas watched Laura go, some of the fierceness in his silver eyes draining away. His dark brows were pulled together in a black frown. Laura was right. She wasn’t that complaisant, naïve young woman he had often thought about in his prison cell, and if she was placed in the position of opposing him she would prove a formidable adversary.

The feelings he had for her, that she awoke in him every time they were together, amazed him. He was discovering a kind of love he had never experienced with any other woman. Had he always felt this way? he asked himself. Had these feelings that were of the warmest, most intimate nature been there before and he had just not realised it?

Before their marriage she had appealed to him, despite the circumstances that had brought them together, but he had never realised just how much. He wanted to go after her and take her into his arms, his only desire being to kiss those lips again and to feel them return his kiss in kind. But, considering it wise to wait until her own anger had subsided, in angry frustration he turned and faced the sea.

What the hell was the matter with him? How could he have so coldly and deliberately interrogated that headstrong, beautiful woman like that? Hadn’t John told him
how well she had managed the estate in his absence and that she was above reproach? Deep inside he believed him, but he was so jealous that he had been unable to stop himself from hitting out at Laura. He remembered each degrading word he had spoken, words that must have hurt her. It occurred to him that he was condemning her on the basis of what Carlyle had told him—a villain in every sense.

How could he believe that man over his wife? He had given her the chance to defend herself, and she had done so admirably. She hadn’t lied to him. Her look of contemptuous scorn when he had accused her so unjustly had told him that. No one who was guilty could have feigned that look of shocked outrage or stunned horror. Whatever else she had done, she had not betrayed him with Carlyle.

Uncertain what to do next, and angry with himself for hurting her, realising that he must ask her forgiveness, he was thoughtful as he sat down on the springy turf at the cliff edge. He pulled out his pipe and tobacco, and, after lighting it, gazed at Stennack’s crumbling engine house in the distance. For the moment his thoughts were diverted from his wife to other matters.

Now that he had successfully brought Caroline and Louis out of France and he had made his own survival known to Edward Carlyle, as long as the utmost care was taken to conceal Caroline’s identity, there was no longer any reason why he shouldn’t make his return from the dead known to his neighbours. He was keen to begin sinking another shaft at Stennack immediately, and he remembered he had the unpleasant task of facing Carlyle again with the maps that would prove to him how dangerous it would be to begin sinking one of his own at Wheal Rose.

Whether or not Carlyle would be put off by this was another matter entirely.

Word spread like wildfire round the district that Sir Lucas Mawgan was alive, and in no time at all a succession
of visitors began to appear at the manor—it received more in one week than it had in two years. Even the local blacksmith, accompanied by the innkeeper from Roslyn village, came to call, and the tiny world in which Laura had existed for the past two years began to change almost beyond recognition.

Lucas was greeted home again with heartfelt warmth, and it became a regular occurrence to find him ensconced by the hearth, puffing contentedly on his pipe while recounting and reminiscing on stories from the past with the local vicar or his neighbours, his grey eyes often considering his wife through the wraiths of smoke that circled into the air.

Laura already knew her husband to be a man of power, and that he was as accustomed to obedience from those about him as he was from his horses and his dogs, but with his raven hair falling untidily over his brow, in his shirtsleeves and with his trim booted feet stretched out before him in indolent pose, his eyes twinkling and full of laughter, he was totally at ease with these people—like a different person from the one who had berated her so severely only days earlier.

Often he would turn and catch her watching him, and his eyes would study her with his strongly marked eyebrows slightly raised. His gaze was penetrating, questioning and challenging, and, feeling uncomfortable beneath it, Laura would look away. She freely admitted that she wanted him—so much that it hurt. She was desperate to make amends, but because of the cruel, hurtful things he had said to her, she had reason to hide her feelings from this complex, formidable husband of hers. She was determined not to let him see just how vulnerable she could be.

As things began to settle down to some kind of normality, with firm determination Laura kept herself too busy to think. Employing two extra maids, she concentrated on
opening up the part of the house that had not been used since Lucas had left. It very quickly became transformed as walls were swept, floors scrubbed, furniture polished, curtains cleaned, and windows washed until they sparkled. By the time they had finished everything gleamed, the smell of soap and beeswax mingling with the aroma of burning wood fires.

Laura was reminded of her early days at Roslyn when, consumed and exhausted, she had yielded to the unvoiced demands from all sides and begun the confusing business of running a large house and all those who were dependent on it for subsistence. It was a task she had been totally ignorant of, and she had clung to her husband’s memory as she would a rock, forcing herself to rationalise and minimise the myriad roles that suddenly faced her.

Lucas had been unprepared for their turbulent beginning and Laura’s haughty rejections. She remained angry with him, and he knew his situation was of his own making. He was fast learning that she was too stubborn and proud for her own good, and, as if that weren’t enough, she seemed to have a special knack for baiting him. She was making him work for her forgiveness, yet each small gain was a heady victory, more meaningful, because it was hard-won.

Because of the callous way he had treated her on their wedding night—a night every young girl feared and yet looked on with curious, excited anticipation—after two years of abstinence and despite being anxious to claim his husbandly rights, he vowed not to exert his power over her as he had then, but to court and win her, and he was supremely confident that he would. Lucas never having been in the position where he had actively had to court a woman in his entire adult life, it was a frustrating, painful thing for him to do, but he would endure anything knowing there was hope.

In the meantime he immersed himself in work, and he
sometimes didn’t see his wife from one day’s end to the next. He spent a large part of each day at Stennack, installing the new engine. Employing a handful of men, he was keen to get the mine up and running as soon as possible, for it was important to develop employment in the district. When not at the mine he met with his tenants and estate workers. At other times he could be found fastened in his study, poring over his business investments and seeking other enterprises in which to invest his time and money.

The coolness between Lucas and his wife caused a feeling of tension at Roslyn. Only Caroline, who was enclosed in a curtain of grief and shock and the comforting presence of her son, keeping to her room for most of the time, seemed not to notice. Dutifully, Laura often went to see if there was anything she wanted and to sit with her. They were not close enough for Laura to know what she was thinking, and perhaps they would never be in total harmony, but while Caroline remained at Roslyn Laura had no desire to be at odds with her.

Almost two weeks after Lucas’s return, Squire Walter Ainsworth and his wife were to celebrate twenty-five years of marriage. Lucas and Laura were invited to attend the affair that evening. It was to be a social gathering of friends and neighbours, and promised to be an enjoyable occasion. It would be the first time they would be seen together in public, and by the night of the party Laura had worked herself into such a knot of anticipation and foreboding, fearful that Edward might have been invited, too. Many of the guests would have been present at their engagement party, and would be watching her closely.

She spent a great deal of time on her appearance, choosing a powder-blue satin gown with elbow-length sleeves trimmed with lace to complement her precious sapphire and pearl necklace, which she had not yet put on and lay on the dressing table. The neckline of her dress was low and
quite revealing, and a sash of a darker hue was tied about her slender waist and trailed down the back of the skirt, falling to the short train.

When Susan had arranged her shining black hair, painstakingly sweeping it up into intricate curls, she leaned towards the mirror and scrutinised her face critically, thinking how pale she looked. Just as she was about to apply a hint of red salve on her lips the door opened and Lucas strode in, looking utterly magnificent.

His tall, athletic frame was resplendent in an impeccably tailored coat of claret velvet and doe-coloured breeches. White silk stockings that fitted without a wrinkle clung to his muscular calves, and silver buckles twinkled on his black shoes. The bunch of lace at his chin was a dazzling white contrast to his black hair.

The vision Lucas saw seated at the dressing table snatched his breath away. Laura was beautiful and bewitching. She was his wife, and he was drawn to her in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible when he’d married her. Pride burst within him, increasing until he ached with it. Upon seeing the salve in her hand, he frowned with distaste. Taking it from her, he put it down.

‘Don’t overdo it,’ he admonished. ‘You are young and need no such artifice.’ Gently, he fingered one of her glossy curls admiringly. ‘The style suits you. You have beautiful hair, Laura—the most beautiful hair I have seen on a woman.’

‘And you have known many to measure me by,’ she remarked.

‘Some,’ he said, not bothering to deny it. ‘I freely admit that I didn’t live the life of a saint before I married you. But that is in the past. You are my wife now, and to me marriage is sacred. Are you looking forward to the party?’

‘Yes, although I wish Caroline were coming with us. It was kind of Mrs Ainsworth to invite her, but she didn’t feel up to meeting people.’

‘I advised her against it,’ Lucas said bluntly.

He was annoyed that Caroline’s presence at the manor had leaked out. It was possible that George’s son Joss—whose tongue was never still—had inadvertently spoken of it in the village, and, it being a small, well-knit community where everyone knew everyone else’s business, it was inevitable that a woman known as Mrs Wilton and her baby staying at the manor would become common gossip.

‘I’d have preferred to keep her presence at the manor secret for the time being, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. I told her that it might prove dangerous for her to be seen out in public just yet.’

‘You did?’ Laura felt a small shiver of resentment. She studied his face through the mirror, suspiciously, but his grey eyes didn’t even flicker.

‘It is possible that she might be recognised—even here at Roslyn.’

‘Since you are so concerned about her safety, Lucas, perhaps we shouldn’t leave her alone in the house after all,’ Laura remarked, unable to hide the edge to her voice.

‘She won’t be alone. I would not be so irresponsible as to allow us both to leave the house without thinking of her safety. I have assigned George to be her protector until we return. Should any unwelcome visitors arrive at the house, he will send them on their way.’

‘I see. I wondered why he hadn’t gone home when his work was finished.’

Lucas’s gaze fell to the sapphire necklace on the dressing table. Scooping it up, in a moment his fingers had laid the costly adornment about her throat. Resting his hands on her shoulders, he bent his head and dipped his eyes to where the jewel nestled coyly between the gently swelling mounds of her breasts. Having looked his fill, he raised his gaze and met her eyes in the mirror. Laura sensed what was going through his mind and flushed beneath his unwavering
regard. The feel of his fingers on her flesh sent a blaze of excitement and tension leaping through her.

‘You look ravishing, my love. When my good friend Walter Ainsworth views you tonight, you will surely send his heart into palpitations.’

Laura’s mouth curved in a gentle smile. ‘You tease, Lucas. Squire Ainsworth and I are well acquainted. He has seen me look exactly as I do tonight many times since I came to Roslyn.’

It didn’t take Lucas a moment to react. Immediately his hands tightened punishingly on her shoulders. ‘With Carlyle—as a couple, no doubt,’ he said fiercely.

In the mirror, Laura saw his eyes glitter into her own like shards of ice. His expression had become so incensed, so embittered. Her throat muscles constricted as, realising what she had said, she choked on a frantic apology. ‘Lucas—I’m so sorry—I—’

Dropping his hands, he turned abruptly and strode to the door. ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs. Don’t be long.’

The evening was cold and crystal-clear, the stars twinkling with a brilliance of their own. Shrouded in her velvet cape, Laura climbed into the coach and settled herself against the squabs. Lucas seated himself across from her, his only concession to the cold being to pull the collar of his cloak up. Mindful of his wife’s comfort, with solicitous care he placed a fur throw over her knees while she snuggled her feet near the warming pan. John was in the front seat, as well armed as any who travelled the highways after dark.

As the coach left the manor, Laura glanced across at her husband. The coach lamps gave off a weak, warm glow, illuminating his face—one moment enhancing his handsome features, the next lending dark shadows, suggesting an overpowering wickedness lurking within. She tried unsuccessfully to maintain a cool and disdainful attitude to
wards him, but how could she when he was so close? Too close, too masculine and too virile. To avoid meeting his penetrating gaze, she pulled back the curtain and gazed out of the window into the gathering gloom, the clean, fresh scent of his cologne lingering on the air.