Chapter 14
Hours later, the games were over and everyone sat on blankets spread out on the lawn enjoying lemonade and sweet rolls. James and his fellow barristers told jokes and laughed with Bobby and the other children.
The heat of the afternoon sun ebbed, and Harriet and Mrs. O’Brien directed the servants to carry the plates and cups inside. Soon after, a large coach and team of six arrived and stood ready in the drive to return the duke’s friends to London.
“It’s been a pleasure,” Brent Stone said, bowing politely to Bella.
An odd amusement flashed in Anthony Stevens’s obsidian eyes. “I’m certain we will see each other again, Mrs. Sinclair.”
Bella curtsied. She had no intention of seeing Anthony Stevens again and had no idea as to what the tall barrister referred. The only trip Bella planned to London would be to meet with the solicitor Evelyn had recommended.
Evelyn stepped forward to embrace Bella warmly and whispered in her ear, “Please contact me when you are in London.”
“I promise,” Bella whispered back.
Evelyn’s husband helped her into the coach, and the footman shut the door. With a low whistle from the driver, the wheels of the coach crunched over the graveled drive. James waved to his friends from the front steps when Bella turned to enter the house.
“Bella,” he called out, “will you walk with me? There’s something of interest I want to show you.”
At his sudden, arresting smile, she felt a moment’s uncertainty. Harriet’s words rushed back to her.
Encourage his amorous feelings. You could keep Wyndmoor Manor, be a duchess.
Could she do it? Looking into his handsome face, her pulse quickened at the idea of marrying him, of knowing him intimately as a man.
He must have mistaken her hesitation as a refusal for he walked forward and said, “It will take but a moment.”
“All right.” She walked down the front steps and they headed down the graveled drive, but instead of following the path to the gardens, he turned toward the stables.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
Her curiosity piqued.
The sun was descending, a brilliant orange ball in a painted sky of pinks, grays, and blues. Gently sloping lawns and a field of buttercups dotted the country landscape. They came to the stables, and she thought he meant to go inside, but instead he led her around the perimeter of the building to the back.
A strange-looking contraption rested against an oak tree. Consisting of a curved wooden frame, it had two large in-line wooden wheels and a wide handlebar assembly in the front.
“It’s a swiftwalker!” she cried out.
“You’ve seen one?” he asked, clearly surprised.
“Not in person, but I’ve seen a sketch in the newspaper. The article said they are all the rage and the dandies are riding them in London. They are even calling them
dandy horses.
”
He chuckled. “It’s all true, but its proper name is a velocipede.”
She approached the velocipede and ran her hand down the wood frame. “How does one ride it?”
“This one was made for a shorter man, but I can still show you.” He straddled the frame and held on to both ends of the handlebar while his feet touched the ground. He pushed along the ground with his feet, and as he pivoted the handlebar, the front wheel turned and allowed him to steer. Then he started to run, increasing his speed. She clapped and burst out laughing.
He stopped beside her.
“Where did you find it?” she asked.
“It belonged to Reeves. Bobby found it mounted on the back wall of the stables.” He pointed to an etching on the frame. “This particular one bears the mark of its inventor, Denis Johnson, a London coachmaker. Brent Stone obtained the letters patent for the man last December.”
Bella’s lips twitched. “I can just imagine Sir Reeves riding it in London, strutting around like a peacock and showing off.”
James rolled his eyes. “Such an unsavory image.” His smile changed and he looked at her in earnest. “Do you want to ride it?”
She did and desperately. But how would she straddle it with her skirts?
As if reading her mind, his gaze traveled her morning dress. “Don’t worry about your skirts. We’re behind the stables and no one can see. You’re free to ride.”
“But you’re here.”
He winked. “I promise to look away. Go ahead. Try it.”
She lifted her skirts and swung her right leg over the frame. The tips of her toes reached the ground. She pushed off and began walking, slowly at first, then faster.
“Don’t forget to steer!” James said as she came perilously close to riding into the oak tree.
“You said you wouldn’t look!”
“I’m not looking at your legs, just your form.”
The statement seemed so ridiculous she laughed. She didn’t stop riding, however, and kept her speed. It was daring and fun and he shouted out words of encouragement. She rode in a large circle behind the stables for a full ten minutes until her legs tired, and she dismounted and rested the velocipede against the oak.
She was breathless and flushed, and yet she felt as joyfully buoyant as a child on Christmas morning. James was the most exciting man she had ever known, and her already vulnerable feelings toward him were intensifying.
“I knew a woman courageous enough to write and sell her work would be daring enough to ride a velocipede,” he said, with his irresistible grin.
His words and nearness made her senses spin. She licked her bottom lip, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. “I find myself daring to try new things of late,” she said.
Awareness passed between them, like the crackle in the air before lightning strikes. His eyes darkened to sapphire, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. His mouth covered hers hungrily. She wound her arms about his neck, and kissed him back, lingering, savoring every moment. This was what she wanted, what felt right.
He must have felt it too because his kiss, his very taste and essence, felt different.
His hands were everywhere at once—in the hollow of her back, at the curve of her waist, and higher still to cup her breast. When his thumb grazed her hardening nipple through the thin fabric of her gown, she gasped and drew herself closer. The scent of the outdoors on his skin, the warmth of his palm on her breast, and the velvet stroke of his tongue spun a magical web of raw need and sweet desire, which she knew had the power to bury and replace the dreaded memories of Roger’s sordid touch.
Her blood pounded, her muscles tensed, her body aching and battling the remnants of her self-control for a taste of what he offered.
He understood. She saw it in his eyes when he lifted his head, his hands cradling her face. “There’s something I must ask you, Bella. I was uncertain at first with our fight over the property, but no longer. Such an arrangement will solve our dilemma.”
Harriet was right! He’s going to propose!
He kissed her forehead, her cheek, the nape of her neck. “We both want each other, darling. There’s no denying the attraction and passion between us. You can stay at Wyndmoor for as long as you wish to remain.”
His tongue flicked the sensitive shell of her ear, and a delicious shudder heated her body.
“You needn’t worry about finances. All will be taken care of, your clothes, your carriage, the servants.” He emphasized each word with the brush of his lips across her collarbone. “I have business I must regularly attend to in London, of course, but I promise to return often. You needn’t fear anything,” he murmured. “I know how to prevent an unwanted child.”
His lips were wreaking havoc with her senses, and her mind was sluggish to comprehend.
Unwanted child?
What was he saying? She was dimly aware that he hadn’t knelt down on one knee, hadn’t proposed. Understanding dawned, and with it a simmering anger.
Crestfallen, her smile quickly faded, and she pulled back. “You want me to be your mistress?”
His brow furrowed. “I never liked that term—”
She pushed him away suddenly and took a step back. Her eyes narrowed, and outrage stiffened her spine. Reaching up, she slapped him.
His expression was taut and derisive. “I take that to be a no.”
Why couldn’t he be an old, ugly, wrinkled man? Why did he have to be so attractive?
Dark eyebrows slanted in a frown. “You cannot still be pining for your husband,” he said. “I know there were no fond feelings between you.”
How dare he! “Did Evelyn speak with you?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you believe I disliked my husband?”
“I’m quite astute and have drawn my own conclusions regarding the level of passion in your marriage,” he said.
“Then your intuition is not as honed as you believe, Your Grace. What I do believe is that your man has been following me. I spotted him when I was shopping in St. Albans. Did you tell him to look into my past as well?”
A fierce shaft of blue fire shot at her before his gaze shuttered. “You’re being followed? By whom?”
She had come to suspect the man outside the bakery in St. Albans was James’s hired investigator. As for the man at the Black Hound, she had been too distraught after escaping the bar fight and, in hindsight, couldn’t be certain they were the same person.
The fury within her now throbbed in her voice. “I do not know. I’m certain only that you hired an investigator to look into matters, to look into me.”
“You’re wrong. The investigator I hired has succeeded only in locating Sir Reeves. I never instructed him to follow you, and he has told me nothing of your marital relationship.”
“Your instincts about me remained flawed, Your Grace. I’ll never be your mistress or your lover or whatever term it is you do prefer!” Turning on her heel, she fled toward the house.
“You’ve been spotted,” James said.
“That’s impossible.”
James had met Investigator Armen Papazian in the library. After the disastrous scene with Bella outside the stables, he had learned that she had stormed into her bedchamber and had not come down since. This suited James just fine, he told himself, as he had an appointment to meet with the investigator.
James paced the room. Papazian occupied an armchair by the window. The investigator was a short, but muscularly built man with black, unruly hair and olive-black eyes leveled under drawn brows. The man’s features appeared deceptively composed, but James caught the uncanny shrewdness in his gaze.
Anthony Stevens swore the investigator was the best. So successful, in fact, that he had unearthed secret letters between a viscountess and her French lover who had happened to be a general in Napoleon’s army. The letters revealed the names of two members of the British army who had aided the French by selling them military secrets. The Regent’s top agents had been searching for the letters for two years without success before Papazian found them a month before Waterloo.
“She didn’t see me,” Papazian insisted. “If she noticed someone else following her, it was another man.”
James stopped his pacing. “It makes no sense. Why would someone else be following her?”
“Maybe it has to do with her deceased husband’s business ventures.”
“Tell me what you’ve learned.”
“Roger Sinclair was a well-respected and wealthy Plymouth businessman. He specialized in importing commodities, mainly grain, barley, coal, and timber. His young wife rarely left home, and upon inquiry of the Plymouth townsfolk, people said she was ‘not of sound mind,’ and some went so far as to say she had gone mad. They sympathized with Roger over his wife’s infirmity and admired that he had not left her.”
“That’s ludicrous. Bella is far from mad,” James said.
“I tracked down Sinclair’s former steward. The man was tight-lipped at first, but he’s also a drunkard and was easy to bribe with a few guineas. He said Sinclair acted the perfect gentleman outside the home; he regularly attended church and donated generously, but at home, he was a tyrannical bastard and rigid master. He had a jealous and obsessive nature and rarely permitted his wife to leave the house for fear she would cuckold him. There were incidents of beatings, and he had frequently threatened to harm his wife’s elderly nursemaid if she defied him.”
A flash of pure rage shot down James’s spine, and he clenched his fists at his sides.
“There’s more,” Papazian said. “Despite Roger Sinclair’s public persona as avid churchgoer and supporter, he was a greedy bloke and consumed with increasing his fortune. After war with France broke out, Sinclair’s trade suffered and he began engaging in questionable activities. He started small, importing French brandy and other embargoed goods, but soon grew emboldened and began exporting guns and ammunition to the French troops. Roger Sinclair’s highly treasonous activities were never discovered by the authorities, and he died six months ago when he fell down the stairs while intoxicated and broke his neck.”