‘Aye….well, some days are easier than others, that’s true, mistress.’
‘And I suppose this must have been one of them. So what do you propose to tell the Duke and Duchess about your decision? That you really didn’t want the prize, in spite of that convincing little lecture you gave me beforehand? That you’ve gone back on the agreement because you’re really not up to it these days?’
He rolled himself round to face her from the other side of the curtain, one hand reaching up almost to the tester, his face showing a mild surprise at her bitter tone, which she knew to be feigned. ‘I shall remind them, if they’re in any doubt, that you were the one to make such a fuss about it with your very noisy refusal to accept the result. Why, even the dairymaid must have heard it out there, let alone those in the hall. Nobody will be too surprised after that, Mistress Laker, and I’ll not have it said that I was obliged to take a woman to wife who hates my guts enough to want to run a sword through them. The woman I marry will worship the ground I walk on, or I’ll do without.’
‘You knew how I felt beforehand,’ Phoebe retorted, ‘yet you agreed to the contest
and
the terms.’
‘And you accepted them too, lass. Then you refused. When you’d lost.’ ‘You
knew
I would lose.’
‘Yes. So did you. Well, let this be a lesson to you not to place me in your clever schemes and fanciful talk of flames and kisses of death and suchlike, for I’ll have none of it. I don’t believe in such airy nonsense. Life may once have roughed you up, as it does to most of us, but you’re a lot better off than some poor devils, and to go seeking personal reasons for deaths you had no control over is unworthy of a woman like you. It’s childish—’
‘How
can
you say that when—’
‘Childish and pitiful it is, to load yourself with that kind of guilt. Perhaps it’s your way of excusing the wild behaviour I was honest enough to comment on. Now you’ve turned your wildness in my direction as if harming me would somehow heal your wounds and bring back what you’ve lost. Well, it wouldn’t, would it? Nothing can. You have to
replace
it, woman, not whine about it and carry it about like a trophy. We’ve
all
suffered losses. There’s been a Civil War, a plague and then a fire when wives, mothers and daughters
all
lost their men. Yes, you’d have married me, I know, for your own warped reasons. But I’m two steps ahead of ye, and my second name is not Martyr.’
‘And those…kisses?’ she whispered, while silent tears slipped across her lips. ‘Meant to humble me, were they?’
‘Is that what they tasted of?’
‘No, Sir Leo, they tasted of curiosity, that’s all. Simple male curiosity.’
‘Then there’s something wrong with your sense of taste, lass. Too much ginger, perhaps. Wipe your tears. You’re free. You should be thankful.’ Giving her no time to reply, he opened the door and slipped through, leaving her to stare at his disappearance through a sea of tears, almost willing it to change and wipe out the mortification she’d just endured.
After all the schemes for retribution, after all the visions of an abject Sir Leo begging for her favour, and a heart healed and empowered, the terrible emptiness of reality overwhelmed her with a force for which she was quite unprepared. He would tell his friends of his conquest, and she would become a laughing stock, the centre of another scandal. The two Tollemache girls, the Duchess’s daughters, would recount every detail to their friends at Court. The Duke would laugh heartily at his secretary’s refusal to be cozened by a woman on the lookout for a scapegoat, which is how he’d see it, and the Duchess would agree that Sir Leo was acting honourably by not taking adavantage of terms that, in hindsight, were so objectionable to both participants.
And those intimate, outrageous, forbidden caresses? What of them? Why in heaven’s name had she allowed it? Worse still, why had he led her on only to stop and tell her that she was not for him? She had suffered enough—these were questions which she dared not try to answer.
There was yet another enigma that she believed would never now be explained, the one he’d whispered to her before the contest about being a tigress fierce enough to fight for their bairns.
Their
bairns. Had he really changed his mind after that, or had he never meant it in the first place?
To give in to despair, to throw herself face down on the bed and howl herself senseless, to refuse food and then stamp off home would, in the circumstances, have been a perfectly normal thing to do. But Phoebe had never lacked spirit, even when she aimed it in the wrong direction, nor was she so blinkered in her clumsy efforts to solve her problems that she couldn’t see when she should re-think her strategies, particularly when her mistakes had been spelled out in such a ruthless fashion. So while Constance undressed her mistress and washed her, laying out her prettiest rose-pink gown with the huge gathered sleeves, Phoebe had time to recall what had been said and done, comparing it to previous calamities in her life when she’d had no one’s help but Mrs Overshott’s. Then, the advice had always been to pick herself up, to dress in her most becoming gown, put on a brave face and get on with life so as not to attract more attention or, in this case, not to upset her hostess. Far from giving the impression that none of this mattered to her, it was meant to demonstrate courage in the face of adversity. More than that, it would show that smug, holier-than-thou, superior, worship-at-my-feet layabout that she didn’t care a damn what he thought of her and that his presence in the house would not affect her at all, after that debacle. She would leave when she was ready, not before the appointed time. It was a sham, of course, but that was the principle.
To the Duchess’s relief and delight, her volatile guest appeared to be no worse for her ordeal, rigged out and radiant in rose-pink silk and white lace, with tiny ribbon-roses in her shining curls. Showing no sign of tears, her eyes were clear and enquiring, looking forward with confidence towards the rest of the evening. It was a polished performance that commended her to the Duke, after he’d recovered from the surprise of her transformation, and not even he could doubt Phoebe’s professed relief that his secretary had not insisted on his pound of flesh. It was, she told him with a convincing candour, a close encounter she had no wish to repeat. Nor would she ever in future accept the brilliant suggestions offered by seventeen-year-old ladies, however well meant.
Sympathetic and solicitous, the Duchess was too wily to be quite convinced by this courageous display, though she did everything possible to gloss over any potential awkwardness and to make Phoebe’s last evening at Ham House pleasant enough to repeat. All in all, Phoebe managed the situation well, strolling down to the river after supper to feed the swans and to watch the last bargemen haul their loads downriver towards Richmond. The two girls were bewildered by the outcome of the contest that had not followed the usual formula of happy ever after, nor did Mistress Laker appear to be as distressed as she ought. It became obvious that their good intentions had been intrinsically flawed from the start.
Later, in the cool peace of her bed after the strain of her emotional deception, Phoebe fought back the tears of another kind of heartache that lamented the loss of something she had never had—Sir Leo Hawkynne.
Her return to Mortlake came as a relief after two days of the high-powered Lauderdales who, although perfect hosts, left her with a feeling of being overfed on flamboyance and flourish, as if there was a competition for the most staggering show of assets. Phoebe was no Puritan, and she could appreciate beauty wherever it showed, but walking into Ham House since the Duchess’s refurbishments was an experience to be taken in small doses. ‘I would not be in the least surprised,’ she told Mrs Overshott, ‘if the Lauderdales don’t find themselves in some kind of financial trouble one of these days. The Duke cannot say no to her, and she cannot say no to herself. You should
see
the green closet, Molly. You’d never believe it. The entire ceiling and halfway down the walls painted with copies of Caravaggio, and you know the kind of thing
he
was good at, don’t you?’
‘Naked cupids, nymphs and satyrs,’ Mrs Overshott rattled off, twinkling. ‘Did you feel threatened, dear?’
Chuckling, Phoebe held out her arms to embrace the companion she had left behind, the dear middle-aged handsome lady who smelled faintly of aniseed and mint, who had risked the plague to nurse Phoebe’s parents, yet had survived. Her complexion was pitted with the scars of smallpox, but her brown eyes had never lost their beam of understanding, her awareness of Phoebe’s humours, how-ever well concealed. ‘Threatened?’ said Phoebe, hugging her. ‘No, not by the satyrs.’
‘Ah,’ said her companion. ‘Come and tell me all about it over a dish of tea. Was the Lauderdales’ tea gilded, too?’
‘Yes,’ said Phoebe, giggling. Together they passed from the panelled hallway into the tapestry-lined dining room that glowed with the soft mellow tones of apricot and dusty blue, burnt orange and ochre. ‘But you must not think I disapprove, Molly. For the Lauderdales, it’s a perfect setting, grand, loud, showy, spacious. The—’
‘Who was there? The Duke, I take it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah,’ said her companion again. ‘Perhaps I should have been with you, then.’
Phoebe had never concealed any of her concerns from Mrs Overshott, for she had a way of listening that made the sharing of confidences not only easy but valuable too. So Phoebe sipped her tea and rudely dunked her biscuit while telling of the fiasco at Ham House, which she felt sure had placed her lower in Sir Leo’s estimation than she was before. ‘If I’d not been so furious with him, I would never have agreed to such a charade. I suppose it serves me right for planning a revenge. It backfired, didn’t it?’
‘Easy to be wise after the event. But his actions in your room suggest to me that he must hold you in affection, Phoebe, whatever his sudden coldness means.’
‘I cannot believe that,’ Phoebe whispered, turning the little tea-dish round to study its pattern. ‘He was all fired up, like me, and probably still angry, and you know what men are like when they’ve won something, don’t you?’
‘Yes. It may be no more than an overflow of energy, Phoebe, but I cannot believe that a man like Sir Leo would have gone as far as he did unless he meant to place you under his ownership. He may have a reputation with women, but he would not dishonour a woman, a guest in his employer’s house. He must have meant something by it.’
‘But he couldn’t wait to shake me off, Molly, after that.’
‘And then he gave you a good dressing-down, which he need not have bothered to do unless he wanted you to know the reason. I think you’ve misread the signs. Why would he have sought a discussion in the first place? Why would he have accepted that particular method of settling your dispute? It was very unorthodox, I agree, but it brought matters to a head, didn’t it? I can see all kinds of signs that he cares more than you think.’
‘I don’t know,’ Phoebe said, shaking her head. ‘I doubt it.’
‘See how you feel after a night in your own bed, love. You did well to recover so quickly. That must have been difficult.’
Phoebe reached for the hand that moved across the polished table, taking it to her cheek to hold it there. ‘I had to,’ she said. ‘They were all watching. What I want to know is how Elizabeth discovered about my fencing lessons when I thought to keep it to myself.’
‘Perhaps you should ask Signor Luigi in the morning.’
‘No, there’ll be no more lessons, Molly. I think it’s a waste of time. I shall have dancing lessons instead. Or perhaps the lute. I still have Tim’s, you know.’
But despite the negative tone of her conversation with Mrs Overshott, who seemed to have little difficulty in seeing through the problem, the small signs Phoebe had perversely overlooked now took on an importance worth another viewing. His kiss, for one thing. His intimate caresses, for another, which, while they had led nowhere, were not the kind of thing a man of his calibre would bestow on an honoured guest in his master’s house without a very good reason. Molly was right about that. So why had he gone so far before telling her she was free? Well, he had provided her with the answer to that in no uncertain terms.
I’m two steps ahead of ye, and my second name is not Martyr,
he had told her before going on to deny that his potent kisses had anything to do with mere curiosity.
The mists began to clear. He was aware of her ploy. He was not to be duped in the way she’d intended. He would dictate his own terms and she would follow, not the other way round. She had misjudged him, for he must have known what effect his brief lovemaking would have upon her, how she was, even then, ready to give herself to him, how she would be both humiliated and left wanting more. He would call her to heel once she’d had time to simmer down, for he was not a man to be manipulated by a woman. How could she ever had believed otherwise?
Did that mean that he wanted her, after all?
This was what she must find out while there was still time, for who could tell when the Duke would demand his presence on the next journey north? She could hardly return to Ham House so soon after the disastrous visit, but a chance meeting somewhere might just provide her with an indication that all was not lost or, conversely, that she had better forget him altogether. Still smarting, still unsure, of one thing she was more certain: if she did not seek him out, he would certainly not seek her.
The aristocrats with the prestigious title of Keepers of Richmond Park were no other than the Lauderdales themselves, so it was not exactly by chance that Phoebe and Mrs Overshott decided at breakfast next morning that a ride in the park would be good for their health. The possibility that certain others might also be of the same mind was not spoken out loud, but the two women knew each other’s thoughts well enough to make it unnecessary. So, dressed in fashionable velvet habits and wide plumed hats, they cut across the loop of the River Thames to the enclosed parkland that the King’s father had considerably enlarged, taking in a sizeable bite of Mortlake, for which some disgruntled owners had still not been compensated.