It was another clear, moonlit night. Cory pulled his neckcloth free with impatient fingers and screwed it up in his hand. He felt better without the constriction of tight evening dress. He felt better out in the open air, if it came to that. Dancing with the likes of Lily Benedict and Helena Lang had been a sore trial to him. Lily had been surprisingly discreet and whilst gossip had fallen from Helena’s lips with no encouragement from him, he had learned nothing of interest. Instead he had been obliged to endure her prattle whilst watching Rachel being charming to that tailor’s dummy James Kestrel.
He acknowledged to himself that the argument with Rachel had been foolish, but she could be a provocative creature when she chose. Her accusations of insincerity had got under his skin when he had tried so hard to court her gently. But Cory knew the reason for the unresolved tension between them even if Rachel did not. He knew that the kiss in the billiard room, mistake or not, could never be forgotten.
We should pretend that it never happened.
Rachel was trying very hard to make that pretence a reality, Cory thought, but she was not succeeding. Nor could she quite hide her anger when he paid attention to other women. She was jealous and he found that rather encouraging. He was obliged to admit that he was jealous too. Rachel could arouse such an emotion in him without difficulty. It was a new experience for him and one that he acknowledged with rueful recognition. Miss Rachel Odell was his nemesis. He would never escape.
Chapter Eleven
I
t was several days before Rachel saw Cory again. On the morning after the ball he failed to arrive at the excavation and though Sir Alfred and Lady Odell were inclined to dismiss this indulgently as the results of a late night, Rachel felt even more out of sorts. Secretly she had been hoping that Cory would arrive early and apologise for his ungentlemanly conduct towards her, after which they might be easy together again. It did not happen.
Instead, Rachel checked the contents of the stillroom with Mrs Goodfellow, who was making jam, and spent the rest of the morning reading about the Midwinter Treasure. She had borrowed some of the local records from the Reverend Lang and, though they were in Latin, found the reading very stimulating. It was interesting to see how the myths and legends had grown up around the story of the Treasure, and how deep was the belief that if anyone tampered with it, they did so at their peril. Jeffrey Maskelyne’s maps and clues were making little sense to her, but they did seem to confirm that there was something hidden on the burial site. She did not intend to involve Cory in the search, however.
In the afternoon she went driving with James Kestrel, who was, of course, far too moderate in his habits to fail to get up the day after a ball. They had a pleasant hour’s drive by
the river and at the end of it Rachel knew him for a man with many opinions on a wide variety of subjects and no sense of humour whatsoever. As a marriage prospect he had initially seemed a promising choice, but that was before she had seen him dallying with Miss Lang in the gardens. She felt that this argued a sad unsteadiness of character.
James pressed her to drive with him again soon, but Rachel declined, softening her refusal by agreeing to accept his escort to the Deben Regatta in a few weeks. She wanted to see the spectacle of the Regatta and thought it unlikely that the rest of the family would attend. She felt slightly guilty over this, for she was aware of using James Kestrel almost as much as he appeared to be using Miss Lang.
It rained on the Thursday of that week, shrouding the excavation in a light grey drizzle that sent Sir Arthur grumbling indoors to read the annals of the Archaeological Society and Lady Odell to the library to write some letters. In the evening there was a musicale at Midwinter Marney Hall, but Cory did not appear and Rachel found herself missing him. Sir John Norton was present, pressing in his attentions and flatteringly pleased that he was driving her into town the following day. Rachel wished that she could summon a greater enthusiasm for the outing, but found she could not.
Saturday was bright and hot again and Rachel took her sketching pad and went down to the fields. She walked slowly up to the knot of pines above the river and settled down and was soon engrossed in her drawing. She had seldom drawn people before—all her efforts had been confined to pots and vases and ornaments, to illustrate her parents’ extensive collection. For a little while she sketched her mother, trying to capture the movement of the trailing sleeves and flapping scarves, but Lady Odell’s round figure looked like a butterball on the page, so with a sigh Rachel turned to her father instead. Sir Arthur was digging out a trench at the easternmost extent of the burial ground and his thin stooping figure looked like a stick man in Rachel’s first
attempt. She sketched him again, with concentration, only slightly distracted by the thought that his tweed jacket would be thick with dust by the end of the day and would require a good beating.
It was quite late in the afternoon when Cory Newlyn suddenly appeared, strolling down the path from the house, raising a hand to greet the Odells and walking across to the trench where Rachel had sat with him a few of weeks before. He moved with a casual grace. Rachel caught her breath as he approached. The passage of a few days had only hardened her intention to make him suffer for his cavalier behaviour at the ball, for she had been hurt and annoyed that their quarrel had meant so little to him that he had not hurried to apologise. Now that the moment of revenge had come, however, she felt strangely nervous.
She watched Cory as he exchanged a few words with Bradshaw, discarded his jacket and set to work. Not for Cory the formality of a tweed coat on a hot day. He was not wearing his disgusting hat today either and the breeze tousled his fair hair and tugged at his linen shirt, flattening it against his chest. His buff-coloured breeches hugged the taut lines of his thighs. Rachel blinked, decided that she had been staring for long enough, picked up her pencil again and set to work on the sketch.
Her first attempt was hopeless. She had got the proportions all wrong so that Cory ended up looking like a giant with a tiny head. It was ridiculous to think that such a picture could ever be the basis for one included in Lady Sally’s watercolour book. Far from humiliating Cory, she would embarrass no one but herself. She was ashamed to even think of approaching Mr Daubenay with the draft of the sketch. Impatient, Rachel flicked over another sheet and tried again. When her second attempt also failed she stopped and bit the end of her pencil thoughtfully. Perhaps she had not given her subject the attention that was needed. Perhaps she needed to study him properly and analyse his physique.
Cory was about a hundred feet away from her, but he had his back half-turned to her so there was little likelihood that he would see her. Rachel rested the drawing pad on her lap and studied him for a good five minutes, watching the way that his body moved with such smooth precision. She examined him with the dispassionate gaze of the artist and felt quite undisturbed. Then she began again.
She started with his face, for she could see it in profile—the clear-cut line of his cheek and jaw, the dishevelled tawny hair that fell across his forehead. He had his loose linen shirt turned up to the elbows now, and the muscles in his arms corded as he worked, lifting and digging, moving with a fluid energy and elegance that was a pleasure to watch. Every so often the breeze would flatten the shirt against the hard, sculpted lines of his back. Rachel started to sketch his torso and this time she got the proportions perfect. She was extremely pleased with her progress.
And then Cory took off his shirt.
One minute he had been engrossed in shovelling a pile of soil out of the trench, the next he had put down the spade and with one movement pulled the linen shirt over his head. The late afternoon sun shone upon him, burnishing his skin to gold. Rachel’s pencil fell from between her fingers and rolled away into the grass. She blinked, frowned and discovered that her mouth had fallen open. She closed it again quickly.
In a way, the experience down by the river should have prepared her for such an eventuality and yet it had not. In that moment it was as though a flame had been lit within her and it was utterly impossible for her to view Cory with the detached eye of the artist. Instead she was compelled to see him as clearly as she had seen him once before, strong, virile and devastatingly attractive. The knowledge was like a blow to the stomach, knocking all the breath out of her.
She looked down at her sketches and suddenly the idea of trying to humiliate Cory for his treatment of her seemed
shabby and underhand and, above all, desperately sad. Rachel could see now that it had been a foolish idea from the very first, born of jealousy and frustration because she disliked the attentions that Cory was paying to other women. It was a mortifying thought and she understood neither why she should feel like that nor what she could do about it.
And whilst she sat there, frozen between shock and horror and desire, the breeze caught the edge of her sketch-pad, scattering the pages in all directions. She made an instinctive snatch for it and Cory glanced up from where he was working and looked directly at her. He grabbed his shirt in one hand and leapt out of the trench.
Rachel jumped to her feet, overcome by total panic. She did not know where to look or what to do first. The pages of the sketch-pad were dancing in the wind, evading her desperate attempts to gather them together. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Cory shrug himself back into his shirt and heard the crunch of the sand under his boots as he came up the slope towards her. It was bad enough that he should have caught her watching him, but if he realised that she had been drawing him as well…Rachel grabbed at the nearest pieces of paper with trembling fingers, feeling slightly sick as she saw Cory bend to pick up a couple of the sheets and glance at them with a casual interest.
He joined her in the lee of the pines and held the pages out to her politely.
‘Hello, Rachel.’ He did not sound in the least bit out of breath from the climb up the slope.
Rachel, in contrast, found herself gasping for air. ‘Oh! Um…hello, Cory!’ She snatched the paper from him and pressed it against her chest. ‘Ah…thank you!’
‘My pleasure,’ Cory said. ‘It is a windy day for sketching.’
Rachel risked a quick look at the sheets he had found. They were the pictures of her parents. Thank God. That
must mean that she had already scooped up the incriminating drawings of him and he need never see them.
Cory was looking her over with cool appraisal. Rachel was horribly aware that her face was flushed and she was almost certain that she was sweating. She crumpled the drawings viciously in her hand. The idea of sketching him had been a terrible mistake from the first, in so many ways. Until now she had not quite realised just what a mistake. She was never, ever going to attempt to draw Cory again. Lady Sally’s book of watercolours would simply have to do without him.
‘I didn’t realise that you were up here,’ Cory continued, his silver gaze still on her face. ‘Have you been here long?’
Rachel blushed harder. ‘Yes…no! That is, just long enough to do a few sketches…’ she gestured wildly ‘…of my parents, you know, and the scenery…’
‘The scenery,’ Cory repeated. A smile touched the corners of his mouth. ‘I see.’
Rachel felt a sudden dread that he had, in fact, seen one of the drawings of himself. She fought down the urge to uncrumple the paper and check again.
‘I apologise,’ Cory said slowly, ‘if you saw me without my shirt. I would not want to offend a lady. Not after the last time.’
Rachel’s throat was dry. She stared at him, remembering in vivid detail the hard muscle and smooth brown skin beneath the linen. Her fingers itched to touch him. ‘I…er…I was not offended,’ she said.
Cory raised a brow. ‘So you
did
see me?’
Rachel swallowed hard. ‘I…I scarce noticed. I was busy drawing.’
Cory looked at her whilst the hot colour mounted into her face and her skin felt as though it was burning.
‘Well,’ he said, after a moment, ‘I am glad that I have seen you, Rae, because I wanted to speak to you about the
ball. I am sorry I could not do so sooner, but I was called away at short notice.’
Rachel turned away. She did not want to prolong their meeting. She wanted nothing more than to escape. And though she had wanted Cory to apologise, she now found that she did not wish to talk about the ball. She was too embarrassed at the situation he had almost caught her in.
‘There is no need—’ she began.
Cory put his hand on her arm. ‘Please. There is a need. I was very discourteous to you, Rae, and I wish to apologise.’
Rachel paused on the edge of flight. ‘It does not matter, Cory. As you said, we are such old friends that I dare say we need not stand on ceremony with one another.’
Cory was watching her face. Now she saw the swift frown that darkened his own. ‘You sound very matter of fact, Rae,’ he said. ‘I had the impression that you were quite upset at the time.’
Rachel bit her lip. ‘I was. But I feel a lot better now.’ The edges of the papers bit into her palm, reminding her of the need to hurry away. ‘Excuse me, please. I…There are things that I must do. The man will be here to mend the clock soon. Papa took it apart to prove some ridiculous law of physics and now there is sand in the mechanism.’
Cory smiled at her and it felt like the sun coming out on a dark day. Rachel felt the helpless, strong attraction catch her as it had done when she was sketching, and she sought to cover it by bending to retrieve her pencil from the springy grass.
‘There is a card party at Mrs Stratton’s this evening,’ she said, a little at random. ‘Do you attend, Cory?’
‘Not tonight,’ Cory said. ‘Is James Kestrel escorting you?’
Rachel turned her head sharply. ‘No, he is not. Why do you ask?’
‘No particular reason.’ Cory thrust his hands moodily into
the pockets of his trousers. ‘I hear that you have been out driving together? I am surprised that Kestrel would risk an activity as dangerous as taking out a team of horses. He might damage himself.’