The Return of Lord Conistone (13 page)

Lucas stood up tiredly. ‘Grandfather, you’ve done more harm than you can begin to imagine. I have to go away now, but believe me, I’ll be back very soon. And you will do nothing else, absolutely nothing, to harm the Sheldons, do you understand?’

‘Always leaving me,’ muttered the Earl bitterly. ‘Parties, London. Horses. Sailing off overseas…
Compensation?
To Jack Sheldon’s profligate family? Ridiculous!’

‘I’ll be back soon,’ Lucas repeated. He bowed, and left.

* * *

The Earl’s rheumy eyes were like slits as he muttered to himself, ‘The girl. The hussy.
She
was Jack’s favourite.
She
was closest to him!’ Suddenly he got up and hobbled to the window, pushing back the curtains so he could see Stancliffe’s acres of wild garden, the lakes. The island pavilion, where he and Jack used to meet.

Two days ago he’d had another visitor, who’d pretended to be his friend. Who’d told him it was his duty to his country to reveal, if he knew it, where Jack’s diary was.

They all wanted that diary, but it was his! For he, the Earl, had paid Jack Sheldon dearly for it. And its whereabouts was a secret he intended to keep.

B
y the time Lucas got back to Wycherley, the sun was setting. Quietly he stabled the horse and let himself in, preparing to spend just one more night here.

By the morning he would be gone.

Guessing Bentinck would still be at the Framlington alehouse, Lucas extinguished all the candles except one and, wearing just his breeches, sprawled on the bed and slept.

Suddenly he was wide awake. He thought he’d heard someone, or something, outside the west window. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was past ten. He reached under the pillow for his pistol.

He blew out the candle and edged up to the wall by the window, angling his head to look out. In the garden all was dark.

There was the sound again
. Someone was creeping through the bushes that grew close to the house.

Lucas padded barefoot across the room to pick up the long iron poker from the grate, dangled his pale handkerchief from its tip, then swiftly raised it up against the
window pane. A bullet came crashing through the glass. He dived aside, landing on the floor, jarring his injured arm. Glass splinters scattered around him. He lay cursing softly.
My arm. Hell and damnation, my arm.…

He heaved himself up and grabbed for his pistol again. Through the broken window, he glimpsed someone running away into the darkness. He took aim and fired.

Too late.

And in falling he had broken open his wound. Blood was seeping through the bandage.

Swiftly he searched for and found the spent bullet that had smashed into the bookcase opposite the window. He pushed the books around to cover the damage and slipped the bullet into his pocket. He carefully broke away more of the window pane, dropping the glass outside, then re-lit the candle and a few others round the room—
whoever did this was a coward, and would doubtless have run as far as his legs could carry him
. Then he went over to the washstand where there was a roll of fresh bandaging, and began the laborious task of re-dressing his wound single-handed.

Give me a proper battle, any time.

But then he’d known, hadn’t he, what he was letting himself in for?

* * *

Verena was upstairs in her bedroom. David had indeed called earlier, but only to tell her that her visit must be postponed, as one of the children had a mild fever.

She’d expressed her concern, and sent Pippa her love; but the empty hours stretched ahead. Desperate to distract herself, she turned again to the London newspaper David had brought; to the latest news of the war.
Our Portuguese correspondent reports that Lord Wellington’s army has vacated the fortress of Almeida and is planning a two-hundred-mile
march to Lisbon, which is held at present just by a small British force.

She could picture it all, because she’d seen her father’s maps, heard his travel stories. To get from Almeida on the Spanish frontier to Lisbon meant, she knew, climbing across mountainous terrain before the coastal plain was reached. Lucas had told her once that whoever held Lisbon, with its vital port, would control all of Portugal.

She put the newspaper down slowly.
Lucas
. Everything always came back to Lucas. He had been paying Mr Mayhew’s bills. He had known more about the court case than
she
did. Unforgivable! Tomorrow, she would ensure that he kept his word and left forthwith!
And then she would never see him again.

She stared blindly out of the window into the darkness. Even losing Wycherley seemed nothing, compared to losing Lucas.

The house seemed eerily quiet. Her mother and sisters had gone early to bed. Cook and Turley had asked permission to go to the celebration of a wedding in the village and were not back yet. Their other servants did not live in.

When she heard the sound of breaking glass and—
Lord, was that a gun shot?
—she was on her feet in an instant, her heart pounding. The noise came, surely, from Lucas’s room downstairs. Clutching her shawl about her, she almost flew down the stairs and rapped sharply on the door.

‘Lucas?
Lucas?’

No answer. She hurried in—and froze.

He was standing with his back to her by the table on which the water jug stood and the rolls of bandages. Nearer to her, the floor was strewn with splinters of glass. She realised the curtain to the west window was pulled back, revealing a jagged hole in the centre of one of the panes. She let out a low cry.

Lucas whirled around to face her. And what had registered only faintly at first in her mind became all too clear.
Verena, you fool, charging in without waiting.

He was clad only in hip-hugging buckskin breeches. His calves, strong and shapely, were unclad, as were his feet. She was presented with the full sight of that manly golden torso rippling with muscle, the broad chest and shoulders tapering down in smooth sculpted ridges to the perfection of his slim waist and loins.

Her throat was dry. No man had the right to look so beautiful.

In the unfortunate event of a young lady finding herself alone in a room with a man, she must avert her eyes, say nothing and leave immediately.

Miss Bonamy should try looking at Lucas Conistone, half-undressed, and see if
she
could avert her eyes.

Verena swallowed and said, as steadily as she could, ‘What has happened, my lord?’ and then she realised. He had been trying his best to hold a wad of bandaging to it, but his wounded arm was bleeding again. ‘Oh,
Lucas’.
She hurried instinctively towards him, all embarrassment forgotten. ‘Let me see to that, before you bleed to death. But
how
…
?’
She glanced in distress at the broken window again.

He said through gritted teeth, ‘It’s nothing. Just the gale outside. A piece of a branch came flying through’.

There was a breeze from the sea, but she wouldn’t have called it a gale. Doubt assailed her. She stiffened. ‘Really? Then where is it, this branch?’

‘I tossed it outside again,’ he swiftly replied. ‘You weren’t meant to be here, you were meant to be at your sister’s’.

‘The visit had to be cancelled,’ she muttered. ‘Just as well—I cannot leave you for one hour, it seems. Please sit on the bed, my lord, and I will bandage your wound again.
Where is Bentinck? I must send him for Dr Pilkington in Framlington—’

‘No’.

His voice was so harsh that she looked at him wonderingly. ‘No?’

‘There is no need, Verena,’ he said more gently. He sat down at last, on the edge of the bed.

Then she saw it. The ugly scar snaking along his left ribs, a raised and angry seam, still not fully healed; the result, Dr Pilkington had said, of a vicious thrust from a French sabre…
‘Lucas’.
She was staring at it, horrified.

‘An old wound,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s nothing’.

‘It’s
not
old! I’m not a fool, Lucas!’

He sighed. ‘You’re determined to out all my secrets, aren’t you? Very well—I fought a duel a few months ago’.

A duel? With a man wielding a French sabre?

She thought not.

None of her business. None of her business…
. But her hands were shaking.

‘I’d better patch you up again,’ she said as steadily as she could.

‘Yes, but, Verena, look, the bleeding’s all but stopped’. He had turned so she could no longer see that scar, but instead she saw the blood that still trickled steadily down his right arm.

‘It hasn’t stopped and I must bind it’. She did so quickly and efficiently, finding a pad of clean linen and getting to work. She pretended to herself that it was just like seeing to one of her younger sisters’ scratches when they used to romp in the garden; pretended that the warm skin overlaying taut sinews against which her fingertips brushed was having no effect on her whatsoever.

A downright lie
. She had never realised a man’s body
could be so exquisite. The strong, golden musculature of his chest and shoulders made her pulse race sweetly. Her head was swimming at his nearness. At the male scent of him. ‘There,’ she said, with a passable effort at brisk efficiency. ‘Now, I will fetch you some tea, or brandy, and something to eat. Cook left a tray for you in the kitchen, for your supper, but I saw it has not been touched’.

‘No!’ he insisted again.

She lifted her shoulders in near-despair. ‘Lucas, you need to restore your strength! Wherever has Bentinck got to? He might persuade you into some sense!’

Lucas said shortly, ‘I sent Bentinck to the village earlier’.

‘To the village…’

‘Yes. To the alehouse’.

‘Then we are alone?’

‘We are alone’. He added, disarmingly softly, ‘Is that so terrible?’

She tried to draw away, pushing back her tousled chestnut hair from her cheeks. ‘What’s happened to this room is terrible!’ she declared, trying to hide her confusion by feigning housewifely concern. ‘My goodness, I really must tidy up the broken glass, and see about getting the broken window boarded up before I go—’

‘There are shutters,’ he gently reminded her. ‘Will not they suffice? And Bentinck will sweep up the glass when he finally returns. There’s no reason for you to do the work of a servant’.

‘Nevertheless, I—’

He caught hold of her shoulder. ‘I meant it. You should value yourself more, Verena’.

She froze at his touch. Her eyes were wide and heartsore. ‘Value myself more?’ she whispered. ‘When you do not even value me enough to tell me the truth? Ever since you
arrived on the day of that hateful sale, things have
happened
here, Lucas, bad things! Those men above Ragg’s Cove, who shot you. Now, this!’

‘Sit down, Verena,’ he commanded quietly.

She did so, almost numbly, on one of the chairs beside the bed. He poured her some wine, kept by his bedside, and pushed the glass towards her. ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘It will help’.

Her fingers trembling, she took a tiny sip.

He dragged another chair across and sat astride it, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘Do you know,’ he went on softly, ‘when I saw you two years ago I thought you were something out of a dream’. Her pulse began to race. ‘It was that wonderful autumn,’ he went on. ‘You were sitting in the shade of the haystack, Verena, in your sprigged muslin gown and sunbonnet, with your spectacles perched delightfully on the end of your nose. You’d flung aside your book on etiquette and were reading about farming. Turnips’.

Her heart thumped. She gulped down too much wine. She said tightly, ‘I suppose you found me—and all of us—amusing!’

‘Amusing?’ He refilled her glass; his face was serious. ‘I was home, from the war. And you were my island of sanity, Verena. You were at the heart of my dream of another life’. His hooded eyes darkened. He whispered, ‘I need that dream now’.

For a moment she was unable to speak. He went on, ‘They were happy days, that autumn, weren’t they? You know, I’d made such plans for myself, Verena. But then I found my world turned upside down. Because I’d fallen in love with you’.

She could hardly breathe. She was sure he must hear her heart breaking all over again, for she could. His grandfather’s hideous message still seared her mind.

She drank more wine. She said, striving to keep her voice steady, ‘Lucas, there is no point in going back over all this…’

‘There is,’ he said. ‘There is
every
point. Now I have some idea, at last, of the damage my grandfather has done. Not only did he try to ruin your family financially; but he has insulted you quite vilely’.

‘How do you—’

‘I’ve been to see him. This afternoon. I know everything, Verena. And I want you to know that I’ve said nothing at all to him, either two years ago or at any time since, of how I felt about you; of my plans, for the two of us…’

Her heart was thudding wildly. ‘Oh,
Lucas’.

He caught her hand. ‘I loved you,’ he broke in. ‘But you stopped caring for me. Tell me, for God’s sake,
why
you despise me so much. Why you were so ready to believe slanders about me, even though I begged you to trust me before I went away. Is it because you think I’m a coward?’