The Return of Lord Conistone (21 page)

A
s the moon pierced the scudding clouds, Verena had a clear view of Lucas Conistone’s lithe, muscular figure. He wore no coat. His soaked white shirt was hanging open and loose, as he strode towards the pavilion with some sort of pack slung over his shoulder, and his long water-streaked hair clinging starkly to his cheekbones. The heavy rain was sluicing off his tight breeches and wet leather boots, and he looked more dangerously masculine than ever. She caught her breath at the sight of his wide shoulders, his long powerful thighs as he prowled towards the pavilion door, his jaw clenched, his grey eyes narrowed to iron slits. ‘Verena!’ he called again, in his deep, compelling voice. ‘I know you’re here!’

She opened the door wide, tilting her chin in defiance, determined to hide the fact that she was trembling with cold—yes, and fear. ‘I’m here, Lucas,’ she answered, attempting calm. ‘I thought you were on your way back to London’.

The way he looked at her
. She felt dreadfully vulnerable, dreadfully conscious of the way her own wet clothes clung
to her. This man had gone to incredible lengths to find her father’s diary. Had even tried to seduce her for it.

She must not let him know it was here.

He said curtly, ‘Unfinished business called me back. I arrived at Stancliffe Manor to find my grandfather soaking wet and talking wildly about you, and the island. What in God’s name were you thinking of, stranding yourself here in this wild weather?’

She went white. ‘Do you think I actually intended all this?’

He said grimly, ‘I can’t imagine what the hell you were thinking, to be honest’.

And he clearly didn’t want to give her a chance to explain.

Already he was ushering her back into the pavilion, swinging the oilskin bundle down from his shoulder. He looked swiftly around. ‘I’d better see if I can get a fire going. It could be hours before the flood water subsides’.

She backed away in fresh panic. ‘I will not stay here!’
With you. Alone.

He gazed at her, rubbing his hand through his soaking hair. ‘Really? What else do you intend? The main bridge is broken. I’m not a miracle worker. There’s no way you can leave until the floods go down and help arrives. I sent a message to Wycherley to let your staff know that you were caught in the storm and are staying safe at Stancliffe’.

Safe?
He towered above her, the epitome of masculinity in this confined space.
All alone with him. All night
. Safe? Dear Lord, anything but. Her throat was dry. She said defiantly,
‘You
managed to get here! ‘

‘I swam,’ he rapped out.

‘With
that
…
?’
She was looking at the heavy oilskin pack he was carrying.

‘I brought a few necessities. I guessed we’d have to stay for the night’.

Guessed—or intended? Her heart hammered.

He’d slammed the door shut and lit a candle with tinder and flint he’d retrieved from his watertight pack. He was pulling other things out: a stoppered flask, candles and a bundle of clothes that he passed to her. There were also dry clothes for himself. Stripping off his wet shirt, affording her a breathtaking view of his broad back, he pulled on a fresh clean white shirt. She stood riveted, clutching the garments he’d handed her.
The way he moved. The way the candlelight flickered on the play of sinew and muscle as he eased the garment on.

He turned round, catching her gaze. His shirt was still open, giving her this time a glimpse of rippling chest and ridged abdomen, where a sprinkling of dusky hairs arrowed down to the waistband of his tight-fitting wet breeches.
That terrible, all-too-recent sabre scar on his ribs.…

His brow lifted sardonically as he fastened a button and pointed to the garments meant for her. ‘Something wrong with the clothes I brought you? Not the right colour?’

She realised she had been staring. She swallowed. ‘This is intolerable! I don’t— There’s nowhere to get changed’.

‘Well, you have a choice’. He was still buttoning his own shirt. ‘Sit and shiver in your old clothes, or take a deep, deep breath and get changed in here. I promise on my honour—yes, I do still have some remnants of it—that I’ll turn my back. I’ll even shut my eyes if you want to be quite sure. And you’d better turn your back, too, because I’m about to remove my breeches’.

She gasped and whirled away from him, squeezing her own eyes tightly shut. Imagining—oh, Lord, imagining him peeling those soaked breeches from—from.

‘All done,’ he said cheerfully after a few moments. ‘Now
it’s your turn. I’m going to build up this fire; I’ll whistle loudly, so I won’t even
hear
you getting changed. When you’ve finished, you can clap your hands or mutter curses at me’.

He reached for the firewood, whistling a lively tune that she had a horrible feeling was a rather rude soldiers’ ditty. Biting her lip, she got changed into a warm woollen gown of faded red, some stockings and a thick India shawl. Where had he got them? Better not to ask.

Just pretend this is normal, Verena. To be stranded for the night with the last person on earth you wanted to see.

Suddenly Lucas broke off his whistling to say, ‘The Earl often used to come here with your father, I know. Deuce take it, this wood is damp. But why did my grandfather bring
you
here, Verena? What exactly were you doing here with him in the first place?’

She pulled the shawl tightly around her. ‘Do you think I
intended
all this?’ she asked fiercely. ‘He asked me to come to Stancliffe Manor, then he ran out of the house and through the garden! I hurried after him and found him here, in the storm. He managed to return across the bridge, but it started to give way as he was crossing it. Does that answer your question? ‘

He stood, after throwing one last log on the fire. ‘I suppose you realise you were mad to come out here after him, without letting anyone know?’

Resentment burned. ‘I did call, for Rickmanby! And then I realised there wasn’t time’.

He frowned down at her. ‘You had no business coming here in the first place. I told you never to go
anywhere
without Bentinck’.

Her indignation overflowed. ‘I detest that man!’

‘Then you’re a fool,’ he said quietly, ‘for I would trust him with my life’.

She closed her eyes briefly, saying nothing. He turned his attention back to spreading out to dry the wet clothes he’d peeled off.

The fire was starting at last to give out some warmth, but she sat as far as she could from it, huddled on a window seat in the big shawl. Her glance slid towards the cushions under which her father’s diary lay, then away again.
O Estrangeiro
. Maps. Treasure. She didn’t understand.

But she certainly understood that she was trapped on this island for the night, with an incredibly dangerous man.
You must forget his kisses. You must forget about his lovemaking. Your father would warn you he is playing some deep, dark game, and you must not be drawn in.

Lucas said curtly, ‘If you’re worrying about your reputation, then there’s no need. Bentinck knows I’ve come here for you, but he’s telling them all at the house that I’m asleep in my old room’.

Her breath hitched in her throat. ‘Is there anything you
don’t
tell Bentinck, pray?’

‘Very little,’ he said flatly. ‘And if you’d trusted him a fraction more, you wouldn’t have ended up stranded
here
. He said you’d given him his notice today, back at Wycherley, but he followed you nevertheless. And aren’t you glad he did? He lost you, of course, once you’d gone into the house. But he was able to alert me that you were somewhere in Stancliffe’s grounds’.

She felt bewildered and rather sick. So Lucas had not been far away. She said, striving to keep her voice steady, ‘Since you’re here, you can perhaps explain something to me. I mentioned the compensation, for the stream, to your grandfather, Lucas. And he seemed to know nothing at all about it’.

He was stooping to attend to the fire again, still whistling softly. ‘He has a poor memory,’ he said. ‘Everything was
legal and above board, I assure you. The Wycherley estate was fully entitled to that compensation’.

She watched him from her window seat, the shawl around her shoulders. ‘But who paid it? You, or him?’

He turned to her and spread out his hands. ‘Does it exactly matter?’

‘It matters to
my family
. You paid it. Didn’t you?’ Her voice shook with emotion now. ‘You paid it all, your grandfather knew nothing. Why, Lucas? Why this constant, relentless interference? Why don’t you just—
leave us alone?’

He looked down at her in silence, his hands on his hips. After a moment he said politely, ‘Should I go away again, Verena? I could always swim, you know, back across the lake, and leave you alone here—’

‘No!’

She hadn’t meant it to sound so emphatic. His mouth twisted. ‘You mean you actually want my company?’

The thunder was rumbling further away now, but the wind was still moaning in the trees. The fire and the candles he’d lit made some things better, but other things worse. The shadows, for example, were playing tricks, flickering and leaping around the walls and domed ceiling of the pavilion. She remembered the stories she and Pippa had frightened each other with, as children. The servants used to say ghosts haunted Stancliffe’s lakes by night.

She said stiffly, ‘I wouldn’t dream of putting you through the ordeal of having to swim across that lake again, Lord Conistone!’

‘Mighty considerate of you,’ he drawled. He pulled a chair across and sat astride it, his folded arms resting on its back so that he was facing her. She found herself rather unnervingly captivated by the golden skin revealed by the open neck of his shirt. ‘Mind,’ he continued, ‘it
would certainly add to the interesting speculation about my various—escapades. Rumours about midnight swimming feats would make a change from the gossip that usually surrounds me. Concerning parties. And drinking. And so forth’. He looked at her questioningly. ‘Go on. Tell me exactly why I received such a frosty reception earlier at Wycherley. What have you heard about me, Miss Sheldon? Though I used to think you disdained society tattle…’

‘I do!’ she cried. ‘I do! Though it’s hard to ignore, when they say you’ve been to—oh, to the Channel Isles, with your idle friend Alec Stewart, attending some grand ball held by—by a French Countess!’

He was on his feet. For just one terrifying moment, as his lean body coiled as if for action, she was truly afraid of what he might do, because she had never seen such blazing anger in his eyes.

Then he said, almost quietly, ‘Is that what you heard?’

She gazed up at him, white-faced. ‘Is it true, Lucas? ‘

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn’t’.

She bowed her head bitterly. ‘And with an answer like that, you expect me to
—trust
you?’

‘Sometimes the truth is—not so easily definable,’ he said softly. ‘Besides, I’m getting rather used to malicious whispers from ignorant fools’.

He turned to put more wood on the fire. The rain was beating down again on the wooden roof of the pavilion. She swung away from him, to look out through the windows at the cold, dark night. He’d not even troubled to deny where he’d been.

Yet she could not forget the night he had saved her, the night he got shot. Or that terrible scar, from a French sabre.

So many mysteries. Too many mysteries.…

He was standing up now from the fire, which was at last giving out a glowing heat.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Even you have to admit that at times I have my uses’.

She turned back to him, her arms clasped more tightly across her breasts. ‘We would have managed!’ she whispered rather desperately. ‘If you hadn’t come back into our lives, Lucas, my family would have managed! You are
everywhere
, you seem to know everything before it happens—oh, I wish I’d never met you!’

‘Really?’ he answered evenly. ‘A few weeks ago, you were happy enough to share my bed. Had you forgotten?’

A gasp came to her lips. Her eyes were wide and desperate.
Forget?
Oh, Lord, the things she had let him do to her. The intense, exquisite, mind-searing pleasure he had bestowed.

Her heart was hammering. ‘Lucas, you said—we were both agreed—that what happened that night was a terrible mistake! The wine I’d drunk…’

‘Ah. The wine,’ he said lightly. ‘And there was I, thinking you were seriously considering my proposal of marriage. The straitlaced Miss Sheldon, undone by a glass of madeira’.

She jumped to her feet. ‘No! Please, Lucas, don’t mock!’
He was accusing her of being a lightskirt
. ‘I was weak and foolish and I’ve acknowledged it, but we decided that you must not be forced into marriage to save my reputation!’

His hands were on her shoulders. ‘Do you seriously think I could be
forced
into marriage?’

Looking down at her, his dark gaze searing her, he began to subtly knead her tender skin through her gown with his strong fingers, sending shivers of raging desire all through her. Reminding her of the way she had arched beneath his
intimate caresses, had risen to sublime ecstasy at the touch of his knowing hands.

She closed her eyes. She was shaking.

‘Verena,’ he murmured, ‘do you think all marriages should be for love?’

His enticing breath was warm on her cheek. She could not move.
You must resist him. You must…
. Somehow she said steadily, ‘I’m not at all sure that I believe in love. From what I’ve seen, love can only hurt you’.

‘What a world-weary matron you are, Miss Sheldon,’ he sighed lightly. ‘How old are you? Ah, yes, all of twenty-two. And sensibly turning your back on the frivolities of youth…’ He let her go at last, and turned to look round. ‘Dare I suggest some wine now, to lighten your despair? Since you find yourself in such—distasteful company?’

He reached for the flask and held it in front of her.
The strait-laced Miss Sheldon, undone by a glass of madeira.

‘No, thank you!’ She shook her head tightly.