The Virgin's Auction (13 page)

“I am not sure I have the funds about me for extra gifts to the staff . . .”

“Have you outrun your allowance again? Do I need to increase it?”

“Perhaps only a little.”
She got to her feet, smoothing her hands over the exquisite material of her dress in an absentminded caress. “Everything is so dreadfully expensive in town.”

“You must learn
to economise, darling.”

“But James, why?” she gurgled irrepressibly. “When we have so much?”

“Only think of your children. If you run through it all what will
they
have to fritter away?”

“Oh, I’m much too young to worry about children, James. Besides which, I can always marry for money, and then I’ll never run out.”

“I wish you to marry for love, darling. I wish you to be happy.”

“Don’t be so serious, James. I shall see you in the morning. I am so pleased you are going with me. How the others will sigh and swoon and fall about. Now don’t frown like that. You’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

She skipped forward to lay a kiss between his eyebrows, and then was away with a pirouette over the carpet and a mocking curtsey at the door.

Well, that had gone better than expected. He had supposed they would not leave until the middle of the afternoon. A small triumph, then, to be away with so little fuss and bother, and only a boring morning tea party full of simpering misses
to attend as the price. And that only for the short interval between the time Stephanie was actually ready to depart, and noon, which he fondly supposed would be no time at all.

Chapter Ten

For a solid week it rained. It was the beginning of spring, sodden and squelchy. Everything turned to thick mud until she longed for the more civilised cobblestone streets of London. As Melissa sat sewing day after day in the clear light at her bedroom window, the weather outside reflected the weather inside her own heart.

She put delicate rows of stitches in cotton and cambric, graduating to more demanding work as Miss
Parsit assessed her ability and was well pleased. The coloured materials in her workbasket changed but this gray internal fugue did not lift.

She put a brave face on it for Peter, chirruping
brightly about the beautiful trees and verdant landscape, glowing with subtle greens as the increasing warmth brought blossom and bud to bare branches. A life lived in London did make this pretty village a paradise of vitality even in the drabness of early spring.

She teased him about the muck he wore home with him from their neighbours’ gardens. He looked the part of a peasant indeed. He brooded around the place and avoided her as much as he could. She was sympathetic and exasperated in turns. Of course he missed their more leisurely town life and the
routines they had always known; that was only natural. But his stance about the nobility of their actions never failed to make her impatient and short with him.

He should count his blessings, as she tried to. There was no Father here to search either of them out for a drunken beating, no struggle to keep up appearances of gentility as furnishings slowly drained from the house, servants were let go and the money to buy cloth for new clothes was whittled away to virtually nothing.

Perhaps he did not feel the advantages of those lacks so keenly as she did, given she had always striven to shield him. The dull, daily terror of it, that awful grind, the downwards spiral were all gone. And that was good; so very, extraordinarily good.

Of course he did not know about the other part either: their lucky escape from the stews of London. For that escape she gave thanks every day, keeping Mr Tell and
Hetty in her prayers and trying to shut out that other handsome face which intruded where it was not wanted.

Nor did he know to be grateful for her noble sacrifice on his behalf. She had to keep reminding herself of his ignorance, every time his long-suffering sullenness grated her raw spirit.

And that was really the crux of it. There was no reward in being a martyr when one had to live every day with the pain of one’s loss, and the boy-man who had benefitted most directly (again that certain attractive face arose in her mind’s eye and was quashed, for he did
not
enter this equation in any way!) was oblivious to his good fortune.

A little gratitude would not go amiss.

A whole shovelful of gratitude would be even more fitting.

The posies made her situation no better.

To her horror she had gained two male admirers in the village. They halted her for conversations if they saw her, cornering her in the village’s small shops and stumbling over themselves to say something clever or witty.

It was the very last thing she wanted or needed, when she had her dreadful secret and could never consider marriage. Each time they forced themselves on her notice she was reminded of what she had lost until she wanted to scream at them to leave her alone, for God’s sake, she was damaged goods.

She glared resentfully at the latest offering, thoughtfully placed on the windowsill by their hostess.

“That one’s from Alfred Stone, who’s an apprentice at the bakery. He’s a sweet enough lad. You’ll find no harm in him. But I don’t know as you’ll find much of interest in him either,”
she said in her soft, worn-out voice. She was a faded woman of advanced years, dressed in the muted lavender of half-mourning. Her hair was dressed simply, pulled back from a face which was narrow and colourless.

“Not like Curtis
Clivey perhaps,” she went on, nodding towards the bouquet gifted to Melissa the previous day, which she had just moved from the windowsill to the mantelpiece over the fireplace. The widow had an egalitarian soul. Each potential lover deserved his time in the sun.

“But then Curtis is known for setting the hearts of the local maidens aflutter.
Such a handsome boy, that one. But then handsome is as handsome does, I always say.” She dusted the mantel a little with a handkerchief she had whisked out of her sleeve. “So lovely to have you working away up here, and know I have the company in the house. I can see as you’re busy so I’ll leave you to your stitchery.”

The faded woman, wreathed as always in her gentle wistfulness – a shadow of old sorrow – gave her soft smile and drifted out the doorway
, leaving Melissa alone with her importunate flowers.

She would pitch them out into the garden if that would not mean explaining herself to the widow.

So she gritted her teeth and sewed, and sewed some more, and thought too much. And sewed. Until her fingertips were tender from the drag of fabric, and she longed for fresh air and a chance to roam the fields the way she had roamed the streets of London.

Today, finally, the rain had eased and then stopped. The sky was still overcast but there was a hint of blue at the horizon and a slight breeze through the trees. She was hardly adept at reading the weather, but logic would suggest the clouds
might blow away. Even if they stayed overhead she might not get drenched if she went out now.

In the city she had always taken
Hetty for propriety’s sake. Probably no one would notice or care if she went alone. Just for a little walk

And by God, she was not going to sit here another second, virtuously labouring for her pennies when there was a chance to get out and just . . . just . . .

She pitched her armload of fabric onto her bed, snatched up her cap and Spencer and whisked down the stairs. Fingers tangled in the ribbons under her chin she called out in the hallway: “I’m just going to take the air, Mrs Bristow.”

“What’s that, dear?” came the querulous response from the drawing room. But she did not stop, sweeping out the front door and past the few cottages to the end of the street, where garden plots quickly became fields for cows and sheep. She hurried, fists clenched, jogging a step for every three she walked, with frustration beating up hard through her chest.

She just needed a walk. That was all; to clear her head. Three weeks of sitting still would drive anyone crazy. Not that she was crazy. But in a state of heightened emotion: Yes. And lonely. That too, with no one to talk to, no one to understand. Having to stay pleasant, polite, submissive; to keep her head down. She was a working woman. She would be a spinster in a corner of her brother’s house for the rest of her life, so she must become used to this . . . pent up crowded in hemmed about . . . Gah!

She climbed a stile by the road, crossed the field and let herself through a gate, closing it carefully after her. Goodness, but
there was a vast difference between a walk in a London park, and a walk through the countryside.

She huffed up a hill, finding it more of a challenge than her city-bred legs had expected. Through another field she went. The cows in it gazed at her curiously. She watching them with a wary eye, and when the closest started to meander in her direction she picked up her skirts and scuttled for the next gate, miring in mud and wallowing on regardless.

As the glow of exercise warmed her body, her hysteria waned.

The air was warm, if still damp. The birds sang in the trees and the fields, and oh, what a pleasant, sweet sound the river made. It was amazing how good the breeze tasted away from the smoke and smog of London. She had never known how stinking and polluted the city until she had something with which she could compare it.

There was a copse of trees at the top of the next hill, so she aimed for that. When she got there she was pleased. It was a high point, and the view from the edge of the copse was delightful. There was a glade within, and a fallen tree might have provided a seat if it were drier. Currently the general squelchiness of the place defeated lounging, but she would return another day when the sunshine would make it a bower.

She would bring her workbasket. For small pieces she could work as well here as anywhere and oh, what a difference it would make to be outside.

As she looked out from under the shelter of the leafy canopy, she saw two fine horsemen ride past, a field and more away. It was a picture that delighted the eye, the smooth canter of the thoroughbred hunters, the effortless control of the powerful gentlemen. She smiled a little at the sight, so much more fitting here amidst this wilderness than in the manicured parks of London.

The dark-haired man looked a great deal like . . .

But no it was not him of course. How could it be? Only he was unpleasantly omnipresent, everywhere in her thoughts and her imagination. It was natural enough he should leave an impression, she supposed. As if the press of his bare skin against hers had engraved some subtle mark even deeper.

Her first –
and destined to be her only – lover; for all her days. Forever. Natural but hardly desirable that she should think of him.

What she needed was forgetfulness. A quiet and willing spirit shackled to a calm small life. Happiness in the little moments, the new freedoms of being here, and a turning away from the bigger dreams she had on
ce had, and the brief hours of that one strange night where her questing self had encountered something . . .

Enough with that.
She was spending too much time alone. Inside the wilderness of her own head, building fantasies out of something which had never been more than a means to an end.

He was a dissolute gentleman, free to squander a fortune on a toy. He had treated her kindly enough, but with no nobility.

He was really nothing out of the common way. Any man might have brought her the same pleasure. It was a body’s clever trick for encouraging the getting of children. Nothing more.

See, even now, the thought of him, the sight of a man who looked like him, made her body flush and tingle suggestively, all heat and desire for more of what it had enjoyed so briefly.

Stupid, hedonistic, lustful body that would happily see all a ruin for a chance to sink back into those arms, feel the heat and power of masculinity, defining her womanliness and giving it meaning by its sheer contrast. A body that would seek to lose reason and control in a reckless struggle for pleasure.

And being poetic about her base lust was perhaps the greatest depravity of all, she thought sardonically.

A fallen woman indeed. That was the meaning of the phrase. It was her, standing under trees on the edge of a field as sunlight broke through the clouds, watching the light hit the broad shoulders of a dark-haired man growing small in the distance, and mentally stripping him bare and placing him in a bed with her so she could use him for her delight.

That
was why no decent man wanted a fallen woman.

Chapter Eleven

Melissa completed the seam with a sigh of relief, tied a knot and snipped off the hanging thread. That was an end to it, and she was delighted to get to finish this putrid puce gown
. It was beastly ugly. She could not imagine wasting money on something so hideous.

If she was running Miss
Parsit’s shop there would be no patron stepping out in a dress such as this. No matter what the fashion plates might say. It was depressing to put so many hours into the creation of it. The sooner it was worn to rags, the better off the world would be.

Still, she need never look at it again, other than perhaps an occasional glimpse of some unfortunate local lady with more money than taste. She folded it carefully into her workbasket, wrapped in a plain white cotton cloth to protect it from snags or a rain shower.

From a hook she took her small bonnet, smiling with pleasure at the pretty thing. It was made over from one that had sat in Miss Parsit’s shop for heaven only knew how long. The spinster had given it to her, clearly unable to sell it. It had been ludicrous to start with. She had stripped it right back, taking off the now unfashionable trimmings and the virulent mustard fabric. Then she covered it with some leftover green satin and added a wide, gauzy ribbon to tie it under her chin. It looked very fetching. She tucked her hair up inside it and spread out her modest gauze collar carefully, making the most of the tiny ruffle she had allowed herself.

With her basket slung over her arm, Melissa stepped out into the sunshine. She caught her skirt up in one hand to hold it clear of the mud. As she walked down the street with her brisk, upright step, she exchanged smiles and nods with those who acknowledged her. Of the five people she passed, only three: the baker’s son, Miss
Parsit’s niece and George the farmer, who brought a brace of hares to the widow’s door every Tuesday. A friendly place the little village might be, but she was a working girl and must keep to her own kind.

Miss
Parsit’s small shop was not far. Before she entered, Melissa was careful to clean off her boots with the boot-scraper placed strategically at the door.

“Good morning,” called a voice from the back room of the shop, as the bell over the door tinkled with her entrance.

“It is I, Miss Parsit,” she called back. “I’ve brought the puce dress. It is finished.”

“My, that was quick!” exclaimed the spinster with pleasure as she came into the front room. “Let’s see it then.” She held out a hand expectantly, and Melissa passed her the basket.

“It looks tidy enough,” Miss Parsit said, shaking out the garment. Melissa stood quietly as her employer turned the skirt inside out to check the seams minutely. She even walked over to the window to get a better look in the light. “Well, I must say you do very good work, young lady,” she confirmed to herself with a nod. “Very good indeed.” Then she looked up as something outside the window caught her eye.

“Oh,
he’s
back again,” she said with a scowl.

“Who is?” Melissa stepped forward to see the person to whom Miss
Parsit was referring. But there was little space at the lace-hung window, and the spinster was directly in her way.

“A friend of Mr Mayhew.
I forget his name,” replied the woman, sniffing disdainfully. “He must needs descend on Bourton and have the young ladies all simpering and squawking. He has money too. Or so we are told.” And that must explain every fault, her tone clearly said.

Melissa was curious to see this notorious individual, but Miss
Parsit showed no signs of moving.

At least, not until she suddenly skittered back from the window with a sharp exclamation.

“He’s coming in here!”

“In here?” echoed Melissa in
astonishment. This was an entirely feminine domain.

“Yes! Yes!” Miss
Parsit hissed, rounding her counter and busying herself amongst her boxes of buttons as if hard at work.

The bell rang sharply as the door was opened.

“Ribbons is it, George?” came a deep, masculine voice that sounded vaguely familiar to Melissa. “Has another lass caught your eye?” The tone was relaxed and amused.

Into the little shop came a tall man wearing a freshly muddied riding coat.

“Not I,” he said cheerfully. “I’m planning to trim a dress. A lovely confection in cream and blue. Needlework is very soothing, you know. You should try it sometime.”

The second man laughed a little as he too
stepped inside, ducking slightly to clear the doorway. He was as tall as his companion but with broader shoulders. The first man called out a greeting to Miss Parsit, and a request to be shown her array of ribbons. The second glanced at Melissa and then froze, arrested.

Melissa felt the breath stop in her throat. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped.

That face and figure were indelibly burned into her brain. It was the man who had bought her! That very man, standing here in a little dressmaker’s shop in Bourton-on-the-Water.

How unspeakably cruel was fate!

He too was transfixed. “It’s you,” he breathed. “Is it you?” He took a step towards her.

His movement broke the spell. Melissa instantly dropped a veil of confusion across her features. Thank heavens her unthinking response had been to
gawk and look foolish. Now she must build on that. She bobbed into a subservient little curtsey.

“
Beggin’ your pardon, sir. I don’ know what you mean,” she said, all bewildered hesitance, pulling her head back into her neck like a turtle, rounding her shoulders and crouching a little inside her skirt to change her body language away from her usual posture and reduce her height. Thank heavens her hair was all ruthlessly tucked away under her bonnet, to give her a suitably modest appearance.

He frowned. “I’m sorry,” he said slowly, his eyes searching her featu
res, “but you look exactly like . . . entirely too much . . . you must surely be?” He was intense.

She continued to stare at him, with a look as vacuously puzzled as she could manage.

His lips tightened, his gaze narrowing even further. Under that steely regard she squirmed internally.

Then suddenly, as if a cloud had passed from the face of the sun, he relaxed and smiled warmly, giving her a wink with the eye hidden from Miss
Parsit.

“I’m mistaken,” he said. “It is only a vague resemblance. For certainly, there could be none other to match your beauty.” His dark eyes twinkled at her appreciatively.

She gave an uncertain grimacing smile, like a simpleton, a fading sound between a giggle and a sigh, covered her mouth with one hand and looking down at the floor as if terrified by the attention from so fine a gentleman.

He took another step forward and lifted her chin by placing one finger underneath it.

Inexorably she met his eyes, her own glazed, skittering away immediately, a show of panic as she shrank from him. Inside she was very calm, very still, internal dialogue silenced. Waiting to see what he would do next, this man as dangerous as a keg of gunpowder in her new-made world.

A single darting glance at his face saw him expectant, searching for a hint she colluded with him in keeping their secret from onlookers. His lips were curved faintly as if this were some delightful game.

She gave him nothing, looking away again in the instant, jerking her head to shake off his touch.

Although he released her chin, she felt as if his finger still rested there. As if his warm skin branded her.

“None other in the entire world,” he said. “I bow before it,” he made her a very handsome bow, as if she were nobility.

“Here, James! Stop your flattering and come help me choose!” called his friend in a joshing tone. Melissa looked sideways
towards where the friend stood, and was horrified to see Miss Parsit glaring at them.

She stepped hastily back from the man before her till her skirt brushed the wall, her hands balled at her throat and her head turned aside, hiding her face behind the inadequate brim of the bonnet. She could see his figure in her peripheral vision. For a long moment the room was silent as he continued to stand there.

“Ah, I knew you wouldn’t be up to the task,” he finally replied to George, breaking the moment as he stepped towards the pair at the counter. “Let me lend my expert advice . . .”

Melissa heard no more, for the instant his back was turned she escaped from the shop. The bell rang vi
gorously at her hasty departure but she did not look behind her. Instead she set off the wrong way down the main street, at just short of a run. A moment later she ducked into the tiny bookshop and hid behind a shelf.

Industriously she perused the dusty covers of the books there.

She had stood on the spot for a couple of minutes when she saw the two men go past the window. The unknown George was talking, waving his arms about animatedly. The other, Carstairs, who had been called James by his friend, had his head up and was scanning the street; as if he was looking for something, or someone.

Melissa shivered. The last thing she wanted was to be of interest to him. Peace and obscurity were what she sought. Not to be pursued by the one man who had intimate personal knowledge she was soiled goods. James. She had not known his name was James.

She struck up a conversation with the bookseller, asking an idle question or two, hardly aware of what she said.
He
would certainly think her a simpleton.

After allowing a good ten minutes to pass, she edged up to the window to scan up and down the street, still talking to the obliging shopkeeper. The two men were nowhere to be seen. Nodding in a
friendly way she bade her new acquaintance good day.

Then she was off back up the street and straight into Miss
Parsit’s shop. She had to stay in the spinster’s prudish good books. Making up to dubious gentlemen was no way to do that! Fences must be mended.

She swept a quick look about the shop to ensure it was empty apart from the
proprietress. “Thank providence they are gone,” she fluttered breathlessly, putting one hand to her chest in a show of maidenly indignation. “Well I never! I was shocked. I did not know what to do, I’m sure. What should a good girl do when mauled at? I’m sure I don’t know. I’m quite overset!”

Miss
Parsit nodded in satisfaction.

“Why yes, my dear,” she said.
“Shocking. I was saying just the same thing to myself. You can see why I warned you.” Her tone was conspiratorial.

“I certainly can. Does he
live hereabouts?” she asked, on tenterhooks.

“He has come a time or two, visiting with Mr Mayhew.” She
pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Such a flutter is made about him in the neighbourhood. It’s not warranted, I must say. His face and figure are so coarse, so boisterous. And he sets the young men up to look foolish, aping him or trying to when they have hardly a penny to do it with.”

“He has certainly earned your disapproval. I must think the worse of him for that.”

Miss Parsit sniffed dismissively, but Melissa saw she was pleased by this flattery. “Not that he cares for our opinions of course. But I cannot abide to watch my nephew spend my good brother’s money on a new coat and hat to be like a prancing folderol from London. And it would curl your hair to hear the lurid things my niece imagines about him. Although,” and here she added as if to give the devil his due: “that may be at least as much about the gothic romances the girl has such a taste for. Awful stuff.”

“Does he stay for long?”

“Oh no, never for long. Two or three days, no more than that. He has an estate somewhat to the north, I believe. I don’t know exactly where.”

“Ah. Well, I shall contrive to stay out of his way,” said Melissa, speaking at least as much to herself as to Miss
Parsit.