Moonlight And Mistletoe

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T0 recount all of Annabelle Redland’s gossip about the Nugents took until the curricle reached the gates of the Hall.

Guy reined in the greys and regarded Hester thoughtfully.

‘It sounds as though Miss Nugent is the stronger character of the two, and not above chicanery, if the tale of her unfortunate fiancé is true. I wonder if he has decided to stay safely in the West Indies and break off the engagement by letter. If they were relying upon his wealth to restore their fortunes, that may well account for them taking desperate action.’

‘But it still does not account for the desperate action taking the form of scaring me out of my home,’ Hester pointed out.

‘No, indeed it does not. Remind me, what excuse do we have for this call?’

‘I am enquiring about Miss Nugent’s health and you have kindly agreed to drive me.’

‘Yes, that is perfectly plausible, but I wonder if I cannot manage to explore further.’ Guy let the greys walk on and regarded the front of Winterbourne Hall critically. ‘I am glad that is not my brickwork or my roof,’ he remarked. ‘I wonder if the work you observed was to repair the house or simply to get it into good enough condition to sell. It all depends on what their debts are and where they come from, I presume.’

No one materialised when they halted at the front door so Guy drove on round to the stables. Hester remained meekly in the background while he embarked on a lengthy conversation with the groom who took the horses, making no complaint until he finally joined her and began to walk round to the front door again.

‘You certainly have the knack of extracting information,’ she said admiringly. ‘Sir Lewis has been selling horses, the work on the repairs to the rear elevation has stopped and I could swear that man was within an inch of asking you if you had any vacancies in your stables.’

Guy accepted the compliment with a smile that caused Hester’s heart to contract, it was extremely unfair of him to have such expressive eyes that seemed to speak to her without any need of words. ‘It begins to fill out the picture. I will ask my London agent to make enquiries about Sir Lewis and see if we can garner any information about his debts.’

The butler opened the door to their knocking and appeared to be on the point of saying that the Nugents were not at home when Hester skipped briskly past Guy and into the hall. ‘Dear Miss Nugent,’ she gushed. ‘I know she would not deny me for I have called to enquire after her health. I could not bear to think of my new friend being unwell and-oh, good afternoon, Sir Lewis.’

He appeared from the library into the shadowed hall so silently that Hester jumped. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Lattimer, Westrope. How kind of you to call, but I am afraid Sarah is from home, staying with an aunt in Aylesbury to recover from having a tooth pulled.’

To Hester’s frustration he showed no sign of either stepping forward into the better light, or of inviting them in. ‘How dreadful! No wonder she was feeling so low the other day when I was here if she had toothache. Was it an abscess?’

‘Yes, rather a bad one.’ Lewis appeared to hesitate and Hester was very conscious of the difference between his attitude now and when she had visited alone. ‘Perhaps you would care to take tea?’

At last! ‘That would be delightful-’

‘But I am afraid we have an appointment elsewhere,’ Guy interjected smoothly. ‘However, I do wonder if I might trespass on your hospitality and ask for the loan of one of your books of local history and antiquarian lore? I find the subject fascinating and Miss Lattimer happened to mention that you had a collection of works by a relative-’ He broke off and simply stood there, radiating a willingness to encumber the Nugents’ hallway for as long as it took to get what he wanted.

Hester hither lips to prevent herself smiling. It was refreshing to see someone else on the receiving end of Guy’s technique. ‘Your great-uncle William, was it not?’ she added helpfully.

‘Yes, of course.’ Lewis appeared to pull himself together and accept their presence. ‘I’ll just go and find you something.’ He turned back through the library door with his uninvited guests hard on his heels.

‘Such a charming room,’ Hester gushed.

‘And such a well-lit one,’ Guy added, his eyes fixed on his host’s head.

Lewis turned, the morning sun streaming through the casements and directly on to his face, its smooth, handsome planes unmarked by so much as a shaving scratch.

Hester felt her breath leave her throat in a sigh which, just in time, she turned into a cough. She knew she could not meet Guy’s eyes.

‘Yes, it is one of my favourite rooms.’ Lewis turned, almost at the door, and stepped across to a section of shelves, lifting down several books and offering them to Guy, who pulled off his gloves before taking them. Across the knuckles of his outstretched right hand the skin was reddened and sore and Lewis’s eyebrows rose.

‘You have been indulging in fisticuffs?’

‘It was nothing, merely a rogue I ran across.’

‘Doubtless the rogue will he sporting at least an equal injury.’ Lewis’s voice was quite neutral, hut Hester thought she glimpsed a flash of anger in his eyes.

‘One hopes so. Thank you.’ Guy took two of the proffered volumes and began to examine them, apparently impervious to Lewis, who seemed quite willing for him to take the entire pile.

Hester glanced around the room while the men were occupied. Under the chaise in front of the crackling tire was a box giving every appearance of having been thrust there in a hurry. One stray leaf of paper lay forgotten under the low table by the side of the seat. With an eye on Lewis, who was urging Guy to take the whole collection, she wandered over to the chaise and sat down, insinuating one booted foot under the table until it rested on the corner of the paper which she could draw out into the open.

It seemed to be a letter, the ink faded, the writing a flamboyant, characterful, rather old-fashioned hand that was difficult to read. Hester squinted, bent as low as she dared and finally managed to make out the words ‘…Moon House… precious… so fearful… we have to hide it…’

‘Miss Lattimer?’ It was Lewis’s voice and Hester almost dropped her reticule as she tried to suppress her guilty start.

‘I am so sorry, were you speaking to me? I thought I had a loose button on my boot. Are you ready, Lord Buckland? My goodness, what a lot of books, I should imagine that will totally satisfy your antiquarian zeal, my lord.’ She stood up as she prattled, holding Sir Lewis’s gaze with hers while she nudged the letter back under the chaise with her toe. ‘Please give my kindest regards to poor Miss Nugent. I do hope she feels very much better soon. Now we must be off, for I am sure we have trespassed upon your hospitality far too long.’

Once the library door was closed behind them again, Sir Lewis appeared to regain his normal character, speaking of holding a small entertainment before Christmas if his sister felt better able to emerge a little from her mourning. Hester, shaking hands as she took her leave, found herself almost doubting the impression she had had of a secretive, frightened man. And the fact remained: no one had hit Sir Lewis Nugent in the face with enough force to damage their own knuckles in the past few days.

He walked with them back to the stables, assisted Hester up on to her seat, complimented Guy on the greys and waved them goodbye. ‘Very determined to see us off the premises,’ Guy remarked as he waved back cheerfully.

Instead of turning right to go back into the village he turned towards the downs and drove in silence up through the beech woods, their greenish-grey trunks and branches interlaced over the deep drifts of copper-coloured leaves. At length they emerged on to the open, sheep-cropped tops. He turned off the road on to the first reasonably dry track they came to and drove on a little way to where a tangle of hawthorn bushes gave shelter against the wind and the view over the Vale of Aylesbury opened up in front of them.

‘I’m sorry, I had promised that you could drive.’ Guy climbed down, tossed the reins over a bush and helped Hester down from the high seat.

‘I do not think I could have done,’ she confessed with an attempt at a laugh, holding out her shaking hands to show him. ‘I had not expected it to be so tense and strange.’ Guy reached behind the seat, found a lap rug and shook it out around her shoulders. Hester stood, rather blankly staring out over the Vale. ‘Guy, he did not have a mark anywhere on his face.’

‘No, and that does have me puzzled. I have been trying to remember what the ghost smelt of, and the answer is, of nothing but plain Castile soap.’

‘Which is expensive.’ Hester caught his meaning at once. ‘So it is not a groom, or some local criminal paid to break in.’

Guy leaned against the carriage beside her. His body sheltered her and she glanced up at him from under her lashes, letting herself think only about him and her feelings for him for the first time that day. The air was chill and her toes cold, but inside something burned warm and constant, a glow of trust and attraction and, she was beginning to fear, of wanting.

‘And what were you up to, sitting demurely on the chaise?’

‘There was a box which had been pushed hastily under it; all I could see were bundles of papers, and what looked like journals. But one sheet was on the floor under the table. I think it was a letter in old-fashioned handwriting. The ink was faded.’ She wrinkled her brow in an effort to recall the words and told him.

‘Moon House, precious and hide,’ Guy repeated slowly. ‘That confirms what we suspect, that there is something of value hidden there which their father did not know of and they discovered too late. And their only hope is to find and remove it before you do, or to scare you into selling the house back to them so they can pillage it at their leisure.’

Hester sighed, suddenly depressed by the whole coil. She had so much wanted peace and quiet, the chance to start afresh with her reputation intact. Now she had fallen impossibly in love and the home of her dreams was tainted by some strange mystery.

‘You are tired and frustrated by our lack of progress.’ Guy put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side. She went with the movement without conscious thought, aware only of the comfort of his body and the gentleness in his voice. ‘I wish I could take you away from this, take you somewhere peaceful where you could relax, sleep, forget all about it.’

‘That sounds so good,’ Hester murmured, turning her face up to smile into his. ‘Peace, sleep.’ She did not finish the thought. Guy shifted position, until he was standing facing her, pressing her back against the carriage, so close she could see the pulse in his throat above his neckcloth. He had pulled off his gloves and with gentle, bruised fingers began to untie her bonnet ribbons, ‘Guy…’ The bonnet came off and was tossed up on to the seat.

‘Mmm?’ He was trailing kisses across her forehead now, down the line where her hair grew at her temple, down her neck and up again to nibble at her ear.

‘Guy, you should not…’ I should not… we should not… Hester felt her body arch instinctively against his, moulding itself to his larger, stronger frame. Despite their heavy winter clothes she felt heat from him, knew her own breath was coming in little gasps to cloud the still air.

‘Why not?’ The murmured question seemed to burr against her ear. ‘The sun is shining, we are alone and quiet and this is a sort of heaven.’

Hester put up her hands to push him away, turned her head to look him in the eye and sternly order that he stop this outrageous, immoral, scandalous behaviour immediately. Instead her fingers clenched on Guy’s lapels, her lips sought his mouth and without conscious volition she found herself kissing him.

This was not like that kiss in her dining room when she suspected he was sending her a warning as much as taking a liberty. This was a slow, gentle, mutual exploration of scent and taste and sensation as his tongue teased and caressed, his lips gentled hers into surrender and his teeth made her gasp with sudden, delicate nips. She was aware of the sunlight on her closed lids, of the cold scent of dead leaves all around them, of the harsh cry of a pheasant and the thud of a heartbeat- hers or Guy’s she could not tell and did not care.

Her fingers moved, reached for the strong shoulders above her, found the lean, muscled column of his neck, locked into the springing, virile hair at his nape. This was the man she loved, this was how his weight felt against her, how his arms held her, how his hands and mouth and murmuring voice caressed her. The man she loved.

Reality came back and with it the memory of those hours spent facing the choices before her, the memory of the decision she had made. Marriage was out of the question for her, and that left only a choice which went hand in hand with the ostracism and humiliation she had experienced before and a shame that this time she would have earned.

‘No!’ Hester twisted her head away. ‘No.’ Furious with herself, she pushed harder than she intended, her hand slipped and she fetched Guy a glancing blow on the side of his head. Startled blue eyes met hers, then he had stepped back and was standing five feet away.

‘Hester, it was not my intention to frighten you, I am sorry.’

‘I am not frightened.’ She knew she was snapping and could not help herself. ‘I am angry.’ Guy threw up a hand in the fencer’s gesture of surrender, turned on his heel and walked away from the carriage, away from her. ‘No!’ she shouted after him. ‘Not with you. Guy, come back.’

Somehow she was moving across the springy turf, a faint scent rising from the cold thyme underfoot as she ran towards him. ‘Angry with me, not with you.’

‘Why?’ He turned back, his eyes dark. ‘Be angry with me, I should have known what would happen. I just wanted to be alone with you, hold you. Hester, my feelings for you are-’

‘Much better left unsaid,’ she interjected hastily, walking past him so she was looking out over the Vale and not at his face. ‘Nothing is possible between us other than friendship. It seems there is an attraction as well. I cannot allow that to continue, not and live the sort of life I have set out for myself.’

Where the words, and the strength to say them, came from she had no idea. Hester blinked hack what felt treacherously like tears and focused hard on the village lying below her, the white line of the post road snaking past it, the glitter of water marking the canal beyond. This was home now, the only fixed thing in her life.

He had moved silently behind her; the first she knew of it were his hands on her shoulders. They rested there, heavy but undemanding. ‘Do you believe I was intending to offer you a carte blanche?’

‘I do not know,’ she replied in as calm a voice as Guy was using. ‘But I know that I should not act in such a manner that you could be forgiven for believing such an offer would be acceptable. It would not be.’ She spun round and he dropped his hands. ‘Ever.’

His eyes had gone from dark to stormy and with a shock Hester recognised anger to match her own. Anger, and, although it was hard to believe, uncertainty, almost vulnerability. She did not want him to be vulnerable or uncertain. She wanted a rock, a supporter, a friend-and had foolishly believed she could have all that and keep her feelings hidden. What Guy’s feelings were she had hardly stopped to consider, she realised with a pang of guilt.

‘I can assure you that, whatever my intentions, offering you a position as my mistress was not one of them. You may have my word that I never will.’

His anger sparked hers into fire again. Guilt, the knowledge that she was behaving badly, the tensions of the mystery that enveloped them, flared.

‘Good. In fact, excellent. We now know exactly where we both stand. And let me assure you that I will never sell you the Moon House, whatever you offer me, and you can therefore cut your losses and leave Winterbourne. If I experience any further trouble, believe me, I will call upon the local magistrate.’

Guy half turned as he stalked back to the curricle. ‘The local magistrate may well be Sir Lewis Nugent.’ He gathered up the reins and waited in silence until she reached his side, handed her her hat, then helped her up on to the seat.

Hester sat down with a thump. ‘Then I will take on Ben Aston as a bodyguard and hire a Bow Street Runner. Will you please drive me home, my lord?’

‘Very well, Miss Lattimer.’ He set the curricle in motion, his weight shifting easily as it bumped over the rough track.

Hester jammed her bonnet back on her head, yanked the ribbons together and sat fuming. By the time they reached the bottom of the hill she was feeling ashamed of herself, at the point where they passed the gates of Winterbourne Hall she realised that the pair of them staring fixedly at the road in front must present a ludicrous picture and by the time the church tower was in sight her sense of the ridiculous had got the better of her and she had to suppress a wry smile.

‘My lord?’

‘Yes, Miss Lattimer?’

‘I apologise, my lord.’

‘So do I, Miss Lattimer. I presume it has occurred to you, as it has to me, that attempting to have a row in a curricle is both impractical and undignified.’

Hester gave a little gasp of amusement that was half genuine, half the unsafe laughter of tension and excitement.

‘I trust we have not been presenting a spectacle of the sulks for any passing yokels.’

‘I never sulk. I may exhibit a brooding silence, it is quite another thing.’ This time her gurgle of amusement was wholly genuine. ‘Do you think we might revert to Christian names, Miss Lattimer’?’

‘I believe so, my lord.’

She flashed a glancing smile at him and saw the storm clouds had gone from his eyes and the twist of amusement that so charmed her was back at the corner of his lips. But she was shaken; she had never aroused such passion in a man, never had her own passions aroused in such a way. To the knowledge that she loved Guy Westrope she had to add the realisation that she desired him in every possible way and that, whatever his feelings or intentions, he felt that desire also.

As the curricle drew up in front of the Moon House the door swung open and Hester’s small household appeared.

‘Oh, Hester dear, thank goodness you are safe!’ Maria almost ran down the path.

‘Why ever should I not be?’ Hester demanded. She climbed down and was startled to find herself clutched to Miss Prudhome’s skinny bosom.

‘Because there are more roses and we did not know where you were,’ Susan said bluntly, meeting them as they came up the path. ‘Sir Lewis called in with a book he said he had forgotten to give you and seemed surprised you had not returned. You’ve been gone three hours, Miss Hester.’

‘We have been for a drive.’ Hester felt flustered at having to account for her movements, but even more so by the obvious alarm of Maria, Susan and Jethro. ‘Jethro, what has happened? You said more roses?’

‘Come upstairs.’ He led the way, but in the hall Guy strode past him and took the stairs two at a time.

‘Stay there, Hester.’

Stubbornly Hester mounted the stairs in his wake. Whatever had occurred, seeing it could not be worse than imagining it. Guy was standing on the landing outside her room, looking at the floor. A trail of evenly spaced roses led halfway across the landing.

With a calm she was far from feeling, Hester stooped and picked up the flowers. ‘Eight,’ she counted. ‘He keeps to his pattern, does he not? And they are where you predicted-approaching my door.’

‘He is thinking as I would if I wanted to frighten you,’ Guy remarked dispassionately, standing hand on hips surveying the corridor. ‘I will send a footman over this evening to spend the night in the kitchen again, but I think he will have a peaceful time-after this you should be safe for a night and a day.’

Guy opened the chamber door and raised an eyebrow at Hester. ‘May I? I would feel more comfortable if I checked the room.’

Hester nodded and followed him in. His tall figure in boots and riding coat seemed to overpower the feminine room and she was almost more conscious of him as a male creature than she had been in his arms on the downs.

She waited, standing quietly while he checked under the bed, in the dressing room, flicked back the bedclothes to run a hand over the sheets, lifted the pillows.

‘All clear, it seems.’ He paused, his hand on the door knob. ‘And Nugent was here this afternoon. I wonder if he has been just a little too clever this time. Let us go and see what your gallant household observed.’

Hester nodded, wishing she felt as gallant. Guy took the roses that she was still holding. ‘The kitchen range for these.’ He touched her lips lightly with one finger. ‘You are a soldier’s daughter, Hester. Your father would have been proud of you.’