Moonlight And Mistletoe

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hester spent the next half-hour in a state of nervous suspense, negotiating the social minefield presented by a group of well-bred and curious ladies all intent on extracting as much information as possible about her and speculating upon their host.

She answered all their personal questions with modest reserve, but with as much frankness as possible, correctly judging that not to do so would create an air of mystery and draw unwanted attention. Fortunately Miss Prudhome knew next to nothing about her new employer’s background. Hester told herself that if she could survive the first few weeks then she would cease to be a novelty and would feel much safer.

Apparently satisfied by her explanation that she found London noisy and unhealthy and yearned for a return to the rural life she had enjoyed in Portugal, the ladies moved on to genteel speculation about their host.

‘Why do you think he is here, Miss Lattimer?’ Mrs Piper enquired. ‘You are his nearest neighbour, after all.’

‘Perhaps he is looking for property in the area?’ Hester suggested, snatching at a part-truth.

‘Possibly,’ Mrs Redland agreed. ‘But why not send his agent?’

Eventually they speculated themselves to a standstill and moved on to discuss the arrival in Aylesbury of a modiste reputed to be lately of London. Hester took her part in the conversation, aware from movement outside that the gentlemen, or some of them, had gone out into the garden.

Why she could not imagine, for it was far too dark to walk around and must be decidedly cold, then she saw the glow of a cigarillo end and guessed that at least one of them was enjoying blowing a cloud before rejoining the ladies.

For a moment she glimpsed a flash of light from one of the Moon House windows; Jethro and Susan must have returned early. Although why they should have needed to go into the dining room…

‘I do beg your pardon, Mrs Bunting. My attention was caught by something outside and I missed what you just said.’

‘Only that I hope the village women I recommended are proving satisfactory, Miss Lattimer.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ Hester agreed warmly. ‘They are making great inroads into the cleaning, which allows my people to concentrate on setting the rooms to rights. I have yet to decide on whether I will employ one of them as a cook.’

‘I do hope you are not troubled by rats and mice, after the house has stood empty for so long,’ Mrs Piper interjected. ‘Horrid things-and the nearest reliable rat catcher is at Tring.’

Stepping into the room with his male guests, Guy caught the last sentence. ‘Is anyone plagued with rats?’ he enquired.

‘Oh, no, my lord,’ Mrs Piper assured him. ‘I was just warning Miss Lattimer that should she be so troubled we do not have a rat catcher in the village.’

A flicker of an idea came to him and at the same moment he caught Hester’s eye. Her level gaze said as plainly as if she had spoken, And do not think of introducing them! He smiled inwardly, enjoying the wordless exchange. He felt a sense of affinity with Miss Lattimer, which was rare in his acquaintance with women. It was a feeling both pleasurable and unsettling.

No, Hester Lattimer was too intelligent-something as simple as a few rats was not going to work. If Miss Lattimer was not going to be frightened away from the Moon House-and that might still happen-then she would have to be seduced away, and that before she became any more comfortable in the neighbourhood.

In fact, he decided, settling in a chair next to Mrs Bunting and appearing to take an interest in the drama of the choirmaster’s falling-out with the churchwardens, he was not at all sure he had not made an error in inviting her this evening. It was a gesture that cemented her social position in the village faster than perhaps anything else could have done and it brought her into all too close a proximity with young Nugent.

Eventually the clock struck ten and the party began to break up. In the hall Hester was helped into her cloak by a footman.

‘If you will excuse me, Miss Lattimer, I will just fetch a lantern to light you across the road.’

The Redland family made their way out leaving Major Piper and the vicar waiting patiently whilst their wives recalled a matter that they simply had to discuss there and then. Hester looked up to find Guy by her side. ‘Thank you, my lord. It was most kind of you to invite me-such a pleasant way to get to know my new neighbours.’ His smile seemed somewhat wry, which was a puzzle. Hester saw the footman emerging from the back regions and held out her hand. ‘Goodnight, my lord.’

To her surprise, instead of shaking it, he turned it and kissed the gap over her pulse just before the buttons began. His lips were dry and warm and she felt them curve against her skin as though in a smile. ‘Goodnight, Miss Lattimer. I hope you will reconsider the driving. And my other suggestions.’

Flustered, Hester retrieved her hand, hoping that none of the other guests had noticed the unusual gesture. She did not know what to make of it, only that her pulse was fluttering in a shamefully pleasant manner.

‘Goodnight,’ she called to the others and went out with the footman, Miss Prudhome hurrying at her heels. Guy was flirting, of course, that was all; pursuing his course of trying to unsettle or charm her enough to agree to what he wanted. It would serve him right if she pretended to fall for his wiles and take him at face value. It might he amusing to flirt back and see him beat a hasty retreat at the thought of an ineligible young woman appearing to accept his advances.

Unless, of course, he assumed she would go as far as to accept a carte blanche from him. Hester flushed in the darkness: that would be too humiliating.

Another lantern was approaching around the edge of the Green, moving very fast. The footman slowed and positioned himself between it and Hester, but she had recognised the faces it illuminated and called out, ‘Susan, Jethro, I thought you were home.’

Jethro came to a halt in front of her, his breath visible in puffs on the chill air. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Hester. I got to playing and what with one thing and another I only noticed the time when the clock stuck the hour.’

Hester turned to the footman. ‘Thank you. I will be all right now.’

‘His lordship told me to see you to your door, ma’am,’ the man responded stolidly. Hester sensed Jethro bristling.

‘Very well, I would not wish to countermand his lordship’s orders. And we are nearly there.’

Jethro made great play of producing the front-door key and ushering Hester and Susan in before nodding dismissively to the footman who towered over him by a good foot.

Hester suppressed a smile, then suddenly remembered why she had thought they were already home. ‘I was sure I saw a light, some time ago. I assumed it was you returned from the inn.’

Jethro turned from lighting the hall sconces. ‘No, Miss Hester. That’s an odd thing.’

‘Must have been the moon reflecting in the glass,’ Susan said sensibly. ‘Look.’ And sure enough the thinnest sliver of new moon shone clearly through the transom glass over the door.

‘Of course,’ Hester murmured with relief; the thought of the mysterious lights seen in the Moon House before she had arrived had been unsettling. Perhaps reflected moonlight was the answer to those as well. ‘Well, I am for my bed, you can tell me all about your adventures at the Bird in Hand tomorrow.’

Susan was agog to hear about Hester’s experiences and sighed gustily at her description of exactly what had been served at dinner, the gowns of the other ladies and even what his lordship had worn.

‘None of the gowns were as fine as yours, then,’ she said with satisfaction as she untied Hester’s stay laces. ‘That Miss Redland sounds a bit worrying, though; her mama will be off ordering her new gowns before the week’s out, I’ll be bound.’

‘Nonsense. You speak as though there was some sort of competition.’ Hester met Susan’s eye in the mirror and added, ‘And that is ridiculous.’

‘Yes, Miss Hester. Is there anything else?’ Susan paused in the doorway of the dressing room and suddenly Hester’s heart was in her mouth, but she only stooped to pick up a stray ribbon and continued in to fold away Hester’s clothes without any further check.

Hester climbed into bed and blew out the candle as the door closed behind the maid. ‘Foolish,’ she chided herself as she lay back against the pillow. The new moon was clear through the glass on the unshuttered window and she made a mental note to remind Jethro to get the hinges mended.

But it was soothing to lie watching the slender white crescent in the dark velvet of the sky, the stars twinkling around it. Hester snuggled down, searching for the flannel-wrapped brick with her toes. She let her mind wander over the events of the evening, but all her treacherous memory would do was dwell on the sound of Guy’s deep voice, the flash of humour in his eyes, the touch of his lips on the soft skin of her inner wrist.

The curtains stirred slightly in the breeze and the room was suddenly filled with the sound of rustling branches. Hester slept. In the darkness outside a pair of calculating eyes rested thoughtfully on her window.

She was halfway downstairs the next morning when Hester recalled the broken shutter. ‘Susan, do remind me to ask Jethro to get that shutter in my bedchamber repaired.’

‘You need new curtains too before the weather gets much colder,’ the maid remarked. ‘But fixing the shutter will be quicker. Jethro’s in the drawing room, I think. I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

Susan disappeared towards the kitchen, singing what seemed to Hester to be a new song. She just caught the tail of the chorus: ‘Never say me nay, my lusty lad.’ It hardly seemed a suitable ditty and was doubtless the result of an evening spent in the public bar of the Bird in Hand.

With an indulgent smile Hester looked round the drawing- room door: no Jethro. She crossed the hail and stepped into the dining room. Again it was empty, but on the table lay a dark, spiky bundle of something next to a chamber stick.

Puzzled, Hester approached the table and peered at the bundle. It was a bunch of roses. Dead roses. Cautiously Hester poked them with her finger tip and the bunch fell apart. They were very dead, brown and perfectly crisp. There seemed to be fourteen of them and beside them on the table an ordinary chamber stick with a burnt-out candle in it.

Hester took an involuntary step backwards, recalling the light she had seen the night before in this room. Not moonlight but the light of this candle placed on the table by whoever-whatever-had left the dead roses there.

She stopped her instinctive retreat by calling up all her rational good sense and made herself step forward again. The front door had been locked. So had the back door, for Jethro would certainly have raised the alarm if anything had been out of order when he left to go to his bed above the stables. And, reliable as the church clock, he made his rounds of all the windows before leaving every night.

Something had got in. Or it had already been inside. Hester realised she was scanning the corners of the room as if expecting some spectral presence to be lurking there. That was as terrifying a thought as her first assumption of an intruder.

She ran her tongue over lips that were completely dry. She could not leave that sinister bouquet there; she must move it before the others saw it. Cautiously Hester gathered it up, just as there was a brisk knock at the front door.

‘I will get it!’ It was Susan, running along the hall before Hester could slip out of the dining room door. ‘Oh. Goodness… I mean, good morning, my lord. I’m not sure if Miss Lattimer is receiving yet.’

‘I would not wish to disturb Miss Lattimer, only to return this handkerchief, which, from the initials, I believe must be hers.’

‘Thank you, my lord, yes, it is Miss Lattimer’s, I am sure of it. Will you not step in and I will see if she-oh, there you are, Miss Hester.’

Left with no option but to put a good face on it, Hester stepped out into the hallway. ‘Good morning, my lord, how kind of you to take the trouble.’ Conscious of her unpleasant burden already crumbling into brown flakes in her hands she chatted on determinedly. ‘Such a pleasant dinner last night; I meant to ask you if you had lured your London chef down to the country or whether you have been fortunate in finding local staff.’

It was hopeless. The blue gaze was fixed on the roses as he said lightly, ‘I am glad you enjoyed it, I will tell Maxim; he insists on accompanying me, apparently in the belief that I would starve else. Not that that devotion to duty prevents him from moaning almost continuously about the conditions into which I have dragged him.’

‘That must be very tiresome,’ Hester said.

‘It is not I who has to listen to him,’ Guy responded. ‘You appear to have an admirer with a very strange taste in flowers, Miss Lattimer.’ Was it her imagination or was there an odd note in his voice?

‘They are dead, my lord.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Flowers do die,’ Hester stated briskly.

‘Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they be withered,’ Guy murmured vaguely. ‘I wonder where that comes from? The Bible, possibly. But flowers in water do not die like that; these are uniformly crisp and brown and have been deliberately set to dry, or possibly hung up.’

‘These had been put aside and forgotten,’ Hester retorted, knowing she was becoming flustered. ‘Susan, take them, please, and throw them away.’ She thrust the tattered bunch into her maid’s hands and confronted Guy as Susan made her way down the hail, trying to keep the crumbing stems intact.

‘As I was saying, my lord…’

‘Guy. I thought we had agreed on Christian names when we were alone. Hester, those flowers have been dead a long time, in a house I know you have been turning out very thoroughly indeed-and you are afraid of something. Where did they come from?’

His voice was very gentle and his eyes concerned. Hester found herself being drawn in, taking one step towards him. She was a little frightened, it would be foolish to deny it. To tell him, to be held safely in those strong arms as he had held her in her bedchamber-the thought was powerfully seductive. And, after all, she knew where he had been all the time.he had been out of the Moon House. It could not possibly be any doing of Guy Westrope’s.

‘I found them in the dining room just now…’ she began hesitantly. Something sparked in that deep blue gaze and she realised that she did not know where he had been for every minute of yesterday evening; at least one of the men had been strolling in the darkened gardens after the ladies had retired. It would have taken a matter of minutes to cross the road in the glimmer of moonlight and leave the dead bouquet, provided you had access to the house. And someone had, of that she was increasingly convinced; thoughts of ghosts were absurd. Someone could come and go in the Moon House, just as they wished.

And no one else had any reason for wanting to scare her away. Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face, in her unfinished sentence. Guy’s eyes narrowed and he said almost roughly, ‘If you will not confide in me, then take care, Hester. I do not like the symbolism of those roses.’

She gathered her tumbling wits, her voice cool. ‘And I do not like attempts to scare me away from my home. I told you Guy. I will not be bought out, and I would tell whoever is behind this that I will not be scared away either.’

He caught up her meaning with a directness that astonished her. ‘You think that I would attempt to frighten you away?’ Those expressive blue eyes showed nothing but concern that she could misjudge him.

Flustered to be taken up so directly, Hester returned to the attack. ‘I did not say so. But who else wants this house?’

‘No one who has made their wishes clear, apparently.’ His voice was dispassionate. ‘But that does not mean they do not exist.’ He had moved towards her slightly and Hester stepped back into the dining room. ‘I would remind you that I made my intentions perfectly clear-and made you a generous offer of compensation.’

‘Because you thought I was an elderly lady who might be cozened by a gentleman of your standing into complying with your desires,’ Hester retorted. Her breath was coming very short and for some reason she felt quite uncomfortably hot.

Guy chuckled. ‘I thought perhaps you would be a middle- aged widow,’ he admitted. ‘But as for my desires…’ Hester knew she was blushing. Of all the foolish words to have used! ‘Within one minute of seeing you I formed a strong desire to do this.’ And he took her very firmly in his arms and lowered his mouth to hers.

Hester gasped, then realised her mistake, for he took instant advantage of her parted lips to deepen the caress. Her hands clenched against his chest and she realised faintly that she might as well be pushing against the wall. Without her conscious volition her fingers opened and her palms pressed against the fine broadcloth of his coat.

He seemed to consume every sense; the taste and the scent of him were novel and dangerously male. Her hearing was blurred by the sound of her own heartbeat, fast and excited. The feel of his mouth gently, but inexorably, roused her to trembling, yielding surrender in his arms. Her eyes fluttered open and she was hazily aware of the texture of his skin, the curl of his hair at the temple.

How long she might have stayed there in Guy’s arms she had no idea. There was a crash from the kitchen region and a wail from Susan and the next thing she knew Hester was standing unsupported against the dining-room door frame. Guy regarded her with eyes that seemed to spark sapphire fire and she hastily dropped her gaze to find herself staring at his mouth. The sensual curve of that was even worse. Anger seemed the only way to retrieve the situation.

‘My lord! That was outrageous!’

‘I thought it delightful,’ Guy remarked, taking a precautionary step backwards as Hester advanced towards him wrathfully.

‘I know exactly what you are about, my lord,’ she snapped, now too angry and flustered to be cautious. ‘You think you can flirt with me until I become too befuddled to resist your proposals and agree to sell the Moon House to you. Or else until I compromise myself in the eyes of local society and have to sell.’

‘Hester, I promise I would never do anything to compromise you. And if I were intending to seduce you into selling to me, I would not do anything so fatal to my chances as kissing you in your own front room. See how angry it has made you.’

‘Oh, you are insufferable,’ Hester stormed. ‘Out!’ She stood, elbows akimbo while Guy opened the front door and, with a slight bow, removed himself.

He stood for a moment on the doorstep, reviewing the last few minutes. So much for his idea of seducing Hester Lattimer out of the Moon House. He had thought that a discreet flirtation might awaken her to the idea that life in London would, after all, be pleasant. He had no idea what it was that had sent an attractive and well-bred young lady hastening into rural seclusion, but he had some confidence that talk of balls and parties, fashionable shopping and promenades, combined with flattering male attention, would persuade her to change her mind.

Guy jammed his hat on his head with some force and strode down the garden path. And what did l do? he demanded inwardly. Kissed her straight out. Idiot. ‘Idiot,’ he repeated out loud, fortunately to an empty street. No wonder she was angry, she was a virtuous young lady. And an enchantingly sensual and responsive one at that.

Guy turned and strode across the Green with no destination in mind, but a pressing need for action. That flash of feeling as his lips touched hers… as if her mouth was made for his. Angrily he kicked a stone out of the road. Dalliance with respectable young ladies was not in his plans.

And this particular respectable, sensual, angry young lady was also, he now realised, a very brave and stubborn one. Those roses had shaken her but she was not going to give into her fear-which was a dangerous choice to make. Money, fear, seduction had all failed: what did that leave? Kidnapping?