She directed Jasper in the manipulations of Rand’s legs. She watched what he ate and gave him vile tonics to drink. She discussed sending him to a therapeutic hot springs, and when Rand furiously disputed her plan, she just smiled. She’d get her way eventually, because she’d conquered his family.
Worse, she’d conquered him. As though his body were a compass, she was magnetic north and his arrow always pointed in her direction. He’d been scheming to touch her again, and she treated him as if he were some kind of…cripple. Not as if his legs were crippled. As if his mind were diseased. Perhaps he shouldn’t have called her a camp follower and subjected her to scorn, but he’d thought she would forgive him. Everyone else forgave him every other despicable thing he did.
Her cottage straw bonnet remained where she had cast it. From frequent exposure to the Somerset sun, wisps of her brown hair had bleached to blond, and they framed her face in bits of curl. The breeze from the sea fluttered her skirt, and the sun warmed her skin to the gold of fine-grained oak. For her, he wanted to be the breeze and the sun, and pass along her skin with gentle fingers and slide under her skirt. Instead he pretended he stood guard over her like an ancient warrior over a sleeping princess, and scanned the countryside for menace.
Nothing moved among the windswept ridges except bracken, heather, and spring’s green grass, pressed down and released in rhythmic waves. He couldn’t see the surf, but he could hear it, and he could see the deep blue of the ocean and the haze that always obscured the line between water and sky.
Together Rand and Sylvan had explored the most remote spots on the estate, and Beechwood Hollow was now their favorite. It was not too far from the house, and it was easy to get to, but its seclusion drew them. The beeches grew, protected from the wind by stony boulders. Pinks bloomed in fragrant clumps, and a rivulet trickled down the draw. The brook plunged off the cliff farther on, a silver arc that splattered on the rocks below and became one with the sea. It had made her happy to dangle off the rocks and see the waterfall.
It frightened him to death. He knew what he should do, if he weren’t such a coward. If he weren’t such a coward, he would start at the top of the smooth headland above him, set his wheelchair in motion, and careen down the hillside until he followed the brook in its plunge.
But not yet. First he wanted to—
Sylvan woke with a jerk. Her eyes, so similar in color to the grass beneath her head, stared in panic at some unseen peril. The muscles that he’d seen lax now tensed once more, and her legs twitched as if she longed to run.
No, he couldn’t kill himself just yet. Not until he’d unraveled the tangled threads of Sylvan’s terror.
Leaning over, he lifted her foot. She tried to jerk it away, but his grip tightened on her ankle. “Keep still,” he said. “I only want to massage you.”
She brushed at her face as if it were sheathed in cobwebs. “No.”
“You’ll like it.” Stripping off her shoe, he placed her foot on his knee.
“No.” She sounded fretful, and she must have realized it, for she tried now for cordiality. “I mean, yes, I’m sure I would, but I’m ticklish.”
Firmly, he began to rub her toes through her white silk stockings. “A friend of mine taught me the essentials.”
“You mean one of your mistresses!” she snapped.
“A dancer,” he admitted. “But it feels good, does it not?”
She struggled for another reason for him to desist, and at last wailed, “You’ll see my underthings.”
“Believe me, I’m not in the least interested in looking at your underthings.” He couldn’t have been more sincere, and she must have sensed it, for after one last futile tug, she shut her eyes and let him have his way.
He hadn’t lied. He didn’t care about her underthings.
He only cared for what was inside them. “Why aren’t you sleeping at night?” he asked.
She answered too quickly. “I don’t need much sleep.”
“I thought maybe the ghost was disturbing you.” Her foot twitched in his hand, and he crowed, “Ah-ha! You have seen the ghost.”
“Only once.”
She sounded as grumpy as a fretful child, and he picked up her other foot, too.
She tried to wrestle it away, saying, “Quit!”
“It doesn’t tickle, does it?”
“No,” she said sulkily.
“That’s because I’m an expert. If you like, I can massage your shoulders and your back.” And your front and your legs. But he didn’t say that.
“I really don’t think so, Lord Rand.”
She sounded insufferably prim, but her skirt slipped up to expose her leg and he looked hungrily at the flesh between her garter and her pantalettes. For one awful moment, he couldn’t move, and she stirred as if she would open her eyes. Hastily, he began his massage again. “When did you see the ghost?”
“Um.” She seemed to struggle before deciding to answer. “The first night I came.”
“The night Pert was attacked.”
“Yes, but that was nonsense, wasn’t it? Ghosts don’t hit people with rocks.”
“Then perhaps your ghost was a person.” He leaned over her. “Listen to me, Sylvan. Bar and lock your door tonight and sleep. There’s no ghost, and a man can’t break through that barrier.”
She murmured, “It’s not the ghost of Clairmont Court that keeps me awake.”
So something did keep her awake. Was it desire for him? He wanted to ask, but she appeared to be so relaxed. Her chest barely rose and fell with her breaths, and she seemed unaware when her skirt fluttered higher. And higher.
He shouldn’t look. It would only make him want more what he couldn’t have. But he could no more have turned away from the view than he could have turned away from the gate of heaven.
For him, Sylvan was the gate of heaven.
What torture! He loved giving her the gift of repose, and wanted to take it from her at the same time. She moaned when he pressed his thumb into the arch of her foot, and it sounded like ecstasy.
He wanted her so badly he could almost taste her. He wanted to taste her so badly, he suffered starvation.
Briefly, he rubbed her ankle, then pressed the long muscles of her calf. Wetting his lips, he asked, “Do you stay awake thinking of me?”
Her eyes opened, not in panic, as they had before, but in a kind of sleepy curiosity.
He touched her like a healer, but his gaze was that of a lover. She froze, and he glanced at the place he longed to kiss. The slumber in her gaze cleared away like clouds before a noontime sun, and she jerked her foot out of his grasp and rolled away. Sitting up, she grasped the hem of her skirt and held it down as if he could lift it with his thoughts. Then with one-handed haste, she crammed her bonnet back on her head. “You are a wicked man.”
“I am a hungry man,” he corrected. “Is that why you can’t sleep?”
“No! No.” She turned her face away, giving herself privacy in the depths of her hat. “May I please have my shoe?”
He prepared to hand it to her, but she stuck out her hand so stiffly and kept her head turned away so resolutely, he hesitated. After all, she already considered him wicked. Why not add to his sins? Placing it back in his lap, he said, “Come and get it.”
He cured her embarrassment with one swift stroke. Coming to her feet, she stalked over and towered above him. He grinned up at her and when she grabbed for her shoes, he snatched her by her wrists and tumbled her into his lap. She tumbled right out again, but he kept hold of her wrists, and as she wrestled with him, she railed, “You are a blackguard, sir, a criminal of the first water and I shall—”
“Kiss me?”
“Why? As a reward for deplorable behavior?”
“No, as payment for your shoe.”
Jerking her hands free, she reached for the slipper once more and he let her grab it before trapping her hand. Color flooded her cheeks once more when she realized his condition. “Your juvenile actions, sir, do not impr
ess me.”
“Your touch impresses me.” He leaned toward her. “One kiss.”
“No.” She tried to twist away.
He held her. “Two kisses, then.”
He should have seen it coming, but he didn’t. She smacked him so hard with her free hand that his ears rang. Wrapping his arm around the back of her head in a wrestler’s hold, he brought her face close to his and laughed into her eyes. “You’ve got a punishing right, my lady, and you owe me three kisses for the gratification you got in using it.”
She squirmed through the first kiss and stayed rigid during the second. But the third…ah, it hadn’t been the darkness and proximity of the bed that had freed her inhibitions last time. He proved it when he wrung a response from her here, in the sunshine and the wind. When he finally drew away, he caressed her cheek and whispered, “You’ve got to come to me some night, and let me show you what pleasure can be.”
Her lids fluttered down and her dark lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. She whispered, “Can you find pleasure?”
“I don’t know, but if I can’t, I can still promise it to you.”
He didn’t know if he’d embarrassed her again, or if she didn’t understand, but before he could ask he heard, “Uncle Rand, what are you doing?”
Sylvan and Rand’s heads swiveled, and he saw Gail standing off to the side, head tilted, observing them with furrowed brow. Sylvan gasped, and this time when she grabbed for her slipper, he let her take it.
“Wretched child,” Rand said. “How long have you been there?”
Primming her mouth in a masterly imitation of Aunt Adela, Gail replied, “Since you started wrestling.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Sylvan sounded quite fierce as she hopped up and down, trying to pull the limp leather over her foot.
“I did, but you didn’t hear me.”
Sylvan glanced at Rand, then looked up at the sky as if solutions could be found within the wispy clouds. “I was probably yelling too loudly, huh?”
“Uncle Rand was laughing, too, and then he kissed you, but I don’t understand why.”
Rand thought of and discarded several replies before saying, “I was showing Miss Sylvan how much I like her.”
“What were you doing it like that for?”
Rand recognized distaste when he saw it, and he even remembered feeling the same way at her age. But it would take a stronger man than he to explain the attraction between man and woman to a ten-year-old. “What are you doing here, Windy Gail?” he asked.
“I wanted to go to the mill, and I’m not allowed to go alone.” Gail’s blue eyes, so like his own, widened in patent appeal.
Rand grinned. She reminded him so much of himself, with her quick mind and cunning tricks. He hoped life treated her well. He wished he could live long enough to see her grown. He prayed for a shield to protect her from the arrows of cruelty the world cast at a bastard. “So you want us to take you?”
“Oh, would you?” She gave a little hop. “What a wonderful idea.”
“I agree,” Sylvan said dryly. “What a wonderful idea.”
“Although I hate to leave our solitude.” Rand glanced slyly at Sylvan and ducked when she glared. “But I suppose we should leave before Miss Sylvan is once more overcome with desire.”
“The desire to slap your face,” Sylvan snapped.
“Again.” He rubbed his still-stinging face. “We’ll go.”
They turned away from their regular route to the manor and moved instead toward the path along the cliffs toward the mill. Sylvan pushed and he strained to keep the wheelchair moving through the clumps of grass. One steep rise offered them a challenge, but with Gail’s help they topped the hill and saw below them the mill.
The sea washed into a small harbor below it, and the hills ringed it, but the mill dominated its surroundings. A massive building of native stone with a slate roof, it rumbled with noise and belched black smoke from its coal-powered steam engine. A villager stood atop a ladder, whitewashing the walls, but he fought a losing battle. Cinders filled the air and covered the grass around the building, although they seemed of no concern to the women taking their dinner outside.
Rand fought his instinct to cower. These were the women Lord Rand Malkin had greeted at church, the women he’d provided for in rough winters, the women he’d teased as he made the traditional visit to their homes at Christmastide. He’d been the beneficent lord, and now he was confined to a wheelchair.
He didn’t want to see their pity or know that they whispered behind his back.
Gail ran on ahead, shouting their names, but Sylvan touched his shoulder, giving him reassurance when there was no way she should know that he needed it.
When the women caught sight of him, they rose en masse and stared, and he closed his eyes for a moment, looking for courage inside himself. When he opened them, he saw a dozen beaming faces.
“Lord Rand, how good to see ye out.” Loretta rushed forward. Big-boned, big-bellied, she was the spokes-woman for the village and knew Rand well. “We’ve had you in our prayers this last year.”
While Loretta kissed his hand in hearty goodwill, Nanna from the farthest farm stood off to the side. Roz and Charity held Gail’s hands as she jumped up and down and babbled, and Rebecca, Shirley, Susan, and all the other women he’d known and cared for crowded around him. They smiled shyly or openly, depending on their natures, and tried to kiss his hands or touch his shoulder. He blushed beneath the sincerity of their welcome, and wondered why he’d avoided them.
“We missed ye this last Christmas, Lord Rand,” Shirley said. “We got our part of the ale and meat, but we had no one to flirt with us.”
“Aye, made our husbands right uppity,” Roz added.
“But ye brought yer husband back down, didn’t ye, Roz?” Loretta stood with her hands on her hips, and Rand laughed when Roz blushed.
“Yes, she’s a randy character,” he agreed.
“’Tis a shame about yer legs, m’lord.” Loretta broached the subject with no discomfiture. “But His Grace says yer nurse is the best to be had, and she’ll take proper care of ye.” Loretta took Sylvan’s hand and kissed it, too. “And I’m sure ye will, miss. Ye have a kind face, as well as a beautiful one, and we know we can depend on ye to help our dear Lord Rand.”
Now Sylvan blushed, and Rand liked that. Let her be embarrassed, too.
“I don’t see Pert,” he said.
“I’m here, sir.” The tiny woman stepped forward.
The bruises around her eyes had faded to green and yellow, and she had a cut beside her mouth that looked sore. She’d lost two teeth since last he saw her, but she might have lost teeth from natural causes. She smiled timidly when he reached for her hand. “This ghost sports quite a wallop for a vaporous spirit.”
Pert’s eyes filled with tears, and she glanced over her shoulder as if she feared whoever stood behind her. “It wasn’t even fully dark, but he was dressed all in black. It was my fault, I suppose, for being out so late, but His Grace paid me to stay and help, and I never thought someone would…would…”
Loretta wrapped her arm around Pert’s heaving shoulders. “It’s not your fault some misbegotten coward hit ye. Don’t ye ever say so again.”
Nowhere in Malkinhampsted could one find as timid and self-effacing a woman as Pert, and someone had done this to her, Rand thought.
Some person. Some man. Some maniac.
“Lord Rand,” Pert cried. “Ye’re hurting me!”
Hastily, he released her hand and watched with horror as she rubbed the red marks he’d left with his too-tight grip. “I am sorry,” he said. “My mind was wandering.”
Pert tried to smile. “No harm done.”
“No harm,” he muttered.
“Ye’re not to worry,” Loretta said in her bossiest tone, still cuddling Pert. “We’re not stupid, no matter what ye men think. We’re not going out alone at night.”
“That does relieve my mind,” he answered. He couldn’t
see the mill, the women pressed in so closely, but he heard the door open.
Garth called, “Have you finished your dinners yet? We’re behind, you know.”
The women glanced at each other, then parted to let Garth see the objects of their attention. Garth smiled in delight and surprise, and striding forward, he called, “Rand! Thank God, you’ve come. I need you to help with these hussies.” He frowned at them in mock displeasure. “They’ll work for you when they won’t for me.”
“’Tis not our fault we’re behind, Yer Grace,” Loretta protested. “The machines still aren’t running right. They’re still breaking the threads all the time, and when we reach in to tie them, we’re lucky if that instrument of the devil doesn’t buck.”
“I know it, Loretta.” Garth gingerly patted her shoulder. “I’d swear there were gremlins in the cotton. Go in now, and we’ll see if we can’t make up time.”
“Will we work late, Yer Grace?” Shirley asked.
“At least until the machines are working smooth.” Grimacing in disgust, Garth offered, “I’ll pay extra.”
The women smiled and headed for the mill with hearty goodwill.
“Miss Sylvan.” Garth wiped his hand on a greasy rag, then took her arm. “And Gail.” He offered his other arm to the child, and she took it with a glowing smile. “How good to see you.” Leading them toward the door, he said, “Allow me to show you my pride and joy.”
“Hey!” Rand called from his wheelchair in the yard. “What about me?”
“Well, come on,” Garth ordered. “Don’t lag behind.”
Sylvan broke away from Garth and, going back to Rand, gave him a shove to start him on his way. Pushing his way toward the door, Rand entered the mill without flinching.
Sylvan could not. Her father held a part interest in several clothing mills. She’d visited them before, and she hated the noise, heat, and odor. Women stood at their stations, placing the cotton on the machines, taking off the thread when it was ready, binding it together when it broke. It required little strength or intelligence, but the women of Malkinhampsted performed their work willingly, alternating tasks as another group stopped to eat their suppers.
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