by Jo Beverley
“I have a penknife in my pocket,” he said. “I could cut your sleeves off. You have lovely arms, as I remember.”
“I am lovely everywhere,” she said tartly, using her beauty as a weapon, as Lord Templemore had suggested.
It did not drive Harry away. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “I hope one day to have the evidence of my own eyes.”
Amy stared at him. “You won’t.”
“Won’t I?” he asked gently. “I wonder. I have decided to fight for you, Amethyst. You’re everything I want in a wife—mind, body, and soul. And you’re not indifferent. I knew it at Coppice Farm, and since then I’ve seen your eyes travel my body just as mine have traveled yours. You deserve better than an old man in your bed.”
Amy turned away and closed her eyes. “Don’t.”
His voice could not be shut out. “I won’t let you do this to yourself. I’m going to woo you, seduce you. If necessary, I’ll abduct you.”
Amy looked at him again. “You’d hang.”
He smiled with hot, ravishing confidence. “Would you say you’re sorry?”
The ball came their way again and he fielded it. Amy could no more have handled the ball than she could fly. “You’re mad,” she said dazedly. “I’m going to marry Sir Cedric.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to marry someone you love. I hope that will be me.”
Amy didn’t know what to say in the face of such madness.
“If you’re afraid of your family,” he said gently, “I will protect you, Amy.”
At last she found anger of sorts. “Of course I’m not afraid of my family. I love my family. Go away. How many times must I tell you I am perfectly happy with my situation?”
When she glanced around he had gone back to his place, but she felt no reassurance, especially when she had to force her eyes not to feast on him. He wanted her to marry for love, even if it was not himself. That was love speaking. And she wanted him to marry for love, because she loved him.
And they were both condemned to something much, much less.
13
ABREAK WAS CALLED for shade and lemonade. Everyone collapsed beneath the oak in shameless abandon. Lucy Frogmorton lowered her gaze from the horizon only when Rowanford sat beside her.
Amy frowned at this. She hadn’t driven him off just to see him fall into Lucy’s greedy paws. She looked at Clyta, who was laughing at something Lord Templemore had said to her, something slightly naughty, Amy would guess. It had the effect of making Clyta look magnificent. Relaxed among friends in the country, Clyta was at her best.
With determination, Amy sat beside the duke and was pleased to hear that Lucy was complaining about the lack of decorum. The duke did not look as if he enjoyed the topic, and he turned away readily enough when Amy broke into the conversation.
“I do hope you weren’t offended over the horse, your grace,” she said in her best demure manner. “I feel so touched that you wanted to take care of me, and it is a long time since I last rode a spirited animal.”
He preened a little. “Not at all, Miss de Lacy. I will certainly know better another time. And you mustn’t be ‘your gracing’ me as if we were strangers.”
“You’re very kind. I did used to be a good rider, but I was never as good as Clyta.”
He looked over at Clyta as she had intended. “No, she’s a wonderful horsewoman.”
Clyta laughed again. Her heavy dark hair was escaping its pins and she was beginning to look wanton, but in this situation it might work to her advantage. “She’s enjoying herself,” Amy said softly, trying to keep his attention fixed to Clyta. “She much prefers the country to London.”
“Oh,” said the duke, his eyes fixed where Amy wanted them as if glued.
“It is her duty, I suppose, as a duke’s granddaughter to do a Season,” Amy persevered, feeling like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. “I’m sure she’ll marry well—don’t you think, Duke? I know any number of eligible men are already interested.” She leaned closer to his ear. “Don’t you think her very handsome?”
By some act of Providence, Chart chose that moment to tease his sister so she pounced on him for a minor tussle. Her hair came down completely and a great deal of her shapely legs was revealed before Chart realized this and established some control.
“My, my,” said Rowanford in the tones of a man who has had a revelation.
“Oh dear,” said Amy briskly, leaping to her feet. “If Chart’s going to tease, I think we should go and rescue Clyta. Brothers can be horrible,” she added, whose only brother had never given her that kind of trouble at all.
Like a puppet, the duke got to his feet and followed. Amy settled him by Clyta, then drew Chart off. When she looked back and saw Clyta laughing and joking with the duke without a trace of shyness, and Rowanford leaning closer, bewitched, she felt she had done a fine piece of work. It might not amount to anything but it was a start, and in the hedonistic atmosphere of Maiden Hall anything could happen.
She glanced back at Lucy and received a glare of dislike. She felt no ill will toward the young woman and would have tried a little matchmaking on her behalf if she could, but Lucy couldn’t have Rowanford because Clyta wanted him, and she couldn’t have Chart or Harry because they both deserved a warmer heart.
Amy wasn’t aware that Lord Templemore had disappeared until he came back. “I have arranged a little entertainment,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
Amy immediately felt alarm and anticipation. What now?
“Not the maze,” said Lord Randal with a grin.
“The maze,” said Lord Templemore.
“Do you really have a maze?” asked Clyta, bouncing to her feet, then leaning down to pull Rowanford up. Amy winced, but the duke didn’t seem to mind at all.
“I really do. A genuine Elizabethan maze that took a devilish amount of work to shape up again. Come and see.”
The ladies resumed their stockings and boots, but that was the only gesture toward resuming propriety before they walked around the house. Amy was pleased to see the duke staying close to Clyta. She wondered why Lord Randal had seemed so amused at the thought of the maze. It sounded interesting, but no more than that.
They were walking along a tall, dense box hedge when Lord Templemore stopped by a narrow gap. Amy realized the hedge was part of the maze. It was at least eight feet high and impenetrable and stretched quite a distance in either direction. The narrow gap led to a path between more dense hedges. Amy suddenly felt nervous.
“There are four entrances—or exits,” said their host, “and a central square with some statues. I’ve left two prizes in the center, one for the first lady, one for the first gentleman. They are to be given to the partner of their choice.” It was clear from the glint in his eye that he knew that could open some mischievous pathways.
“I think the ladies should go in first,” he said. “Who will volunteer?”
Clyta stepped forward. “I will. But what if we can’t find our way out?”
“Someone will rescue you before dark, I promise.”
With a flitting, teasing look at the duke, Clyta slipped through the gap and moved out of sight. Rowanford made as if to follow, but Lord Templemore stopped him.
“On to the next entrance,” he said and led the way. It was some distance to the corner, and then Amy could see the dimensions more clearly. “This is enormous,” she said.
“Yes,” agreed Lord Templemore. “Are you game to go next?”
There seemed no point in refusing, so Amy slipped between the trimmed box and into the maze. The outer path went forward the length of the maze, cut by a number of gaps leading inward. Amy listened, but it was quiet now. She couldn’t even hear the voices of the others. It was as if she were alone in the narrow green world, and she poked her head back out to assure herself that the real world was still there.
Then she stiffened her nerve and took the next gap.
Sometimes the paths became dead ends, sometimes they went in circ
les. She tried to carry some plan of where she had been but found it impossible. She encountered no one, and a fear that she was stuck in the maze began to grow in her. She imagined the others back at the house having tea and laughing at the joke they had played to trap her here.
She began to hurry, then run, plunging always through the first gap she came to. She heard a noise through the hedge. “Hello!” she cried. “Who’s there?”
“Miss de Lacy?” It was Lucy Frogmorton. “Oh, this is horrible. How can I get to your side?”
Amy came to her senses. She wouldn’t be as much of a ninny as Lucy. “I don’t know,” she called. “Don’t worry. Just wander around. You’ll either get out, or to the middle sooner or later.”
“I want to get out now!” Lucy demanded.
“Scream then,” recommended Amy and headed away from the voice. She didn’t hear any screaming, so Lucy must have decided not to make a fool of herself. Amy took her own advice and wandered. If she began to feel trapped, she looked up at the blue sky. Whenever she heard a sound she called out, and she made contact with Clyta and Chart that way, though she never saw them.
She was amused to find small grottoes here and there in dead ends. They were furnished with benches and a certain amount of screening. In view of her host’s rakish reputation she could imagine their purpose.
She found her mind dwelling on the kind of parties that had doubtless been held here in his bachelor days, with ladies and gentlemen finding and losing each other in these dark green passageways, feeling alone together here, apart from the world and all the burdens of responsibility and correct behavior.
She wondered if Lord Templemore wandered here with his wife to stop and share kisses in a secret corner. She could imagine it. It was perhaps improper to dwell on such things but she couldn’t help it. She could imagine Lord Randal and Sophie enjoying the same pleasure.
There would be none of that for her. No teasing romps, no romantic trysts. Amy allowed her mind in a direction she had never permitted it before. She knew, in general terms, what marriage involved. She imagined her marriage bed when Sir Cedric joined her. He would kiss her, and then do what he had to do. She supposed he would enjoy it, for men apparently did, but it was hard to imagine any enjoyment for herself. It was equally hard to imagine Sir Cedric looking at her with the hunger she had seen in other eyes today.
Having opened her mind to these thoughts, they could not be shut out. She saw new dimensions to the world around her. She had thought Lord Templemore’s gaze at his wife heated, but now she recognized hunger. It was decently controlled by maturity, civilization, and, she supposed, the expectation of satisfaction, but it was hunger all the same. She remembered the way Sophie had said, “Married life is so exhausting,” and the gleam in her husband’s eye. Hunger again.
And maybe there had been just a little hunger in Rowanford’s eyes when he looked at Clyta. Amy certainly hoped so.
It had been there in Harry’s and, she suspected, in her own. She sighed. Was she to go hungry all her life?
She turned a corner and came face-to-face with Harry.
“Ah, another human being,” he said lightly, but his eyes were hungry.
Amy swallowed. “Just what I was thinking.”
It was silent and shadowed and cool. She walked toward him and put her hands on his broad shoulders. “I’d like you please to kiss me, just once.”
His arms came to rest at her waist, and his breathing was suddenly unsteady. “Why just once?”
She rested her head against his warm shoulder and heard the pounding of his heart. She watched as her hand slid down his damp neck to play among the curls on his chest. “Well, maybe twice.”
His hand came up to cover hers against his skin, holding it still for a moment. Then he grasped it, moved apart from her, and set off back the way he had come, pulling her behind him.
“Where are we going?” she demanded. “Don’t you want to kiss me?”
“Yes, I want to kiss you,” he said and turned a corner that led to a grotto. He sat on the bench and drew her down beside him. His eyes were dark and dangerous, and Amy knew she was in peril, delicious peril.
He drew her against him with a relentless arm, guided her head with his other hand, and kissed her. It was not the gentle, questing kiss they had shared before, but hotly demanding and not a little angry. Amy surrendered to it. She, too, was hungry and angry and hot.
She pressed herself closer and held him tighter, sliding her hands beneath his shirt to feel his heated skin. She tasted him and swirled within a mad, heated passion, a hunger that was not appeased but grew and grew.
“God,” he groaned and tore his lips from hers.
Amy made a faint protest, then came to herself and stared at him, dazed. She had somehow come to be on his lap, and his shirt looked as if she had half torn it off his body. “I’m terribly hard on buttons,” she wailed and burst into tears.
He held her and stroked her and murmured to her. He held her tight and close as no one had held her before. Amy wept for Stonycourt, which would never be as it once was; for Beryl who would only be an aunt, never a mother; for Jassy, who would not marry well; for Jasper, who wouldn’t have a string of hunters and host the Belvoir; and for herself, who wouldn’t have any joy either because she wouldn’t be happy if none of the others could be.
The sobs faded to gulps and then to numb silence. Amy clung close, filling her senses with the feel of his body and the scent of his skin, something to take with her and remember.
“You take buttons very seriously,” he said shakily. His hand cradled her head, his fingers sending a message of comfort.
Amy sniffed. “You have to when you’re poor.”
He pushed her away. “There’s no need for you to be poor, Amy. I can take care of you.”
Amy shook her head. “Can you provide dowries for Jassy and Beryl?”
“Something, at least.”
“Something isn’t enough.” She looked up at him. “I don’t have a dowry, you know.”
“I guessed. It doesn’t matter.” He looked impatient. “Isn’t it a bit arrogant for you to assume that your sisters can’t find love without money to sweeten the pot?”
Amy pushed away sharply. “That’s a horrid thing to say!”
“It’s what you’re saying.”
“No it isn’t!” She jumped off his lap entirely. “It’s just that that’s the way of the world. At least they need decent clothes.”
“I fell in love with you in a blanket.”
Amy’s anger escaped her. “Oh, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say you love me.”
“But I do.”
“So do I.” She clapped her hand over her mouth to call back the error.
He grasped her shoulders and pulled her closer. “Then you cannot marry anyone else.”
“I love my family, too.”
“Do they love you?” he asked in exasperation.
“Of course they do!”
“Then they won’t want you to marry where you don’t love, Amy. Why are you doing this?”
“They won’t know. They mustn’t know.”
“Of course they’ll know.” He gave her a little shake. “Have some sense!”
“Stop shouting at me!”
“I feel like strangling you! If I had any sense I’d take you here and now in this damned bower and then you’d have to marry me.”
They stared at each other and Amy knew it was temptation which wove through the heated air. She’d have to marry him, and she wanted him, now. Hunger. She hadn’t recognized it before.
She backed away.
“Amy,” he said and held out a hand.
She turned and fled.
She did not look, just ran, gasping. She collided with a hard body. Hands grasped and steadied her.
“Miss de Lacy,” said Lord Randal. “Are you all right?”
Amy collapsed against him, heart thudding. “No.”
; He held her for a moment, then pushed her gently away so he could look at her. He was very sober for one so lighthearted. “What has happened?”
Amy took a deep breath. She knew what he thought. “If I said Harry and I had…committed an indiscretion, you’d say we had to get married, wouldn’t you?”
“The world would.”
“You wouldn’t?”
His earlier somberness had gone and he looked, if anything, amused. “It would depend, I suppose, on the indiscretion, the consequences, and the feelings you share.”
She might have known she’d get no sane answers from these people. They were all mad. Amy turned away. “Nothing happened,” she said flatly.
“That is a lie.”
She turned sharply, guiltily. “What do you mean?”
He just smiled, shook his head, and gently rearranged her bodice. “Let me escort you out of here.”
She went willingly. Perhaps once out of the strange world of narrow green paths she could find sanity again.
In a little while he said, “This wasn’t planned, Miss de Lacy.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Today. I admit we connived a little to bring you and Harry together at the ball. We all thought you’d both be better to get one another out of your systems. But today, well it was Rowanford’s idea to invite you, and he was supported by Clyta. Now I think I see why. I noted the way you’ve tried to help her. Thank you.”
“She’s my friend. She’d do as much for me.”
“We all would,” he said gently.
Amy looked at him in surprise and swallowed tears. It was all too much. “I am an unscrupulous fortune hunter, Lord Randal. Your kindness is misguided.”
He smiled with amazing sweetness. “I don’t think so.”
They had reached an exit, and they passed out into open spaces and clean air. Amy shuddered as reality invaded and cooled her senses, opening the way for the enormity of what had happened. Lady Templemore was nearby and she hurried over.
Lord Randal spoke first. “I think Miss de Lacy would appreciate returning to the house, Emily, for some peace and a cup of tea.”
