Once again she stopped his lips. ‘There’s no need to turn this…agreeable interlude into more than it was. I took precautions, I assure you, to ensure there would be no…repercussions. We’re safe on my land, far from town and the gossips. There is absolutely no need to make me a “gentlemanly” offer.’
His smile faded. ‘Are you telling me…you let me make love to you, but you’ll not accept my hand?’
Something cracked and splintered inside her as she made herself laugh. ‘Goodness, you can’t try to tell me you propose to every woman you bed?’
Sitting up abruptly, he shifted away from her. ‘No, but it is the first time I’ve bedded an unmarried lady. Or at least I thought she was a lady.’
That shot went home, but she let it go. She had to get him out of here, before all resolve crumbled like a child’s sandcastle after a wave and she begged him to stay, accepted his hand, catapulted herself into the terror of a future she could not control.
‘Life is full of surprises, isn’t it? I expect we should get back. You must pack, and I have the preparations for Emma and Cecily’s arrival to finish. I shall need your kind assistance, however.’ Turning her back, she indicated the loosened laces of her stays.
Silently he began doing them up, while she waited, her heart already bleeding at the cold anger radiating from him. When he’d finished, she moved to slide off the bed.
He caught her shoulder. ‘You can’t pretend to be so…indifferent. I know you’re not!’
Her eyes stung with tears she wouldn’t let him see, and it took all the effort she could summon to keep her voice even. ‘Indeed, I’m hardly indifferent! Have I not just given a convincing demonstration of how attractive I find you?’
‘Attractive. And that is all?’
‘Did you not find it enough? I thought our interlude vastly satisfying. In any event, I trust I may rely on your discretion?’
‘My discretion!’ he repeated, his tone bitter. ‘I suppose I can promise you that.’
Her heart seemed to be splintering in as many pieces as pleasure had shattered her body. Frantically she resisted the imperative to apologise, throw herself back into his arms and assure him she wasn’t the doxy she was trying to appear.
It had seemed so easy when she’d planned it: savour his touch, and touch him in return with a shocking intimacy that would distance him for ever and never tempt her again.
She’d not foreseen it would rip her heart from her body to deceive him and walk away, knowing he would never again approach her with more than chill civility.
Only the thought of Mama, dying neglected and heartbroken in this very house, lent her the courage to continue. Casting about for some remark that would prick him deeply enough to make him depart at once, she said, ‘I do thank you, of course. ’Twas a very agreeable entertainment.’
The green eyes studying her turned glacial. After swiftly re-fastening his trousers, he made her a bow. ‘So glad I performed to your expectations, madam. Having entertained you, I shall take my leave.’
She managed to keep a smile on her lips as he stalked past her and out through the door. Stumbling to the window, she peeped through the frame and watched him exit the house, mount his horse and ride off.
Wrapping both arms around herself, she returned to sit at the edge of the bed, staring into the rapidly gathering gloom. In mockery of all her clever stratagems, she was very much afraid that Allen Mansfell had carried away with him not just her innocence, but also her heart.
Chapter Ten
Back home at the Grange, Allen had passed the most joyless Christmas he could remember—all because of the perfidious Meredyth Wellingford. He’d thought himself so clever, teasing and inflaming her into finally acting upon the passion between them! So confident their unexpected interlude would lead to an immediate engagement. Fool that he was, she’d gulled him even more completely than Susanna Davies.
By the time he’d reached home, his initial fury over this fact had disintegrated into a black depression no amount of dispassionate reasoning had lightened.
None of the traditional family celebrations he normally savoured had appeased him. His mother’s welcoming wassail had lacked the piquant touch of lemon and spice in Miss Wellingford’s brew. The blaze of Christmas candles had carried the image of her face reflected in their glow. The children’s excitement when they’d brought home the Yule log had made him recall the greens-gathering expedition at Wellingford, while the jackstraws Thomas had given his nieces sparked poignant reflections of the game he’d played with Meredyth on the schoolroom floor, back when he’d still believed he would make her his bride.
And he absolutely couldn’t look at a kissing ball.
As unsuccessful as he was at avoiding thoughts of her by day, at night it was worse. Too many times he awoke bathed in sweat, hard and aching, his mind aflame with the image of her astride him.
In vain he argued with himself as he lay there, unable to recapture sleep, trying to dismiss from his mind and senses a wanton who had been as ready to ride him as she’d been to casually send him away afterwards.
He actually welcomed the end of the Christmas holiday, that he might resume the time-consuming, energy-draining tasks of supervising the estate, certain that the work would dim this agony as it had helped him survive Susanna’s betrayal.
Except so far the charm wasn’t working. Indeed, his work on the estate had, if anything, deepened his unhappiness and kept his anger, disappointment, puzzlement and frustration over Meredyth Wellingford’s behaviour at a constant simmer.
He couldn’t ride the fields and consult with the tenants without recalling his time at Wellingford, with an intelligent, knowledgeable Meredyth cantering by his side. Nearly every task he undertook—ordering seed, preparing thatch, mending tools—recalled a discussion, an observation, a similar activity he’d shared with Meredyth.
It was more than past time to get on with his life, he told himself as, short-tempered from lack of sleep and frustration, he stamped into breakfast a month after Kings’ Day, giving a curt nod to Thomas, who was already at table.
The two brothers ate in silence until, as he rose to leave, Thomas jumped up to follow him. ‘Allen—wait! Can I have a word with you?’
‘If you want me to increase your allowance,’ he said over his shoulder to his brother, ‘the answer is no. What with putting more acres under cultivation—’
‘It’s got nothing to do with my allowance,’ Thomas interrupted. ‘Just like you to start growling before I even tell you what I want! You’ve been like a bear with a sore paw since we left Wellingford. After your withering reply reduced poor Mama to tears when she asked you what was wrong last night, she has begged me to speak with you.’
Before Allen could tell him to go to the devil, Thomas held up a hand. ‘I don’t know what happened at Wellingford—nor do I want to. Though I must say I always thought you possessed such address I’m amazed you somehow made such mice-feet of courting Merry.’
‘Thank you for refraining from comment,’ Allen said acidly.
‘Dammit, I can at least express my disappointment!’ Thomas replied with exasperation. ‘I can’t think of another lady I’d be prouder to call sister. That bitch Susanna Davies must still be clouding your mind. I had hoped you were over her by now.’
‘You should be more charitable, Thomas. Besides, all women are wanton at heart. ’Tis just a matter of degree—’
Allen had scarcely uttered the last word when Thomas shocked him with a right uppercut to the jaw. Propelled backwards, he barely managed to keep from knocking over a dining chair as he righted himself.
‘Don’t you dare compare Merry to that…that witch!’ Thomas declared angrily. ‘Not all women are like Miss Davies—though I’m glad she revealed her true character before you succeeded in marrying her. She tried to seduce me, you know.’
Engaged in rubbing his sore jaw, Allen froze. ‘Tried to seduce you?’
‘When I called to congratulate her on your engag
ement, she invited me to walk through the shrubbery. There she rubbed herself against me, offering me her lips, murmuring how glad she was that we would be close. I never told you—blind with adoration as you were, I doubt you’d have believed me. Not content with bewitching you, Susanna Davies wanted every man she met to be wild with desire for her.’
A woman who bewitched a man with desire? Allen thought, pressing his lips together against the temptation to tell Thomas a thing or two about his revered St Meredyth. But though Meredyth Wellingford might not be the lady everyone believed her, he was a gentleman—and he had promised her his ‘discretion’. A surge of outrage over her ill-treatment of him rose again to choke him.
‘I do apologise for my maladroitness,’ he said, when he could speak.
‘It’s your foul temper that’s plaguing everyone now,’ Thomas retorted. ‘Why don’t you either get over it or go beg her pardon and start again?’
‘Ah, the astute advice of a experienced gentleman of ten and seven summers,’ he shot back.
‘I may not be old and experienced,’ Thomas replied, ‘but I’m not such a selfish oaf as to inflict my black-tempered moods on the whole family.’
That well-aimed barb hit home with the sting of truth. ‘Pray convey my apologies to Mama and Papa,’ Allen replied, remorse emerging through the weight of misery that lay like a soggy blanket over his soul. ‘Let me hasten to remove my objectionable presence from the house.’
While Thomas sighed, and denounced him without heat as a blockhead, Allen bowed and strode from the room.
The chill, grey morning fog had disintegrated into a steady rain driven by bitter wind. Impelled by raging anger and unhappiness, Allen set off on a tour around the Grange, forcing his shivering mount past field after field deserted by farm workers intelligent enough to have left work to a more auspicious day.
Finally, exhausted, soaked and chilled to the marrow, Allen rode home. In the bleakness that succeeded his burst of activity, as he paced back to the house, he asked himself why he was having such difficulty ridding his mind and senses of Meredyth Wellingford. Even in the depths of his anguish over Susanna he hadn’t been so out of sorts and snappish with his family.
Get over it, Thomas had advised…or start over again. A pang of longing rose in him. Oh, that he might turn back the clock to the moment just after their lovemaking at the Dower House, when he’d thought himself the luckiest man in the world! Exulting at his good fortune in winning for his wife a woman who combined all the virtues of a lady with the sensuality of a siren. A lady who would surprise him, delight him, and captivate him for a lifetime.
Until she’d uttered those blighting words about their ‘amusing interlude’. Acid drenched his stomach anew that she had casually dismissed the event that had so shaken his world as an afternoon’s frolic.
Meredyth Wellingford was a wanton, despite what Thomas believed. Whatever her other qualities, he’d as soon saddle himself with the misery of a loose-moralled wife as he would mortgage his birthright.
But then another of Thomas’s remarks rang in his head, stopping him in his tracks.
The fact that Susanna had made advances to Thomas, then a stripling of sixteen, no longer shocked him. As Thomas had alleged, a wanton’s behaviour would find her out sooner or later. But in all his dealings with Meredyth before the afternoon at the Dower House no one he’d observed with her—workmen, foreman, tenants, neighbours—had betrayed the slightest hint they suspected Meredyth Wellingford to be a lightskirt.
Absent that episode at the Dower House, he would not have believed it himself.
The whole conundrum of her behaviour crystallised around that one point. If she wasn’t a wanton, why had she deliberately set out to make him believe she was?
Why she would seduce him if such were not her normal practice was a mystery too devious for his simple male mind to sort out. However, it should be rather easier to discover her true character. If Meredyth were lacking in morals, having lived nearly all her life at Wellingford, someone in the country thereabouts would surely know it.
Perhaps confirming that fact would set him at ease and allow him to begin forgetting her.
And if he could not confirm it…He was not the sort of man to seduce—or allow himself to be seduced by, he amended—a lady and walk away for no more reason than she had given him at the Dower House. He would have to confront Miss Wellingford face to face one more time and demand that she explain herself.
The thought filling him with more energy and enthusiasm than he’d felt since riding with her to the Dower House that fated afternoon, he strode into the house. He wasn’t sure how, but one way or another he meant to discover the truth about Meredyth Wellingford.
The opportunity to investigate occurred sooner than he could have hoped, at dinner that night, when his father mentioned the possibility of acquiring a property in the country adjacent to Wellingford. Immediately Allen volunteered to inspect it. Though he wasn’t yet sure exactly what he meant to do, Waring Manor was located only a day’s ride from Wellingford. Once he had completed the business for his father, he could stay overnight at the inn at Swansden, the small village closest to the Wellingford demesne.
A week later, his tour of the prospective new property complete, Allen strode into the Swansden Arms. The innkeeper in the deserted taproom hurried over to assist him. After he had requested overnight accommodations and given his name, the man asked if he were related to the Mr Thomas Mansfell who frequently visited the young master at Wellingford.
Pleased to discover, as he’d hoped, that the proprietor of the only inn for twenty miles around was familiar with the owners of the local estate, Allen confirmed that he was. If Meredyth Wellingford had lovers, they must have either met her here or travelled through here. Accepting a pint of the landlord’s homebrew, he settled beside the bar to discover what he could.
The next half-hour’s conversation was wonderfully illuminating. Mr Sweeney, the innkeep, had nothing but praise for Meredyth Wellingford, whose care and diligence had brought the property neglected by her sire back into a productivity that benefited the entire countryside.
‘Aye, what a good mistress she is! Took my Betsy into service at the Hall, she did, and knows as much as the parson about any in the county who be ailing or in need. Though I’m surprised you mean to stay here, being acquainted with the family. We’ve not housed visitors to the Hall since repairs to the house been finished, five or so years ago. Though she been good to bring us custom, often sending her guests here for a homebrew after a day’s hunting.’
‘Her suitors didn’t stay here?’ he pressed.
The innkeeper chuckled. ‘Being a neighbour, Lord A paid his calls from home, and that other gent, though he stayed up at the Hall, didn’t last long. Folks hereabouts think Miss Wellingford never got over losing the young soldier she was promised to. A pity, for she’d make some gent a fine wife!’
At that moment another party entered, and the garrulous innkeeper excused himself to go tend them.
Allen sipped his ale, considering what he’d just learned. It seemed the local innkeeper had as high an opinion of Meredyth Wellingford’s character as Thomas did.
Of course she might have conducted her affairs in some deserted outbuilding on the Wellingford grounds. But with whom? He couldn’t see her dallying with her elderly steward. No, there had been no cavalcade of suitors, nor were there any other estates in the area to host the calibre of gentleman which was the only creditable type for a tryst with a lady of the manor.
Which meant…despite her insinuation to the contrary…that perhaps she hadn’t trysted. The evidence he’d just gathered and every maligned instinct he possessed told him that Meredyth Wellingford was no wanton.
For what incomprehensible reason could she have deliberately tried to deceive him? He had no idea. But he intended to ask her first thing tomorrow.
A rising excitement intermingled with joy bubbled up at the prospect of seeing her again, watching the expressions p
lay across her mobile face as he matched wits with her. Anticipation sizzled in his blood at the thought of inhaling her rose scent, touching the softness of her hand, her lips.
Whatever her game, Meredyth Wellingford was going to find him much more difficult to fob off than she had at the Dower House.
It was then, smiling at the image of her, that the truth dawned on him, so clear and simple he wondered why it had taken him so long to see it. The reason he’d been so distraught at her deception, so angry at the thought of her with another man. The reason he’d been in such a black despair since he’d left Wellingford, forced to abandon the idea of making her his wife.
He was in love with Meredyth Wellingford. He threw back his head and laughed at the giddy delight of it, attracting a curious look from the newcomers across the taproom.
Tomorrow he would demonstrate to her just how much passion, persuasion and persistence he was prepared to exert in order to win her love in return.
After breakfast the next morning, Meredyth wandered through the rose garden, warmed by the morning sun within its sheltering walls. It had been a month since the last of her Christmas guests had left—Sarah bearing Faith off to help plan her Season, Colton going to visit a friend in the next county. And almost two months since she’d last seen Allen Mansfell. Yet she found him still constantly invading her thoughts.
She went over to sit upon the bench where he’d proposed. In the long days and even longer nights since he’d departed she’d been unable to shake the suspicion that in refusing him she might have made a dreadful mistake.
She was sure, however, that she’d not erred in succumbing to her desire for him. If, as seemed quite probable, she would never again experience the heights of bliss to which he had raised her that fateful afternoon, she would always have the memory of it to cherish.
One Candlelit Christmas Page 9
