“No. Thank you. You’re very good.”
“I’m afraid I become carried away a trifle. ‘Take no prisoners’ and all that.”
“Are you always so competitive?” She glanced at him as she gathered up the remnants of a once-proud army. Unlike the game, this question made him think.
He shook his head. “If I play, I play to win. That’s the way it should be. After all, chess is just war in miniature, don’t you think?”
“I disagree. I play for enjoyment or to pass an idle hour. And, at least partly, to honor my father’s memory. ‘Twas he who taught me the game.”
“Did he give you these pieces? They’re fine.” He held up one dashing cavalier from the red set. The tiny horse reared up, every hair in his mane clearly carved in the ivory. A rider clung to his back, very martial in Greek helmet and shield.
‘They were his. Please... Mr. Knight. Put that down.”
He looked at her with a frown. She supposed her voice must have sounded rather odd. Hurriedly, he set it in the space outlined for it in the velvet-fitted drawer under the game table. “Pardon me,” he said, his head bowed. “I should have realized how much it looked like the Rider.”
“No, how could you? I think you must pardon me. I’m not usually so fanciful. There’s really no resemblance at all.”
She put the rest of the white pieces away. In the hearth, a fire popped and sizzled a few feet away. When she was done, she sank down before it, leaning her arm on a hassock, her blue silk shirt billowing in waves around her. “How wise of Camber,” she said. “It might be the height of folly to have a fire on a beautiful June evening but when the fog is pressing against the windows, what could be more cheering?”
Dominic sat down and sipped the red wine in his glass. The flavor still did not appeal to him, yet the liquid was capable of lending a certain warmth to the limbs. Though he’d expected the weather to turn after his talk with Forgall, even fog created by the king’s own will had a depressing effect on the spirit.
Clarice sighed, her eyes dreamy in the firelight. He wondered what she saw in the heart of the flames. The red light played over her profile, highlighting first her warm pink lips, then the curve of her cheek. Her eyes sparkled, only to be cast into the shadows again as her hair glistened with gold and red strands. One instant, the hollows of her face predominated, making her look like an old crone; the next instant, her face glowed like that of a girl in the first blush of beauty.
He gazed at her, thinking that this was Clarice herself, ever-changing, ever-intriguing. She was like a diamond, held up to the light. Depending on how it was turned, different colors would flash from its heart, everything from green to rose to sapphire blue. Like a diamond, too, she could not be cut except by her own like.
He thought of her future, how one day she would marry. He toyed with a portrait of the right husband for her. Someone worthy, of course, with a resolute spirit. He’d need that for she had been too long Lady of the Manor to take lightly to interference, unless it came from someone she loved with her whole heart. Someone young enough for her too, to bring the laughter into her eyes and awaken her passions.
His gaze traced the long curve of her back, admiring the edges of her shoulder blades under the smooth silk and the proud carriage of her head, her soft golden hair piled high. If only she weren’t the daughter of his sworn enemy ...
Dominic sighed, resolutely turning his thoughts from the envious direction they’d taken. Taking another sip of his wine, he said, ‘Tell me a little about your parents.”
She started, as though his voice had broken some dream she’d fallen into. “My father.. . had a wonderful sense of humor. Dry wit. He’d say something to set the room aroar and then look about him with a bland expression as if unsure what had set everyone off. He always had a word of greeting for everyone, high or low. The local people all loved him. They could tell, you know, that it wasn’t something he put on for the occasion. He knew everyone’s concerns intimately.”
“He loved Hamdry?”
“Oh, yes. We all do. We Stavelys have lived here for many, many centuries, even before we received the title.” She rose up and went to the bookshelves. Choosing a large folio volume, she brought it down and laid it open on the smooth leather desktop. The book was closed, a faded red ribbon tying the covers together. She said, “This is the patent.”
He rose to look over her shoulder while she tried to untie the ribbon. The silk ties had worked themselves into a tight knot. “How vexing,” she said in smiling exasperation. “I never leave it like this. If Morgain has been in here, we’ll probably find hippogriffs and phoenixes scrawled over it and I will have to contain my anger because he’s unwell.”
“Allow me,” Dominic said. His big hand moved and suddenly the knot on which she’d been nearly breaking her fingernails came loose. She smiled her thanks and opened the book.
It contained only the one uneven sheet of vellum, once a new white lambskin now turned mellow and tan with great age. The thin black lines of handwriting traced away down the page, crooked and straight, some initial letters as big as his thumb. A date leapt out at him in red ink. “Fourteen fifty-two?”
“Yes. You’ll see it’s signed by Henry VI. His mind broke just a few months later, in 1453. There are those who will tell you that his signing this patent for my ancestor was the first sign of his approaching insanity. You see, the title can descend to the eldest child of either sex. Unheard of, at the time.”
“Not so common now, I think,” he said in the same tone.
“No. Just as well. I should hate to have been ‘Miss Stavely’ all my life.”
“I thought your sister was the eider,” he said idly.
The laughter died in her eyes. She closed the book, tying the ribbon neatly at the side. Smoothing the limp leather cover with the fiat of her hand, she said, “She should have been Lady Stavely. My father loved her mother first, before he married my mother. If he’d married Maria Starret instead . . .”
She picked up the book and carried it back to its place on the shelf. “I didn’t know about Felicia until the year I was ten. Her mother died and she came to live here, at Stavely.”
“That must have been a shock.”
‘To my mother, yes. A very considerable shock. Felicia was not at all... that is, she had not been raised with advantages. To me, however, her coming was sheer delight. I hated being the only child rattling around in this house. When Felicia came, it was as though all my dreams of having an elder sister were realized. I loved her at once.”
Dominic guessed that she was leaving much unsaid. From what he knew of Matilda, the presence of an unwanted, illegitimate child of her husband’s getting must have been a perpetual thorn in her side. He doubted that Clarice’s realized dream of having an older sister had been untroubled by dark looks and disdainful words.
How easy it would have been for Clarice, no more than ten, to have followed her mother’s example and make Felicia feel her inferiority. None of the information he’d been given had indicated that she had done so; quite the opposite, in fact.
“I take it that Mrs. Gardner doesn’t look upon you as an usurper of her rightful title?”
Clarice shook her head, laughing at the very idea. “Felicia would hate it. Not the responsibility for she is both dependable and honorable but the other duties that attend a title. The very idea of being in the House when the Session opens, sitting among all the notable lords petrifies her. She says she can never speak naturally to strangers. She only accompanied Blaic to London this time because it is the book’s debut.”
Dominic realized later that it might have been wise to make some complimentary comment about Mrs. Gardner, who, after all, he’d given the impression of having met. Instead he said, “So everything falls out as it should. You are Viscountess Stavely and she is married to Blaic Gardner.”
“Yes. Yes, everything is as it should be.”
“Do you ever wonder, I wonder, what it would like if you had married hi
m?”
“Of course not,” she said incredulously.
“Surely, he appeals to you. It’s only natural that you should look on him with admiration.”
“I do admire him. As though he were my older brother. Any other notion is absurd. Whatever would make you say such a thing? Wait... let me guess. One of those silly Wisby girls, no doubt expressing her wish disguised as mine.”
“You’ve guessed it,” he said, lying through his teeth.
“No great effort was needed to guess. I admire Blaic greatly, as I would anyone who wooed and won my lovely Felicia. But that those girls should try to ... don’t they know I was not yet seventeen when Felicia and Blaic were wed and he was... well, he must have been all of thirty!”
“I would guess Mr. Gardner to be older than he looks.”
Her brilliant gaze flicked toward his face as though suspecting him of some inner meaning. He schooled his features to show nothing beyond a mild interest. Her eyes narrowed as she tucked in her rose lips. It was a look he’d come to know over the chess table this very afternoon. Clarice was about to try an audacious gambit.
“I am most curious, Mr. Knight, about your work. Tell me all about it.” She seated herself on the comfortable settee, gathering her whispering silks to make room for him next to her. When he didn’t at once join her, she patted the cushions invitingly.
As warily as though he were walking into a seemingly empty dragon’s lair, Dominic approached her. He sat down, thinking there was sufficient distance between them, but somehow winding up much closer to Clarice. Suddenly, he was highly aware of the soft, powdery fragrance of her skin and the swanlike beauty of her throat. The whiteness there was rivaled only by the purity of her rounded breasts, the tops screened by the muslin fichu about her shoulders in a way that seemed both to conceal and reveal.
She did nothing vulgar—neither licking her lips nor taking deeper breaths than usual to emphasize her figure. Yet Dominic found himself aware of her as a desirable woman as he had not been until that moment. He remembered Forgall’s warning. It steadied him, despite the instincts that were screaming at him that this was some particularly subtle trap.
His voice remained deep and steady. “I intend to discover whether the builders of these ancient forts used any particular pattern or style of building. For instance, if each one is the same circumference, it would tell us that these ‘forts’ were built by the same groups of people or, at any rate, people who had a great deal of contact amongst themselves.”
“How fascinating. You’ll measure each fort that you find, then? What if they are not complete?”
“There . . .” Strange how he had suddenly to clear his throat. “There will be other evidence, dips in the ground where a former stone compressed the earth and such. Even if a stone has fallen over, I will be able to determine which way it fell. Naturally—ahem—naturally, I will have to chart each fort with the greatest care.”
“What fascinating work. I don’t believe anything like it has been done here before, though I saw some similar archaeological work being done at Herculaneum.”
Clarice did not reach out and touch his hand as she’d done at their first meeting to test him. Yet something in her smile made him feel as though she might at any time. He tried to remember everything he’d been told about the wiles of mortal woman. As soon as the king had chosen him as Clarice’s guard, he’d been sent to study all he could of human history and behavior. Though he was human, he knew little beyond the art of war. What else he had learned flew out of his head the moment Clarice had patted the cushion.
He would have to recapture his cunning while at the same time give her enough of a fright to stand off from him. Safer by far if she wanted never to be alone with him again—safer for them both.
Dominic turned toward her and coaxed a fatuous smile from his stern lips. “Enough about me. Cold stone is a dull subject for a woman ... especially a woman like you.”
“A—a woman like me?”
“You don’t need me to tell you that you are the loveliest creature alive, Lady Stavely. Such a cool name . . . I heard Mr. Gardner call you Clarice. It suits you.”
“I don’t feel you know me well enough to call me by my name, Mr. Knight.”
“Perhaps not. Soon I hope to know you much, much better.”
Clarice would have vehemently denied that she’d been flirting with Dominic Knight. She’d been raised to believe that only light-skirts flirted with a man; nothing could be more vulgar. Yet she’d also been told that nothing was more appealing to a man than a woman who took a genuine interest in his pursuits.
Not pugilism or gambling, perhaps, but if a man were a collector of snuffboxes or a lover of fine music, it behooved a clever woman to cultivate those tastes as well. Not with the intention of surpassing a man—never that!-—but so that one could ask intelligent questions, for men also loved to instruct ladies in their own particular field.
“Pray believe me. I am truly interested in your work, sir. How old, do you think ...”
“At the moment, I am interested only in you. How can you bear living so retired when London waits to throw itself at your feet? Such beauty and charm shouldn’t be wasted in this backwater.”
“I go to London now only when my duty demands it. I’ve no ambition to make a great noise in the world.”
“I cannot be sorry to hear that. Such a prize as you are surely would have been won by some titled gentleman and we should not be here now, together.”
Clarice tried to move farther down the settee, but found herself already wedged into the corner. Her motives had been less to learn about his book than to draw him out. She knew little about him, only what he’d let slip. She thought if he started talking freely on the subject of his work, it would be easy to persuade him into discussing whatever subject she fancied. Instead, it was she who was telling him more than she’d wanted to.
She said lightly, “I suppose the titled gentlemen were all married already. Not so much as a single duke proposed during my Season. Pray tell me, Mr. Knight, what is it you do when not pursuing your researches?”
“I live very quietly, but not so quietly as you. No dukes pursued you, you say? Then all the nobles of England must be blind as well as foolish. Not one made a push to secure the loveliest prize of all?”
“I do not think myself so very lovely. Once, perhaps, I was.” She held up her hand to keep him from uttering any more empty compliments. “If I had a wish, it would be to find someone to love me for those qualities which linger. Beauty fades.”
“You have nothing to fear in that direction for some time to come.” His gaze wandered over her, and suddenly she wished she’d put on her heaviest woolen gown despite the calendar.
Clarice described her behavior to herself as having become a trifle more unabashedly feminine than was her habit. She only understood that she’d raised her femininity too much when he had turned to her with that fatuous expression. She’d wanted to set him talking freely about himself, only to find that he did not want to stop at talking.
Dominic slid a trifle closer to her on the settee. There was literally not an inch of space between his thigh and hers. His rich, low voice carried warmly to her ear. “Clarice ... don’t be bashful.”
She knew she should rise to her feet, rebuke him sharply, and sweep away out of the library. Instead, she sat immobile, not even turning her head away. She felt his hand steal about her waist while his other hand covered hers on her knee. She’d never been touched so intimately by a man before.
Clarice remembered the strength of his arms when he’d carried her to her room, and felt a curious flutter deep inside as though her heart had trembled. She hesitated, fatally.
Dominic had thought that she would have run away by now. He could see the tension in every line of her beautiful figure. When his arm encircled her, he felt her quiver as though with disgust. Yet she didn’t move. Frowning now, he said in a well-feigned loverlike tone, “The moment you agreed to let me stay here at
Hamdry, I knew what you wanted.”
Surely now she would run away?
He added, “I wanted it too. We are entirely alone. Shouldn’t we seize the moment that has been granted us?”
She turned her head and looked him full in the eyes.
Her expression was not something his study had prepared him for. Half-eager, half-frightened, wholly determined, she studied him. Her face was so close to his that he could all but taste the violet pastilles she’d taken while playing chess.
Then, in a clumsy lunge, she reached out to grasp his lapel. With a surprising strength, she pulled him nearer, leaned in, and kissed him. Her lips landed on his chin. They were soft as rose-petals.
Drawing back, she appeared to be appalled by her own brashness. Her cheeks glowed feverishly from sheer embarrassment and she ducked her head. “I’m sorry ... I don’t know...”
Dominic’s arm encircled her waist. Still acting on pure instinct, he tightened it, bringing her abruptly against his chest. Her head flew up while her hands fended him off as best she could. He had never kissed a woman before in his life, yet he aimed with both speed and accuracy. His kiss did not go awry.
Her lips were even softer than he’d thought. Warmer, too, with a sweetness that struck right into his soul. When the same odd little quiver ran through her body, it awoke a response in him. Her hands tightened on his coat as she kissed him back. New instincts came roaring into life. For the first time, he felt the desire to possess, to claim this woman for his own.
For a moment, he broke contact with her lips. Was this wrong? The pause lasted less than a heartbeat before he knew he did not care. He wanted to go on kissing her, exploring this new experience. Aware of nothing except Clarice, he tasted her lips again, trying a different pressure, a different angle, and finding it also good.
He wondered why his eyes closed naturally the moment their lips met when it would be so much more wonderful to see her lovely face. He opened them, but saw over Clarice’s shoulder the black expression of his king.
Forgall stood in front of the fireplace, his arms crossed over his chest, his head held down so that his beard bristled over his arms. His voice sounded in Dominic’s head. “Stop that immediately!”
Magic by Daylight Page 12
