by Sophia James
Brown. That was a word she might use to describe herself. Plain was another. She had not learned the art of flirting or dancing or conversing with a man as though everything he said was right and true and exact. Others here had that knack, she had watched them. The quiet flick of a fan and the twirling of an errant curl; the breathless looks that would reel a man in to produce the long sought-after offer of a hand in marriage.
Like a game. How often had Eloise or Jean told her of this and underlined the consequences marriage wrought on a woman’s independence and pathway in life.
Kenneth Davis, the third-born son of Sir Nigel Davis, a squire on a neighbouring property, had then brought every warning to life. Adelaide shook her head, her eyes in the mirror darkening. She would try not to think of him.
It wasn’t running away, she said to herself. No, rather it was protecting her uncle and her cousin and the name of Penbury from a man who had clearly taken her offer of friendship and changed it into something that was different.
She hadn’t told a soul other than her aunt Eloise about their exchange, either, preferring instead to sink back into the sanctuary of Northbridge and to the comforting other world of solitude. But sometimes at night when the moon was full and the land was covered in bright shadow she remembered.
She had been sixteen years old when she met Kenneth Davis behind the stables at midnight, creeping from her room with all the delight of one who expected compliments and perhaps a kiss. Small and trifling objects of his affection and regard.
The man who had met her was not the one she had known in the daytime, and when he had pulled at her gown and ripped it to her waist in one single dreadful movement, she was so frozen in shock that she could not even fight back.
Until his teeth bit at her nipples and his free hand seized the softer flesh beneath her skirt, his touch as unexpected and painful as the one at her breast. When she had tried to scream for help he had placed his hand across her mouth and pressed down hard.
‘No more pretending, my sweetling. I have courted you for three whole months in all the small ways, but the real pleasure is here and now, in the dark.’ His fingers came between her thighs, sharp and prodding, and the wine on his breath was strong as he swore.
He was drunk.
Drunk and dangerous and different.
In earnest she began to struggle, her knee coming up in the way Bertie had shown her, angled hard and direct to the groin. Kenneth Davis had fallen as if by magic, his mouth open, his breeches grotesquely arranged around his ankles so that the skin of his naked round bottom was pale in the moonlight.
Then she had run, with her tattered bodice, aching breasts and ruin, the stupidity of what she had allowed him beating against her reason. Tears could wait until she had once again gained the safety of her room and locked the door behind her.
Once there she had simply collapsed against the solidness of the wood, her legs like jelly as shock brought on a shaking and she had thoroughly gone to pieces.
She had made a mistake that was monumental and prodigious and far reaching in its consequences. Would Kenneth Davis tell anyone? Was she ravaged? Would she now have to marry a man she hated to the very last fibre of her being? What would her uncle say or her aunts?
This edge of horror was now the truth of her life as the scratches on her right breast throbbed in pain, burning as the night-time faded into dawn.
Aunt Eloise had found her in the morning, cold and stiff, and she had bathed her and dressed her and counselled silence.
‘There is no way that you can win a war such as this one, Addie,’ she had crooned as she pulled back the blankets and put her to bed. ‘This is a truth women of all the ages have known.’
And so nothing had been said and life had regained its patterns and gone on.
In a different way for her, though. Fright filled the cracks of silence and Adelaide made certain that she was never far from her two old aunts. Nightmares replaced dreams, too, and for a good year afterwards she had barely slept.
Then Eloise and Jean had begun to teach her the art of healing, and in the elixirs and tinctures and ointments she had regained a peace long missing and a sense of herself that she had thought was lost.
Aye, in her reflection sometimes she still saw it, that terror and panic, but mostly now it was hidden under calm and manners, only a small ripple of a previous disquiet and seldom on show. Kenneth Davis himself had left summarily on an extended sojourn to Europe. She often wondered if his father had known something of his son’s propensity for damage and drunkenness and had exiled him.
Almost eight years ago now, she whispered to herself. A day, a week, a month, a year. She had written down the passage of time as a list in her diaries, counting days and taking comfort from the distance and number as each year marched on. But she had never truly forgotten the horror and her uncle and cousin were the only men she allowed herself ever to be alone with.
But who was she now, she wondered, her eyes meeting the reflection in the silvered glass. Did a lack of trust hold one prisoner for ever, locked into celibacy and destined for spinsterhood?
‘Please,’ she whispered and then stopped. What was it she was asking for? The curl of hope turned inside darkness, like a frond of some fern in a deep and far-off forest. Nascent. Plump. Moving against shadow. Unfurling against Gabriel Hughes.
Because of his humour and kindness and beauty. His hands around her waist as he had helped her from the horse, his wariness in the library when she had asked him why he was reading a botanical, his lazy drawl as he had taken the pulse at George Friar’s neck and commented on his appalling clothing.
She smiled. She would meet him again tomorrow in the park. At two. Her uncle had been surprisingly acquiescent. She had brought riding outfits down from Northbridge and, crossing the room, she opened the cupboard to bring them out across the bed.
Taking the shirt from one, she added it to the jacket of another. Finding a pin of bright red rubies, she placed it across the frothy collar. With her riding skirt this would look well upon her. She wondered if the hat she chose was not too...formal, but added it anyway as she had always liked the dark blue of the velvet.
Her fingers brushed up against the grain, the lush fabric a present from her uncle a year or so before. Her father’s brother was a good man and he meant well. He would stay true to his word of allowing her home after the twelve weeks of Season, but just for a moment she wondered what might come to pass in the time left of her London stay. Gabriel Hughes’s heartbreaking smile flashed into her memory.
* * *
Adelaide Ashfield’s hands tightened on the leather reins with such a force that all her knuckles turned white.
‘Fear looks like that, Miss Ashfield.’ Gabriel pointed to the stiffness in her fingers. ‘Demeter will know you tremble through the leather and it’ll worry her.’ Reaching up, he released the reins. ‘Just grip like this and let the leather run over the top. See? Then cup them so that there is space to move.’
‘She won’t pull away?’
‘Try it.’
‘Now?’
‘I am here beside you. Walk around the pathway and if she becomes fidgety I will stop her.’
She nodded, though Gabriel could see her composure was taking some effort.
‘After the other day, riding a horse does not feel as safe as it should.’
‘The steed you nearly fell from was largely untrained. Does your uncle have no idea of an animal’s temperament or of your ability to manage one?’
‘Well, he rides sometimes, but, no, I suppose there is not much need for expertise at Northbridge because we seldom venture out further than the village.’
As the mount began to move she took in a hard breath.
‘This isn’t the small and docile steed I had imagined you might pick for me, Lord Wesley. Did you get her at
Coles?’
‘No, she’s mine.’
‘Oh. No wonder she is so beautiful, then.’
He began to laugh. ‘You think I only keep attractive horses in my stable?’
‘Well, rumour has it you are a man of good taste...in whatever you try.’
‘The titter-tattle of the ton in play, no doubt. Wait till you hear what else is said of me. Ahh, but I can see from your face that you have. Bear it in mind that my reputation is one magnified by the interest in it and if I had slept with every woman I am said to have I’d have barely been out of bed. These days I am far more circumspect.’
She looked at him directly then, censure in the water-marked blue. ‘Brothels are not more circumspect, my lord, in anyone’s language.’
A thread of irritation surfaced. ‘The tongues of those with little to recommend them save gossip are seldom still. If you could take it on yourself to disbelieve at least half of what is said of me, the picture might be a truer one.’
‘An angel, then? The personification of your name?’ Her irony was harsh.
‘Hardly that. Were I to proffer an excuse at all it would probably be a lack of paternal guidance. My father was a violent drunk.’
‘Well, at least you had one. Mine was killed when I was not yet four years old.’
‘Touché, Miss Ashfield. Has anyone ever told you that you are beautiful when you are angry?’
The wash of red caught him by surprise. Her blush was intense and unsettling and wide eyes stood out amidst it.
‘No, of course not. And they would be lying if they did. I am not beautiful, Lord Wesley, not in the way the ton defines beauty and I have no wish to be. Passable is all that I aim for. And interesting,’ she added, her top teeth worrying her bottom lip after she had said it.
Despite meaning not to his hand reached out for the arm nearest to him and he laid his fingers across hers. ‘If you think I was lying, then you have no knowledge of me at all, Miss Ashfield.’
The park around them dissolved into empty space and without warning a feeling that Gabriel had long since thought dead, rose. It was so unexpected that the world disappeared into whiteness, the dizzying bout of relief making him sway, an unusual heat creeping into the very bones of emotion and wringing out the bitterness.
‘God.’ The breath was knocked out of his body in shock and confusion.
Adelaide Ashfield was off her horse in a second, a dismount that was as rapid and competent as any he had ever seen.
‘Are you well, Lord Wesley?’
He held his fists so tightly curled that they hurt.
‘I...am.’ Fighting to get the words out, he closed his eyes. Not panic now, but sheer and utter relief. If he could feel like this once, then it stood to reason he could do so again. He swallowed back a thickness and took in air, reaching for the return of that he had imagined never to know again.
‘If you describe your symptoms to me, I am more than certain I could find something to help you?’
The laughter in his throat warred with a heady disbelief and that in turn was swallowed by a certain and horrifying realisation.
She had no idea what she was doing to him, this unusual and tall country miss with her ocean-blue eyes and honesty. Already she was digging into the pocket of her skirt to bring forth a twist of powder that was the colour of mud.
‘I had this on hand for myself, my lord. Lightheadedness comes from fear, you see, and I imagined I may have had need for it. But you...?’
He shook his head, not wishing for any medicine that might eliminate the effect of warm blood on his masculinity. ‘Perhaps we might...postpone this riding...lesson, then, until another day...Miss Ashfield.’ Sweat had begun to build above his top lip and temples.
‘You are too overheated?’ Her face looked aghast.
‘Just...breathless.’ Each word took effort, and, gesturing to the maid who sat on a bench twenty feet from them, he moved back, the reins of his horses in his hands held as tightly as he had been instructing her not to.
And then he was off his horse, walking, striding towards the park gate and glad that the pathway out of the gardens was clear.
Once through them, he stopped. What the hell had just happened? He wanted to go back and try again, take her hand and see if perhaps the feeling might grow and blossom into the hope of more. A proper erection. The return of his libido. But he couldn’t. Cowardice had a certain all-consuming feel to it and if it was an illusion, then...? He shook his head and mounted his horse for home.
* * *
Adelaide watched him go, her brow knitted in worry. She hadn’t a clue as to what was wrong with Lord Wesley, but the colour had flooded from his face as if sudden pain had consumed him and he had swayed so markedly she had thought he would faint.
If Aunt Eloise and Aunt Jean were here they would have probably known his troubles exactly, but they were long gone.
Milly stood watching him, too, puzzlement on her face. ‘Perhaps his lordship is still hurt from the incident with the horse in the park the other day, ma’am, and is not telling us.’
Or he is truly sick, she thought, her worry growing. The botanical she had seen him reading in Lackington’s was a sign of something not being right and his symptoms here underlined that fact.
She had enough experience to also know some men loathed discussing any ailment they suffered with a woman, and the knowledge that she was not a trained healer would be a further deterrent. Still, a small sense of sorrow stirred in such a lack of trust.
‘Say nothing of this to my uncle, Milly. I am certain once the earl is feeling better we can continue the lessons.’
Chapter Seven
Once home Gabriel helped himself to a stiff brandy and sat down to mull over his afternoon.
He had felt something there in the parts of him that had been numb and dead for a full six months. He could barely believe it. Was he cured? Was this the beginning of a healing he had been so certain was beyond hope?
It had begun the moment he had laid his fingers down across hers and felt an answering tug that had been soft and gentle. Unexpected. Impossibly real. Not the full-blown nakedness of practised courtesans or the come-hither sexual play of a country whore. Just a gentle quiet gesture in the middle of a busy park.
He closed his eyes and breathed in hard.
How was that even possible?
A knock on the door had him standing as his butler announced there was a visitor. Not just any visitor, either, but Mrs Cressida Murray and newly returned from the north. Cressie and he had once been lovers before she had left for Yorkshire and a marriage with a local landowner of some note.
Her face, as she came into the room, was as beautiful as he remembered it to be, though her eyes were somewhat reddened. ‘I am sorry to bother you, Wesley, but I had no one else that I could turn to and I need help.’
She removed her coat when he failed to reply and her breasts almost sprang from the very low neckline of a deep red day dress. Then she flung herself into his arms and kissed him full on the lips.
Nothing. He felt nothing. His stomach did not turn with the sickness and his heart failed to pound with the closeness. A new development, this. A further difference in the reactions of his body. Today was one of such constant surprise he could barely keep up.
‘It is so very good to see you again, Gabriel.’
Smiling through unease, he extricated himself from her grasp and turned to pour them both a drink. The strong brandy made him feel less edgy.
With the intimacy of Cressida Murray’s kiss, and after his encounter with Adelaide Ashfield, he might have expected some warming, but there had been none. Another problem. A further disquiet? One moment hot and the next cold and no middle ground where compromise could result in a cure? Shaking away the thought, he made himself concentrate on what his unexpecte
d visitor was saying.
‘I have come because I need a partner for the Whitely ball and I want him to be you.’
‘Why?’
‘My husband has cheated on me and I have reached the conclusion that if he wants to play at this game then he needs to know I can, too.’ Her voice wobbled as she went on. ‘I think he needs to know that I am a beautiful woman whom he is lucky to be married to, a woman whom he should not leave alone up in the wilds of Yorkshire whilst he cavorts with others here.’
There was something in her voice that held Gabriel’s attention, some quiet and vulnerable honesty. After his shock today he was more in tune with the nuances in others. He waited as she went on.
‘I love him. For his good points and his bad, but this...dalliance in London needs to stop. He needs to come home to Yorkshire and give our marriage a chance again.’
Without warning Cressida went to pieces, her tears and sobs filling the room. With trepidation Gabriel moved forward to hold her, till the storm had passed and she had quietened, pleased again when her closeness did not seem to affect him in the slightest. After a good few moments she looked up at him through tear-filled eyes.
‘You were always the sort of man that women truly liked, Gabriel, and not only for the way you look. Gavin and I are...having problems and I could not think of anyone else to come to for help without it being all over town come the morning. I need a companion who is attentive and well regarded by the ladies. One who might make my husband jealous without expecting anything in return.’
‘So you want me to...?’ He stopped, leaving the question in the air.
‘Flirt with me at the Whitely ball and dance at least twice with me.’
He began to laugh. ‘And will I be called out at dawn by this husband of yours because of it?’
‘Oh, if he did do that it would be wonderful, but I wouldn’t like you to shoot him or anything.’
Gabriel had to smile at her convoluted reasoning. ‘He’s a big man, if I recall...’
‘But clumsy with it.’
