by Mary Brendan
The punishing kiss he’d forced on her earlier had confirmed what she’d suspected from the first moment their eyes had collided in Hastings Upper Street: he was angry with her for a reason she could not fathom. Knowing she was innocent of deserving such treatment, it now angered her. Of the two of them she was the one entitled to claim to be the injured party over any past slights. Yet in time she had subdued her hurt over his abandonment and found a future husband in Edmund. Today, despite her shock at seeing him, she had striven to maintain a semblance of civility. So had he at first; and then, when they were alone in the parlour and his resentment and lust had got the better of him, he’d shown his true colours. The fact that afterwards he’d said he regretted doing so simply added to Deborah’s suspicion that he was striving to maintain a façade.
Earlier, she’d brought the decanter of brandy to the parlour and handed it, and him, over to her mother’s care. She knew that her mother’s genuine fright about the possibility of Luckhurst returning, and Randolph’s innate gallantry, would persuade him not to leave unfinished the task he’d promised to undertake. In order that no further friction could arise between them she’d excused herself by saying she would like to freshen her dress before dinner.
In the interim she’d had an hour or so to turn over in her mind what had occurred that day. She couldn’t deny that he’d acted as her saviour on the walk home, or that he’d promptly and willingly gone to rout Seth Luckhurst from the grounds of Woodville Place. But despite his spontaneous protectiveness she’d still not managed to shake off her sense of disquiet about his motives in turning up at all.
At eight of the clock they had taken their places at the stately yew dining table. Thankfully Lottie had had the sense to set the places reasonably close and not scatter them to the corners of the vast polished board so they must squint at each other through candle flame and converse loudly or not at all.
When Randolph eventually answered her question, so mild was his tone, and so sunk in contemplation was she that Deborah simply blinked at him with deep blue eyes.
He smiled slightly as he reminded her of her enquiry. ‘I believe you were asking whether my trip here was strictly necessary.’ Randolph’s eyes were narrowed, faintly amused. He was letting her know that he was aware she thought his motives dubious. ‘I have some sheep, but their number was severely depleted last year when the sea wall was breached and a good deal were lost in the ensuing flooding.’
Deborah stuttered a mumbled commiseration and gave her plate her attention, busying herself with spearing a potato. He, too, carried on ostensibly enjoying his meal but she knew his eyes frequently settled on her whilst he ate and slowly she became more certain he’d sensed her suspicion.
Once she’d thought she knew Randolph Chadwicke well…well enough to want to marry and spend her life with him. Now he was a stranger—a man she found intriguing, but also unnerving. The notion that he might be here in Sussex because of her made her breath catch in her throat in dizzying excitement, yet at the same time a ripple of apprehension sprinkled ice along her spine.
‘I believe I recall reading in the newspaper at the time about that natural disaster,’ Julia burst out to terminate a lengthy silence. Her eyes skipped from her daughter’s lowered profile to Randolph’s saturnine features, half-covered by a slowly revolving crystal glass.
Randolph lowered his goblet to the table and, seeing his hostess staring at him, gave her a smile.
‘How awful it must be to have one’s land and property destroyed by the sea,’ Julia carried on whilst a subtle glance begged a little assistance from her daughter.
‘The marshes about Rye have flooded several times,’ Deborah contributed. She’d understood her mother’s tacit plea to lighten the atmosphere. She also didn’t want Randolph to think that she doubted everything he’d said, or that he could intimidate her into keeping quiet. ‘The locals still talk of a bad storm some hundred years or more ago when all was washed away for miles inland. The sea wall was breached on that occasion. You can clearly see where the massive waves marked the walls of the church and that stands on quite high ground.’
‘Churches and other important buildings close to the coast were often built on manmade mounds in the hope they would escape the sea’s vengeance.’
‘Vengeance, sir?’ Debbie echoed faintly.
‘Salt marshes were once seabed. Some believe the sea will have back what man has stolen from it.’ He picked up his glass and in a swallow emptied it.
‘Shall we talk of something cheerful?’ Mrs Woodville hastily intervened, once more attuned to the tension in the air. ‘After dinner, and after you have kindly done your duty outside, sir…’ it was a reminder softened with a coy smile ‘…we could play a game of cards. Or you could sing for us, Debbie. My daughter has a fine voice and can play the pianoforte tolerably well, too—’
‘I don’t think we should impose on Mr Chadwicke’s time any longer than is necessary,’ Deborah sharply interrupted. ‘He has been delayed already and must want to return to his lodgings in Rye.’ Her mother’s next announcement made her soft lips spring apart in shock.
‘Oh, but Mr Chadwicke must stay the night.’ Julia frowned at her daughter as though chiding her for her lack of manners in not anticipating that. ‘We cannot expect our guest to travel on at such an hour. I have already asked Basham and Lottie to prepare a guest chamber.’
‘Thank you for your consideration, ma’am, but I should return to Rye this evening.’ Randolph’s voice was firm, his narrowed eyes fixed on Deborah’s stricken countenance.
‘But the villain might return in the early hours when we are asleep and murder us in our beds,’ Julia hissed, low and fearful. She hadn’t needed to give much thought to whether she’d sooner Randolph went on his way before a mention was made of his letters. She’d much rather he stayed and continued to protect them. Post from foreign lands was notoriously irregular. If he cared enough now to raise the matter, he and Deborah were sure to settle on a mundane explanation for the loss.
‘Mama, you are overwrought,’ Deborah interjected quickly. ‘We have Basham and Fred to protect us in the unlikely event that a felon should try to break in.’
‘Oh…Fred will be of no use!’ Julia flapped a hand in disgust. ‘He is in a fine old state. He has been fighting again. I saw him earlier creeping on tiptoe to the kitchens when he thought I might not spot him.’ She snorted at the memory of the youth’s derisory attempt to evade detection. ‘I asked him how he’d got such a beating. He looked sorry for himself, I can tell you. Basham sent him off upstairs with a flea in his ear, then told me what had happened. It seems the blacksmith’s daughter has been flirting with Fred although she’s walking out with another young fellow. Naturally trouble ensued from it.’ ‘It’s not Fred’s fault…’
‘It’s not the first time this has happened.’ Julia spoke fretfully over her daughter’s defence. ‘He has an eye for the girls. A few months ago he was in a brawl with another fellow over Lizzie Smith. Now he’s fighting for her again. Perhaps we should let him go before he causes real trouble.’
‘No.’ Deborah pushed away her plate quite violently over polished wood. ‘I know he had a scuffle in the village once before, but this time it was not his fault.’ Deborah’s eyes skimmed on Randolph’s and she knew they were both thinking the same thing. Basham had tried to protect his mistress and his colleague by fibbing about how Fred acquired his injuries. Unwittingly the old retainer had worsened the situation. The last thing Fred deserved was to lose his job after his heroic defence of her. ‘I know what went on and I can assure you that Fred did nothing wrong,’ Deborah announced with finality.
‘Well…even so…’ Julia’s words faded away and she looked quite taken aback by the vehemence in her daughter’s voice. A beseeching glance at Randolph preceded her next words. ‘I would be most obliged if you would stay just this one night, sir. We are women alone but for one able-bodied manservant. Basham is loyal and very willing, but he is no longer a young
man.’ Her voice quivered with anxiety and she pressed fidgeting fingers to her cheek. ‘I should hate him to be crippled in defending us.’
‘If it will ease your mind…and your daughter’s…I will remain overnight.’ Randolph’s eyes fixed deliberately on Deborah for an answer.
When Julia saw the direction of his gaze she gave her daughter a surreptitious, emphatic nod designed to hurry her response in case he changed his mind.
‘I think it unnecessary, but if you will sleep easier, Mama, I…’
‘Well, that’s settled, then,’ Julia quickly said as her daughter’s stilted agreement tailed off. ‘Ah…good—pudding is arrived.’ She pounced on the distraction of the arrival of another course.
Basham and Lottie had discreetly entered the room and begun loading the sideboard with sweet pastries, fruit and nuts and cheeses, together with dishes of creamy syllabub. Once they had unburdened their trays they approached the table and, with permission, started to take away the used crockery.
The meal was finished quite quickly. Deborah had lost her appetite; in fact, her insides had tilted on knowing that Randolph was to sleep under the same roof. But how could she deny him the offer of a bed for the night after all that he had done for them? She could hardly announce she thought he had designs on her virtue and might make a clandestine visit to her room in the early hours.
It seemed Randolph, too, had eaten his fill, for he politely declined anything else despite Julia’s insistence that he try a blackcurrant tart.
‘Perhaps a dish of syllabub,’ Julia persevered, already rising from the table to fetch it from the sideboard.
‘Thank you, but, no,’ Randolph said before his hostess was fully on her feet. ‘I have had more than enough and thank you for a fine dinner.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘If you both have no objection I shall go now and see if Basham is prepared to go on watch. I ought to call at the stables, too, to make sure that my horse is bedded down comfortably for the night. I might be gone a while.’
‘Of course, sir,’ Julia said. ‘Good of you to show such concern for our safety,’ she added humbly as though she’d never dreamed of pressurising him to do so.
As Randolph rose, bowed politely, then strolled to the door, Julia dug in to her dessert, avoiding her daughter’s fierce glare.
‘You must take some port when you return, Mr Chadwicke,’ Julia called affably. ‘It will warm you after the night air.’
‘How could you do that, Mama?’
‘Do what?’ Julia asked innocently, savouring the syllabub on her lips.
The bow of Debbie’s soft pink lips was lost to a tightly compressed line. After a moment she contained her anger well enough to splutter, ‘Do you think it was seemly to ask Mr Chadwicke to stay the night?’
‘I think it would have been unseemly not to have done so,’ Julia answered tartly. ‘The fellow has done us a very good turn in offering us his protection. You of all people should know how necessary it is to have a strong young man about the place. Have you forgotten how wicked and brutal are those Luckhursts and their cronies?’
‘Of course I have not forgotten, Mama,’ Deborah stressed in a ragged whisper. ‘Nevertheless, it was unnecessary to make Mr Chadwicke remain here overnight. He has gone for the second time in a few hours to put your mind at rest that no villain is skulking outside. Are you expecting him to be at your disposal for the duration of his stay in the area?’
‘Don’t be silly…’ Julia flushed. ‘In any case, he doesn’t mind.’
‘I think he does mind…and so do I.’
‘You are too wrapped up in yourself, miss.’ Julia made her point with a silver spoon. ‘It would do you good to think of me and my nerves once in a while.’ She pushed away her half-eaten syllabub and put a hand to her forehead. ‘The throb has started,’ she whispered weakly. ‘I shall need to lie down before I get giddy.’ A moment later she was midway to the door with a remark tossed over a shoulder. ‘Once you were friends with Mr Chadwicke. I find it hard to believe that you cannot bear to entertain him for just one evening so we might sleep easier in our beds.’
‘Where are you off to, Mama?’ Deborah threw her napkin on to glossy wood and stood up. She knew her mother suffered with migraines, but she doubted that this was a genuine malaise.
‘I am going to bed.’ Julia sighed. ‘If I take a draught I might get to sleep before I start to feel quite poorly.’ She tottered about by the door. ‘When Mr Chadwicke returns, offer him my goodnights and a nightcap of port or brandy. It is the least he deserves.’ She opened the door, then hesitated as another thought occurred to her. ‘Don’t go off too soon, Deborah, and leave the fellow twiddling his thumbs with only a decanter for company. If he gets too deep in his cups, he’ll be no good to us if the Luckhursts come back.’
Julia had remembered that as young bucks about town Randolph Chadwicke, Marcus Speer and many of their chums had had rackety reputations. Many a scandalous rumour had started over the amount of wine and women they’d got through. ‘Perhaps you might enjoy a game or two of piquet, to while away the time,’ Julia suggested.
‘Yes, of course, Mama,’ Deborah muttered beneath her breath at a closing door.
Chapter Seven
‘He won’t be back, not alone anyhow,’ Basham announced knowledgeably, raising his flare so he might take a peer about at murky shrubbery. ‘Likes o’ Seth Luckhurst don’t do fair fights. That one’ll want henchmen around him ‘fore he gets in a tough tangle. Coward, he is. Bully, too. His brother’s a bit different. More his own man, if you know what I mean. But vicious and wicked as sin the two of ‘em are, and they like to let us all know it.’ He swept a sideways look up and down Randolph’s powerful physique. His eyes returned to linger on a shadowy profile outlined against the night sky. A sliver of moon and a flickering flame had carved his visage to eerily planed angles of light and shade. It was as though the fellow hadn’t heard, nor cared, for a word he’d said about the local villains who could terrorise on a whim.
For the second time that day Basham’s nape prickled as he sensed a strange menace about this reticent gentleman, poised still and silent beside him. He was listening, he realised, like a nocturnal animal might when it’s on the prowl. ‘Seth got to meet you earlier, didn’t he, when you escorted Miss Woodville home?’
A single nod answered Basham. Randolph’s narrowed eyes remained on an impenetrable darkness that lay beyond the pool of gold in which they stood.
‘Mark my words, sir, Seth won’t be back on his own, not if he’s got it into his head to do mischief. Let’s hope he ain’t—’
‘You take the southern side and I’ll go towards the north boundary,’ Randolph interrupted Basham’s onesided dialogue. Tilting the flare so it illuminated a few yards of grass, he quit the stone-flagged terrace and set off at a stroll in the direction of the yew hedge.
* * *
So…he had been spotted trespassing earlier that afternoon, Seth Luckhurst realised as he watched the two disembodied lights gliding on opposite sides of the garden. He’d thought he’d glimpsed the widow watching him from a window and, as he’d slipped away back to the village, had heard men’s voices in the distance and wondered whether his presence had brought the stranger and some servants outside to investigate.
Seth’s fleshy lips curled as he watched the glow on his left go behind the yew hedge. If the stranger was behind that torch, Seth reckoned he’d been right about him from the start. He was just a foppish fool who thought his quarry was an idiot too. Only a dunderhead would return to loiter in the same place as before. As the crescent moon was lost to cloud he peered into blackness; both flares had disappeared and he slunk a little further behind the stout trunk of the oak on the fringe of woodland. Behind him he could hear the sound of the stream as it tumbled over rocks and rushed to feed the river.
Earlier that day, after his run in with the fellow who called himself Chadwicke, Seth had sent his cronies on their way, then turned back to lie in wait at Woodville Place. He’d h
oped Miss Woodville’s escort might drop her off at the top of the drive and give him a chance to ambush her before she entered the house. But not only had Chadwicke taken her to her door, he’d gone in with her too. Obviously they were acquainted and Seth guessed they’d met before in London. He knew a bit about Deborah Woodville’s past: that she’d been a fine lady who’d lived in a fancy house until her rich father had died.
Seth’s lust for Deborah Woodville had been steadily mounting for some years. In fact, he’d had a fancy for the uppity wench from the first time that he’d set eyes on her shopping with her mother in Hastings. They’d been new to the area and he’d made it his business to find out about her. But he’d been sensible enough to know not to interfere with a woman under the protection of an influential pillar of the local community. After Squire Woodville’s death his stepdaughter had got betrothed to a dragoon and, again, Seth knew that it would be suicidal to draw the wrath of the militia down on his own and his brother’s heads by going after her with every intention of tumbling her.
When the betrothal was announced, he had mentioned to his brother that he had a yen for the Woodville girl. His brother had then impressed on him, very painfully, that she was out of bounds and he should continue to relieve himself with the local tavern jades. Zack had also scoffed with much uproarious hilarity that Deborah Woodville was a fine lady from Mayfair and way out of his league. Seth had known that was true, but her angelic looks and haughty way simply increased his need to bring her down.
Apart from her lovely face and lush body there was another reason why Seth had an itch where Deborah Woodville was concerned: she needed to be taught a lesson. The piquancy of quenching his lust whilst simultaneously disciplining her made his loins heat and throb with anticipation. Since her fiancé, Edmund Green, had been killed, she’d been a thorn in the side of every smuggler.
