‘I’m flattered.’
‘So you should be, sir.’
‘And how is Drury Lane managing without you?’ he asked.
‘My understudy is doing her paltry best.’
He smiled. ‘She may outshine you.’
‘That drab little mouse?’ The magnificent amber eyes were scornful. ‘I’ll be welcomed back with laurels and roses. Besides, she has no talent for comedy, and the only laughs she will get are when she falls flat on her fanny.’
‘How unkind.’
‘It’s not my kindness that interests you, sir.’ She edged to the bedpost and then knelt up with her thighs provocatively apart. ‘Come over here and show your appreciation,’ she whispered, pouting her lips.
He hesitated, but it was barely noticeable. He had seldom met a woman of more earthy passions. There was nothing she was not prepared to do in the pursuit of sexual pleasure, and no male fantasy she was not prepared to indulge, but she was a difficult woman, with a ferocious temper and arrogant disregard for anything that did not fall in with her exact requirements. He enjoyed her blatant sexuality but not her character, and had recently begun to debate the wisdom of continuing a liaison that – for him – was based solely on her astonishingly varied sexual repertoire.
She pouted, and a different note entered her voice. ‘Well now, Guy Valmer, I do not leave offers on the table for more than a minute. Either you take it up, or I leave.’
He felt desire stirring. ‘Will you give me time to undress?’ he asked lightly.
She smiled then. ‘You must leave that to me, sir.’ Slipping from the bed she came over as if to link her arms around his neck and lift her lips for a kiss, but, as he bent his head to oblige, she gave a playful laugh and stepped back to begin undoing his neck cloth. ‘Oh, how I love the sound of a neck cloth being drawn from around a man’s neck,’ she breathed, pulling the muslin slowly away. ‘It’s so sensuous and full of promise.’
‘I trust I can live up to expectations.’
‘You will, my darling, you will,’ she replied, reaching down to hold the swelling at the front of his trousers. ‘My, my, what a delightfully big boy you are, my English rover. I vow my thighs are trembling already, and Puss begins to purr.’
‘I trust you and Puss intend to wait for me?’
She laughed and began to undo his waistcoat and shirt. When his chest was exposed, she leaned close, her palms flat against it, and breathed deeply of his scent. ‘You always smell so very good,’ she whispered, her lips moving against his skin and the unexpectedly dark hair across his chest.
‘One does one’s best,’ he said softly, sliding his arms around her.
She pulled away again. ‘No, not yet, not yet!’ He took his arms away having long since learned that the best way was her way. She undid the front of his trousers, and her breath escaped slowly as she touched the tip of his now rigid arousal. ‘Oh, my beautiful English rover, I simply have to worship at such a grand altar,’ she whispered, pushing his trousers down and sinking to her knees in a cloud of strawberry silk. Her hands shook as she guided him into her mouth and began to adore him with her tongue. He closed his eyes as a riot of carnal sensations spread from his groin through the rest of his body. She swayed gently, lost in enjoyment and, as she took him deeper into her mouth, her hands slid around to clasp his hips. Her fingers smoothed and explored, stroked and fondled, as if she would remould him to her own secret design, and she made little sounds of contentment as her pleasure intensified.
Guy’s desire began to mount. His erection was like a rod of hot iron, and he didn’t know how long he could withstand her ministering, but even now, when gratification was so close, a portion of his consciousness regretted what he was doing. This was just a sexual act; he didn’t love her and never had. How much better would it be if he did love her? How much more rewarding and precious? But love had always eluded him.
She drew away suddenly. ‘Now I’ll have you inside me, if you please, sir,’ she declared, thus making it plain that her own needs were all that mattered.
‘And if I refuse?’ he replied.
Her amber eyes flickered. ‘But you won’t, my English rover, because I have you in such a lather now that you’ll do whatever I ask.’
‘Then ask,’ he said.
Their eyes met, and for a moment he saw her uncertainty, but then she gave him a pouting smile. ‘Please make sweet love to me now, my dashing rover,’ she begged, holding her arms up to him almost in supplication.
He smiled, and pulled her to her feet and then scooped her into his arms to place her on the bed. She lay back with her legs spread. ‘Come to Puss, my fine tomcat,’ she invited, slipping a hand between her legs and massaging herself. ‘Make Puss happy.’
‘Would you have me be ill-mannered enough to mount you with my boots on?’
‘Yes, oh, yes, I’ve a mind to try that,’ she answered.
‘As you wish.’ Boots and all, he climbed on top of her, his virility slipping readily between her thighs to nestle against the entrance to her sexual soul. She gasped. ‘Holy Mother, Holy Mother of God.’ The irreverence was torn from her lips as he enslaved her with his devastating masculinity. He, and the voluptuous pleasure he gave her, was everything in her world. This was why she had followed him, why she ached for him, couldn’t stop thinking about him; could never have enough of him.
Guy knew so well how to give her the utmost delight, and without penetrating her, slid the moist tip of his erection against her most private and sensitive flesh. She squirmed and moaned as exquisite sensations melted through her. At last, slowly and commandingly, he pushed inside her, burying himself as deeply as he could before lying perfectly still. His size stretched her, and took her to new heights of rapture. She was almost beyond reason, her muscles tightening convulsively around him, her fingernails digging savagely into his back through his shirt and waistcoat as she writhed, almost mad with gratification. His own control still strong, he moved a little inside her and was immediately rewarded by her almost delirious joy. Suddenly she reached the point of no return, and displayed the ferocious sexual aggression of a tigress. Ripping and clawing, biting and kissing, she ground herself on him in an orgasmic passion that transcended what had gone before. ‘Puss is going to have your soul, your very soul,’ she gasped, working her body on his erection as if she would fuse with it forever. No mortal man could have withstood such an onslaught for long. He began to drive in and out of her, and she cried out with each thrust. When he came she screamed an oath worthy of Billingsgate, her body twitching uncontrollably as she shared the climax. Her legs and arms were wrapped around him, and she held him close until the spasms had finally died away, and then she sank back on the bed, exhausted. He bent his head to kiss her nipple, but her senses were so keen and vibrant that she couldn’t bear to be touched. ‘No, please! It’s too much. Too much.’ Her body quivered, and she closed her eyes. ‘You’re opium, and have made an addict of me.’
He rolled on to his back. ‘And you’ve almost skinned me,’ he murmured, relieved he hadn’t undressed after all.
She turned to lean over him, her flaxen hair spilling warmly over his shoulder. ‘I make no bones about having had many lovers. I may be a good Catholic girl, but still confess my appetites every week. I know what a man can or cannot do for me. You are one apart, my English rover, the only one who gives me such ravishment that afterward I cannot bear to be even breathed upon, let alone touched. It’s an exquisite sensation, for which I thank you.’ She kissed him on the lips, and her tongue explored his mouth before withdrawing. Then she turned away from him, snuggled down, and went to sleep.
Guy was used to her ways, and got up to straighten his clothes and then pour a glass of Madeira. He had various letters to write, concerning affairs on his estates, and when Maria awakened, he intended to send her on her way. He hadn’t wanted her to follow him, but now that she had, and he’d obliged her with what she wanted, he wished her back at Drury Lane as swiftly as possible.
/> He’d attended to three letters before she stirred, and he set his pen aside cautiously. In recent weeks her moods had swung arbitrarily between loving and loathing. The adoring Puss who went to sleep could as likely be a rabid cat on awakening, so he was seriously considering ending the liaison. He wanted many things from a woman, but not caprices so wilful as to seem unhinged, so he watched as she sat up and pushed her hair back from her face. The strawberry wrap had fallen revealingly from her shoulders. Her nipples were soft now, and her languid movements told him she was still sated, and yet she had an edginess he knew presaged another outburst. Rising from the bed, she pulled the wrap tightly around herself, as if suspecting him of ogling her as she slept. ‘Do you intend to make an honest woman of me?’ she asked suddenly.
He wasn’t about to indulge her. ‘You know that’s impossible,’ he replied bluntly.
‘So, I’m good enough to shag witless, but not to wear your ring?’
‘You’re being unreasonable, Maria, because you already have a husband. You married the theatre manager who contracted you in Dublin, then left him to make your fortune in London. You are Mrs Ambrose Malone, and that is that.’
She turned away distractedly and began to pace up and down, her robe hissing over the wooden floor. ‘But if you could marry me, you would?’ she said then. When he shook his head, her breath snatched and her lips curled back. ‘You slavering, misbegotten English hellhound!’ she breathed.
He rose slowly from the desk. ‘Maria, if your Catholic conscience is such a torment, I suggest you confess to a priest.’
‘My conscience?’ she cried.
‘What else? You come to me like a bitch in heat, get what you want to feed your hunger, and then wake up with guilt weighing so heavily that you behave like this to make yourself feel better. Well, enough. Dealing with you is like dealing with a madwoman!’
‘Yours is the conscience being salved, Guy Valmer! You’ve been callously using me, and what’s left of the gentleman in you rebels at your cruelty.’ Her stiff demeanour and air of wounded pride were so ridiculous that he was amazed she didn’t know it herself, but she appeared to believe herself to have been gravely insulted.
‘View it in that light if you wish, Maria, it’s immaterial to me. Our recent encounters have almost always ended this way, and I want no more.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’d rather I just went away. You bring me here, use me, and—’
‘You came of your own volition. Do stop this idiocy, Maria.’
‘Idiocy? So that’s what you think of my injured character?’ She stalked to the screen in the corner and disappeared behind it. He could hear her dressing furiously, and then she reappeared in a rose-and-grey striped lawn gown and grey silk pelisse, her golden hair swept up beneath a silk bonnet. ‘Good day to you. I will send for my luggage.’
‘Goodbye, Maria.’ Her steps faltered, but then she raised her chin again and swept out, leaving the door wide behind her. Guy breathed out with relief. He didn’t know what was wrong with her, and had tried to be patient and understanding, but it had got him nowhere. He’d come to believe that the kinder he was, the worse she became. Now it was no longer going to be his problem.
Chapter Six
That evening, having been to the George and Dragon, where Matty and Johnno introduced him to a host of village folk, all of them friendly and welcoming, Jake leaned against the forge entrance. His coat was tossed over his left shoulder as he looked across the village green at the lights beginning to twinkle in Squire Lloyd’s grand house. Sweet perfume filled the air from the white roses and honeysuckle climbing through the apple tree next to the forge, and everything was quiet, save for the squabbling of the ducks on the pond. There was no drunken brawling, no constant traffic, no shouting and street cries, no swaggering whores and no jangle of different bells. Just peace. Except for the darned cockerels. He smiled wryly. He and Rozzie had left one behind, and come here to find thirty-one! Every darned cottage had fowls, with a strutting cock to lord it over them. Come dawn it would be well nigh bedlam! Well, he could put up with that for the sheer pleasure of being out in the country at last. From his attic window he didn’t look out on dirty alleys and the dock basin, but on green fields and the embankment along which the canal was to pass. And beyond that he could even see the wild estuary, where the hazardous Severn tides reversed the flow of the river.
He looked up at the stars glittering in the deep ruby that remained of the sunset. Never had he seen such a heavenly pageant as tonight’s dying sun. Such wondrous colours and patterns, painted upon a sky so clear that he felt he might reach up and pluck some of the stars. Frampney was living up to his dreams, but one thing jarred his contentment, and perhaps it was the greatest thing of all: he’d lost Beth. A nerve twitched at his temple as he blinked back the tears that had seldom been far away all day. A grown man, reduced to helplessness by love.
He watched a fine carriage drive slowly around the green, expecting it to turn into the squire’s driveway, but instead it passed by and came steadily toward the forge. He straightened as it halted by him. The liveried coachman addressed him. ‘Would you be Jake Mannacott?’
‘Who wants to know?’ Jake asked uneasily, not for the first time wondering exactly where and how Beth had got the twenty guineas.
Another voice answered. ‘Sir Guy Valmer wishes to know.’ The carriage door opened and a fashionable gentleman climbed down.
Jake sharpened. The gent who’d found Beth when she fainted? What could he want? Beth said he didn’t know her.
Guy glanced curiously over the handsome smith, of whose existence he only knew because of Weasel’s diligence. Weasel also learned that Jake and his daughter had suddenly left Gloucester with enough money to buy into a prosperous village smithy. ‘Mannacott, enquiries have led me to believe you may know something of Elizabeth Tremoille’s present whereabouts,’ he said, flicking the lace at his cuff.
It was the money. Jake thought, fearing his new life was about to be snatched away before it had begun. ‘Elizabeth who?’
‘Oh, come now, let’s not play childish games. I’m talking about the woman you’ve lived with for the past year. I know she was your mistress.’
‘All right, I lived with Beth. But why do you want her?’
Ignoring the question, Guy went into the shed, looking around at the array of tools and at the fire that still glowed red-hot. ‘My finding her can only be to her benefit, I do assure you.’
‘I don’t know where she is.’ Jake followed him in.
‘I understand you came here to purchase a partnership, and obviously you’ve succeeded. Where did you get the money?’
Jake felt cold. ‘I saved it.’
‘Twenty pounds? Allow me more intelligence than that! Beth gave it to you, didn’t she?’ Jake said nothing, and Guy picked up a poker that lay with its tip in the heart of the fire. As he examined it, the glow reflected in his compelling grey eyes. ‘Beth gave it to you, didn’t she?’ he said again.
‘I’m not saying anything to you, Sir Guy.’
‘For fear of incriminating her?’
‘I wouldn’t know what you mean.’
Guy gazed steadily at him and saw that Jake genuinely didn’t know where the money came from. ‘Look, I mean her no harm, I just want to find her.’
‘I don’t know where she is, Sir Guy, if I did, I’d—’
‘You’d what?’ Guy watched the emotion on the other’s face.
‘I’d try to get her back! That amuses you, doesn’t it? The thought that a man like me would even hope she’d come back to him? Well, I hope, because I worship that woman more than anything else on God’s earth. But I’ve lost her.’ Jake turned his head away quickly, knowing that his love was too naked, too painful.
Guy put the poker down. ‘It doesn’t amuse me in the least. True love should never be mocked. So, you don’t know where she could have gone, but she did give you the money?’
‘That’s my business, Sir Guy.’
So she had. Guy tugged his hat low over his forehead. Pieces of the puzzle had begun to slip almost mockingly into place. Why couldn’t he have realized earlier that the reason Bessie Alder looked so familiar was her strong resemblance to the portrait of Beth Tremoille at Tremoille House? Now, too late, he understood why the cook’s starving niece spoke so well and understood the finer points of German wine. He’d had his prey in his grasp! A nerve fluttered at his temple and his lips pressed together. What had happened on that common? She’d definitely stolen her stepmother’s money, but had she murdered as well? And where had she gone with the 980 guineas she’d kept for herself? London, of course. He returned to the carriage. ‘Back to the Crown, Dickon. We’ll leave for Town at first light,’ he said, as he slammed the door.
Midnight struck as the Cheltenham Rocket arrived in the capital, and entered the huge yard of the important coaching inn, the Swan with Two Necks. It stood on the north side of Lad Lane in the City, and was noisy with travellers, vendors, ostlers, dogs, ticket office bells and horses. There was such a crush of coaches, carriers’ wagons and post chaises, to say nothing of piles of luggage, that it was some time before the Rocket’s weary team could finally be manoeuvred to a safe place to discharge its passengers. The last part of the journey had been accomplished at a snail’s pace because the capital was ringing with word of a great victory for Wellington at somewhere called Waterloo, near Brussels. Crowds were out in the streets, most of them delirious with delight and singing ‘Rule Britannia’. But there was dissent too, from those who feared the price of peace, and the Rocket had passed several disturbances that reminded Beth of Cathedral Lane, with hooded groups breaking windows and chanting ‘No starvation! No landlords!’
As Beth and the nervous young couple climbed down, the coachman slid from his perch. ‘I brought you safe and well, sir, ladies,’ he said, extending his hand hopefully. It was the custom to tip drivers, so he was rewarded. The portly, balding innkeeper, Mr Waterhouse, a famous man in the coaching world, emerged from the taproom, wiping his damp hands on his apron as a troop of cavalry clattered past in Lad Lane. The young husband called out to him. ‘Sir, has there really been a great victory?’
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