Star-Crossed Summer

by Sarah Stanley

  ‘To us.’

  Their eyes met again, and she smiled. It was a signal and she knew it, but she had already slipped beyond the point of no return. Let fate take its course. As she sipped the wine, he dragged the hamper close and opened it. Suddenly she found herself back in Guy’s carriage again. The illusion was gone in a moment, but not before she’d heard his voice. Eat, I beg you, for I cannot bear the thought of your hunger.

  The cook at the hall had prepared an excellent picnic of ham, salad and some slices of pork pie, to be followed by fresh apricot tart. There was also a selection of delicious fruit, including a pineapple from the hall’s pinery. They applied themselves to the picnic, talking idly of this and that, and then Landry poured their second glass of wine. ‘Well, you know my shocking past, Beth,’ he observed, leaning back again, ‘but I know nothing of yours, not even where you lived before coming to the Dower House.’ He smiled. ‘I want to know all about you, you see.’

  ‘I came originally from Gloucestershire.’

  ‘I know the county a little. Where in particular?’

  ‘Nowhere in particular, various places,’ she replied vaguely, and then headed him off. ‘How much are you asking for Snowy?’

  He smiled at the change of subject. ‘Keep him for a while, and we’ll discuss prices later if he pleases you.’ He sipped the wine and studied the view for a moment before looking at her again. ‘Beth, something must be fixed for you to meet local society. Believe me, they’ll be as curious about you as you must be about them.’

  Her vulnerability returned. ‘I’d rather not. I don’t care for the social whirl.’

  ‘We don’t whirl hereabouts,’ he said with a grin, ‘rather do we turn a little now and then, and that with rustic simplicity.’

  She had to laugh. ‘What a picture you paint.’

  ‘Beth, if you don’t appear in society, it will be talked of.’

  ‘I know.’ She sighed.

  ‘You’re not alone; you have me, and Harriet will be to hand as well.’

  ‘There’ll certainly be talk if you escort me,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Then I will see to it that you are chaperoned by Harriet and her father. Nothing could be more proper than that.’ His gaze was lazy upon her. ‘You fobbed me off earlier when I asked about Gloucestershire, but I refuse to be left in complete ignorance. Beth, you must at least tell me something about yourself.’

  ‘There is nothing to tell.’ There’s nothing I dare tell.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘That cannot be so. Forgive me, Beth, but I’m consumed with uncertainty. You assured me you have no husband, but is there is someone else?’

  ‘No, there isn’t.’

  ‘But there has been?’ he pressed.

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Beth, you are a beautiful woman, and, forgive me again, you are at ease in male company in a way that tells me you’ve been admitted to the great secret.’

  ‘Secret?’

  ‘You’ve made love. You still have an innocence, Beth, a delightful air of not yet having been brought to full life by shared passion, but you are no longer a virgin either.’

  Colour suffused her cheeks. How well he described her, she thought, astonished that he’d perceived so much. ‘Will you think less of me if I admit it to be so?’ she asked, almost wishing he would recoil, and give her a reason to depart in high dudgeon and thus save herself from her desires.

  ‘So there has been someone?’ he pressed.

  ‘Yes.’ Jake smiled in her memory, but Guy could not be denied either.

  ‘Does he still matter to you?’

  She shook her head dishonestly. ‘It’s all in the past.’

  ‘Is that the truth?’

  ‘Were you truthful when you said you no longer visit Carrie Markham?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes. And I know you do the same.’ He set his glass aside, and then leaned across the hamper to take hers as well. When both were safely propped on the grass, he pushed the hamper away and pulled her down on to the mossy ground. Still holding her hands, he leaned over her. ‘Look at me, Beth.’ She obeyed, tingles of pleasure dancing through her as his thumbs caressed her palms. ‘I don’t care what is in your past,’ he said, ‘provided there is no one who can return to your life and take you from me.’

  ‘There isn’t anyone,’ she insisted.

  ‘If you wish me to stop now, you have only to say,’ he whispered, gathering her gently to him.

  Stop? No, she wanted to plunge over the precipice into carnal bliss. A heady blend of excitement and apprehension consumed her, and her flesh and senses thrilled almost unbearably as she raised her parted lips. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her long and slow. His mouth was strong and yet pliant, commanding and yet teasing, and moved richly to and fro over hers. Her skin quivered as his thumbs caressed, persuaded and tempted her with sexual promise and, as she felt control slipping away from her, she made no effort to call it back. She wanted desire to carry her away with utter and complete gratification, so she returned his kiss with a fire that seemed to burn white-hot within her. The taste of his mouth was ambrosia, the food of the gods, and his body was strong and vibrant. He smelled of the moors and the ocean, of heather and the onshore breeze, and tasted as sweet and fresh as sun-warmed strawberries. She exulted in his weight and hard contours pressing against her, and remembered rhythms returned as she undulated erotically against his arousal. He wanted her as much as she wanted him, and the knowledge intensified her craving. She felt wild and uninhibited, an untamed she-creature that must mate at the height of the sun or the full of the moon. The stone circles in the valley behind them seemed to whisper to her, urging her on, denying her the wit or will to call a halt to what was happening. Her pent-up sexual craving now found release in a savage coupling that was the swiftest route to ecstasy.

  Landry’s ardour was spurred on by the intensity of her response. She neither gave him the chance to be gentle nor invited such consideration. If he was shocked by the eager fury of her lovemaking, he gave no sign. He matched her kiss for kiss, intimate caress for intimate caress, fumbling with her jacket buttons in order to reach the soft mounds of breasts that waited to be freed so that he could draw her hardened nipples into his mouth. She shivered as delicious sensations quivered through her, and her body stretched up beneath him. Her hands roamed over his back. How strong and warm he was through the rich silk of his shirt, and how exciting. Then her hands moved down his back, and for a moment she held his buttocks, pulling his hips against her. Shivers of joy scattered over her as she felt the urgent outline of his masculinity, hard and potent, kept from her only by the few layers of their clothes. How soon it would be released now, and at last she would feel the most vital part of a man within her. She kissed his hair as he nuzzled her breasts. He raised his head and kissed her on the mouth. His face was flushed, his eyes dark with desire, and his hair dishevelled by her caresses. He was ready to take her, his excitement such that it strained the front of his breeches to a peak. He rolled aside to undo the falls, but her impatience was too great and she did it for him, in order to fondle him before he entered her. His erect member sprang out the moment the breeches were undone, and she groaned with delight at its hardness. He was so ready for her that he might explode at any moment. As she smoothed her palm over the tip, he gasped and rolled to straddle her again. Her thighs parted eagerly, and her riding habit skirt opened as if designed for just this. Slowly he lowered himself between her legs, and electric sensations engulfed her as she felt him at the entrance to her body. He slid forward, pushing in until he filled her completely. Rapture overwhelmed her, and she sucked in her breath to prolong the moment. This was what she wanted so much, what she needed so much. Ever since that last time with Jake, she had become prey to these yearnings. Now she wanted to cry and laugh at the same time, but most of all she wanted him to raise her to the heights of utter elation. But it was Guy who held her. Reality disappeared, and she was dreaming once more. With Guy. Guy.


  She was a wild being again, writhing beneath him, clenching him within her, sucking and nibbling whatever part of him she could reach. His strokes were long and deliberate, but he thrust harder and harder as all control left them both. He drove himself in with a force that shook them. She clawed his back, squirming against him, kissing his throat, his neck and his shoulder. Torrents of ravishment began to flood through her, melting her flesh and burning her soul. She could feel him coming too, and as they became weightless she almost cried out Guy’s name. They clung together as they rode the tide, and when the waves washed them ashore, they lay together as the pounding of their united hearts gradually subsided.

  I’ll find you again, Beth Tremoille, I’ll find you! Guy’s voice spoke within her, like a distant church bell through an autumn mist, and with it came not only guilt that she had used Landry to quench the power of her desire for Guy, but that she had done so with such animal abandonment. She hadn’t merely surrendered to Landry’s advances, she’d been so ferocious, intense and unstoppable that she’d displayed all the talents of a whore. Where now Miss Mannacott, lady tenant of the Dower House?

  Landry drew out of her, and rolled on to his back. He smiled and reached for her hand. ‘Beth, I didn’t know a woman could be so—’

  ‘Depraved?’ she finished for him. Her face was now branded with mortification. How could she have been so licentious? So utterly unprincipled and immoral? What did he really think now? How could he possibly respect a woman who behaved as she had? One kiss and she had become a wanton slut.

  ‘No, Beth, not depraved,’ he answered, his fingers tightening over hers, but she pulled her hand away and scrambled to her feet. She was shaking so much she could barely button up her jacket, but somehow she managed. ‘Beth, for pity’s sake!’ Realizing she was going to flee, he got up as well, pushing himself back into his breeches and trying to straighten his clothes.

  She hesitated agitatedly, the tears now wet on her cheeks. ‘I’ve just allowed myself to behave so appallingly that I cannot even look you in the eyes.’

  ‘Please, Beth, there is no need for this.’

  ‘There is every need if I am ever to hold my head up again.’ She retrieved her hat and pinned it back into place on her untidy but still netted curls.

  ‘Please don’t run away,’ he begged, but she started to make her way out of the little hollow. She was silhouetted briefly against the sky, and then had gone. Landry breathed in deeply, and then exhaled, trying to collect his thoughts. ‘Oh, Beth,’ he whispered. All he’d been trying to say was that he hadn’t realized a woman could enjoy the sexual act to such a degree. He had just experienced the most magnificent lovemaking of his life. Her eagerness had released something in him, and the satisfaction was such that it had been like his first time. Perhaps it was his first time; everything that had gone before was a sorry imitation of what he had with Beth Mannacott. She had electrified his life, transformed it, set him so by the ears that he hardly knew himself. But it was already finished.

  His glance fell on the antler, which was still propped against the rock. Luck? With a curse he hurled it over the cliff into the sea far below.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As Beth fled in shame, her stepmother was no happier. Jane’s marriage to Thomas had already turned sour because he’d cast off his cloak and she finally saw him for the irredeemable maggot he really was. The scales had fallen from her eyes at last. Too late, of course, because she would lose everything if she left him now. All she could do was contemplate how sweet it would be to turn back the clock, never have donned her wedding clothes, never driven to Gloucester Cathedral and certainly never uttered those imprisoning vows before the altar. Now she was jailed in her own house, and her guard was an embittered, drunken pig who had legal possession of all that was hers, and felt free to treat her with cruelty and contempt. Beth would laugh at such poetic justice.

  Jane sat in a window seat, trying to enjoy the afternoon sunshine. A volume of Lesage’s Gil Blas lay open on her lap, but she wasn’t reading. The August day was hot and hazy, and everything down in the vale shimmered like a mirage. How breathless it would be down there. Jake Mannacott crossed her mind. The Lord help him if he was in the forge on a day like this. Even up here on the hills it was stifling. With luck there would soon be a storm to freshen the air. What a strange summer this had been, sometimes so cold and wet it was like March, sometimes so humid as to be unbearable. And there were the astonishing sunsets and sunrises.

  Her mind moved back to her unhappy situation. She had soon learned how real was Thomas’s fear of water, because he had insisted on quitting Whitend to come up here. He ruined Tremoille House for her, ruined everything for her, and his behaviour was so irrational that the servants sniggered behind his back. His dread of water even extended to ponds, about which he displayed such abhorrence as to seem suitable for incarceration in an asylum. The marriage was descending into Hades, and she already felt the flames around her feet. He was in the room with her now, slumped despondently in a comfortable chair, staring at a miniature of Esmond on the over-mantel. A glass of cognac was to hand, as it always was from breakfast onward, and he hadn’t spoken in over an hour. He just sat there, staring at Esmond. What was he thinking? Nothing good, that was for sure, and whatever it was boded ill for his hapless wife. She hated him. After adoring him ever since her early teens, now she wished she had never set eyes on him. She wanted a red-blooded man of constant passion; she had Thomas, Lord Welland, God rot him. At last she couldn’t bear the silence any longer. ‘You’ve hardly said a word all day, Thomas.’

  ‘I’ll give you a number of words. Copper’s down from a hundred and eighty pounds a ton to only eighty, and iron from twenty a ton to only eight. All this and still the damned government leaves income tax on the statute books. That limp-wristed scoundrel Pitt promised it was only for the duration of the war. Ten per cent of everything! The government owns a wheel of every damned blasted vehicle on the roads! And it takes threepence ha’penny on every fivepenny pot of beer.’

  She groaned inside. ‘I know your financial position has been affected, but surely not as much as it affects those with less.’

  It was an error of judgement, for he erupted from his chair and stomped furiously to a drawer, which he unlocked with shaking hands. He snatched the sheaf of documents lying inside, and strode over to her, waving them aloft before dropping them on her lap. ‘It could be, madam my wife, that I too will soon have much less than now, eh? In short, I may soon only be master of what was mine anyway. Is that not so?’

  How she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘I don’t understand, Thomas.’

  ‘Don’t you? Well, I’ve been thinking about how Tremoille gained this property, and about your insistence that you are his sole heir. Is Beth the real heir after all?’

  ‘I’ve already told you—’

  ‘But you’re a lying bitch,’ he interrupted bluntly. ‘Don’t test my temper, Jane, because I’m in no mood! Let me begin with this house. Does Sir Guy Valmer stand a chance of reclaiming it?’

  She flushed and got up from the window seat to put the documents and Lesage on a nearby table. ‘Be reasonable, Thomas. Esmond had this estate before I married him! It was because his lands abutted yours that I chose him in the first place!’

  ‘You knew him long before that, my dear,’ he said menacingly. ‘I know you were involved, and unless you tell me now, so help me I’ll beat it out of you.’

  ‘Thomas, there was nothing illegal about it. Esmond told me he settled Sir Richard Valmer’s gambling debts in return for this house and estate. Sir Richard accepted the offer, knowing his wife was heir to the vast fortune of an elderly relative close to his deathbed. Sir Richard didn’t need this house, just the money.’

  Thomas looked at her. ‘The rumours all concern a fishy royal flush, but you expect me to believe this?’

  ‘I’ve told you what I know. I believe it to be true.’

  ‘Madam, you wouldn’t kno
w the truth if it jumped up and bit your tits off!’ he snarled, clenching his fists until the knuckles turned white. ‘There are two packs in this, a pack of lies and a pack of cards!’

  ‘No, Thomas. Sir Richard didn’t want the monde, particularly his wife, to know he had numerous duns on his track. He wanted the deal to be done without the truth getting out. It was preferable for him to pretend he’d had one lapse at the gaming tables, not that he’d been dim-witted enough to squander his wealth over several years.’

  He gazed at her, his eyes small and porcine, and then he grunted and went to replenish his glass. Her heart sank. He hadn’t finished yet. He swirled the cognac, sniffed the bouquet and then drained it in a noisy gulp, before slamming the glass on the table. ‘Which leaves Beth. Does she have a claim upon her father’s estate?’

  ‘No.’ She returned his gaze a little wearily. ‘Thomas, how many times must I tell you that there isn’t, and never was, a second will.’

  ‘That had better be so, my dear, because if not I’ll tear your tongue out.’ With that he stomped from the room, bawling to Bolton to have his horse saddled.

  Robert Lloyd shifted his position, his riding crop tapping against the back of his boot, his top hat crooked on his blond hair as he waited in the Frampney forge. A groom was with him, holding the reins of a fine red bay thoroughbred. Robert wasn’t sure if Jake had seen him or not, but suspected he had. A faint smile lurked on the young man’s lips. Mannacott needed a little reminding of his station in life.

  Jake continued to hammer the glowing poker, his body gleaming with sweat in the fiery heat. He was deliberately taking his time because he’d disliked what he’d heard of the young man even before the incident two weeks before with that fool Johnno and his wagon. Rosalind had been taken severely to task for riding home with the squire’s lecherous son. She hadn’t come to harm, but she so easily might, and for that she’d been punished and forbidden to go outside at all. Until today. And now here was the strutting young hosebird to stir up the memory. Jake thrust the poker into the fire before turning. ‘You want me, Master Robert?’