‘Miss Wyatt, good morning.’ He doffed his hat and Helena realised he must be out shooting, for a shotgun was cradled in the crook of his arm and he wore a shot-belt slung across his frieze jacket. ‘Sit down, damn it,’ he snapped at the dogs, who were spraying mud over his breeches and boots.
‘My lord.’ Helena struggled to restore her equilibrium. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her heart was beating uncomfortably and she was aware she must sound both peremptory and breathless.
There was a long pause while Adam surveyed her from her flushed cheeks to the mud-spattered hem of her gown and her unfashionable walking boots. ‘Exercising my dogs—I believe this is a public right of way.’ He raised one brow and Helena blushed in earnest.
‘My lord, forgive me…I did not mean to imply you had no right to be here. I was just startled—I had thought myself alone.’
‘Brooding, Miss Wyatt?’ he asked abruptly.
Helena’s shoulders went back, her chin up. ‘Certainly not. I have nothing to brood upon, my lord. I believe I am as entitled as you to take the fresh air, which I was doing in perfect tranquillity until you accosted me.’
‘Had you not been inciting my dogs to behave like ill-trained puppies, I would have had no reason to accost you. Sit, sir!’ He turned irritably on one of the hounds, which had jumped eagerly to its feet at the sound of his voice, and pushed it back into a sitting position with the toe of his boot.
‘I trust you will not beat your dogs, sir!’ Helena’s temper was rising dangerously.
‘I do not beat any animal of mine, madam,’ he retorted.
‘I should not be surprised at anything you did, such is your temper, sir,’ she responded frigidly.
Adam glared at her. ‘I do not think you have any reason to complain of my temper, Miss Wyatt, despite considerable provocation on your part. I cannot recall the last time anyone flouted my orders or my wishes as you have done.’
They were both suddenly and inexplicably furious with each other. Helena was too angry to retreat in a dignified manner, even though she knew she should simply turn on her heel and leave him.
‘As I told you at St Mary’s port, my lord, you have no right to command me. You are neither my father, my brother nor my husband…’ Helena saw the pit opening at her feet as soon as the fatal word was uttered.
A grim smile set Adam’s mouth. ‘Since you broach the subject, Helena, and as we are quite alone, perhaps you would do me the courtesy of explaining exactly why you find my offer of marriage so unacceptable.’
His eyes were as cold as the water behind him and Helena felt suddenly very alone and vulnerable. ‘Sir, you are no gentleman to ask me such a question!’
‘Madam,’ he responded evenly, laying down the gun and taking one slow step towards her, ‘you are no lady to cause me to ask it.’
Helena drew breath sharply, the cold air hitting the back of her throat. Without thinking she moved towards him, one hand raised to slap his insolent face, and found her wrist imprisoned in his hard grasp. Adam pulled her towards him until their faces were so close she could feel his breath on her lips.
‘You struck me once, Helena; I will not permit you to do so again.’
They stood as if frozen, staring into each other’s eyes. Helena felt all her anger ebb from her, and in its place was a terrible burning desire to be in this man’s arms. Surely he would kiss her, his lips were so close now. The seconds slowed; still he made no move, no attempt to draw her closer, to answer the yearning in her eyes.
Unable to meet that hard blue stare any longer, yet equally unwilling to break free, Helena closed her eyes, feeling her strength ebbing from her. Why, oh why, would he not kiss her? Did he no longer desire her?
Her lips were forming the shaming word ‘please’ when his mouth found hers and his strength pulled her hard against his body, crushing her captive hand between his chest and her breast. As she clung to him he kissed her with passion, his mouth opening her willing lips, his tongue sweetly invading, inciting.
And Helena responded with answering passion, her free hand locked into the frieze of his jacket, holding his body against hers as if she would never let him go. He deepened the kiss, his hand tugging the strings of her bonnet free until he could cast it aside. His palm pressed against the exposed nape of her neck, before moving over her back, down into the curve of her waist, impelling her further into his hardness.
Helena was lost in a wave of sensation and longing, totally oblivious of her surroundings, totally oblivious of anything but the sensation of his skilled mouth on hers, as a little moan of supplication rose in her throat.
Adam opened his hands and stepped back, leaving her reeling from the unexpectedness of it.
‘Yes…’ he said thoughtfully ‘…no lady. I am sorry if you are regretting your decision to decline my offer, Miss Wyatt, but it will not be repeated.’ He stooped to pick up the shotgun, whistled up the dogs and strode off across the saltmarsh without a backward glance.
Chapter Six
If anyone had told her that it were possible to feel such scalding humiliation as she was feeling now, Helena would never have believed them.
She hugged herself, suddenly shivering with cold and reaction despite her warm pelisse. How could she? How could she have thrown herself at him like that? How could she have incited him to kiss her, caress her in such a shameless way and, worse still, have responded to him as she had? She had behaved no better than…than…an opera dancer!
Of course Adam had taken advantage of her! He had been angry, provoked, goaded beyond the restraint of any man, even a gentleman such as he. ‘And what must he think of me?’ she wailed out loud to the empty marsh, startling a wader which had ventured close to her frozen figure.
She had turned down his honourable declaration of marriage without offering him an explanation—reasonable or otherwise. And then to behave with such shocking familiarity, to beg him to kiss her…and when he did, to respond to his advances in a way that only a married woman should to her husband!
Helena stooped and picked up her prayerbook where it had fallen unheeded to the ground, its black leather stained with mud. And on a Sunday, too! A day when she should have been thinking on higher things, resolving to be a dutiful daughter, to withstand the temptations and shallowness of Society to which she would shortly be exposed in London.
The sharp wind lifted the curls at the nape of her neck, reminding her she was bonnetless. The hat lay where Adam had tossed it, its feather bedraggled, one muddy paw print besmirching the fine cream straw. Helena picked it up, her eyes filling with tears which rolled unchecked down her cheeks as she trudged back to the house.
But, by the time she had wended her way home through the churchyard and narrow lanes, her contrition was replaced by an increasing sense of indignation. Yes, she had behaved badly, but so too had Adam! He was a man of the world, she an inexperienced girl. How much greater was his responsibility, therefore, for his behaviour. At any point he could have turned on his heel and left her! She scrubbed the traces of tears off her cheeks with her handkerchief, no longer feeling any inclination to penitence.
As she walked on, another thought slowly came to her. This was the second time Adam had started to make love to her, only to break off. This time he was doubtless motivated by the desire to punish her for her refusal of him. But before, on the ship…Why had he begun with such passion, only to stop so abruptly? The more she thought of it, the less she believed his protestation that he wanted to wait until they were married. If he truly believed that, he would never have gone so far past kisses and harmless caresses. The only result of that incident had been to drive all thought of that mysterious package she had hidden for him from her mind. And the tactic had been so effective that until this moment she had hardly given it another thought.
As she rounded the curve of the drive, these disturbing thoughts were overtaken by the sight of her aunt’s carriage drawn up before the front door. Helena quickened her pace, a sense of unease growing in
her mind. For her aunt to travel from Chichester on a Sunday was unprecedented; like all gentlefolk, she considered that to journey further than to church and back on the Sabbath was unfitting. The fear that was never very far from the minds of anyone with a loved one serving in the army or navy filled her and she broke into a run.
Unmindful of her muddy boots and bedraggled appearance, Helena pushed open the door and hurried across the hall towards the drawing room where voices could be heard. She swung open the panelled door and entered without ceremony. Lady Wyatt, from the couch where she was pouring wine for her visitors, regarded her daughter with dismay.
‘My dear Helena, you look a perfect fright! You are so muddy—what have you been doing?’
The confusion this question would normally have provoked was overtaken by Helena’s cry of joy and relief as she recognised not only her aunt, but also her uncle. Commodore Sir Robert Breakey had risen to his feet when his niece entered the room, but now strode across to embrace her.
‘Uncle Breakey! We thought you were with the fleet off Toulon!’ Helena hugged him convulsively, then stepped back to regard his bronzed face with concern. ‘You are not wounded, are you?’
The Commodore smiled with indulgent affection at his niece whom he had not seen for six months. During that time she had blossomed into a beautiful young woman, he thought, although, as her mother had remarked, strangely bedraggled for a Sunday. But nothing could detract from the sparkle of her violet eyes and the freshness of her complexion.
‘My dear Helena, I am, as you see, in one piece. I landed at Portsmouth yesterday, and I will be going up to town with you tomorrow, for I have dispatches from the fleet for their lordships at the Admiralty. I expect to be able to remain in Brook Street for several weeks.’
And indeed the Commodore looked his normal self: not above average height, his relative youth was belied by a shock of iron-grey hair, which, set against his tanned skin, gave his normally serious features a look of distinction.
‘Helena,’ her mother reproved, ‘luncheon will be served shortly. Can you not change your gown and shoes before you distribute any more mud on my new carpet?’
Glancing down at her bedraggled skirts, clinging muddily to her ankles, Helena could only agree with her mother’s words of censure. ‘Yes of course, Mama, I am very sorry—I was jumped at by some dogs on the marsh.’ Well, it held some modicum of truth.
Hastening out, she encountered her brother John in the hall, returned from birds’ nesting in even more of a messy state than she. Hurrying him upstairs with the promise of a great surprise if he would only make himself presentable, Helena pulled twigs from his hair and tutted over his torn stockings. ‘John, you look as though you have been dragged through a hedge backwards!’
‘I have,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Harry did it, ’cos I wouldn’t give him my hedge sparrow’s nest. Anyway, you don’t look much better!’
At that moment Nurse emerged from the linen room, regarded her small charge with horror and, with the speed of long practice, whisked him off for a good wash. ‘Do not tell him our surprise, Mrs Goody!’ Helena called after them as she hastened to ring for her own maid.
The pleasure of her uncle’s safe return and the excitement of the final preparations for the trip to town almost served to push the memory of her encounter with Lord Darvell to the back of Helena’s mind. Whenever a wayward recollection surfaced, she thought determinedly of silk stockings or vouchers for Almack’s or pressed her long-suffering uncle to recount more stories of life with the blockading fleet. And yet the memory of Adam’s embraces haunted her, and the unanswerable suspicions about him would not leave her.
When the cavalcade of carriages finally set out from the Manor, the Commodore obligingly sat with the ladies instead of riding alongside, as was his usual habit. John, protesting vigorously, was dispatched to sit on the box with the coachman; normally a high treat, this was now torture to him, so eager was he to cajole his uncle into taking him back to sea with him.
It was an impressive procession for the quiet Sussex locality, for not only was there Lady Wyatt’s carriage, and two coaches containing her baggage and servants, but the Breakeys’ vehicle followed behind empty, ready to take up their servants and belongings at Chichester.
They took two days over the journey, for neither lady enjoyed travelling at speed and Sir Robert’s dispatches were of no pressing urgency.
It was evening when they drew up outside the Breakeys’ town house in Brook Street and, by then, they were all heartily glad to be out of the swaying conveyance and into the warmth and light of the tall house.
‘I declare, I would rather be in the teeth of a gale in the Bay of Biscay, than spend another day in that vehicle,’ Sir Robert grumbled as he helped the ladies to descend.
They enjoyed an excellent dinner, for Lady Breakey had taken the precaution of sending her French chef on ahead, and it was a happy, if tired, group who assembled in the salon afterwards. Sir Robert sat scanning the pile of letters his agent had left for him, muttering darkly about the amount of work he must fit in, as well as the time he would doubtless have to spend kicking his heels at the Admiralty in attendance on their lordships. ‘For mark my words,’ he grumbled, from long experience, ‘they will keep me hanging around while they draft orders for half the Mediterranean fleet!’
The ladies, meanwhile, were entertaining themselves with an album of prints which he had brought back from his travels and paying little heed to the Commodore, who as usual, talked to himself as he scanned the papers.
‘No need to increase those rents…of course I will not sell those fishing rights, the man’s a fool! Hmm, I must see what I can do for old Hodgkinson’s nephew…Lord Darvell…’
All three ladies started as though a shot had gone off and turned to regard him with, as Lady Wyatt said later to her sister-in-law, an expression of guilt and alarm on their faces.
‘What on earth is the matter, my dears?’ the Commodore enquired, understandably bemused by the reaction his innocent words had provoked. ‘If you have such a fixed opposition to my acquiring more grazing land, Lady Breakey, I will of course proceed no further with the offer, but you have never interested yourself in such matters before.’
‘Grazing land?’ his wife repeated blankly.
‘Yes, I have here a suggestion from my agent in Sussex that I buy some salt marsh grazing that Lord Darvell is selling near his estate in West Itchenor. It seems sensible as the price of wool is rising, and the land marches with my own down there. What is there to alarm you all in that?’
‘Nothing at all, Sir Robert,’ Lady Breakey responded, her cheeks somewhat flushed. ‘It was merely that Lord Darvell has…a…reputation, and I would not discuss him in front of our niece…’
‘Really, my dear, I think you refine upon it too much. Unless the man has changed greatly since I was last in the country, he is not such a rake that a young lady should be alarmed to hear his name spoken! Why, he spends his money much as he likes, and a good part of that goes upon a string of fine mistresses, but what of that? He can well afford it.’ He waved aside his wife’s scandalised clucking. ‘Do not be such a prude, my dear, Lord Darvell is no danger to well brought-up young girls! Half the young bucks in town set up a mistress, there’s no need to glare at me like that! The girl’s no empty-headed ninny—she knows what goes on, even if she pretends not to.’
‘I would be obliged if you would select another topic of conversation, Sir Robert,’ his wife retorted frostily.
Helena, doing her very best to look like the sort of young girl to whom Lord Darvell posed no threat, kept her head bent over the album of prints and wished with all her heart that her aunt would say no more.
The thought of Adam being concerned with grazing land and other problems of estate management was curiously attractive and she indulged herself for a moment with the image of him striding around a well-managed estate, tenants respectfully doffing their caps, his dogs gambolling at his heels.
At
that point she took a firm hold on these fantasies which were leading her into dangerous waters and got to her feet. ‘Aunt, I think I will retire now, I feel very tired. Goodnight, Mama.’
‘Of course, my dear.’ Her aunt patted her hand, looking at her with such concern that Helena was only grateful that her uncle was once again immersed in his papers or he would soon be demanding to know what secret his female relatives were hiding from him.
At least, she thought, slipping thankfully between the sheets and blowing out the candle, Adam was safely down in Sussex. Strange as it was to imagine him as a country landowner, it was even more difficult to transpose her memories of his barefooted, windswept figure, braced against the wind on the deck of the Moonspinner, into the formal world of London Society. The whole painful episode could sink into the past, she would soon forget all about him, for assuredly, he would have forgotten her much sooner…
Why, with such sensible musings as she fell asleep, Helena should pass such a troubled night was a puzzle to her. She could not recall what had disturbed her dreams and left her tossing and turning, but whatever it was resulted in heavy eyes and a slight headache the following morning.
She was partaking listlessly of bread and butter and a cup of chocolate in the dining room when the sound of the knocker heralded the arrival of the post. The Breakeys paid extra for the early morning delivery and the letter which was now brought in by the butler sent her megrims flying.
‘Mama—it is from Portia! You remember, Aunt—Mrs Rowlett, my old school friend. She is in town, after all; only last week she wrote to say she would have to remain in Bath for the entire Season, for old Lady St Clare was insisting her gout was too bad for her to be left—and you know the only companion she will tolerate then is Portia.
‘But Portia writes that the waters seem to have quite revived her grandmother’s spirits. She is content to remain with friends and she has told Portia she should rejoin her husband.’ Helena turned the closely written pages. ‘The House of Commons is still sitting so Portia says she will have all the time in the world to go out and about with us.’
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