Buch lesen: «The Silver Squire»

Chapter One

‘You little fool! You will speak to Mr Dashwood and what’s more you’ll show gratitude and a little grace in your address when you accept!’

Margaret Worthington’s thin fingers locked with surprising strength onto an elbow that was ceaselessly jerking to free itself.

‘You are wasting your time, Mama, and that of our…guest.” The epithet was spat through gritted white teeth. ‘I will not marry him, nor will I even deign to sit in the same room as that despicable roué.’ Emma Worthington picked at her mother’s clawed digits. The restraint was soon reapplied and Emma wearily sighed. ‘Please let go of my arm.’

‘I shall not! If you do not enter the drawing room of your own volition, you will enter from mine, or your papa’s…or perhaps even Mr Dashwood’s. He demands a biddable wife and one of unimpeachable virtue. Well, the latter condition you honestly meet, the former I own I’ve embellished upon. He might have to encourage that quality…And I’m sure he will now he’s laid down two thousand pounds on your father’s account.’

‘Two thousand pounds?’ The fury and disbelief in Emma’s tone rendered her voice little more than an outraged squeak. ‘You have allowed that…that vile man to purchase me for two thousand of his disgusting, blood-stained pounds?’

‘Don’t be so ridiculously melodramatic, Emma,’ Margaret Worthington hissed. ‘Besides, there should be another sixteen thousand of those disgusting notes to follow, when you are wed, and that should just about set your papa’s finances to rights. How can you be so stubborn and selfish? Are you so determined to rip a modest comfort from your doting parents in their twilight years? I tell you, it’s not to be borne!’

Taking abrupt advantage of her daughter’s momentary daze, Margaret managed to swing open the drawing-room door with one determined hand whilst the other propelled Emma, with an ungentle shove, into the room. Margaret reclined daintily against the mahogany panels; a sturdy, unseen hand was planted at her daughter’s back, preventing her retreat. It prodded her forward.

Emma tilted her chin, endeavoured to separate her grinding teeth and walked purposefully towards the gentleman who had gained his expensively shod feet at their ungainly arrival.

Tawny eyes of the most exquisite shade and oval shape met the dark gaze watching her. She politely extended pale, slender fingers to him and bobbed a curtsey. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Dashwood. Unfortunately, there appears to have been a misunderstanding between myself and my parents on the matter of your marriage proposal. I can only apologise to you for the confusion and beg you forgive us for detaining you.’

Emma just caught her mother’s shocked gasp from behind but she kept her sooty-fringed amber eyes on the gentleman balancing the tapered tips of her ivory fingers on the swarthy blunt pads of his. His dark head angled out of his courteous bow a little and assessing olive eyes arrowed sideways at her.

Something in that low-lidded gaze slew her attention to where they held bodily contact. She curbed a shudder as she noted a few wiry hairs sprouting from sturdy knuckles. Jerkily, her hand recoiled to the folds of her skirt.

Jarrett Dashwood gave a low, unamused chuckle as he straightened into stiff-backed stillness. A piercing glance sliced over the top of Emma’s honey-brown head to her mother’s stricken countenance. ‘I appear to be missing something here, Mrs Worthington,’ he began, so smoothly amused, it almost belied the fierce glint in his eyes. ‘On meeting with you and your husband earlier this week, I could have sworn you both gave me to believe your daughter was not only agreeable to my offer but “happy and honoured’ was, I recall, the phrase you used…? Perhaps you have another daughter? One who more resembles your description of a shy spinster of advanced years with an amenable nature…ah, yes, and a fondness for reading frivolous romantic fancies penned by Jane Austen.’ Barely pausing for breath, he drawled, ‘Well, to bastardise that good lady’s wise words: it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man with a good fortune must be in want of a wife: most assuredly so once a little of said fortune has been transferred to his insolvent prospective in-laws.’ With the same oiled ease, yet through lips that seemed motionless, came, ‘Where is your husband? Fetch him, if you please.’

‘My husband is unwell, sir.’ The words were faint and breathy. ‘I beg you will excuse him this afternoon. I beg, too, you will allow me a few moments alone with my daughter. She, too, I believe must be suffering the same malaise: confusion…muddled thoughts…’

‘Your husband’s usual complaint, then, Mrs Worthington? Your daughter, on the other hand, seems remarkably sober.’ Jarrett Dashwood’s silky sarcasm had Margaret squirming and blushing, then his disdainful olive gaze pointedly turned on Emma’s dowdy appearance.

Despite her resolution that she would not, Emma also flinched beneath his distaste. She snapped her face up, unwilling to be intimidated, even by a man whose reputation as a black-hearted roué was unsurpassed. Their eyes clashed before his heavy lids drooped lower and an insolent look slid over her thin frame.

Emma bridled, clenching her hands at her sides. Let him check her over. He was sure to shortly be congratulating himself on a lucky escape!

She had never been praised as a beauty, even in her heyday nine years ago. When launched into society at eighteen she had found the superficial friendships and earnest rivalry between debutantes competing for male attention degrading and boring. She had never preened and primped at her appearance as other young ladies did, curling and rougeing and poring over the latest Paris fashions, even when her mother fair frothed at the mouth insisting that she did.

With her unusual fawn hair and eyes, creamy complexion and sculpted elfin features, she was never going to be a ‘rage’. There was nothing extreme enough in her looks and colouring. She was only fair to middling in every way, as her mother had dispiritedly pointed out on numerous occasions. If only, her mother sighed, she were a petite, pink-cheeked blonde like Rosalie Travis who had had slavish gentlemen trailing in her wake for some twelve months before she’d settled on a Marquis; or she resembled Jane Sweetman, a tall, porcelain-complexioned redhead, who attracted beaus as bees to acacia. For her own part, Emma praised the raven-haired, grey-eyed perfection of her dearest friend, Victoria Hardinge.

Victoria was now Viscountess Courtenay, married to a man of her choosing, a man she loved, a man who adored her in return. And that was what Emma wanted. She was determined to settle for nothing less. And since the only man she had ever wanted to beguile had been totally impoverished, totally unsuitable and totally obsessed with someone else she had become reconciled to her quiet life in Cheapside, socialising on the fringes of polite society with a few sedate friends of similar tastes and circumstances. And she had believed that her parents had reconciled themselves to allowing her that simple, unassuming existence.

For affection and romance, Emma fantasised of fictional heroes: they were so much more reliable in providing her requisite perfectly happy ending.

Aware of Jarrett Dashwood jerking her a wooden bow, she returned a cursory bob, then he strode past and was speaking in a driven undertone to her mother by the door. Emma spun on her heel to watch. Her stomach tumbled as her mother’s heightened colour seeped away, leaving her pasty-faced. The woman gestured in feeble apology, looking close to tears, and Emma’s eyes closed in consternation.

She must not be browbeaten! she exhorted herself. She deserved better! Marriage to a man such as this would destroy her. The very idea was galling when she knew she could have attracted a worthier gentleman had she, in her prime, taken pains to court attention and flirt as other debutantes did. She had rebuffed several adequate suitors because she felt incapable of loving them. With arrogant idealism, she had determined to settle for nothing less than absolute bliss.

A few paying court had been pleasant enough and would have shown her kindness and respect. A sharp stab of guilt and regret…and ultimate understanding…pierced her. She now knew why her mother had ceaselessly nagged about security and status and marriage. It had been to protect her only child from a time such as this, when the only thing of value her irresponsible husband had left was his daughter.

Emma’s tawny gaze raked over the side of the dark profile presented to her. Oh, Jarrett Dashwood was handsome enough in his way, if rather swarthy of countenance. His black hair was glossy and neatly styled. He was of medium height and a little stocky but his shoulder breadth was derived from muscular strength rather than portliness. His nose was a little sharp and hooked and his mouth too sensually fleshy, but overall he held the appearance of a dignified gentleman in his thirties. No stranger would have guessed that his wealth had come from plantation crops produced with barbaric slaving or that nearer to home he had a reputation as an insatiable lecher whom, gossip had it, beat inept mistresses. Even within the small, staid circle in which she socialised, Dashwood’s meanness, his ruthlessness, his wealth were discussed with terrified curiosity and censure.

She had been reared with the consequences of her father’s drunken antics, listening to her mother’s sibilant stricture as yet another pile of merchants’ bills went unpaid. Yet always they had survived. A business deal came good, a wager turned up trumps, a sympathetic friend loaned money at a good rate. Teetering on the brink of disaster, they had always managed to sidestep the abyss and find solid ground again.

To her shame, she realised she, too, had become complacent. When recent arguments between her parents had become exceptionally heated, she had simply retreated to the sanctuary of her room and a book. When meals had become meagre, she’d eaten less. When her maid had been dispensed with last month she had sadly bidden Rosie farewell with a small gift and tended to her own needs. Part of her had known disaster was again threatening but subconsciously she had trusted fate would again make it right.

Two nights ago when her parents had sent for her to join them in the parlour, she’d realised Lady Luck had finally deserted them. Her papa would not meet her eyes. Her mother had fidgeted ceaselessly on the chair-edge, and their unease had chilled her skin. Yet never had she imagined they would sacrifice her so callously in a bid to buy her father’s extravagance another reprieve.

A marriage must be made, her mother had firmly decreed, while her papa had mumbled incoherent assent and blotted at his face with his handkerchief. Nothing Emma had suggested about further economies or a little time to think had made the slightest difference. And now she knew why: the marriage contract was already sealed and money had changed hands.

The sound of the door cracking closed as Jarrett Dashwood left started Emma from her miserable memories.

‘Well, miss, you’ve done your work well!’ was hissed shrilly at her. ‘Do you know what awaits us all now? Your spurned suitor has just promised your father an indefinite sojourn in the Fleet…and for us an indefinite sojourn in the nearest gutter. We are ruined…finished!’

‘Mama, how could you consider turning me over to such an odious individual?’ was Emma’s broken, soft rejoinder. ‘A marriage I would have agreed to. But you must allow me a man of my own choosing: someone I can at least respect, if not love. You know of Dashwood’s reputation…assuredly better than I. He is reviled as a slave-master…and a whore-master. Yet you would force me to live my remaining years with him?’

‘Some of the noblest, richest families in the land are built out of Jamaica, and have philanderers at their head. Are you to find fault with all of those too?’ her mother impatiently snapped. ‘You quibble unnecessarily, Emma!’

Margaret’s tone honeyed persuasively. ‘As his wife you would enjoy a life of pampered luxury. He would treat you well: after all, we all know how greatly he believes he has appearances to keep. Why do you think such a man would settle on purchasing himself a sedate spinster? He wants her virtue and gentility and the assurance she is never likely to humiliate him by shamelessly gadding about. Once you had provided his required heir or two, what more use would he make of you? A man so rich has his pick of beautiful courtesans to quench his lust.’ A derisive, summarising stare preceded, ‘You are fortunate to get any offers when you have so little to recommend you. You’re too thin, you’re too old—despite the fact you look like a gauche adolescent with your scrubbed complexion and buttoned-up gown. Even your hair has lost its rich hue as you’ve aged…your eyes too. I swear you’re now all tea when once you were chocolate. Your musical accomplishments, I suppose, are adequate…’ she allowed on a sniff.

‘I hardly think Jarrett Dashwood is to be swayed to stay home by cosy musical evenings about the pianoforte, Mama,’ Emma mentioned on a sour laugh.

‘How fortunate for you! In his absence, you could nestle into domesticity with a child on your lap and one of those soppy romantic novels in your hand.’

An impatient sigh escaped Emma at the ridiculously wholesome imagery. ‘It might not be all so bleak for us, Mama,’ she cajoled. ‘You are right—Mr Dashwood does covet status and respectability. He will never sue Papa for fraud. Papa is known to be ailing. Dashwood would hate being seen as vindictive enough to dun a sick man without conceding him time to make amends. He will allow us a while to repay him…you’ll see.’ Warming to her theme, she enthused, ‘I can work. I am educated well enough to be a governess…or a companion to a wealthy lady…or a housekeeper…’

‘Housekeeper?’ her mother choked, outraged. ‘You have been gently reared! The success of your twenty-fourth-birthday ball was the talk of the ton for months afterwards. Had you deported yourself more…more becomingly to the gentlemen present that evening, you would have been wed these past three years or more and no longer draining us with the expense of your keep.’

As though unable to contain her fury or bitterness, Margaret’s lips and eyes narrowed in exasperation. She approached her daughter on wobbly, stiff legs in the manner of a mechanised rickety toy. As she passed a side-table something caught a glaring eye and she grabbed up the leather-bound volume and looked at it with intense loathing. ‘All this ridiculous daydreaming you do of love and heroes and happy endings…it is a shameful indulgence and not to be borne, Emma.’ She snorted a sour laugh. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ she parodied in a shaking voice, ‘that a wilful, selfish daughter of seven and twenty will prove to be a tiresome burden on her parents. Her presence should no longer be tolerated!’ The volume of Jane Austen’s work was skimmed abruptly towards her, and with chance accuracy smacked a hefty blow on a slender shoulder.

With a moan of recalled pain, Emma Worthington pushed herself upright in bed, her breathing fast and erratic and a pale hand instinctively seeking the tender bruise below her collarbone. Her head drooped forward, thick tan hair coating the sides of her face, as she waited for the pounding of her heart to steady and the vividness of the dream to recede a little.

A hand fumbled out to the unfamiliar table at the side of the alien bed and sought the candle, drawing it close to gain its weak, guttering light. She held it aloft in an unsteady hand. As she shook back tresses from her blanching face, wide, darting eyes surveyed the moon-striped tavern chamber, every gloomy nook scoured for spooks and intruders. But she knew it was nothing other than inner demons that had startled her awake.

The dream had so sharply, so accurately retraced events of two days ago that she might have been back in the drawing room of Rosemary House, facing her mother’s spite and Jarrett Dashwood’s menacing presence.

She drew her knees up close to her body, her slender arms hugged about them for warmth and comfort and she laid a cold shivering cheek atop them. A bar of silver light bathed her bent head as the moon again escaped scudding cloud. It shifted to incorporate her entwined fingers and she stretched them towards the pearlescence. Replacing the candle on the table, she quit the hard bed and padded softly over cold wood to the small leaded window.

A velvet night sky was visible through a net of shimmering nimbus. Her gaze swept the courtyard below. Immediately she shrank back. Her eyes had, by chance, located a courting couple by an outbuilding, their faces and bodies fused together. Compelled by an uncontrollable fascination, Emma slipped back, seeking again the shadowy outline of a tall man and a woman wedged between his sturdy body and the stable brickwork. She whirled away, her face stinging with hot self-disgust, and scrambled back into bed.

Shifting backwards against the crude wooden headboard, she distractedly picked up her book with one hand and the candle with the other. After a few minutes of mindless reading, she accepted that balancing the thin candle-flame this way and that to try and illuminate the pages was a pointless task. Her eyes were strained from deciphering print which seemed to merge into shapes like entwining lovers. Abruptly, she replaced the book and candle on the table and slowly sank down into the bed with a weary sigh.

Turning on her side, she stared wide-eyed and sightless at the perfect full moon as it emerged from cloud. She thought of Matthew and wistfully smiled as she wondered how he would react to her unexpected arrival; after all, they had seen nothing of each other for two years and she was still awaiting a reply to the last letter she had sent to him some six months ago now.

Perhaps it had been undelivered… ‘Please God, don’t let him have moved away,’ she whispered at the silver orb. Doubt and guilt trembled through her as she thought of her parents in Cheapside. Were they anxious? Furious? Remorseful? She should have left a proper note…not just a few lines that begged them not to worry…or to try and find her.

She twisted restlessly on the soft mattress, frowning at shadows on the ceiling, while thinking of unrequited love and a man who had buried his heart with his first wife and of whether she would ever come to love step-children.

‘Not been bit by the bed bugs, I ‘opes,’ the young man said. ‘I seen folks wi’ legs swole up an’ as red as can be from the nasty blighters…’

‘No, I’m quite well, thank you. Just a little tired still.’ Emma responded to his query as to whether she had slept well. ‘You seem very busy today.’ A look through the window indicated the bustling courtyard.

The young potman inclined his dark head to conspiratorially impart, ‘Quality wi’ a queer name turned up late last night. His nibs be travelling on early wiv ‘is family to Bath, so I ‘eard. Get you anythin’ else from the kitchens?’ he offered cheerily, stacking Emma’s plate and mug neatly together.

Emma returned him a smiling shake of the head. He swaggered off with a lewd wink for a girl sluicing tankards, and it was then that Emma, with pinking cheeks, recognised the young couple she had seen through her window.

Just as the sun was gilding the horizon, she had given up hope of sleep and made her way downstairs and into a small taproom. The cheerful landlady had served up tea and buttered crumpets, refusing to take payment, while patting at Emma’s hand in such a knowing, sympathetic way, Emma had swallowed her protestations and pocketed her coins. She had savoured the delicious crumpets as she viewed unfamiliar sun-dappled countryside through dusty square panes, and pondered the woman’s unexpected generosity. Was her unfortunate predicament so obvious? Was there something about her demeanour which branded her an impecunious spinster absconding from mercenary parents and a detested suitor? Or was the landlady simply a kind soul and, having been in the company of very few of those lately, she’d become cynical?

Collecting her carpet bag from beneath the rustic oak table, she made her way out into the fresh September morning to await the arrival of the coach and newly shod horses. She hoped the poor beast that had forced them to overnight at the Fallow Buck would be allowed to rest—one of its front legs had looked badly swollen as though more than just a blacksmith’s skills might be needed for it to continue pulling the cumbersome coach.

She was now keen to be travelling on. Even if her mother had at first dismissed her absence at mealtimes as a fit of sulks in her room, she surely would, by now, have found the brief note she had left on her dresser.

She doubted they would search for her. They had neither the resources nor, she imagined, the inclination to send investigators after her. She was, after all, a spinster of twenty-seven, not a child in need of protection. Besides, her mother had declared her presence was no longer to be borne. Far from arousing anxieties, the reverse might be true, and her removal from Rosemary House deemed a relief. How they dealt with the odious Mr Dashwood and his recompense was their own concern. She would not dwell on it…nor feel guilty! The predicament was not of her making!

September morning mist was wreathed about the low brick and wood stables of the Fallow Buck posting house and with quiet appreciation she lingered to watch a spider, stealthy on the edge of its dew-beaded gossamer web.

As she strolled to the perimeter of the dusty gravel courtyard, her wide golden gaze roamed the recently harvested cornfields. Even denuded, they had a spare barren beauty to her unaccustomed town eye. She breathed deeply of the cool morning air, now mingling with a warm aroma of baking bread wafting from the kitchens, feeling unaccountably optimistic and uplifted. Sighing contentedly, she turned from the fresh, sun-dappled vista back towards the tavern.

Her confident step forward faltered, ground into gravel, halting her so abruptly she stumbled. Yet her eyes never relinquished the man. Something in his height, his breadth of shoulder and confident stature was unnervingly familiar, yet, try as she might, in those few, breathless seconds, she couldn’t recall why. But whatever association it was produced an odd, terrified exhilaration that knotted her stomach and started her heart hammering.

Her eyes flicked over immaculate dark clothes to a silver-blond head, so unusual a shade that it ought, immediately, to have solved the mystery.

He was a wealthy, influential gentleman; that much was apparent from his attire and bearing. She was watching, analysing him with such rapt attention that she hadn’t immediately noticed the child approaching. The boy clung to long, charcoal-grey legs and was immediately swung into his arms. She had sight of his profile now. His cheekbone and jaw were lean and angular and deeply tanned…an exotic contrast with his lengthy white-blond hair. He laughed at the boy in his arms, turning with him towards her…

Emma instinctively dipped her head and tilted her bonnet over her face before swivelling towards the fields she had recently admired.

Don’t be so idiotic! she silently berated herself as she tried to steady the frantic pulse leaping in her throat. He was a stranger…probably a foreigner, judging by his sun-bronzed appearance. She immediately recalled the potman telling her of a nobleman with a queer name who had arrived late last night and was travelling with his family to Bath.

He was a French count, she dreamily decided. And the fact he seemed familiar was no doubt due to him resembling some romantic character in a novel she had read. Cocking her head to one side, she crossed her arms about her middle and sifted through plots and people, searching for a tall blond hero of devastating good looks. Possibly he was the villain, she mused, recalling how oddly apprehensive the sight of him had made her feel.

Long oval fingernails scored deep ridges vertically, horizontally, into bronzed skin and, with an impatient grunt, the man rolled them both sideways plunging hard and fast, at the same time unlocking gripping, silky legs from about his muscular brown thighs.

He ignored her frustrated squeal as she tried to drag his hips back to hers with her calves and make him shed his seed within her. With an easy shove he tipped her away onto her back and within seconds was seating himself on the edge of the tumbled bed. Tanned fingers swept across his shoulder and came away red and sticky. He looked dispassionately at the blood. ‘Trim those talons, sweet…’ he ordered with very little inflexion, yet the quiet, casual words brought her blonde head up off the pillow and she caught her full lower lip between small teeth.

Yvette Dubois narrowed blue eyes on angry weals tracking skin that looked like cold bronze and felt like warm satin. ‘I can’t ‘elp it, chéri,’ she purred breathlessly. ‘You excite the wildcat in me, you know that. ‘Ow can I be thinking and sensible at such a time?’ She pouted at his broad shoulders, trailed a moist, apologetic kiss across the welts and then, still ignored, she huffed and flung herself back onto the sheets.

He picked up a tumbler, downing the few remaining inches of cognac in a swallow. ‘A wildcat with sheathed claws is fine,’ he commented drily, collecting his breeches from the floor in a fluid movement as he stood.

‘Why won’t you give me all of you?’ she husked at him, casually lowering the sheet seductively away from her breasts as he finally turned to look at her. She peeked up through dusky lashes into cool silver eyes and knew he understood her perfectly.

‘A swollen belly and sagging breasts?’ he mused with ironic deliberation. ‘I think I prefer you this way, Yvette.’ His grey gaze swept down her curvaceous figure to where the sheet just exposed a tantalising rosy nipple.

Aware of his observation, she stretched sinuously, arms raised above her head. Small fingers clenched on the bedhead, making the thrusting perfection of her full, firm breasts impossible to ignore and openly available to him.

A tanned hand came out, fondling first one then the other until she was arching and moaning, her hands clenching rigidly on the brass bedstead. He choked a laugh, stepped into his breeches and was buttoning them by the time he reached the window and stood staring out.

‘Richard!’ Yvette furiously screeched from the bed. “Ow can you go now? I want you…’

‘Cut your nails…’ he mentioned impartially as he drew a cheroot from his pocket, lit it, and stood staring absently into the dusk. He sensed he was irritated and that irritated him further for there was no reason to be.

It was nothing to do with Yvette Dubois or her savage passion or her transparently mercenary desire to make him impregnate her so she’d have a lasting role in his life. She was wasting her time on all counts: he had no desire for an enduring liaison or for children. He slanted a glance at her, a quirk of a smile softening his finely chiselled narrow mouth as he noticed how she immediately perked up with his attention.

A long blonde ringlet was slowly worked about a small finger and she rolled onto her back, impatiently kicking away the tangling sheet from her shapely long legs so the dark blonde curls between her thighs were displayed.