The Silver Squire

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.

She was very good, very adept: the pulse in his loins was picking up tempo already, just as she was calculating it would. He drew deeply on the cheroot and reached for his shirt on the chair. If he hadn’t promised to return to Silverdale in time for supper with his visiting relations, he probably would have stayed longer and let her earn her keep.

The irritation niggling at him intensified with that callous thought and he raked five brown fingers absently through his thick white-blond hair, unwilling to actually acknowledge that something so insignificant…so idiotic could disturb him so.

His mind returned to the Fallow Buck posting house and the image of a dowdily dressed woman standing with her back to him. There was nothing about her that could have possibly interested him. On first glance he would have guessed her to be perhaps a high-ranking servant—a governess or housekeeper travelling alone on business. What irked him was the unshakeable notion that, despite seeing nothing of her apart from an unattractive bonnet and dismal brown travelling cloak, he felt he knew her.

He was certain she had concealed her face just as he’d turned towards her, and that compounded the mystery. He’d been curious enough at the time to start walking towards her but had managed only a pace or two when his brother had distracted him to settle the landlord’s bill. On returning to the courtyard, the Bath post was just pulling out into the road and he’d just known the woman was on it. He’d shrugged and walked away and forgotten it…for all of a few hours. Now, for some insane reason, not having crossed to the fields to look at her was a major aggravation and the sheer farce of it was killing him.

‘I don’t want you to go yet. You leave me too much…too soon. It’s not fair…’ was called softly from behind, breaking into his reverie.

Even white teeth clenched on the cheroot and he drew on it steadily, but he turned towards her with a smile. ‘So what do you intend to do about that?’

Yvette swung long legs off the bed and posed with deliberate provocation on the edge. Her throat curved archly, her blonde head tilted as she viewed him between barely parted porcelain lids. Pushing herself slowly upright, she undulated towards him, each sinuous step swaying her pouting breasts. ‘I think I shall make you change your mind about leaving…about a lot of things…’ she purred as she came right up against him and grazed her naked belly against the hard proof of his full attention. A long fingernail trailed up his thigh, scoring into fine cloth as it neared his groin.

He caught at her hand inches from its target, brought her palm to his lips and dropped a brief kiss on it. Turning her away, he gave her a gentle push towards the bed. ‘I have to go…’

‘Business…business…all the time business,’ she flung at him, whirling back in a cloud of shining blonde hair. ‘I am sick with this business all of the while,’ she complained, her accent thickening in her rage. ‘I am alone too much. I need some company…I need you…’

‘You can’t have me, Yvette. Understand that,’ he said with slow deliberation so that she digested all his meaning, then endorsed it with a smile that didn’t warm his metallic eyes. ‘If you’re lonely, get yourself a companion,’ he added carelessly as he moved past her and towards the door.

‘What…?’ she screeched. ‘How shall I? A friend just drops from the sky?’

‘Advertise in the Herald…’ he suggested with an infuriating smile as he closed the door behind him.

Chapter Two

With a deep, inspiriting breath, Emma took another determined peek around the hazel hedge.

The dilapidated exterior of weatherbeaten boarding and slipping roof tiles had her optimism again ebbing. The cottage looked deserted. Perhaps he had moved away. Please no, don’t let that be! she silently prayed. The London post was already lost to view as the road dipped below the shadow-racing field, and would be well on the way to Bath, some two miles further on.

She had been dropped in the village of Oakdene and had wandered the narrow, rut-scored lanes looking for Nonsuch Cottage with many a villager’s curious stare following her. A bramble embedding in her skirt had quite literally brought her stumbling upon what she sought: it was an aptly named little place, she smilingly realised as her honey gaze weaved past the crude wooden name-plate on the gate, through foxgloves and scarlet roses entwined with bellbind and cow parsley, and on to the crooked door.

Gently reared behind the graceful brick façade of Rosemary House in Cheapside, she had hardly realised that such ram-shackle-looking dwellings existed, let alone expected ever to enter one. As for gardening, nurturing delicate hothouse blooms had been her only experience of the demands of horticulture. The association of a conservatory and exotic plants and happier days with friends evoked a flash of memory, puzzling and niggling at the periphery of her consciousness. She gave it barely a further moment’s concentration before again focussing on the grimy whitewash of the cottage.

On closer inspection it seemed structurally sound. In fact, she decided, it held a definite rustic charm. The interior of the building might be quite neat and tidy; one couldn’t expect a widowed gentleman of straitened means to bother about weeds when he had to attend to the needs of his small children. Curtains were visible at dusty windows high under the eaves, she gladly noted, yet it was so quiet it could have been deserted.

As though to settle that anxiety a female voice shrieked out something unintelligible; there followed a child’s thin wailing. So the property was inhabited, and by a Billingsgate fishwife by the sound of it! A sudden awful suspicion stopped her heart, and she wondered why it had never occurred to her earlier: had Matthew not replied to her letter of six months ago because he had remarried? Before she could torture herself further on the subject, the white-boarded cottage door was flung open. A small mongrel dog hurtled, whining, close to Emma’s skirts then scampered out into the lane.

‘Blasted cur!’ the young woman barked, and was about to slam the door shut when she noticed Emma. Slack-mouthed surprise was soon replaced by a stony expression. ‘Whatever you be sellin’, we don’t want none. Be off with you. We’ve got Bibles aplenty ‘n sermons ‘n pills ‘n potions…’

Emma wasn’t sure whether to laugh or display outrage that this young woman’s first impression of her was as some sort of pedlar! Was her appearance really so drab that she was deemed to be touting from door to door? Her own impression now of this young woman was that she wasn’t Matthew’s wife but his housekeeper, a judgement backed by her rough local dialect and faded black uniform.

Aware of the woman still staring aggressively, Emma finally detached herself from the bramble with a tear to her skirt, a prick to her finger and a spattering of mauve berry juice to her palm. Drawing herself up to her full height, her slender shoulders back, and topaz eyes glass-cool, she haughtily informed the woman, ‘I have just alighted from the London stage and would like to speak to Mr Cavendish. Is he at home?’

Emma’s unexpectedly refined accent had the woman’s jaw dropping again and a keen-eyed scrutiny slipping over her from serviceable tan bonnet to dusty, sturdy shoes.

‘Close that blasted door, will you, Maisie? The draught is taking these papers all over the desk…’ was bellowed from within.

‘Matthew…’ Emma whispered to herself at the sound of that well-modulated, if deeply irritated tone. But the relief she was sure would drench her at the first sight or sound of him was slow in coming. ‘I should like to speak to Mr Cavendish,’ she repeated firmly, with a nod at the door.

‘Wait there,’ the woman snapped discourteously, dark eyes skimming over Emma’s modest attire, then the door was shut in her face. Within what seemed a mere second a tall man was stepping over the threshhold onto the grass-sprouting cobbled pathway. A hand was wiped about his bristly chin and across his eyes as though he was fatigued.

‘Emma…?’ Matthew Cavendish murmured disbelievingly as his fingers pushed a tangle of brown hair back from his brow for a better view of her. A white grin split his shady jaw and, with a cursory straightening of his shirt-cuffs and waistcoat, he was rushing towards her.

‘Emma! How wonderful to see you!’ He gripped her by the shoulders and warm hazel eyes smiled down into her upturned, uncertain face. ‘Why didn’t you send word you were coming? Oh, I’m so sorry…come inside…please. What an oaf you must think me, leaving you planted amongst the weeds! As you can see,’ he added ruefully, gesturing at snaggled greenery, ‘tending the roses isn’t a fond pastime.’ After drawing one of her arms through his they proceeded out of breezy late summer sunlight into the cool, dim interior of the cottage.

‘Maisie will fetch some tea,’ he directed at the woman while helping Emma to slip out of her cumbersome cloak.

Emma’s eyes flicked to the small brunette and noted an odd, insubordinate stare arrow from servant to master. Then, with a twitch of her faded black serge, Maisie was gone.

After a brief pause during which only polite smiles passed between them, there was,

‘I must apologise…’

‘I should explain…’

They had spoken together and simultaneously laughed, embarrassed, too.

‘You first,’ Matthew invited, ushering Emma towards a comfortable-looking chintz-covered fireside chair and pressing her into it. As he leaned towards her and gripped her hands, displaying his pleasure at seeing her, a recognisable sweetish aroma assailed her nostrils. She had too often been about her intoxicated papa not to instantly recognise the smell of strong alcohol about someone’s person. There was a hint of red rimming his eyes too, she noted, with a hesitant smile up into Matthew’s undoubtedly hung-over face.

‘I was about to say, Matthew, I must apologise for visiting you without proper warning. But I had no time to write, or wait for your reply.’ She gave him a wry look. ‘After all, it has been six months since last I wrote and still, daily, I expect your letter…’

Throughout the uncomfortably sultry atmosphere in the coach jolting its way to this village, all that had dominated her mind was Matthew: how she longed to unburden herself to him, beg him to reinstate his marriage proposal of five years ago. Now, oddly, the desperation had evaporated. What remained was simple relief that she had distanced herself from Jarrett Dashwood.

‘You must rest awhile after your journey, then dine with us,’ Matthew said with an emphatic squeeze at her small hands within his.

Emma smiled her thanks; she was hungry; she was also grateful that Matthew was exercising tactful restraint. He had obviously sensed she needed a little time to compose herself before revealing the catastrophe that had forced her to break all codes of etiquette and arrive uninvited and unchaperoned at the home of an unwed man. Acknowledging that impropriety brought another to her attention: remaining with Matthew overnight as his guest, even if he had a female servant and children, was completely out of the question. She would need to find lodgings.

Emma glided small, unobtrusive glances at him as she looked about the untidy small parlour. Oh, he still appealed to her. He hadn’t aged. But his unruly hair was tangled, his skin tone unhealthy and his attire dishevelled.

‘I’ll apologise for my appearance.’ He shrewdly anticipated the reason for her eyes lingering on his unshaven jaw. A sheepish smile preceded, ‘I attended a debate at the village hall last night. It was after midnight when I found my bed.’ He made a determined effort to neaten his hair and clothes with slightly vibrating hands.

‘Was it a literary debate?’ Emma asked quite interestedly.

‘Er…no,’ Matthew laughed. ‘Nothing quite so highbrow, I’m afraid, my blue-stocking Emma. It concerned the siting of a new water pump in the village and how division of the cost is to be made between tenants. Of course, once universal agreement was reached, we had to drink to it…’

‘Of course,’ Emma smiled, pleased and relieved that such an amusingly improbable incident was responsible for his hangover. ‘And as the pump is not yet operative you were forced to settle for whisky rather than water.’

Matthew laughed. ‘That’s my Emma,’ he said, with a gentle touch at her face. ‘Actually, the toast was with ill-gotten geneva,’ he revealed, sliding a finger to cover her lips.

Emma sensed her heartbeat quickening as their eyes held. She smiled against the light caress, then asked quickly, ‘And how are your children? I believe I’ve already had a quick brush with your little dog.’

‘Ah, Trixie…’ Matthew muttered with a laugh. ‘I heard Maisie chiding Rachel for allowing the dog back onto her bed. She’s a rapscallion…’

‘Your dog, your daughter, or your servant?’ Emma asked with a laugh.

‘All three at times…but thankfully not usually together,’ he answered, with a rueful shake of the head.

Their tea arrived and Maisie poured and distributed it all the while sending brooding glances at them both. Reproof, almost warning was apparent in Matthew’s glassy hazel eyes as he and Maisie exchanged a look before she quit the parlour.

‘My apologies for Maisie keeping you on the path,’ Matthew smoothly said. ‘She is a little wary of strangers. But she’s a good girl…’

Emma’s tawny head turned, alert to a muffled noise…a snort of humour or anger from the hallway. Matthew gave no sign he’d heard yet, passing idly by the door, he pressed it firmly shut.

‘Well, Emma,’ Matthew said with a distracting smile. ‘Drink up your tea for there are things to be taken care of: the children above stairs, the dinner, but most importantly, you…’

‘Well, do you think Rachel and Toby much grown?’

‘Indeed. I should never have recognised either of them,’ Emma truthfully admitted. Then, finding nothing positive to add, fell silent again. She gathered her cloak about her as the breeze stiffened and turned her head to gaze out over darkening hedgerows and fields.

The dogcart shuddered and swayed over potholes as they travelled on towards Bath, and her evening’s lodgings. Matthew had not quibbled when, over dinner, she’d informed him that she must seek a place to stay. He had simply asked, quite gravely, whether she had the means to pay for her board. Learning that she did had seemed to relieve him.

Mrs Keene’s rooms in Lower Place, on the outskirts of Bath, were the most fitting place for a gentlewoman to overnight, he had then decisively informed her. But now, as they journeyed on in amicable quiet, she knew Matthew was hoping for some complimentary comment about Rachel and Toby. Yet, on meeting the children again today, Emma had been surprised and disappointed.

Rachel was now nine years old and Toby seven and they no longer bore any resemblance to the bonny children she recalled meeting two years ago.

One mild autumn afternoon the Cavendish family had joined her in Hyde Park for a last stroll together before they quit London for Bath. She and Matthew had exchanged good wishes, reluctant farewells and promises to write, while two fair-haired children, neatly dressed in navy blue clothes, had refused to scrunch through the glorious red-gold carpet underfoot as others were, and stood quiet and solemn. On cue, they had politely shaken her hand before their father led them away.

Today, she had uneasily watched Matthew half-heartedly chiding two grubby-faced urchins for failing to wash or neaten their attire before they sat down to dine with their guest. Reluctantly, almost surlily, they had stamped away to be returned by Maisie some few minutes later in a slightly improved state.

Emma had freshened herself for dinner in a small upstairs chamber, thanking Maisie for the washing water and cloth and receiving little more than a terse grunt for her courtesy.

The meal, prepared by Matthew’s cook—an elderly widow who lived but a few yards along the lane, he had conversationally told her as they ate—had been plentiful and delicious. Roast mutton and veal and a boiled chicken had joined dishes of steaming vegetables and sweet blackcurrant tarts on the dining table. Wine had been set out and although Matthew had poured a glass for both Emma and himself, his own goblet had remained virtually untouched—something Emma had found inordinately reassuring.

Despite Emma’s attempts to talk to the children they’d seemed reluctant to cease chewing for the few moments a response would take. On asking about their lessons, Rachel had informed her with a grimace that Miss Peters at the Vicarage tutored them. As for a friendly enquiry on special aptitudes, neither had given the matter much thought before admitting to knowing of none.

Their fond father had then deemed them too modest and defended their ignorance with recalled good marks in English or arithmetic. But with lowered heads they’d simply set enthusiastically about their meals with an air of concentration that precluded further questions or table manners.

The elderly dun mare pulling Matthew’s dogcart stumbled into a rut, throwing them together. Matthew steadied Emma with a sturdy hand, then raised her slender fingers, touching his lips briefly to them. ‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said softly.

It was his tactful way of saying that an explanation for her presence was long overdue, she realised. ‘I have quit London to avoid being married to a detestable man,’ she informed him simply, gazing over a flat, dusky vista. Instinctively her fingers tightened about his, at the oblique reference to Jarrett Dashwood, as though drawing from his strength.

‘I guessed it to be something like that,’ Matthew said softly, reining back so that the mare slowed its steady trot.

Emma looked at her fragile hand resting in his large fingers. ‘My parents have arranged for me to wed someone in the hope he will set to right my father’s debts. The man is a notorious blackguard.’ Her voice shook with strengthening outrage. ‘I had never believed they would act so brutally. The matter was concluded before I had even a hint of it. I will have none of their plots. They have treated me shabbily…abominably…’

‘They must be in grave trouble to do so, Emma, I’m sure.’ His thumb smoothed gently at her wrist. ‘I’m very happy and flattered that you felt you could turn to me for support.’ His voice became husky. ‘Does this mean that you would now reconsider my offer of marriage?’

The air between them seemed to solidify. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She had fled Rosemary House late at night instinctively to seek him and these were the words she had prayed he would utter. She heard herself say, ‘I need time to think, Matthew. I’m confused…plagued by ambivalence. I feel guilty for abandoning my parents, yet, at times, I’m sure I despise them almost as much as Jarrett Dashwood.’ Even with the lowering dusk, Emma could discern Matthew’s abrupt pallor. The cart jolted as he reflexively tightened his grip on the reins and the mare pranced.