Highwayman Husband

At thirty years old and having made love to many women, a paragon of virtue Lucas was not. Before they had married Laura had already fallen in love with her husband-to-be. She was not foolish enough to think the feeling was reciprocated, and nor was she naïve enough to believe she knew how to make him happy. But she had desperately wanted to—somehow—and she had been determined to find out how to accomplish it.

Lucas having made no attempt to consummate their marriage at any of the posting inns on the way to Cornwall, when they had reached Roslyn Manor and the moment had finally come Laura had yielded helplessly to the hot, searing need within her, while a nameless panic began to take hold of her. Lucas had taken her quickly, dutifully, and without endearment, with no thought to her immaturity and innocence, and after he had withdrawn from her he had rolled away and gone to sleep. It had been nothing more than the joining together of any man and his wife. Duty or pleasure, the thing was done.

Too stunned to move, Laura had lain looking up at the shadows playing with the light on the ceiling, struggling with disappointment. She had felt so miserable she had wept at her husband’s absolute detachment. If that was love she could not understand why they made so much fuss about it in story books. It had left her with a feeling of disgust combined with a strong sense of frustration.

Gazing across at him now, Laura could not believe the man she saw was the same man who had left her bed with the dawn and immediately embarked for France. Suddenly she saw his expression gentle, and she was sure she could see approval in his inscrutable eyes. ‘Why did you want to hide from me?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t. I just wanted to lie low for a while.’

‘But why? Has it something to do with you being a thief—a common highwayman? Why have you taken to the life of a High Toby?’

As he observed how seriously concerned she looked Lucas’s composure slipped and he laughed outright, a rich, deep sound that reminded Laura of thick velvet. She realised that when he did that he seemed younger, much younger than when his face was in repose.

‘I’m sure you will be relieved when I tell you that I am not a highwayman. Tonight was the first time—and the last—that I shall take to the road.’

‘Then—why did you do it?’ she asked, quite bewildered. ‘I did not take you for a prankster.’

His response to her question was a cool inclination of the head. A hard gleam entered his eyes and when he spoke his voice was deadly calm. ‘It wasn’t a prank. It was deliberately intended to infuriate and intimidate Carlyle—to put his back up. You are my wife, Laura, and no one—no one—interferes with anything that belongs to me. I can be a harsh man when angered.’

Laura felt a moment of unease at the possessive content of his words. ‘I discovered that to my cost,’ she retorted drily.

‘When John told me what you were up to—that you were to wed Carlyle and that you were celebrating your betrothal with the entire county—I was furious, naturally so. However, knowing nothing could come of it now I had returned to the scene, my fury abated. When John informed me that you intended travelling home that night I couldn’t resist the pure devilry that came over me, to have a little fun at Carlyle’s expense,’ Lucas said with a roguish grin, the harshness of a moment earlier having vanished.

‘And mine,’ Laura reminded him coolly.

‘I confess that I was enjoying myself rather well until I heard it from your own lips that you were to be his wife. It rekindled my anger and roused all that is unpleasant in me.’

‘I noticed,’ Laura said. ‘Why didn’t you try and stop the celebrations?’

‘I did think about it, but I wasn’t ready to show myself—not to you, nor anybody.’

Laura was about to ask him what the secrecy was all about, but found herself saying instead, ‘You really don’t like Edward, do you, Lucas?’

‘Does one like a rattlesnake?’ he responded quickly. Placing the horrors Carlyle had inflicted on his own person aside, Lucas dwelt for a moment on what John told him when he had brought him up to date with all that had been happening in the district during his absence. It would seem that an underlying menace lurked among the huddle of cottages in Roslyn village and the surrounding hamlets, for the very name of Edward Carlyle engendered such fear that none dared interfere with his plans, challenge him or speak against him. To do so would have been to risk one’s life. Lucas’s hatred of Edward Carlyle was almost a physical pain within him, but when he answered Laura’s question he gave no sign of his true feelings.

‘There is a dark side to Carlyle someone as innocent as you cannot possibly begin to conceive. There is enmity between us, and it’s more than a matter of us not seeing eye to eye over a few difficult episodes in the past. I will not allow someone like him to ride roughshod over me. I have a score to settle with him—a heavy score and one I mean to make him pay in full…when the time is right,’ he said in a low voice. A ruthless gleam shone from his eyes. ‘Believe me, what you witnessed tonight was only a fraction of what I intend to do to that particular gentleman.’

There was a warning underlying the lightness of his words and Laura knew that he spoke in all seriousness.

‘But tell me,’ he went on, diverting the conversation away from his neighbour, ‘when you heard I had perished on the vessel bringing me back to England, Laura, why did you not return to London—to your father?’

Laura sighed, her mind going back to that time when she had found it hard to take in that the handsome man she had married was dead. ‘Because Roslyn was my home. I was Lady Mawgan and I had responsibilities. It was my duty to remain and take care of things. There was no one else, and the longer I stayed I found I was surrendering more and more of myself to the place. My brother, Philip, and his wife, Jane, bring the children down from London during the summer. The little ones do so love the cove. My—my father, who, as you will recall, suffered ill health, died shortly after we were married.’

Sympathy flickered in Lucas’s eyes. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I remember how close you were to him. You must have been devastated.’

‘Yes, I was.’ She glanced at him quizzically. ‘Who told you of his demise?’

‘I was in London for a time before I came to Cornwall. Your brother told me.’

‘I see. When I was told what had happened to you—that you were dead—I had to go to London to see your lawyers, so I stayed with my father. Before he died he told me something, Lucas, and I would like you to tell me if it’s true. You see, I never did know why you had to go to France so soon after we were married, and I would like it if you explained to me where you have been and what you have been doing all this time.

‘My father told me you were working for the government—that the foreign secretary had sent you to France on a secret mission. Is that true?’ Lucas’s eyes snapped to her face and a sudden wariness ignited in his eyes. Her question had taken him completely unawares, she could see that, and she existed in a state of jarring tension for his reply. When it came his voice was guarded, only telling her enough to pacify her curiosity.

‘My business was—highly confidential.’

‘But you were on government business?’ she persisted, watching him closely.

‘With France in turmoil at the time and the situation deteriorating daily, His Majesty’s government was eager to see how the French would resolve the situation, since it would affect the rest of Europe. Absolute monarchs everywhere recognised that the doctrines of the revolution in France endangered their own regimes.

‘Already the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen issued by the French Assembly in August ’89 was spreading its message, with unrest and demands for reform by the bourgeoisie and peasants appearing in countries all over Europe, and French émigrés pressing unceasingly for war against the revolution. Reluctant to start such a conflict, the foreign secretary, feeling that some special purpose might be gained, sent me to Paris to act as a detached observer.’

‘A spy, you mean.’

His expression was grave but calm. ‘I prefer to call myself a government agent.’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘No. I was not the only one employed as such. God alone knows how many foreign spies were loose in France at that time—and now, for that matter.’

‘And—were you carrying any despatches?’

‘No,’ Lucas went on, feeling duty bound to answer her questions, but careful not to reveal too much. ‘It would have been too dangerous—should they fall into the wrong hands. I carried nothing with me except false credentials.’

‘And what happened to you when the vessel bringing you back from France sank? I was informed that only one man survived and that he managed to make it back to England. According to him, the Pelican was attacked by some unknown force and everyone on board killed and thrown into the sea.’

‘That is more or less what happened. Who that man was I really cannot say, and how he made it back to England is a mystery to me. With so much traffic passing back and forth in the Channel it is likely that he was picked up by a vessel. But, contrary to the account he gave to the Admiralty, he was not the only one to survive. Along with one other I was pulled from the sea by the captain of a French vessel on patrol. Unfortunately, having received a severe blow to the head, I was unconscious at the time. When the captain demanded to know our names, the other man—a mariner from Roslyn village who died soon afterwards—knowing nothing of my mission, gave the captain my true identity.

‘Unfortunately it was not unknown to the French, since my coming and going between our countries engaged on secret missions during the American war had been greeted with suspicion and made me most unpopular at the time. I was taken back to Paris, where I was pronounced a traitor, and without a trial I was thrown into prison—La Force, a notoriously vile, appallingly overcrowded place, a common jail, where criminals of every kind who roam the slums of Paris and elsewhere are incarcerated.’

Laura was horrified. ‘But—how could they imprison you, an Englishman?’

‘My mother was French,’ he told her. His voice was grim. ‘They knew this. She was a member of the detested aristocracy, from the Languedoc region—the same aristocracy the people are feeding to the guillotine every day.’

‘Oh!’ Laura exclaimed, expressing her surprise. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘No,’ he said quietly, his eyes calmly watching her. ‘There is a lot we don’t know about each other, Laura.’

‘We—we hear such dreadful things about what is happening in France…with so much internal unrest,’ she faltered, unable to stem the warmth his disturbing gaze sent pulsating through her veins. ‘Did—did they interrogate you?’

‘I was—subjected to questioning,’ he told her hesitantly, sparing her the gruesome details of how he had been shackled with a length of heavy chain hand and foot, tortured at the hands of experts, before being dumped unceremoniously into an underground hell-hole, a pathetic, clanking heap of misery. This was not for the ears of a respectable young woman.

‘But I gave no account. In the beginning I was kept in complete isolation—unable to make contact with the outside world—in a place where a man loses count of the days and where death can strike in many ways. I had plenty of time to think, but I tried not to. When a man loses his freedom, thinking is a dangerous business—apt to drive him mad. Eventually I was taken out and put in a cell with two other prisoners.’

Pain and disbelief streaked through Laura at the thought of Lucas languishing in one of France’s prisons. If only she had known, she would have moved heaven and earth to rescue him.

‘How I wish I’d known…’ A knot formed at the base of her throat, shutting off her words, and, leaning forward, Lucas saw tears in her eyes.

‘You weep for me?’ he murmured, deeply touched. ‘How strange!’

‘Strange?’ she asked, finding her voice once more. ‘Is it strange for a woman to weep when her husband tells her what you have just told me—of the tragedy that befell you, of the pain and indignities you must have been subjected to at the hands of those…those foreigners, knowing you could emerge at any time and be taken to the guillotine in one of those creaking carts of death?’ She dropped her gaze and looked down at her hands. ‘I’m sorry. You must think I’m very silly.’

Lucas’s face seemed transfigured and he was looking at his wife as if he could not gaze too long. Quietly he said, ‘I happen to think you’re very sweet.’

Raising her eyes, she looked across at him. She felt a sudden quiver run through her, a sudden quickening within, as if something came to life. Something was happening to her, something golden and wonderful, and when she spoke she could only stammer, ‘H-how did you manage to get out of the prison? Did you escape?’

‘No. I was released when war broke out with the Prussians. When thousands of patriotic volunteers went to defend the revolution their departure from Paris provoked concern about the prisons, which were crowded with counter-revolutionaries who might threaten a city deprived of so many of its defenders. Already there was a rumour spreading that they were plotting their escape and would avenge themselves on the remaining defenders and hand Paris over to the Prussians.

‘Marat, a powerful member of the commune, declared that the enemy within must be destroyed before the invader could be repulsed. He called for the conspirators to be put to death. Armed bands began visiting the prisons, and the advance of the enemy gave an excuse for the mob to vent its hatred in an orgy of bloodshed.

‘There was absolute mayhem as improvised courts were set up to try prisoners. Hundreds of counter-revolutionaries were killed—and a large number were released. Miraculously I was one of them. I didn’t hang around to find out why. I immediately left Paris and headed for the coast, where I managed to find a boat to take me across the Channel.’

Laura was not ignorant of what had been happening in Paris. Since these ‘September massacres’ which Lucas spoke of, the French troops had halted the enemy advance. On September 21st the convention had abolished the monarchy, and the next day it proclaimed the republic. She had listened to Lucas calmly, deeply moved by everything he had told her, but she had the distinct feeling that there was a great deal more he had left unsaid.

‘We will speak no more of this now,’ Lucas said, ‘and not a word of it to anyone.’

‘You can rely on me not to breathe a word. I promise.’

Lucas’s eyes warmed. ‘I know. Despite betrothing yourself to Carlyle, the way you have behaved during my absence proves to me that you are a person one can depend on in a crisis.’

He watched the youthful, graceful line of her neck at the back of which her hair nestled, soft and shining. He saw the sensitiveness of her small hands folded in her lap, and the dark sweep of her long, curling eyelashes against her flushed cheeks, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed before. ‘You have spirit and courage, Laura. I commend that. In fact you are a complete contradiction in terms and appearance.’

‘A contradiction?’ she queried, looking slightly bewildered.

‘I already know that you are direct and intelligent—and quite lovely. I saw that before I married you, and it appealed to me even then. You give the impression of being rather delicate, weak and extremely vulnerable, yet I believe you are both strong and determined—and more than a little obstinate. I suspect you are not always the easiest person to get along with.’

Encouraged and warmed by his words, she tilted her head to one side, a slow smile tempting her lips. ‘I have my moments,’ she told him.

‘Oh?’

‘Now and then,’ she said.

He chuckled, and then said, ‘Have you any idea how lovely you look tonight, in your fetching blue gown?’

There was a soft, caressing note in his voice that almost turned Laura’s bones to water. She looked at him and smiled, enjoying the warmth and the intimacy of their conversation. ‘I am exactly the same person I was when you went away. I have not changed.’

‘I disagree. The charming girl has become an elegant woman. Perhaps I have changed, also.’

‘After all that has happened to you, it is hardly surprising. Will you get involved again? I ask this because I need to know. If you decide to disappear again, I should appreciate being informed before you go.’

‘I am still involved, Laura—in one way or another.’

There was a faint accent on the last sentence and Laura shivered. ‘Are you in danger? Am I in danger?’

Lucas’s look was piercing, his expression grim. After a moment of deliberation he nodded slowly. ‘Possibly, which is why it is important that no one knows I am here for the present—particularly Edward Carlyle. I have one final mission to complete before I can reveal myself. All I ask is that you be patient.’

Laura would have liked to ask him to explain more about this final mission, but the warning in his eyes seemed to pierce her as if it were a knife. ‘But—the servants. You know what they are like. The invisible grapevine that exists between them will spread the news that you have returned from the dead throughout Cornwall.’

‘I know them. They have been employed by the Mawgans for years and can be trusted; after all—’ his eyes twinkled merrily across at her ‘—they kept my presence in the house from you.’

‘So they did. When everyone finds out that you are still alive, what will you tell them when they ask where you’ve been?’

‘The truth—although I prefer the reason I went to France to be kept between ourselves. I know you’re a woman of great discretion.’

‘Of course,’ Laura said, grateful of the confidence.

Hoisting himself out of the chair, Lucas stretched his long limbs. ‘The hour is late and it’s time for bed. We will talk some more tomorrow.’

Standing up, Laura stiffened, wary of the direction in which he was moving—towards the bed. Panic struck her. ‘Lucas! I think you have not understood me. You are not staying in my room. I will not get into bed with you. After two years’ absence, you cannot walk back into my life and expect to carry on as if nothing has happened.’

An almost lecherous smile touched Lucas’s lips as his eyes swept the bed before settling on her face. ‘By any definition, you are my wife. Restraint does not come easy to a man deprived of a woman’s arms and love for so long.’

His soft answer and the way his gaze fastened on hers awoke tingling answers in places Laura tried to ignore. This betrayal of her body aroused an impatient vexation. ‘You treat the word love lightly, Lucas. It is an emotion that should be a test of devotion and commitment, and until I get used to having you back I would appreciate it if you will allow me to sleep alone.’

‘What if I refuse to agree?’

Laura swallowed and looked up at him in desperate appeal, his tall, muscular frame making her achingly aware of her own helplessness, and the futility of trying to resist him. ‘If you insist, then I will do my duty and submit to you.’

Lucas stared at her, stunned by her choice of words. ‘Submit?’ he repeated. ‘I am unable to believe that my wife should speak of the act of making love with her husband as some form of punishment. It isn’t as if you haven’t shared a bed with me before.’ When she flushed and averted her eyes he frowned with concern over the tension and anxiety he saw on her face. He moved closer and tipped her chin with his finger, forcing her to look at him. ‘Am I to understand you did not enjoy what I did to you that night, Laura?’

‘I— No, I didn’t like it—and you made me feel less than worthy of your attentions,’ she told him bluntly, with a trace of accusation. ‘I found the whole thing painful and undignified, and I can very well live without it. I made up my mind not to repeat it in a hurry.’ When he removed his finger from her chin and stepped back, unable to meet his steady gaze any longer she looked away in sheer embarrassment, her cheeks as pink as the roses that clambered in profusion over the walls at Roslyn.

Lucas looked at her intently, as if he were seeing her for the first time. The things he had done to her on that one night they had lain together as man and wife paraded across his mind, bringing pain and regret. In his prison cell he had often found himself lost in that memory, and afterwards he was left with a lingering feeling of failure.

There had been no tenderness or regard in his treatment of her. His mind had been so preoccupied with the importance of his mission to France the following day that he had given little thought to the fears of his young wife. She had surrendered her virtue without a struggle, and he had coldly and deliberately taken her innocence as his due. He realised now that he must have scared the hell out of her.

She was standing an arm’s length away from him, and she looked flushed, extremely lovely, and terrified half to death. He was surprised that it gave him intense pleasure to contemplate taking her to bed and guiding her gently, tenderly, along the paths of love until she was moaning with rapture in his arms.

‘Laura, this marriage might not have been of our choosing, but it was done and we will have to find a way to live in harmony with it. I did you a great wrong on the night I took your virtue, and nothing I can say or do will change that,’ he said, speaking with great gentleness, firstly because he was dealing with an anxious and bewildered young woman, and secondly because he genuinely wished to make amends for any pain he had caused her.

‘I should have exercised more care and consideration for your youth and inexperience. I hurt you, and for that I implore your forgiveness. I promise not to treat you like that again. Please believe me when I tell you that the next time I make love to you it will be different from before.’ She looked so relieved that he smiled crookedly. ‘You needn’t work yourself up into a fevered anguish. You are reprieved—for now, at least.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I would be grateful if you would allow me a little time. I’m so glad you understand.’ Fixing his gaze on her lips, he smiled, a slow, lazy smile that made her heart leap. ‘Now what are you thinking?’

‘That the reprieve I grant you will be harder for me to bear than it will for you—so do not take too long.’ He lifted a brow in tender mockery. ‘I’m not cut out to be a monk.’

‘No?’ She laughed lightly, teasingly. ‘My mother always used to say restraint is good for the soul.’

‘I doubt your mother was referring to our making love,’ he countered, his gaze caressing her smiling face. The radiance of her smile heartened him.

‘No,’ she replied, pink-cheeked. ‘I don’t suppose she was.’

His eyes glowed warm and he grinned roguishly. ‘You are blushing—that’s charming. I don’t intend to spare your blushes. We know so little about each other, Laura, that we will find it interesting to discover more—and we have all the time in the world to make those discoveries.’

Picking his jacket off the bed, which Laura foolishly realised had been his true reason for crossing to the bed in the first place, and not because he’d had any designs on sharing it with her, he took two objects from the pocket and handed them to her—her sapphire necklace and the silver snuff box he had taken from Edward.

‘I think these belong to you.’

‘I could not understand why you took Edward’s snuff box and left the rest. Why did you?’

‘It was your betrothal gift to him, was it not?’

‘Yes, but I don’t see—’

‘I don’t like my wife presenting gifts to other men,’ he told her sharply.

‘How could you have known I had given it to him—or that he would have it on his person tonight, for that matter?’

‘I didn’t. I took a chance. It was John who told me you had given it to him.’

She frowned crossly. ‘I think I might have told John far too much. Why did you take my necklace?’

‘To make the robbery more convincing—and it pleased me to discover how reluctant you were to part with it.’