Miss Spry made her cautious way down, and Georgie followed her. When they reached the bottom they looked back,and Charles, sitting in a niche on the landing, raised a hand in encouragement. ‘I suppose it is a sort of postern gate,’ said Georgie thoughtfully. ‘The inhabitants might have used it to enter or to leave in secret, even if they were besieged, and surely kept a boat here for the purpose. An escape route, if one were needed.’
‘And even if some enemy did come this way, it would be impossible to climb the stairs and take the Castle if even a very few defenders held them. Two or three resolute men in armour might do it. Imagine coming up that narrow, slippery staircase in single file, knowing that armed men stood waiting at the top to push you back. A single misstep and you would fall to your death. How terrible, and how thrilling!’
Georgie agreed that it was both thrilling and terrible, and they made their way out onto the beach. The cave had been sheltered, but the wind outside was coming straight off the sea, loaded with spray, and literally took their breath away. They set out along the firm golden sand, glad that on Lady Blanche’s recommendation they had tied scarves across their bonnets to prevent them blowing off and halfway across Yorkshire.
They walked briskly for a while in silence, their cheeks flushed and loose strands of hair whipping about their faces, and occasionally one of them bent to pick up a curious shell or gleaming stone that caught her eyes. Eventually Miss Spry stopped, and turned to look out to sea, and Georgie stood beside her, eyes watering. ‘Magnificent!’ she said.
‘It is,’ assented Jane. ‘And now there is not the least danger of being overheard, even by seagulls, and I hope you will tell me just exactly what is going on between you and the Duke.’
11
His Grace the Duke of Northriding shut his study door behind him with a sigh of profound relief. He was alone at last save for his dogs, Tam and Nico, and they settled into their accustomed positions either side of the fire. He wished he could be so relaxed and at ease. Easier to be a dog than a duke, he sometimes thought, and then reproved himself for preposterous self-indulgence and maudlin self-pity.
Although he knew that nobody would disturb him here against his explicit instructions – and he had given instructions quite explicit enough that even servants far less well-trained than his own would have been foolish to ignore them – he felt a strong impulse to lock the door behind him. His home, which had been his sanctuary, no longer seemed anything of the kind.
It was his own fault, of course. When his sister Blanche had suggested this misbegotten house party as a solution to the problem of his marriage, he should not have listened to her. In the past he had always been most careful what guests he brought here, and his displeasant sensations upon contemplating the assembled company over the last few days showed how right he had been, and how wrong to go against those deepest instinctsat Blanche’s urging. He should have conducted this ridiculous… this ridiculous, degrading – degrading for all concerned – parade of candidates for his hand in London, or at one of his other residences. Anywhere but here.
But Blanche had argued – and he was obliged to admit that her argument had carried some weight – that he was not only looking for a bride for himself, a mother for his children, but also a mistress for Northriding Castle. Any woman who looked on this ancient place with indifference or disdain, any woman who could not appreciate its special wild beauty, simply did not belong here. If a young lady disliked the Castle in July, even an inclement and unseasonable July such as this one, she would hardly wish to spend a day, a week, a month here in January or February, when the wind across the North Sea knifed at your skin, and howled and moaned around the walls and turrets with the banshee wail of a soul in torment. Did she shiver now, and pull her shawl about her? Only imagine her discontent when the snow lay on the ground for weeks at a time and icicles appeared inside the windows. It took a certain kind of person, his sister said and he agreed whole-heartedly, to appreciate such a place and accommodate herself to its occasional discomforts as the price to be paid for its glorious setting and enormous, ever-changing skies and sea. For everything had its price in life, as he knew all too well.
Blanche was right, of course, and it was a matter for serious consideration. He had not the least desire to marry, but he knew he must, and it would be foolish in the extreme to choose a bride who would be miserable here, in his ancestral home, the jewel of his inheritance, the place where Mauleverer children were always raised. The trouble was, most of the young women assembled here were so very anxious to be duchesses – not to marry him, he could not so flatter himself, for he was in himself no great bargain, but to be duchesses – that had he beenSatan himself and this the chief castle of the infernal regions, they would have complimented him upon the fine situation and healthful airs, and declared that no prospect could be finer than the lake of fire and brimstone that they beheld seething and boiling in the middle distance.
This being so, the whole exercise took on the aspect of a gigantic waste of time, since it was all but impossible to ascertain how any of his guests actually felt about the potential future that he laid before them. Could any of them say in perfect honesty that they thought they might be happy here? He had taken several of them riding just now, he had listened to them sing last night and the night before – that was an experience he would be perfectly content never to repeat – had walked and conversed with them together and separately, and felt he was no further on in understanding the private feelings of any one of them. Did he feel the slightest partiality towards any of the group of women he had brought here as prospective brides, did he feel any desire at all to take any one of them in particular as his wife and companion at bed and board, as a mother to his children, God willing? He did not. Christ knew he did not.
He walked over to the window, frowning abstractedly, and looked down upon the deserted beach below. He had not, he realised now, so much as thought to propose to the young ladies that they should brave the Duke’s Stair and go down through the bowels of the Castle to walk upon the shining sands and breathe in great lungfuls of salty air. He could all too well imagine their faces if he made such an outlandish suggestion, their unsuccessful attempts to dissemble and feign pleasure at the prospect. He made a small sound of disgust, of impatience with himself as much as with them, and it was at that moment that he saw that he was wrong; that some young ladies, two at least, had without any prompting from him descended the steep steps, and were striking out along the beach at a brisk pace.
Gabriel watched them walk – these were not feeble town-bred damsels, he saw, they strode out with a will and were plainly taking pleasure in the exercise – and then he watched them come to a halt, and engage in what appeared to him at this distance to be an intense and enthralling conversation, apparently untroubled by the strong onshore wind that was whipping their hair about their faces and their skirts and petticoats about their ankles. One of the ladies was excessively tall, and he recognised her without difficulty as Miss… Miss Spry, the authoress, Lady Louisa Pendlebury’s Sapphic companion. He had previously come across pieces that she had written, and been impressed by them, by the mind and sensibility they revealed. But he had little attention to spare for her just now, or her literary attainments, because with a certainty he did not think to question he knew exactly who her companion was. Her, it was her.
She was not tall or short, she was not fat or thin, there was nothing obviously distinctive or unusual about her to make her stand out at this distance, and so there was no reason at all for such certitude, and yet he knew. Put her among a thousand others, masked and cloaked, conceal even her extraordinary bright blue eyes from him, and still he would know her. Blindfold him, he thought, and he would know her, by smell, by feel, by taste. God almighty,thatmost of all.
12
They had, of course, been extraordinarily intimate. He thought, had thought even at the time, even while it was happening, that he would never as long as he lived forget that night, their conversation, the instant connection that had sprung to life between them and led – inexorably, as if nothing else could ever possibly have transpired – to her kissing him with such passion, to her pressing her gloriously lithe body against his, and then to him falling to his knees and… God. God. He groaned and rested his suddenly hot forehead on the windowpane, welcoming its soothing coolness. Tam seemed to sense his agitation and raised his long grey head in enquiry, whining a little, but then subsided when no further sound was heard from his master.
Gabriel was forced to admit that, while he had in all conscience been uncomfortable enough with his bizarre situation before the Pendlebury ladies had arrived, the recognition of just exactly who had come into his home had disturbed him more than he was able to articulate, even to himself in his most private of thoughts. It had been difficult at first to comprehend what she was doing here, but he had known even in that first instant that she was horrified to see him, andhad had not the least idea who he was prior to that moment. She had lied to him once, for reasons he only partly understood even now, but there was no trickery in her. She had not come here with any ulterior motive. God knows she had betrayed no desire to use the secret that they shared as any kind of leverage. Very much the opposite, and most unflatteringly so, in fact.
And her presence had thrown all his plans into confusion.
Gabriel was still not entirely sure why he had opened the secret panel in the cupboard at the base of the tower and climbed up to see her last night – what he had hoped to achieve by it. He wanted her, of course. Still wanted her. It would be futile to deny that. His attention had been piqued as soon as he had set eyes on her, so out of place and yet so stubbornly refusing to leave, and he would not have been human if those long legs in the clinging red breeches, that expressive little face and tempting mouth beneath the lace mask, had not intrigued him. A girl, a beautiful blue-eyed girl in boys’ clothing – what man would not want to know more? But he could see that she was not safe in that house, did not belong there, and he would have been happy – he told himself he would have been perfectly happy – to help her make her escape and never see her again. One virtuous action in a life that had been full of sin: a feather on the scale.
That was not what had happened: she had refused the chance to escape when it had been offered to her, and for that she must take some share of the responsibility. At least he could comfort himself with the undeniable fact that he had not so far lost his senses as to do anything that she had not asked of him, despite the desire for her that had almost overmastered him. And what she had asked of him…
It did no good at all to think of that now. He had spent enough nights reliving every word, every expression, every nuance of their kiss, every hesitation and sigh, the feel of her finger in his mouth, her bravery when at last she had let himknow what she wanted from him. And then most of all, most of all, the sight of her on that sofa as she waited for him to pleasure her, still masked, half-naked, lips parted in desire and anticipation. And then when he had put his mouth on her, good God… the softness of her skin, her exquisite responsiveness, the little gasp of surprise and arousal she had let out when he had bitten her tender thigh, and the delicious wetness of her most secret places when he had buried his face in her and felt her opening to him like a flower, like… like a revelation.
He made a soft noise of disgust at the tenor of this thoughts. He was no poet. He despised high-flown sentiment, always had. One of the main aims of poetry, as far as he could see, and his classical education had confirmed as much, was to persuade women into your bed who otherwise might not agree to go there, and make everyone think you were a devil of a fine fellow, rather than a hopeless libertine, while you were doing it. A clever trick, or a cheap one, he was not quite sure. Both, perhaps. He’d never experienced the urge to versify. He had made love to women before, more women than he cared to count, and never felt a need to describe the lips, the hair, the eyes, the breasts, the taste of any one of them. He did not want to describe it now; he wanted to experience it. To taste her again, to kiss every inch of her body and caress the parts of her he had not yet seen and burned to see. If he must be crude – and it really did seem that he must – he wanted to be inside her, for his cock to follow where his tongue had so unforgettably been. But first he wanted to make her come again so gloriously, for her tenderest and most private places to quiver uncontrollably and then soften and relax deliciously because of what he, he alone, could do to her. And he wanted that almost –almost– more than he wanted to spend himself in her in his own unstoppable climax. And then he wanted to do it again, and again, and again, until he tired of it, orshe did. Which, he had already known that night and knew now, would not be soon.
And she had been right, of course, hideously so; it was unconscionable to feel such powerful desire for a woman who was staying under his roof and still contemplate even for a moment wooing, proposing marriage to, announcing his engagement with, any other woman in the world. It was much worse than unconscionable – he had done unforgivable things before and probably would again – it was bloody stupid. And it was unnecessary.
Because there was an obvious solution to all of these difficulties.
13
Down on the beach, Georgie’s head whipped round and she gazed at her companion in astonishment. ‘How…?’
Jane smiled. ‘I saw the way you looked at him; I saw the way he looked at you. And last night, very shockingly, I heard voices.’
‘Oh, God help me,’ said Georgie involuntarily. ‘Does Louisa know?’
‘She was asleep and heard nothing, and I haven’t told her. I don’t enjoy keeping secrets from her, and generally I do not do so, but if I tell her she will feel obliged to tell your brother. How could she not? He is “the head of the family” and your guardian. And I don’t like to see myself as the sort of woman who informs another woman’s brother or father of matters that they consider private. You’re not a possession, though the law says you are.’
