Nicola Cornick – Christmas Wedding Belles: The Pirate's Kiss / A Smuggler's Tale / The Sailor's Bride (страница 2)

It was past twelve and time for bed. Lucinda heard the clock at the bottom of the stairs chime the quarter-hour. Mrs Saltire would be asleep by now, tucked up with her laudanum, and Stacey, whom Lucinda had caught reading Ivanhoe earlier in the day, was probably dreaming of romantic heroes, not creeping out into the grounds of Kestrel Court to meet one.

Nothing ever happens here…

Lucinda put up a hand to pull the curtains shut, then paused as the flicker of movement caught her eye again. A man on horseback was riding very slowly down the track that bordered the gardens of Kestrel Court. Lucinda could see his outline in the moonlight. It looked disturbingly like Mr Chance, on the raking bay mare upon which he had caught Stacey’s eye in the first place.

A floorboard creaked on the landing, and then there was the sound of a step on the stair. With a sharp sigh Lucinda snatched her cloak from the chairback where she had left it earlier, and flung it about her shoulders. She grabbed the candle from beside her bed, and hurried out into the corridor. It was not the first time that her role as governess had involved her in counselling against an improvident love affair. She did not want Stacey to ruin herself in a foolish elopement and then rue it for the rest of her days when the love was gone and there was no money on which to live.

The house was silent. A lamp burned in the porch, but the night porter was not at his post, though the front door was unlocked. Deploring such laxity on the part of the servants, Lucinda turned the handle and went outside, down the steps and onto the gravel sweep. Her candle flickered and went out, doused by the sharp sea breeze. For a moment she blinked in the sudden darkness, but then her eyes adjusted to the moonlight and she could see a figure slipping between the trees in the lee of the park wall. At the same time she heard the sound of hooves on the frosty ground. Could that be Mr Chance, coming to carry off his bride? Lucinda screwed up her face as she imagined Mrs Saltire’s hysterics when she discovered that her little ewe lamb had thrown herself away on a pauper.

She hastened after the fleeing figure, but Stacey—if it were she—had already lost herself amongst the trees that bordered the park. The night was quiet now. Suspiciously so. Lucinda held her breath, straining to hear any sound that might give her quarry away, but there was nothing except the wind in the top of the pines and the distant beat of the waves on the shore.

Perhaps she had been mistaken. Perhaps Stacey really was tucked up in bed. It was a servant she had heard on the stair and she was out here chasing shadows. The cold was eating deep into her bones now. It was no night for an elopement. Feeling foolish, Lucinda turned to go back to the house.

The moon went behind a cloud, but in the moment before it disappeared Lucinda clearly saw a man crouching in the lee of the park gates—and in the same instant she saw what he could not: the menacing shadow of the Riding Officer moving silently along the wall, coming closer all the time. She caught her breath on a gasp, and the hidden man turned his head at the sound. With a shock of recognition Lucinda knew him.

Terror and amazement jolted through her. Past and present collided violently. Lucinda started to tremble. She could see that the man had spotted her and was about to speak; she saw too that Owen Chance was urging his horse forward silently, every sense alert for the slightest sound.

Lucinda acted on instinct. She raised a finger to her lips in a beseeching gesture and saw the fugitive pause, and then she was beside him in one silent move, clapping her hand over his mouth. She pulled him deeper into the shadow of the gate and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

‘Be silent! There is an excise man on the other side of the wall.’

Touching him as she was, she could feel the tension that ripped through his body at her words. Every muscle he possessed was taut and ready for flight—or fight. He moved slightly, silently, to grasp the pistol in his belt.

Lucinda eased her hand from his mouth and rested it warningly on his shoulder. They were both utterly still. She could not even hear his breathing. But she was more aware of him than she had ever been of any other person in her life. She was pressed against the unyielding lines of his back. She could feel the warmth of his skin and she could smell him, a scent of fresh air and salt and leather that went straight to her head and made her senses spin, and also made her wonder, quite outrageously, if he tasted of the sea as well.

The tension spun tight as a web and seemed to last for ever, and then there was a chink of harness. She heard Owen Chance swear softly, and the horse snorted as he pulled on the rein. The shadows shifted and the horse and rider turned towards the Woodbridge road to be were swallowed up in the darkness. The frost glittered on the road behind them. Lucinda released the man and stood up slowly, every muscle in her body protesting at being clenched so tight.

The man got to his feet and they stood looking at each other in the moonlight. Lucinda felt breathless—a natural enough condition, she assured herself, since she had forgotten to breathe during the entire encounter. Twelve long years slipped away as though they had never been, and she was a young girl again, fathoms deep in her first love. She had thought never to see this man again…

‘So…’ he said. His voice was smooth. ‘I must thank you for saving my skin. I had no notion that he was there.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Muffling the horse’s hooves is an old trick. I cannot believe it almost caught me.’

‘You should be more careful,’ Lucinda said. She was glad that her voice sounded so calm when inside she was trembling. Did he not recognise her? Had she changed so much? It seemed impossible that he would not know her when she had known him instantly. A spasm of bitterness twisted within her. Perhaps it was not so surprising. He had, after all, forgotten her as soon as he had walked out of her life. Why would he remember her now?

She saw his teeth flash white as he smiled. ‘I will take your advice in future. But you, mistress…What made you decide to help me when ninety-nine of one hundred females would have screamed loud enough to bring every last Riding Officer in the vicinity down on me?’

Lucinda regarded him steadily. She was not entirely sure why she had helped him when she had reason enough to wish him dead. But instinct, as old and deep as time, had made her save him rather than condemn him, and she did not want to question why.

‘I did it for the sake of your sister, Daniel de Lancey,’ she said, reaching for an acceptable half-truth. ‘Rebecca would not wish me to condemn you to hang if I could save your neck.’

He went very still. ‘Do I know you?’

‘You did once,’ Lucinda said.

He took her chin in his hand and turned her face up to the moonlight, and Lucinda took the opportunity to study him as candidly as he was scrutinising her. He had not changed so much from the young man she had last seen twelve years before. He still had intensely dark hair, untouched with grey, and dark eyes that had once bewitched every young lady in the county—eyes so black she had once imagined fancifully that they were darker than midnight. Differences were there, though. His face was leaner than she remembered, hardened, perhaps, by experience and adversity—the line of the jaw harsh, the mouth firm. And he was no longer the lanky youth he had once been, but had filled out with hard muscle beneath his coat, so that his shoulders were broad and he seemed taller, tougher, altogether more dangerous.

Her skin prickled with awareness beneath his fingers. Emotions stirred. Old memories…She had been so young, only seventeen, but there had been nothing childish about her feelings for Daniel de Lancey. He had been her first love—her only love, if she were honest. And she had never forgotten him, not even when humiliation and pride had flayed her alive, and common sense and practicality and every sound, rational reason she could ever come up with had prompted her to let his memory go.

He pursed his lips into a soundless whistle.

‘Lucy Spring…By all that’s miraculous…’ There was something in his eyes, something of nostalgia laced with a wickedness that made her heart turn over. But she was a sensible widow now, not a lovestruck young girl who would fall for his shallow charm a second time.

‘Lucinda Melville,’ she corrected primly.

His hand fell. ‘Of course. I heard that you had wed. You did not wait for me as you promised.’

Emotion raked Lucinda suddenly, as raw and painful now as it had been eight years before, when she had heard of his betrayal. ‘You did not come back for me as you promised.’ The hot words tumbled from her lips before she could help herself. ‘How dare you reproach me? You left me without a word. I waited four years, Daniel! And then I heard that you had abandoned me—abandoned everything you had previously held dear!’ There was a wealth of bitterness and humiliation in her voice. ‘Did you expect me to wait for ever?’