His Duty, Her Destiny Page 11

  ‘We’re taking all the horses with us,’ he said, ‘and it’s your safety that concerns me, not your riding ability. Now, put that rabbit into its basket and fix the lid. She can go beside the bird.’

  ‘Melrose will ride with me,’ she said, defiantly. ‘She’ll be upset if she has to listen to that squawking popinjay the whole way.’

  Sir Fergus eyed the bird with intent. ‘I can soon put a stop to that,’ he said. ‘In fact…’ Taking Nicola firmly by the arm, he walked her into the empty winter-parlour and closed the door behind them before she had an inkling of what he was about. Then she knew.

  His kiss matched the mood of the last few hours, efficient, masterly and forbidding any more contrariness on her part, so thoroughly did he take possession of her mouth. It was not meant to gentle her, and she would have found it easy enough to match his urgency, kiss for kiss, except that it would have sent the wrong signals and he had already begun to anticipate her interest. She must not make matters worse.

  ‘Fergus Melrose…no!’ she gasped, her lips only a breath away from his. ‘Stop, please stop! I don’t know what you’re thinking of, but whatever it is, forget it. This is all like a military operation to you, isn’t it? But this is my house, sir, my home. Do you think I feel nothing at having to leave it?’ She shook herself free but, with her back to the panelled wall, she was still captured. Her wound had begun to hurt her, and she put a hand up to comfort it, showing him by her frown that his strength was at fault. ‘Leave me be,’ she whispered. ‘It’s bleeding again. I need to attend to it.’

  His voice was husky with tenderness as he replied. ‘I can see to it. Come, I put it there, I can tend it too.’ His hand took hers away as he spoke, forcibly overcoming her protests that were now on the brink of tears. ‘It’s all right…shh…come on, lass. We’re going to be much more intimate than this before we’ve finished. Let me see… Look, I have a clean kerchief here in my pouch. If I place the pad just there, like that.’ Once again, without her doing much to prevent him except by an ineffectual hold on his wrist, he drew the neck of her kirtle down to expose the full exquisite roundness of her breast and its wicked red line, placing the pad of silk against the skin, then drawing her clothes back over it while she stood there, trembling, watching his careful hands and not daring to think what he meant.

  ‘All right?’ he said, adjusting the shoulder of her houppelande. ‘Will it stay there, d’ye think?’

  She nodded. ‘You should not have seen,’ she said. ‘Please don’t speak of it.’

  He placed a finger over her lips. ‘Hush. Wild horses wouldn’t drag it from me. Not even a hint, my beauty.’ His hand slid gently down over her bare neck, lingering over the silken surface before daring to revisit the site where his kerchief lay hidden. As softly as a feather, his hand cupped the wounded breast as if in apology, and all that time she held his other wrist, watching, ready to stop him or to leap away like a deer. Neither of which she did.

  Finally, she took his hand away and held it with the other upon his chest. ‘This is not the Fergus Melrose I know,’ she said. ‘At least I shall be safe from you at George’s house.’

  ‘No, you won’t, my lady. Come, it’s time we were away.’

  Although they chose not to acknowledge it openly, both Fergus and Nicola knew that their pretence at friendship had now moved beyond its first innocent phase into something more serious, for no woman would have permitted that degree of intimacy from a man, not even in an emergency, unless she meant to allow him more permanently into her life. For her to have stood still and done nothing much to stop him was a significant step forward that occupied Fergus’s thoughts all the way to the River House and that, combined with the hand on his waist as she rode pillion behind him, was enough to put the glitter of triumph back into his eyes. At last now she had begun to talk to him without the continual tongue-lashing.

  For Nicola, there was a mass of contradictions to straighten out, keeping her mind in turmoil all through London’s rowdy streets, for she could find no good reason for her behaviour, nor any explanation why she should believe one thing and find herself doing entirely the opposite. Having gone so far, there would be no turning back. All she could do to slow things down would be to insist that her new civility was still pretence; but though that might deceive her brother and his wife, it would not fool Fergus.

  Totally unfeigned, however, was the joy shown by George, Lord Coldyngham, and his wife, Charlotte, and such was the welcoming, the carrying of wicker baskets and bundles, the hugs, the questions and assumptions, that Nicola was convinced she had done the right thing even while she let them all believe it was their persuasion that had won. ‘Only temporary, love,’ she told her sister-in-law. ‘Don’t let George think I’ve come to stay. As soon as the troubles have died down, I’ll return home.’

  Lady Charlotte greeted Sir Fergus with a kiss to both cheeks. ‘Did you see anything of the riots?’ she said. ‘George tells me they’ve started fires on the street where the Lombards live. You know how disliked the Italian merchants are.’

  ‘We caught the smoke before we left,’ said Sir Fergus. ‘There’s a strong south-westerly but still no sign of rain. Don’t worry, it’ll die down.’

  Sailors’ talk, the women’s glances said. Lady Charlotte linked an arm tightly into Nicola’s. ‘You rode pillion?’ she said.

  ‘He wouldn’t let me ride my mare. Bossy creature.’

  ‘And you brought everything, did you?’

  ‘Except for the heavier pieces. We left two men to guard it. No use leaving a house unattended.’

  ‘Quite right, my dear. And who is this?’ Lady Charlotte looked down at the white rabbit straining at the blue leash, obviously uneasy at the interest of two towering gazehounds.

  Nicola picked her up. ‘Melrose,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘Well, well!’ A white beringed hand stroked the silky ears. ‘So it’s gifts already, with jewels on the harness. Nick, have things…have you…?’

  ‘No, nothing at all. And we haven’t. This is to do with something that happened when I was a child and for some reason he seems to have remembered it, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh.’ The disappointment in Lady Charlotte’s voice would have been difficult to miss, but not the smile that followed. There was plenty of time and a few small indications. ‘I’ve given your maids a room of their own,’ she said, ‘next door to yours. Come, I’ll show you.’

  But their hopes that the south-westerlies would bring rain did not materialise that night and, by next morning, the fires that had worked their way sporadically along the tinder-dry oak-shingled rooftops in the centre of London were now throwing sparks towards the lower end of Bishops-gate and, as fast as one fire was extinguished, another started.

  The worse news came as Lord Coldyngham’s riverside household stirred into life with the dawn when Nicola’s two men arrived from Bishops-gate. Exhausted by their marathon, they came to tell her that her house was burning and that there was nothing they could do to stop it.

  ‘Nothing?’ said George, tucking his shirt into his braies. ‘What d’ye mean, nothing? Where were the bloody fire-buckets, man? Did ye not stay to find out? What the hell d’ye think you were left there for, to watch it burn?’

  It was rhetoric not meant to be answered but, in any case, there were no answers except the look of horror on Lady Nicola’s face. She had lost her house and, with it, her hopes of independence. Shivering with shock in Lady Charlotte’s arms, she heard how the men had been woken in the dark hours to find the place full of smoke and the roof well alight, the timbers already crashing into the stables and igniting the flammable straw. They dared hardly mention the illegal thatch on the service areas, for they were places the city aldermen had not checked too closely on their last visit. It had been a matter of expense, and Nicola’s father had been complaisant.

  ‘So the rest of the street’s on fire too then, is it?’ snapped George.

  ‘Er…no, sir…your lordship.’


  ‘Then where did the sparks come from? How did they reach Lady Nicola’s house? Come on, man. Speak!’

  ‘I don’t…don’t know, sir. Honest. We had to run for it.’

  ‘Leave it, George, please,’ said Nicola. ‘The men are exhausted. Let them recover. It will have gone by now. Gone. I’ll go and get dressed.’ Her face was ashen. ‘My lovely house,’ she whispered.

  ‘You might have been in it,’ said George, tersely. ‘I’ll go there with you.’

  Riding her own mare, Nicola set out with George and a party of armed men to reach Bishops-gate via a roundabout route intended to avoid the worst of the damage with the result that it took longer to get there, for all their speed. Many streets were blocked by debris and the evidence of uncontrolled hooliganism. Townspeople went about their business, silent and angry; they had seen it before. Men pulled at the rubble of houses, women scolded, children clung, dogs scrounged and yapped at homeless rats and, as every moment passed, Nicola thought of her comfortable house and those last few moments there with Fergus Melrose. It was as if fate was anxious to move things on quickly, before she could suffer a change of heart. Damned fate.

  By the time they reached Bishops-gate, most of the signs of rioting had been left behind except for one heavy pall of smoke ahead of them, the smell of burning wood, and rivulets of water beneath their feet. Through the thick acrid haze, the eerie light of the sun struggled like a distant lamp and, more articulate than any call to prayers was the doleful priory bell, on and on. Coldness seized at Nicola’s heart. It was the passing-bell.

  All around them the trees and even the wild roses were singed, and where Nicola’s timbered four-storey house had stood yesterday with bright herbs by the door, blackened posts pointed like fingers and sticks of smouldering incense. A massive heap of rubble lay beneath thick layers of hot white ash, rafters hung at strange angles and a doorway was still burning, the tongues of flame roaring and crackling in the breeze. Like a charred skeleton, the demolished wall spaces allowed a view through from front to back across the courtyard to the debris-covered garden, and from over the high wall came billows of smoke and greedily licking flames. The cloister next door was on fire, its thatched roof shrivelling in the heat. Sounds of crashing and showers of sparks were sent high into the air as the roof and pillars collapsed. Someone screamed.

  The garden door, so long forgotten, burst open as George and Nicola drew to a standstill and a group of men and nuns headed straight for the fountain in Nicola’s garden, making a chain of buckets and arms swinging in unison, as if to music.

  ‘Quick, you lads!’ George yelled to his men. ‘Get in there and help.’

  Moments later, two men on horses came galloping up the track behind them, throwing themselves out of the saddles to run through the hot embers towards the blazing cloisters. It was the two Melrose brothers.

  ‘No…George…don’t let them! Fergus…no!’ Nicola yelled, then bit back her tongue. Of course they must help. But please, God, don’t let him be harmed.

  George looked at her and said nothing.

  She had dismounted before he could help her, though he pulled at her arm to make her listen and wait. ‘No…Nick, no! You cannot go in there.’

  ‘Someone’s been killed, George. There’s a room at the corner of the cloister. I must go and find out. Let me go, please.’

  ‘No need. Look, there’s someone coming out of the side door. Ask them.’

  Two nuns emerged, followed by two more carrying bundles. They were crying and unable to recognise her with an old brown felt hat jammed down over her wimple, her plain homespun cote-hardie. ‘Go back,’ they croaked. Then, one of them stopped, blinking and frowning. ‘Forgive me, lady…I didn’t see…you were not in your home after all? Thank God.’

  ‘No, I’m safe, as you see. But who’s the bell for? Is it the prioress?’

  The old nun’s face crumpled and a hand trembled in front of her pale lips before it made the sign of the cross, telling Nicola what she needed to know.

  ‘Not burned, sister?’

  ‘No, thank heaven. Not burned, but overcome by smoke only a while ago, before we could carry her out. Her lungs, you know.’ She patted her chest. ‘She was so frail, but that was not the way for her to go. She deserved peace at the last, not that.’ The nun had not intended it to sound like blame, but that was what Nicola heard, even so.

  ‘Where is she, sister?’

  ‘Over in the stone church on the other side. The fire won’t reach us in there.’

  Indeed, the fire would not reach them anywhere, for it had already begun to respond to the men’s endeavours, sending clouds of steam to billow high above the wall and to enclose the human figures in shrouds of white.

  But the appalling news of the prioress’s hastened death, the damage to the priory, and the loss of her own home struck at Nicola’s spirit with a pain so intense that, as the nuns continued on their way, she fell like a child into her brother’s arms, shaking with distress and a numbing grief as if she had lost a kindred soul vital to her aim in life.

  ‘Hush, love,’ whispered George. ‘These things happen. We’ll rebuild it.’ What occupied his thoughts at that particular moment, however, was to do with why it had happened when the riots had not spread this far, nor even as far as the Merchant Tailors’ Hall, a favourite target of apprentices.

  For two days Nicola kept to her room with neither energy nor inclination to share her convoluted thoughts with anyone. The certainty that Prioress Sophie had not been expected to live much longer was one thing, but it was an entirely different and horrifying matter to suspect that those few precious days had been stolen by an act of sheer depravity. Was it the apprentice riots, or was it, as George had said, altogether something more sinister? Nicola was sick at heart just to think of it.

  Neither Fergus nor Muir had been hurt that day, but the memory of her fears and her spontaneous exposure of them to George stole into every small corner of her mind, giving her no peace during the day and no comfort at night. One dear friend had departed her life in a riot of violence and malice, while Fergus Melrose, whom she had never been able to call friend, had come to take her place with a velocity she was unable to stop. And now it looked as if she would have to swallow her hurt pride, after all her protests, and become his wife.

  She was not ready. She would never be ready.

  Casually, she had asked George if he knew of a Melrose sister, but he had disclaimed any knowledge of one. But then, Fergus’s opinions about younger sisters were well documented. He had scarcely ever mentioned Muir, either.

  Just as worrying was the way in which she would, before very long, be obliged to veer like a weathervane and startle them all, especially Fergus, by accepting the hand he was still offering her. It would seem, to put it mildly, like a typically female piece of whimsy without rhyme or reason when, in fact, it was anything but. Nor could she confide in Charlotte without expecting a strong bias in favour of Fergus. Would she ever be able to tell anyone the real reason for her apparent change of heart when the secret was not hers to reveal?

  The real reason? Were there not two real reasons? Did those sneaking disturbing thoughts not also include memories of warm lips and a heady concentration of virile closeness, the touch of his hands upon her skin, tending her wound while making love to it, too? Was it not his strong arms and hard unyielding thighs she felt at night in the small dark hours when sleep would not come? And had any of those immature childhood longings been anything like the real thing? Physically, she was ready for him. Temperamentally, she was not. There was only one thing to do. Bargain with him. Reason with him. Put him off…stall him…try to make him understand…

  Come on, lass. We’re going to be much more intimate than this before we’ve finished. Was there ever a man so cocksure, so arrogant? Talking to him would be like talking to a whirlwind.

  And so it proved to be.

  Dressed casually in a blue linen bliaud and an old woollen sleeveless surcoat, she accepted
the young groom’s help to mount her grey mare, though she could have sprung into the saddle unaided had no one been around. A ride out through the fields in the sunshine would help to clear her head and blow away the nasty cobwebs of doubt, and she would escape before any of them could pester her about the wisdom of doing what she had always done at home in Wiltshire. Their protests whispered to her as she trotted out of the gates, as she broke into a canter upon the wide green verge that led towards Charing Cross and the open fields beyond. And though the canter could not last long because of the houses and people, it was enough to remind her of what she had missed for months, her own solitary company.

  Her recent talk to Lotti about having her own circle of like-minded friends began to seem like wishful thinking after what had just happened, and the family she had been so eager to shake off since their father’s death were the very ones who had her well being and safety closest to their hearts. With them, she could be more herself, as she was being at this moment.

  Past the houses, she sped along the track towards a patch of dense woodland where a herd of black-and-copper-coloured pigs snuffled in the undergrowth, and noisy wood pigeons clattered upwards into the new foliage. The pigs ignored the pounding hooves, but the young swineherd called out a greeting as she passed, repeating it only a moment later, to Nicola’s annoyed surprise.

  She turned to look behind her and was both furious and excited to see the big bay stallion rounding a curve of trees, its rider sitting upright and holding the horse back, making no effort to catch her. ‘Go away!’ she called, hearing the emptiness of her command.

  Digging her heels into the mare’s flanks, she pushed on faster and faster, flying over the soft pine-needled forest floor, leaping fallen logs and ducking beneath the lowest branches, twisting and turning in the hope of out-manoeuvring the larger horse. It was a vain hope, for Fergus’s horsemanship was legendary and Nicola knew she would be caught, if that was what he intended.