A Most Unseemly Summer Read online

  ‘Hah! You’re sure it’s only time you lack, Sir Leon? I seem to have heard that excuse more than once when skills are wanting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my feet are wrinkling like paper, and I must hone my tongue in private.’

  It was not to be, however. Enter Mistress Elizabeth bearing a large armful of feathery green plants, her face flushed and prettily eager. Without taking stock of the situation in the chamber or sensing any of the tension, she headed directly for her mistress and dumped the green bundle on to her lap. ‘My lady, look! Here’s chervil for your bruises. There’s a mass of it in the old kitchen garden. There, now!’ She looked round, newly aware of the unenthusiastic audience and searching for approval.

  Felice looked down at the offering. ‘Chervil, Elizabeth?’

  ‘Comfrey, Elizabeth,’ said Lydia. ‘You were told to gather comfrey.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth, flatly.

  ‘You have injuries, lady?’ said Sir Leon. ‘I didn’t know that.’ His deep voice adopted a conciliatory tone that made Felice look up sharply, her eyes suddenly wary.

  ‘No, sir. Nothing to speak of. The journey yesterday, that’s all.’ In a last effort to persuade him to leave, she stood up, holding out the greenery to Lydia and taking a thoughtless step forward.

  She went crashing down, tipping the bucket over and pitching herself face-first into a flood of tepid water, flinging the chervil into Sir Leon’s path. He and Lydia leapt forward together, but he was there first with his hands beneath her bare armpits, heaving her upright between his straddled legs. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, he lifted her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a child and stood with her in the centre of the room as the two maids mopped at the flood around his feet.

  Felice was rarely at a loss for words, but the shock of the fall, her wet and dishevelled state, and this arrogant man’s unaccustomed closeness combined to make any coherent sound difficult, her sense of helplessness heightened by her sudden plunge from her high-horse to the floor.

  His hands were under her knees and almost over one breast that pushed unashamedly proud and pink through the wet fabric; his face, only inches from hers, held an expression of concern bordering on consternation. He was watching her closely. Inspecting her. ‘You hurt?’ he said.

  She peered at him through strands of wet hair, shaking her head and croaking one octave lower. ‘Let me go, sir. Please.’

  He hesitated, then looked around the room. ‘Where?’ he said.

  ‘Anywhere.’

  For a long moment—time waited upon them—their eyes locked in a confusion of emotions that ranged through disbelief, alarm and, on Felice’s part, outright hostility. It was natural that she should have missed the admiration in his, for he did his best to conceal it, but she was close enough now to see his muscular neck where a long red scratch ran from beneath his chin and disappeared into the open neck of his shirt. His jaw was square and strong and his mouth, unsmiling but with lips parted as if about to speak, had a tiny red mark on the lower edge where perhaps his lover had bitten it in the height of passion. His breath reached her, sending a wave of familiar panic into her chest, and as her gaze wandered over his features on their own private search, he continued to watch her with a grey unwavering scrutiny, noting her bruised wrists before holding her eyes again.

  Her gaze flinched and withdrew to the loosely hanging points of his doublet that should have tied it together; the aiglets that tipped each tie were spear-heads of pure gold. One of them was missing. She took refuge in the most inconsequential details while her breath stayed uncomfortably in her lungs, refusing to move and gripped by a terrible fear that seeped into every part of her, reviving a recent nightmare. She fought it, terrified of accepting its meaning.

  His grip on her body tightened, pulling her closely in to him, then he strode over to the tumbled mattress where she had lain that night and placed her upon it, bending low enough for his forelock to brush against her eyelids. He stood upright, looking down at her and combing a hand through his hair that slithered back into the ridges like a tiled roof. Without another word, he picked up the grimy doe-skin breeches she had worn in the garden, dropped them into her lap and strode past the sobbing Elizabeth and bustling Lydia and out of the room, without bothering to close the door. They heard his harsh shout to someone below them, and the two deerhounds stood with ears pricked, listening to the last phases of his departure.

  Mistress Lydia was first to recover. ‘For pity’s sake, Elizabeth, stop snivelling and help me with this mess, will you? What’s that you’re fiddling with? Let me see.’

  ‘I don’t know. I found it under the chervil in the kitchen garden.’ She held out her palm upon which lay a tiny golden spear-head with a hole through its shaft.

  Lydia picked it up, turning it over in the light before handing it to her mistress. ‘An aiglet,’ she said. ‘Somebody lost it. Now, lass…’ she turned back to Elizabeth ‘…you get that wet mess off the floor and throw it out. Plants and men are rarely what they seem: that chervil is cow-parsley.’

  Chapter Two

  The unshakeable determination that Felice had shown to her early morning visitor regarding her occupation of the Abbot’s House now collapsed like a pack of playing cards, and whereas she had earlier brushed aside Lydia’s suggestion that they might as well return to Sonning, it now seemed imperative that the waggons were loaded without delay.

  ‘We can’t stay here, Lydie,’ she said, still shaking. ‘We just can’t. Send a message down to find Mr Peale.’

  Mistress Lydia Waterman had been with Felice long enough to become her close friend and ally and, at five years her senior, old enough to be her advisor, too. She was a red-haired beauty who had never yet given her heart to any man to hold for more than a week or two, and Felice loved her for her loyalty and almost brutal honesty.

  ‘Think what you’re doing, love,’ said Lydia, businesslike. ‘That’s not the best way to handle it.’

  Felice winced at the advice, given for the second time that day. ‘I have thought. That was him!’ she whispered, fiercely. ‘This is his missing aiglet that Elizabeth found. He’s a fiend, Lydie.’

  Lydia lifted a dense pile of blue velvet up into her arms and held it above Felice’s head. ‘Arms up,’ she said, lowering it. ‘Losing an aiglet in the kitchen garden doesn’t make him a fiend, love. And he didn’t arrive here until now, so how could it have been him who chased you? Last night he’d have been miles away.’

  ‘If he was near enough to get here so early he couldn’t have been far away, Lydie. He must have been snooping while they believed he was away, looking for something…somebody. And I recognised the voice too, and the way he looked at me. I know that he knows. He wanted to humiliate me.’

  ‘All men sound the same in the dark,’ said Lydia, cynically. ‘But he picked you up out of the water fast enough.’

  ‘And he pretended to believe that I was Lord Deventer’s mistress, too.’

  ‘Perhaps he really believed it. His lordship’s no saint, is he? It was an easy mistake to make, with him not recognising the name of Marwelle. Turn round, love, while I fasten you up.’

  ‘I don’t care. We’re not staying. We can be away tomorrow.’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Lydia said with a mouthful of pins. ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’

  Lydia’s pragmatism could be shockingly unhelpful, yet not even she could be expected to share the torment that now shook Felice to the very core. The knowing stranger she had presumed would take her secret with him to the ends of the earth now proved to be the very person whose antagonism clearly matched her own, the one with whom she would not have shared the slightest confidence, let alone last night’s disgraceful fiasco.

  He would misconstrue it, naturally. What man would not? He would believe she was cheap, a silly lass who needed reminding to think before she allowed a man, a total stranger, to possess her, hence his whispered warning that should more typically have come from her rather than him. Oh, yes, he would
revel in the misunderstanding: she would see it in his eyes at every meeting unless she packed her bags and left.

  It was a misunderstanding she herself would have been hard-pressed to explain rationally, a private matter of the heart she had not discussed even with the worldly Lydia, for Father Timon had not been expected to know what it was frowned upon for priests to know, and his role of chaplain, confessor, tutor and friend had progressed further than was seemly for priests and maids of good breeding.

  Timon Montefiore, aged twenty-eight, had taken up his duties in Lord Deventer’s household soon after the latter’s marriage to Lady Honoria Fyner, previously Marwelle, and perhaps it had been a mutual need for instant friendship that had been the catalyst for what followed.

  Friendship developed into affection, and the affection deepened. As her mother’s preoccupation with a new husband and a young step-family grew, Felice’s previous role as deputy-mistress of their former home became redundant in Lord Deventer’s austerely regimented household. Rudderless and overlooked by the flamboyant new stepfather, Felice had drifted more and more towards Timon, partly to remove herself from Lord Deventer’s insensitivities and partly because Timon was always amiable and happy to see her. He had been exceptional in other ways; his teaching was leisurely and tender, arousing her only so far and no further, always with the promise of something more and with enough control for both of them. ‘Think what you’re doing,’ was advice she heard regularly, though often enough accompanied by the lift of her hand towards his smiling lips and merry eyes.

  She had discovered the inevitable anguish of love last summer when Timon had caught typhoid fever and her stepfather had had him quickly removed from his house to the hospice in Reading. Forbidden to visit him, Felice had been given no chance to say farewell and, during conversation at dinner a week later, she learned that he had died a few days before and was already buried. Lord Deventer was not sure where. Did it matter? he had said, bluntly. Until then, Felice had not known that love and pain were so closely intertwined.

  Since that dreadful time last summer, no man’s arms had held her, nor had any other man shared her thoughts until now. Her terrible silence had been explained by her mother as dislike of her new situation, exacerbated by talk of husbands, a remedy as painful as it was tactless to one who believed her heart to be irrevocably broken.

  The usual agonies of guilt and punishment had been instilled into Felice from an early age and were now never far from her mind without the courteous priest to mitigate it. The replacement chaplain had been stern and astringent, not the kind to receive a desperate young woman’s confidences, and she had been glad to accept any means of escape from a house of bitter-sweet memories upon which she had believed nothing would impose. But last night’s experience had suggested otherwise in a far from tender manner, and her anger at her heart’s betrayal was equal to her fury with the shiftless Fate who had plucked mockingly at the cords that bound her heart.

  ‘Out of the frying-pan, into the fire’ was a saying that occurred to her as she went about the first duties of the day, now demurely dressed in a blue velvet overskirt and bodice that set off the white under-sleeves embroidered with knotwork patterns. Black-work, they called it, except that this was blue and gold. Her hair was tidily coiled into a gold mesh caul at the nape of her neck almost as an act of defiance to the man who had warned her of his men’s easily deflected attentions. At home, she would have worn a concealing black velvet French hood, yet she had never been overly concerned by prevailing fashions and saw no reason to conform now that there was no one to notice. That dreadful man had seen her at her worst; whatever he saw now would be an improvement.

  The first floor was thronged with men carrying tables, stools, chests and cupboards and, in her chamber, several of the carpenters were erecting the great tester bed and hanging its curtains. The ground floor was the servants’ domain, containing the great hall and steward’s offices, but the top floor covered the length and breadth of the building, a massive room flooded with light from new oriel windows that reflected on to a magnificent plasterwork ceiling. Knowing that these additions were the result of the surveyor’s vision, Felice tried hard to find fault with it, but came away with grudging admiration instead. It was no wonder he had been irked by her takeover.

  She visited the kitchens across the courtyard next, but came close to being trampled underfoot by lads carrying boxes, baskets, pans and sacks; so, to give her feet some respite, she headed for an area at the back of the Abbot’s House that gave access into the derelict square cloister. Here at last was peace where, in the enclosed warmth, the kitchen cat poured itself off a low wall at the sight of Flint and Fen and disappeared into the long grass.

  Shelving her thoughts about how to make a dignified return home, she sat with her legs stretched out between the stone columns that topped the low wall, her eyes unconsciously planning a formal garden with perhaps a fountain in the centre. Not that it mattered; she did not intend to stay. She removed her shoes to inspect the soles of her feet in valuable privacy.

  The deerhounds nosed about behind her, so their silence went unheeded until, sensing their absence, she turned to check on them. Their two heads could not have been closer beneath the hand of the tall intruder who stood silently in the shadows on the church side of the cloister, watching her.

  Her heart lurched, pounding with a new rhythm, and she turned away, throwing her skirts over her bare ankles, pretending an unconcern she was far from feeling. She snapped her fingers, angrily and called, ‘Flint! Fen! Come!’—by no means sure that they would obey but reluctant to turn to see.

  The hounds returned to her side but they were not alone, nor had they obeyed her command but his, and she knew then that, like the steward deserted by his mastiff, she would never again be able to rely on them for protection. Angered by their inability to tell friend from foe, she snapped at them, ‘Lie down!’

  Sir Leon was laughing quietly at this calamity as he came to sit on the wall just beyond her feet and, as she began to swing them to the ground, he caught one ankle in a tight grip, making her flight impossible. ‘No, lady,’ he said. ‘We have some unfinished business, do we not? A moment or two of your time, if you please.’

  ‘Be brief, sir. And release my foot.’

  She did not need to look at him to see that he had already started work, for he had discarded his doublet and now wore only the jerkin over his shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to expose well-muscled forearms. A deep V of bare chest showed in the opening, and his boots were powdered with stone-dust. Unhurried by her command, his hand slid away and spread across his knee. ‘Well?’ he said, tucking away the remnants of a smile.

  She frowned at him, puzzled. ‘Well, what, sir?’

  ‘I’m allowing you to state your case before I state mine, Lady Felice Marwelle. And you need not be brief.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I will be. You will be relieved to know that I intend to return to Sonning within the next few days.’ She spoke to a row of purring pigeons on the angle of the wall behind him, disconcerted by his close attention, his attempted dominance even before words had been exchanged.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’ve changed your mind about staying.’

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t ask me why. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘You changed your mind to please me?’

  Her mouth tightened. ‘No. It pleases me.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry to disappoint you. I must reject your decision.’

  ‘What?’ She frowned, looking at him fully for the first time. ‘You’re in no position to reject it. I’ve already made it.’ His eyes, she saw, were grey and still laughing.

  ‘Then you can unmake it, my lady. You’ll stay here and complete the task Lord Deventer set for you.’

  Rather than continue a futile argument, Felice’s response was to get up and leave him, but her body’s slight message was deciphered even as it formed,
and her ankle was caught again and held firmly.

  ‘Ah, no!’ he said. ‘I’m aware of your aptitude for bringing discussions to an abrupt conclusion but really, you have to give them a chance to develop occasionally, don’t you think so? Now, what d’ye think your stepfather will say when you tell him you haven’t even seen the place yet?’

  Riled by his insistence and by his continued hold on her ankle, she flared like a fuse. ‘And what d’ye think he’ll say, Sir Leon, when I tell him of the disgraceful way I’ve been received? Which I will!’

  This did not have the effect she hoped for, no sign of contrition crossing his face. ‘About mistaking you for one of his mistresses, you mean? That jest will keep him entertained for a month, my lady, as well you know. And if he’d intended to send a message to warn me of your arrival…’

  ‘To warn you? Thank you!’

  ‘…he would have done. Clearly he had no intention of doing so.’

  ‘Why ever not, pray?’

  ‘Because he knew damn well he’d have to look for another surveyor if he had. He knows my views about mixing work and women.’

  Felice bent to clutch at her leg and yank it bodily out of his grasp, swinging her legs down on to the long grass. ‘Then there will be three of us pleased, sir. There is nothing more to discuss, is there?’

  ‘Correction. There’ll be two of us pleased. You’ll stay here with me.’

  She sat, rigidly angry, with her hands clutching at the cool stone wall on each side of her. ‘Sir Leon, I am usually quite good at understanding arguments, but when they are as obscure as yours I’m afraid I need some help. Explain to me, if you will. If you are so disturbed about having women near you, why have you suddenly decided that I must stay? I can only conclude that you must need to please Lord Deventer very much indeed to sacrifice your principles so easily. Do you need his approval so much, then?’