Nicola Cornick (18 page)

‘Just a moment, Lady Carberry. Surely you do not expect me to let you go as easily as that? We need to talk, you and I. You cannot just walk away as though you had not met me!’

There was a silence which felt to Alicia as though it lasted several hours. Her mind seemed incapable of understanding the implication of his words. She had focused so completely on getting herself away from him and the embarrassment of the situation that she had not contemplated an alternative. And why should James wish to talk to her anyway? He had never given any indication that they should be anything other than mere acquaintances.

All this went through her mind as she stepped through the doorway into the courtyard, and James tightened his grip on her arm and drew her towards the main door of the house.

One of the stable doors was open and a groom was leading a docile Savannah towards it. The mare was still within reach, but Alicia had barely half formulated the idea of grabbing her reins and riding off when James disconcertingly read her thoughts.

‘I wouldn’t even think about it if I were you,’ he said, pleasantly but definitely. ‘It’s only in stories that a lady encumbered by a side saddle and long skirt is still able to make some dashing escape. You would merely look foolish, and I would be put to the trouble of bringing you back!’

Alicia fumed, resolving that he was quite the most unpleasant man she had ever met. On the principle that attack was her best form of defence, she stopped dead on the cobblestones and rounded on him.

‘So you intend to keep me here by duress? Might I enquire to what purpose?’

James did not appear disconcerted. ‘But you came here of your own free will, my lady! I could ask what you are doing here at all!’

‘I wish to buy Monks Dacorum,’ Alicia snapped, half-truthfully. ‘I thought that you had left for Worcestershire, and I came over from Chartley to inspect the property.’

‘How very unorthodox,’ James observed mildly, with a smile that made Alicia’s blood boil. ‘Most prospective purchasers would surely contact my agent first! But you, Lady Carberry—’ it was said with exaggerated politeness ‘—you are always different!’

Alicia’s understandable humiliation at being caught on the property was fading fast before this mockery.

‘You still have not answered my question, my lord,’ she pointed out frigidly. ‘Do you intend to hold me here by force?’

The corners of James’s firm mouth twitched in a smile. ‘How very melodramatic! If you insist on expressing it in those terms, then yes, I intend to keep you here for a while!’

A breeze rippled along the surface of the moat and shivered down Alicia’s spine. Savannah had now gone into her stall and Alicia could hear the groom talking softly to her as he rubbed her down. The shadows were lengthening in the courtyard and the air was cold. In the slowly gathering dusk the ancient house looked less approachable.

So there it was. James wished to speak with her and was prepared to follow the unconventional route of holding her against her will in order to achieve his aim. This was presumably the cue for any gently bred lady to faint or have hysterics, Alicia reflected. Being held hostage might seem appalling to some and romantic to others, but Alicia was not a reader of Mrs Radcliffe’s gothic novels and doubted prosaically that she was in any serious danger. Clearly, all James wanted was information, not to force his attentions upon her.

Alicia abandoned the idea of creating an awkward scene. On a practical note, she was fairly certain that James would only throw cold water over her if she had a fit of the vapours.

She stole a glance at his profile and sighed inwardly. Beneath the tan his face was set in hard, uncompromising lines which did little to reassure her that the coming interview would be a pleasant one. She took a deep breath. She might as well make one last attempt to persuade him of the impropriety of his actions. They were crossing the gravel towards the oaken front door now, and Alicia stopped again. James slanted a look down at her, but did not release her arm.

‘Whenever we have met, my lord, you have made me well aware that you disapprove of my flouting of convention,’ Alicia observed quietly, tilting her head to look up at him properly. ‘It therefore seems strange that you should be breaking with propriety yourself in behaving like this.’

‘That’s true.’ James appeared to give the statement serious consideration and now sounded infuriatingly reasonable. ‘I accept that word of any meeting between the two of us here would damn for-ever your hopes of overriding the previous scandal. However, I want to talk to you, so you will stay and hear me out.’ He gave her a thoroughly unnerving smile. ‘You think me high-handed, no doubt. Well, so I am, but there is not a great deal that you can do about it. A novel situation for the self-sufficient Lady Carberry, I suspect.’

Alicia gave up. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of retaliating in any way. She made the tacit admission to herself that she was as much his prisoner as his guest, and steadfastly refused to think about what her grandmother might say if news of this latest escapade
reached her ears. She would worry about that later; just now she needed her wits about her to deal with whatever it was James intended to say to her.

James was waiting with scrupulous courtesy to allow Alicia to precede him into the house, and after a moment she stepped over the threshold and found herself in a dark, stone-flagged hallway. The ceilings were low above walls of beautifully moulded plaster, with heraldic devices entwined with flower designs and mythical beasts. There were fresh flowers on the highly polished table and the scent of beeswax in the air. It was both charming and welcoming. Alicia forgot both her hostility and her embarrassment, and gazed about her, captivated. James gestured to a door at the end of the passage.

‘Will you step into the Hall?’

The Great Hall, with its huge, dominating stone fireplace and minstrel’s gallery, appeared little altered from its original style. It was a coldly impressive, baronial room, the only concession to modernity being the long windows which looked out across a terrace to the moat and the woodland beyond. A suitably large fire was burning in the grate, but made little impression on the chill air. Alicia shivered. Even the pools of light cast by the multitude of candles appeared cold, and the shadows beyond the light were deep. There was something awesome about such splendour, but it was chilling too.

In such a setting James Mullineaux seemed peculiarly at home. On the walls were the pictures of his ancestors—Sir James Mullineaux, who had been an Elizabethan privateer and had bought Monks Dacorum and a peerage from the Crown with the ill-gotten gains of piracy; the fourth Baron Mullineaux, who had been a rake and a gambler, and a close friend of Charles II; the sixth Baron, an astute politician who had been granted the Marquisate for services to the Crown, followed later by the Dukedom of Cardace to crown his glittering career. The dark, patrician countenances all showed the same elements of danger and excitement; the watchful eyes held a gleam both wild and calculating. James, in the casual hunting jacket that so became his lithe physique, was the epitome of the reckless attraction that had been the hallmark of the Mullineaux family down the centuries.

Alicia allowed her gaze to travel to the opposite wall, where the ladies who had married into the Mullineaux dynasty looked down with a painted disdain that matched that of their menfolk. There was more variety here in terms of appearance and expression, but all had one characteristic in common, and that was a determined look which sug
gested that they had no intention of letting this parade of charismatic manhood overawe them. Alicia smiled despite herself. The Lady Henrietta, who had almost single-handedly defended the Oxfordshire estates against Cromwell’s men, looked to have been a fearsome battleaxe, and even Lady Rose, James’s famously sweet and beautiful mother, had a set to her chin which suggested that she would take no nonsense no matter how amiable her reputation.

Alicia turned impulsively to James, whose unreadable gaze had never left her face as she’d assimilated her surroundings.

‘In truth, it is very imposing, my lord, but rather cold! Surely you must find such grandeur a little lonely on a day-to-day basis?’

James smiled, and the change was remarkable. For a moment the bitter lines were smoothed away and it was like coming face to face with the young James Mullineaux, beloved of the matchmaking mamas. Alicia’s heart did not simply skip a beat, it did a somersault. The illusion lasted only a moment, however, before the shutters came down again.

‘Indeed I do,’ James was saying, ‘but it seems peculiarly appropriate for this evening. You will, I hope, honour me by staying to dine?’

His tone was wholly courteous, but it was hardly a question, more a statement. Alicia hesitated. She could scarcely send a messenger to Chartley with the news that she was dining alone with the Marquis of Mullineaux; that would fan the flames of gossip to a positive bonfire. On the other hand, if she did not send word, her grandmother for one might be unnecessarily worried. She bit her lip.

‘Thank you, Lord Mullineaux, but I must return to Chartley soon. I have guests, and they will become concerned if I am missing for any length of time…’

Her voice trailed away as she saw his ironic smile.

‘No doubt you thought of that before you chose to go riding alone? Tell me, Lady Carberry, do you always do exactly as you please?’

Alicia’s eyes widened. Here he was again, watching her with the critical amusement one might show to a spoiled child! She felt her simmering resentment rising, but before she had framed a suitably crushing reply he had turned away.

‘Never fear, I will arrange for Lady Stansfield to be sent an appropriately reassuring message! And I will see you safely escorted back to Chartley—after dinner. Now, will you not take a seat?’

Rude, arrogant, high-handed…Alicia ran out of mental epithets, and, rather to her surprise, found herself already installed in a high-backed
chair before the huge fireplace. James poured two glasses of wine and passed one to her gravely. Their fingers touched and Alicia felt her pulse rate increase. Tearing her gaze away from him, she chided herself for being a fool. It was intolerable to want to be free of the spell he had cast on her, but to find herself welcoming his touch with a shiver that owed nothing at all to revulsion. She had no control at all over her wayward response to him.

‘So you did not know that I was still here?’ James asked. Sitting opposite her with his long legs crossed negligently at the ankle, he looked both relaxed and watchful at the same time.

‘No, I did not!’ Alicia blushed at the possibility of him thinking she had intended to meet him. ‘It was not my intention to seek you out, my lord!’ Her tone implied that nothing on earth would have induced her to go to Monks Dacorum knowing he was at home, and she saw him smile as the point went home. ‘I set out for a ride with no fixed intent, and when I reached the gates here I thought to take a look at the house. I know it was an unpardonable intrusion, but I scarcely expected—’

‘That the price of curiosity would be so high?’ James finished for her, very dryly.

Alicia kept a tight grip on her temper. Her well-known cool serenity was under severe attack and was all but lost. ‘You are severe, sir. I have already apologised
several times!’

James smiled slightly. ‘Yes, I suppose it was unhandsome of me. And in fact your coming here is very convenient—I had been hoping for the opportunity to speak with you privately and could not have contrived a better one than this.’

Alicia’s nerves tightened. She did not speak, not wanting to pre-empt anything he might say. She waited for him to explain, but James did not continue immediately; he got to his feet and placed another couple of oak logs on the fire, settling the remaining wood with his booted foot. The logs split apart, the fire jetting up to illuminate his intent features, the dark eyes which held no warmth for her any more. His expression was sombre.

‘When we met last month at Ottery, I thought myself the unluckiest man alive to have been obliged to meet with you so soon after returning to this country. I had wanted to put the past behind me and think on it no more. I certainly thought that we two had no more to say to each other.’ He drove his hands deep into his pockets. ‘Yet now I find that I cannot simply forget it. In order to be free of the past I must know
the truth of what happened and I think that at the very least you owe me an explanation.’

He finished and simply stood looking at her.

Alicia found herself to be struggling with a cocktail of emotions. Part of her was not surprised by the sudden demand, since she had suspected that that might be what he wished to discuss with her. However, she was shocked and resentful at the abrupt way in which he had spoken, and beneath her anger ran the undercurrent of pain which was always there when she remembered the events leading up to their separation. He had implied that she owed him an apology, and, whereas before she would have given anything for the chance to explain it all to him, now she felt that she could not bear to expose so harrowing a tale to his critical analysis. Instinct and reality were at war again; intuition was telling her that this was the same man she had loved so much before, but reality was showing him to be a stranger to her. She found that she was shaking her head, retreating for defence behind a determination to say nothing.

‘I regret, Lord Mullineaux, that I cannot offer you the explanation you seek.’