Nicola Cornick, Margaret McPhee, et al (7 page)

Daniel shrugged. ‘Because I like the danger? And because I…’ He
hesitated, and for one mad moment Lucinda thought he was going to tell her that
he loved her.

‘And for one last dance,’ he said, drawing her closer. His cheek
brushed hers. She could feel the beginnings of his stubble and it sent a long,
cool shiver through her.

‘The least you could do was shave if you were planning on
attending a social gathering,’ she said sharply, to cover her feelings, and he
laughed and rubbed his cheek against hers again.

Lucinda struggled with her emotions. The intimacy of their
encounter, here in a ballroom with fifty other people, seemed extraordinary.
She was aware of nothing other than the touch of Daniel’s hands as he steered
her through the waltz, the brush of his body against hers, the smile that was
for her alone.

‘For the duration of this one last dance, then, the least you can
do is tell me the truth,’ she said, and felt him stiffen a little.

‘The truth?’

‘Yes.’ Lucinda looked up into his eyes. ‘Surely the truth is not
so alien to you that you cannot recognise the concept? Since we are not to meet
again—’ she threw down her challenge ‘—the least you owe me is to answer one
question honestly.’

‘What is the question?’

She could feel the tension in him as he waited for her to speak.

‘Since I saw you last I have heard things,’ Lucinda said. She
looked around, keeping her voice low. ‘I have heard that it is Sir John Norton
who is the traitor and French spy whom Owen Chance currently seeks, not the
notorious Daniel de Lancey—though de Lancey is still a wanted man. And some
say—’ she lowered her voice still further ‘—that de Lancey is not even a
pirate, but a privateer secretly in the pay of the government.’ She glanced up
and caught the look of brilliant intensity in his eyes. ‘What do you say to
that, sir?’

Daniel’s hands tightened on her waist for a moment and he bent
his head close to hers. ‘I say that you should forget you heard those words,’
he said softly. ‘It might have been true once, but not now. Not any more. Now I
am a wanted man.’

Their eyes met. His were restless and heated, and there was
something there that stole her breath.

‘Don’t ask any more questions about me,’ he said. ‘It is too dangerous.’

Lucinda’s heart pounded. ‘But I have to know—’

He touched a finger to her lips in a fleeting gesture, and she
felt the echo of that touch through her whole body.

‘You are too loyal,’ he said, ‘and too passionate, Lucy.’

Lucinda shook her head. ‘No! If I have misjudged you—’

He did not let her finish. ‘You did not,’ he said. ‘Not in any
way that matters. I am sorry, Lucy, but I am not the man you would wish me to
be.’

Lucinda understood at once what he meant. She had wanted to
exonerate him, to think him true and good and honourable. But he was refusing
to allow that, and she knew there was no going back for them—no matter what the
truth was. Too much had changed.

‘But for tonight,’ Daniel said, ‘I wish it were not so. I never
thought to say it, but I wish I could turn back the clock.’

His words silenced Lucinda for a moment, bringing a longing so
potent that she could not speak. It was madness, yet instinct deeper than
reason, deeper than sense, made her want this man with every bone in her body.
She fought the primitive urge that beat in her blood. The touch of his hands
burned her through the silk of her dress, the brush of his thighs against her
skirt distracted her, making her want to press closer with a shameless, wanton
longing. She almost missed her step, and his hands tightened for a second.

In this moment, she thought, in this one dance, she would forget
all that had come between them and give herself up to the here and now. Soon,
she knew, Daniel would be gone, and this brief time would be no more than a
dream. She closed her eyes and allowed the music to sweep her up, and thought
of nothing but the pleasure of being in his arms.

‘Why do you wear that foolish turban?’ he asked softly, his
breath brushing her ear. ‘I want to see your hair, touch it like I did that
night in the moonlight…’

Lucinda’s heart raced. She could feel herself shaking a little.
‘I wear it because, as you so rightly pointed out when we first met again, I am
a respectable widow, not a flighty girl. You should remember that too.’

He laughed. ‘You are still the wild country girl I knew all those
years ago, Luce. You may hide it well most of the time, but I saw you trying to
jump ship. I know you are still a hoyden.’ He ran his fingers caressingly over
her wrist where the pulse beat erratically. ‘I know you,’ he repeated softly.

‘You knew me,’ Lucinda corrected, against the fierce beating of
her heart. ‘Like you, I have changed.’

‘Not so much as you pretend.’

Lucinda looked at him and felt swamped by the same hopeless rush
of feeling she had felt upon first meeting him again. She knew that there was a
wanton, sensual and reckless side to her character. Daniel was the only one who
could arouse it in her. She had locked it away for so long, but now he had
awakened those feelings again and they troubled her and gave her no peace. But
soon he was to be gone again, vanishing from her life again like the spectre he
was. So it was easier by far to be angry with him and keep those other
treacherous, terrifying emotions out—for this Daniel was a man to the boy he
had once been, and she knew he could demand a response from her that was every
bit as fierce as the one she had given him all those years ago when they had
been young.

‘De Lancey!’

The shout cut through the web of emotion that had engulfed them,
causing them both to jump violently. The music wavered and died. Lucinda saw
Daniel swing round on instinct—but there was nothing surprising in that.
Everyone in the Assembly Rooms had frozen at the sound of that name, then spun
around to confront the person from whom it had come. Searching feverishly
through the shocked faces of the crowd, Lucinda saw Owen Chance striding
forward. He had what looked like a letter in his hand, and he was making
directly for them.

‘You are Daniel de Lancey,’ he said.

Lucinda felt all the blood drain from her face. For a moment she
thought that she was about to swoon for the first time in her life. It was
purely emotional, purely instinctive. She felt terrified at the danger Daniel
was now in. No one in the Assembly Rooms had ever seen him before, so she knew
someone must have informed on him. She looked at the letter in Owen Chance’s
hand, and then up into his face with a sort of despair.

Daniel was made of sterner stuff, she realised. Her face looked
pale and stricken in the long mirrors that lined the ballroom, but he was
standing there with the cool of the devil himself, one brow raised in polite
enquiry, a look of amused tolerance on his face as he confronted Owen Chance.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Daniel said, ‘but I fear there is some
mistake. I am Mr Jackson Raleigh, of Ludlow in Shropshire.’

The room had erupted into a torrent of whisper and speculation.
Someone had moved to the door as though to guard it. Out of the corner of her
eye Lucinda saw one of the redcoat captains draw his men closer. She saw the
easy amusement in Daniel’s eyes turn to calculation as he looked around for an
exit. Her heart swooped into her satin slippers as she realised that there was nowhere
for him to go. There was no escape.

Their eyes met for a long second, and in that moment she knew
exactly what he was going to do.

‘I am sure that Mrs Melville will vouch for me,’ he said. He held
Lucinda’s gaze very directly. ‘She knows me well. We were children together.’
He looked around the circle of amazed faces. ‘In fact she is my betrothed.’

‘O
F ALL
the unpardonably dirty tricks!’

The door of the room was locked and the guard’s footsteps receded
along the corridor. Lucinda grabbed Daniel by the lapels of his jacket and
shook him hard, her weight carrying them both backwards onto the dirty pallet
bed in the corner of the room.

He went down with a thud, banging his shoulder against the wall,
all the breath knocked from his body. Lucinda was no lightweight. Now she was
sitting on top of him, just as she had when they had fought as children, in the
days before their youthful feelings had turned to something deeper. Daniel
shifted beneath her. No. On second thoughts it was not quite as it had been
when they were children. Now Lucinda’s silk-clad legs were pressing against the
side of his body, the warm juncture of her thighs was brushing a rather
delicate and responsive part of his anatomy, and as she leaned forward, her
wrathful face only a few inches from his, he caught a tantalising glimpse of
the curve of her breasts beneath the silk ballgown.

He did the first thing that came into his mind.

He seized the hateful turban from her head and threw it into a
corner of the room. Lucinda’s hair tumbled down to her shoulders, sticking out
from its pins in charming blonde disarray. Daniel smiled.

‘That’s better.’

Lucinda made a noise like an enraged kitten and beat her fists
against his chest.

‘Beast! Hateful, lying, deceitful, manipulative,
traitorous
beast!’

Daniel laughed out loud. ‘Don’t hold back, Lucinda!’

‘I hate you! You ruined my life once before, and now you have
ruined
me
! I detest you!’ Her voice broke. To his amazement, Daniel
realised that she was on the very edge of tears, his indomitable Lucinda. He
had never, ever seen her cry—not even when her pet slow-worm had died when she
was thirteen.

His hands gentled on her shoulders. He felt a huge wave of
remorse, sobering him, humbling him. He got into—and out of—situations like
this every day of his life, but Lucinda did not. In his careless, selfish
disdain for her feelings and her future he had indeed ruined her.

‘I am sorry,’ he said slowly.

Her eyes were very bright with unshed tears as she looked down at
him.

‘Why did you do it?’

Daniel shrugged uncomfortably. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like
this. We weren’t supposed to be locked up. I thought that Chance would believe
me. My plan was for him to back down and apologise, and for everyone to
congratulate us, and then we would simply walk out of there—’

‘And you would walk out of my life. Again. Leaving me to
explain—again—the disappearance of my fiancé.’

There was a silence.

‘Something like that,’ Daniel admitted.

Lucinda straightened, moving away from him. Daniel swung his legs
over the side of the bed and sat next to her. They were in a hastily converted
office on the first floor of Woodbridge Gaol, detained at His Majesty’s
pleasure whilst Owen Chance sent to Shropshire for urgent confirmation of Mr
Jackson Raleigh’s identity. The door was locked, and a soldier was on guard at
the end of the corridor. The Riding Officer had been apologetic but firm.
Clearly he had not thought he could consign to the filthy cells a couple who
might just possibly be all that they seemed—outraged gentry caught up in a case
of mistaken identity. Even so, their situation was not a comfortable one. The
room had one pallet bed, a desk, a wooden chair, a bucket, and that was all.

Daniel could not see Lucinda’s face. The unruly strands of hair
that he had released now masked her expression from him.

‘You have never cared about anyone else in your life,’ she said
slowly. ‘It is all of a piece.’

When he did not reply she glanced sideways at him.

‘Why do you not answer?’

Daniel shook his head. He felt cold within. ‘I have no defence
against your words. You are correct. I thought only of myself and how I might
escape.’

‘You abandoned me without a word when I was seventeen,’ Lucinda
continued. ‘Tonight I almost forgot all of that, and was nearly seduced into
caring for you all over again. But you—you care for no one but yourself,
Daniel. You always have and you always will.’

Daniel made an abrupt movement of pain and frustrated rage. Until
recently he had been his own sternest critic. Sometimes in the dark hours he
struggled with his guilt, but that fight was his alone and he never spoke of
it. That had changed when Lucinda had burst into his life again. She had
confronted him and made him face up to the hurt he had dealt her in the past.
And now he had hurt her all over again.

‘Why did you not denounce me?’ he said now. ‘Why did you lie to
save me? Why did you not tell them at once that I was using you?’

She shot him a look from her very blue eyes. A tinge of colour touched
her cheek. She caught her lush lower lip between her teeth.

‘Because I find that I am not as ruthless as you.’ She knitted
her fingers together. ‘I did not want to see you hang.’

‘Thank you.’

She glared at him. ‘Oh, I
wanted
to denounce you for ruining
me. Don’t mistake me. It is simply that I do not have the necessary hardihood.’

Daniel winced. ‘Well, thank you anyway.’

Lucinda turned her head slightly towards him. ‘Is there someone
in Ludlow who can vouch for you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Nor anyone else who will come to our aid?’

‘No.’

‘The Duchess of Kestrel might try, for my sake.’

‘She cannot do anything to help.’ Daniel rubbed his brow. ‘I dare
say she realises that I am indeed de Lancey, but she will not intervene. I have
worked with Justin Kestrel for the past five years, but he cannot save me now.
He offered me a pardon only a few weeks ago and I turned him down. It is
understood that if I am captured I am on my own.’

Lucinda was staring. ‘You have worked with Justin Kestrel?’

‘Yes.’ Daniel paused for a moment, but he knew that this was
hardly the time to keep any further secrets from Lucinda. ‘You mentioned
tonight that you had heard I worked for the Admiralty. Well, it is true. I am
no traitor, Luce. I have worked for this government throughout the war.’