The Notorious Lord (7 page)

‘I suppose I can at least talk to him,’ she said. ‘I should be happy to do that.’

‘Oh, goody!’ Helena Lang exclaimed. ‘How exciting to have such a famous adventurer in our midst! Was it not Lord Newlyn who wrestled a crocodile in the Nile and survived the curse of Amenhopec? He is the most complete gentleman, is he not?’

‘The crocodile incident was much exaggerated,’ Rachel said coolly, wishing to depress Helena Lang’s pretensions and reduce Cory’s appeal at the same time. ‘As for the curse, I do not believe that Lord Newlyn escaped so easily. He had a dreadful stomach upset for weeks after he excavated that tomb. They call it the Pharaoh’s Revenge.’

There was a ripple of scandalised laughter from the group as the ladies took her meaning. ‘My dear Miss Odell,’ Lady
Sally said, wiping the tears from her eyes, ‘I do believe that you have demolished Lord Newlyn’s dashing reputation in one move. An upset stomach indeed! How very unromantic! I cannot wait to tease him about this.’

‘You might sketch Lord Newlyn wrestling a crocodile, ma’am,’ Helena Lang said hopefully to Lady Sally. ‘Without his shirt, perhaps—’

‘In the waters of the Winter Race?’ Lady Sally said. ‘What a fertile imagination you have, Miss Lang. Not that I totally discount the idea. So, ladies—’ she looked around the group ‘—to work! I am relying on you.’

The meeting broke up on that note. Rachel declined Olivia Marney’s offer of a ride back to Midwinter Royal in the gig, preferring instead to take the footpath that skirted the riverbank. The air was fresh here, straight off the water, and held a tang of salt. The Winter Race was a small tributary of the larger River Deben, originally feeding the watermill at Midwinter Bere, but these days the mill was derelict and the water flowed sluggishly between low banks in the summer and in the winter flooded the mud flats and marshes. On such a clear day she could see directly across to the Deben, where the yachts and wherries were moored on the quay at Woodbridge.

The sand track was soft beneath Rachel’s shoes. A rabbit scuttered through the undergrowth, startling a pheasant out of the bracken. As she walked she thought about Lady Sally’s reading group and the planned book of watercolour drawings. It was the most shocking matchmaker’s charter and as such she was certain it would be a raging success.

Rachel paused to look out across the Winter Race. The breeze teased tendrils of hair from beneath her bonnet and she stopped to tuck it back in. Ahead of her the riverbank sloped up towards the Midwinter Royal burial ground. There was a knot of pine trees that gave a sheltered lookout across the river in one direction and over the fields to Midwinter Royal in the other. Last year’s pine needles were a soft
carpet beneath Rachel’s feet and they gave off a sweet, resinous scent.

She paused on the top of the hill to watch the excavation. Sir Arthur and Lady Odell were working in the southernmost corner of the field, digging one of the long barrows and sorting the earth into a huge spoil pit. Rachel sighed. It all looked so messy and she detested untidiness.

Cory Newlyn was much closer to her, digging a trench into the side of a burial mound. Cory did not favour the accepted method of digging straight down from the top of a barrow; he maintained that this could damage the finds buried inside. Instead he would open a small, exploratory ditch and work inwards from there. Rachel could not see that it mattered one way or another. Soon her parents would be tramping the dirt through the house and she would have to spur Rose into action to clean it all up again. Then the scullery would be full of bits of pot to be washed and the dining room would have bones laid out on the breakfast table. It was always the same.

She watched as Cory paused in his digging and leaned on his spade, rubbing a hand across his forehead. His disgusting broad-brimmed hat tilted at a more rakish angle still. Rachel looked at him and tried to work out why Lady Sally had described him as one of the most charismatic men of her acquaintance. She had an appreciation of classical statuary and by those standards Cory was not particularly good looking. His face was too thin and his features slightly irregular. Nevertheless, the hard, clearcut planes of his face were somehow pleasing to the eye and it was difficult to tear one’s gaze away. Then there was his thick, tawny hair and his cool grey gaze and his long, rangy body that looked so good in the saddle—or emerging from the river…Oh, yes, Rachel could appreciate Cory Newlyn in a completely objective manner. Even so, there was nothing objective about the strange pit-a-pat of excitement in her stomach as she watched Cory at work, and when he turned to look at
her, she looked away and hurried off without speaking to him. She felt strangely embarrassed and certainly not brave enough to broach the subject of the watercolour book. That would have to wait for another day.

As Rachel hurried along the path towards the house she imagined that she could feel Cory’s gaze on her retreating back. Impartial appreciation…Yes, she understood how attractive Cory might appear to another lady. For a brief moment, though, impartial was not how she felt at all, and she did not like it.

Chapter Four

C
ory Newlyn straightened up, drove his trowel into the sand and reached for the earthenware pitcher of water. It was a hot day for an English summer, with a dry heat that reminded him more of archaeological excavations in Italy or Greece. He tilted the pitcher to his lips and took a long swallow. He felt the liquid spill from the pot and the refreshing coolness of the water run over his chin and down his neck under the linen shirt. After a moment he took off his hat and tipped the remains of the water over his head, slicking his fair hair back and shaking the droplets from the ends. The cold water raised the hairs on the back of his neck and he enjoyed the sensation of chill on such a hot day.

Despite the heat, the excavation site was a hive of activity. Sir Arthur Odell was directing operations in the far corner of the field, where the Odells’ footman and gardener toiled over a wheelbarrow, moving piles of earth from the largest burial mound to the spoil heap some yards away. Lavinia Odell was sifting the earth through a huge sieve and picking out a few bits and pieces that caught her attention. So far the excavation of the Midwinter burials had been disappointing. Sir Arthur had turned up a few battered pieces of gold and some broken bits of pottery dating from Anglo-Saxon times, but most of the tombs that they had
opened had been robbed out years before. This had happened to Cory time after time, and he was too old a hand to let it dismay him unduly. Since he had another reason for being in the Midwinter villages that summer, the Odells’ excavation was a convenient and enjoyable excuse. Besides, Cory’s instinct, which had never failed him before, told him that there
was
something there to find. Something big. Hidden treasure. It was just a matter of discovering where it lay.

Perhaps they might even find the Midwinter Treasure itself, although Cory was sceptical. The legend related that the gold cup had been discovered by an awestruck peasant in the fourteenth century, but when he had tried to take it from the tomb, a voice had stopped him in his tracks and he had run away, too frightened to carry out his intended looting. When he told his story later, a group of Midwinter villagers more hardy than he had gone to find the treasure, but had never returned. Neither they nor the cup were ever seen again, and there was a myth that if anyone tried to take the treasure they would come to an untimely end.

Cory stretched, then replaced the battered hat on his head. In the dining room of Midwinter Royal House there would be a delicious cold luncheon waiting and no doubt they would all be in trouble with Rachel for neglecting it. He could see her now, making her way up the path that ran alongside the burial ground towards the house. She had removed her bonnet and the sunlight gleamed on the rich chestnut of her hair, so ruthlessly plaited that not a single bright strand broke free of its constraints. Her pale blue dress was pin neat and she stepped over brambles and rabbit holes with precision. Cory smiled slightly. He remembered Rachel as a child of seven lining up her abacus with absolute accuracy. Ten years later, he could remember her picking a loose thread off his evening jacket when he had attended her come-out ball. She had always been the epitome of order
and he had always nursed a subversive desire to shatter that composure. In the interests of friendship, he had resisted it.

The same desire to shake her self-possession had overcome him that morning when he had met her by the river and she had been so stunned to see him in the nude. He had known then that Rachel was not completely indifferent to him as a man. Some of her embarrassment had understandably sprung from the shock any well-bred girl would sustain when confronted by a naked man. But, more tellingly, he had seen the first long, intent stare that she had given him before she had realised who he was, and later the struggle she had had to resist the impulse simply to forget modesty and look on his nakedness. Cory smiled to himself. He was no gentleman to have prolonged the encounter as he had done, but he had been enjoying Rachel’s consternation too much to put an end to it. It was fortunate that her flailing hands had touched his arm rather than any other more sensitive part of him. He would not have wished to make the situation any more difficult than it already was.

Cory deliberately dismissed the encounter from his mind and turned his attention instead to Rachel’s situation within the Odell household. In some ways it seemed to him that Rachel had exchanged roles with her parents, worrying about what they wore and what they ate, making sure that their lives ran smoothly whilst they ran around collecting antiquities like irresponsible children gathering conkers. It infuriated Cory. He felt that someone ought to be looking after Rachel rather than the reverse.

Cory scraped the sand off his boots with irritable swipes of the trowel. The only time that he had expressed his views to Rachel, she had accused him of hypocrisy. And it was true, Cory thought fairly, that he also enjoyed the sort of life that the Odells pursued. But he was not married and nor did he have any children. His love of travel was the reason
why
he had never married. He valued his liberty too highly to compromise it.

His gaze returned to Rachel. She had caught the hem of the blue promenade dress on a trailing bramble and had bent to release her skirts. She was by necessity displaying her very attractive ankles, which she had kept demurely hidden from him since she was about ten years old. Cory grinned. Rachel had a figure as luscious as any of the Greek statues that adorned her parents’ hall, but no one was ever likely to get a glimpse of it. Her necklines were always high and her hemlines low. She was as neatly tied up as a parcel packaged with string.

He felt a wayward male urge to unwrap that parcel.

Cory sighed and ran a hand over his hair. He was not sure when his feelings for Rachel had started to change. Certainly he did not feel remotely brotherly towards her. Cory had plenty of sisters and his feelings for Rachel were quite different. At some point he had started to notice her in an entirely masculine way, and having started, had been unable to stop. It was utterly pointless and he knew it. Rachel saw him as a reliable elder brother and he was honour bound not to step outside the part. Besides, even he was not so disreputable as to have dishonourable intentions towards the daughter of his mentor and friend.

‘My lord?’ Cory jumped, dragging his gaze from Rachel’s figure and his thoughts from the fascinating subject of all the things that he could
not
do with her. He turned to find Bradshaw, his valet, at his elbow. The man was holding out what looked like a gold coin on his grimy palm. Cory picked it up.

‘Very good, Bradshaw. That looks like a shield boss. We’ll make an antiquarian of you yet!’

Bradshaw grinned. He had thick, dark hair and a muscular physique, and his arrival had caused a stir amongst the female servants. Before he had entered Cory’s employ he had had a variety of jobs, but all of them had been on government business and none of them had been anything to do
with valeting. That, however, was a fact known only to Cory and Bradshaw himself.

‘Not whilst I have my strength you won’t, my lord! I had no notion that these were the duties you had in mind for me.’

‘Excavation work isn’t to your taste?’ Cory had taken a small brush and was flicking the soil off the disk so that more of the inscription was revealed.

‘No, my lord. It is all too pernickety for me. I thought it would involve digging up big earthenware pots and shields of gold!’

‘The Midwinter Treasure?’ Cory murmured.

‘Something of the sort, my lord,’ Bradshaw said.

Cory laughed. ‘Digging for antiquities is mainly tedious, Bradshaw, with rare moments of excitement.’ Cory placed the shield boss carefully in the basket of finds. He lowered his voice discreetly. ‘And this is useful intelligence work. We are getting the lie of the land, talking to people, picking up information…There is plenty going on here.’

He glanced towards the corner of the burial field where the ground sloped down to the river. ‘There is some disturbance of the ground over in the eastern corner of the field, for instance. It’s my belief that smuggled goods have been stored there. Steady…’ he put a restraining hand on Bradshaw’s arm ‘…we cannot simply go rushing in there drawing attention to ourselves! Remember that this is part of a bigger game. We will have our chance.’

Bradshaw nodded reluctantly. ‘Aye, my lord.’ He grinned. ‘In the meantime, I shall concentrate on getting burned by the sun and developing muscles I was unaware I possessed!’

Cory clapped him on the back. ‘That’s the spirit! And I do believe—’ he looked over his shoulder ‘—that we have you to thank for the additional help we are getting from Kitty the kitchen maid. Lady Odell was commenting that the maids had not shown any inclination towards excavation
work until this morning.’ He saw the valet’s face flush. ‘You are to be congratulated, Bradshaw. Kitty is surprisingly good at the job, as well as a fine source of gossip. If you could encourage her a little…’