not, and you know it. If I had truly taken advantage of you, I could have plied you with more wine instead of telling you to stop. I could have taken you into any one of a dozen dark rooms. I could still have you stark naked and on your back right now, if that’s what—’
‘No!’ she panted. ‘That you will never do! Now release me.’ For all its apparent fervour, her plea lacked momentum under his persuasive hands that cleverly drew her mind from resentment towards the breathtaking response of her body. Still tingling from his attentions, she had no will to protest as his wandering hands reinforced his first lesson.
‘You started this, my beauty, and now you’re in it up to your pretty little hocks again, aren’t you. And no guardians to run to.’
‘Master Fowler will…be my…’ Her mouth was taken over by his kiss.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘run to your Gentleman Controller as often as you wish, but he’ll never have control of you as I shall. You can stop playing your game of run-and-hide now, Adorna. It’s time to face reality.’ He caught her wrist and swung her round to face him, taking a fistful of her golden hair to tilt her face under his. ‘I want you and I shall have you. Fume and fight as much as you like; your opposition will make my winning and your losing all the sweeter.’
‘Fine words,’ she snarled, ‘from one who makes a secret assignation with no intention of keeping it. If that’s the reality you intend me to face, sir, I’ll stick with my so-called games a while longer, I thank you.’
‘So that’s niggling at you, is it? Well, if I’d thought you’d have accepted my explanation any earlier, I’d have given it to you, though there’s hardly been a good moment for apologies, has there? I was foaling a mare. A first foal. Premature.’
‘And you could not have sent a message?’
His voice softened with an invisible smile. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I could have. I could have sent your Master Fowler. He was with me in the courtyard when the stable-lad came to tell me that the mare had started. I could have asked him to go to the banqueting house where you’d be waiting for me and tell you not to. Should I have done that, do you think?’
The idea was absurd, she realised that now. He could not have sent anyone with such a message. ‘I was not waiting for you,’ she said, angrily pulling at his grip on her wrist. ‘I went in.’
‘Ah, I see.’ He smiled, releasing her. ‘Then there is no real harm done after all, is there? And no apology needed. Now, anything else before I take you home?’
‘Yes, there is. Have you warned him to stay away from me?’
‘Who? Master Fowler?’ His smile grew into a soft laugh. ‘No, mistress. I do not warn men off. I don’t need to. Our Gentleman Controller will get the message soon enough without any extra help from me. I think you’ve already seen that tonight.’
‘And I think, sir, that the less I remember of this night the happier I shall be. I choose my own friends and I shall choose my own lovers when I’m ready. And you will not be among them. Master Fowler would never have behaved as you have.’
‘In which case, Mistress Adorna Pickering,’ he said, pulling her to him once more, ‘you would not have behaved the way you just have, would you? And that would have been a pity.’ Like his first kiss, he gentled her lips with his own, reminding her of how she had responded to him and luring her into another betrayal of her slumbering protests. It also made her aware that this theory, though probably sound, was way beyond her understanding at that moment and had better be analysed on the morrow.
Chapter Six
F ortunately, Lady Marion was entertaining some friends when Adorna arrived home like a sleeping child in Sir Nicholas’s arms, and Sir Thomas had not yet returned from the palace. Consequently, no one except Maybelle and the Pickerings’ chamberlain were there to see how carefully she was deposited on the bed from which she did not wake until well past dawn. And then she wished she had not.
It was not so much her head that pained her, though that was worse than anything she could remember, but the shattering burden of self-reproach that grew with each of her searching questions to Maybelle about her behaviour, her clothes—or lack of them—and about Sir Nicholas’s part in getting her home. The pain worsened as her mother kindly lectured her on the dangers of allowing a man too much familiarity. How did she know about the journey home? ‘Because I pay my chamberlain to tell me what’s going on in my own house,’ she replied. Unfortunately, it was not possible for Adorna to discover exactly what the chamberlain had implied, or how much her mother suspected, or indeed how far Sir Nicholas had gone. And having no one but herself to blame for her determination to drink too much undiluted wine, she realised that she must get herself out of this situation with the same defiance she had used to get into it.
Neither the pain nor her temper was improved by Hester’s somewhat ill-timed opinion that Sir Nicholas would make a good husband. ‘For you?’ Adorna said, wincing at the sunlit garden.
‘Well, yes. My inherited wealth and his inherited title would go together rather well, I think. And Sir Nicholas has noticed how much I’ve changed. Isn’t that nice?’
‘Very nice,’ Adorna murmured, watching a butterfly head off towards a gaudy marigold. ‘That makes all our efforts worthwhile.’ Secretly, it rankled that the plan she had been so eager to put into action only a short time ago had now begun to look as if it had Hester’s approval and, what was worse, that it might actually work. The only comforting thought she could find was that, one day quite soon, Sir Nicholas and Peter would both be gone up to Kenilworth with the Earl of Leicester to prepare to welcome the Queen.
Adorna had missed the Sunday-morning service in the Queen’s royal chapel, but felt obliged to attend the evening one at which she hoped Sir Nicholas would not be present. Her hopes were soon sent packing. He came in with the earl’s household only moments before the Queen herself, fitting into a space on the bench immediately behind her. It was Hester and Lady Pickering who turned to smile at him, but the unkind lurch of Adorna’s heart had already responded to some strange telepathy, and from then on it was all she could do to keep her mind on course instead of on his presence at her back, his hands so close, his eyes taking in every detail.
She devised a series of strategies for evading him afterwards, but her father and Hester demolished them by keeping her between them as they turned to speak to Sir Nicholas, compelling her to respond to his query about her health. His ‘You are well, I hope?’ was accompanied by a lack of gravity in his eyes that suggested he might already know the answer.
She had no intention of telling him the truth. ‘Well enough, I thank you, sir.’ Against her will, her eyes evaluated the impeccable green silk doublet and matching trunk-hose, its surfaces slashed to show long puffs of pale gold silk beneath. A small white ruff sat neatly beneath his chin, but her examination stopped at his mouth, lacking the courage to meet the laughter in his eyes.
Hester, apparently, felt that Adorna’s response was sadly wanting in detail. ‘She is now,’ she said, in the awkward silence that followed. ‘She’s been unwell all morning with a terrible headache. Poor Adorna.’ She looked pityingly at her cousin, trying to imagine what a headache felt like.
‘Hester!’ Adorna said through her teeth. But the damage was done.
‘Really?’ Sir Nicholas replied, adopting an expression of extreme concern. ‘Is that so, mistress? Now what could possibly have caused that, I wonder?’
Sir Thomas came to the rescue, dismissing the problem with his usual bluffness. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘anyone who has to dress eight noblewomen as Water Maidens all at the same time is entitled to a headache, I’d say. It gave me one just to think about it. Hah! Now, Sir Nicholas, I believe I owe you our thanks for escorting Mistress Adorna home last night. Very thoughtful. Mighty good of you. I was tied up till the early hours, you know.’
Sir Nicholas’s response was a slight bow, though his eyes and voice still denied a proper seriousness. ‘No thanks are necessary,