Any man who could move a woman so quickly and with such mastery was obviously no woman-hater. ‘You have a long way to go,’ she said, coldly. ‘About twenty years should be enough.’
The smile returned. ‘That’s better. We’re talking again. Now, my lady, I shall show you round the New House and we can discuss what’s to be done in the best chambers on the upper floors. The lower one…’
‘Sir Leon, you are under a misapprehension. I have already told you…’
‘That you are not staying. Yes, I heard you, but I have decided that you are. If Deventer has entrusted you with the organisation of his household here at Wheatley, and to furnish his rooms, then he must think highly of your abilities. Surely you’re not going to throw away the chance to enhance your credit with him and disappoint your mother, too? They would expect some kind of explanation from you. Do you have one available?’
‘Yes, sir. As it happens, I do. I intend to tell them that you are impossible to work with and that our intense dislike of each other is mutual. Indeed, I cannot help feeling that my stepfather guessed how matters would stand before he sent me here, so I shall have no compunction about giving him chapter and verse.’
‘Chapter and verse?’
‘You are detestable!’ she whispered, looking away.
‘And you, as you have reminded me, are a woman, and therefore you will hardly be deceived by my very adequate reasons.’
‘Not in the slightest. Nor would a child believe them.’
‘Then how would it be if I were to inform your parents of what happened last night?’ he said, quietly.
She had not been looking until now, but the real intention behind his appalling question needed to be seen in his eyes. He could not be serious. But his expression told her differently. He was very serious.
‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered, her eyes narrowing against his steady gaze. ‘Oh, yes, you would, wouldn’t you? And if I told them you were talking nonsense?’
‘Whose word would your stepfather take, d’ye think? Whose story would he prefer to believe, yours or mine? I could go into a fair amount of detail, if need be.’
She launched herself at him like a wildcat, her fingers curved like claws ready to rake at his cool grey eyes, his handsome insolent face, at anything to ruffle his intolerable superiority and to snatch back the memories he should never have been allowed to hold.
Her hands were caught and held well out of harm’s way and, if she had hoped to knock him backwards against the stone column, she now found that it was she who was made to sit with one at her back while her arms were slowly and easily twisted behind her.
His arms encircled her, his face close to hers, and once again she was his captive and infuriated by his restraint. ‘And don’t let’s bother about talk of killing me if I should lay a finger on you because I intend to, lady, one way or another. You threw me a careless challenge earlier. Remember?’
Mutely, she glared at a point beyond his shoulder.
‘Yes, well I’ve accepted it, so now we’ll see how much skill is needed to tame you, shall we?’
She was provoked to scoff again. ‘Oh, of course. That’s what it’s all about. First you pretend to be concerned with duty, yours and mine, and then you try threats. But after all that, it’s a challenge, a silly challenge you men can never resist, can you? How pathetic! What a victory in the eyes of your peers when they hear how you took on a woman single-handed. How they’ll applaud you. And how the women will sneer at your hard-won victory. Did you not know, Sir Leon, that a man can only make a woman do what she would have done anyway?’ She had never believed it, but it added some small fuel to her argument.
‘Ah, you think that, do you? Then go on believing it if you think it will help. It makes no difference, my beauty. Deventer sent you down here with more than his new house in mind, and somewhere inside that lovely head you have some conflicting messages of your own, haven’t you, eh?’
Frantically, she struggled against him, not wanting to hear his percipient remarks or suffer the unbearable nearness of him again. Nor could she tolerate his trespass into her capricious mind. ‘Let me go!’ she panted. ‘Loose me! I want nothing to do with you.’
‘You’ll have a lot to do with me before we’re through, so you can start by regarding me as your custodian, in spite of not wanting me. Deventer will approve of that, I know.’
‘You insult me, sir. Since when has a custodian earned the right to abuse his charge as you have abused me?’
‘Abuse, my lady? That was no abuse, and you know it. You’d stopped fighting me, remember.’
‘I was exhausted,’ she said, finding it increasingly difficult to think with his eyes roaming her face at such close quarters. ‘You insulted me then as you do now. Let me go, Sir Leon. There will never be a time when I shall need a custodian, least of all a man like you. Go and find someone else to try your so-called skills on, and make sure it’s dark so she sees you not.’
‘Get used to the idea, my lady,’ he said, releasing her. ‘It will be with you for as long as it takes.’ He picked up her shoes and held them by his side. ‘Fight me as much as you like, but you’ll discover who’s master here, and I’ll have you tamed by the end of summer.’
‘A most unseemly summer, Sir Leon, if I intended to stay. But, you see, I don’t. Now, give me my shoes.’ She would have been surprised and perhaps a little disappointed if he had obeyed her, yet the temptation to nettle him was strong and her anger still so raw that she would have prolonged even this petty squabble just to win one small point. As it turned out, the victory was not entirely hers.
‘Ask politely,’ he said.
‘I’ll be damned if I will! Keep them!’
Her moment of recklessness was redeemed by voices that reached them through the open arch that had once been a doorway, the way she had entered. Lydia and Elizabeth were looking for her. ‘My lady?’ they called. ‘Where are you?’
‘Here,’ she called back. ‘Elizabeth, ask Sir Leon prettily for my shoes, there’s a dear. He’s been kind enough to carry them for me.’ Without another glance at her self-appointed custodian, she held up one foot ready for its prize. ‘Such a gentleman,’ she murmured, sweetly.
It was better than nothing. But she could not bring herself to elaborate on the scene to Lydia, who was not taken in by Sir Leon’s stiff bow or by her mistress’s attempt at nonchalance, her blazing eyes and pink cheeks.
‘We’re staying, then,’ said Lydia, provocatively.
‘Certainly not!’ Felice told her, surreptitiously probing along her arms for more bruises. ‘We’re getting out of here at the first opportunity. Why?’ She glanced at her maid’s face. ‘Don’t tell me you’d like to stay.’
‘Well…’ Lydia half-smiled ‘…I’ve just discovered that he has a very good-looking valet called Adam.’
‘Oh, Lydie! Don’t complicate matters, there’s a love.’
Another reason for Felice’s reserve was that her discord with Sir Leon had now acquired a sizeable element of personal competition in which the prize was to be her pride, a commodity she was as determined to hold on to as he apparently was to possess. Removing herself from the field of contest would indicate that it was probably not worth the fight, leaving him to be the victor by default. And naturally, he would believe her to be afraid of him.
Perhaps even more serious was his threat to make Lord Deventer aware of their first encounter from which she had emerged the loser. While her stepfather would undoubtedly clap his surveyor on the back for taking advantage of such a golden opportunity, not to mention his night-time vigil, she herself would be severely censured for such conduct, irrespective of its initial purpose. The thought of Lord Deventer’s coarse laughter brought waves of shame