fight and twist away was one thing, but a whalebone corset beneath the pink fabric of her bodice was quite another and, though she might have screamed, the breath was not in place before he spoke without a trace of the facetiousness she had dreaded.
‘Adorna…hush now. You’ve got it wrong. Listen to me.’
‘I don’t want to…be here… Let me go!’
‘I cannot let you go.’
‘Words…words!’ she hissed. ‘I’ll not be your latest conquest!’
‘Adorna, what is all this about my conquests, my long line of amours? What is it that you’ve heard? Give me a chance to refute it. I’ll not deny that I enjoy women’s company, but it’s not the way you think.’
‘I don’t think anything!’ She pushed at him, angrily.
‘Yes, you do, or you’d not be so fierce. I’m not trying to force you into a relationship. Did you think I was?’
‘Then what are you doing with my wrists in your hands, sir?’
‘Persuading you to listen to me, for you’ll not listen any other way. There, I’ve released you, see. Now, you can do whatever you wish with your hands while I tell you how lovely you are.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ she yelped. ‘Tell me that my hair is like the moon’s rays, my mouth is like a rosebud, my eyes are like—’
‘Adorna!’
‘Like two faded periwinkles, my nose…oh…whatever the best noses are like nowadays, but spare me the rest, I beg you. I’ve had all that and more, and you can have nothing to add that I’ve not already—’
Apparently there was something that he could add that, so far, no one else had ever succeeded in doing, something that stopped the flow of scorn as effectively as a gag. She tried to talk through it, but he was no amateur like the one he had identified at the Queen’s picnic, and his was not the kind of kiss that pushed and hoped for the best. Knowing that she would try to avoid him, he caught her head and turned it sideways on to his chest, wedging her there while he cut off the scolding words with a sweet tenderness that dried up her thoughts, too. This, he was telling her, was more potent than words, beyond argument, and totally beyond her experience.
Her hands, now freed, could have torn at him but lay unhelpfully upon his doublet instead, feeling nothing. She had sometimes wondered how a woman was supposed to return a man’s kiss when he was doing all that needed to be done, and now she stopped thinking altogether for, after the first startling invasion of his mouth on hers, her mind closed as effectively as her eyes, and she was swept away into the deepest, darkest, most overpowering sensation she could ever have imagined. And she had imagined, often.
Drunk with the new experience, her mind was slow to adjust and, when he paused, just touching her lips with his, her pretences had deserted her. Without any prompting, her hands knew what to do, reaching up through the darkness to touch his face and to find their own way over his ears and hair that parted under her fingers. Shadows of shattered conscience warned her of some former conflict, some contradiction, but it was too dark to identify them before they fled, and his lips returned to take what, this time, she was yielding up without protest. He was tender, carefully disturbing the surface of her desire until a moan began to rise in her throat.
Then he released her, easing her upright and supporting her in his arms while her head drooped, almost touching his chin. ‘You were saying?’ he whispered, eventually.
She shook her head, saying nothing, thinking nothing.
‘Then will you listen to me awhile?’
‘Another time,’ she whispered. ‘Please? Another time? My father…the servants will be here soon to…’ she peered about her and disengaged herself from his arms ‘…to clear up, to lock the doors.’ Unsteadily, she stepped aside, hearing a loud crack from beneath her skirts. ‘Oh, no!’
Sir Nicholas bent to lift her foot and to retrieve two halves of a roundel, placing them on the table. ‘Can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘Adorna, just one thing before I take you back.’ He took her hand and held it against his chest. ‘Whatever you’ve been hearing of me, and you know how people gossip at Court, don’t allow it to prejudice you against me. If there is no scandal, people will invent it. It’s gossip, Adorna.’
There was nothing she could reply to that except to remove her hand and hope that her cheeks and lips would be cooled by the night air before she entered the house. The last remaining guests were departing as they appeared together, though one who lingered was, to Adorna’s consternation, Master Peter Fowler. He came to greet them with some eagerness, his expression as he looked from one to the other showing that he recognised what Adorna had hoped to conceal.
‘Peter,’ she said, reading his face.
‘There you are!’ Peter said, breezily. ‘Sir Nicholas, I was hoping to catch you, sir.’
‘Me? Whatever for?’
‘I’ve been across to the palace just now. The keys, you know. Bedtime.’ He smiled apologetically. The handing over of the keys of Her Majesty’s chamber at bedtime was a ritual he could not evade. ‘And I’ve been given two messages for you. You’re a popular man, sir.’ His expression, Adorna thought, held a glint of sheer mischief as he came to her side, ready to lead her away. ‘One from his lordship’s man to say that he’d be glad if you’d take a look at the bay stallion again before you retire.’
‘Certainly. And the other?’
‘Oh, from Lady Celia Traverson’s maid. It appears her mistress was expecting you to visit her this evening in the east tower room, sir. Seemed a bit upset. I said I’d see you got the message.’ He glanced again at Adorna with a suggestion of triumph in his merry eyes. ‘Wonderful evening,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, taking the arm he offered. ‘Wonderful.’
As if to verify the effect of Peter’s ill-timed messages, she met the eyes of her former companion as he made her a formal bow and saw the anger that washed briefly across them, drooping the lids with a stifled frown. Their glances agreed that there was no explanation that he could offer to which she would want to listen, and that Adorna’s former hostility, far from being lessened, had now increased. Her coldness turned to a relentless freeze. She did not need to ask who Lady Celia Traverson was, having heard the same name that evening in connection with his last love affair. Nor was there any doubt in her mind that Lady Celia was the woman he had met in the friary paradise while she had watched, yearning for such a kiss. And now, her first kiss had turned bitter upon her lips.
Chapter Four
S ir Nicholas straightened, dropping the stallion’s hoof gently into the deep straw. He patted the sleek brown rump and looked across at his noble employer over the top of it. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘It was the same last night. He’s sound enough, sir.’ He leaned back against the stall.
The Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s favourite and the handsomest man at Court, some said, leaned against the other side of the stall and folded his arms across his wide chest. ‘Samuel Manning certainly taught you a thing or two, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘You believe it was the mare, then?’
Sir Nicholas smiled. ‘Almost certainly, sir. They can do a fair amount of damage when they’re new to it, as you know.’
‘Then we shall have to make sure he’s well padded next time, eh?’
The laughter was mutually rueful. The earl looked pointedly at the reddened skin along the left side of Sir Nicholas’s eyebrow, unable to conceal his interest. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that you need some padding, too. I’ll not believe it. Was that the problem?’
A hand went up to comfort the tender place. ‘Nothing to speak of, sir,’ Sir Nicholas smiled. ‘A misunderstanding.’
‘Not Lady Celia,