LIBERTINE in the Tudor Court. Juliet Landon

under way in the Queen’s garden. But though her fear of being added to his conquests remained as great as ever, he had shown her with appalling ease how close she had come to ignoring every one of her objections. The thought was terrifying.

      ‘Let me go home,’ she whispered, shakily. ‘You have taken advantage of me, sir.’ She stood, clinging to one of the wooden pillars for support.

      He came to stand behind her, his hands beneath her cloak covering her breasts and pulling her back to him, possessively. ‘Oh, no,’ he said into her ear. ‘Oh, no, sweet maid. That I did 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.