A Most Unseemly Summer

“Do remind me,” she said scathingly.

“That’s what Deventer would have had in mind, I believe. It will do to begin with.”

“Hypocrite!” Felice spat. “As if you give a damn what Lord Deventer has in mind.”

“There’s the wildcat. Now we begin to understand one another. Now, come here.”

She remained rooted to the spot, glaring at the darkening windows.

“Come here, Felice.”

Trembling inside, she went to him, dreading what was to come and fearful that her inevitable response would mock at all she had been asserting. “No,” she whispered. “Please don’t.”

His hand reached out and slipped around to the back of her neck, drawing her lips toward his….

A Most Unseemly Summer

Juliet Landon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JULIET LANDON

lives in an ancient country village in the north of England with her retired scientist husband. Her keen interest in embroidery, art and history, together with a fertile imagination, make writing historical novels a favorite occupation. She finds the research particularly exciting, especially the early medieval period and the fascinating laws concerning women in particular, and their struggle for survival in a man’s world.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

L ady Honoria Deventer shaded her eyes against the strengthening pale green rays that streamed into the best bedchamber at Sonning House. By her side, Lord Philip Deventer quietly opened the window, blowing a brittle winter cobweb into the garden below, where already a fuzz of new green covered the untidy plots.

Their joint attention was focussed on a tall and slender figure who stood motionless in the early sunshine, her dark mass of silky hair piled untidily on top of her head, her back curving into a neat waist without the support of whalebone stays. And though her face was turned from the house, her mother had guessed at its expression of sadness.

‘What is wrong with her these days?’ she whispered. ‘So angry. So quiet.’

‘She was not so quiet yesterday morning when she boxed the gardener’s lad’s ears, was she?’ her husband replied.

‘He was tipping birds’ eggs out of their nests to feed the cat. He deserved it. But she was never so severe until recently, Philip. Perhaps I should find her a new tutor.’

‘She’d be better off with a husband. A home. A few bairns.’ The typically brusque response sent a shadow across his wife’s face, which naturally he missed. His great hand wandered across her distended stomach, anticipating the gender of the new bulge, the first of a new strain of Deventers. Their combined families, eleven of his by his late wife and seven of hers by two previous husbands, would total nineteen by summer.

Lady Honoria nestled into him, covering his hand with her own. ‘But she has a home here…’ she turned her face up to him, suddenly unsure ‘…doesn’t she? She’s only nineteen, dearest, and she’s always been good at managing a household. Until we moved here to Sonning,’ she added as an afterthought. Lord Deventer’s household had not appreciated her expertise.

‘Well then, she can go down to Wheatley and manage that.’

‘What d’ye mean?’ Lady Honoria slowly turned within his arm, puzzled by his tone. ‘To Wheatley Abbey? There’s no one there, dear.’

‘Yes, there is. Gascelin will be there now, after the winter break. He sent a message up last week. There’ll be plenty of room for her in that big guesthouse, and she can make a start on the rooms in the New House ready for our move. We could be away from here in the autumn, if they both get a move on.’

His new wife turned away, glancing at her daughter’s lovely back with some scepticism. ‘You cannot be serious, Philip. I know you and Felice haven’t got to know each other too well yet, but I’ll not have her packed off down to Hampshire on her own to work with that man. There’d be trouble.’

‘Yes,’ Lord Deventer replied, unhelpfully, ‘but that man, as you call him, is the best surveyor and master builder this side of the Channel. Brilliant chap. And anyway, Hampshire’s only the next county, love, not exactly the other side of the world. She can always come back if she finds the task too daunting.’ He braced himself for his wife’s predictable defence of her beloved and only daughter.

‘Daunted? Felice? Never! But he’s not the easiest man to work alongside, is he? You know what a perfectionist he is.’

Lord Deventer had chosen Sir Leon Gascelin for just that quality and was only too well aware that the last thing he would appreciate would be someone like young Lady Felice Marwelle getting under his feet. However, there were ways of overcoming that problem.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘so is she, for that matter, and heaven knows the place is big enough for her to keep out of his way. He won’t want much to do with a lass like her. He was after Levina again when I last heard.’

‘Levina! Tch! Half the court is after Levina.’ Hearing the amusement in his voice she quickly closed the window against his impending laughter. ‘You’ll send a message to prepare the best rooms for her? She’ll be comfortable, Philip?’

‘Of course she will, love,’ he said, bending to kiss her downy neck. ‘I’ll send a man down today. She’ll be in her element.’

‘Today? So soon?’

‘Yes, love. No time like the present, is there?’

If only the daughter had been so pliable.

The daughter, Lady Felice Marwelle, had surprised her stepfather by an unusual co-operation verging on enthusiasm over a means of escape that had occupied her mind almost incessantly in recent weeks. But her expectations of the comfort promised by her mother were dashed against the large stone gatehouse leading to Wheatley Abbey through which a large and untidy building site was framed.

The elegant but sour-faced steward held his ground, clinging to his staff with one hand and the wide spiked collar of a mastiff with the other. ‘I received no orders from Sir Leon about a visit,’ he said. Though his tone was courteous, his finality might have dismayed most of those present.

But the young lady astride the bay mare was remarkably steadfast, giving back stare for stare from large brown eyes rimmed with thick black lashes, beating down the watery pale ones that time had faded. ‘That has no bearing whatever on the fact that I am here, now, with thirty members of Lord Deventer’s household and a fair proportion of his possessions,’ she replied, coolly. ‘And in Sir Leon’s absence you may take your orders from myself, Lady Felice Marwelle, Lord Deventer’s stepdaughter. Is that good enough for you?’

‘Lady,’ the steward bowed stiffly, ‘I beg your pardon, but the fact is that Sir Leon—’

‘The fact is, steward, that we have been on the road for two days, at the end of which I was assured there would be lodging in the guesthouse available to us. Are rooms available or not?’

In truth, she was beginning to doubt whether the guesthouse would be the most suitable place to stay, after all, for although the fourteenth-century complex of buildings appeared to be more than adequate, they were far too close to the building site for comfort.

It was inevitable, of course, that any reconstruction work on this scale would cause some considerable mess, and although the abbey’s original stones were being re-used, the sheer scale of the undertaking had turned the whole of the abbey precinct, once so well kept and peaceful, into a waste land. The large area between the gatehouse, guesthouse, abbey church and its old monastic buildings were stacked with stone and timber, scaffolding and hoists, with mounds of grit and sand, with the lean-to thatched sheds of the masons, carpenters, plasterers and tilers.

Most of the workers had finished for the day, but a group of grimy and wide-eyed young labourers hung round to see who would win the argument, Thomas Vyttery, steward, or this saucy young lass on the bay mare. They gawped at her and her two maids appreciatively until their attention was diverted by the steward’s impressively muscular mastiff that suddenly noticed, through the legs of the lady’s horse, two grey deerhounds almost as large as donkeys, standing passively but with bristling crests and lowered heads. Taking him by surprise, the mastiff wrenched itself out of the steward’s grasp and fled for the safety of home with its tail between its legs, leaving the steward without his main prop.

‘My lady, may I be permitted to suggest that, before you make a decision’—he was nothing if not formal—‘you take a look at the inn in the village of Wheatley. You would have passed it on your way to the abbey. It’s quite…’

Lady Felice was not listening. She was looking over to the right, beyond the church, towards a group of ancient stone-built dwellings that must once have been used by the monks for eating and sleeping before the terrible years of the Dissolution had driven them out. The message that Lord Deventer had received last week from his master builder and surveyor, Sir Leon Gascelin, had said that some of the rooms in the converted abbey would soon be ready for furnishing. Surely those must be the ones he meant.

‘Those buildings over there. That must be Lord Deventer’s New House, I take it?’

The steward did not need to look. ‘The men are still working on that house, m’lady, and Sir Leon himself will be moving into the old Abbot’s House within the next day or two.’

‘Mr…?’

‘Thomas Vyttery, m’lady.’

‘Mr Vyttery, hand me the keys to the Abbot’s House, if you please.’

The steward’s voice quavered in alarm. ‘By your leave, lady, I cannot do that. I shall be dismissed.’

‘You will indeed, Mr Vyttery, if you refuse to obey me. I shall see that Lord Deventer replaces you with someone who knows more about hospitality than you do. Now, do as I say.’ She held out a hand. ‘No, don’t try to remove any of the keys. I want the complete set—kitchens, stables, the lot. Thank you.’

In furiously silent remonstration, the impotent steward turned away without another word. Behind Felice, the cavalcade of waggons, carts, sumpter-horses, grooms and carters, cooks and kitchen-lads, household servants and officials lumbered into motion, creaking and swaying past the building site through ruts white with stone chippings and lime.

The fourteenth-century Abbot’s House was on the far side of the abbey buildings within the curve of the river, far removed from the builders’ clutter and larger than Felice had imagined. There were signs of extensive alterations and additions, enlarged windows and a stately carved porch with steps leading up to an iron-bound door.

Sending the carts, waggons and pack-horses round to the stableyard at the rear, Felice handed the large bunch of keys to her house-steward, Mr Peale, whose meteoric rise to the position had been effected especially for this venture. Still in his early thirties, Henry Peale took his duties very seriously, ushering his mistress up the steps into a series of pine-panelled rooms with richly patterned ceilings of white plaster that still held the pungent aroma of newness. In the fading light, it was only possible for them to estimate the rough dimensions, but the largest one on the first floor would do well enough for Lady Felice’s first night, and the rest of the household would bed down wherever they could.

It was testimony to the young lady’s managerial skills that a household, quickly assembled from her stepfather’s staff at Sonning in Berkshire, so soon worked like a well-oiled machine to unload whatever was necessary for their immediate comfort and leave the rest on the carts until they knew where to put it. There was no question of assembling the lady’s bed, but when the candles and cressets were lit at last, the well-swept rooms held a welcome that had so far been denied them. So much for her stepfather’s assurances of comfort, she muttered to Lydia, her eldest maid.

‘We’ll soon have it ship-shape,’ Lydia said, drawing the unpinned sleeves over her mistress’s wrists. ‘But where’s Sir Leon got to? Wasn’t he supposed to have been expecting us?’

‘Heaven knows. Obviously not where Lord Deventer thinks he is. More to the point, what’s happened to the message he was sent?’ She stepped out of her petticoat, beneath which she had worn a pair of soft leather breeches to protect her thighs from the chafing of the saddle. ‘You and Elizabeth take the room next door, Lydie. I’ll have the hounds in here with me.’

Perhaps it was these vexed questions that made her come instantly to life long before dawn and respond with a puzzled immediacy to her new surroundings. To investigate the moonlight flooding in broken ripples through the lattice, she crossed the room to the half-open window, watched by the two sprawling hounds. The scent of wood-ash hung in the air and in the silence she could hear her heart beating.

The moonlit landscape was held together by an assortment of textured greys that there had been no time for her to remember as trees or groups of sleeping water-fowl. A cloud slid beneath the moon reflected in the glassy river below and, as she watched, a series of counter-ripples slid across the water, chased by another, and then another. Across on the far side where the darkness was most dense, a disturbance broke the surface and, even before her eyes had registered it, she knew that it was a boat, that someone who rowed on the river had been caught by the moon. Then the boat disappeared, towing behind it a wide V of ripples.

Wide awake, she pulled on her leather breeches and her fine linen chemise, tucking it in and hurriedly buckling on the leather belt to hold them together. Then, without bothering to look for her boots, she commanded the hounds to stay and let herself silently out of the room. The wide staircase led down to the passageway where the front doors were locked and bolted. They were new and well oiled, allowing her to exit without attracting the attention of the sleeping servants. She was now almost directly below her own chamber window and only a few yards from the riverbank that dropped to a lower level, dotted with hawthorns and sleeping ducks.

She followed the river away from the Abbot’s House in the direction of the boat, her bare feet making no sound on the grass. She kept low, putting the trees between herself and the river, passing the kitchens and the tumbledown wall of the kitchen garden and eventually finding herself on a grassy track that led to a wooden bridge and from there to the mill on the opposite side.

A small rowing boat was tied up below the bridge and, as there was no other, she assumed it to be the one she had seen, suggesting that whoever had left it there was probably in the mill. The miller, perhaps, returning from a late night with friends?

The owls had ceased their hooting as she retraced her steps, the moonlit abbey now appearing from a different angle, the great tower of the church rising well above every rooftop. Rather than return by exactly the same route, she was drawn towards a gap in the old kitchen-garden wall that bordered the track, its stones paving a way into the place where monastic gardeners had once grown their vegetables. It was now impossible for her to make out any shape of plot or pathway, but she picked her way carefully towards the silhouetted gables of the Abbot’s House, brushing the tops of the high weeds with her palms.

A slight sound behind her made her jump, and she turned, ready for flight, only her lightning reaction saving her from a hand that shot forward to grasp at her arm. She felt the fingers touch the linen of her sleeve, heard the breath of the one who would hold her, and then she swerved and fled, leaping and bounding like a hare without knowing which part of the wall ahead held the means of her escape.

She was tall, for a woman, but her pursuer’s legs were longer than hers and she was forced to use every device to evade him, swerving and zigzagging, ducking and doubling, hoping by these means to make him stumble. But it was she who stumbled on the rough ground that had not been cultivated for some twenty years or more, and that hesitation was enough for the man to catch her around the waist and swing her sideways, throwing her off-balance. She went crashing down into a bed of wild parsley and, before she had time to draw breath, his weight was over her, pressing her face-down into the weeds and forcing an involuntary yelp out of her lungs.

That was all she allowed herself, knowing that to reveal her identity might make her a greater prize than she already was. Let him think her a servant, a silly maid meeting her lover. It was not until he spoke that she realised how she must have appeared.

‘Now, my lad, that was a merry little dance, eh? Let’s introduce ourselves then, shall we? Then you can answer a few questions.’ The voice that breathed softly into the back of her neck was nothing like a common labourer’s, nor did he seem to be out of breath, but more like one who had enjoyed the chase, knowing he would win. He eased himself off her shoulders to kneel lightly astride her hips. ‘Your name, lad?’ he said.

Felice clenched her teeth, waiting for the persuasive blow to fall. This was something she had not reckoned on. Her face was deep in the shadow of long stalks and feathery leaves where the moonlight could not reach, her cheek pressed against the night-time coolness of the earth, which was to her advantage as soon as she felt his response to her silence.

‘All right, lad, there are other ways.’

His hands were deft around her waist, searching her lower half for weapons and hesitating over the soft fabric of the chemise tucked into the belt. ‘Hey! What’s this, then?’ he said more softly. Slowly, his hands moved upwards, spanning her back, his fingertips already well out of bounds. The next move would be too far.

Taking advantage of his shift in position, Felice twisted wildly, flailing backwards with one arm to hit hard at the side of his head with a crack that sent a wave of pain through her wrist. It took him by surprise, and although he was quick to recover his balance, it gave her the time she needed to roll beneath him and to push hard with one shoulder, using every ounce of force she could summon.

He swayed sideways but caught her again before she could free her legs from his weight, and then she fought madly, desperately, knowing that her boy’s guise was not, after all, to be her safety. In panic, she tore at his shirt and sleeveless leather jerkin, missing his face but raking his neck and forearms and finally sinking her teeth into the base of his thumb as he grabbed at her wrists. She felt him flinch at that, giving her yet another chance to twist away, kicking and beating, desperate to be free of him.

She rolled, lashing out, but he rolled with her, over and over through the spring growth of chick-weed and willow-herb and she was sure, without seeing his face, that he was actually enjoying her efforts, even while being hard pressed to contain them. At last she was stopped by an ancient half-buried wheelbarrow, and she lay, panting and exhausted, in an embrace so powerful that it hurt her ribs, immobilised by strong legs that encircled hers, her back against his chest and her wrists held fast beneath her chin by one of his hands.

She felt his chest shake in silent laughter while his free hand took her heavy plait and slipped the ribbon off the end, combing her thick hair loose with his fingers and letting fall a silken sheet of it across her face.

‘There now, my beauty. Shall we stop pretending now. Eh? Fleet of foot and sharp of claw and tooth. That’s hardly a lad’s way now, is it? You’re going to tell me who you are, then?’

Her resolve to remain silent wavered while her mind sought a quick answer to the question of his intentions; whether he would have as many qualms about violating a noblewoman as much as a village lass. Yet there was something about his persistent interrogation that suggested some other purpose behind his violent pursuit. Surely he would not have chased a lad with such ferocity if he’d had only rape in mind. But having discovered he held a woman, would he now change his purpose?

Panic, anger and dread screamed through her mind and left a sickly void at the pit of her stomach, for now his hand had come to rest upon the large silver buckle of her belt, loosening the thong in a leisurely mockery of her weakness.

‘No,’ she whispered, writhing. ‘No…please!’

The hand stopped, but the voice was smiling. ‘No? No, what? You’re not going to tell me who I’ve captured? Are you a moon-spirit, perhaps?’

‘No,’ she whispered again. Having broken her silence, it seemed necessary now to insist. ‘Let me go. Please.’

He spoke teasingly against her ear, his words touching her. ‘Then I require some kind of proof that you’re mortal, don’t you agree? Do you have any suggestion of a harmless nature? Nothing too…irreparable?’

Holy saints! What was he talking about? Suggestions of a harmless nature? Nothing irreparable? Angered, obdurate, she remained silent, now becoming aware of the throbbing in her wrist. She tried twisting to bite at any part of him, but his hand tightened its grip as she writhed, his free hand gently easing the linen chemise from the safety of her breeches.

She stopped, again paralysed with foreboding.

‘So, tell me who sent you here. Who are you working for?’ His hand was still, waiting on the bare skin of her midriff, and when she again refused to answer, he shifted slightly, settling her sideways against him and wedging her head into his shoulder with one iron forearm.

Looking back on this episode, she was to wonder why she had not screamed, why she had suddenly been aware of her heart fluttering instead of beating, or why the dread had suddenly become tinged with a shade of illicit excitement. It was dark, she was to excuse herself later, and she had not been able to see when his mouth covered hers, and then all proper maidenly resistance was obscured by longings that had lain dormant over the long dark months of autumn and winter, waiting to be rekindled.

It was no excuse, of course, but it would have to serve in the absence of anything more persuasive. What was more, it was the certainty that she would never again encounter this stranger on any level that freed her mind and body to his direction. If she had believed, even for the space of one second, that they would ever meet again, she would have killed him rather than give what he took so expertly, what she gave without further protest.

She was not inexperienced, but this man was a master, claiming her mind, her total participation from start to finish. She was hardly aware when his hand moved upwards to capture her breasts and to explore them in minutest detail while his lips held hers in willing submission, suspending all resistance with cords of ecstasy. She moaned and pushed against him, feeling the brush of his hair on her eyelids, his warm hand caressing and fondling, her own hands now freed and hanging numbly out of harm’s way, allowing him free access.

In the far distant reaches of her mind, a comparison stirred and settled again, dimly reminding her to take, while she had the chance. So she took, greedily and unsparing, surprising him by her need that, had he known it, had never before reached these dimensions. How could he have known what part he was playing in her desperation?

Responding immediately, he tipped her backwards on to the cool dark bed of greenery and lay on her, whispering to her like a voice of conscience that she must think…think. Unbelievably, he told her to think what she was doing.