“Guardianship, is it? Is that a notch up from custodian, or a notch down?”

“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.

It was a familiar word to her, one which she had not thought to hear again in this connection, and the senses that moments before had been submerged beneath a roaring storm of emotion now emerged, chilled and shaking, drawing her attention to the prickly coldness at her back and the pale shocked stare of the moon. Tears blinded her, shattering the white orb into a thousand pieces.

‘Let me go,’ she whispered yet again. ‘Let me up now, I beg you.’

‘Who are you? Tell me, for pity’s sake, woman.’

She turned her head away, suddenly shamed by his limbs on hers, his hand slowly withdrawing, leaving her breast bleak and unloved. ‘No, I’m nobody. Let me go.’ The tears dripped off her chin.

His sigh betrayed disappointment and bewilderment, but there was to be no return to the former roles of captor and captive. He rolled away, lying motionless in the dark as Felice scrambled unsteadily to her feet and hobbled away with neither a word nor backward glance, wincing at the pains that now beset her like demons, clutching her chemise in both hands.

She could not know, nor did she turn to see whether he followed, nor did she know how she found her way out of that vast walled space and through the stone arch that had once been closed off by wooden gates. All she knew was that, suddenly, it was there, that the rough ground had changed to cobbles that hurt her feet unbearably, and that she used the pointed finials on the rooftop to show her where the Abbot’s House was.

Predictably, Lydia scolded her mistress on all counts, especially for leaving the two deerhounds, Fen and Flint, behind. ‘Whatever were you thinking of, love?’ she whispered, anxious not to wake young Elizabeth. ‘Why didn’t you tell him who you were? He could have been somebody set to guard the site at nights. Here, hold your other foot up.’

Shivering, despite the woollen blanket, Felice obeyed but felt bound to defend herself. ‘How could he be? All those who work here would know of our arrival. He’d know who I was, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t guess, and that shows he’s a stranger to the place. Ouch! My wrist hurts, Lydie.’

‘I’ll send Elizabeth to find some comfrey as soon as it gets light. Now, that’ll have to do till we can have some water sent up. Into bed, love.’

Bandaged and soothed and with a streak of dawn already on the horizon, Felice gave in to the emotions that surged uncontrollably within her, awakened after their seven-month suppression. She had shared her heartache with no one, though faithful Lydia had been aware of her relationship with Father Timon, Lord Deventer’s chaplain and Felice’s tutor, and of the manner of his death. Now this stranger had forced her to confront the pain of an aching emptiness and to discover that it was, in fact, full to overflowing.

The revelation had both astounded her and filled her with guilt; what should have been kept sacred to Timon’s memory had been squandered in a moment of sheer madness. Well, no one would know of that deplorable lapse, not even dear Lydia, and the man himself would now be many miles away.

But try as she would to replace that anonymous ruffian with the gentle Timon, the imprint of unknown hands on her, ruthlessly intimate, sent tremors of self-reproach through her aching body that were indistinguishable from bliss. The taste of his lips and their bruising intensity returned time and again to overcome all comparisons until, once again, she sobbed quietly into her pillow at the knowledge that that memory also would have to last for the rest of her life.

By first light, the servants were already astir under the direction of Mr Peale and Mr Dawson, the clerk of the kitchen from whom Lydia had obtained buckets of hot water. Elizabeth, a blonde-haired, scatterbrained maid of sixteen and the apple of Mr Dawson’s discerning eye, had been sent off to find some comfrey for Felice’s bruises while Felice herself, examining her upper arms and wrists, found exactly what she expected to find, rows of blue fingertip marks that were visible to Lydia from halfway across the room.

‘Merciful heavens, love! I think you’ll have to tell Sir Leon of this when he returns,’ she said. ‘It’s something he ought to know about.’

‘By the time Sir Leon Gascelin returns,’ Felice replied, caustically, ‘this lot will have disappeared.’ She stirred the water in the wooden bucket with her feet, enjoying the comfort it gave to her cuts and scratches. ‘And by the sound of him,’ she went on, ‘my well-being will probably be the last thing on his mind.’

‘Lord Deventer said that of him? Surely not,’ said Lydia, frowning.

‘Not in so many words, but the implication was there, right enough. Keep out of his way. Don’t interfere with his plans. And above all, remember that he’s the high and mighty surveyor to whom we must all bow and scrape. Except that he’s not available to bow and scrape to, so that gives us all time to practise, doesn’t it? Pass me that comb, Lydie.’ Thoughtfully, she untangled the long straight tresses, recalling how it had recently been undone by a man’s fingers. ‘I should wash it,’ she mumbled.

A shout reached them from the courtyard below, then another, a deep angry voice that cracked across the general clatter of feet, hooves, buckets and boxes. Silence dropped like a stone.

Another piercing bark. ‘Where, exactly?’

The reply was too quiet for them to hear, but Lydia mouthed the missing words, pointing a finger to the floor, her eyes wide with dismay.

‘That doesn’t sound like the steward,’ whispered Felice.

Lydia crossed to the window but she was too late, and by the time she reached the door it had been flung open by a man who had to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the low medieval lintel. He straightened, immediately, his hand still on the latch, his advance suddenly halted by the sight of a stunningly beautiful woman sitting with her feet in a bucket, dressed in little except a sleeveless kirtle of fine linen, half-open down the front. It would have been impossible to say whose surprise was the greater, his or theirs.

‘Get out!’ Felice snapped, making no effort to dive for cover. If this was a colleague of the miserable steward, Thomas Vyttery, then his opinion of her was of no consequence. Yet this man had the most insolent manner.

He made no move to obey the command, but took in every detail of the untidy room as he bit back at her. ‘This is my room! You get out!’

It took a while, albeit a short one, for his words to register, for the only other person who could lay claim to the Abbot’s House was Sir Leon Gascelin, and he was known to be away from home.

The man was tall and broad-chested, the embodiment of the power that she and Lydia had facetiously been applauding. His dark hair was a straight and glossy cap that jutted wilfully out over his forehead in spikes, close-cropped but unruly enough to catch on the white lace-edged collar of his open-necked shirt. Felice noticed the ambience of great physical strength and virility that surrounded him, even while motionless, and the way that Fen and Flint had gone to greet him with none of the natural hostility she would have preferred them to exhibit in the face of such rudeness.

He caressed the head of one of them with a strong well-shaped hand that showed a scattering of dark hairs along the back, while his straight brows drew together above narrowed eyes in what might have passed for either disapproval or puzzlement.

Felice’s retort was equally adamant. ‘This house belongs to Lord Deventer and I am here by his permission. As you see, I am making no plans to move out again. Now, if you require orders to bully my servants, I suggest you go and seek Sir Leon Gascelin, my lord’s surveyor. That should occupy your time more fruitfully. You may go.’ Leaning forward, she swished the water with her fingertips. ‘Is this the last of the hot water, Lydie?’

Lydia’s reply was drowned beneath the man’s icy words. ‘I don’t need to find him. I am Sir Leon Gascelin.’

Slowly, Felice raised her head to look at him through a curtain of hair, the hem of which dripped with curving points of water. She had no idea of the picture of loveliness she presented, yet on impulse her hand reached out sideways for her linen chemise, the one she had worn yesterday, gathering it to her in a loose bundle below her chin. Promptly, Lydia came forward to drape a linen sheet around her shoulders.

‘Then I have the advantage of you, Sir Leon,’ Felice said over the loud drumming of her heart. ‘I was here first.’

‘Then you can be the first to go, lady. I require you to be out of here by mid-day. My steward tells me that you call yourself Lady Felice Marwelle, but Lord Deventer never mentioned anyone of that name in my hearing. Do you have proof of your relationship to his lordship? Or are you perhaps his mistress with the convenient sub-title of stepdaughter?’ He looked around him at the piles of clothes, pillows, canvas bags and mattresses more typical of a squatter’s den than a lady’s bedchamber. ‘You’d not be the first, you know.’

Outraged by his insolence, Felice shook with fury. ‘My name, sir, is Lady Felice Marwelle, daughter of the late Sir Paul Marwelle of Henley-on-Thames who was the first husband of my mother, Lady Honoria Deventer. Lord Deventer is my mother’s third husband and therefore my second stepfather. I am not, and never will be, any man’s mistress, nor am I in the habit of proving my identity to my stepfather’s boorish acquaintances. His message would have made that unnecessary, but it appears that that went the same way as his recollection that he had a stepdaughter named Felice. He assured me that he sent a message three…four days ago for you to prepare rooms in the guest…’ She could have bitten her tongue.

‘So you decided on the Abbot’s House instead. And there was no message, lady.’

‘Then we share a mutual shock at the sight of each other, for which I am as sorry as you are, Sir Leon,’ she said with biting sarcasm. She felt the unremitting examination of his eyes which she knew must have missed nothing by now: her swollen eyelids, her bruises, her soaking feet, all adding no doubt to his misinterpretation of her role. Defensively, she tried to justify herself whilst regretting the need to do so. ‘I chose this dwelling, sir, because I am not used to living on a building-site, despite Lord Deventer’s recommendations. Whether you received a message or not, I am here to prepare rooms in the New House next door ready for his lordship’s occupation in the autumn. And I had strict instructions to keep well out of your way, which I could hardly do with any degree of success if our two households were thrown together, could I? Even a child could see that,’ she said, looking out of the window towards the roof of the church. ‘Now will you please remove yourself from my chamber, Sir Leon, and allow me to finish dressing? As you see, we are still in the middle of unpacking.’

Instead of leaving, Sir Leon closed the door behind him and came further into the room where the light from one of the large mullioned windows gave her the opportunity to see more of his extreme good looks, his abundant physical fitness. His long legs were well-muscled, encased in brown hose and knee-high leather riding boots; paned breeches of soft brown kid did nothing to disguise slim hips around which hung a sword-belt, and Felice assumed that he had stormed round here immediately on his return from some nearby accommodation, for otherwise it would have taken him longer to reach an out-of-the-way place like Wheatley.

‘No,’ he said, in answer to her request. ‘I haven’t finished yet, lady. You’ll not dismiss me the way you dismissed my steward yesterday.’

Instantly, she rose to the bait. ‘If your steward, Sir Leon, knows no better than to refuse both hospitality and welcome to travellers after a two-day journey, then it’s time he was replaced. Clearly he’s not up to the position.’

‘If Thomas Vyttery is replaced at all, lady, it will be for handing you the keys to this house.’

‘That was his only saving grace. The keys remain with me.’

‘This is no place for women, not for a good few months. We’ve barely started again after winter and there are dozens of men on the site,’ he said, leaning against the window recess and glancing down into the courtyard below. It swarmed with men, but they were her servants, not his builders. ‘And I have enough trouble getting them to keep their minds on the job without a bevy of women appearing round every corner.’

‘Then put blinkers on them, sir!’ she snapped. ‘The direction of your men’s interest is not my concern. I’ve been sent down here to fulfil a task and I intend to do it. Surely my presence cannot be the worst that’s ever happened to you in your life. You appear to have survived, so far.’

‘And you, Lady Felice Marwelle, have an extremely well-developed tongue for one so young. I begin to see why your stepfather was eager to remove you to the next county if you used it on him so freely, though he might have spared a thought for me while he was about it. He might have done even better to find you a husband with enough courage to tame you. I’d do it myself if I had the time.’

‘Hah! You’re sure it’s only time you lack, Sir Leon? I seem to have heard that excuse more than once when skills are wanting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my feet are wrinkling like paper, and I must hone my tongue in private.’

It was not to be, however. Enter Mistress Elizabeth bearing a large armful of feathery green plants, her face flushed and prettily eager. Without taking stock of the situation in the chamber or sensing any of the tension, she headed directly for her mistress and dumped the green bundle on to her lap. ‘My lady, look! Here’s chervil for your bruises. There’s a mass of it in the old kitchen garden. There, now!’ She looked round, newly aware of the unenthusiastic audience and searching for approval.

Felice looked down at the offering. ‘Chervil, Elizabeth?’

‘Comfrey, Elizabeth,’ said Lydia. ‘You were told to gather comfrey.’

‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth, flatly.

‘You have injuries, lady?’ said Sir Leon. ‘I didn’t know that.’ His deep voice adopted a conciliatory tone that made Felice look up sharply, her eyes suddenly wary.

‘No, sir. Nothing to speak of. The journey yesterday, that’s all.’ In a last effort to persuade him to leave, she stood up, holding out the greenery to Lydia and taking a thoughtless step forward.

She went crashing down, tipping the bucket over and pitching herself face-first into a flood of tepid water, flinging the chervil into Sir Leon’s path. He and Lydia leapt forward together, but he was there first with his hands beneath her bare armpits, heaving her upright between his straddled legs. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, he lifted her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a child and stood with her in the centre of the room as the two maids mopped at the flood around his feet.

Felice was rarely at a loss for words, but the shock of the fall, her wet and dishevelled state, and this arrogant man’s unaccustomed closeness combined to make any coherent sound difficult, her sense of helplessness heightened by her sudden plunge from her high-horse to the floor.

His hands were under her knees and almost over one breast that pushed unashamedly proud and pink through the wet fabric; his face, only inches from hers, held an expression of concern bordering on consternation. He was watching her closely. Inspecting her. ‘You hurt?’ he said.

She peered at him through strands of wet hair, shaking her head and croaking one octave lower. ‘Let me go, sir. Please.’

He hesitated, then looked around the room. ‘Where?’ he said.

‘Anywhere.’

For a long moment—time waited upon them—their eyes locked in a confusion of emotions that ranged through disbelief, alarm and, on Felice’s part, outright hostility. It was natural that she should have missed the admiration in his, for he did his best to conceal it, but she was close enough now to see his muscular neck where a long red scratch ran from beneath his chin and disappeared into the open neck of his shirt. His jaw was square and strong and his mouth, unsmiling but with lips parted as if about to speak, had a tiny red mark on the lower edge where perhaps his lover had bitten it in the height of passion. His breath reached her, sending a wave of familiar panic into her chest, and as her gaze wandered over his features on their own private search, he continued to watch her with a grey unwavering scrutiny, noting her bruised wrists before holding her eyes again.

Her gaze flinched and withdrew to the loosely hanging points of his doublet that should have tied it together; the aiglets that tipped each tie were spear-heads of pure gold. One of them was missing. She took refuge in the most inconsequential details while her breath stayed uncomfortably in her lungs, refusing to move and gripped by a terrible fear that seeped into every part of her, reviving a recent nightmare. She fought it, terrified of accepting its meaning.

His grip on her body tightened, pulling her closely in to him, then he strode over to the tumbled mattress where she had lain that night and placed her upon it, bending low enough for his forelock to brush against her eyelids. He stood upright, looking down at her and combing a hand through his hair that slithered back into the ridges like a tiled roof. Without another word, he picked up the grimy doe-skin breeches she had worn in the garden, dropped them into her lap and strode past the sobbing Elizabeth and bustling Lydia and out of the room, without bothering to close the door. They heard his harsh shout to someone below them, and the two deerhounds stood with ears pricked, listening to the last phases of his departure.

Mistress Lydia was first to recover. ‘For pity’s sake, Elizabeth, stop snivelling and help me with this mess, will you? What’s that you’re fiddling with? Let me see.’

‘I don’t know. I found it under the chervil in the kitchen garden.’ She held out her palm upon which lay a tiny golden spear-head with a hole through its shaft.

Lydia picked it up, turning it over in the light before handing it to her mistress. ‘An aiglet,’ she said. ‘Somebody lost it. Now, lass…’ she turned back to Elizabeth ‘…you get that wet mess off the floor and throw it out. Plants and men are rarely what they seem: that chervil is cow-parsley.’

Chapter Two

T he unshakeable determination that Felice had shown to her early morning visitor regarding her occupation of the Abbot’s House now collapsed like a pack of playing cards, and whereas she had earlier brushed aside Lydia’s suggestion that they might as well return to Sonning, it now seemed imperative that the waggons were loaded without delay.

‘We can’t stay here, Lydie,’ she said, still shaking. ‘We just can’t. Send a message down to find Mr Peale.’

Mistress Lydia Waterman had been with Felice long enough to become her close friend and ally and, at five years her senior, old enough to be her advisor, too. She was a red-haired beauty who had never yet given her heart to any man to hold for more than a week or two, and Felice loved her for her loyalty and almost brutal honesty.

‘Think what you’re doing, love,’ said Lydia, businesslike. ‘That’s not the best way to handle it.’

Felice winced at the advice, given for the second time that day. ‘I have thought. That was him!’ she whispered, fiercely. ‘This is his missing aiglet that Elizabeth found. He’s a fiend, Lydie.’

Lydia lifted a dense pile of blue velvet up into her arms and held it above Felice’s head. ‘Arms up,’ she said, lowering it. ‘Losing an aiglet in the kitchen garden doesn’t make him a fiend, love. And he didn’t arrive here until now, so how could it have been him who chased you? Last night he’d have been miles away.’

‘If he was near enough to get here so early he couldn’t have been far away, Lydie. He must have been snooping while they believed he was away, looking for something…somebody. And I recognised the voice too, and the way he looked at me. I know that he knows. He wanted to humiliate me.’

‘All men sound the same in the dark,’ said Lydia, cynically. ‘But he picked you up out of the water fast enough.’

‘And he pretended to believe that I was Lord Deventer’s mistress, too.’

‘Perhaps he really believed it. His lordship’s no saint, is he? It was an easy mistake to make, with him not recognising the name of Marwelle. Turn round, love, while I fasten you up.’

‘I don’t care. We’re not staying. We can be away tomorrow.’

‘No, we can’t,’ Lydia said with a mouthful of pins. ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’

Lydia’s pragmatism could be shockingly unhelpful, yet not even she could be expected to share the torment that now shook Felice to the very core. The knowing stranger she had presumed would take her secret with him to the ends of the earth now proved to be the very person whose antagonism clearly matched her own, the one with whom she would not have shared the slightest confidence, let alone last night’s disgraceful fiasco.

He would misconstrue it, naturally. What man would not? He would believe she was cheap, a silly lass who needed reminding to think before she allowed a man, a total stranger, to possess her, hence his whispered warning that should more typically have come from her rather than him. Oh, yes, he would revel in the misunderstanding: she would see it in his eyes at every meeting unless she packed her bags and left.

It was a misunderstanding she herself would have been hard-pressed to explain rationally, a private matter of the heart she had not discussed even with the worldly Lydia, for Father Timon had not been expected to know what it was frowned upon for priests to know, and his role of chaplain, confessor, tutor and friend had progressed further than was seemly for priests and maids of good breeding.

Timon Montefiore, aged twenty-eight, had taken up his duties in Lord Deventer’s household soon after the latter’s marriage to Lady Honoria Fyner, previously Marwelle, and perhaps it had been a mutual need for instant friendship that had been the catalyst for what followed.

Friendship developed into affection, and the affection deepened. As her mother’s preoccupation with a new husband and a young step-family grew, Felice’s previous role as deputy-mistress of their former home became redundant in Lord Deventer’s austerely regimented household. Rudderless and overlooked by the flamboyant new stepfather, Felice had drifted more and more towards Timon, partly to remove herself from Lord Deventer’s insensitivities and partly because Timon was always amiable and happy to see her. He had been exceptional in other ways; his teaching was leisurely and tender, arousing her only so far and no further, always with the promise of something more and with enough control for both of them. ‘Think what you’re doing,’ was advice she heard regularly, though often enough accompanied by the lift of her hand towards his smiling lips and merry eyes.

She had discovered the inevitable anguish of love last summer when Timon had caught typhoid fever and her stepfather had had him quickly removed from his house to the hospice in Reading. Forbidden to visit him, Felice had been given no chance to say farewell and, during conversation at dinner a week later, she learned that he had died a few days before and was already buried. Lord Deventer was not sure where. Did it matter? he had said, bluntly. Until then, Felice had not known that love and pain were so closely intertwined.

Since that dreadful time last summer, no man’s arms had held her, nor had any other man shared her thoughts until now. Her terrible silence had been explained by her mother as dislike of her new situation, exacerbated by talk of husbands, a remedy as painful as it was tactless to one who believed her heart to be irrevocably broken.

The usual agonies of guilt and punishment had been instilled into Felice from an early age and were now never far from her mind without the courteous priest to mitigate it. The replacement chaplain had been stern and astringent, not the kind to receive a desperate young woman’s confidences, and she had been glad to accept any means of escape from a house of bitter-sweet memories upon which she had believed nothing would impose. But last night’s experience had suggested otherwise in a far from tender manner, and her anger at her heart’s betrayal was equal to her fury with the shiftless Fate who had plucked mockingly at the cords that bound her heart.

‘Out of the frying-pan, into the fire’ was a saying that occurred to her as she went about the first duties of the day, now demurely dressed in a blue velvet overskirt and bodice that set off the white under-sleeves embroidered with knotwork patterns. Black-work, they called it, except that this was blue and gold. Her hair was tidily coiled into a gold mesh caul at the nape of her neck almost as an act of defiance to the man who had warned her of his men’s easily deflected attentions. At home, she would have worn a concealing black velvet French hood, yet she had never been overly concerned by prevailing fashions and saw no reason to conform now that there was no one to notice. That dreadful man had seen her at her worst; whatever he saw now would be an improvement.

The first floor was thronged with men carrying tables, stools, chests and cupboards and, in her chamber, several of the carpenters were erecting the great tester bed and hanging its curtains. The ground floor was the servants’ domain, containing the great hall and steward’s offices, but the top floor covered the length and breadth of the building, a massive room flooded with light from new oriel windows that reflected on to a magnificent plasterwork ceiling. Knowing that these additions were the result of the surveyor’s vision, Felice tried hard to find fault with it, but came away with grudging admiration instead. It was no wonder he had been irked by her takeover.

She visited the kitchens across the courtyard next, but came close to being trampled underfoot by lads carrying boxes, baskets, pans and sacks; so, to give her feet some respite, she headed for an area at the back of the Abbot’s House that gave access into the derelict square cloister. Here at last was peace where, in the enclosed warmth, the kitchen cat poured itself off a low wall at the sight of Flint and Fen and disappeared into the long grass.

Shelving her thoughts about how to make a dignified return home, she sat with her legs stretched out between the stone columns that topped the low wall, her eyes unconsciously planning a formal garden with perhaps a fountain in the centre. Not that it mattered; she did not intend to stay. She removed her shoes to inspect the soles of her feet in valuable privacy.

The deerhounds nosed about behind her, so their silence went unheeded until, sensing their absence, she turned to check on them. Their two heads could not have been closer beneath the hand of the tall intruder who stood silently in the shadows on the church side of the cloister, watching her.

Her heart lurched, pounding with a new rhythm, and she turned away, throwing her skirts over her bare ankles, pretending an unconcern she was far from feeling. She snapped her fingers, angrily and called, ‘Flint! Fen! Come!’—by no means sure that they would obey but reluctant to turn to see.

The hounds returned to her side but they were not alone, nor had they obeyed her command but his, and she knew then that, like the steward deserted by his mastiff, she would never again be able to rely on them for protection. Angered by their inability to tell friend from foe, she snapped at them, ‘Lie down!’

Sir Leon was laughing quietly at this calamity as he came to sit on the wall just beyond her feet and, as she began to swing them to the ground, he caught one ankle in a tight grip, making her flight impossible. ‘No, lady,’ he said. ‘We have some unfinished business, do we not? A moment or two of your time, if you please.’

‘Be brief, sir. And release my foot.’

She did not need to look at him to see that he had already started work, for he had discarded his doublet and now wore only the jerkin over his shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to expose well-muscled forearms. A deep V of bare chest showed in the opening, and his boots were powdered with stone-dust. Unhurried by her command, his hand slid away and spread across his knee. ‘Well?’ he said, tucking away the remnants of a smile.

She frowned at him, puzzled. ‘Well, what, sir?’

‘I’m allowing you to state your case before I state mine, Lady Felice Marwelle. And you need not be brief.’

‘Nevertheless, I will be. You will be relieved to know that I intend to return to Sonning within the next few days.’ She spoke to a row of purring pigeons on the angle of the wall behind him, disconcerted by his close attention, his attempted dominance even before words had been exchanged.

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’ve changed your mind about staying.’

‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t ask me why. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

‘You changed your mind to please me?’

Her mouth tightened. ‘No. It pleases me.’

‘Then I’m sorry to disappoint you. I must reject your decision.’

‘What?’ She frowned, looking at him fully for the first time. ‘You’re in no position to reject it. I’ve already made it.’ His eyes, she saw, were grey and still laughing.

‘Then you can unmake it, my lady. You’ll stay here and complete the task Lord Deventer set for you.’

Rather than continue a futile argument, Felice’s response was to get up and leave him, but her body’s slight message was deciphered even as it formed, and her ankle was caught again and held firmly.

‘Ah, no!’ he said. ‘I’m aware of your aptitude for bringing discussions to an abrupt conclusion but really, you have to give them a chance to develop occasionally, don’t you think so? Now, what d’ye think your stepfather will say when you tell him you haven’t even seen the place yet?’

Riled by his insistence and by his continued hold on her ankle, she flared like a fuse. ‘And what d’ye think he’ll say, Sir Leon, when I tell him of the disgraceful way I’ve been received? Which I will!’

This did not have the effect she hoped for, no sign of contrition crossing his face. ‘About mistaking you for one of his mistresses, you mean? That jest will keep him entertained for a month, my lady, as well you know. And if he’d intended to send a message to warn me of your arrival…’

‘To warn you? Thank you!’

‘…he would have done. Clearly he had no intention of doing so.’

‘Why ever not, pray?’

‘Because he knew damn well he’d have to look for another surveyor if he had. He knows my views about mixing work and women.’

Felice bent to clutch at her leg and yank it bodily out of his grasp, swinging her legs down on to the long grass. ‘Then there will be three of us pleased, sir. There is nothing more to discuss, is there?’

‘Correction. There’ll be two of us pleased. You’ll stay here with me.’

She sat, rigidly angry, with her hands clutching at the cool stone wall on each side of her. ‘Sir Leon, I am usually quite good at understanding arguments, but when they are as obscure as yours I’m afraid I need some help. Explain to me, if you will. If you are so disturbed about having women near you, why have you suddenly decided that I must stay? I can only conclude that you must need to please Lord Deventer very much indeed to sacrifice your principles so easily. Do you need his approval so much, then?’

He allowed himself a smile before he replied, revealing white even teeth. ‘Certainly I do. He pays me, you see, and the sooner this place is lived in, the sooner I can move on to others. I’m in demand, hereabouts.’

‘Not by me!’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Barbarian!’

‘Still sore?’ He lowered his tone to match hers, catching the drift of her mind.

It was a mistake she regretted instantly, having no wish to discuss those terrible events, neither with him nor with anyone. Forgetting her shoes, she was quicker this time, managing to reach the centre of the overgrown quadrangle before her wrist was caught and she was brought to a halt. She shook off his grip and whirled to face him in a frenzy of rage.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she snarled, her eyes blazing like coals. ‘Don’t ever lay a finger on me again, sir, or I swear I’ll…I’ll kill you! And don’t think to dictate to me where and when I go. You are not my guardian.’ She turned her back on him deliberately, but had no idea how to get out of the quadrangle without climbing shoeless over the low wall. Her heart thudded in an onslaught of anger. She hesitated, feeling the sharp tangle of weeds on her sore feet. There was an uncanny silence behind her.

‘You’ll need these to get out of here, my lady.’ His voice came from where they had been sitting.

She knew he referred to her shoes but still she hesitated, wondering if it was worth risking more pain to her feet. The cloister walkways were littered with rubble.

‘Come on,’ he said, gently. ‘We’re going to have to talk if we’re to work together.’

‘We are not going to work together,’ she snapped. ‘I want nothing to do with this place. I’m going home.’

‘You’ll need your shoes, then.’

She turned and saw that he was sitting on the wall again with one leg on either side, holding up her shoes as bait. ‘Throw them,’ she said.

‘Come and collect them.’

She looked away, then approached, eyeing his hands. She reached the wall just as he dropped them over on to the paved side, beyond her reach. ‘Don’t play games with me, Sir Leon. I’m not a child,’ she snapped.

‘Believe it or not, I had noticed that, but I’m determined you shall conclude this discussion in the proper manner, my lady, whether you like the idea or not. Now, please be seated. I am not at all disturbed by the idea of having women near me, as you see. Actually, it’s something I’m learning to get the hang of.’

She knew he was being ridiculous. 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 to her face enough to make any castigation pleasant by comparison. He would find her a husband, one who was more concerned about the size of her dowry than her reputation.

As for Sir Leon, any man who could use such an intimate and enigmatic incident as a threat was both unprincipled and despicable; he must know that that alone would be enough to keep her at Wheatley. Still, there was nothing to stop her making him regret his decision, though she expected that future encounters would be both rare and brief. Except to Lord Deventer, the man had absolutely nothing to recommend him.

The news that men had been seen traipsing through the kitchen garden had intrigued her until she discovered at suppertime that they had been repairing the gap in the wall by the side of the river path. And when she had asked by whose orders—it was, after all, in her domain—she had been told it was by Sir Leon’s.

She might have let the matter rest at that; it would not do to display an inexplicable curiosity. But in the comforting darkness of her curtained bed, the soft images of the previous night took unnatural precedence over the day’s conflicts and would not leave her in peace. It was as if, in the darkness, they were beyond regret. She had now seen the man with whom she had been entangled and, although hostile, it was not difficult for her to recall the way he had held, caressed and kissed her, nor to remember how her own body had flared out of control before the sudden quenching of prudence. In the dark, shame did not exist.

With only the moon to watch, she took Flint and Fen quietly downstairs out of the front door and round through the kitchen courtyard to the back of the house, the reverse of last night’s frantic journey. At the entrance to the garden she stopped, confronted by the derelict place washed by moonlight where dear Timon’s memory had been cruelly disturbed by one insane moment of bliss, the like of which she had never known with him. Was it because of his absence? Her longing? She thought not, but no one need know it. She need not admit it again, even to herself.

One of the deerhounds whined, then the other, both suddenly leaving her and bounding up the overgrown path into the darkness. Incensed by their preference for rabbits rather than her, she took a step forward, yelling into the silvery blackness, ‘Flint! Fen! Come back here, damn you!’

They returned at the trot, ears flattened and tails flailing apologetically, but shattering her reminiscences and making her aware of their absurdity. ‘Come!’ she said, severely. ‘Stupid hounds.’

This time, her return was unhurried and more thoughtful.

Had the next day been any other but Sunday, there would have been a good chance of avoiding the cause of her sleepless moments, but churchgoing was never an option unless one intended to attract the disapproval of the vicar and his church-wardens. Furthermore, as a close relative of the abbey’s owner, Felice had a duty to attend.

She had had her hair braided and enclosed by a pearl-studded gold-mesh cap that appeared to be supported by a white lace collar. Over her elegant farthingale she wore a light woollen gown of rose-pink, a soft tone that complemented the honey of her flawless skin. As the early morning mist had not yet cleared, she wore a loose overgown of a deeper pink lined with grey squirrel, and she assumed Sir Leon’s long examination of her to be approval of her outfit. But, as she had feared, she was given no choice of where to sit, the better benches being at the front and the church already well-filled. So his, ‘Good morrow, my lady,’ had to be acknowledged as if all were well between them.

Fortunately, there had been no time for more. The vicar, a lively and well-proportioned middle-aged man, was nothing like the sleepy village priest she had half-expected, and it was not until after the service when introductions were made that Felice discovered he was married to the lady who had been sitting beside her.

‘Dame Celia Aycombe,’ Sir Leon presented the lady, ‘wife of the Reverend John Aycombe, vicar of Wheatley.’

Knowing of the new queen’s objections to married clergy, Felice was surprised. Those who defied the royal displeasure usually kept themselves quietly busy in some isolated village which, she supposed, was what the Aycombes were doing. She had been equally surprised to see that Sir Leon’s unwelcoming steward, Thomas Vyttery, had been assisting the vicar, and to discover that he also was married.

Dame Celia introduced the woman who had been sitting next to her and who had been craning forward in perpetual curiosity for most of the service. ‘Dame Audrey Vyttery,’ she said to Felice, who saw a woman nearing her forties who must in her youth have been pretty when her eyes and mouth had still remembered how to smile. She was slight but over-dressed, and spangled with brooches and ribbons almost from neck to toe. Whereas the plumpish contented figure of Dame Celia held only a pair of leather gloves and a prayer book to complete her outfit, Dame Audrey fidgeted nervously with a pomander on a golden chain, an embroidered purse, a muff, a prayer book and a quite unnecessary feather fan. Acidly, she enquired whether Felice was to stay at Wheatley permanently and, if so, would she remain in the Abbot’s House? She had understood Sir Leon to be moving in there.

Catching the direction of the enquiry, Felice put her mind at rest while speaking clearly enough for Sir Leon to hear. ‘No, Dame Audrey. Certainly not. Indeed, I’m making plans to leave soon. This is merely a brief visit to check on progress for Lord Deventer.’ Surprisingly, she thought she detected something like relief in the woman’s eyes, but Dame Celia was vociferous in her reaction to the news.

Her pale eyes widened in surprise. ‘Surely not, my lady. This will be May Week, when we have our holy days and games. You’ll not return before we’ve given you a chance to see how we celebrate, will you?’

‘Of course she’ll not!’ The answer came from halfway down the nave where the energetic vicar approached them in a flurry of white. Billowing and back-lit by the west door, he bore down upon them like an angelic host. ‘She’ll not, will she, Sir Leon? No one leaves Wheatley during the May Day revels, least of all our patron’s lovely daughter.’

Sir Leon, who appeared to find Felice’s denial more entertaining than serious, agreed somewhat mechanically. ‘Indeed not, vicar. I’ve already told her she must stay.’

‘Good…good.’ The vicar beamed. ‘That’s settled, then.’

‘Then you approve of May Day revels, vicar?’ Felice said.

‘Hah! It makes no difference whether I approve or not, my lady. They’d still do it. I believe half the fathers and mothers of Wheatley were conceived on May Eve. Swim with the tide or drown, that’s always been my motto, and it’s stood me in good stead, so far, as you can see. I keep an eye on things, and so does my good lady here, and we baptise the bairns who’re born every new year. That’s probably why the church is so full. Now, have you seen the new buildings yet, my lady? A work of art, you know.’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘Be glad to show you round myself, but the master builder must take precedence over a mere clerk of works.’ He grinned, glancing amiably at Sir Leon.

Sir Leon explained the vicar’s mock-modesty. ‘The Reverend Aycombe is also my clerk of works for the building-site, my lady. Both he and Mr Vyttery hold two positions as priests and building officials.’

‘Priests?’ said Felice. ‘Mr Vyttery is a priest?’ She stared at Dame Audrey who simpered, icily.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘May hasband was sacristan here at Wheatley Ebbey. Augustinian, you see. All the manks were priests.’

Felice nodded. If she was to be obliged to stay here, she had better learn something about the place. ‘Of course. And you, vicar? You were at the abbey, too?’

‘Abbot, my lady,’ he beamed.

Not only married priests, but married monks. And Timon had told her more than once that it could never be done, that he was already courting danger by celebrating the Roman Catholic Mass in private which was why no one must know of his whereabouts. But, of course, he had been concerned for her safety: recusants were fined quite heavily these days.

It was later that morning as she passed through the courtyard behind the Abbot’s House that Felice noticed something odd which she could not at first identify. The yard was always emptier on Sundays, yet the stables had to be cleaned out, even on the sabbath, and it was not until she remembered yesterday’s bustle of men and furnishings that she realised what was missing. The carts. The waggons.

‘William,’ she called to the head groom. ‘What have you done with the waggons?’

William came towards her, leading a burly bay stallion. ‘Waggons, m’lady? Sent ’em back to Sonning yesterday.’

‘What?’

Unruffled, the man rubbed the horse’s nose affectionately. ‘Gone back to Lord Deventer’s. Sir Leon’s orders. He said you’d not be needing ’em. He wants the stable space for his own ’osses. This one’s his.’ He pulled at the horse’s forelock.

‘Did he, indeed? And how in heaven’s name shall I be able to return home without horses and waggons? Did you ask Sir Leon that?’

‘Yes, m’lady,’ William replied, not understanding her indignation. ‘He said you’d be able to manage, one way or another, but there wasn’t room for Lord Deventer’s ’osses and his, too. He sent ’em all back, sumpter ’osses, too.’

‘And the carters? He sent them back?’

‘Only a few. He says the rest can stay and work here.’

‘But carters don’t do any other work, William. They cart.’

‘Yes, m’lady. That’s what they’ll be doing for Sir Leon.’

‘No, they will not!’

After quite a search of the New House and several missed turnings, she found the high-handed and mighty surveyor by crashing into him round a corner of one of the narrow pannelled passageways. He did not retreat, as she would have preferred him to do, but manoeuvred her backwards by her elbows until she sat with a thud upon a window-seat in the thickness of the wall.

‘You certainly have a way with entrances and exits, my lady,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘But I’m flattered by your haste to find me.’

‘Don’t be!’ she said coldly, standing up again. ‘Why have you removed my waggons and horses and appropriated my carters?’

He leaned an elbow on the top edge of the wavy-wood panelling and stuck his fingers into his thick hair, holding it off his forehead as if to see her better. ‘Did you need them urgently?’ he said, disarmingly.

‘That is not the point. They were mine.’

‘Yours, were they? Ah, and I thought they belonged to Deventer.’

‘Don’t mince words, Sir Leon. I needed them for my return to Sonning. You knew that.’

‘Then you have a short memory, my lady, since we are not mincing words. I’ve already told you that you’ll be staying here at Wheatley, and therefore the waggons and horses will be required by Deventer for his own use. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our understanding already.’

‘There is no understanding, Sir Leon. There never will be any understanding between us, not on any subject. And I want my waggons back. You have taken over my stables and my carters; do you intend to take over my kitchens next, by any chance?’

Languidly, he came to stand before her, easing her back again on to the window-seat, resting his hands on the panelling to prevent her escape. ‘Not to mince words, my lady, I can take over the entire Abbot’s House any time I choose, as I intended to do to clear the guesthouse for renovation. Would you prefer it if I did that sooner instead of later? We could pack in there quite cosily, eh?’ He lowered his head to hers.

She gulped, her chest tightening at the new threat which she knew he was quite capable of carrying out, even at his own expense. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘But…’

‘But what?’

‘I…I did not agree to stay here. I cannot stay…in the…in the…’

‘In the circumstances?’

She breathed out, slowly. ‘Yes.’

‘You are referring to our first meeting?’

She nodded, looking down at her lap and feeling an uncomfortable heat creeping up towards her ears.

‘Which you find painful to recall?’

He was baiting her. ‘Yes,’ she flared, ‘you know I do or you’d not insist on dragging it into every argument.’

His face came closer until he needed only to whisper. ‘Then why, if it’s so very painful, did you return to the garden last night, lady? To relive it, just a little? Eh?’

She looked into his eyes for a hint of laughter but there was none to be seen, only a grey and steady seriousness that gave nothing of either enjoyment or sympathy for her chagrin.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘How do you know that?’

‘I was there. I saw you.’

‘The hounds…?’

‘I sent them back to you.’

‘I went to…to look at the wall. You had it repaired.’

‘In the dark? Come now, lass, don’t take me for a fool. You couldn’t keep away, could you? You had to go to remind yourself or to chastise yourself. Which? Do you even know which?’

Goaded beyond caution, she broke the barrier of his arm and pushed past to stand well beyond his reach, panting with rage and humiliation. ‘Yes, Sir Leon, I do know exactly why I returned, but never in a thousand years would you be able to understand. Of course,’ she scoffed, ‘you believe it was for your sake, naturally, being so full of yourself and all. But it was not, sir, I assure you. It was not. Did you believe you’re the first man who’s ever kissed me?’

She noticed the slight shake of his head before he answered. ‘On the contrary, lady. I am quite convinced that I am not the one who lit the fire that rages inside you, and I also know that you are feeding it on some resentment that threatens to burn you up. Which is yet another reason why you’ll be better down here at Wheatley doing what Deventer expects of you rather than moping about up in Sonning with little to do except think. Or are you so eager to continue wallowing in your problems unaided?’

‘My problems, as you call them, are not your concern, Sir Leon, nor do I need anyone’s aid either to wallow or work. And I’m stuck here with no transport, thanks to your interference, so what choice do I have now but to stay?’

‘Less than you had before, which was what I intended.’

‘You are insufferable, sir.’

‘Nevertheless, you will suffer me, and I will tame you. Now you can go.’

‘Thank you. I was going anyway.’ She stalked away, fuming.

That prediction at least was true, though she missed the smile in his eyes that followed her first into a dark cupboard and then into a carpenter’s bench and a pile of wood-shavings.

‘Where the devil am I?’ she turned and yelled at him, furiously.

His smile broke as he set off towards her.

‘Come,’ he said, laughing.

Chapter Three

A lthough the notion had taken root in Felice’s mind that she might have to stay at Wheatley Abbey after all, Sir Leon’s high-handed tactics hardly bore the hallmarks of subtle persuasion. Added to their disastrous introduction, it was this that made her almost wild with anger and humiliation to be so brazenly manipulated first by Lord Deventer and then by his surveyor. It was almost as if they saw it as some kind of game in which her wishes were totally irrelevant. As for his talk about taming her, well, that was ludicrous. Men’s talk.

‘Tamed, indeed!’ she spat. ‘You’ve bitten off more than you can comfortably chew, sir!’ She threw a fistful of bread scraps to the gaggling ducks, scowling approvingly at their rowdiness.

Her companion on the afternoon stroll was Mistress Lydia Waterman, whose insight was heart-warming. ‘Take no notice, love,’ she called from further along the river’s edge. ‘You know what they’re like. They have to be given a sense of purpose. We could do worse, though, than be stranded in a place like this, and at least you have plenty to do. Just look at it; it must have been swarming with monks twenty years ago.’

To one side of them the river cut a tight curve that enclosed the abbey on two sides before disappearing beyond the mill into woodland. Where the grass and meadowsweet had recovered from the builders’ feet, creamy-white elder blossom drooped over ducks, geese and swans that jostled for food. They launched themselves into the water in dignified droves as Felice’s two deerhounds pranced towards them.

Wheatley Abbey had been left in ruins for twenty years after the English monasteries were closed and their wealth taken by the present queen’s father, Henry VIII. But the villagers had won permission to keep the church for their own use while the rest of the abbey buildings had been bought by Lord Deventer whose programme of rebuilding had already lasted two years. During that time, his talented thirty-year-old surveyor had restored and converted first the Abbot’s House and then the New House, which had once been the monks’ refectory, dormitory and cellarium. The enclosed cloister still awaited attention, and the guesthouse, which at present stood apart from the other buildings, was being used as Sir Leon’s offices and some of the masons’ accommodation. There was still plenty to be done, but work on the New House was almost complete: courtyards, kitchens, stables and smithy, storerooms and dairy had all been rebuilt from the monks’ living quarters.

Even the church had had to adapt to the religious changes of the last twenty turbulent years. The young Queen Elizabeth was more reasonable than her forebears in her dealings with religion, but even she was not immune to pressure from her councillors to take a harder line with those who found the changes too difficult to accept, like Felice’s mother, for instance. Lord Deventer himself cared little one way or the other but had taken on the young chaplain, Timon Montefiore, for the sake of his staunch Roman Catholic new wife who saw no harm in breaking the law every day of the week while relenting for an hour or two on Sundays, just to avoid being fined.

Felice and Lydia strolled along the river’s edge in silence in the direction of the village and a wooden bridge under the dense white candles of a chestnut tree. A familiar figure came from the opposite side, joining them midway over the green swirling depths where a rowing boat was tied to one of the bridge supports. A clutch of small children fished with excited intensity, calling to Dame Celia as she crossed.

‘They’ve been doing that for centuries,’ she smiled. ‘I did it myself when I was a wee child, though never on a Sunday.’

‘You lived here as a child?’ Felice said. ‘I didn’t realise.’

Slowly, they meandered along the opposite side of the river away from the thatched rooftops that appeared through the trees. Dame Celia pointed the way she had come. ‘Down there,’ she said, ‘at the end of the village. You’d have passed Wheatley Manor the other day as you came through. My parents owned it, but now my brother and his family live there. John and I have the priest’s house on the Wheatley estate.’

‘So you went away to be educated, Dame Celia?’ said Felice.

‘With the nuns at Romsey until I was fifteen. It’s only a few miles away. But it was closed down at the same time as Wheatley and everyone was turned out. I was fortunate in being able to come home, but the nuns and novices had a much harder time of it.’

They sat on a log that had recently been felled, its stump still oozing with sticky resin. Lydia sat on Dame Celia’s other side. ‘Then you didn’t consider taking vows?’ she said.

‘Not I!’ Dame Celia laughed. ‘You see, John had been abbot of Wheatley only a year when the abbey closed. He was the youngest ever. And I had returned home to live when he took the post as chaplain to my parents, and as vicar at the church here. No one had better qualifications for those jobs than the former abbot. So that’s how we came together.’

Felice’s heart skipped a beat. Chaplain and employer’s daughter. ‘Did your parents approve?’ she said.

Dame Celia’s comfortable face crumpled in amusement. ‘Certainly not, my lady. But John was given a goodly pension and he was very persuasive. But it was a very unsettled time, you know, with all the changes. At first, the former monks and nuns were allowed to marry; priests were even allowed to marry their former mistresses and concubines. Then the young King Edward decided they were not, and we swung from being Catholic to Protestant twice in the space of four reigns, m’lady, and it left everyone a bit troubled. Especially people like Dame Audrey and her Thomas.’

Felice recalled the steward’s bejewelled wife, her sadly pretty face and her pseudo upper-class accents. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Was Dame Audrey at Romsey Abbey, too?’

‘She was a young novice when it all came to an end. Audrey Wintershulle, she was then, a very pretty girl.’

‘But then she married the sacristan. Why was that so troublesome to her?’

‘Well, you see, they were unfortunate because Thomas had been appointed only a few months before the date was set for the abbey’s closure so he received only a small pension, barely enough to live on, so he took the job of chantry priest here at the church to say prayers for the dead. But then when the young King Edward came to the throne, all the chantry chapels were abolished and the money used for other purposes, schools and such-like. So poor Thomas was out of a job again. Then when the abbey was eventually sold off to Lord Deventer, Thomas was taken on as steward to oversee the property and maintain it. No one else could have done that better than Thomas; he knows the abbey like the back of his hand.’

‘But what did he do for a living between times, Dame Celia? Surely he couldn’t live off his pension alone?’

‘John helped him out,’ the dame said. ‘He’s been so good to them both.’

But on such a small pension, Felice wanted to ask, why did he take a wife? Especially one with such extravagant tastes. Surely the vicar’s assistance didn’t stretch as far as jewels and furs, did it? There was more she would like to have known about the strangely matched Vyttery couple, but she had no wish to pry. Instead, she turned her attention back to the vicar’s wife who appeared to have suffered few financial problems, for all her simplicity of dress.

‘And does your husband approve of all the alterations to the abbey?’ She looked across the river to the New House of pale grey stone, solid and glittering with tiers of windows that only the very wealthy could afford in such quantity. It sat at an angle to the Abbot’s House next door, dwarfing it by its sheer bulk and magnificence.

‘Oh, John is very adaptable,’ said Dame Celia. ‘He’s had to be with so many changes. But, yes, he admires Sir Leon’s work. They’ve always got on well together.’

‘They’ve known each other long?’ Felice’s question was casual, though she doubted whether it would deceive the motherly lady at her side.

‘Only over the time they’ve been working together. Sir Leon’s been responsible for several abbey conversions in the south. He’ll never be short of work. Everyone thinks very highly of him.’

‘Of him, or of his work? Isn’t he somewhat difficult to work for?’

Dame Celia smiled and laid a gentle hand on Felice’s pink sleeve. ‘Men like him hate any interruption to their work, m’lady. They can only think of one thing at a time, not like we women. One has to humour them to keep the peace.’

Felice and Lydia laughed, having harboured the thought many times but not heard it said out loud by the wife of a former monk. ‘Who does the little boat belong to, Dame Celia?’ said Lydia. ‘The one tied to the bridge back there.’

‘It’s the smith’s. His cottage is next to the inn, very close to where the boat’s tied up. He works the mill near the Abbot’s House.’

‘He works there?’ Felice queried. ‘I thought that’s where the miller worked.’

‘Yes,’ Dame Celia smiled. ‘Smith is the miller. That’s not a cornmill, you see, but a water-powered forge used for the estate. It’s easier for him to carry his heavy things in a boat from one bridge to the other.’

‘Does he work at night?’ said Lydia, brushing the mossy bits off her gown. ‘We thought we heard the paddles going.’

‘He works hard at his drinking,’ the dame said, firmly. ‘He doesn’t have far to go for that. Have you seen inside the New House, yet?’

The idea of dispensing with Sir Leon as tour guide appealed to Felice almost as much as the idea that she could annoy him by her independence, and this was enough to hasten them across the bridge by the mill towards the great flight of stone steps that led to an impressive porch and an unlocked door.

The mansion that had seemed, only a few hours ago, to resemble a rabbit warren now spread from the front entrance in shining newness across pine floors, intricately plastered ceilings, panelled and painted walls, floor-to-ceiling windows and a marble chimney-piece that no one could have missed. It was while they stood in awe, taking in the grandeur of the carved staircase, that voices penetrated a heavy door behind them only seconds before it opened.

Felice tensed as she recognised one of them, and her quick turn to examine the coat-of-arms above the fireplace gave Dame Celia the chance to greet the men with far more geniality than Felice could have done.

‘Sir Leon…John…and Marcus! Well, what are you doing here?’

Half-turning, Felice watched from a distance as her two disloyal deerhounds made a fuss of Sir Leon, and the newcomer named Marcus greeted Dame Celia with a familiar kiss to both cheeks. He was, she thought, probably a year or two younger than Sir Leon and of slighter build, but dashingly well set-off by an immaculate suit of honey-coloured velvet and satin, by white linen, lace, gold buttons and braids. His face was lean and good-humoured, almost handsome, his hair curled in a carelessly arranged fair mop that fell into heavy-lidded blue eyes. His manner exuded a gentle charm that contrasted immediately with Sir Leon’s dark dynamism and animal grace.

His greeting to Dame Celia over, the man called Marcus made a beeline for Felice that forestalled any introduction, taking her by surprise with a bow and one hand placed over his heart. ‘Ah, lady!’ he sighed. ‘If you would consent to marry me, here and now, we can use this good priest here, and yonder chapel, to unite our souls without delay. Now, tell me you consent or I shall go away and die.’

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