The Silver Squire

He picked up a tumbler, downing the few remaining inches of cognac in a swallow. ‘A wildcat with sheathed claws is fine,’ he commented drily, collecting his breeches from the floor in a fluid movement as he stood.

‘Why won’t you give me all of you?’ she husked at him, casually lowering the sheet seductively away from her breasts as he finally turned to look at her. She peeked up through dusky lashes into cool silver eyes and knew he understood her perfectly.

‘A swollen belly and sagging breasts?’ he mused with ironic deliberation. ‘I think I prefer you this way, Yvette.’ His grey gaze swept down her curvaceous figure to where the sheet just exposed a tantalising rosy nipple.

Aware of his observation, she stretched sinuously, arms raised above her head. Small fingers clenched on the bedhead, making the thrusting perfection of her full, firm breasts impossible to ignore and openly available to him.

A tanned hand came out, fondling first one then the other until she was arching and moaning, her hands clenching rigidly on the brass bedstead. He choked a laugh, stepped into his breeches and was buttoning them by the time he reached the window and stood staring out.

‘Richard!’ Yvette furiously screeched from the bed. “Ow can you go now? I want you…’

‘Cut your nails…’ he mentioned impartially as he drew a cheroot from his pocket, lit it, and stood staring absently into the dusk. He sensed he was irritated and that irritated him further for there was no reason to be.

It was nothing to do with Yvette Dubois or her savage passion or her transparently mercenary desire to make him impregnate her so she’d have a lasting role in his life. She was wasting her time on all counts: he had no desire for an enduring liaison or for children. He slanted a glance at her, a quirk of a smile softening his finely chiselled narrow mouth as he noticed how she immediately perked up with his attention.

A long blonde ringlet was slowly worked about a small finger and she rolled onto her back, impatiently kicking away the tangling sheet from her shapely long legs so the dark blonde curls between her thighs were displayed.

She was very good, very adept: the pulse in his loins was picking up tempo already, just as she was calculating it would. He drew deeply on the cheroot and reached for his shirt on the chair. If he hadn’t promised to return to Silverdale in time for supper with his visiting relations, he probably would have stayed longer and let her earn her keep.

The irritation niggling at him intensified with that callous thought and he raked five brown fingers absently through his thick white-blond hair, unwilling to actually acknowledge that something so insignificant…so idiotic could disturb him so.

His mind returned to the Fallow Buck posting house and the image of a dowdily dressed woman standing with her back to him. There was nothing about her that could have possibly interested him. On first glance he would have guessed her to be perhaps a high-ranking servant—a governess or housekeeper travelling alone on business. What irked him was the unshakeable notion that, despite seeing nothing of her apart from an unattractive bonnet and dismal brown travelling cloak, he felt he knew her.

He was certain she had concealed her face just as he’d turned towards her, and that compounded the mystery. He’d been curious enough at the time to start walking towards her but had managed only a pace or two when his brother had distracted him to settle the landlord’s bill. On returning to the courtyard, the Bath post was just pulling out into the road and he’d just known the woman was on it. He’d shrugged and walked away and forgotten it…for all of a few hours. Now, for some insane reason, not having crossed to the fields to look at her was a major aggravation and the sheer farce of it was killing him.

‘I don’t want you to go yet. You leave me too much…too soon. It’s not fair…’ was called softly from behind, breaking into his reverie.

Even white teeth clenched on the cheroot and he drew on it steadily, but he turned towards her with a smile. ‘So what do you intend to do about that?’

Yvette swung long legs off the bed and posed with deliberate provocation on the edge. Her throat curved archly, her blonde head tilted as she viewed him between barely parted porcelain lids. Pushing herself slowly upright, she undulated towards him, each sinuous step swaying her pouting breasts. ‘I think I shall make you change your mind about leaving…about a lot of things…’ she purred as she came right up against him and grazed her naked belly against the hard proof of his full attention. A long fingernail trailed up his thigh, scoring into fine cloth as it neared his groin.

He caught at her hand inches from its target, brought her palm to his lips and dropped a brief kiss on it. Turning her away, he gave her a gentle push towards the bed. ‘I have to go…’

‘Business…business…all the time business,’ she flung at him, whirling back in a cloud of shining blonde hair. ‘I am sick with this business all of the while,’ she complained, her accent thickening in her rage. ‘I am alone too much. I need some company…I need you…’

‘You can’t have me, Yvette. Understand that,’ he said with slow deliberation so that she digested all his meaning, then endorsed it with a smile that didn’t warm his metallic eyes. ‘If you’re lonely, get yourself a companion,’ he added carelessly as he moved past her and towards the door.

‘What…?’ she screeched. ‘How shall I? A friend just drops from the sky?’

‘Advertise in the Herald…’ he suggested with an infuriating smile as he closed the door behind him.

Chapter Two

With a deep, inspiriting breath, Emma took another determined peek around the hazel hedge.

The dilapidated exterior of weatherbeaten boarding and slipping roof tiles had her optimism again ebbing. The cottage looked deserted. Perhaps he had moved away. Please no, don’t let that be! she silently prayed. The London post was already lost to view as the road dipped below the shadow-racing field, and would be well on the way to Bath, some two miles further on.

She had been dropped in the village of Oakdene and had wandered the narrow, rut-scored lanes looking for Nonsuch Cottage with many a villager’s curious stare following her. A bramble embedding in her skirt had quite literally brought her stumbling upon what she sought: it was an aptly named little place, she smilingly realised as her honey gaze weaved past the crude wooden name-plate on the gate, through foxgloves and scarlet roses entwined with bellbind and cow parsley, and on to the crooked door.

Gently reared behind the graceful brick façade of Rosemary House in Cheapside, she had hardly realised that such ram-shackle-looking dwellings existed, let alone expected ever to enter one. As for gardening, nurturing delicate hothouse blooms had been her only experience of the demands of horticulture. The association of a conservatory and exotic plants and happier days with friends evoked a flash of memory, puzzling and niggling at the periphery of her consciousness. She gave it barely a further moment’s concentration before again focussing on the grimy whitewash of the cottage.

On closer inspection it seemed structurally sound. In fact, she decided, it held a definite rustic charm. The interior of the building might be quite neat and tidy; one couldn’t expect a widowed gentleman of straitened means to bother about weeds when he had to attend to the needs of his small children. Curtains were visible at dusty windows high under the eaves, she gladly noted, yet it was so quiet it could have been deserted.

As though to settle that anxiety a female voice shrieked out something unintelligible; there followed a child’s thin wailing. So the property was inhabited, and by a Billingsgate fishwife by the sound of it! A sudden awful suspicion stopped her heart, and she wondered why it had never occurred to her earlier: had Matthew not replied to her letter of six months ago because he had remarried? Before she could torture herself further on the subject, the white-boarded cottage door was flung open. A small mongrel dog hurtled, whining, close to Emma’s skirts then scampered out into the lane.

‘Blasted cur!’ the young woman barked, and was about to slam the door shut when she noticed Emma. Slack-mouthed surprise was soon replaced by a stony expression. ‘Whatever you be sellin’, we don’t want none. Be off with you. We’ve got Bibles aplenty ‘n sermons ‘n pills ‘n potions…’

Emma wasn’t sure whether to laugh or display outrage that this young woman’s first impression of her was as some sort of pedlar! Was her appearance really so drab that she was deemed to be touting from door to door? Her own impression now of this young woman was that she wasn’t Matthew’s wife but his housekeeper, a judgement backed by her rough local dialect and faded black uniform.

Aware of the woman still staring aggressively, Emma finally detached herself from the bramble with a tear to her skirt, a prick to her finger and a spattering of mauve berry juice to her palm. Drawing herself up to her full height, her slender shoulders back, and topaz eyes glass-cool, she haughtily informed the woman, ‘I have just alighted from the London stage and would like to speak to Mr Cavendish. Is he at home?’

Emma’s unexpectedly refined accent had the woman’s jaw dropping again and a keen-eyed scrutiny slipping over her from serviceable tan bonnet to dusty, sturdy shoes.

‘Close that blasted door, will you, Maisie? The draught is taking these papers all over the desk…’ was bellowed from within.

‘Matthew…’ Emma whispered to herself at the sound of that well-modulated, if deeply irritated tone. But the relief she was sure would drench her at the first sight or sound of him was slow in coming. ‘I should like to speak to Mr Cavendish,’ she repeated firmly, with a nod at the door.

‘Wait there,’ the woman snapped discourteously, dark eyes skimming over Emma’s modest attire, then the door was shut in her face. Within what seemed a mere second a tall man was stepping over the threshhold onto the grass-sprouting cobbled pathway. A hand was wiped about his bristly chin and across his eyes as though he was fatigued.

‘Emma…?’ Matthew Cavendish murmured disbelievingly as his fingers pushed a tangle of brown hair back from his brow for a better view of her. A white grin split his shady jaw and, with a cursory straightening of his shirt-cuffs and waistcoat, he was rushing towards her.

‘Emma! How wonderful to see you!’ He gripped her by the shoulders and warm hazel eyes smiled down into her upturned, uncertain face. ‘Why didn’t you send word you were coming? Oh, I’m so sorry…come inside…please. What an oaf you must think me, leaving you planted amongst the weeds! As you can see,’ he added ruefully, gesturing at snaggled greenery, ‘tending the roses isn’t a fond pastime.’ After drawing one of her arms through his they proceeded out of breezy late summer sunlight into the cool, dim interior of the cottage.

‘Maisie will fetch some tea,’ he directed at the woman while helping Emma to slip out of her cumbersome cloak.

Emma’s eyes flicked to the small brunette and noted an odd, insubordinate stare arrow from servant to master. Then, with a twitch of her faded black serge, Maisie was gone.

After a brief pause during which only polite smiles passed between them, there was,

‘I must apologise…’

‘I should explain…’

They had spoken together and simultaneously laughed, embarrassed, too.

‘You first,’ Matthew invited, ushering Emma towards a comfortable-looking chintz-covered fireside chair and pressing her into it. As he leaned towards her and gripped her hands, displaying his pleasure at seeing her, a recognisable sweetish aroma assailed her nostrils. She had too often been about her intoxicated papa not to instantly recognise the smell of strong alcohol about someone’s person. There was a hint of red rimming his eyes too, she noted, with a hesitant smile up into Matthew’s undoubtedly hung-over face.

‘I was about to say, Matthew, I must apologise for visiting you without proper warning. But I had no time to write, or wait for your reply.’ She gave him a wry look. ‘After all, it has been six months since last I wrote and still, daily, I expect your letter…’

Throughout the uncomfortably sultry atmosphere in the coach jolting its way to this village, all that had dominated her mind was Matthew: how she longed to unburden herself to him, beg him to reinstate his marriage proposal of five years ago. Now, oddly, the desperation had evaporated. What remained was simple relief that she had distanced herself from Jarrett Dashwood.

‘You must rest awhile after your journey, then dine with us,’ Matthew said with an emphatic squeeze at her small hands within his.

Emma smiled her thanks; she was hungry; she was also grateful that Matthew was exercising tactful restraint. He had obviously sensed she needed a little time to compose herself before revealing the catastrophe that had forced her to break all codes of etiquette and arrive uninvited and unchaperoned at the home of an unwed man. Acknowledging that impropriety brought another to her attention: remaining with Matthew overnight as his guest, even if he had a female servant and children, was completely out of the question. She would need to find lodgings.

Emma glided small, unobtrusive glances at him as she looked about the untidy small parlour. Oh, he still appealed to her. He hadn’t aged. But his unruly hair was tangled, his skin tone unhealthy and his attire dishevelled.

‘I’ll apologise for my appearance.’ He shrewdly anticipated the reason for her eyes lingering on his unshaven jaw. A sheepish smile preceded, ‘I attended a debate at the village hall last night. It was after midnight when I found my bed.’ He made a determined effort to neaten his hair and clothes with slightly vibrating hands.