Destitute On His Doorstep

Jane stepped back, her eyes flashing with the force of her anger and the heat that was beginning to consume her body. ‘Do not mock me, sir. I am serious. I shall not give up on this.’

‘Do as you must, but you will be wasting your time.’ He encountered her hostile gaze and smiled.

It was a disconcertingly pleasant smile, and the fact that even through a haze of anger and acute physical misery and social embarrassment she could recognise it as such increased Jane’s hostility. ‘We shall see. I shall do whatever it takes to have you removed from this house.’

‘And fail. Two categories are exempted from applying—those who were the King’s top men, and those who are both Catholics and Royalists. Your father belonged to the latter.’

‘He was not a Catholic.’

‘No, but he was a staunch Royalist. Therefore his estate was confiscated and sold—to me.’

‘Aye, with money plundered from the Royalists, I don’t doubt.’

His eyes glittered like ice. ‘I am no thief, Mistress Lucas. I have got where I am by my ability to succeed. Right now you are distraught and angry—and rightly so, since I can imagine how you must feel on knowing the place you have called home is no longer that, so I shall ignore what you have said. But know this. The money with which I purchased this house was earned in honest occupation, so please don’t accuse me of being a thief again.’

Jane stared at him, white and rigid. Something warned her that she dared much with her open disdain. She thought here was a man who revealed nothing of his thoughts and passions, and he ruled himself like steel. Lowering her gaze, she nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Just one more thing, Mistress Lucas. You say you will travel to London to face the Committee for Compounding.’

‘What of it?’

‘Will you have the money with which to pay the fine? Bilborough is a sizeable estate. Should the Committee consider your application, the sum will be considerable.’

Jane stared at him. So confident had she been that she would be able to simply walk into Bilborough and carry on as though nothing had happened, she had given no thought to any of this.

‘No,’ he said, taking her silence as assent. ‘I thought not.’ He cocked an eye at her, the light from the leaping flames in the hearth setting strange shadows dancing around them. The lights flickered over his thick hair, outlining his face. He looked down at her. She had allowed her guard to slip a notch, showing her distress. She looked so young, innocent and vulnerable and her pride was hurting, and for some unknown reason he felt a fierce, uncontrollable urge to protect her. A gentle smile touched his lips.

‘So, Mistress Lucas, it would seem you are homeless.’

She bowed her head. Though her face did not flinch, Jane could feel her anger mingled with her distress simmering inside her, but knowing he was observing her and feeling the indignity of her position, impelled her to raise her head bravely. ‘It would appear so,’ she replied tightly.

‘You have travelled from Northampton, I believe.’ She nodded. ‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you are more reckless than I thought. Can you not return to Northampton?’

‘No—I cannot do that,’ she replied haltingly, lowering her eyes to hide the painful memories his question evoked. ‘It—it is out of the question.’

He stared at her for a moment, seeing her anxiety, but he did not comment on it. Biting back an admiring smile, he watched her struggle to maintain a cold façade in the face of his silent scrutiny, and he marvelled that she could convey so many things without moving or speaking. She was outrageously daring and untempered by wisdom or hampered by caution, and he wondered why she had left Northampton. Was it merely because she had wanted to come home, or something more sinister than that? Had she been driven out by desperation?

Curious as to the cause of it, he turned his head away lest he be seen with the expression on his face of the deep, welling, growing emotion she aroused in him. Deep, yes, ever since she had hurtled so precipitously into his life just moments before.

‘And you have no family you can go to?’

‘No. I have no family.’ Beginning to realize the true gravity of her situation, an awful lump of desolation swelled in Jane’s throat as she folded her hands in her lap and tried to think what to do next.

As if he read her thoughts and not unacquainted with hardship—he had not forgotten the pain of it—he said, ‘I am not as heartless or as unfeeling as I might sound. At least let me offer you accommodation. My invitation that you remain as my guest still stands,’ he offered, hoping she would, astonishing himself.

‘I must reject your invitation. I will not inhabit the same house as a Roundhead,’ she replied.

Francis was relieved that her reply sounded more of a statement than a heated exchange of anger. ‘No, I though not. So—where are you planning to go?’

‘That is no concern of yours.’

‘Humour me,’ he said drily. ‘You have to go somewhere.’ When she didn’t reply and continued to look down at her hands, trying to hold on to his patience, in exasperation he said, ‘Mistress Lucas, are you always this disagreeable and stubborn?’

She glanced up at him. ‘My father always told me that I have a unique talent for it.’

Glancing down at her, Francis thought he glimpsed a shadow of a smile curving her soft mouth as she lowered her head once more. ‘I’m beginning to realise that. Might I make a suggestion?’

‘Please do.’

‘Your steward’s house is empty. You could stay there for the time being …’ A smile touched his lips. ‘Rent-free, naturally.’

‘That won’t be necessary. I may not have the money to pay the fine on Bilborough, but I am not destitute. I can pay my way.’

‘So you agree to live in the steward’s house?’

‘I am left with no choice.’

‘But you do have a choice.’

The dark eyes narrowed. ‘And I told you that I will not stay under the same roof as a Roundhead.’

‘As you wish.’ He turned away from her and shoved another log into the fire with his booted foot. ‘But I wonder if all that pride of yours will keep you warm at night and your belly full.’

Jane lowered her gaze, too aware of her situation to make any denials. ‘One must be practical.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’ His hard blue eyes narrowed as they took in her uncovered head and gown in one coldly speculative glance, and he raised his brows. ‘In which case, might I suggest that unless you wish to draw attention to yourself from the authorities, you remove what you are wearing and dress yourself in normal apparel.’

Burning colour flooded her face, and placing her hands in the small of her waist, she moved closer to him, glaring at him, her eyes overbright with an oncoming fever. ‘Dear me, sir, you really are a Puritan through and through, aren’t you—condemning those who are given to frivolity and prefer to wear lace and silken-coloured gowns instead of the morbid black of a crow. No doubt you think there is too much laughter in the world, too many people intent on enjoying themselves, no matter what the cost to their immortal souls.’

Francis became still and Jane’s breath caught as he stepped nearer.

All his senses completely involved with her, Francis felt an overwhelming desire to take her arms and shake some sense into her, or to drag her into his own. Her soft ripe curves beckoned him, made his body starved of a woman for too long ache with the want of her. Her loveliness quickened his very soul, stirring his mind with imaginings of what loveliness lay hidden from view beneath her provocative red dress. It was a long time since he had felt this need in him to feel the warmth of a woman, to sweep her up in his arms and ease the lust in his loins. Were he to do so, he could well imagine Miss Lucas’s outrage.

A lazy smile crept across his face and Jane’s heart skipped a beat. Francis Russell had a smile that could melt a glacier. All she was conscious of was a sense of complication and confusion. Everything had suddenly changed. His powerful, animal-like masculinity was an assault on her senses. Moistening her lips, she could almost feel her body offer itself to this man, this Roundhead, this stranger—and yet he wasn’t a stranger, not to her, and in that instant they both acknowledged the forbidden flame ignited between them.

Francis drew a ragged breath, wishing he could understand why she seemed so familiar to him. By an extreme effort of will he replied casually, ‘I am a man of the Civil War. That does not make me a Puritan who would tell you to cover yourself and say that your appearance is unseemly in the eyes of the Lord—that your breasts are as wantonly exposed as your brazen, flaunting hair.’

The warmly mellow tones of Colonel Russell’s voice were imbued with a rich quality that seemed to vibrate through Jane’s womanly being. To her amazement, the sound evoked a strangely pleasurable disturbance in areas far too private for an untried virgin even to consider. As evocative as the sensations were, she didn’t quite know what to make of them. She glanced up at him, cheeks aflame.

‘Then since you are not a Puritan, Colonel Russell, you would not say those things?’ He shook his head. ‘So my state of dress, immodest as it is, would not trouble you?’

‘Not in the slightest, but for your own safety you would do well to heed my words.’

‘Oh, I shall, sir, but I will continue to wear what I please. Nothing you may say or do will persuade me to discard this dress. And you cannot force me to do so.’