A Most Unseemly Summer. Juliet Landon

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