Dangerous Lord, Seductive Miss. Mary Brendan

you also keen to return there to live?’

      ‘I certainly miss the gaiety and the friends I had there,’ Deborah answered, more composed.

      ‘If you returned to London, you’d avoid the necessity of living amongst the likes of the Luckhursts.’

      ‘I shan’t allow them to drive us away,’ Deborah retorted with a defiance that made him cock a dark brow at her. Had he told her he found her attitude immature he could not have made his opinion plainer. ‘We have some friends here,’ she continued doggedly. ‘Harriet and her brother are nice people. So are Mr and Mrs Pattinson. Not everybody hereabouts is in league with the smugglers. Evil will triumph if good people are too cowardly to combat it.’

      ‘Certainly,’ he agreed drily. ‘But a lot of decent folk don’t consider contraband a bad thing, but a benefit.’

      A defeated little grimace was Deborah’s acknowledgement of the truth in that statement. Her stepfather had been a good man, yet he had happily paid to have his cellars stocked illicitly.

      ‘Why do you not return to London to live?’ Randolph asked. A few brown fingers curled to rest close to his narrow mouth as he waited for her reply. After a silent moment he prodded, ‘Is there more to it than a battle of wills with the smugglers?’

      Deborah got to her feet and collected the cups to put on the tray. She spun about to face him, feeling an odd unwillingness to admit that she—once an heiress with a magnificent dowry—now could not afford to live in London. Yet she had nothing to be ashamed of. She had not squandered her inheritance; it had been taken from her. Again she had an inclination to tell him that he had no right to ask. But then that would imply that she cared what he thought. And she didn’t.

      ‘When Papa died the whole estate was entailed on the next male heir. I have no brother, as you know. There was no close relative on the paternal side who might have felt morally obliged to treat us generously. A distant cousin—a gentleman we haven’t met who resides in a castle in Scotland—took the title and estate. Mama was very well provided for in my father’s will, and my inheritance was held in trust. Unfortunately it was one that could be breached.’ She shrugged, clattering crockery.

      ‘When your mother remarried her assets became Mr Woodville’s,’ Randolph guessed.

      ‘Indeed,’ Debbie muttered, her fingers tightening on the edge of the table until the knuckles showed bone. ‘And Mr Woodville had a son and a strong belief in primogeniture.’

      A silence ensued and whilst Debbie stared fiercely through the window Randolph watched her.

      ‘You have enough to live on?’ he eventually asked quietly.

      ‘Oh, yes. Mr Woodville left Mama enough to carry on living here comfortably, if we are careful. When she has passed away the house and estate will go to his son, Norman. In order that I would not be left destitute, he also left me a bequest of a few thousand pounds to tempt a prospective husband. It is not quite the sixty that my father had wanted me to have.’ She turned with a smile on her lips. ‘Well, as we have finished tea, sir, shall we now take a stroll in the gardens?’

       Chapter Five

      Once in her chamber Julia went directly to the small anteroom where her writing desk was positioned close to a window. When seated in that spot she had a splendid view of the rosebeds and lawns that flowed in an undulating emerald swathe to a stream edging an area of deciduous woodland. The trees were a beautiful sight to behold, garmented in shades of gold and red. At present the charming view did not lure Julia’s interest, rather her desk did. She sat down before it and got from a pocket in her grey gown a key. She used it to open the bureau, then, having found the little spring with a finger, she put pressure on it until a secret compartment came open. Gravely she gazed at the contents within. An unsteady hand trembled forwards to withdraw a few letters tied with ribbon.

      ‘Oh … Gregory, he has come,’ she whispered. ‘He seems angry with her, too, despite his courtesy. But I think he still wants her. We should not have done it,’ she murmured to her beloved first husband. ‘Our Debbie did not make the excellent match she deserved. Nice Edmund Green is lost to her, too. She is a spinster … soon to be twenty-five. A beauty still, indeed she is, but past her prime.’ She pressed pale fingers to her watering eyes. ‘Now you are not here and I alone must decide what to do. What shall I say if she asks if letters arrived for her? Must I deny it all? Shall I burn them or hand them over with excuses?’ She dropped the unopened letters back whence they came. ‘Will they think the letters were innocently lost and accept it as fate’s way rather than our way of telling them their love was not to be?’

      An hour or so later Julia woke from her fitful slumber with a start. A thought had been pricking at her semi-consciousness. Now it surfaced and made her gasp. She had forgotten to visit the kitchens and tell Cook they had a guest to dine. She used her elbows to get upright on the coverlet where she had been napping.

      A woman’s musical chuckle was heard coming from outside and it drew Julia from the bed to the window. The sun was setting in the west, filtering through autumn-hued trees and turning the eastern boundary to a fiery panorama. A movement on the southern path caught her eye and she watched as the handsome couple strolled. With a woman’s eye she noticed straight away that her daughter had not taken Mr Chadwicke’s arm whilst promenading. They were side by side, and smiling, but a good space was between them. Despite their time alone, and their amiable appearance, no intimate conversation had taken place. Julia knew, to her shame, that she was glad their pride held them apart. She hoped he would leave and go about his business without making any mention of his letters.

      Deborah had been a touch formal with him. Julia had sensed that immediately, in spite of her daughter’s attempt to conceal her emotions behind good manners. But Julia was sure that Mr Chadwicke still had a hankering for Deborah. She was not so shrivelled that she could not recognise when a man had a certain twinkle in his eye. She craned her neck as the couple began to disappear from sight in the direction of the walled garden. She imagined Deborah was intending to show him the parterre and the fishpond situated beyond the iron gate.

      Drawing back with a sigh, Julia was about to turn away when a movement to the north of the plot caught her attention. Instinctively she shrank back in fear as though to conceal herself behind the heavy curtain. A fellow was lurking and appeared keen to secrete himself behind a huge yew whilst peeping in the direction that her daughter and Mr Chadwicke had taken. Julia knew the burly individual was one of the Luckhursts. He and his brother were alleged to be notorious criminals, although it seemed they always managed to escape arrest. When she’d been shopping with Deborah in Hastings Julia had seen them brazenly swaggering about with their cronies. She had never liked the way the younger one smirked at her daughter with a mixture of lechery and belligerence on his coarse face.

      On moving to Sussex with her second husband Julia had initially felt an indifference to the fact that they lived amongst smugglers. But since her daughter’s fiancé had been killed, she had been thrust into awareness of the true price of contraband. Deborah loathed the smugglers and let everybody know it. On many occasions Julia had cautioned her daughter to guard her tongue. One never knew who might be listening.

      Blood began to pump deafeningly in Julia’s ears. Why was Seth Luckhurst in the garden spying on Deborah? Had her daughter recently challenged him again over his wickedness? Again she peeked out. For a moment she was mesmerised by the brawny fellow who was glancing this way and that. He seemed to be checking if the coast were clear before making his move. Julia skittered backwards away from the window as she saw him look up. She was frightened he might have spotted her. She collapsed on the edge of the bed, her fingers threaded tightly together. A calming thought occurred to her: their guest might be the person drawing his interest. Randolph Chadwicke looked a well-to-do fellow with his handsome appearance and stylish apparel. Perhaps the miscreant had been following him. Was he watching for him to leave so he might ambush him and rob him of his valuables? A moment later Julia was again fretting for her own safety. Anybody could see that Mr Chadwicke had a lofty height and a fine pair of shoulders on him and would put up a good fight. It was more likely that