LIBERTINE in the Tudor Court: One Night in Paradise / A Most Unseemly Summer. Juliet Landon

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ as her eyes, and she was swept away into the deepest, darkest, most overpowering sensation she could ever have imagined. And she had imagined, often.

      Drunk with the new experience, her mind was slow to adjust and, when he paused, just touching her lips with his, her pretences had deserted her. Without any prompting, her hands knew what to do, reaching up through the darkness to touch his face and to find their own way over his ears and hair that parted under her fingers. Shadows of shattered conscience warned her of some former conflict, some contradiction, but it was too dark to identify them before they fled, and his lips returned to take what, this time, she was yielding up without protest. He was tender, carefully disturbing the surface of her desire until a moan began to rise in her throat.

      Then he released her, easing her upright and supporting her in his arms while her head drooped, almost touching his chin. ‘You were saying?’ he whispered, eventually.

      She shook her head, saying nothing, thinking nothing.

      ‘Then will you listen to me awhile?’

      ‘Another time,’ she whispered. ‘Please? Another time? My father…the servants will be here soon to…’ she peered about her and disengaged herself from his arms ‘…to clear up, to lock the doors.’ Unsteadily, she stepped aside, hearing a loud crack from beneath her skirts. ‘Oh, no!’

      Sir Nicholas bent to lift her foot and to retrieve two halves of a roundel, placing them on the table. ‘Can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘Adorna, just one thing before I take you back.’ He took her hand and held it against his chest. ‘Whatever you’ve been hearing of me, and you know how people gossip at Court, don’t allow it to prejudice you against me. If there is no scandal, people will invent it. It’s gossip, Adorna.’

      There was nothing she could reply to that except to remove her hand and hope that her cheeks and lips would be cooled by the night air before she entered the house. The last remaining guests were departing as they appeared together, though one who lingered was, to Adorna’s consternation, Master Peter Fowler. He came to greet them with some eagerness, his expression as he looked from one to the other showing that he recognised what Adorna had hoped to conceal.

      ‘Peter,’ she said, reading his face.

      ‘There you are!’ Peter said, breezily. ‘Sir Nicholas, I was hoping to catch you, sir.’

      ‘Me? Whatever for?’

      ‘I’ve been across to the palace just now. The keys, you know. Bedtime.’ He smiled apologetically. The handing over of the keys of Her Majesty’s chamber at bedtime was a ritual he could not evade. ‘And I’ve been given two messages for you. You’re a popular man, sir.’ His expression, Adorna thought, held a glint of sheer mischief as he came to her side, ready to lead her away. ‘One from his lordship’s man to say that he’d be glad if you’d take a look at the bay stallion again before you retire.’

      ‘Certainly. And the other?’

      ‘Oh, from Lady Celia Traverson’s maid. It appears her mistress was expecting you to visit her this evening in the east tower room, sir. Seemed a bit upset. I said I’d see you got the message.’ He glanced again at Adorna with a suggestion of triumph in his merry eyes. ‘Wonderful evening,’ he said.

      ‘Yes,’ she agreed, taking the arm he offered. ‘Wonderful.’

      As if to verify the effect of Peter’s ill-timed messages, she met the eyes of her former companion as he made her a formal bow and saw the anger that washed briefly across them, drooping the lids with a stifled frown. Their glances agreed that there was no explanation that he could offer to which she would want to listen, and that Adorna’s former hostility, far from being lessened, had now increased. Her coldness turned to a relentless freeze. She did not need to ask who Lady Celia Traverson was, having heard the same name that evening in connection with his last love affair. Nor was there any doubt in her mind that Lady Celia was the woman he had met in the friary paradise while she had watched, yearning for such a kiss. And now, her first kiss had turned bitter upon her lips.

       Chapter Four

       S ir Nicholas straightened, dropping the stallion’s hoof gently into the deep straw. He patted the sleek brown rump and looked across at his noble employer over the top of it. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘It was the same last night. He’s sound enough, sir.’ He leaned back against the stall.

      The Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s favourite and the handsomest man at Court, some said, leaned against the other side of the stall and folded his arms across his wide chest. ‘Samuel Manning certainly taught you a thing or two, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘You believe it was the mare, then?’

      Sir Nicholas smiled. ‘Almost certainly, sir. They can do a fair amount of damage when they’re new to it, as you know.’

      ‘Then we shall have to make sure he’s well padded next time, eh?’

      The laughter was mutually rueful. The earl looked pointedly at the reddened skin along the left side of Sir Nicholas’s eyebrow, unable to conceal his interest. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that you need some padding, too. I’ll not believe it. Was that the problem?’

      A hand went up to comfort the tender place. ‘Nothing to speak of, sir,’ Sir Nicholas smiled. ‘A misunderstanding.’

      ‘Not Lady Celia, surely?’ the earl said gently. He was as tall as Sir Nicholas and, even with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his graceful bearing and proud head showed him to be a man of considerable importance. He crossed his long elegant legs, well muscled and encased in brown leather thigh-boots.

      ‘Lord, no, sir.’ He sighed, taking hold of the stallion’s tail and slipping his hand down its silky length. ‘No, Lady Celia departs from Portsmouth today. She and her mother and sister will embark as soon as they get a fair wind, and she’s distraught, naturally.’

      ‘At leaving England, or you?’

      ‘Both, sir. Nor does she like the idea of marrying her Spanish duke.’

      ‘Mmm…I heard about that. Her Majesty’s not keen on the connection, but Lord Traverson is adamant about it. Says it’s too good an opportunity to miss.’

      ‘He would, being of a Roman Catholic family. We ended our relationship weeks ago, but she asked me to meet her, for a last goodbye. Except that it wasn’t the last, of course.’

      ‘Hah! Never is, man. They say a last goodbye at least three times; I could have told you that. Recriminations, then?’

      ‘Oh, no, sir. No bad feeling. Just a sadness. Our parting was mutual, but I’d not have wanted her to go all that way, just the same. We were friends.’

      ‘Sad,’ the earl said. ‘So who’s the unwilling one?’

      ‘Sir Thomas Pickering’s daughter, sir.’

      ‘Ah! The Palomino!’ A slow grin spread across his face. ‘The one you hauled out of the river the other day? Well, you’ll not get that one eating out of your hand so easily. Nor will you be the first to try.’

      Nicholas was, however, reasonably sure that he had been the first to succeed in areas where others had failed. ‘No, sir. That’s what I heard, but I think now’s the time for some schooling.’ He grinned back at the earl. ‘I also think I’m in for a rough СКАЧАТЬ