Unmasked. Nicola Cornick

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СКАЧАТЬ stone the crows,” the groom said, scratching his head. “You never can tell.”

      They sat watching Nick until he passed a turn in the driveway and was swallowed up between the huge oaks of the home park. Then an irritable voice from within the coach asked when they were to resume the journey. The coachman recollected himself and picked up the reins and the lodge-keeper waved a cheery hand and hefted the sack of mail away.

      As the sound of the coach died away, silence settled once again over Cole Court and Nick shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other to ease the ache. This was not how he would have chosen to spend his army furlough, despite the pleasure of renewing acquaintance with his old friend, but then Rashleigh had never had any consideration for the needs of others and it was typical that in his death he would cause as much trouble as in life.

      Nick had shied away from all social engagements since Anna’s death, preferring instead the rigors of life on campaign. Somehow the physical hardship of army life assuaged the guilty ache in his soul that he had not been there to help Anna when she needed him. But now he had been obliged to put aside his own preferences for a little and rejoin the Ton even if it was only as a cover to hunt down a notorious criminal.

      Nick thought about the girl at the tavern frequently, more often than he wished. The memory of her haunted him, superimposing itself on the older, more faded memories of Anna, demanding his attention in a manner that both obsessed him and fed his guilt. He did not seem able to escape her. He had held the girl in his arms and had wanted her. He had desired her more than any woman he had known. He had dreamed about her every night for a week after they had met in the tavern, vivid erotic dreams from which he had woken panting and hard, desperate to assuage the ache in his body. It seemed like a double betrayal of Anna’s memory to want to make love with a woman who must be a harlot and a murderer, and the guilt flayed him alive. For hours he had sat with his miniature of Anna clasped in his hand, trying to force his thoughts back on to his dead wife and away from the woman who had bewitched him. He had turned his back on all women since Anna’s death, yet suddenly he found himself lusting after a girl who was everything that sweet, delicate Anna was not. He had tried to bury the memory and turn his heart to ice again but he could not forget the girl in the tavern. His emotions, once reawakened, were not so easy to turn off again and he hated himself for it. He had fallen slave to lust and he did not seem able to escape it.

      Thinking and hoping that it was just a physical need for a woman—any woman—he had sought out one of the most celebrated courtesans in Town. Their encounter had been torrid and intense and entirely devoid of any real emotion on either side. At the end of the night she had kissed him affectionately and invited him to call on her again whenever he chose, and he had left feeling strangely unsatisfied. His body was sated but his mind felt sharp and unfulfilled. He needed to find the woman from the Hen and Vulture again. He wanted her with an ache that was ever more powerful.

      As he walked up the driveway toward the lights of Cole Court, Nick’s thoughts turned inevitably once more to the girl in the tavern. Could such a woman really be Glory, the infamous highwaywoman whose band was responsible for the rather quixotic robbing of the rich to give to the poor? Nick was of the opinion that Glory would not have been so notorious were it not for the fact that she was a woman. Her deeds had caught the public imagination like a latter-day Robin Hood. Ballads and poems were written in her honor. She was talked of in the taverns and the clubs, her exploits celebrated in toasts and speeches. She was a popular heroine. And now he was here to track her down so that Lord Hawkesbury could hang her. He would likely end up the least popular man in the country if he carried it through. But leaving aside Lord Hawkesbury’s commission, he had a personal quest to fulfill. Glory, the girl in the tavern, had played him for a fool and he wanted revenge.

      Nick went through the gate that separated the parkland from the formal gardens. Dusk was falling now, painting the sky in shades of peach and blue with the trees standing tall and black against its light. There was the scent of pine and cut grass on the air, and Nick could hear the splash of water. Suddenly he felt intolerably dirty from the long journey. Following the sound, he found himself approaching a flat grassy plateau with a round pool and a small summerhouse. Someone had designed a charming sequence of canals and cascades here. In the half-light the water looked deep and mysterious. A fountain at the center showered down a spray of sparkling drops like grains of corn. Nick lowered his bag to the ground, knelt on the grass beneath the tumbling branches of a willow tree, cupped his hands and tipped the cold water over his head, exulting in the cold shock as the liquid ran down his neck and eased the gritty scratching of his skin. He was tempted to strip off his clothes and leap into the pool, but even as he straightened and his hands went to the buttons of his jacket, he saw that he was not alone. Someone else had had the same idea as he.

      From the trees on the far side of the pool came a slender figure so insubstantial in the dusk that she looked more like a figment of his imagination than a real woman.

      Or like a figment of those wild erotic dreams that had haunted his nights.

      As she crossed the grass she let the white shift slip from her body. The rising moon touched her skin with silver. There was a splash as she stepped into the pool, and Nick heard her involuntary gasp as the cold water from the fountain cascaded over her. She stood still beneath its caress, a creature of fantasy in the moonlight, raising her hands high above her head as the water ran down her body in silver rivulets and scattered jewel bright drops over her cloudy dark hair.

      Up at the house the orchestra was striking up for the ball and the music drifted across the quiet gardens and hung on the air, faint and tempting. The goddess ran her hands slowly down her naked length, over her breasts, across the planes of her stomach and the curve of her hips, leaving a trail of shimmering water on her skin. There was a smile on her parted lips, at once sensuous and innocent, that had a direct effect on Nick’s groin. He felt his body swelling to what felt like near fatal proportions. His breeches were suddenly intolerably tight, a tourniquet about his most vital parts. It felt like the hottest night of his entire life.

      The air seemed full of the scent of honeysuckle. It wound itself around Nick’s senses, sweet and seductive. He knew that he was no gentleman to watch, but then she could be no lady. And he would have had to be approaching death to remain unaroused at the sight of the woman in the water. Her head was tilted back as the fountain splashed down on her face, her eyes were closed, the lashes fanning against her cheek, and every line of her body was pure and silver in the moonlight, with the water droplets rolling over her breasts, beading on her nipples and cascading down to the dark juncture of her thighs.

      A peacock called its harsh cry from near at hand and Nick jumped, cracking his head on one of the willow tree’s low branches. The girl in the pool froze. She turned her head toward him and for a second it seemed that her gaze met his, and then she was gone, running from the pool with the water spangling the grass behind her, scooping her chemise up as she went, before her flying figure was swallowed up in the shadows.

      Nick released the breath that he had been holding. His whole body felt hot, hard and aroused. Damnation, he needed that dip in the pool even more now. A shower of cold water was exactly what he required to get his wayward body and feverish imagination under control, or he would be presenting himself for the Duchess’s ball in an extremely inappropriate physical condition. The sight of the girl in the fountain had tapped straight into all those dreams he had sought so hard and so unsuccessfully to repress.

      He picked up his kit bag. A brisk walk across the garden would have to suffice instead.

      By the time that he reached the house, both Nick’s breathing and his errant body were under control again. His imagination, however, was proving more difficult to subdue, presenting him with images of naked goddesses with water cascading over their bodies. He blinked when a liveried footman opened the main door of the house and the glare of candlelight spilled out. What he must look like he had no notion, СКАЧАТЬ