Mistletoe Magic

Chapter Fifteen

‘This hillock affords the best view of the place,’ Lucas said as they stopped atop a cliff. ‘I think it must have once been a river-bed, for the water has cut through the sandstone etching out the land. See, there is still the remains of a smaller stream.’

Lillian looked at where he was pointing. ‘You have a good knowledge of geography.’

He shook his head. ‘Rivers are the same anywhere. They divide the country with their own particular brand of frivolity and men must simply follow their course.’

‘Like the river near where you live? The James, was it not?’

‘And you have a good memory,’ he returned before spurring his horse on and gesturing her to follow.

They had spent the morning wandering the wide lands of Woodruff Abbey, his attempt, she suspected, at keeping her busy and having enough space between them to make things…simple. No touching, no deeper conjectures, just the land and the choice of moving on once conversation foundered.

And yet she was enjoying the tour, enjoying the cold winter sun on her face and the exploration of an estate that was magnificent in its diversity. The caves they now stopped beside were mossed with lichen and carvings, sticks wedged as sentinels protecting angular sandstone facings.

This time he dismounted and came over to help her down. Having no other recourse but to accept, she waited as his hands came around her waist, her body sliding down the length of his until her toes met the ground.

Moving away as soon as she was stable, the material in his riding jacket strained across the breadth of his shoulders. Today he was neither the Lucas Clairmont who had kissed her in London nor the dangerous man at Fairley with blood on his face and anger in his eyes. The Lucas Clairmont of yesterday had disappeared, too, with his confidence and certainty. This man was gentler, more considerate, with no hint of demanding more than she would give him. A patient, self-controlled husband who had spent his wedding night alone!

She suddenly missed the man who would tease her and reach out unbidden, his golden reckless glance today well guarded, as if he was trying to be on his best behaviour.

Lillian’s heart began to beat faster. Was that what he was doing? Nurturing patience?

‘If you could be patient.’ She had asked that of him yesterday. Had he retreated into trying? Warmth began to spread into the cold anger that the wedding had imbued, flushing the possibility of something very different.

‘Jack Poole says these carvings have been here since before any written history.’ His voice was tight, the facts given with a stiff correctness.

‘So they don’t really know who did them?’ Sitting on the nearest rock, she hitched up her skirts to keep them from trailing in the dust.

‘He says Viking travellers, thanes from the early part of the eighth century. People who crossed this part of England to battle the Saxon warriors fiercely defending themselves in the last free land of Wessex.’

His voice petered off as his eyes met her own, the bare facts of history irrelevant now in the growing silence. For the first time since she had met him she felt that she was in charge, the knuckles in his fist pressed white on the hand she could see, his wedding band glinting in the sun.

‘An old history, then.’

He only nodded. A man who had probably reached the end of his patience!

‘In which part of England did you live as a boy?’

‘In the north-east,’ he said obliquely. Telling her nothing.

‘You seldom answer questions about yourself. I have noticed it.’

At that he laughed, but the sound of it was hard. ‘Ask me anything.’

She pondered for a moment. ‘Why did you steal the watch at Eton?’

‘Anything but that.’

‘Very well, then! How did you meet Nathaniel St Auburn and Stephen Hawkhurst?’

‘At school. We were in the same year when we were all sent there at eleven and I was there for a good while. Holidays were also generally spent at St Auburn or Hawthorne Castle, Hawk’s family seat in Dorset.’

‘And what of your home? Your parents?’

‘My father and mother were rarely home and when they were I stayed as far away as I could get.’

Lillian glanced up, this answer nothing like the others, a ring of truth and anger so desperately heard within it. But he did not look at her as he gazed across the wide valley, a few wildflowers even at this time of the year, caught in the change of seasons and the onslaught of winter. Brittle and temporary! She knew just exactly how they felt.

‘You were an only child?’

He nodded, but the honesty of a second ago was gone. Regretting his outburst probably, she thought, by the look of the muscle that rippled to one side of his cheek.

‘And they did not follow you to America?’

‘No.’

‘Then who did you live with when you got there?’

‘An uncle. My father’s brother. A fine man by the name of Stuart Clairmont.’ He shook his head as she went to speak again. ‘Are you always this curious?’

‘You are my husband. Spouses ought to be curious about each other.’

‘Very well, then,’ he returned. ‘Tell me something about you that nobody else knows.’

He saw the way her lips tightened, her pale eyes searching his face for what? For the right to see if what she wanted to say would be taken in the spirit that she gave it? He knew that look, had seen it on his own face in the mirror as a child when his mother had warned him not to tell anyone about anything that went on inside their family.

‘I once read the Bible backwards,’ she began. ‘It was after my mother left my father for a lover who killed her.’ She looked up. ‘Not physically, you understand. There are other ways for people to die.’

Other ways? Small ways and large. Hearts that broke bit by bit until there was nothing left of any of it. Confidences that squeezed the very life out of living!

‘Her lover was a man like you…secretive, dark…’ Her voice broke on the confession.

Lord. Just like him! And in so many more ways than she knew.

But she did not let it go. ‘If my father hears that I have told you this…’

‘He won’t.’ The hands at the side of her gown were balled into tight fists.

‘You promise me?’

‘On my very life,’ he returned, an odd expression that Nat and Hawk and him had used as boys when trading secrets.

‘I had not meant to say, it was only…’ She stopped.

‘Only that I had aired my skeletons in the cupboard and you felt obliged to do the same?

He was pleased when she smiled. ‘Only that.’

Far away the shape of Woodruff Abbey stood against a dark line of trees, nestled in a wide and fertile valley. Figures played on the lawn and on the circular sweep of driveway.

‘How long have you been the children’s guardian?’

‘Since I put Woodruff into trust for them and named myself a trustee.’

‘The place is not yours?’

‘It is mine to use, but theirs to keep.’

‘An expensive gift from a man with little in the way of chattels.’

‘Children need a safe home to grow up in.’

‘A home like the one you never had. Whatever happened to your parents’ house? You have not mentioned it at all.’

‘It was sold when they left England. Travel is expensive and my father could never abide the responsibility of chattels.’

‘He sounds a selfish man.’

When he didn’t answer she tried another tack. ‘The little girls seem very fond of you?’

This time when he laughed Lillian felt the warmth of it and she liked the sound, liked the easy way he tipped back his head, liked the creases that marked the skin around his eyes when he did so. Not a dandy or a fop. No, her husband was a man whom the outdoors had marked in muscle and in tone, the bronze in his eyes startling sometimes against the darkness of his skin. Like now, outlined against the wideness of sky, a man who could have been one of those wild Danish thanes wandering this part of the land all those centuries ago. That was it exactly. He did not really fit into England with its gentle rhythms and thin watery sun.

And he was hers. For a lifetime. This man whom she did not understand, but wanted to, this man whose body called to her own in a way no others ever had before him. She felt humbled by his confession of the Woodruff trust, humble enough to offer him money and condolences for his lack of property

‘Fairley Manor is a large estate. You should want for nothing with my dowry.’

‘I would never challenge your right to Fairley, Lilly. I swear it. If you wanted, I could have my lawyer draw up a document to say just that.’

Lillian was speechless at his sincerity. How often in her life had she been pursued by swains who measured the value of the Davenport lands before the worth of taking her as a bride? Yet here was a man with little who would give it all back?

‘Fairley is your heritage and, just as Hope and Charity need a home, so do you.’

The understanding in his answer was exactly what she needed and the awareness between them heightened.

Touch me! she longed to ask. Reach out first and touch me, for she could not do it, not after the words she had given him of squandering and patience and anger.

But he only swiped away a winged insect that dived down and laughed as she jumped back.

‘It likes the light in your hair. How long is it when you wear it down?’

‘My hair?’ She blushed beetroot red. ‘Too long, probably. I should cut it, but-’

‘No.’ A frown crossed his forehead, emotion skewered by his need for caution.

In answer she simply undid the net that held her chignon in place, enjoying the feel of curls unravelling down her back, the length reflected by the greed in his eyes.

‘It was patience I asked for,’ she whispered softly, ‘not distance.’

‘Ah, Lilly,’ he replied in return, ‘have caution with what you think a husband might take from such an offer.’

Still he did not move.

‘Perhaps a little?’ Her tongue licked around the sudden dryness of her lips.

‘A little?’ His voice was husky as he reached forwards and brought him to her, not gently either, but moulded along the full front of each other so that she felt the hard angles of his body and the heat of his breath.

‘Is this a little?’ he asked as his lips came down upon her own, opening her mouth and plundering, one hand sliding up from her waist to fist in her hair and the other cupping her chin as though daring her to pull away.

She didn’t, the taste of him exactly how she had remembered it in countless dreams, an invitation for more, his tongue laving against hers, the rocking of his body restless and every breath shared.

Heady delight in the fold of an ancient mountain and the wind playing with her hair, the shards of need swelling want in her belly, in her breasts, in the place between her legs that no man had ever touched.

She could not feel where she ended and he began, could not in truth stop him from doing anything that he wanted, the brutal slam of lust as desperate in her as she could feel it was in him. Just pleasure, on the edge of delight, just the boneless floating relief of what it was to be a woman, and at twenty-five it had been a long time coming.

When he finally broke off the kiss she pressed in, but he held her still, his breathing ragged and his voice hoarse.

‘The rain is near and a little is never enough.’

His heart beat in the same rhythm as hers, matching exactly as her hands bunched at the material in his jacket, trembling with what had just happened, no control and no regrets either, the core of her being alive with the rightness of it.

This had nothing to do with the expectation of others, for no external thing could touch a freeing blazing truth that held all the other more normal concerns at a distance.

What if she had not constrained him with ‘a little’, what if she had just let him do what it was he seemed so very good at, up here on the high mountain with no one around them for miles?

Always a limit, the boundaries of her life reflected even in her loving. The thought made her frown as she tied up her hair, feeling a little like a fairytale princess who had been let out of a story for just a moment.

Princess Lillian. How often had unkind children called her that as she had grown up? The girl with everything!

Except a mother, and the rigid morals of her father the touchstone to his affection.

She took in a deep breath and moved away, not meeting the gaze of her husband, though his smile she could not fail to miss even from the corner of her eyes.

‘For a woman who has barely been kissed in her life you have made remarkable progress.’

Not a criticism, then. With her confidence bolstered she faced him. ‘I have had a good teacher.’

‘And one with a lot more to show you yet.’

His laughter caught on the wind and the cloak she wore billowed as if even her clothes sought closer contact, both the strength and mystery in him evident in the way he watched her, as if ‘just a little’ would never be enough.