One Night Of Scandal

Chapter Sixteen

D eb had no idea of the time when she awoke. The moon was pouring its light into the tower room and the soft hush of the waves was as sweet and soothing as a caress. Deb lay with her eyes open, watching the shadows shift on the ceiling and breathing in the scent of lavender and spent candles. She felt warm and languorous and, for some reason, wide awake.

She sat up, drawing the covers close about her. Beside her, Richard shifted slightly in his sleep and turned towards her, but he did not wake. A small smile curved Deb’s mouth as she looked down at him.

She examined her feelings. One of the things that she had been afraid of was that the feeling of wanton happiness would burst like a bubble, leaving her as disillusioned with herself as she had after Neil’s betrayal. This time, after all, she had knowingly given herself to a man. She had sought his embrace with a brazen disregard for propriety and practically demanded that he make love to her. She smiled a little to herself at the memory of it. She did not feel cheapened, or dishonoured, or immoral. With Richard she felt warm and happy and cherished. She was not sure what constituted the difference, but it was there and she was in no mood to question it. She slipped from the bed and stole across to the window. The view was so beautiful that it made her catch her breath. The bright light of the moon spilled across the sea, turning the beach to silver and painting the trees in shades of black and white.

‘Deb?’

Richard was behind her. She felt the warmth of his naked body against her, a counterpoint to the chill of the cool night air from the window. He slid his arms about her and drew her head back against his chest.

‘I woke,’ Deborah said. ‘It was so beautiful that I wanted to see…’

Richard’s lips touched her collarbone and drifted along the line of her shoulder. Deb shivered, but not from the cool draught. His hands spread across her bare stomach and she felt her muscles contract beneath his caress. When his hands moved up to her breasts she was already waiting for their touch and arched back against him, helpless in her desire. His cheek brushed hers, hard against her softness.

‘The night is not over yet…’ he reminded her, and her heart leaped at his words and the heated images they provoked.

He turned her into the window alcove, so that her back was against the hard stone of the wall, and kissed her until she was mindlessly adrift and lost in sheer bliss. He lifted her up and held her trapped between his body and the wall. She obeyed without hesitation his instruction to wrap her legs about him, sliding down to find herself impaled, senses utterly ravished at his deep invasion of her body. The stone was cold behind her, but the heat of his body scorched her. His hands steadied her, holding her still to meet his thrust. The shocking delight of what she was experiencing, combined with the insistent tug of his mouth at her breast, was enough to send her mind spinning away into silken darkness and she screamed aloud, wilting in his arms, shattered and pierced by the devastating bliss.

Then he took her back to the bed and kept her there until she had no notion of what was moonlight and what was breaking daylight, and was so lost in blind ecstasy that she did not care either way.

Olivia Marney was in her bedroom, sitting before the mirror whilst Jenny carefully unpinned the emerald-encrusted bandeau that nestled amongst her curls. It was very late and she felt tired. The evening, a dinner at Saltires, could not be accounted a complete success. Lily Benedict had been in a scratchy mood and had made several sharp remarks about Deb’s absence that evening and the coincidental disappearance of Lord Richard Kestrel. Fending off her barbs had given Olivia a headache, and her spirits had not improved to see that Ross seemed sunk deep in thought and barely made any attempt to join in the conversation. Occasionally he would look at her across the table, a deep impenetrable look that Olivia could not read. Until that evening she had thought that they had been achieving a better understanding. They had talked on a number of topics recently, including Deb’s supposed false betrothal and Richard Kestrel’s honourable intentions. On more than one occasion, Olivia had thought that Ross might even be intending to kiss her, for there was a certain look in his eye. He had not done so, however, and now he was not speaking to her again. She felt utterly cast down.

When they had returned to Midwinter Marney Hall that evening it was to find the servants in a panic for the second time in as many days. A message had come from Owen Chance that the smugglers and the revenue men were out, and they should stay within doors and make sure that all was secure. Ross had muttered something about going down to the farm to check that the livestock was safe and Olivia had watched him go in bafflement and not a little irritation. She had trailed her way upstairs to her bedroom and rung for the maid.

Now it was twenty minutes later and Olivia was in her petticoats, with a dressing robe over, waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Jenny to finish her ministrations. Whilst the maid fussed about her, Olivia’s ill temper grew until it reached epic proportions. All the exasperation she had felt with Ross over the past few weeks was growing into a tidal wave of frustration. What was the point of presenting an exquisitely prepared face to the world when her husband appeared to prefer the company of his pigs? Olivia picked up the pot of rose-scented skin cream from her dressing table and just managed to repress the impulse to throw it into the fireplace. So much for Deb’s aphrodisiac! It may have made her skin softer, but it had had absolutely no positive effect on Ross and what was more, it did not smell of roses at all but of a rather unpleasant hint of goose fat.

There was a discreet knock at the bedroom door. Jenny went across and, after a low-voiced colloquy, brought Olivia a note.

‘Excuse me, madam. Mr Ford says that this has just arrived from Mallow. He did not wish to disturb you, ma’am, but the boy said that it was urgent. He is waiting for a reply.’

Olivia felt a clutch of fear. The combination of Deb’s absence from dinner and the scare about the smugglers suddenly came together as an unspecified dread. She unfolded the note slowly and read it. Then she read it again, biting her lip as she did so.

Mrs Aintree’s words were both discreet and carefully chosen, but there was no denying their underlying message.

Mrs Stratton, she wrote, had sent a message earlier in the evening to say that she had decided to prolong her outing with Lord Richard Kestrel and that he would escort her back home later that night. She had not returned in time for dinner, nor by eleven, when Mrs Aintree had decided to retire. An hour later they had received the warning about the smugglers, and shortly after that Mr Chance had arrived at Mallow to tell them that there had been a chase and that the villains had opened the sluices on the Winter Race to flood the roads about Mallow and create a diversion. Given both the danger of flooding to Mallow House itself and the fact that Mr Chance wanted to check that none of the Mallow servants was involved in criminal activity, he had demanded-politely, but demanded nevertheless-that the household be mustered. Mrs Aintree had been obliged to comply with his request and summon everyone within the house.

And Deb had not been there.

Mrs Aintree wrote that she had passed the matter off as best she could by claiming that Deb was staying at Midwinter Marney with her sister. Mr Chance had accepted her excuses on Deb’s behalf very smoothly. But the truth was out.

Olivia put the note down slowly. She did not think that Owen Chance would be unchivalrous enough to challenge Mrs Aintree’s claim of Deb’s whereabouts even though he might believe it was not true. But the servants at Mallow knew that Deb was not there, and the servants at Marney knew she was not staying there…And servants talked. Olivia remembered Lady Benedict’s malice with a shiver. The scandal was out and it would ripple through the neighbourhood like a breeze across the river. It would not be long before the whole of Woodbridge would know that Mrs Deborah Stratton had been missing when a muster was called at Mallow in the middle of the night. Soon after that, someone-Lady Benedict, no doubt-would observe that had not both Lord Richard Kestrel and Mrs Stratton been missing from the dinner at Saltires, and how piquant it would be if they had been together…Engagement or no engagement, Deb’s reputation would be in tatters.

Olivia glanced at the clock. It was almost two in the morning and Ross had been gone a half-hour.

‘Where is Lord Marney?’ Olivia demanded, suddenly furious that Ross was not there to help her decide what to do at a time like this.

Jenny looked startled. ‘I believe that he is still down in the farmyard, milady. Should I ask Ford to send for him?’

Olivia made an exasperated sound. ‘I shall find him myself! Jenny, a pen and paper…’ She scribbled a note and thrust it at the maid. ‘Give this to the boy from Mallow.’ She pulled the remaining pins from her hair with impatient fingers, shook out her curls and thrust her feet into her slippers. Grabbing Mrs Aintree’s note, she made for the door.

‘I am off to find Lord Marney,’ she said, over her shoulder.

The maid looked astonished. ‘But, madam, your hair!’ she wailed. ‘Your slippers! The farmyard!’

But Olivia was gone.

It took Olivia ten minutes to walk from the main house to the home farm, which was close by. During that time she barely thought about what she was doing. She was fuelled by her anger with Ross and her concern over Deb’s situation, and for once she had thoroughly lost her composure. She arrived in the farmyard, panting slightly, and looked around for her husband.

He was not difficult to find. The door of the second pig pen was open and Olivia could see Ross leaning on the wooden rail of the stall. One lantern burned on the windowsill. Olivia did not normally enter the farmyard, for it was not only dirty but prodigiously smelly as well and the pigs were the worst offenders. Tonight, however, she had no thought for either the dirt or the smell. She erupted through the door, waving Clarissa Aintree’s letter agitatedly.

‘Ross, the most dreadful thing has happened-’

She stopped dead. The air was full of the scent of roses and two of Ross’s prize Gloucester Great Spot pigs were enthusiastically mating in the pen in front of her. Olivia gave a little squeak and covered her eyes with the letter.

‘Ross! Are you so depraved that you come down here deliberately to watch your pigs at sport-?’ she began wrathfully, only to break off as she heard her husband give a guffaw of derision.

‘Of course I do not, Olivia. What a ridiculous notion!’ Ross ran his hand through his hair. He was frowning. ‘To tell the truth, I have been worried about their recent enthusiasm for procreation.’ He nodded towards the jar that Olivia could dimly see on the windowsill. ‘Ever since you gave me Rachel Newlyn’s potion to help them with their skin complaint they have not been able to keep away from each other. I fear that they will be quite exhausted.’

Olivia stared at the frolicking pigs and then at the pot of ointment. She sniffed the air delicately.

‘The liniment does seem to have a very sweet aroma,’ she said faintly. ‘Has it worked to cure their skin ailment?’

‘I have not been able to keep them still for long enough to check properly,’ Ross said ruefully. ‘When they are not mating they are skipping around full of vigour. Betty used to be the most slothful of animals. I cannot explain it at all.’

Olivia rather thought that she could. She stared at the pot again whilst the heat came into her cheeks and the smell of goose fat on her own face seemed to overwhelm the sweet scent of the roses. There was no denying that Rachel’s potion was exceptionally good for the complexion. Her skin felt as smooth as silk.

‘Oh, no…’ she said faintly.

Ross had come across to her and taken her gently by the arm, steering her away from the pen and its happily cavorting animals.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘Is there something the matter, Olivia?’ His gaze travelled over her, from the dishevelled tumble of her fair hair to the slippers that were now somewhat the worse for wear. His eyes lingered thoughtfully on the diaphanous dressing robe and the petticoats beneath, before he seemed to drag his thoughts away and focus abruptly on her face.

‘Olivia?’ he said again. He was holding her gently by the elbow. ‘There must be some reason that brought you down here in your slippers. Is something wrong?’

Olivia dragged her thoughts away from aphrodisiacs for pigs and goose-grease face cream.

‘Oh, yes, the most dreadful news!’ She waved the letter again. ‘Deb has been missing all night and I dare swear that she is with Lord Richard Kestrel!’

Ross grinned. ‘So that is how he thought to persuade her into marriage!’

Olivia slapped his arm. ‘It is not funny, Ross! There has been a muster at Mallow House to try and catch the smugglers and everyone was hauled from their beds and Deb was not there! Now everyone will know where she has been and who she was with!’

Ross’s face stilled. ‘That is unfortunate,’ he said, ‘but it is Deborah’s choice to behave in this manner and therefore her difficulty, not yours, my love.’

In her distress Olivia missed the endearment. She was almost in tears.

‘But Deb is ruined! Do you not understand? She is spending the night with Lord Richard and now everyone will know and her reputation will be in tatters.’

‘Deb will be quite safe,’ Ross said soothingly. ‘Come back inside or you will be frozen.’

Olivia abruptly became aware of her flimsy robe and chilled feet. She waited whilst Ross blew out the lantern and bolted the door on the still-snuffling pigs. Then, to her great surprise, Ross swept her up off her feet.

‘Keep still,’ he instructed softly, as she made a faint protest. ‘If you struggle, you may fall in the slurry.’

It was enough of a threat to keep Olivia still as a mouse all the way back to the Hall. It was also inevitable that during the course of the journey she should become aware of the warmth and strength of her husband’s hands through the slippery silk of the dressing robe. Sliding her arms around Ross’s neck purely in order to hold on, Olivia felt a traitorous and unexpected little shiver of desire run through her.

‘I told you that you would catch cold.’ Ross sounded briskly practical.

‘Yes,’ Olivia said faintly. ‘I think you might need to take me to my bedroom…’

She felt rather than saw the look that Ross slanted down to her. Her heart was suddenly beating very swiftly as Ross carried her into the house and up to her room. But when he placed her very gently on her bed and straightened up, he said stiffly, ‘I will send your maid to you.’

His obtuseness was the last straw for Olivia. Would they never, ever be able to reach some sort of understanding? She felt quite hopeless and furiously angry. She moved quickly, dashing over to the dressing table and grabbing the pot of ointment that had been sitting there.

‘Ross, take this! Take it and go! You may be sure that your pigs will be the better for it.’

Ross was looking understandably confused. He looked from her stormy face to the pot in his hand.

‘I beg your pardon, Olivia?’

Olivia could feel a curious sensation building up inside her like a volcano about to blow its top. She kicked her dirty slippers off and sent them sailing across the room with a violence that made Ross flinch.

‘This is the pig ointment, Ross! Lady Newlyn sent two pots. I have been using the pigs’ unguent on my face and you have been using my-’ Olivia caught herself up quickly before she could utter the word aphrodisiac. ‘You have been using my rose-scented cream to try and cure their skin condition.’

Ross took the pot and looked at it, then back at her. Not a muscle moved in his face.

‘I hope,’ he said politely, ‘that this has been beneficial for you, Olivia?’

‘Perfectly, thank you,’ Olivia snapped. ‘My skin smells a little of goose grease, but it is very soft.’

She thought that she saw Ross’s lips twitch, but could not be certain. ‘So the pigs’ skin cream was meant for you…’ he began.

Olivia was beginning to wish she had not said anything at all. She felt hot and shaky and quite uncertain of how the conversation might progress now that it had begun.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I shall not press for it to be returned, having seen what it has done to your pigs.’

Ross was still watching her, an unfathomable expression in his very blue eyes. ‘Did you know about it’s…ah…invigorating…capacities?’

Olivia evaded his gaze. Her shakiness seemed to be getting worse as they approached the crux of the matter.

‘I had been told to use it sparingly,’ she admitted, ‘but I never imagined what the effect might be. I expect that you have been plastering it all over the Gloucester Great Spots in order to cure them-’

‘And instead I have made them quite astonishingly rampant,’ Ross finished drily.

‘Ross!’ Olivia blushed crimson with shock and mortification. Ross took a step closer to her.

‘What on earth would have happened had you used it yourself?’ he mused.

Olivia toyed with the tie of her dressing robe. ‘I cannot bear to think,’ she said crossly.

‘Really?’ Ross drawled. ‘So whatever possessed you to try the potion in the first place?’ He was lounging at the foot of the bed now and Olivia was annoyed to see that he looked rather amused. The torment inside her tightened as she looked at him laughing at her. She made a last, desperate attempt to hold on to her temper. Ladies did not show anger, she reminded herself. It was not the done thing.

‘Deborah passed it to me,’ she said tightly, and closed her lips to forcibly prevent any other words from spilling out.

Ross raised his brows. ‘That may account for many things, my dear Olivia, but it does not answer my question. Why on earth would you want to use it?’

The mockery in his tone was too much for Olivia’s overstretched nerves. Her anger erupted with the force of a tidal wave. So long repressed, there was no stopping it. With a gesture that would not have been out of place on the stage at Drury Lane, she turned and swept her hairbrush and a selection of bottles off the top of her dressing table on to the carpet with a resounding crash. She swung round on her startled husband.

‘Why would I want to use such a thing? Perhaps it is because I cannot seem to attract my own husband! The last time that you came to my bed you swore not to trouble me again! Perhaps I could not bear to imagine you taking solace in the arms of someone like Lily Benedict. Perhaps I was jealous of the thought of you even considering consoling yourself with another woman!’ She paused for breath. Ross was looking absolutely riveted and Olivia was astounded to discover that she felt wonderful, vibrant and alive, and, for once, totally unguarded. That being the case, she carried on.

‘Would it astound you to know, Ross, that I wanted you from the first moment that Papa introduced us? Oh, yes-’ she saw his look of shock ‘-I wanted to marry you! I wanted you to sweep me off my feet!’ She turned away. ‘But you courted me with such decorum. It was very sweet but utterly unfulfilling. Yet it fitted with everything that Mama had ever told me about gentlemen requiring their wives to show no passion and conduct themselves with absolute propriety.’ She gave a bitter shrug. ‘So I thought that there was some fault in me for feeling the desire I did. I thought I would give you a disgust of me. So I subdued it and conducted myself in the manner a wife was meant to behave.’

Her gaze swept over him from head to foot. ‘After a little while I forgot all about my girlish desires. I realised that you did not wish to be close to me. I would have given anything then just to be able to talk to you, Ross, but I could never reach you. You shut yourself away from me. So in the end I lost the habit of trying to please you.’

Ross had turned pale now. ‘I thought that you wanted me to preserve some distance,’ he said. ‘I thought that you had ice in your veins. I did not want to trouble you with the memories of all things that had happened to me before I met you, or talk to you about matters I assumed would not interest you-’

Olivia laughed. The blood running through her veins felt so hot now she thought she might be in danger of taking a fever. ‘So we are both as foolish as each other,’ she said bitterly. ‘There is a certain justice in that.’ She shot him a look. ‘Have I said enough yet?’

‘Nowhere near enough,’ Ross said. He was white, but there was a spark of something in his eyes and it lit an answering flame within Olivia. She spun away from him and picked up the thread of her thoughts.

‘You asked why I wanted the rose-petal potion. Why not? I had nothing to lose and I thought that perhaps I might even kindle some degree of interest in my husband before it was too late. So I took the pot and I have been lathering myself in pig ointment this month past whilst your pigs have been frolicking in rose-petal aphrodisiac-’ She broke off. ‘Damn you, you are laughing! It is not funny, Ross!’

She realised all of a sudden how thin the line was between anger and despair and stopped before the tears could break. She could see her reflection in the inset mirrors, her hair tumbled, her breasts heaving with outraged fury. And she could see Ross, who definitely was laughing, coming towards her with a very purposeful look in his eyes. Panic seized her throat.

‘And if you think for one second that I love you-’ she gasped.

‘Well,’ Ross drawled, grinning openly now, ‘I think it is a little too late for disavowals now, my love.’

‘Arrogant beast!’ Olivia glared at him, beating her clenched fist helplessly and with very little force against his chest.

‘Sweetheart,’ Ross said, trapping her hand and pulling her close. ‘I love you too.’

Olivia opened and closed her mouth silently, like a landed fish.

‘Perhaps we could talk now,’ Ross said, with scrupulous politeness, ‘unless it is too late.’

Olivia stared at him, knowing he was not speaking of the hour. ‘I do not believe that it is too late,’ she said huskily.

She licked her dry lips and watched, fascinated, as Ross’s eyes fixed on her mouth and darkened almost to black with desire. He was still holding her hand and her skin burned beneath his touch.

‘If you prefer to retire and would like me to send for your maid then I shall, of course, comply,’ he said, but his eyes gave her a different message.

Olivia freed herself from his grip and reached out with both hands to grab him by the lapels of his jacket. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, a second before his lips met hers.

When Deb awoke, the early morning light was pouring through the window and spilling across the bed. She was alone. She had already stretched out a hand instinctively and found empty space when memory returned to her and her spirits sank lower than a stone.

The night was over. It was time to go home.

She stretched and winced at the stiffness in her body and the unaccustomed soreness, the deep, tender ache inside her. It seemed to echo the ache in her soul. There was always a price to be paid.

The chinking sound of the harnesses came from below. Richard must be getting the horses ready to leave. She hurried from the bed and threw her clothes on haphazardly. She did not want to be naked when Richard came back. She did not want him to see her vulnerability now, in the bright light of day. Her mind could not encompass all the things that they had done. She did not want to have to think about it.

Nevertheless, she could not seem to help herself.

Deb sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed. A cold prickle ran down her spine and settled like a leaden weight in her stomach. Something was wrong and it was nothing to do with the night she had spent with Richard, nor the shockingly intimate and entirely pleasurable nature of their activities. Awareness had come to her during the night. She understood now the difference between how she had felt when she had found herself betrayed by Neil Stratton, and how she felt now. Both experiences, were they known, would bring her disgrace in the eyes of the world. Yet now she felt none of the shame that had dogged her for so long after her sham marriage was exposed. This time she had made her own choice freely and from something she had thought was physical desire. Now she knew how mistaken she was. Now she knew that she had fallen in love.

She let her hands fall into her lap and stared blindly out of the window. What an absolute fool she had been, thinking that she could dictate to Richard that she wished for a night of passion and then expect nothing to be different afterwards. The night had been all that she had wanted and more, glorious, blissfully fulfilling, but Richard had taken her soul as well as her body, and bound her to him with a love that could never be broken. She knew now that this was the man with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

Looking back with the clear vision of hindsight, Deb could see that she had been falling in love with Richard for weeks. She had discovered so many different facets to a man she had once dismissed as nothing more than a society rake. She had agonised over his loneliness and cherished his tenderness. Yesterday afternoon they had spent a perfect time together, building intimacy upon companionship, deepening the feelings for him that she already possessed. They were feelings that she had held for him almost from the first. The dazzling attraction, the heated tug of desire were all as nothing to the things that she valued in him, the strength and the protectiveness and the humour and the intellect that teased and matched her own…She even had some half-remembered dream of telling him that she loved him…

She gave a little moan of distress, for there was no reason to suppose that Richard felt the same way. She had never asked him for his love, only his passion.

She beat an impotent fist on the bed beside her. She was a fool. She had held on so long to her mistrust and disenchantment that she had not been able to see when love had crept up upon her.

Moving slowly, she went to the head of the stairs and started to descend to join Richard below. She did not spare a backward glance for the bedroom with its tumbled blankets or the bed where she had slept curled next to Richard and had experienced such ecstasy in his arms. She would never forget such pleasure, but they had made a bargain. She had wanted a false betrothal and for Richard to be her lover. He had given her both of those things. And now it was over.