Nicola Cornick, Margaret McPhee, et al (6 page)

‘That would surely depend on who you were married to?’

There was a pause. The wind sighed through the pines. ‘I suppose
so,’ Lucinda said. ‘I made a bad mistake with Leopold. I was running away from
my feelings for you, I suppose. And I was angry, so I took the first offer I
received.’

The pain and guilt in Daniel tightened another notch.

‘We all make mistakes,’ he said, ‘and mine have been the
greater.’

He saw her smile. ‘So what were your mistakes, Daniel?’

Daniel turned to look at her in the gathering dusk. ‘Leaving
you,’ he said. ‘Arrogance, complacency, thoughtlessness…Oh, and cheating a
Portuguese pirate at cards and almost paying for it with my life.’

Lucinda gave a peal of laughter.

‘And wishing,’ Daniel said softly, watching her face, ‘that I
could change the past.’

The laughter died from her eyes. ‘That
is
a mistake,
Daniel.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘We are almost at the park wall. You may
leave me here. I shall be quite safe.’

She put a hand against his chest and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.
Her lips were cool and they clung to his, and he wanted to pick her up and
carry her off to make love to her under the trees of the pine forest. But he
knew that some things could never be, and already he had let matters go far too
far.

‘Goodnight,’ she whispered, and he knew that she meant goodbye.

‘Tell them to lock the doors fast tonight,’ Daniel said.

She raised her chin. ‘Because you and your scoundrel crew will be
out smuggling?’

The frustration, the wanting, poured through him and almost swept
everything else aside. He caught her shoulders, pressing her back against the
trunk of the nearest tree.

‘Ah, Lucy, what a shockingly poor opinion you have of me,’ he
muttered, his mouth harsh against hers. He wanted to forget her anger and her
scorn and find the sweetness beneath—the sweetness he was sure was still there
for him. He plundered her mouth like the pirate he was—taking, demanding,
asking no permission. He held her hard against the unyielding wood as he stole
the response he wanted from her, his kiss fierce and insistent, until he was
panting for breath and she was too, and he knew from the touch and the feel of
her that she was his for the taking.

Her eyes were a hazy blue in the moonlight, dazed with sensual
desire, and her mouth was soft and ripe and he ached for her. But he knew that
if he made love to her now she would hate him in the morning. Because although
he could wrench this response from her body she mistrusted him, and detested
what he had become, and once she thought about what had happened she would
despise herself and him too.

With an oath he set her away from him.

‘You had better go, Lucinda,’ he said, deliberately cruel. ‘Go
before I forget what little honour I have left and treat you like the pirate I
am.’

He saw her flinch at his harshness, and then she gathered her
cloak to her and hurried away. He felt a cold desolation that had nothing to do
with the winter night.

T
HE
middle of December brought the final
Woodbridge Assembly before Christmas. The Assembly Rooms were icy cold that
night. A wind was whistling in from the sea, finding all the gaps between the
windows and setting the candle flames dancing in the draught. Lucinda drew her
shawl more closely about her and shivered on her rout chair. Company was light
that evening—a few local families, and some of the officers from the Woodbridge
barracks—but amidst the small crowd Miss Stacey Saltire shone like a jewel.

Lucinda had observed that it was often the way when a young lady
was engaged: all the gentlemen who had been wary of approaching her when she
had been husband-hunting now felt free to pay attention to her, knowing she was
promised to another. And none was more assiduous in his attentions than the
Riding Officer, Mr Owen Chance, who was even now dancing with Stacey, the two
dark heads bent close to one another as they indulged in intimate conversation.

Lucinda sighed. Not only was she concerned by what she saw—as was
Mr Leytonstone, glowering from across the other side of the floor but too
cowardly to intervene—but she felt for a moment a wave of envy so sharp that it
that shocked her. Envy for Stacey, and for the way that Owen Chance was looking
at her, and for her own lost youth and her lost love.

She had not seen Daniel since the night he had kissed her in the
woods. She had run from him then—run from his harshness and the feelings he
could still stir in her. More than anything she had run from the fact that he
was not the man she wanted him to be, and her heart ached that she had loved
him once and now he was a stranger to her.

She had kept away from the creek, just as Daniel had demanded,
and had taken her walks in less dangerous places. Sometimes as dusk was falling
she would stand by her bedroom window and scour the wide expanse of the bay for
a scarlet and black ship with a snarling dragon on the prow, but the horizon
was always empty, and she would draw the curtains together with a sigh and feel
her heart plummet to her slippers. If only she had never met him again. But she
had, and memory, reawakened, was difficult to dismiss. It taunted her at every
turn with the restless passion and excitement of that distant summer when she
and Daniel had been young. And the knowledge that he was a different man now,
supposedly a criminal and a traitor, tortured her.

She had asked questions about him of Sally Kestrel, and had
listened to Midwinter gossip with avidity. Although she knew she should forget
Daniel, she found she could not help herself. His name was mentioned
frequently, but the stories were as insubstantial as smoke, and at the end it
was impossible to tell the truth from the myth. Intriguingly, many of the
legends painted Daniel de Lancey as a hero—a man secretly in the pay of the
government rather than the renegade he pretended to be. Lucinda found she ached
for it to be true, but thought it probable that she would never know.

‘My dear Mrs Melville, you look blue-devilled!’ a warm female
voice beside her commented, and Lucinda turned to see the Duchess of Kestrel
smiling sympathetically at her. She followed Lucinda’s gaze to the couple on
the dance floor.

‘Matter for concern, do you think?’

‘As a chaperon, I would say most definitely,’ Lucinda said. She
hesitated. ‘As someone who would wish to see Miss Saltire happy, perhaps not.’

Sally Kestrel’s green eyes focused shrewdly on her face. ‘You
think that Miss Saltire will be making a mistake in marrying Mr Leytonstone?’

Lucinda shrugged a little awkwardly. She was acutely aware that
in her youth Sally Kestrel had chosen the rather more solid merits of Stephen
Saltire above the dashing brilliance of Justin Kestrel, and that it had been
twenty years before they were reunited. Their glowing love for one another now
was plain for all to see, and was something else that made Lucinda feel even
more cold and alone.

‘I think that Stacey should marry for love, not money,’ Lucinda
admitted reluctantly. ‘Though it contradicts my duty to say so.’

Sally Kestrel smiled understandingly. ‘We do not wish to see
others make the same mistakes that we did,’ she said. ‘I have already tried to
speak to Cousin Letitia, but she is adamant. They have no money and Mr
Leytonstone is very rich.’

‘And Mr Chance, I suppose, is not?’

Sally Kestrel shook her head. ‘He is better born, but he has no
fortune. And I fear that Cousin Letitia values fortune above all things.’

Lucinda glanced towards the doorway, where the Master of
Ceremonies was announcing a late arrival. The knot of people gathered by the
doorway parted to allow the newcomer entrance.

‘Mr Jackson Raleigh!’

Lucinda’s breath caught in her throat. She dropped her fan and
had to rummage under the rout chair to find it again. She felt hot and cold all
at the same time, shaking as though she had a fever. Raleigh, she remembered,
was the name that her good friend Rebecca de Lancey had used when she had lived
in London before her marriage. It was the name of a famous sailor whom some
might say had been a privateer…

She straightened up. Daniel De Lancey was coming directly across
the room towards her. He looked spectacular, in evening dress of a stark
severity that emphasised the breadth of his shoulders and the hard, strong
lines of his body. His step was light, and his demeanour one of confident charm
that, Lucinda sensed, drew the eye of every woman in the room.

She tried not to look at him, afraid that if she did it would in
some way give him away. She was surely the only one present who knew his
identity. A little flicker of anger heated her blood to think that Daniel was
taking her silence for granted, that he believed that she would not betray him.
He had the audacity of the devil himself, and a part of her thought he richly
deserved a fall. Another part of her was terrified that he would be found out.

‘My dear Mrs Melville,’ the Duchess of Kestrel was saying. ‘You
have gone very pale. Are you quite well?’

‘I am very well, thank you,’ Lucinda said, recovering. ‘I feel a
little chilled. It is a cold night.’

‘You should dance, you know,’ Sally Kestrel said, smiling. ‘Just
because one is a chaperon…’

‘Oh, I do not dance these days,’ Lucinda said.

‘Not even when the most handsome man in the room is intent on
asking you?’ the Duchess enquired.

Lucinda looked up. Daniel was now cutting a very determined path
through the small crowd towards her. He was looking straight at her, with a
mocking challenge in his eyes. He was taunting her, daring her to denounce him.
Lucinda drew herself up a little straighter in her chair.

‘Madam,’ he was bowing over her hand now. ‘Allow me to introduce
myself to you—’

‘I remember you,’ Lucinda said, before he could finish. ‘We have
met before.’

She savoured the first faint sign of wariness that she saw in his
dark eyes and smiled. ‘How do you do, Mr Raleigh?’

He raised her hand to his lips in an old-fashioned gesture and
pressed a kiss against it—a real kiss rather than a formal brush of the lips.
Her skin tingled, and she tried to withdraw her hand, but he held her fast for
a long moment.

‘I am flattered that you remember me, madam,’ he said.

‘Oh, I had all but forgotten you until you walked in,’ Lucinda
said airily. ‘But then I thought that you seemed vaguely familiar. Pray permit
me to introduce you to Her Grace the Duchess of Kestrel. Your Grace, may I
introduce Mr Raleigh?’

Daniel bowed, smiling, and Sally Kestrel looked delighted. ‘Mrs
Melville! You did not vouchsafe the fact that you and Mr Raleigh were already
acquainted. How do you do, sir? What brings you into this part of Suffolk?’

‘Business,’ Daniel said promptly. He smiled at Lucinda, a smile
of cool confidence, and to her annoyance she could feel herself blushing like a
schoolroom miss.

‘But when I saw Mrs Melville across the room,’ Daniel added, ‘I
was tempted to renew our old acquaintance and mix business with pleasure.’

‘A capital idea,’ Sally Kestrel said promptly. ‘I was remarking
to Mrs Melville only a moment ago that it is an evening for dancing…’

‘My sentiments precisely, Your Grace,’ Daniel said. He held out a
hand to Lucinda. ‘If you would do me the honour, madam?’

‘I am here to chaperon Miss Saltire, not to dance myself,’
Lucinda began, but Sally gave her a gentle little push with her fan.

‘I will watch over my cousin, Mrs Melville. What could be more
appropriate? You and Mr Raleigh must have a deal of news to catch up on.’

Daniel’s fingers were insistent against hers. ‘Come, Mrs
Melville. It is the waltz, I believe, and I am sure that you were given
permission to dance it many years ago.’

‘More than I care to remember,’ Lucinda said. She allowed him to
draw her onto the floor and into his arms. ‘You are insufferable!’ she added in
an undertone, as the music struck up. ‘Why not tell me I am at my last prayers
and have done with it?’

Daniel smiled broadly. ‘Oh, I do not believe the case to be quite
as bad as that.’ He sobered, though the smile was still in his eyes. ‘Truth to
tell, you look very beautiful tonight, Lucinda.’

Lucinda stamped down hard on the little quiver of awareness that
his words caused within her.

‘Truth, is it?’ she said coldly. ‘I thought the truth was that
you had no desire ever to see me again? You certainly went to a great deal of
trouble to make me believe so when last we met.’

The smile died from Daniel’s eyes. ‘Oh, I had the desire to see
you,’ he said quietly.

Lucinda met his eyes very directly. ‘Then why try to drive me
away?’

A rueful smile twisted his lips. ‘I was trying to do the right
thing for once, Luce. Belatedly, cruelly and probably pointlessly, but for the
right reasons all the same.’

His use of her old nickname tugged at her heart. ‘Because…?’ she
whispered.

‘Because you know it is too late.’ Daniel’s eyes were very dark,
his tone a little rough. ‘You said it yourself, Lucy. It was over a very long
time ago.’

Lucinda swallowed hard. ‘So why are you here tonight?’

‘I came to say goodbye.’

Lucinda had almost been expecting it, but now that he had said
the words she felt swamped by a loss and a loneliness that made her catch her
breath.

‘You are insane to take such a risk,’ she whispered.

‘I know.’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘I had to.’ Daniel’s eyes were very dark. ‘I wanted to see you
one last time.’

Lucinda’s heart was beating fiercely in her throat. ‘There is no
point,’ she said harshly. ‘Ever since we met we have known that what was once
between us cannot be rekindled. Why risk all for one last meeting?’