A Dark and Brooding Gentleman (7 page)

‘Miss Allardyce …?’ Hunter pressed.

Phoebe knew what Hunter was offering her—the chance to save her papa. She raised her gaze to look through the soft flickering candlelight at the stark handsome man who so fascinated her. ‘You are not mistaken,’ she said and she heard the words as if they had been spoken by someone other than herself.

She saw something flicker in Hunter’s eyes, and she could not tell whether it was surprise or anger or something
else altogether. He made not one move and his expression was hard and thoughtful. ‘But that night in my study …’

‘I have changed my mind.’

The silenced hummed loud between them. The very air seemed to crackle as if there were a storm waiting to unleash.

‘Do you even know what you are asking?’ His voice had dropped to barely more than a husky whisper.

‘Of course,’ Phoebe lied. She remembered Elspeth’s whispered warnings from so long ago and wished she had asked more. ‘As you said, why else would I be here?’ Her heart was thudding so loud she wondered that he could not hear it.

He stepped closer and stroked his fingers against her cheek, sliding them down to touch against her lips. Phoebe’s breath shook. Her blood pounded all the harder.

‘I am not sure that I believe you,’ he said softly and let his hand fall away.

Her heart stuttered at his words—she knew just how close to the edge she was treading. Her father’s life hung in the balance. She knew she had to persuade Hunter. Slowly she reached her face up to his and brushed her lips against his cheek.

His skin was rough with the stubbled growth of beard. The scent of him encompassed her, both familiar and enticing. It was such a very wicked thing to do, and Hunter must have thought so, too, for she heard his sudden intake of air and saw the sharpening of his gaze.

The candle in her hand began to tremble and she could not still it. He took it from her and set it down upon the chest of drawers, beside the looking glass.

‘Miss Allardyce,’ he said and his voice was so soft and so very sensual that it made her tremble all the more.

He lowered his face to hers, his mouth so close yet not quite touching. She felt the warmth of his breath caress her hair, her eyelids, the line of her cheek and everywhere that it touched her skin blossomed and tingled. His breath swept a kiss against her mouth and the sensation of it shimmered through her body, even though his lips had not yet touched to her own. The breath caught in her throat in anticipation.

‘One last chance …’ he whispered softly against her ear. A shiver stroked all the way down Phoebe’s spine and the breath she had been holding rushed from her lungs. ‘To change your mind …’ His mouth hovered just above her own, so close she felt his words rather than heard them. She shivered again and felt her nipples tighten.

His eyes were dark in the candlelight, dark and dangerous and utterly beguiling.

‘Miss Allardyce …’ he whispered and his gaze swept slowly, sensually down to fix upon her lips. ‘Phoebe …’ and she quivered at the hunger in his voice.

She shook her head and reached her mouth towards his, and as Hunter finally claimed her lips she closed her eyes and gave herself up to him.

The kiss was more than Phoebe could ever have imagined a kiss to be. Gentle yet possessive. Enticing yet demanding. His lips courting hers to make her forget that anything else even existed. It seemed that she had waited all her life for this moment and this man. Nothing had ever felt so right, nothing ever so wonderful. She felt his arms around her, moulding her against
his body, breast to breast, thigh to thigh, as his mouth worked its wonder upon her own. Phoebe yielded to him and all that he offered, splaying her hands against the hard muscle of his chest so she could feel the warmth of his skin through the fine linen of his shirt, pressing herself closer to feel the heat in his long muscular thighs.

She heard the rasp of Hunter’s breath, a sound that mirrored her own. She was his, completely, utterly, just as he was hers. He deepened the kiss, his lips inviting hers to so much more, and she did not even think of not following. His tongue led hers in a dance that both fed and consumed, with such intimacy and passion as to scorch away all that was in its path. And the blood was rushing in her veins and desire was pounding in her soul, and everything was hot and reckless and overwhelmed with her need for Hunter. She felt she had known him for a thousand lifetimes, that he was her alpha and omega, that for her there would never be any other man.

He threaded his fingers through the length of her hair, teasing and mussing and stroking.

‘Phoebe,’ he whispered her name and she answered his call with everything that she was and everything that she would be.

The touch of his hand scorched through her nightdress, caressing her breast, her hip, her stomach, touching her as she had never been touched before, lighting a fire in her thighs and belly. She burned for him, ached for him, arched against him, wanting this and everything that could be between them. Then she felt his hand slip inside the nightdress, to the bare skin of her breast, his fingers teasing against its hardened sensitive peak,
touching the very core of her being, rocking the world on its axis. She gave a moan and, as her legs buckled beneath her, stumbled back against the tall wooden bedpost even as Hunter caught her.

Phoebe glanced up, her gaze falling directly at the looking glass. The woman she saw there was dark-eyed and flushed with passion, her hair long and wanton, her nightdress gaping to expose small pale breasts and she was in the arms of a tall dark-haired man. And even then it did not hit her, not until the man turned his face to follow her gaze and she saw that it was Hunter.

Hunter stared at the reflection and the shock of it cooled his ardour in an instant. Only then did he realise just what he was doing—ravishing Phoebe Allardyce with all the thoroughness of a rake. He stared, appalled at himself, and released her, stepping away to open up a space between them.

He saw the daze clear from her eyes, saw the sudden awareness and the shame and horror that followed in its stead. She looked as shocked as he felt, staring at him with great wide eyes as if she could not believe what had just passed between them. He could hear the raggedness of her breathing, see the tremble in her hands as she clutched her nightdress to cover herself.

‘Phoebe—’

But she turned and fled, silent as a wraith.

Hunter made no move to stop her. Just stood where he was until he heard the quiet closing of the door. His heart was still thudding with a sickening speed. He raked a hand through his hair and wondered what the hell had just happened between him and Phoebe Allardyce. Such untutored passion, such connection and depth of desire. Hunter had never experienced anything
like it before. And yet he had known she was an innocent from that very first tentative touch of her lips.

God help me,
he thought.
God help me in truth.

Her candle still sat upon his chest of drawers. Hunter lifted it, noting that his hand was not quite steady as he did so. His blood was still surging too hard, his heart beating too strong. He took a deep breath, and struggled to control himself. And then his eye caught the glint of something on the Turkey rug before his feet. He crouched to retrieve his diamond cravat pin, and by its side found the dark silken ribbon he had slid from Phoebe Allardyce’s hair. He rose and surveyed the room.

Nothing was missing. Nothing else had been moved. He slipped the diamond pin into its place and threaded the ribbon through his fingers. And the look in his eyes was brooding, for he knew most assuredly that she had not come to his room to wait for him.

Miss Phoebe Allardyce had been searching through his jewellery casket … and had taken not one item.

P
hoebe stood by the window in her bedchamber, staring out over the walled garden and the still, dark water of the loch. The brightness of the morning sun hurt her eyes and she felt tired and groggy from a night devoid of sleep. Behind her the bed was a tumbled mess of sheets and blankets, where she had tossed and turned and worried through the hours of darkness.

The memory of what had happened between them, the clear knowledge of what she had done, made her cringe. She leaned her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes, knowing that the hours that had since passed relieved nothing of the fury of emotion that pulsed through her. Shame and embarrassment, guilt and desire.

She had led him to kiss her, to touch her in ways Phoebe could never have imagined. And the most terrible thing of all was the wickedness of her own feelings. That she had wanted his kiss, that in some deep instinctive way she had needed it. Hunter had awakened
something within her that she had not even known existed, something she did not understand and that, standing here alone in the cold light of day, seemed very far away. She wondered how on earth she was going to be able to face him again, after what had passed between them, after what she had led him to believe. And yet if she was to hide the truth of what she had been doing in his bedchamber she knew she would have to do precisely that.

When she opened her eyes and looked out again the moor looked cold and bleak beneath the white-grey sky and the wind keened low through the panes of her window. And she seemed to hear again the echo of her father’s words,
There are dark whisperings about him, evil rumours …
Phoebe shivered and forced her thoughts away from Hunter. There was the whole of Blackloch to be searched, and she could not balk from it. She turned and moved to face the day.

Phoebe and Mrs Hunter worked side by side on the tapestry. Each day they filled in a little more of the still-life vase and flowers sketched upon the canvas, their needles flashing fast in the sunlight of the drawing room. Mrs Hunter brought the roses to life with threads of dusky pink while Phoebe stitched at the freesias with a violet thread. They worked together in comfortable silence.

Mrs Hunter tied off her thread and searched in their thread basket for a skein. ‘Oh, bother!’

‘What is wrong?’ Phoebe stopped stitching to glance round at Mrs Hunter.

‘I am about to start the leaves and have left the pale
green thread in my bedchamber. Would you be a dear and run and fetch it, Phoebe?’ ‘Of course.’

‘I think it is on my bedside table,’ she called as Phoebe exited the drawing door.

The green-coloured thread was not upon the bedside table. As Phoebe scanned around the room she realised the opportunity that had just presented itself. This was her chance to search the bedchamber, not for the thread, but for something else altogether.

It felt so wrong, so sordid, that she hated to do it, but one thought of her papa was enough to push such sensibilities aside. Phoebe began a systematic and speedy search. She started with Mrs Hunter’s jewellery box, moved on to her trinket box and the drawers of her dressing table, then the drawers of the bedside cabinet. The minutes passed too quickly. She found the thread, a cool pale green reminiscent of Hunter’s eyes, but nothing else that she was seeking, and knew that she could take no more time. Mrs Hunter was waiting. She gathered up the skein of thread and left.

‘There you are, Miss Allardyce, or perhaps, as we are alone, I may call you Phoebe.’ Hunter moved from his position leaning against the wall outside his mother’s bedchamber. ‘I thought you were never going to come back out of there. I believe my mother is in the drawing room if you are looking for her.’

Miss Allardyce gave a start and a tint of peaches coloured her cheeks. ‘Mrs Hunter sent me to fetch some thread.’ She handed him the skein as if offering her proof. ‘It was not where it was supposed to be. I had to search for it and, well, it took an age in the finding.’ Her voice was calm enough, but she was talking too much,
revealing her nerves and, Hunter suspected, her guilt. ‘If you will excuse me, sir, I fear I have kept Mrs Hunter waiting long enough.’ He saw the calm determination slot back down over her ruffled poise.

He stayed her with a hand to her arm, and felt her jump beneath his touch. ‘Only fifteen minutes, Phoebe, what are a few minutes more?’

‘You were timing me?’

‘In my eagerness to see you.’ And it was only half a lie.

‘Mr Hunter!’ She sounded breathless.

‘Sebastian,’ he insisted, and told himself he was doing this for the sake of his mother’s safety, and not because he had wanted Miss Allardyce since first setting eyes on her. Not that he would allow matters to progress anywhere near as far as taking her; unlike last night, now he was prepared. Hell, but the kiss had shaken him enough; he could not doubt what it had done to Phoebe Allardyce. What the hell was she looking for in the rooms of Blackloch? A little more pressure and she would reveal the truth in one way or another.

‘Really, I must go.’

But Hunter slid his hand down her arm to take her hand in his. ‘Are you forgetting our arrangement, Phoebe?’

‘Arrangement?’ Her expression was innocent and artless, her eyes filled with wariness she could not quite disguise.

‘Surely you have not forgotten last night?’ he murmured.

Her blush intensified. ‘Last night …’ And just for a moment something of the strength in her eyes faltered. Her hand slipped out of his and she backed away until
the wall blocked her retreat. She dropped her gaze, hiding beneath the sweep of those tawny-red lashes so that he thought she would cease her pretence.

‘Phoebe?’ he said more gently.

She looked up at him then and he saw that he was wrong. They stared at one another across the width of the passageway and in her eyes was nothing of capitulation, only caution and, beneath it, a steadfast resolve that bordered on defiance. He wondered what she would do if he took her in his arms and kissed her as hard and thoroughly as he wanted to. What would it take to make her confess the truth of what she had been doing in his bedchamber last night, of what she had been searching for in his mother’s rooms just now? Would she let him carry her into his bedchamber, throw her on bed and bury himself inside her? He made not one move, but something of his thoughts must have shown in his face for she paled, but she still did not back down.

‘Sebastian …’ The sound of his name upon her lips made his pulse kick. ‘We will speak of this later. But for now I must not keep your mother waiting.’ Her voice was all calmness and control. She turned to leave, but he caught hold of her elbow, preventing her departure. He felt her start beneath his touch, heard the slight catch of her breath, saw the frenzied leap of the pulse in her neck, and he knew she was not so unaffected as she was feigning. Her eyes locked with his, and in their depths he thought he saw the flash of guilt and fear and desire.

‘I have already told you—’

He said not one word, just pressed the pale green thread into her hand and walked away.

Over the next few days Phoebe found it impossible to continue her search of Blackloch. Hunter was always around, brooding, silent and yet present. For all the animosity that existed between him and his mother, since the night she had gone to his bedchamber he had been spending more and more time in Mrs Hunter’s company. And in his presence Phoebe felt a constant awareness of their ‘arrangement’ as he had called it. Every time their eyes met the memory of that night was between them, of his mouth possessing hers. The feel of his arms holding her close, of being pressed against the long hard length of his body. She denied the thoughts, pushed them away, knowing that she could not afford to let herself weaken, feeling a guilt at this unbidden attraction. Responsibility sat heavy on her shoulders. And the fear for her papa drove her on.

Beneath the shade of a crab apple tree in the walled garden Phoebe and Mrs Hunter sat reading.

‘This was always my favourite spot,’ Mrs Hunter told Phoebe, ‘for it is nicely tucked away out of the wind.’

‘Mother.’ Hunter appeared through the arched gateway, making Phoebe start and lose her place in her book. He gave a grave bow. ‘I am need of your company today to assist with the tenant visits.’

Mrs Hunter peered at him with irritation. ‘I thought your steward, McEwan, did that.’

‘The visits involve matters that would be better dealt with by a woman—the distribution of linens and such.’

Mrs Hunter frowned. ‘What of Mrs Dawson?’

‘Mrs Dawson left Blackloch shortly after you did.’

‘And you did not replace her? It is little wonder the place is in such disarray without a housekeeper.’

Hunter said nothing, but it seemed to Phoebe, as mother and son stared at one another with expressions that boarded on glacial, the comfortable temperature within the sheltered garden spot seemed to drop a few degrees.

Mrs Hunter gave in first. ‘It seems I have little option,’ she complained with a scowl, which she then turned upon Phoebe. ‘Come along, Phoebe, you may return the books to my room and ready yourself.’

‘Ready myself?’ Phoebe repeated and looked at her employer. ‘But shall you not be attending with Mr Hunter alone?’

‘No, I shall not,’ snapped the lady. ‘It is bad enough that I am being dragged around the countryside visiting one smelly peasant after another, but I am certainly not enduring the day alone.’ And with a final glare at her son Mrs Hunter marched from the garden.

Phoebe met Hunter’s gaze briefly, but a
frisson
of awareness tingled between them and she had a horrible suspicion as to the reason Hunter was suddenly desirous of his mother’s company. She turned away before he could fathom anything of her thoughts and followed in Mrs Hunter’s wake.

Hunter rode on his great black horse. Mrs Hunter and Phoebe sat in Hunter’s fine coach, Mrs Hunter not wishing to ruin hers by trailing it through, as the lady put it, the mud of all the moor. The baskets of linens and food were fastened in the boot.

Within each farmstead Hunter spoke to the man of the house, he who was holding the tenancy to farm the
land, and eke some measure of living from it. From what Phoebe could hear their conversations seemed to centre on breeds of sheep, trout in the lochs, deer and the maintenance of the farm buildings. While Hunter dealt with that side of it, Mrs Hunter was in her element bestowing sheets, blankets and great hampers of food on the wives. Between each farm she moaned incessantly about the mud dirtying her shoes and the wind ruining her hair. But once in the farms Phoebe could see that Mrs Hunter was secretly enjoying herself.

One of the farmsteads, the closest to Blackloch and located on a particularly bleak stretch of the moor, housed a family of eight children, all girls, the oldest of which looked to be only ten or eleven years of age. The younger girls, dressed in clothes that looked worn and shabby, were running about the yard when the carriage drew up. The older girls were helping their mother peg wet washing to a drying line. All activity ceased as the coach rolled into the yard.

The woman’s husband, the tenant sheep farmer, was a thin, grey-haired man with a kind but work-worn face. He looked as if life on the moor was not an easy existence. Hunter and the man must have been talking of the barn for the pair of them were looking and pointing in that direction before walking off towards the small wooden building.

The small girls gathered round Mrs Hunter and Phoebe in silence, their little faces in awe of their visitors, their hands and fronts of their smocks revealing that they had been busy playing in the dirt.

‘Oh, Mrs Hunter, ma’am.’ The mother hastened to greet them, pink cheeked and breathless, and Phoebe saw the wash of embarrassment on Mrs Hunter’s face as
her gaze dropped to the woman’s heavily swollen belly. Mrs Hunter glanced around almost as if checking that her son was not witnessing the woman’s condition. And now Hunter’s request for his mother’s presence seemed to make sense and Phoebe felt ashamed at her thoughts over his motive.

‘Such a pleasure, ma’am. I was just doing the washing for it is a fine drying day.’

‘Indeed,’ said Mrs Hunter and smiled as if she understood completely, even though Phoebe doubted whether Mrs Hunter had ever had to give a thought to the washing and drying of clothes in the whole of her life.

‘Our Martha loves working in the big house. She cannae speak highly enough of you and Mr Hunter, ma’am,’ the woman gushed.

Mrs Hunter smiled magnanimously and said to Phoebe, ‘Martha Beattie is a maid of all at Blackloch.’

Phoebe thought of the freckle-faced young girl who lit the fires and drew the water and swept the stairs.

The footman carried over two baskets, setting them down upon a bench in the yard and opening the lids for the farmer’s wife to see the linens in one and food in the other, before leaving to answer Hunter’s summons.

‘Oh, bless you, ma’am, bless you. I’ve never enough baby linens to go round. Rosie and Meg are still in nappies, and I didnae ken how I was gonnae manage wi’ the other wee one on her way.’ She patted her hugely rounded stomach.

The children’s eyes lit up when they saw the hamper of food. Soon their curiosity overcame their awe and they edged closer.

‘Can I offer you some water, or a little ale?’ Mrs Beattie asked.

But Mrs Hunter declined graciously.

‘Let me get this emptied so that you can take the baskets away back wi’ you.’ And the woman lifted both baskets.

Mrs Hunter frowned. ‘Should you be …?’

Phoebe stepped forwards. ‘Please allow me to help you with that, Mrs Beattie.’

‘Ocht, they’re no’ heavy, no’ next to a load of wet wash. Never be botherin’ yoursel’, miss.’

But Phoebe had taken hold of the baskets, which were, she could confirm, most definitely too heavy to be carried by a woman in Mrs Beattie’s condition.

She carried the baskets into the cottage and set them down where Mrs Beattie directed, before helping the woman to unpack their contents. The cottage was clean, scrubbed and well swept, but the rooms were small and the bedroom in which they were piling the linens was tiny with barely room for more than the bed.