A Fine Passion (4 page)

“Is that so?” He caught her dark gaze, held it for a pregnant instant, then quietly asked, “So why, Lady Clarice, have you taken against me? What have you imagined about me?”

She saw the trap, recognized she’d stepped into it; faint color tinged her cheeks—anger and irritation, not embarrassment. Purest alabaster, her complexion reminded him of rich cream, smooth, luscious; his fingers itched to touch, to stroke. To feel.

To make her flush with something other than anger.

She must have seen some hint of his thoughts in his eyes; her chin rose, but there was defensiveness in the gesture. “In your case, my lord, no imagination was necessary. Your actions over the years speak clearly enough.”

He’d been right; for some mystical reason she held him in contempt, even though they’d never met, never set eyes on each other, let alone communicated in any way. “Which actions are those?”

His tone would have warned most men they were treading on extremely thin ice. He was quite sure she heard the warning, read it correctly, felt equally sure as her eyes flashed that she’d dismissed it out of hand.

“I can understand that while your father lived, there was no pressing need for you to live here, no reason for you to curtail your military service.”

“Especially given the country was at war.”

Her lips thinned, but she inclined her head, acknowledging the point, conceding that much. “However”—she turned and walked out of the tree’s shade toward the rectory, a low, rambling house partially screened by the high hedge bordering the other side of the field—“once your father died, you should have returned. An estate like the manor, a village like Avening, needs someone to manage the reins. But no, you preferred to be an absentee landlord and leave Griggs to shoulder the responsibilities that should have been yours. He’s done well, but he’s not young—the years have taken their toll on him.”

Pacing beside her, Jack frowned. “I was…with my regiment.” He’d been in France, alone, but he saw no reason to tell her that. “I couldn’t simply sell out—”

“Of course you could have. Many others did.” The glance she cast him was scornful. “In our circle, elder sons—those who will inherit—don’t usually serve, and while I understand your father died unexpectedly, once he had, your place was here, not”—she gestured dismissively—“playing the dashing officer in Tunbridge Wells or wherever you were stationed.”

In France. Alone. Jack bit his tongue. What had he done to deserve this lecture? Why had he invited it—and even more pertinently, why was he putting up with it?

Why wasn’t he simply annihilating her with a setdown, putting her firmly in her place, reminding her it was no place of hers to pass judgment on him?

He glanced at her. Head up, nose elevated to a superior, distinctly haughty angle, she paced fluidly, gracefully, beside him. She had a long-legged, swinging, confident stride; he didn’t have to adjust his by much to match it.

Annihilating Boadicea wouldn’t be easy, and for some unfathomable reason, he didn’t want to meet her on any battlefield.

He did want to meet her, but on another field entirely, one with silken sheets, and a soft mattress into which she would sink…. He blinked and looked ahead.

“Then came Toulouse, but you didn’t bother to return even then. No doubt you were too busy enjoying the Victory Celebrations to remember those who’d spent the years working here for you, supporting you.”

He’d spent the months of false victory in France. Alone. Mistrusting the too-easy peace as had Dalziel and certain others, it had been he who had kept a distant eye on Elba, he who’d sent the first word that Napoleon had returned and raised the eagles again. He kept his tongue clamped between his teeth; his jaw had set.

“Even worse,” she declaimed, condemnation in every syllable, the same emotion lighting her dark eyes as she glanced, fleetingly, at him, “when everything ended at Waterloo, you compounded your slights of the past and remained in London, no doubt catching up on all you’d missed in your months abroad.”

Years. Alone. Every last week, every last month for thirteen years, all alone except for that brief, supremely dangerous, reckless three days that for him had been Waterloo. And after that, once he’d sold out, there’d been a line of pressing, very real and weighty responsibilities waiting to claim him.

Her final words had been scathing, her meaning crystal clear. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d indulged in the manner to which she was alluding; no doubt that accounted for his current state—the intense, urgent, remarkably powerful urge to slake his long-suppressed carnal appetites.

With Boadicea.

Not with any other woman. Now he’d met her, no other would do.

It had to be her.

Clearly he had his work cut out for him, but he loved challenges, especially of that sort.

An image of Boadicea—
Lady Clarice
—lying naked beneath him, heated, desperate, and wantonly begging, those long, long legs tensing about his hips as he thrust into her, helped immeasurably in focusing his mind. In clarifying his direction.

They’d reached the hedge surrounding the rectory. She lashed him with another of her cutting glances; he caught it, held her gaze as, by unvoiced consent, they paused in the archway leading into the rectory gardens.

He read her face, examined the dismissive contempt written in her fine features, that glowed, alive, in her lovely dark eyes. Slowly, he arched a brow. “So…you think I should remain at Avening and devote myself to my responsibilities?”

She smiled, not sweetly—condescendingly. “No—I believe we’ll all do better if you return to London and continue with your hedonistic existence there.”

He frowned. She continued, without hesitation answering his unvoiced question, “We’ve grown accustomed to managing without you. Those here no longer need a lord of the manor—they’ve elected someone else in your place.”

She held his eyes for a defiant instant, her gaze direct and ungiving, then she turned and swept on, heading for the rectory’s side door.

Frown deepening, Jack watched her—let his eyes drink in the quintessentially feminine sway of her hips, the evocative line from her nape to her waist, the promise of her curves…

She couldn’t mean what he thought she’d meant, surely?

There was one certain way to find out. About that, and all else he now wanted to know about Boadicea. Stirring, he followed her into the rectory.

He found the Rector of Avening, the Honorable James Altwood, in exactly the same place he’d left him seven years ago—in the chair behind the desk in his study, poring over some tome. Jack knew the subject of said tome without asking; James was a renowned military historian, a Fellow of Balliol among other things. He held the livings of numerous parishes, but other than overseeing the work of his curates, he spent all his days researching and analyzing military campaigns, both ancient and contemporary.

Boadicea, predictably, preceded him into the study. “James, Lord Warnefleet has returned—he’s come to speak with you.”

“Heh?” James looked up, peering over his spectacles. Then his gaze found Jack, and he dropped the book on the desk. “Jack, m’boy! At last!”

Jack managed not to wince as James surged to his feet. Very aware of Boadicea’s critical gaze, he went forward to grasp James’s outstretched hand and let himself be pulled into a fierce hug.

James gripped tight, thumped his back, then released him. Retaining Jack’s hand, he drew back to examine him.

Now in his fifties, James was starting to show his age; the brown hair Jack remembered as thick and wavy had thinned, and the paunch around his middle had grown. But the energy and enthusiasm in James’s brown eyes was still the same; if anyone had been responsible for encouraging Jack into the army, it was James.

James blew out a long breath, and released Jack’s hand. “Damn it, Jack, it’s a relief to see you hale and whole.”

Along with Jack’s father, James had been one of the very few who knew that Jack hadn’t spent the last thirteen years in any regimental barracks.

Jack smiled, no screening charm; with James, he was never other than himself. “It’s a huge relief to be back.” He couldn’t resist adding, “
At last
, as you so sapiently note.”

“Indeed, indeed.
Such
a shambles with your great-aunt and her holdings. But here—sit, sit!”

Waving Jack to a chair, James went to resume his, then remembered Boadicea. “Ah, thank you, Clarice.” James looked from her to Jack, at whom she was now staring, her expression, to James, impossible to interpret. Jack had no such difficulty. Boadicea was quick. She’d heard James’s reference to his great-aunt…and now wondered.

When James looked at her, he flashed her a tauntingly superior smile.

“Ah…I take it you two have met?” James looked from one to the other, sensing undercurrents but unable to read them.

“Yes.” When Jack raised his brows at her, Clarice transferred her gaze to James. “I was mushrooming, and there was a carriage accident along the road, just past the manor gates.”

“Good gracious!” James waved Clarice to a chair, waiting for her to sit before sinking into his. “What happened?”

“I didn’t actually see the accident, but I was the first to the wreck”—Clarice glanced Jack’s way as he sat in the other armchair—“then his lordship rode up.”

“Was anyone hurt?” James asked.

“The driver,” Jack replied, “a young gentleman. He’s unconscious. We’ve moved him to the manor and sent for Dr. Willis. Mrs. Connimore’s taking care of him.”

James nodded. “Good, good.” He looked at Clarice. “Was he anyone from round about?”

“No.” She frowned.

Jack recalled she’d done the same, out on the road.

“But…?” James prompted before Jack could.

Her lips twisted; she glanced at Jack, then looked at James. “I know I’ve never met him—I don’t recognize him at all—but he looks familiar.”

“Ah!” James nodded sagely.

Jack wished he knew why.

Clarice went on, “He seems too young to be anyone I knew in the past, but I wondered…he could be someone’s younger brother, or son, and I’m picking up the resemblance.”

Jack wondered which circles she’d inhabited in her “past.”

As if reading his mind, she shrugged. “All that means is that he’s most likely some scion of some tonnish family, which doesn’t get us far.”

“Hmm—I must drop by. If he doesn’t regain his wits soon, I will, although if you can’t place him, it’s unlikely I will.” James shifted his gaze to Jack. “And even less likely you’d draw a bead on him. I don’t suppose you’ve been haunting the clubs and hells lately, heh?”

Aware of Clarice’s saber-edged gaze, Jack humphed. “I barely had time to visit my tailor.”

A tap on the door heralded Macimber, James’s butler. He beamed at Jack and bowed. “Welcome home, my lord.”

“Thank you, Macimber.”

Macimber looked at James. “Mrs. Cleever wishes to know if his lordship will be remaining for luncheon, sir.”

“Yes, of course!” James looked at Jack. “You’ll stay, won’t you? I daresay Mrs. Connimore would love to have you back at your own table, but I’ve a greater need to hear your voice and learn what you’ve been about.”

Jack kept his gaze on James while gauging the quality of that other, sharp, dark-eyed gaze trained on his face. “I’d be delighted to stay for luncheon”—turning, he met Boadicea’s eyes—“if it’s no trouble?”

If she didn’t object
. She understood his question perfectly. James, puzzled, glanced back and forth; they ignored him.

Holding her dark gaze, Jack saw her decision, knew the moment the scales tipped in his favor, when her curiosity got the better of her scorn.

“I’m sure it will be no trouble….” She paused, then went on, her voice regaining its customary decisive note, “And indeed, with the young man to look after I’m sure Mrs. Connimore has enough on her plate, especially as she wasn’t aware you’d be arriving today.”

That last was delivered with a predictable bite; Jack bit back a retort to the effect that he’d grown out of short-coats many years ago.

While James instructed a delighted Macimber to set the table for three, Jack turned his mind to planning how best to exploit the advantage Boadicea and her unjustified disapproval had handed him.

When dealing with warrior queens, no advantage should be squandered.

One point that nagged at him was her age, the first point he should address in learning what she, a marquess’s daughter, was doing living buried in the country with James. A scandal was the only situation he could conjure that might account for it, yet Lady Clarice didn’t seem the sort to throw her bonnet over any windmill. A less flightly, less flibbertigibbety female was hard to imagine.

“So!” James sat back and regarded Jack with fond anticipation. “Start at the beginning of recent events. How did you find London after what? Thirteen years?”

Jack grimaced. “Not much different, truth to tell. The names were unchanged, the faces older, but the game was still the same.”

“And still left you largely unmoved, heh?” James grinned. “I always told your father he’d never have to worry over you being seduced by the delights of the capital.”

“Just so,” Jack rejoined, his tone dry. He was careful not to glance at Clarice, to see what she was making of James’s more accurate view of him; he was itching to know, but if he looked, she’d realize….

“Griggs told me that Ellicot—it is Ellicot, isn’t it—your great-aunt’s solicitor?”

Jack nodded. “Solicitor, agent, and executor combined, and he’d inherited the position just a month before Great-aunt Sophia departed this mortal coil, so he was as green as I was in terms of her estate.”

“Difficult.” James nodded understandingly. “As I was saying, Griggs told me Ellicot was close to panicking, so I wasn’t surprised when you remained in town.”

“It took months.” Jack sat back and let the frustrations of the past months show; the easiest way to convince Boadicea she’d read him entirely wrongly was simply to be himself. “Ellicot had held the fort as well as he could, but in truth, some decisions should have been made, steps taken, even without my knowledge and consent. However, I do understand he was walking a fine line, especially as he hadn’t even met me.”