Shining Threads (15 page)

She did not see it, only the approval written on his face and that was all she wanted.

‘And what about you, Walter?’ She grinned at the stable lad who was staring, open-mouthed and slack-jawed at this dashing young lad who was very definitely
not
a young lad.
Though her hair was shorter than his own, its boyishness merely served to emphasise the thrusting peaks of her high young breasts, the smooth white skin of her shoulders above the disarranged
neckline of the dinner-gown she still wore, the slender shapeliness of her bare arms which he had never really noticed before, and the sight of it all took his breath away.

‘By gum, Miss Tessa,’ he breathed admiringly, letting his masculine appreciation show in the way his eyes ran over her, then blushing furiously he turned and blundered from the
stable.

‘Well, cousin,’ Drew’s voice was somewhat husky and his fingers gripped the scissors fiercely, ‘it seems you have at least one admirer should the rest turn tail at the
sight of you.’ They wouldn’t, of course, his eyes told her.

‘Fiddlesticks! I want no admirers.’ Her heart beat fast and joyously as she ran her hand through the delightful softness and lightness of her hair. ‘Come on, let me slip inside
and up to my bedroom before Mother sees me or I’ll be for it. I’m sure you will want to ride over to the Hall tomorrow to tell Nicky Longworth of your new foal and I want to come with
you. We’d best lie low until then or we’re bound to be stopped.’

For a second only she lost her nerve at the thought of her mother’s dark anger, then she tossed her head again as another thought followed, much more exciting.

What would Will Broadbent think? Would he look at her as approvingly as her cousins and Walter had done? Would his eyes warm with admiration, then narrow in that quite thrilling and masculine
way which happened sometimes? Or would he laugh, treat her as an enormously amusing child, naughty and wilful and deserving of a spanking?

Well, what did it matter what Will Broadbent thought? His opinion meant nothing to her, she told herself, and if he so much as smiled when next she saw him she would . . . what would she do? As
she lay in her bed, having avoided the servants and her family and gained the privacy of her room quite safely, she grinned wickedly in the dark at the thought of the fun there would be
tomorrow.

7

The fox, being a night feeder, provides no sport early in the day and it would give her the greatest satisfaction, she decided, to arrive at the Hall amongst the Squire’s Friday-to-Monday
guests before they set off in its pursuit. There would be aristocratic ladies and gentlemen, manorial families from Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire and perhaps even further afield come for the
start of the hunting season, booted and spurred, languid and bored and ready to be amused by anything for a lark, particularly the gentlemen who would approve of her own boldness in defying every
convention enforced by society. It would give her even more satisfaction to see their faces when she whipped off her top hat to reveal the splendour of her new hair style which nobody but Drew and
Pearce and Walter had yet seen.

No, she wouldn’t wear a hat. She would gallop up to the Hall with her short hair all about her head as she had seen her cousins do and would enjoy the vast consternation and be as
outrageous as she pleased. She would ride with the wind intoxicatingly in her face and hair, through farmyards and over fences, showing them her daring and endurance, showing them that she was as
able and strong and durable as any man there. Why she should want to do so never crossed her mind.

It was a clear and glorious day. The trees were almost naked now and the fallen leaves made a dry, rustling sound beneath the hooves of the horses, a splendid carpet of red, gold, green and
brown. The fields had been harvested, then ploughed and the long, neat furrows reached into the distance, orderly and somewhat business-like. Bright-eyed jackdaws disappeared in and out of them,
hopping up and down with sprightly steps, and on the edge of the fields stood trees holding the former spring nests of rookeries.

The mellow October day was perfect, acting as a barrier between the last of the autumn and the bitter weeks of winter to come. There were still wild flowers bobbing their last blooms in the cool
sunshine: the yellow buttons of tansy and orange of toadflax, the deep pink and white of fumitory, its fern-like leaf so fragile it looked like smoke from a distance.

Though she rode like the wind, leaping and diving, the thundering explosion of horses’ hooves in her ears, flat on her mare’s back across pasture and meadow, her companions close
about her, hounds ahead, the clarion call of the horn, the spray of mud and river water, the scatter of earth thrown up by their passage, she was scarcely conscious of it, or them, as she moved
through the day in some dream world, their noisy presence jostling about her like discordant ghosts. Her cousins were nowhere to be found when later the stable yard at the Hall was filled with the
wild-riding end of the hunting party, hoof-beats erupting against the cobbles, the smell of steaming horse-flesh, the well-bred shouts of the fox-hunting set applauding the success of the day. Her
own cheek carried the brown stain of dried fox-blood for she had been the first lady to reach the kill. There was to be champagne and they pressed her to stay but, for some reason, she found that
the great and glorious sparkle with which the day had begun had evaporated. She could not have said why since she had been a huge success, showered with compliments on her appearance, her bravery
and the glory of the kill, but really, she said politely to the Squire, who could not take his eyes from her flaunting and extraordinary beauty, she must be getting home since her
‘people’, speaking as
they
spoke, would be expecting her.

She was on the top road which led from Longworth Hall to Crossfold and Greenacres when he rose from the flat stone on which he had been sitting. It seemed right, somehow, as though everything
had been moving towards this moment: the frustration of yesterday, the cutting of her hair as an act of bravado which had been a statement of some pressure within her; the dream-like quality of
today, leading up to her meeting with this man who had trembled on the edge of her conscious thought ever since she had opposed him in the mill yard.

She reined in her mare, ready to smile, the afternoon, though drawing in towards nightfall, brighter suddenly. She had her back to the lowering sun which shone directly into his eyes and she
could see the expression in them, warm, glad, she knew, to see her, as she was to see him.

‘Miss Harrison.’ His uncompromising jaw which told the rest of the world of Will Broadbent’s intention to succeed, to get on with his life in whichever way it took his fancy,
softened for her. She felt herself become disentangled from the complexities which seemed to beset her, and life slowed down and simplified to this moment, to this quiet stretch of moorland and she
knew he made it so. She sat for several long, tension-free seconds, looking at him, at the understanding he had of her which showed in his quiet smile, glancing away smilingly, then back at him,
recognising that there was no need for haste nor impatience.

‘Will you not get down?’

‘I think I might.’

‘I hesitate to help you.’ He grinned, absurdly pleased with himself for some reason which seemed not to matter in the lingering end of this lovely day, though she guessed it had
something to do with her.

‘Perhaps I might not mind today.’

‘Miss Harrison! I can hardly believe my ears. Have you lost your senses?’ He was still smiling and warm. ‘Where is the independent young lady who needs assistance from no man,
or so she told me?’

‘I . . . I found that to be untrue, Mr Broadbent, if you remember . . . ?’ Both their faces darkened suddenly as they were reminded of her encounter with the tinkers from which he
had saved her. She still woke in the night, her body drenched in sweat, crawling with the memory of those filthy hands, the rank stench of unwashed bodies and decaying teeth in her dreaming
nostrils. Only the deliberate bringing back of this man’s controlled strength which he had shown her twice now, could dissolve the nightmare.

The quiet, almost tender moment shattered and his face closed up.

‘Aye, I remember it and it occurs to me you made me a promise on that day. Have you no concern for your own safety, girl? At least when you came over to Annie’s you had the sense to
bring your dogs but now I find you riding hell for leather along a lonely track which no sane woman would attempt. Have you no sense at all?’

‘Apparently not, Mr Broadbent,’ she began, ready to smile, to soothe his sudden irritation with an unusual apology, a warm glance, a reference to Drew and Pearce who could not be far
behind her. But the image of her as he had seen her then, fragile, defenceless, made him harsh in his fear for her, careless of the lovely moment they had just created.

‘You did not mean to keep your promise then?’

‘Yes, I did, but . . .’

‘Then why are you here completely alone, with no one, not even those dogs to protect you?’

‘If you will allow me to speak . . .’

‘To make further promises which you have no intention of keeping?’

‘No, I would just like to . . .’

‘You are like a child who must be forever watched . . .’

‘Dear God!’ She was as maddened as he now without really knowing why. The strange sense of unhurried tranquillity, the smiling calm he had instilled in her had gone and she felt her
resentment rise sharply to swamp her previous pleasure. What right had
he
to tell
her
where she might or might not go, and with whom. She was at liberty to please herself how she went
about, her haughty expression said. To tell the truth, in the excitement of the last twenty-four hours she had given no thought to the danger which could stalk these moors and which recently she
had been careful of. She had expected to ride home with Drew and Pearce, later on, much later on, and it was only her own curious unease which had brought her home early.

But that had nothing to do with Will Broadbent. Just because he had rescued her from those Irish tinkers – whom she had now convinced herself she could have dealt with on her own anyway
– he imagined he owned her. Well, he didn’t and she would tell him so. Sensing her anger, her mare began to move restlessly, stepping sideways in a circle round the standing man until
the sun which had been at Tessa’s back now fell on her face.

‘I would be obliged if you would get out of my way,’ she said, high-toned as any of those with whom she had hunted that day. ‘You are making my mare nervous,’ which was
not true. ‘I cannot imagine what you can be doing hanging about on this path like some wandering vagrant . . .’ Her voice, which had been loud and defiant died away slowly as the
expression of ill-humour on his face drained away and the corners of his mouth twitched. His whole manner altered miraculously. His eyes became warm again and alive with amusement and his mouth
stretched in a wide smile over his white teeth.

‘What the devil have you been doing to yourself, lass?’ he laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘My God, if there was another girl like you in the whole wide world I’d
eat me damned cap. Peak an’ all.’

For a moment she felt her anger dissipate and pleasure moved in her again for she took his words as a compliment. But he had not done yet. ‘If you were mine I’d take a strap to you
for you’re surely the most contrary female in Christendom. There must be a thousand women in Lancashire primping and preening with the curling irons, or whatever it is you women do in an
effort to catch the eye of us men, and they would all, like as not, give their souls for hair such as you had. But you! You have to throw it away like some unwanted . . .’

‘It
was
unwanted and is none of your business besides,’ she said tartly.

‘Dear God,’ his eyes had lost their glow, ‘d’you think I’m not aware of that?’

‘Then why is it that every time we meet you find it necessary to threaten me with a thrashing and spend all your time lecturing me on how foolish I am?’

His voice snapped in exasperation and he made a sudden movement towards her mare, catching the bridle and bringing the animal to a halt. He was breathing hard and his face had darkened.

‘Because that is the feeling you arouse in me with that capricious and flighty manner you have.
And
the careless way you put yourself in danger. And for God’s sake get down
off that damned animal: I’ve a crick in me neck from looking up at you.’

‘Again I say what I do does not concern you and
no
, I will not get down. I am on my way home so let go of that bridle before I am forced to lay my crop about you.’

He sighed and stepped away. His face was without expression now, the warmth and laughter she always seemed to have the power of inspiring in him, emptying from him.

‘You’re right, it’s nowt to do wi’ me so I’ll move on and you can do the same, Miss Harrison.’

He watched her turn, ready to guide her mare away, her head, so strangely defenceless in its short, close-fitting cap of tumbled waves, held in high disdain. He was struck by the way the loss of
her hair, which was said to be a woman’s crowning glory, had made her somehow more and not less feminine and the words were out before he stopped to think about them, or the effect they were
to have on his life.

‘It suits you like that. I don’t know why it should, but it does.’

‘Your approval is of no concern to me, Will Broadbent. I’m sure you know that?’ Her lip curled disdainfully but she did not move on.

‘Indeed I do, Miss Harrison. You don’t give a damn what anyone thinks, or so you keep telling me and who am I to argue?’ His mouth began to twitch again and she looked at him
suspiciously, not at all sure whether to be offended again. He smiled as his eyes went to her hair, but they admired it now, and
her
, and she was somewhat mollified.

‘Well, then,’ she said, not quite sure what she meant by it.