Louise Allen - Moonlight And Mistletoe

‘Why?’ He turned back, his eyes dark. ‘Be angry with me, I should have known what would happen. I just wanted to be alone with you, hold you. Hester, my feelings for you are-’

‘Much better left unsaid,’ she interjected hastily, walking past him so she was looking out over the Vale and not at his face. ‘Nothing is possible between us other than friendship. It seems there is an attraction as well. I cannot allow that to continue, not and live the sort of life I have set out for myself.’

Where the words, and the strength to say them, came from she had no idea. Hester blinked hack what felt treacherously like tears and focused hard on the village lying below her, the white line of the post road snaking past it, the glitter of water marking the canal beyond. This was home now, the only fixed thing in her life.

He had moved silently behind her; the first she knew of it were his hands on her shoulders. They rested there, heavy but undemanding. ‘Do you believe I was intending to offer you a carte blanche?’

‘I do not know,’ she replied in as calm a voice as Guy was using. ‘But I know that I should not act in such a manner that you could be forgiven for believing such an offer would be acceptable. It would not be.’ She spun round and he dropped his hands. ‘Ever.’

His eyes had gone from dark to stormy and with a shock Hester recognised anger to match her own. Anger, and, although it was hard to believe, uncertainty, almost vulnerability. She did not want him to be vulnerable or uncertain. She wanted a rock, a supporter, a friend-and had foolishly believed she could have all that and keep her feelings hidden. What Guy’s feelings were she had hardly stopped to consider, she realised with a pang of guilt.

‘I can assure you that, whatever my intentions, offering you a position as my mistress was not one of them. You may have my word that I never will.’

His anger sparked hers into fire again. Guilt, the knowledge that she was behaving badly, the tensions of the mystery that enveloped them, flared.

‘Good. In fact, excellent. We now know exactly where we both stand. And let me assure you that I will never sell you the Moon House, whatever you offer me, and you can therefore cut your losses and leave Winterbourne. If I experience any further trouble, believe me, I will call upon the local magistrate.’

Guy half turned as he stalked back to the curricle. ‘The local magistrate may well be Sir Lewis Nugent.’ He gathered up the reins and waited in silence until she reached his side, handed her her hat, then helped her up on to the seat.

Hester sat down with a thump. ‘Then I will take on Ben Aston as a bodyguard and hire a Bow Street Runner. Will you please drive me home, my lord?’

‘Very well, Miss Lattimer.’ He set the curricle in motion, his weight shifting easily as it bumped over the rough track.

Hester jammed her bonnet back on her head, yanked the ribbons together and sat fuming. By the time they reached the bottom of the hill she was feeling ashamed of herself, at the point where they passed the gates of Winterbourne Hall she realised that the pair of them staring fixedly at the road in front must present a ludicrous picture and by the time the church tower was in sight her sense of the ridiculous had got the better of her and she had to suppress a wry smile.

‘My lord?’

‘Yes, Miss Lattimer?’

‘I apologise, my lord.’

‘So do I, Miss Lattimer. I presume it has occurred to you, as it has to me, that attempting to have a row in a curricle is both impractical and undignified.’

Hester gave a little gasp of amusement that was half genuine, half the unsafe laughter of tension and excitement.

‘I trust we have not been presenting a spectacle of the sulks for any passing yokels.’

‘I never sulk. I may exhibit a brooding silence, it is quite another thing.’ This time her gurgle of amusement was wholly genuine. ‘Do you think we might revert to Christian names, Miss Lattimer’?’

‘I believe so, my lord.’

She flashed a glancing smile at him and saw the storm clouds had gone from his eyes and the twist of amusement that so charmed her was back at the corner of his lips. But she was shaken; she had never aroused such passion in a man, never had her own passions aroused in such a way. To the knowledge that she loved Guy Westrope she had to add the realisation that she desired him in every possible way and that, whatever his feelings or intentions, he felt that desire also.

As the curricle drew up in front of the Moon House the door swung open and Hester’s small household appeared.

‘Oh, Hester dear, thank goodness you are safe!’ Maria almost ran down the path.

‘Why ever should I not be?’ Hester demanded. She climbed down and was startled to find herself clutched to Miss Prudhome’s skinny bosom.

‘Because there are more roses and we did not know where you were,’ Susan said bluntly, meeting them as they came up the path. ‘Sir Lewis called in with a book he said he had forgotten to give you and seemed surprised you had not returned. You’ve been gone three hours, Miss Hester.’

‘We have been for a drive.’ Hester felt flustered at having to account for her movements, but even more so by the obvious alarm of Maria, Susan and Jethro. ‘Jethro, what has happened? You said more roses?’

‘Come upstairs.’ He led the way, but in the hall Guy strode past him and took the stairs two at a time.

‘Stay there, Hester.’

Stubbornly Hester mounted the stairs in his wake. Whatever had occurred, seeing it could not be worse than imagining it. Guy was standing on the landing outside her room, looking at the floor. A trail of evenly spaced roses led halfway across the landing.

With a calm she was far from feeling, Hester stooped and picked up the flowers. ‘Eight,’ she counted. ‘He keeps to his pattern, does he not? And they are where you predicted-approaching my door.’

‘He is thinking as I would if I wanted to frighten you,’ Guy remarked dispassionately, standing hand on hips surveying the corridor. ‘I will send a footman over this evening to spend the night in the kitchen again, but I think he will have a peaceful time-after this you should be safe for a night and a day.’

Guy opened the chamber door and raised an eyebrow at Hester. ‘May I? I would feel more comfortable if I checked the room.’

Hester nodded and followed him in. His tall figure in boots and riding coat seemed to overpower the feminine room and she was almost more conscious of him as a male creature than she had been in his arms on the downs.

She waited, standing quietly while he checked under the bed, in the dressing room, flicked back the bedclothes to run a hand over the sheets, lifted the pillows.

‘All clear, it seems.’ He paused, his hand on the door knob. ‘And Nugent was here this afternoon. I wonder if he has been just a little too clever this time. Let us go and see what your gallant household observed.’

Hester nodded, wishing she felt as gallant. Guy took the roses that she was still holding. ‘The kitchen range for these.’ He touched her lips lightly with one finger. ‘You are a soldier’s daughter, Hester. Your father would have been proud of you.’

H ester led the way into the kitchen. Somehow the warmth of the range, the homely gleam of pewter and brass and the scrubbed simplicity of the long table were a comfort. What her neighbours would think of her entertaining an earl there she could only imagine.

Guy tossed the roses on the fire and watched them sombrely as they crackled and burned. ‘What happened when Sir Lewis called? Was he alone at any time, Ackland?’

‘No, my lord.’ Jethro shifted his arm in its sling and concentrated. ‘He came to the front door and knocked. I answered it and he said he had a book he had forgotten to give you this morning. I thanked him and said that Miss Hester was not at home. When I told him that he looked very serious and said that surely you would have returned by that time.’

‘Then I came out of the front room,’ Miss Prudhome chimed in. ‘And I invited him in for tea, which he accepted. So I rang for Susan…’

‘You were all in the front room by this point?’

‘Yes.’ Jethro closed his eyes the better to picture the scene. ‘I stepped in to clear the tea table, which Miss Prudhome had been using for her sewing things. Susan came in to ask what Miss Prudhome required.’

‘And I was sitting by the hearth with Sir Lewis opposite,’ Maria finished.

‘Not long,’ Hester observed. ‘But I suppose long enough for someone to come in through the secret way and hide in the dining room. From there they could go upstairs as soon as Jethro and Susan went back to the kitchen.’

‘And that would explain why he brought the book to you,’ Guy added. Hester smiled at him, enjoying the bittersweet sensation of shared thoughts, of watching him thinking and reasoning and joining her mind with his in this puzzle. ‘I had asked for the books-the only reason not to take it to the Old Manor would be to distract the household here.’

‘And if he knew about the footman in the kitchen he would know he could not get in at night. He must be getting desperate,’ Hester added.

‘I’ll give him desperate,’ Susan muttered.

‘We need to catch him red-handed,’ Miss Prudhome announced, her face grim. Beside her Jethro picked up the vegetable paring knife and ran a thumb thoughtfully down the blade.

‘Well, unless we sit here all day and night, that may be easier said than done.’ Hester smiled at her bloodthirsty allies. ‘I think you are going to have to withdraw your footman from the kitchen at night and give the ghost a clear run, my lord.’

Guy fought down his instinctive retort that, on the contrary, he would also install a groom with a blunderbuss in the hallway and told himself to stop thinking with his heart and instead to apply his head. Miss Hester Lattimer was turning both his resolve and his intellect head over heels. She was right- another trap was the only way of resolving this, but somehow it had to be contrived without putting her in danger. An idea was stirring at the back of his mind.