Helen Dickson - Highwayman Husband

His words were calmly spoken, but Laura heard an edge to his voice. ‘I—I don’t know. We never discussed it.’

Lucas shifted to a more comfortable position, propping one booted foot casually atop the opposite knee. ‘Why don’t you sit back and relax? You look like a rabbit about to bolt down the nearest hole. You’re spoiling the atmosphere.’

‘I am?’

‘Yes, the atmosphere I was enjoying before you came in, which was warm—quiet. For me it was…’ He fell silent and stared intently into the glowing heart of the fire, his eyes fixed on something invisible, something way beyond the confines of the room.

Easing herself into a more comfortable position, Laura looked at him in surprise. There was something in the clear depths of his eyes that she did not recognise, something mysterious—sinister, even, that eluded all her understanding. For a moment he seemed to forget where he was. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked quietly.

Abruptly he came back to earth and said harshly, ‘You couldn’t understand.’

‘I—might. I’m a good listener—so I’m told.’

He smiled suddenly, that crooked smile Laura remembered of old. His light grey eyes rested warmly on her face, the fire having turned her cheeks a soft pink. ‘I’m sure you are.’

They fell silent, each preoccupied with their own thoughts and content to listen to the wind buffeting the great house on its high perch above the sea. Seated thus, Laura felt a strange sense of security she had not felt in a long time. She could not believe Lucas was here with her. Was it an illusion—a figment of her imagination? she asked herself.

She let her mind drift back over two years, remembering how it had been between them that one and only night she had lain with him as his wife. In a new home surrounded by strangers, she had had no one to answer the frightening turmoil of questions about the night ahead.

At thirty years old and having made love to many women, a paragon of virtue Lucas was not. Before they had married Laura had already fallen in love with her husband-to-be. She was not foolish enough to think the feeling was reciprocated, and nor was she naïve enough to believe she knew how to make him happy. But she had desperately wanted to—somehow—and she had been determined to find out how to accomplish it.

Lucas having made no attempt to consummate their marriage at any of the posting inns on the way to Cornwall, when they had reached Roslyn Manor and the moment had finally come Laura had yielded helplessly to the hot, searing need within her, while a nameless panic began to take hold of her. Lucas had taken her quickly, dutifully, and without endearment, with no thought to her immaturity and innocence, and after he had withdrawn from her he had rolled away and gone to sleep. It had been nothing more than the joining together of any man and his wife. Duty or pleasure, the thing was done.

Too stunned to move, Laura had lain looking up at the shadows playing with the light on the ceiling, struggling with disappointment. She had felt so miserable she had wept at her husband’s absolute detachment. If that was love she could not understand why they made so much fuss about it in story books. It had left her with a feeling of disgust combined with a strong sense of frustration.

Gazing across at him now, Laura could not believe the man she saw was the same man who had left her bed with the dawn and immediately embarked for France. Suddenly she saw his expression gentle, and she was sure she could see approval in his inscrutable eyes. ‘Why did you want to hide from me?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t. I just wanted to lie low for a while.’

‘But why? Has it something to do with you being a thief—a common highwayman? Why have you taken to the life of a High Toby?’

As he observed how seriously concerned she looked Lucas’s composure slipped and he laughed outright, a rich, deep sound that reminded Laura of thick velvet. She realised that when he did that he seemed younger, much younger than when his face was in repose.

‘I’m sure you will be relieved when I tell you that I am not a highwayman. Tonight was the first time—and the last—that I shall take to the road.’

‘Then—why did you do it?’ she asked, quite bewildered. ‘I did not take you for a prankster.’

His response to her question was a cool inclination of the head. A hard gleam entered his eyes and when he spoke his voice was deadly calm. ‘It wasn’t a prank. It was deliberately intended to infuriate and intimidate Carlyle—to put his back up. You are my wife, Laura, and no one—no one—interferes with anything that belongs to me. I can be a harsh man when angered.’

Laura felt a moment of unease at the possessive content of his words. ‘I discovered that to my cost,’ she retorted drily.

‘When John told me what you were up to—that you were to wed Carlyle and that you were celebrating your betrothal with the entire county—I was furious, naturally so. However, knowing nothing could come of it now I had returned to the scene, my fury abated. When John informed me that you intended travelling home that night I couldn’t resist the pure devilry that came over me, to have a little fun at Carlyle’s expense,’ Lucas said with a roguish grin, the harshness of a moment earlier having vanished.

‘And mine,’ Laura reminded him coolly.

‘I confess that I was enjoying myself rather well until I heard it from your own lips that you were to be his wife. It rekindled my anger and roused all that is unpleasant in me.’

‘I noticed,’ Laura said. ‘Why didn’t you try and stop the celebrations?’

‘I did think about it, but I wasn’t ready to show myself—not to you, nor anybody.’

Laura was about to ask him what the secrecy was all about, but found herself saying instead, ‘You really don’t like Edward, do you, Lucas?’

‘Does one like a rattlesnake?’ he responded quickly. Placing the horrors Carlyle had inflicted on his own person aside, Lucas dwelt for a moment on what John told him when he had brought him up to date with all that had been happening in the district during his absence. It would seem that an underlying menace lurked among the huddle of cottages in Roslyn village and the surrounding hamlets, for the very name of Edward Carlyle engendered such fear that none dared interfere with his plans, challenge him or speak against him. To do so would have been to risk one’s life. Lucas’s hatred of Edward Carlyle was almost a physical pain within him, but when he answered Laura’s question he gave no sign of his true feelings.

‘There is a dark side to Carlyle someone as innocent as you cannot possibly begin to conceive. There is enmity between us, and it’s more than a matter of us not seeing eye to eye over a few difficult episodes in the past. I will not allow someone like him to ride roughshod over me. I have a score to settle with him—a heavy score and one I mean to make him pay in full…when the time is right,’ he said in a low voice. A ruthless gleam shone from his eyes. ‘Believe me, what you witnessed tonight was only a fraction of what I intend to do to that particular gentleman.’

There was a warning underlying the lightness of his words and Laura knew that he spoke in all seriousness.

‘But tell me,’ he went on, diverting the conversation away from his neighbour, ‘when you heard I had perished on the vessel bringing me back to England, Laura, why did you not return to London—to your father?’

Laura sighed, her mind going back to that time when she had found it hard to take in that the handsome man she had married was dead. ‘Because Roslyn was my home. I was Lady Mawgan and I had responsibilities. It was my duty to remain and take care of things. There was no one else, and the longer I stayed I found I was surrendering more and more of myself to the place. My brother, Philip, and his wife, Jane, bring the children down from London during the summer. The little ones do so love the cove. My—my father, who, as you will recall, suffered ill health, died shortly after we were married.’