Juliet Landon - LIBERTINE in the Tudor Court - One Night in Paradise / A Most Unseemly Summer

‘Well?’ he said, caressing. ‘Have you remembered?’ When she made no answer, he understood that she was already on the verge of surrender and so, to provoke her, he tightened his grip on her wrist and shifted his weight.

‘No…no! Please…don’t!’ Her voice shook itself into a whisper, full of the premonition that, whatever his next move was to be, it was up to her to make him understand that no matter whether this was what he did with other women, he could not do it with her. She could not have said why, having no experience to go on, but the certainty was there.

Instantly, he withdrew his hand, gently pulling her clothes back into their proper place. ‘Shh…shh…all right. I’ve stopped. That’s enough for now, I think.’ Carefully, he swung himself away, easing her upright to rest in his arms until her trembling was under control.

Even in her fuddled and confused state, she could not have denied that the capitulation already begun in the banqueting house was now well under way in the Queen’s garden. But though her fear of being added to his conquests remained as great as ever, he had shown her with appalling ease how close she had come to ignoring every one of her objections. The thought was terrifying.

‘Let me go home,’ she whispered, shakily. ‘You have taken advantage of me, sir.’ She stood, clinging to one of the wooden pillars for support.

He came to stand behind her, his hands beneath her cloak covering her breasts and pulling her back to him, possessively. ‘Oh, no,’ he said into her ear. ‘Oh, no, sweet maid. That I did not, and you know it. If I had truly taken advantage of you, I could have plied you with more wine instead of telling you to stop. I could have taken you into any one of a dozen dark rooms. I could still have you stark naked and on your back right now, if that’s what—’

‘No!’ she panted. ‘That you will never do! Now release me.’ For all its apparent fervour, her plea lacked momentum under his persuasive hands that cleverly drew her mind from resentment towards the breathtaking response of her body. Still tingling from his attentions, she had no will to protest as his wandering hands reinforced his first lesson.

‘You started this, my beauty, and now you’re in it up to your pretty little hocks again, aren’t you. And no guardians to run to.’

‘Master Fowler will…be my…’ Her mouth was taken over by his kiss.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘run to your Gentleman Controller as often as you wish, but he’ll never have control of you as I shall. You can stop playing your game of run-and-hide now, Adorna. It’s time to face reality.’ He caught her wrist and swung her round to face him, taking a fistful of her golden hair to tilt her face under his. ‘I want you and I shall have you. Fume and fight as much as you like; your opposition will make my winning and your losing all the sweeter.’

‘Fine words,’ she snarled, ‘from one who makes a secret assignation with no intention of keeping it. If that’s the reality you intend me to face, sir, I’ll stick with my so-called games a while longer, I thank you.’

‘So that’s niggling at you, is it? Well, if I’d thought you’d have accepted my explanation any earlier, I’d have given it to you, though there’s hardly been a good moment for apologies, has there? I was foaling a mare. A first foal. Premature.’

‘And you could not have sent a message?’

His voice softened with an invisible smile. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I could have. I could have sent your Master Fowler. He was with me in the courtyard when the stable-lad came to tell me that the mare had started. I could have asked him to go to the banqueting house where you’d be waiting for me and tell you not to. Should I have done that, do you think?’

The idea was absurd, she realised that now. He could not have sent anyone with such a message. ‘I was not waiting for you,’ she said, angrily pulling at his grip on her wrist. ‘I went in.’

‘Ah, I see.’ He smiled, releasing her. ‘Then there is no real harm done after all, is there? And no apology needed. Now, anything else before I take you home?’

‘Yes, there is. Have you warned him to stay away from me?’

‘Who? Master Fowler?’ His smile grew into a soft laugh. ‘No, mistress. I do not warn men off. I don’t need to. Our Gentleman Controller will get the message soon enough without any extra help from me. I think you’ve already seen that tonight.’

‘And I think, sir, that the less I remember of this night the happier I shall be. I choose my own friends and I shall choose my own lovers when I’m ready. And you will not be among them. Master Fowler would never have behaved as you have.’

‘In which case, Mistress Adorna Pickering,’ he said, pulling her to him once more, ‘you would not have behaved the way you just have, would you? And that would have been a pity.’ Like his first kiss, he gentled her lips with his own, reminding her of how she had responded to him and luring her into another betrayal of her slumbering protests. It also made her aware that this theory, though probably sound, was way beyond her understanding at that moment and had better be analysed on the morrow.

F ortunately, Lady Marion was entertaining some friends when Adorna arrived home like a sleeping child in Sir Nicholas’s arms, and Sir Thomas had not yet returned from the palace. Consequently, no one except Maybelle and the Pickerings’ chamberlain were there to see how carefully she was deposited on the bed from which she did not wake until well past dawn. And then she wished she had not.

It was not so much her head that pained her, though that was worse than anything she could remember, but the shattering burden of self-reproach that grew with each of her searching questions to Maybelle about her behaviour, her clothes—or lack of them—and about Sir Nicholas’s part in getting her home. The pain worsened as her mother kindly lectured her on the dangers of allowing a man too much familiarity. How did she know about the journey home? ‘Because I pay my chamberlain to tell me what’s going on in my own house,’ she replied. Unfortunately, it was not possible for Adorna to discover exactly what the chamberlain had implied, or how much her mother suspected, or indeed how far Sir Nicholas had gone. And having no one but herself to blame for her determination to drink too much undiluted wine, she realised that she must get herself out of this situation with the same defiance she had used to get into it.

Neither the pain nor her temper was improved by Hester’s somewhat ill-timed opinion that Sir Nicholas would make a good husband. ‘For you?’ Adorna said, wincing at the sunlit garden.

‘Well, yes. My inherited wealth and his inherited title would go together rather well, I think. And Sir Nicholas has noticed how much I’ve changed. Isn’t that nice?’

‘Very nice,’ Adorna murmured, watching a butterfly head off towards a gaudy marigold. ‘That makes all our efforts worthwhile.’ Secretly, it rankled that the plan she had been so eager to put into action only a short time ago had now begun to look as if it had Hester’s approval and, what was worse, that it might actually work. The only comforting thought she could find was that, one day quite soon, Sir Nicholas and Peter would both be gone up to Kenilworth with the Earl of Leicester to prepare to welcome the Queen.

Adorna had missed the Sunday-morning service in the Queen’s royal chapel, but felt obliged to attend the evening one at which she hoped Sir Nicholas would not be present. Her hopes were soon sent packing. He came in with the earl’s household only moments before the Queen herself, fitting into a space on the bench immediately behind her. It was Hester and Lady Pickering who turned to smile at him, but the unkind lurch of Adorna’s heart had already responded to some strange telepathy, and from then on it was all she could do to keep her mind on course instead of on his presence at her back, his hands so close, his eyes taking in every detail.