Juliet Landon - A Most Unseemly Summer

Lydia’s reply was drowned beneath the man’s icy words. ‘I don’t need to find him. I am Sir Leon Gascelin.’

Slowly, Felice raised her head to look at him through a curtain of hair, the hem of which dripped with curving points of water. She had no idea of the picture of loveliness she presented, yet on impulse her hand reached out sideways for her linen chemise, the one she had worn yesterday, gathering it to her in a loose bundle below her chin. Promptly, Lydia came forward to drape a linen sheet around her shoulders.

‘Then I have the advantage of you, Sir Leon,’ Felice said over the loud drumming of her heart. ‘I was here first.’

‘Then you can be the first to go, lady. I require you to be out of here by mid-day. My steward tells me that you call yourself Lady Felice Marwelle, but Lord Deventer never mentioned anyone of that name in my hearing. Do you have proof of your relationship to his lordship? Or are you perhaps his mistress with the convenient sub-title of stepdaughter?’ He looked around him at the piles of clothes, pillows, canvas bags and mattresses more typical of a squatter’s den than a lady’s bedchamber. ‘You’d not be the first, you know.’

Outraged by his insolence, Felice shook with fury. ‘My name, sir, is Lady Felice Marwelle, daughter of the late Sir Paul Marwelle of Henley-on-Thames who was the first husband of my mother, Lady Honoria Deventer. Lord Deventer is my mother’s third husband and therefore my second stepfather. I am not, and never will be, any man’s mistress, nor am I in the habit of proving my identity to my stepfather’s boorish acquaintances. His message would have made that unnecessary, but it appears that that went the same way as his recollection that he had a stepdaughter named Felice. He assured me that he sent a message three…four days ago for you to prepare rooms in the guest…’ She could have bitten her tongue.

‘So you decided on the Abbot’s House instead. And there was no message, lady.’

‘Then we share a mutual shock at the sight of each other, for which I am as sorry as you are, Sir Leon,’ she said with biting sarcasm. She felt the unremitting examination of his eyes which she knew must have missed nothing by now: her swollen eyelids, her bruises, her soaking feet, all adding no doubt to his misinterpretation of her role. Defensively, she tried to justify herself whilst regretting the need to do so. ‘I chose this dwelling, sir, because I am not used to living on a building-site, despite Lord Deventer’s recommendations. Whether you received a message or not, I am here to prepare rooms in the New House next door ready for his lordship’s occupation in the autumn. And I had strict instructions to keep well out of your way, which I could hardly do with any degree of success if our two households were thrown together, could I? Even a child could see that,’ she said, looking out of the window towards the roof of the church. ‘Now will you please remove yourself from my chamber, Sir Leon, and allow me to finish dressing? As you see, we are still in the middle of unpacking.’

Instead of leaving, Sir Leon closed the door behind him and came further into the room where the light from one of the large mullioned windows gave her the opportunity to see more of his extreme good looks, his abundant physical fitness. His long legs were well-muscled, encased in brown hose and knee-high leather riding boots; paned breeches of soft brown kid did nothing to disguise slim hips around which hung a sword-belt, and Felice assumed that he had stormed round here immediately on his return from some nearby accommodation, for otherwise it would have taken him longer to reach an out-of-the-way place like Wheatley.

‘No,’ he said, in answer to her request. ‘I haven’t finished yet, lady. You’ll not dismiss me the way you dismissed my steward yesterday.’

Instantly, she rose to the bait. ‘If your steward, Sir Leon, knows no better than to refuse both hospitality and welcome to travellers after a two-day journey, then it’s time he was replaced. Clearly he’s not up to the position.’

‘If Thomas Vyttery is replaced at all, lady, it will be for handing you the keys to this house.’

‘That was his only saving grace. The keys remain with me.’

‘This is no place for women, not for a good few months. We’ve barely started again after winter and there are dozens of men on the site,’ he said, leaning against the window recess and glancing down into the courtyard below. It swarmed with men, but they were her servants, not his builders. ‘And I have enough trouble getting them to keep their minds on the job without a bevy of women appearing round every corner.’

‘Then put blinkers on them, sir!’ she snapped. ‘The direction of your men’s interest is not my concern. I’ve been sent down here to fulfil a task and I intend to do it. Surely my presence cannot be the worst that’s ever happened to you in your life. You appear to have survived, so far.’

‘And you, Lady Felice Marwelle, have an extremely well-developed tongue for one so young. I begin to see why your stepfather was eager to remove you to the next county if you used it on him so freely, though he might have spared a thought for me while he was about it. He might have done even better to find you a husband with enough courage to tame you. I’d do it myself if I had the time.’

‘Hah! You’re sure it’s only time you lack, Sir Leon? I seem to have heard that excuse more than once when skills are wanting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my feet are wrinkling like paper, and I must hone my tongue in private.’

It was not to be, however. Enter Mistress Elizabeth bearing a large armful of feathery green plants, her face flushed and prettily eager. Without taking stock of the situation in the chamber or sensing any of the tension, she headed directly for her mistress and dumped the green bundle on to her lap. ‘My lady, look! Here’s chervil for your bruises. There’s a mass of it in the old kitchen garden. There, now!’ She looked round, newly aware of the unenthusiastic audience and searching for approval.

Felice looked down at the offering. ‘Chervil, Elizabeth?’

‘Comfrey, Elizabeth,’ said Lydia. ‘You were told to gather comfrey.’

‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth, flatly.

‘You have injuries, lady?’ said Sir Leon. ‘I didn’t know that.’ His deep voice adopted a conciliatory tone that made Felice look up sharply, her eyes suddenly wary.

‘No, sir. Nothing to speak of. The journey yesterday, that’s all.’ In a last effort to persuade him to leave, she stood up, holding out the greenery to Lydia and taking a thoughtless step forward.

She went crashing down, tipping the bucket over and pitching herself face-first into a flood of tepid water, flinging the chervil into Sir Leon’s path. He and Lydia leapt forward together, but he was there first with his hands beneath her bare armpits, heaving her upright between his straddled legs. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, he lifted her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a child and stood with her in the centre of the room as the two maids mopped at the flood around his feet.

Felice was rarely at a loss for words, but the shock of the fall, her wet and dishevelled state, and this arrogant man’s unaccustomed closeness combined to make any coherent sound difficult, her sense of helplessness heightened by her sudden plunge from her high-horse to the floor.

His hands were under her knees and almost over one breast that pushed unashamedly proud and pink through the wet fabric; his face, only inches from hers, held an expression of concern bordering on consternation. He was watching her closely. Inspecting her. ‘You hurt?’ he said.

She peered at him through strands of wet hair, shaking her head and croaking one octave lower. ‘Let me go, sir. Please.’