Juliet Landon - A Most Unseemly Summer

He allowed himself a smile before he replied, revealing white even teeth. ‘Certainly I do. He pays me, you see, and the sooner this place is lived in, the sooner I can move on to others. I’m in demand, hereabouts.’

‘Not by me!’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Barbarian!’

‘Still sore?’ He lowered his tone to match hers, catching the drift of her mind.

It was a mistake she regretted instantly, having no wish to discuss those terrible events, neither with him nor with anyone. Forgetting her shoes, she was quicker this time, managing to reach the centre of the overgrown quadrangle before her wrist was caught and she was brought to a halt. She shook off his grip and whirled to face him in a frenzy of rage.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she snarled, her eyes blazing like coals. ‘Don’t ever lay a finger on me again, sir, or I swear I’ll…I’ll kill you! And don’t think to dictate to me where and when I go. You are not my guardian.’ She turned her back on him deliberately, but had no idea how to get out of the quadrangle without climbing shoeless over the low wall. Her heart thudded in an onslaught of anger. She hesitated, feeling the sharp tangle of weeds on her sore feet. There was an uncanny silence behind her.

‘You’ll need these to get out of here, my lady.’ His voice came from where they had been sitting.

She knew he referred to her shoes but still she hesitated, wondering if it was worth risking more pain to her feet. The cloister walkways were littered with rubble.

‘Come on,’ he said, gently. ‘We’re going to have to talk if we’re to work together.’

‘We are not going to work together,’ she snapped. ‘I want nothing to do with this place. I’m going home.’

‘You’ll need your shoes, then.’

She turned and saw that he was sitting on the wall again with one leg on either side, holding up her shoes as bait. ‘Throw them,’ she said.

‘Come and collect them.’

She looked away, then approached, eyeing his hands. She reached the wall just as he dropped them over on to the paved side, beyond her reach. ‘Don’t play games with me, Sir Leon. I’m not a child,’ she snapped.

‘Believe it or not, I had noticed that, but I’m determined you shall conclude this discussion in the proper manner, my lady, whether you like the idea or not. Now, please be seated. I am not at all disturbed by the idea of having women near me, as you see. Actually, it’s something I’m learning to get the hang of.’

She knew he was being ridiculous. Any man who could move a woman so quickly and with such mastery was obviously no woman-hater. ‘You have a long way to go,’ she said, coldly. ‘About twenty years should be enough.’

The smile returned. ‘That’s better. We’re talking again. Now, my lady, I shall show you round the New House and we can discuss what’s to be done in the best chambers on the upper floors. The lower one…’

‘Sir Leon, you are under a misapprehension. I have already told you…’

‘That you are not staying. Yes, I heard you, but I have decided that you are. If Deventer has entrusted you with the organisation of his household here at Wheatley, and to furnish his rooms, then he must think highly of your abilities. Surely you’re not going to throw away the chance to enhance your credit with him and disappoint your mother, too? They would expect some kind of explanation from you. Do you have one available?’

‘Yes, sir. As it happens, I do. I intend to tell them that you are impossible to work with and that our intense dislike of each other is mutual. Indeed, I cannot help feeling that my stepfather guessed how matters would stand before he sent me here, so I shall have no compunction about giving him chapter and verse.’

‘Chapter and verse?’

‘You are detestable!’ she whispered, looking away.

‘And you, as you have reminded me, are a woman, and therefore you will hardly be deceived by my very adequate reasons.’

‘Not in the slightest. Nor would a child believe them.’

‘Then how would it be if I were to inform your parents of what happened last night?’ he said, quietly.

She had not been looking until now, but the real intention behind his appalling question needed to be seen in his eyes. He could not be serious. But his expression told her differently. He was very serious.

‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered, her eyes narrowing against his steady gaze. ‘Oh, yes, you would, wouldn’t you? And if I told them you were talking nonsense?’

‘Whose word would your stepfather take, d’ye think? Whose story would he prefer to believe, yours or mine? I could go into a fair amount of detail, if need be.’

She launched herself at him like a wildcat, her fingers curved like claws ready to rake at his cool grey eyes, his handsome insolent face, at anything to ruffle his intolerable superiority and to snatch back the memories he should never have been allowed to hold.

Her hands were caught and held well out of harm’s way and, if she had hoped to knock him backwards against the stone column, she now found that it was she who was made to sit with one at her back while her arms were slowly and easily twisted behind her.

His arms encircled her, his face close to hers, and once again she was his captive and infuriated by his restraint. ‘And don’t let’s bother about talk of killing me if I should lay a finger on you because I intend to, lady, one way or another. You threw me a careless challenge earlier. Remember?’

Mutely, she glared at a point beyond his shoulder.

‘Yes, well I’ve accepted it, so now we’ll see how much skill is needed to tame you, shall we?’

She was provoked to scoff again. ‘Oh, of course. That’s what it’s all about. First you pretend to be concerned with duty, yours and mine, and then you try threats. But after all that, it’s a challenge, a silly challenge you men can never resist, can you? How pathetic! What a victory in the eyes of your peers when they hear how you took on a woman single-handed. How they’ll applaud you. And how the women will sneer at your hard-won victory. Did you not know, Sir Leon, that a man can only make a woman do what she would have done anyway?’ She had never believed it, but it added some small fuel to her argument.

‘Ah, you think that, do you? Then go on believing it if you think it will help. It makes no difference, my beauty. Deventer sent you down here with more than his new house in mind, and somewhere inside that lovely head you have some conflicting messages of your own, haven’t you, eh?’

Frantically, she struggled against him, not wanting to hear his percipient remarks or suffer the unbearable nearness of him again. Nor could she tolerate his trespass into her capricious mind. ‘Let me go!’ she panted. ‘Loose me! I want nothing to do with you.’

‘You’ll have a lot to do with me before we’re through, so you can start by regarding me as your custodian, in spite of not wanting me. Deventer will approve of that, I know.’

‘You insult me, sir. Since when has a custodian earned the right to abuse his charge as you have abused me?’

‘Abuse, my lady? That was no abuse, and you know it. You’d stopped fighting me, remember.’

‘I was exhausted,’ she said, finding it increasingly difficult to think with his eyes roaming her face at such close quarters. ‘You insulted me then as you do now. Let me go, Sir Leon. There will never be a time when I shall need a custodian, least of all a man like you. Go and find someone else to try your so-called skills on, and make sure it’s dark so she sees you not.’

‘Get used to the idea, my lady,’ he said, releasing her. ‘It will be with you for as long as it takes.’ He picked up her shoes and held them by his side. ‘Fight me as much as you like, but you’ll discover who’s master here, and I’ll have you tamed by the end of summer.’