Emily Greenwood (17 page)

He stepped around in front of her now and stood against the tree trunk, looking at her, his dark brown eyes crackling with energy and heat. He reached out toward her, and she put her hand in his warm, large one, feeling deep trust. He tugged her to him, so that she fell gently to him with her hands pressed against his muscled chest, her face tipped up to his.

Reaching up, he tangled his fingers in her hair, and she was startled to notice that his hand was trembling. As close as they were, she could read passion in his darkened eyes.

“You
are
a fairy queen, who has bewitched me. I’m mad with wanting you.”

She was delirious, drunk with pleasure. “I feel the spell between us,” she whispered.

She gave in to the urge to explore the contours of his chest through his shirt. He shuddered and dropped his hands behind her to pull her fully against the length of him, a groan of deep satisfaction escaping him. Her senses sang dizzily as he tugged her to stand between his legs. How long and hard his thighs were—dear heaven but it felt good to be imprisoned by him like this.

He pressed himself to her, low against her belly. How very hard he was there. With a rhythm that was new but somehow familiar, as if it were written on her somewhere inside, he rubbed himself against her. Pleasure and wildness spiraled through her, made her breathing ragged and her mind empty of any thoughts save of him and what he was doing to her.

And then—shockingly, and so disappointingly—he pulled abruptly away. He was panting, and his eyes were so dark, almost black. “My God, we can’t go on like this. At this rate we’ll have to get married.”

His words acted like a blast of cold water, and though she had wanted only to pull him back against her, she pushed away from him. “No,” she said vehemently.

He looked startled at her tone. Almost hurt, but that was impossible. He had only been joking about marriage, she knew that. This attraction between them—they both knew it was there, and it was powerful. But, at least for him, it was not love. And it didn’t matter anyway what it was, because marriage could never come of it. She’d made her vow.

Her face burning with shame and frustration, she nonetheless forced herself to look unaffected. “All right, so we find one another—”

He crossed his arms, his mouth tight. “Yes? Can you admit it?”

“Irresistible! I admit it. I do find you irresistible. But attraction is all this is or can be. We’re adversaries, for pity’s sake.”

“I don’t feel like an adversary,” he said in a low, smooth voice, his dark eyes pinning hers. He didn’t look like he was joking.

“What do you want from me?” she whispered, all topsy-turvy. Nothing made sense anymore.

But before he could answer they heard a little girl’s voice pipe up with “Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly,” and another followed it with, “Lavender’s green.”

“The girls are coming,” she whispered urgently, stepping farther away from him and looking out toward the hillside. The next moment, Alice and Lydia came into view. Behind her, Felicity heard James exhale heavily.

The children were obviously tired from the long day outdoors. Lydia sat down on the ground at James’s feet and began to rub her eyes and fuss. James patted the top of her head absentmindedly, then swung her up onto his shoulders amid her shrieks of delight. Alice, who looked as if she wished she were young enough for such a ride, turned to Felicity and took her hand, and they all walked quietly down the hill. Felicity was still so stirred up inside, and so disappointed that she had not gotten to hear what it was that he wanted. Maybe he wouldn’t even have said. But she had so wanted to stay on that hillside and explore with him all the things they were feeling and hoping.

So foolish. She’d only get her heart broken.

She could see him out of the corner of her eye, his long, firm legs jauntily descending the hill with Lydia on his shoulders, a hearty grin spreading over his tanned face as the girls giggled over something. He had moved on from their encounter. Her eye was caught by the flexing of his muscles in his close-fitting tan breeches, and an image filled her mind of him working among the vines at his Spanish bodega, bent over with a bright sun shining down on his dark head. His exotic lapis-blue tailcoat only made her imaginings more real. He was telling the girls about his travels as a younger man, talking of Rome’s Coliseum and giving them gory details about the Christians who had been fed to the lions there.

She swallowed hard, reaching for an inner strength to bear the knowledge that she loved this man. He was good and he was sweet, and funny, and brilliant, and he made her senses sing. He was everything she loved and wanted. She loved him so.

There. She’d admitted it to herself. She was dealing in truth now, though it didn’t matter to anyone but herself. Because what was between her and James could never come to anything at all.

Even if she and Crispin had never done what they had, even if she felt free to marry, Felicity knew James was not in love with her. In lust, certainly, but not love. James, next in line in a family of MPs, cousin to a viscount, was important and significant in a way the Wilcoxes were not and did not even want to be. With all his plans and energy, he was like a muscular hummingbird who would flit from his various projects, to the houses he owned in England, his vineyard, to Parliament. A busy, important man. He was many things that Felicity wasn’t and didn’t even want to be.

Needing to steel herself, to stiffen her spine so she could endure the rest of this day together, she reminded herself harshly of his words about her to Lila Pendleton, ignoring what else he had said to her on the hilltop. She was unusual, a funny little country mouse. Not the words of a besotted lover. And he was right; they were from two different worlds.

She was deeply grateful to find, when they reached the picnicking area, that the carriages were all packed and ready to depart. She had never craved the familiar, plain comfort of Blossom Cottage more.

When she arrived home, a letter was waiting on the hall table. It was from their lawyer.

With a gasp, she swept the letter off the small pile of mail that Martha had put on the hall table in their absence. Her hope mounting, she tore it open immediately.

Mr. Blake wrote to inform Miss Wilcox that according to his investigation, there was absolutely nothing illegal about the transaction between the late Sir Jonathan Beresford and Mr. James Collington.

Tethering Hall and the estate lands were, in fact, legally and irrevocably the property of Mr. Collington.

Hardly knowing what she was doing, she wandered blindly to the back garden and slumped onto a bench. She let her head fall into her hands.

A weight of doom settled on her. Everything was a disaster. All her hopes and dreams for Tethering—and for her future—were truly dashed. She had failed in the task her mother had set her. She had lost the estate that had defined her, that had given value to her life and hope to her future.

And now, too, there was this: James would be always connected to the estate, close by when he visited, but as unattainable as Tethering itself.

She looked out past a cherry tree, barely registering the beauty of the summer evening’s gloaming through the blur of tears that for once she didn’t stop. Her thoughts turned over likely futures, none of which could she bear. James would be away often, in Spain and at his other estates, and she would have the memory of caring about him and the constant reminder that he was about in the world and away from her. When he returned to Tethering, he might well come with a wife. And what could Felicity do but sit at the dower house and watch? She shuddered at the image her mind cruelly provided of James with his arm around a beautiful, fashionable wife, strolling through the orchard in bloom.

Tears slid unchecked down her face as they never had since she’d been grown. Hot and messy, they rolled in unrelenting streams down her cheeks, and she let the sobs that she hadn’t known lurked within her out, uncaring of the ugly sounds she made in the quiet garden. There was no one to hear.

And there was more quiet desperation to consider, more of a future that broke her heart to envision: she might, pressed by her father, end up married to someone she didn’t love. It would have to be someone like Mr. Godfrey, because she couldn’t bear to involve Crispin in a marriage that, out of honor and romantic notions, he felt compelled to offer. How long would her father give her before he pressed her into making a choice? She couldn’t remain forever with him as a burden, when another man would take on her care. Even if that man would be taking a ruined woman.

She didn’t know how long she sat thus, weeping. Despairing. Perhaps the weeping was something of a release, as if, at least, she would no longer have to hide her feelings from herself. She would no longer ignore how she felt. She would face and accept her feelings, even the ones she didn’t want. There was something healing in that, even if it meant admitting the pain of knowing her love for James was not returned.

Time slid by and the tears gradually came more slowly, as though they’d exhausted themselves. She became aware of the sounds around her, of the chirping of a robin a few feet away and the light scent of the roses across the garden coming to her on the breeze. She sniffed a few times and took a very deep breath against the heaviness in her chest and wiped her wet cheeks with the inside of her sleeve.

A practical action, tidying herself up. It made her aware that while tears might release a little of her pain, she couldn’t sit and pine her life away. It wasn’t who she was. She had to do
something
. It was possible—just possible now—that she could still make Tethering such an unpleasant place that James would want to leave and not return. He owned it, but she could make it into a place that he didn’t want to visit. That would be better than having him there.

But she would have to do what he’d asked her not to do, what she knew would hurt him the most. She would have to haunt his guests, to create a scene that might damage his chances as an MP. To create a spectacle that would make his guests believe there were ghosts and other strange doings at his house.

Though the last thing she wanted to do was hurt James and betray his trust in her, she had no choice. She had to make Tethering into a place that he wanted nothing to do with.

And, with Crispin angry and threatening to expose her, she would have to make her move that very night, or risk losing her chance.

***

She sat quietly staring out of the window in her room at Blossom Cottage that night, dressed only in her chemise, watching the quiet night grow darker. Finally, with the moon high in the inky sky, she stood and pulled on a dark blue silky dressing gown she had rescued from the moths several months earlier. She didn’t plan to be seen that night, so she would not bother with Lovely Annabelle’s costume—she only needed something dark to provide some cover. The blue gown was daintily embossed about its low bodice with pale blue forget-me-nots, and its insistent femininity cheered her.

She sneaked out of the house, closing the side door silently behind her, and set off for the tree line, but this time she didn’t feel the same excitement as before. Then, she had been angry with James, and tormenting him had filled her with naughty glee. Now her feelings were closer to sick and sorrowful panic.

Life was change, her father had said—after all, her mother had died and life had gone on. They’d have to think about things less grandly than she had hoped. Simon would likely not be able to go to university. Her father would be happy enough with his lot, of course, and would have his poetry, which, good though it was, could not be relied upon to provide much in the way of funds. Maybe she could find work at the village school, or perhaps as a governess—maybe that would dissuade her father from the idea of her marrying. The final loss of Tethering would mean change for them all, but they would muddle along.

The night was cloudy, and the back of the dark hall was only faintly lit by the obscured moon, but she didn’t need light, the way being so familiar. Quietly she lifted the stone that hid the entrance to the secret passage, her breath catching with relief that it had not been discovered yet and sealed up. She had other, less appealing plans that she could have resorted to if this entry had been no longer available, but the passage was the best way to get into the house unnoticed. As before, she crept along the tunnel and was soon in the basement. This time, however, she did not go to the stairs but instead made her way in the darkness along the wall, feeling with her hands until they finally discovered a tall shelf.

It took quite a bit of force to move the shelf away from the wall. The shelf had likely not been touched since she and Simon and Crispin had, in the course of poking about in the basement one summer day years earlier, discovered something thrilling behind it. What it concealed had captivated them for that whole summer.

The shelf finally pushed aside, she ran her hands along the wall behind it until she found the ring she was looking for, about the height of her hips. The iron circle was perhaps four inches in diameter, and when she grasped it and pulled it, twisting her hand at the same time, it gradually began to move, taking with it the panel to which it was attached. The mechanism was old and a little rusty, so it took several minutes to quietly work the small door free. But once it was rotated upward, she could feel with her hands the good-sized opening in the wall that she remembered.

Bracing her arms on the inside, she hopped up to sit on the edge of the opening, then pulled her legs and skirts inside. Running her hands along the far interior wall, she soon touched the ladder. She gathered her dressing gown over one arm and began to climb up, staying alert as she went for another small door on a floor above.

A few minutes’ hard work brought her up to the second floor, where the bedrooms were. With her hands she reached beyond the ladder for the outline of the trapdoor that led into a second-floor room that she guessed was either empty or housing one of the guests. It was not, fortunately, the master bedroom, so she knew James wouldn’t be in there.

Now that she was so close to executing her plan, panic begin to rise in her breast. Before when she’d haunted, she’d been in the hallway or outside, public places with a relatively easy escape, or at least the possibility of hiding if necessary. But tonight there were many more people present besides James, and it was a great deal riskier. While she wasn’t dressed as Lovely Annabelle, if discovered, she couldn’t imagine how she would begin to explain what she was doing.

She took a deep, steadying breath and steeled herself. Now that she knew where the door to the second floor was, she could find the narrow walkway that led along behind the second-floor rooms. She gingerly put out a foot to the side of the ladder and probed for, and found, the floor rail. Letting go of the ladder, she began to creep along the walkway, going several feet before stopping at what seemed like a good place.

She and Simon and Crispin had never told anyone about the secret passageways they discovered, not wanting their fun to be taken away from them, so they had never been able to ask why the passageways were there. Thinking about them now, she supposed they had been put there so that lovers could meet secretly.

She began tapping softly on the wall and moaning. She stopped to listen, but no sounds of arousal came from the other side of the wall. Her plan would come to naught if no one awoke and heard the ghost. She knocked more loudly and moaned insistently.

This time, her efforts produced results. A startled feminine shriek sounded from the other side of the wall. She knocked and moaned once more, then quickly made her way back to the opening by the ladder. She had decided that, to make her ghost seem more ethereal and mysterious, she would enter the room on the other side and make some noise there before leaving. It was a good plan because the opening did not give onto the room directly, but to the inside of a large wardrobe, where she could be concealed for the few moments she was making noise. She would then make her escape.

From the other side of the walls she could hear muffled yelps and cries and someone moving about. She experienced a moment of worry, realizing that Lovely Annabelle might also be scaring Alice and Lydia. Felicity didn’t mind in the least giving the adults a fright, but she would not for the world have scared the girls. She would get this over with and hope they would not awaken. Weren’t children supposed to be sound sleepers?

Now she was in front of the ring attached to the door for the wardrobe exit, and she quickly tugged and twisted the ring so that the flap slid upward. It gave out a low grating noise, but that couldn’t be helped. She could only hope no one heard it above the woman’s squealing.

Another few inches and the door was up and away from the opening. With the slot open, she could better hear the sounds from the next room. The shrill voice belonged to Lila Pendleton.

“Help!” she yelled. “There’s something in my wall!”

From down the hallway, rapid footsteps sounded, stopping, no doubt outside Mrs. Pendleton’s room. Felicity heard someone knock softly on what must be her door. Mrs. Pendleton squealed anew, perhaps surprised this time by the sound of the knocking.

Felicity allowed herself a moment of wicked glee, then worked herself through the opening and into the large wardrobe it gave onto, glad for the clothes hanging there that were muffling her sounds. She noticed that the clothes smelled familiar, but it was a passing thought, her mind being much more occupied. She must be here only a few moments, then she must leave. The longer she stayed, the greater the chance she would be discovered.

Her bare feet touched the bottom of the wardrobe without making a sound, and she pushed at the clothes to make room for herself. She was standing in a deeply crouched position among the clothes, just about to moan, when the door to the wardrobe suddenly flew open.

“Ah!” she yelped in astonishment and fright, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

Her view of the outside was obstructed by the clothes around her, but she could perceive the glow of candlelight in the moment before a strong hand took hold of her arm and yanked her from the wardrobe. She fell forward, stumbling against a familiar hard chest before she stood on her own feet.

Oh, heck!

Before her stood an angry James. He held a candle to one side and peered at her under harshly lowered brows, his mouth tense, his eyes alight with something she did not want to consider. His chest was bare; in fact, as she stood there frozen before him, the sounds of voices and movement increasing in the room next door, she noticed that he wore only a pair of breeches. His dark hair was disheveled, as if from sleep, and his eyes were black pools. She swallowed as, under his ferocious glare, she knew herself to be in the presence of a dark and wicked rogue unleashed from the bonds of civility.

“Felicity,” he ground out, his teeth wolf-white in the candlelight, “what the devil are you doing here?”

She tugged her arm where he held it to get him to release his tight grip, but he only increased the pressure. Giving up, she demanded, “What are
you
doing
here
? This isn’t the master bedroom.”

“Felicity,” he said in a voice heavy with warning, “you’re not the one who’s going to ask the questions.” His eyes bored into her. She resisted an urge to squirm.

Before he could continue, a knock sounded at the door.

“James?” a woman’s voice asked urgently in a loud whisper; it sounded like Lady Dunlop.

“Yes, what is it?” he asked as if he didn’t know, continuing to stare at Felicity.

“Lila has heard… noises in the walls of her room. She wants you to investigate.”

He looked conflicted for a moment, as if he wouldn’t take his eyes from Felicity, then said, “All right, Josephine, I’m coming.”

Felicity’s heart surged with gratitude for the interruption. As soon as he left the room she would slip back out through the wardrobe. She tried to keep the relief from showing on her face.

His lips, however, curved up in a smile that could only be called fiendish. “Don’t even begin to imagine that you will be leaving until I’ve dealt with you,” he said. He tugged her forward and grabbed her other arm. “You’ll wait right here until I return.”