"But the risk you take ..." It was the last
objection — they were all well aware of the sense of her statement.
"It is
l
ess than
attempting to escape tonight. We must be patient."
"There seems little option." Peter sighed.
"But
I
cannot like it."
"
We
are not in a position to like or dislike a
n
y
thing
," Ginny retorted tartly and then apologized for
her s
h
ar
p
ness.
The prisoners would be in torment, cabined in the semi-darkness of this tiny
chamber with no activity to
take
their
minds from their lonely danger, and no facilities but the wooden pail that
Peter emptied each night under cover of darkness.
"
I must go before my absence is
remarked. Be patient, Edmund, for just a little longer. I know it is not your
greatest virtue, but I fear it is one you must learn to practice.
"
She smiled a reassurance that she
didn't feel and prayed that Edmund, who knew her so well, would not see through
the facade. The son of John Redfe
r
n's
widowed sister, he had grown up with the Redfe
r
ns, providing Ginny with the sibling she had never had, and the
brotherly companionship of one who was not a brother, and with whom, therefore,
she could share so many growing pains.
She left the way she had come, opening the stone door a
crack, peering around to ascertain that the coast was clear before slipping out
into the dusk. Rather than return immediately to the vegetable garden, Ginny
strolled casually to the orchard. If anyone had noticed her leaving the garden
earlier, she could say that she had decided to pick fruit first. No one would think
that it had taken her about twenty minutes to walk the quarte
r
mile to the orchard.
The orchard seethed with
l
ife
as the men set up their bivouacs and lit the braziers that would cook their
evening meal. They had for the most part discarded their breastplates and
helmets and sat amidst their tents polishing armor, joking and talking, taking
their ease on this warm summer evening in the peaceful surroundings where no
pitched battle threatened for the morrow.
Ginny moved amongst them, picking fruit from the lowest
branches. No one spoke to her, but they stared as if she were some kind of
misshapen exhibit in a traveling circus. Women were a luxury. The colonel
permitted no camp followers, and excursions into the local towns were strictly
regulated, doled out like spoonful of medicine to purge the unruly body. The
men grumbled at the strictness of the regime and compared their lives with
those of their colleagues in brigades where the command was lax. But even as
they complained, they knew that their colonel was as careful of their lives as
he was of their morals. In battle he was always at their head, never threw them
into futile engagements, thought more of strategy than vainglory, and they were
well fed and as rested as it was possible for an army on the move to be.
The word had gone around that the colonel had placed the
mistress of the manor under house arrest and she was to be accorded all due
respect. If discovered attempting to leave the immediate boundaries of the
house and garden, she was to be prevented with courtesy and escorted to the
colonel. These orders, however, did not alleviate the lustful stirrings at the
sight of that svelte body, the firm high breasts pressing against the bodice of
her gown as she reached up for a succulent piece of fruit, or the delineation
of her hips as she bent to pick up a windfall.
Ginny was acutely uncomfortable and decided
that
she would avoid the orchard in future. Those
stripping eyes made her feel like a coquettish wanton, deliberately tantalizing
those who could not take advantage of her apparently freely offered charms. If
it were not for the protection of Alex Marshall, she would not have left the
orchard unmolested, of that Ginny was convinced as she walked away, fighting
the urge to run.
Chapter 2
The stableyard was now quiet, the horses bedded down and
their attendants ga
there
d in a companionable group by the
barn, wooden spoons scraping the tin porringers clean, the contents of pewter
tankards disappearing down thirsty throats.
The kitchen was deserted. Ginny laid the basket of produce on
the table and worried about the task she had agreed to perform. How many
officers did the colonel command? And what in the world was she to serve them
in the short time available? He had spoken of plentiful supplies, and she had
seen evidence of that earlier. At least the range was lit, although it made the
kitchen unpleasantly warm. Well, first she must discover how many she was to
cook for. with a purposeful tilt of her head, Ginny went in search of the
colonel.
The house carried a strange atmosphere. After the emptiness
of the last six months, it hummed with habitation; but it was an alien presence
—
a
hostile army interested only in
possession. The house was merely an object to be taken, no longer the home of a
loving family but the sequestered property of a Malignant.
Ginny was the stranger now, a prisoner in what had been her
home until her marriage four years ago. For two years she had lived on the
Courtney estate in Dorset until Giles had finally been unable to resist his
family's pressure to declare himself for the king. After the news of his death,
the year following her father
'
s, Ginny had
left the narrow, restrictive environment of the Courtneys and returned
thankfully to assume the role of dutiful daughter to her ailing mother. It was
a role she infinitely preferred to that of widowed daughter-in-law paying
obeisance to the vicious tongue of her husband's
m
other and the vituperative malice of her sisters-in-law. Just after her
mother
'
s death, Ginny had discovered a young
man hiding in the orchard—
the
son of one of the local Royalists
who had fallen foul of Parliament's men. His house had been sacked, the estate
pillaged, and all male members of the family arrested and sent to Winchester jail for summary trial and execution. Only the sixteen year old had escaped. It
had been deepest midwinter, and the snows had lain thick. Ginny had hidden the
fugitive in the priest's hole and two nights later sailed him to the mainland.
It had been an horrendous trip, not only because of the winter seas that made
Fiddler's Race, ripping parallel to the shore of the island, an even wilder
current than usual, but also because of the armed fortress of Hurst Castle,
standing on its spit, protruding from the mainland to guard Southampton and the
Solent from invasion from France. Keyhaven was the nearest and safest landfall
to Alum Bay, but it lay behind Hurst Castle, which commanded, also, the Keyhaven River. Ginny had been forced to sail diagonally across the Solent, to avoid the
castle and land at Beaulieu. On her return, she had dismissed her household,
unwilling to implicate them in her chosen form of war work, and had set up her
safe house for those on the island who wished to join with the Royalists on the
mainland. The ferries
that
had previously run from the mainland
to Cowes, Yarmouth, and Ryde had been stopped by Governor Hammond when King
Charles had first sought his protection. Then Ginny had established her own
ferry service, and word had spread rapidly. She had hidden them in the priest's
hole until tide and weather conditions made the winter journey possible, and
then delivered them to Beaulieu.
But she could no longer perform that role, and she would
throw in her lot with Edmund and Peter. It had been agreed among them while
they awaited the occupying force that would come to the Redfern estate as
surely as it had done to all the others. And when this war was settled, one way
or the other, she and Edmund would marry.
Once, when he was seven and she was five, they had plighted
their troth. Then, of course, they had both grown up, and John Redfern had
given his daughter to Giles Courtney. She had detested the man from the first,
but her
m
other had forcefully reminded her
that at least he was personable and young—
a
mere five and twenty. She could have found herself affianced to a man twice his
age, had her father so decreed. It was a simple fact of life, and Ginny had
bowed her head to the yoke, until civil war had burst upon the land.
Now she had neither husband nor inheritance, and her fate
rested entirely in the hands of Colonel Alexander Marshall—
r
ested there until Edmund was well again. She had no
one now, except Edmund, to whom she was tied by the love and loyalty of
friendship, as was he to her. There was no passion in their love, but they
loved with the depths of indissoluble friendship, and after a passionless,
loveless, friendless marriage, life with Edmund would be both a heaven and a
haven. And the last years had brought enough unwanted passion in both
their
lives to last an eternity . . . hadn't it?
She heard the colonel's voice coming from the dining room,
and memories of that moment in the dairy, when she had felt something
previously unimaginable, rolled over her in an inexorable tide. Had
that
extraordinary sense of compulsion, of inevitability,
been passion? The undeniable desire of a particular woman for a particular man
—
a
desire that subsumed all differences
and could be slaked only be consummation?
No! The man was her captor, her enemy, one who was as
responsible for the death of her father and the wounding of her dearest friend
as if he himself had wielded the sword. She raised her hand to knock upon the
oak door. But why should she? This was
her
house, and they were her
guests. No one else might perceive the situation in that fashion, but Virginia
Courtney, nee Redfern, most certainly did. She opened the door.
There were twelve men in her dining room, standing around the
table, examining an enormous map. They all turned at the sound of the opening
door, and the surprise on their faces was politely extinguished.
"Good evening, gentlemen
.
" Virginia dropped a curtsy.
"
You
will forgive my intrusion, but I was unsure how many I am expected to prepare
dinner for." Her eyes slipped past those of their commanding officer.
"There is no expectation, mistress." The colonel's
voice was low. "If you find yourself unequal to the task, we shall dine in
our accustomed fashion."
"Pray do not concern yourself, sir. I am quite equal to
the task." The door closed again on the crisp statement, and Alex, with a
muttered excuse, strode after her.
"Virginia!"
She stopped at the kitchen door.
"
Yes, Colonel."
"I thought you had agreed to use my name."
"I do not remember such an agreement, sir
.
" She went into the kitchen, and the colonel
followed.
"I
think
that perhaps you do
,
" he said, watching as she rolled up her sleeves
and threw flour on the pine table in preparation for pastry making.
"I remember that you took shameless advantage of a defenseless
prisoner," she declared, filling a bowl with water from the brass jug.
"If that was indeed the case, Mistress Courtney,
then
I can only apologize."
"Do you doubt it?" Her hands moved automatically,
crumbling butter into the flour. If she concentrated on the task in hand, then
maybe her racing blood would slow and he would leave her. She would make a meat
pie, her thoughts rattled on. There were beef and kidneys aplenty, and she had
picked a basket of mushrooms this morning . . .
this
morning before this double invasion had occurred, an invasion not only
of her freedom, but of some part of her own self—
a
part she never before had had occasion to acknowledge.
She received no verbal answer, simply warm hands on her
shoulders, turning her to face him. Their eyes fused, and the reality of the
kitchen, the sparking range, the murmur of voices in the stableyard became
simply a part of the background of a tapestry where they stood embroidered in
the forefront, held forever until the embroiderer completed the picture. And
then the embroiderer chose to complete the picture. Alex's head bent, the full
lips captured hers. Without volition, her mouth opened to receive the exploring
tongue
that
danced against the whorls and
contours of her cheeks, fenced with her own that was suddenly muscular and
knowing and explored in turn deep within the warm, velvety cave of his mouth.
Ginny felt her nipples peak, hard and burning against the
linen of her bodice, and the most peculiar weakness in her loins. With an
incoherent, panic-stricken mumble, she fought the hands
that
had released her shoulders and now grasped her hips,
holding her against the heat of a pulsing, rising shaft. It was a sensation she
knew well. How many nights, in the years of her marriage, had she felt Giles's
readiness, the hands impatiently spreading her thighs so that her own
unprepared body was laid ready to receive the invasion? But this was quite
different. She could feel the moistness as her body prepared itself of its own
accord, drowning out all logic and reason.