The Conquest of Lady Cassandra (29 page)

Her apartment was larger than in London. It was all hers too. She could find no door or passage that connected to Ambury’s chambers. Presumably, only the earl enjoyed such convenience with his wife here.

He found her anyway. He walked in while the maid assigned to her unpacked her portmanteau. He did not announce himself or say any word at all. He merely stood at the doorway to the dressing room until the maid noticed him and excused herself.

Thinking a husband’s sense of privilege could be inconvenient sometimes, Cassandra began a bit of unpacking herself. Ambury watched with his shoulder resting against the wall and his arms crossed.

“We will dine at Trotwood Park with the Witherspoons. They are a prominent gentry family and important in the county,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, we will ride out so the servants and tenants can see you.”

“Then I should hang this out at once.” She pulled out her riding dress and shook it out with a flourish. He did not get the hint that she was more likely to appear presentable if he allowed the maid back to do her duty.

“The next day, I will have to leave for a few days. I need to ride south to visit some property.”

“Is this part of your obligations to your father and the estate?”

“One of the more inconvenient ones.”

“I will use the time to get to know the people here. I may do better on my own anyway, since they are too much in awe of you.” She looked to the door through which the maid had disappeared. “Or else, perhaps, afraid of you, if they are young, pretty things.”

“I have never importuned a servant, and do not expect to ever consider it in the future.”

“That is good of you.”

“Do not attribute more restraint to me than I deserve. I shall never consider it, because I have a wife at my beck and call now. So actually, it is good of
you
.”

“Beck and call? I hope you do not plan to bellow through the house for me when you feel randy. Will you send your valet or a footman?”

“More likely I will just walk in the door.”

As he had recently done. Unpacking had distracted her from the mood he projected. Interested. Restless and a little dangerous. Ambury, when in pursuit, created a subtle but undeniable disturbance in the air of a space. An exciting one. It assaulted her now, and she stirred in response. Over the last week, her body had shed any inhibitions about meeting desire with desire.

He watched while she set out a few items for her toilet,
on the dressing table. Then she went into the bedchamber. “I think this is the most lovely chamber I have ever used. All the white linens, pale paint, lace trim, and plump pillows make it look like a Boucher painting.”

“All that is missing is a beautiful naked woman displaying her pretty bottom on that bed.” He lowered himself onto the palest blue chair and reached for her. He turned her around and released the fastenings on her dress. “You will have to paint that in.”

“Is that a beck or a call, Ambury?”

“It is a command, Cassandra. Men do not beckon their mistresses.”

He was throwing her words from last night back at her. His manner dared her to play the worldly role she had told him he expected.

No, not dared, she decided when she turned around and saw how he waited and watched. Commanded, just as he said. Nor was she certain this would be a game.

She should not like the subtle ways that affected him, but her body did. Lowering her dress titillated her. Ambury’s hot, hard gaze caused hundreds of tiny, thrilling shivers when she slid her chemise off her shoulders. Soon she stood in front of him wearing nothing but her hose.

He appeared far too composed to her. Too in command of them both, as he intended. Deciding to even the score a bit, she went to his chair, nestled her knee at his crotch, and angled to kiss him. She did it more aggressively than normal, and she felt the effects in the bulging firmness against which her knee pressed.

She broke the kiss and waited for his mouth to move to her body. Instead, he gave her one small kiss on her cheek. “Get on the bed, Cassandra.”

A little disappointed, she walked to the bed. It was a big one that required she climb up. She threw herself down across it. She lay on her stomach and rose on her forearms to watch him.

Ambury stood and undressed. It did not take long. It reminded her of that day on the coast, when he had stripped to bathe in the sea. The drapes in the chamber had not been drawn, so the cool light showed his lean strength just as the brilliant sun had that day. They had seen each other undressed enough, but this was the first time since that day that she had seen him naked in clear light.

He knelt one knee beside her and kissed between her shoulders. Another kiss on her back. One more at the base of her spine. Then she felt him behind her, lifting her hips.

“Kneel.”

A profound tremor shook down her center and pooled in her vulva. She knelt, and he arranged her so her bottom rose higher than her back. Her position and vulnerability created a compelling mix of anticipation and fear. Her breasts rasped against the sheets, arousing her all the more.

He touched her, and immediately frantic hunger possessed her mind. It was not a touch designed for pleasure. He did not tease or caress. He stroked deeply, making her ready for him. As soon as she was, he thrust inside her so deeply that her breath caught.

He took her then. Took his pleasure while he held her body for his use. She found hers too, a savagely erotic pleasure stripped of artifice or tenderness. He ravished her, and she reveled in it. She climaxed first, before his final ruthless thrusts brought his own completion. He released her then, and they collapsed on the bed in a tumble of nakedness.

She did not drift in sated bliss afterward. She lay on her side with his strong warmth behind her, starkly awake and alert to the difference in what had just happened.

It had been amazing in its way, but she would not have liked it the first time with him, or every time. She could not ignore that there had been few preliminaries and damned little intimacy. No kissing or caresses. No deliberate arousals of her breasts and body. On occasion, this would be
exciting. If it were every night, she did not think she would like the cold indifference it would imply.

She waited for some sign that today did not herald how it would be from now on. Anything at all would do, even a kiss on her shoulder. Surely he did more with his mistresses than ensure they had a climax.

He moved, and she felt the bed respond as he left it. She closed her eyes, and the sounds of dressing came to her. Then his steps crossed the chamber.

She thought he had left and opened her eyes. Instead, she found him standing near her, looking down. He reached over and slid his fingertips down the side of her face in a caress that moved aside some wild strands of her hair. “I will tell them to prepare a bath for you.”

Then he was gone.

She sat up in the middle of the damp sheets and erotic smells of the bed. A bath and one caress. It was something, at least.

Y
ates stopped his horse at the top of a low rise of land. He surveyed the landscape in front of him. It was mostly flat, and the nearby sea had intruded to create an uneven and changeable coast in the distance. Tracks of marsh alternated with farmland that hugged what high ground could be found.

He had to laugh at himself when he saw the unpromising vista. He should have listened to his father and left this alone. No wonder the dispute had never been investigated. If the rest of the property looked like this, he was on a fool’s errand. Better if he had stayed at Elmswood with Cassandra.

Since he had ridden this far, he went the rest of the way. A half hour later, he approached a flock of sheep being herded by two dogs and a man. Yates hailed the fellow who gave him a solid inspection before returning the greeting. His garments suggested the man was not a shepherd but a tenant.
He wore a coat that while old still bestowed the appearance of a squire.

Yates swung off his horse and introduced himself. Mr. Harper, who had pointedly taken note of Yates’s coats and saddle, brightened when he realized his visitor was a lord.

“Come to see about some defenses here, finally?” he asked. “I don’t know what it takes for Parliament and the services to act. I’ve seen lights on the swamps at night that say someone is up to no good. Some men were here in June seeing what was what, and I told them that. Now with the Irish all but handing their western coast to the enemy—I’m thinking of sending my wife to her family up north, for protection.”

Yates gazed to the coast. It was not far from here to Southampton, and he doubted there was any danger. Mr. Harper no doubt felt vulnerable, however. The terrain might not be hospitable to French landings, large or small, but it also meant isolation for the few who lived here.

“I do not speak for the army or navy,” Yates said. “But I will report what I see to those responsible.”

Mr. Harper decided that was an invitation to show him everything. He pointed to the spots where he claimed to have seen lights, and led to an especially swampy area to point out an abandoned boat. The boat appeared half rotted to Yates, and he guessed it had been there many years already.

He let Harper talk, for the man had much to say. It was not until an hour later, as they walked up to where the dogs kept the sheep waiting, that he broached his real reason for being here.

“Are you a tenant, Mr. Harper? Or is this land yours?”

“I hope if I ever own land it is better than this, sir.”

“Who does own it, then?”

“Well now, that is not clear.”

“You must pay your rents to someone.”

Mr. Harper laughed. “Money leaves my purse, that is sure. Whether and how it lands in another’s after that, I do not know.”

“Surely it lands in the purse of the person with whom you signed as a tenant.”

“One would think so. That is how I expected it. But my family signed with one person, then it was sold to another.”

They waded into the flock. The sheep shuffled along like a large, flat, formless animal with many little hooves.

“With whom did you sign?”

“A land agent. My father told me the property was Highburton’s when we took it. This was, oh, a good thirty years ago he told me that, and my family has been here twice that long. But at some point another land agent began coming for the rents, back when I was a boy. When I took over, I told him we needed some improvements and to ask Highburton about them. That was when I learned it wasn’t his any longer.”

Yates judged Mr. Harper to be in his forties. Back when he was a boy was a long time ago. Whatever dispute had entangled this property had done so well in the past.

“What is the name of the land agent who collects now?”

Mr. Harper peered at him skeptically. “You be wanting to talk to him? If you think to buy it, you need to know that it is good for naught but sheep, and barely for that. So there’s no point in thinking of more rents.”

“No one is looking to raise the rents. I am sure whoever owns this land is grateful for your long tenancy, and any future owner would not want it to end. I am asking for a family member who has expressed interest. I can see it is good for little, but I promised to look into it.”

“Well, now, if the rents stay the same, not much difference to me who has an interest. The man I dealt with stopped coming years ago. No one comes now. I send the rents to town now, to the Bank of England.”

It sounded as if the property were held in a trust. If so, it might be difficult to learn much more about it.

He thanked Mr. Harper and mounted his horse to ride the rest of the property and see if it had as little to offer as this section did.

C
assandra rearranged herself on the library’s divan and propped her book on her stomach. While she enjoyed Ambury’s company, the last two days alone had been very pleasant. These were the first hours she had enjoyed on her own since she went to Mama’s house, and she had missed being with her own thoughts and with no obligations for conversation.

Gently crisp air entered the window nearby. It contained just enough of autumn’s scents and chill to announce that summer’s heat would not return for many months now.

She wondered if Ambury had been glad for an excuse to leave for a few days. He was no more used to the constant company than she was. True, their sojourn here had permitted a variety of sensual explorations, and no man minds that.

In saying he liked having a wife he could treat as a mistress, she had given him permission to do just that, it appeared. The result had been astonishing. A few of his commands had even shocked her, although she never let him know that. There were gestures of affection too. And yet—an essential intimacy had been lost from their first nights together, even if the pleasure more than satisfied on every count.

He did not mind the hours in bed, then. He also appeared to enjoy the dinners to which the county neighbors had invited them, and the long rides to inspect the estate. Still, such frequent companionship was not normal between husband and wife, and she suspected he longed for town and his clubs and more varied activity.

The fair day beckoned, and she set aside the book to go stroll in the garden. Her path took her through the big gallery. It was a tall, wide, and fairly gloomy space. Dark paintings lined its walls, and few of them offered much interest. Many of them could not even be deciphered. She decided that she would ask Emma for instructions on how to clean them.

The light today permitted more to be seen than in her past viewings, and she stopped to admire a landscape that had caught her eye before. Today she noticed it included some tiny figures in the middle ground of the scene. Two of them carried something, perhaps a shrouded body. The lush and extensive landscape overwhelmed whatever burial had been depicted.

Several portraits hung above the landscape, stacked in a vertical row all the way up to the molding. Her gaze followed the line up to the picture of a woman at its top. The woman’s eyes arrested her attention, then her mouth and the line of her jaw. The resemblance to Ambury was remarkable. The woman’s regalia marked her as a past countess, and from the fashions she wore, perhaps his great-grand—