The Notorious Lord

Although I would counsel you to wear more clothes in future if you are intent on staying. It is not the done thing to walk around nude in England, at least not in public. I realise that you have been abroad for so long that you may have forgotten our conventions.’

‘I never was governed by them in the first place,’ Cory said. He stretched lazily. The blanket slipped lower. Rachel took a hasty step up the bank.

‘Go,’ she said, ‘before you catch a chill or that rug falls off and takes the last of my composure with it. We may talk when you have your clothes on again.’

Cory smiled. ‘I never thought to hear that phrase from you, Rae.’

‘Well, no doubt I am not the first to say it to you,’ Rachel said, repressing a rueful smile. She knew all about Cory’s reputation.

Cory started to retreat down the bank, one hand raised in conciliation. ‘I am going now. I apologise if I upset you, Rae.’

‘I was not particularly discomfited,’ Rachel said untruthfully, smoothing her skirts, ‘but it was a slight shock.’

Cory bent and retrieved another piece of bread and ham from Rachel’s upturned breakfast basket. He sank his teeth into the thick slice and nodded slowly. ‘Delicious. Just what I need after an early morning swim.’

He gave a negligent wave of his hand and walked away.

‘Mind the rose bushes at the top of the bank,’ Rachel called suddenly. ‘The thorns are sharp-’ She winced as she heard a crashing sound and a muffled expletive. ‘Oh, too late.’

She sank down on to the sandy bank and rested her back against the nearest pine tree, closing her eyes and tilting her head back against the trunk. The sunlight pricked her eyelids. She gave a huge sigh and, once she was convinced that Cory had genuinely gone, she allowed her body to relax.

She had not been expecting to see him on this excavation in Suffolk. Her mother had completely neglected to tell her that he would be coming to visit, but then that was no great surprise since Lady Odell had no memory for anything other than her antiquities. She might be able to list the rulers of Rome in chronological order, she might be the acknowledged expert on dating the Egyptian tombs, but when it came to simple social matters she was completely hopeless.

The last time that Rachel had heard news of Cory was six months previously. He had written from his home in Cornwall to say that he was returned from an expedition in Patagonia and was suffering from malaria. Rachel had sent him a tincture that she had made herself, for she had developed quite an array of medicines to cope with the more arcane of her parents’ ailments. Cory had sent a note of thanks and a big bouquet of roses, and Rachel had smiled to receive them for it had been a thoughtful gesture. She had then become preoccupied with the move to Suffolk, and had forgotten about Cory Newlyn until the moment she had seen him emerge from the river.

For the previous seventeen years Cory had been a feature in her life, but one that came and went like a fitful comet. He was an explorer and collector with a legendary reputation. According to folklore, Cory had wrestled with crocodiles, battled for his life against poisonous snakes, explored the wastes of impassable deserts and discovered fantastical treasures. Rachel knew that a great deal of this was nonsense. As an antiquarian, Cory spent much of his time excavating tombs that were full of nothing but bits of bones. She doubted very much that the ladies of the London ton, whose eyes sparkled with delight whenever Cory’s name was so much as mentioned, would think him quite so dashing if they had seen him up to his knees in mud in a howling gale in the Orkneys. One thing she was obliged to recognise, however, was that Cory was very good at what he did. He was skilful, knowledgeable and a talented antiquarian with an almost uncanny knack for finding interesting artefacts. Plenty of men travelled the world buying up antiquities these days, but Cory was special. He was no armchair antiquary. He wanted to be in on the hunt.

Rachel sighed. No doubt that was why Cory was here in Midwinter Royal. He knew her parents were digging the famous Anglo-Saxon burial ground and he wanted to be part of the excavation. It would have been useful if Lady Odell had remembered to tell her. But then, Rachel thought, she would still have been quite unprepared for the sight that had met her eyes that morning. Nothing could prepare one for the sight of Lord Newlyn in a state of undress. It had been a very disturbing experience. Just thinking about it now caused the little shivers to run all the way along her skin, leaving her breathless and distinctly unsettled.

Without the rug to protect her, the ground felt cold and a little damp. It was early and the dew was still on the grass. Rachel got to her feet, dusted her skirts and packed the remaining food away in the basket. She retrieved her book from where it lay in the grass. She knew that she would not be able to concentrate on it now. Her mind was still showing an obstinate tendency to dwell on Cory’s appearance. She would do better to go back to the house and see how her mother progressed with the last of the unpacking.

She did not walk back through the wood for fear of meeting Cory again just as he was getting back into his clothes rather than out of them. Instead, she walked back along the edge of the Midwinter Royal burial ground, an ancient site that had drawn her parents to Suffolk in the first place. The sun was higher in the sky now and it bathed the excavation in its bright light. It was going to be another scorching hot day.

As Rachel entered the house, she heard her mother’s voice raised in the hall as she gave the footman instructions on the morning’s excavations.

‘And make sure that you sift the soil from yesterday’s trench, Tom, before you start digging the long barrow…’

Rachel smiled a little. Poor Tom Gough had had no idea when he had accepted the post that none of his duties would be of a conventional nature and all of them would relate to the excavation work that was going on in the field next door. For twenty-five years Sir Arthur and Lady Odell’s entire life had revolved around the search for antiquities. This dig in Suffolk was just the latest in a long line of excavations. Sir Arthur fretted that the war against Napoleon kept them at home, and told tales of the time some six years previously when he had had to flee the advancing French army and leave behind all his discoveries in the Valley of the Kings.

By the time that Rachel had divested herself of her spencer and straw hat, and had taken the basket back to the kitchens, Lady Odell was in the library, removing some artefacts from a large packing case. Rachel wandered into the room. The bright morning light illuminated the cracks in the plaster ceiling and the threadbare patches on the carpet. Midwinter Royal was no worse than the other two dozen houses that Rachel had lived in and it was a lot less shabby than some. She had no expectation that she would stay there any longer than she had in the other places. Six months was a long time for Sir Arthur and Lady Odell to remain in one place.

Lavinia Odell was a stocky woman whose face habitually wore an expression of vague sweetness. Her eyes were a warm brown flecked with green and gold and were her finest feature, a feature that her daughter had inherited from her. Her hair was a faded mouse colour, lighter than Rachel’s chestnut brown, and her skin had long since given up the struggle against harsh sun and abrasive sand, and was sunk in lines and wrinkles. One unkind ton dowager had likened Lady Odell’s face to a leathery boot, crumpled and tough. Lady Odell, to whom a parasol was an alien notion, had laughed heartily when she heard this piece of spite.

‘I met Cory down by the river just now, Mama,’ Rachel said. ‘You did not tell me that he was to visit.’

Lady Odell looked confused. ‘Did I not? I had a letter from him only yesterday saying that he would be joining us on our excavation. Is that not simply splendid? And you say that he is here already?’

‘Yes, Mama.’ Rachel smiled. ‘He was taking a morning swim. I believe that he will be joining you once he has got his clothes back on.’

‘Good, good…’ Lady Odell said vaguely. She held out what looked to be a statue of a small cat. The cat was brown and very shiny, its expression malevolent, its legs braced as though it were about to scratch. Rachel grimaced when she saw it.

‘I thought that this could go on the drawing-room mantelpiece. It will bring us luck.’

Rachel shuddered. ‘Mama, pray do not. The only thing that it will attract is the flies. I fear that it smells.’

Lady Odell looked affronted. She clutched the cat protectively to her large bosom. ‘It does not smell! This is an antiquity, Rachel, from the third millennium before Christ-’

‘Which is why it smells, Mama,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘The poor creature has been dead several thousand years and should be permitted to rest in peace now. It is no wonder that it looks so very bad-tempered.’

Lady Odell sighed and placed the cat reverently back in the bottom of a half-empty packing case next to a Greek vase. ‘Well, perhaps you are correct. Embalming methods were not always completely successful.’

‘No, Mama,’ Rachel said. She knew all about the success or otherwise of ancient embalming methods for she