The Notorious Lord

Cory’s eyes narrowed. He spoke very softly. ‘Is that what you want, Rachel?’

Rachel screwed up her face to repress the tears. ‘Yes! I want us to be friends again. I want that friendship back the in the same manner it was before!’

‘You wish matters to be undemanding and easy between us?’ Cory shook his head. ‘It can never be that, Rachel. Never again.’

‘But why not?’ Rachel wailed.

‘Because I do not want that any more. And neither do you in your heart.’ With a swift move Cory caught her arm and pulled her close to him. ‘How can we ever be friends when I cannot forget the feel of you in my arms?’ he said. ‘Tell me you do not want the same thing that I do, Rae.’

This was new to Rachel, this intensity in him. Cory had always seemed the most easy and relaxed of men. Yet she remembered the persuasive insistence of his kisses with a shiver. There was a different side to Cory that she was beginning to discover, a side that was forceful and passionate and intriguing. She wanted it as much as she wanted to let him go.

‘I cannot deny that I am attracted to you,’ she said desperately. ‘I have admitted it! But I still maintain that it is not enough.’

‘It is a good beginning,’ Cory said. ‘I understand what you are saying, Rae, but we already have more than most other people. Surely we can at least try.’

Rachel shook her head. ‘No.’ Her voice went flat. ‘You wish to travel, Cory, and I wish for nothing more than a settled home. You cannot give me that and I cannot ask it of you. And that is an end to it.’

She felt Cory go still and his hand fall from her arm, and when she dared to open her eyes she realised with a mixture of relief and intense disappointment that he looked the same as he usually did-cool, assured, slightly quizzical.

‘Then there is no more to be said,’ he said.

For Rachel there was. ‘Please-’ the hot tears stung her eyes again ‘-if you withdraw your friendship from me, Cory, then all will be lost.’

She saw the pity in his face then and felt her heart miss a beat that it could be for her. But his expression was softening and he almost smiled.

‘Poor Rae,’ he said. ‘Of course I shall not withdraw my friendship from you, but I cannot promise that it will ever be the same again.’

He bowed and walked away and Rachel felt that, despite his words, it was too late. She had lost something irretrievable.

Chapter Nineteen

The thunderstorm struck the following day. Rachel had given the servants the afternoon off and Sir Arthur and Lady Odell had gone to a fete champetre at Saltires. Rachel had felt far too miserable to be in company and had sent her apologies. She had retired to the library to read, as she had done so often in the past when she was unhappy, but this time neither the romantic overtones of The Enchantress nor the beautiful language of Shakespeare nor the philosophical common sense of Marcus Aurelius could soothe her. Instead she stared blindly out of the window and thought about her quarrel with Cory, her mind going round and round over the same ground until she was utterly exhausted. It was some time before she realised that the glass panes through which she was staring were liberally streaked with rain.

When she finally went over to the window, a shocking sight met her gaze. The sky overhead was a strange pale brown colour with puffy rain clouds building angrily overhead. Away to the east, where the black horizon met the sea, lightning flickered and there was the distant sullen growl of thunder.

Rachel went to the door. A sheet of rain hit her full in the face as soon as she opened it and the rising wind sent her stumbling back into the hall. There was a roaring in the air, the sound of the wind in the high trees combining with the rushing of the Winter Race as it lived up to its name and pounded the bank that ran alongside the burial ground.

‘Oh, no! The excavations!’

Rachel’s anguished exclamation echoed through the empty house. There was no one here to help her secure the site and no one to save the trenches from being swamped with water or the precious artefacts from being washed away. Rachel knew that there was nothing she could do. Even so, she grabbed one of Sir Arthur’s old cloaks from the hall cupboard and dashed outside.

Out in the rain, the storm was even more frightening. Rachel struggled through the wicket gate into the field, her body bent almost double against the power of the wind. The black outrider clouds were already overhead and the thunder rumbled much closer now. Rachel half-stumbled, half-ran along the footpath that bordered the field. She was blinded by the flapping material of the wet cloak as it whirled about her in the wind. The rain came down in torrents. The ground underfoot was already running like a stream, for so much water on the dry ground could not be absorbed all at once. And it was hopeless to imagine that she could ever save the excavation. Rachel could see that at once. The trenches were filling with water and the sandy soil was crumbling, turning to mud and flood, drowning all that was in it.

As she came to the corner of the long barrow near the knot of pines that overlooked the river, Rachel saw that she was not the only person who had thought to save the excavation. Cory Newlyn was standing on the riverbank, looking across the flooded trenches. There was no time for embarrassment or surprise. Rachel merely found that she was very pleased to see him.

‘Cory!’ she said. ‘What are you doing here? I thought that you were at Saltires?’

‘I came to check on the site,’ Cory said. His tawny hair was plastered against his head with the rain and he wiped the water droplets from his eyes. ‘I promised your parents that I would do what I could. They cannot get through, Rae. The road is already flooded.’

He pushed the soaking hair back from his forehead. ‘This is worse than I had thought, for soon the river will burst its banks. Come away, Rae. There is nothing that we can do here.’

‘But the dig!’ Rachel said hopelessly. ‘All your work! Mama and Papa will be utterly bereft if it is all swept away.’

‘There is nothing that you can do,’ Cory said again. ‘It is dangerous to stay out here, Rachel. Come along.’

He took her arm and they retraced their steps along the edge of the bank. The soil felt strange and unsteady, both clinging and shifting at the same time.

‘Mind the edge!’ Cory said sharply. ‘The sand is unstable here-’

But even as he spoke, Rachel felt a strange sucking sensation beneath her feet, like the tide pulling at her heels. There was a rumble and the grating of shingle on stone, and the sensation of falling down and down into darkness. She heard Cory shout, but her eyes were blinded by rain and sand, and though she put out a desperate hand, her fingers slid helplessly through his grasp. And then she hit something hard and flat, and lay winded and still, staring into the dark.

Rachel was not sure how long she lay there, her thoughts tumbling in shock, her eyes wide and staring through the darkness for a glimmer of light or a clue as to what had happened. The sliding sound of sand and pebbles had ceased and beneath her the rock felt smooth, hard and dry, but she could see nothing at all. She was lying on her back, but now rolled cautiously on to her knees and from there tried to stand. It was fortunate that she did so slowly, for she hit the back of her head on stone and stifled a groan.

She sat down again, drawing her knees up to her chin and curling up as much for comfort as warmth. Her clothes were unpleasantly damp and encrusted with sand, and she could neither see nor hear anything but the rapid breath of her own panic. The air smelled stale. It seemed that the ground above her-the very river bank itself-had collapsed in upon itself and plunged her into a burial chamber that they had not even realised was there.

Rachel tried to breathe more slowly and calm herself, remembering at last all the things that she had learned over the years.

‘If you are trapped underground, do not panic,’ Sir Arthur Odell had once told her when as a child she had become locked in the cellar of a house and had roused the entire neighbourhood with her screams, ‘for you will only use up all the air and achieve absolutely nothing at all.’