curves and hollows of Alice’s body, worshipping the lovely yielding softness of her. She made a quiescent sound in her sleep and opened her lips to his and the desire flared inside him and he drew her back into his arms.
Yes, he had reformed. But not that much.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ALICE SAT TRYING TO READ the tea leaves and trying not to feel too impatient. In the week since Miles had gone to London to the Doctors’ Commons to fetch a special license, she had been cooped up in the house under strict orders from him not to venture abroad unless escorted by Nat Waterhouse or Dexter Anstruther. It had been intolerably boring. She hated to be so constrained.
She missed Miles dreadfully. She had had no idea that she would feel so bereft. Before he had left on the morning after her sojourn in the Fortune’s Folly jail, he had held her tightly and told her he would be back soon, and she felt sure that he loved her. She had felt it in his hands as he held her and seen it in his eyes. The lovemaking they had shared the night before had bound them close. Dazed and dazzled by it, she had drifted through the first few days of Miles’s absence as though in a dream, but gradually reality had intruded and now she felt on edge and anxious. Lydia had still not been found, Tom Fortune was still at large and there was an air of tension about Fortune’s Folly. Each day Mrs. Lister would return from her trips into the village, bringing the most astonishing scurrilous gossip, and each day Alice was obliged to sit quietly at home whilst the rain poured down outside and she mangled another piece of embroidery and tried not to snap at the servants. In a vain effort to settle her nerves she made endless pots of jam from the stores she had laid down the previous summer. They would be eating plum conserve until Christmas at this rate.
The scandal of her seduction and subsequent night in jail had swiftly been superseded by another piece of tittle-tattle so delectable that the Fortune’s Folly gossips had been overcome with excitement. Lord Armitage had jilted Mary Wheeler and her fortune of fifty thousand pounds and had disappeared off to London with Louisa Caton. Mary was said to be heartbroken. Then, before that
The Dowager Lady Vickery had been in a terrible state for several days.
“How could Celia possibly have written such things?” she had bemoaned. “Adventure stories for boys? It is most inappropriate, especially as she is a
“She said that she was inspired by
Lady Vickery looked scandalized. “Inspired or not, she is utterly compromised. Whatever will Miles say when he returns to discover that his sister is betrothed to Mr. Gaines?”
“I imagine that he will wish them happy,” Alice said. “Dear ma’am, it might not be what you wished for your daughter, but can you not see how much pleasure they derive from each other’s company? He is so very proud of her.”
Lady Vickery’s expression softened slightly. “I suppose he is. But adventure stories? Utterly shocking.”
It was interesting, Alice thought, that Lady Vickery was conveniently able to erase the entire scandalous memory of her son’s former mistress accosting him in the Pump Rooms, the subsequent seduction of her future daughter-in-law and her incarceration in jail, simply because she thought that Alice was rich and would save them from the poverty. Frank Gaines, in contrast, was considered a poor match for Celia because he was a lawyer with little money and no social standing. Alice liked Lady Vickery but she doubted that they would ever see eye to eye on such matters as rank and consequence.
The wind hurled another barrage of rain at the windows and Alice sighed. Was that a tree she could see in the tea leaves or a tower? Was it hope or disappointment? She could not be sure. Actually it looked like a large splodge of nothing in particular. She thought Mrs. Lister probably made the whole tea-leaf-reading thing up as she went along.
There was a knock at the door, and Marigold entered with a letter on a little silver tray. The silver tray had been one of Mrs. Lister’s innovations. She had wanted to employ a butler to carry it, but Alice had insisted that their household was so small that they did not need one. Mrs. Lister had grumbled but complied. The tray was a compromise since Alice thought it simple enough to carry a letter in one’s hand but Mrs. Lister thought it a necessary sign of rank.
“A letter for you, miss,” Marigold said superfluously.
Alice took the note and unfolded it. It looked as though it had been dashed off in haste.
Alice’s heart started to race. It was Nat who was acting as nursemaid for her today and just at the moment he was out at the wood pile helping Jim chop the logs. Alice did not want to deceive Nat but equally she did not want to tell him about Lydia’s note. He and Dexter would go marching up to the windmill to arrest Tom, and Lydia would know that Alice had betrayed her confidence. She looked once again at the note. The writing was definitely Lydia’s and the undertone of desperation was quite clear. This could be no trick. Her friend would never play her false like that.
Putting from her mind the knowledge that Miles would be absolutely furious with her when he heard that she had deliberately ignored his instructions, Alice whisked out into the hall and grabbed her coat and boots from the cupboard by the door. All was quiet, but she was shaking with nerves as she slipped out of the house and down the drive. The wet gravel slipped and slid under her hurrying feet.
Was Lydia in desperate trouble? Had Tom betrayed her again? Alice lowered her head against the driving rain and quickened her pace.
Fortune Windmill stood on the hill above the village. It had only recently gone out of use, replaced by the new windmill built by the villagers a mile or so distant. Now it crouched in the rain like a great dark bird, the water dripping from its silent sails. Alice looked up at it and shivered. She wondered whether Miles and the other Guardians had already been there in their search for Tom Fortune. It seemed an obvious hiding place. The track up to it led away over the moors to Drum and beyond that to the village of Peacock Oak and eventually to Skipton. It was rutted and muddy in the spring rain. A curious, wet sheep stuck its head through a gate to look at her, but apart from that there was no one in sight.
Alice ducked in under the low lintel and stood waiting for her eyes to adjust to the interior. The air was thick and still. There was no sound but for the rain beating on the roof above.
“Lydia!” she called.
A startled bird flew out with a flap of wings. Nothing else stirred. Alice started to climb the twisting wooden stair up to the top floor.
When she got to the room at the top, Alice paused, looking about her. It was clear that someone had been there, for there was an old rug lying on the floor with a scatter of cushions and the remains of a meal. A mouse was feasting on some of the stale crumbs. Alice looked around, wondering if someone had already surprised Tom and Lydia here and if they had fled as a result. If so, they could not be far away. Perhaps she would wait. But there was something about the old windmill, crouching there like a malignant beast, creaking with the wind in the old beams, which was making her feel nervous. It was as though someone was watching-and waiting.
It was then she heard a footstep on the stair. Thinking-hoping-that Lydia might have returned, Alice went out onto the landing and peered down the stairwell. She could not make out any movement in the shadows below. The landing was quite dark, with light filtering in only from the cracks between the shutters on the platform above. Alice hesitated, aware of the silence in the building broken only by the creak and groan of the old sails in the wind. The darkness pressed in on her, and suddenly the quiet seemed so alive that it almost felt as though it was breathing.
