kaleidoscope of corn and wheat and silver, her skin mirroring the delicate fineness. Carefully he shrugged off his shirt and stepped from his trousers, though when the bandage on his arm chaffed against his side he saw her wonder, all the other scars he had kept hidden beneath clothes visible as well today in the morning light.
Lillian’s fingers traced the one on his thigh and then the smaller scar beneath his left rib. ‘A bullet where I was not quick enough,’ he said when he saw where it was she looked.
Her body glowed in unmarked glory, the long lines of her legs, the roundness of her bottom and the smooth beauty of her breasts. Only one finger held the slice of some accident. He found the hand and separated it from the others.
‘I hurt it on a knife last year when I was quartering the first apple of summer.’
He laughed. Even her accidents were appealing. The ruby ring on her finger winked at him as he turned her hand.
‘Do you still want this changed?’
She shook her head.
‘I have grown used to it and it has grown used to me.’
‘It was my grandmother’s and the only possession I took with me from England. I wore it on a chain then around my neck so that it would not be stolen when I worked my passage. I never gave it to my first wife and now I know why. I was waiting for you.’
Her hand fisted tight and he leant to place a kiss on the back of her knuckles, laving the spaces between with his tongue, the trail of coldness making Lillian shiver.
Her husband. A man fashioned by hardship and loneliness and the absence of family that had shaped all of his life.
And now. What was he now? Just at this moment in this room with their skin against the daylight and the feel of each so known?
Lovers? Friends? Two halves of a whole made complete? The beginning of a life that glinted in the red stone on her finger, tantalisingly close.
‘Love me, Lucas,’ she whispered.
‘I do,’ he answered and his mouth came down to claim hers in reply.
He had left when she woke, the dent in the sheets where he had lain, cold and empty.
Her hand smoothed down the creases and she turned towards his side so that she lay watching the window, the smile that played at her lips pushing into the pillow with a shy incredulity.
‘Goodness,’ she whispered, remembering. She had always been so controlled, so restrained, so correct and careful and proper.
But not this morning!! The hours with Luc had cured her of ever being
A tiny piece of misdoubt remained as she also thought of the marks that crossed his body. No little accidents or paltry cuts. The scar on his leg ran from his groin to his knee and the one at his neck reached the blade of his shoulder. And that was discounting the long wound still beneath the bandage. She frowned. The man who had left England as a boy had had enemies; that much was certain. Still had enemies, she corrected.
Could she ask him about it? Would he tell her? Her father had seldom spoken to her mother of anything of importance. She knew because Rebecca had complained of it again and again to her friends when she thought Lillian was not listening.
Was this the way of marriage? She shook her head and played with her ring. In the light the stone shone red against the sheets, and in the newly cleaned yellow gold she saw markings. Slipping the bauble off, she brought it up to her eyes and read an inscription of three words held within the band.
Lillian finished it off from memory in a whisper. ‘…I will go: and where thou lodgest I will lodge.’
She sat up, the declaration of devotion from the Book of Ruth making her heart thump. Did Lucas know these letters lay within the ring? Had he meant them for her? The band was an old one, fashioned, she imagined, some time in the last century, the worth of it considerable. Had it been only recently engraved or was it an ancient troth given between other lovers? His grandmother’s, he had said, and the only worldly tie to a family lost to him. Slipping it back on, she clenched her hand inwards, the value of gold and precious stone as nothing compared to the worth of the words.
A shimmer of hope crossed her heart like a kiss beneath the magic of mistletoe or the first dusting of fine snow when the Christmas bells rang true.
New! Exciting! Full of promise!
Pushing back the sheets, she stood, donning a nightgown left on the oak chest at the foot of his bed, the material holding the smell of Lucas and the folds of fabric easily reaching to her feet. With care she pulled the bedding upwards so that the prying eyes of the maids she summoned would not see the chaos that such loving had wreaked and then she waited for a hot bath to be filled.
There were two men in the library with her husband when she went to find him a few hours later. Two men who looked nothing like refined country folk or city gentlemen.
Dangerous.
The word came out of nowhere and made her stop, fright replacing all that had been there a moment earlier, and Lucas’s expression daunted her further.
‘Lillian.’ His tone was distant but polite as he moved in front of the visitors, shielding them from her gaze. ‘I am busy now. If you could wait until later?’
‘Indeed?’ She could not keep the question from her response, though nothing showed on his face save guardedness.
Looking further on to the desk, she noticed a pile of paper bank notes of the larger denominations and beside them lay a gun. Not the elegant shape of a duelling pistol, either, but the serious contours of a lethal shooting tool. The small Christmas tree that Charity had made him as a present sat squarely beside it, its red and silver stars the reminder of a season of goodwill and peace.
Not here though!
Not in this room!
Not with men who looked like foreign sailors or thieves, their eyes falling away from her own even as she glanced at them. Her right hand crossed her left, feeling for her ring.
‘I will await you in the blue salon,’ she added frostily, accepting her husband’s help with the door as she sailed through it, the wide sway of her gown breaking the growing silence with its own particular music.
Once outside she stopped and took stock. Lucas’s arm was out of the sling Mrs Poole had fashioned for him, and the clothes he wore were riding ones. Could he have been out already?
Eight days until Christmas and her house was filling up with guns, blood money and ruffians of a foreign persuasion, not to mention the chilling anger that had dwelt in her husband’s eyes before he had been able to hide it.
She took three deep breaths and heard the sound of a squeal from the stairs.
Rounding the corner, she saw Hope and Charity playing with a puppy who looked nothing like any other dog she had ever seen. And Hope was calling to it, as it leapt to try to take a ball.
Lillian walked forwards. ‘Where did the puppy come from, poppet?’
‘Mrs Poole brought it over early this morning and Mr Lucas said we could keep it because Royce is getting to be so old. Can we, Lilly?’ This entreaty, given her husband’s promise already made, was so unexpected that she could not help but nod. Charity’s head was bobbing up and down, too, and Lillian thought for a second that the child might even speak, for she pursed her lips in the way of a ‘please’.
This morning could not possibly become any stranger, she thought. A husband sequestered with men who looked like pirates and a puppy dog with baby fat showing through the ample folds of its pink-and-white skin.
But when Stephen Hawkhurst suddenly burst through the front door in full riding kit and without knocking, she revised her opinion.
It just had!
