‘But that’s—’
‘The one where we put all the worst examples of the taxidermist’s art, including the crocodile. Exactly. It is about time that Mr Gregor realises he is not the only person in this household with a sense of humour.’
It seemed a very long time since she had laughed out loud, not since before Simon Ashley had been found cold in his bed. He had kept her in a ripple of amusement with his dry wit and scurrilous anecdotes, the wicked old man.
She was still smiling when she passed the archway into the stable yard and glanced through it at the sound of voices. Gregor was holding the head of the grey horse she had glimpsed when the men had arrived and Quinn Ashley was walking round it, running his hands down its legs, lifting each hoof in turn. Lina knew nothing about horses, but she knew beauty when she saw it and this animal with its slightly dished face, big dark eyes, long white tail and mane and air of disciplined power was beautiful.
Ashley and Gregor must be checking the animals after their long ride, she supposed, seeing an equally handsome black tied up at the rear of the courtyard with a sturdy bay beside it. She drew back against the arch and watched. The men were talking easily together, dropping a word here and there, hardly troubling to complete their sentences. Lina could remember when it had been like that with her sisters, Bella and Meg. They had been so close that one or two words, a phrase or a smile was enough to share thoughts and feelings.
Where are you? she asked in a silent plea for an answer that never came. Be safe, please be safe and happy. If she ever got out of this mess, she would devote her legacy to finding her sisters, she swore, hurrying away from the arch and the sight of the men and their easy, unthinking friendship.
She ran, paused only to open the simple iron gate into the park, then slowed as she followed the overgrown track that climbed up the side of the ridge that separated the park from the sea, sheltering the house within its wooded slopes.
Once carriages would have carried houseguests along this route up to the gazebo on the top where they could survey the sweep of coastline in one direction or the fine parkland in the other. But it had been many years since old Lord Dreycott had entertained houseguests who enjoyed picnics and flirtations in the coppices and the track had dwindled almost to a footpath.
Lina climbed on, only half-aware of the alarmed call of jackdaws and crows, the flash of colour as a jay flew across the path. If—no, when—she was cleared of this charge of theft, then what should she do? Aunt Clara had been so good to her it seemed like treachery to think of leaving The Blue Door, but she could hardly spend the rest of her life in a brothel.
Perhaps Clara imagined she would take over and run it one day. Lina could not suppress a wry smile at the thought of a virgin as abbess of a select nunnery. She had heard many of the names for houses of ill repute—school of Venus, vaulting school, smuggling ken, house of civil reception—but nunnery was the one that had startled her the most. As well as being an ironic name, it seemed that nuns were a popular male fantasy and The Blue Door had enough habits hanging in its bizarre wardrobe room to equip a small convent.
But she must acknowledge the fact that, however much she loved her aunt and liked the girls, that could never be her life, only a temporary sanctuary, one that could ruin her permanently by association.
Panting slightly, she reached the top of the hill. Set on stout wooden pillars right in front of her was the gazebo, built to add another twenty feet to the vantage point for anyone with enough breath still to climb. Lina lifted her skirts in one hand, took a firm grip on the rickety handrail with the other and mounted the steps.
At the top she went to the seaward side and leaned her elbows on the rail. The wind was fresh up here, bringing the scent of the ocean with it, and she pulled off her snood and hairpins, shaking her hair free so it blew out behind her in the breeze.
No, she could not live in a brothel for ever, nor run one, not with her lack of experience. And she had no intention of acquiring the practical knowledge, not after that hideous experience with Sir Humphrey Tolhurst. The thought of a man paying to touch her, of having to feign pleasure at the act, do whatever he wanted when she did not like or desire him, made her feel sick.
Now, if she could only come out of hiding, she had the resources to find herself a little cottage somewhere while she searched for her sisters. But she would not forget her aunt or the girls at The Blue Door, or look down on them for making the choices that they had. They had been forced into it, just as she had, but unlike her, or even Mama, they would find no escape. She would—
‘Why, I have found the little nun at last and she has cast off her wimple.’ He moves like a cat, Lina thought, spinning round on the platform to confront Quinn Ashley as he reached the top of the steps.
Then what he had said penetrated. ‘How dare you! How dare you call me a nun!’ But she had stood still while this man had kissed her fingertips, stood still and quivered with terrified pleasure. The thought of her own perverse weakness only fuelled her anger. Her loose hair settled round her shoulders in a cloud, partly obscuring her sight, and she pushed it back. ‘You…libertine, you…’
He took two strides across the platform and caught her wrists in his hands before she could strike him. ‘Do you seek to insult me, Celina? You will have to do rather better than that. I will willingly admit to libertine. Rake as well, for I can see that word forming on those very pretty lips of yours. Come then, let me give you stimulus for your vocabulary.’ And he pulled her to him, bent his head and kissed her.
Chapter Five
Celina had never
been kissed on the mouth by a man before. Sir Humphrey had been too eager for her to disrobe to worry about preliminaries so she had nothing to compare this kiss with, no expectations of what it would be like. She tried to stay composed, in control, ready to pull free the moment Ashley relaxed his hold, but the shameful reality was that her brain forgot how to work and her limbs how to struggle, the moment his lips pressed against hers.
Whatever she had expected from a kiss, it had not been this totally enveloping sensual experience. Ashley’s warm lips moving over hers were disturbing enough in the intimacy of the gesture, but she could taste him as well and she felt the brush of his tongue against the seam of her lips and guessed he wanted her to open her mouth. Stubbornly she managed to keep it closed, even while she inhaled the scent of him mingling with the fresh smells of the spring woodland all around them and the tang of the sea breeze. His body was hot and hard and so much stronger than hers that even struggling seemed pointless. Or was it that his strength was arousing and, shamefully, she did not want to struggle?
Ashley released his hold on her wrists and put one hand in the middle of her back, the other hand raking deep into her loose hair. He growled, a husky sound of appreciation, as he shifted his stance to turn and get his back against the rail and Celina found herself pressed intimately close as his tongue began its assault on her closed lips once again.
She felt so strange. She ached and yearned and trembled and the inner voice that cried Stop! was drowned in the roaring of her blood and the hammering of her pulse. Lina parted her lips, felt the thrust of Quinn’s tongue. Heat flooded through her at the intimacy of the intrusion and for a moment she could not react. Her body, though, knew what to do; her own tongue moved, tangled with his, the taste of him filled her senses.
He was aroused; she felt him hard and urgent pressing against her. A flutter of alarm brushed against her mind and was drowned in the torrent of new sensation. Ashley’s hands moved, one sliding down, urging her against him, the other slipping between their close-pressed bodies to cup her breast.
Long, knowing fingers found the edge of her bodice, slid beneath it to find the tight-puckered nipple. A stab of fire lanced from his fingertips to her belly, terrifying in its effect.
She was aware, hazily, that in a moment she would be beyond rational thought, utterly at the mercy of her own untutored sensuality and Ashley’s skilful seduction. We were so innocent… Her aunt’s words seemed to ring in her ears. Innocent, seduced, ruined.
No, stop this. Now. He thinks I have yielded, she thought, then closed her teeth hard, released them as she felt his recoil, pushed out of his arms and was away down the steps, heedless of the slippery surface and the ancient rail.
She was almost at the bottom when she lost her footing and pitched down the final six steps, bumping painfully on the sharp wooden edges to land in an undignified, bruised heap on the ground. It hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she was not going to dissolve into sobs in front of him, she thought fiercely, drawing in gasps of breath while she tried to work out if anything was broken.
Ashley came down the stairs after her with even more reckless haste, two at a time, and vaulted over her huddled body at the bottom, kicking up the deep leaf mould as he landed. ‘Hell, woman, of all the stupid things to do! These stairs are lethal. Don’t move.’ He knelt beside her. ‘Don’t move anything. Where does it hurt?’