As the conversation of the guests grew louder the two of them remained still, quiet islands in the sea of noise. Henrietta supposed she was responding properly to the questions of her neighbours but it was mechanical. All her consciousness was focused wholly on Matthew. She wanted to be in his arms on that big soft bed, learning his body in even greater detail, exchanging kisses and caresses that burned and tormented until at last they lay fulfilled together. She stifled a sigh: it was a long, long time until nightfall.
Her husband was listening with a very straight face to Serena Willoughby telling a tale which was causing her to blush and cast down her eyes coyly. Henrietta suspected she was asking for advice on her suitors. To all intents and purposes Matthew was following closely, but Henrietta knew his eyes and attention were focused on her. He saw her watching him and one eyelid drooped in a slow wink.
Covered in confusion, her heart fluttering madly, Henrietta cut herself a piece of cheese. He must have forgiven her for this morning and she wanted his forgiveness so much. She loved him, craved his love with a hunger that astonished her. But he didn't love her, not yet. But he would, she vowed. She would replace Sarah in his heart somehow, and perhaps one day he would love her as he'd loved his first wife.
The cheese was sharp on her palate, but she didn't notice. Before she did anything she must quit her promise to James, send those papers on their way, and the message in the glove from Robert's Oxford contact promised help.
The last of the meal had been eaten, the dishes almost cleared. Many of the ladies were already retiring to the cool of Aunt Susan's parlour but Serena Willoughby hung on her mother's arm, begging permission to go and play bowls with the other young people.
Lady Willoughby cast a sharp look round, decided none of the young men presented a threat to an unchaperoned girl, and gave her permission.
‘Come with me and I'll find the bowls for you.’ Henrietta gathered the laughing group around her and led them through the screens to the large press at the foot of the stairs. She showed the men where the wooden bowls lay and reassured the enthusiasts that the green was newly scythed and rolled. They trooped off, leaving her suddenly alone, her skirts brushing the oak chest containing the glove and its message.
Some of the older men still lingered in the hall talking. She heard Sir Walter and Matthew, still apparently discussing sheep, and realised she had the perfect opportunity to retrieve the message and take it to her room.
It was the work of a moment to lift the lid and extract the package from between the folds of her heavy winter cloak. The scrap of parchment was where she had left it, rolled into a cylinder in one finger of the right-hand glove.
A step sounded on the flags behind her. With a guilty start she dropped the heavy lid of the chest, the sound echoing like a thunderclap up the stairwell.
Hands, warm and sure, clasped her shoulders, and Matthew's lips caressed the line of her neck from earlobe to collarbone. ‘What are you doing out here alone?’ he murmured against her skin, sending the fine hairs on the back of her neck into tingling arousal.
‘F-finding the bowls,’ she managed to stammer, speech more and more difficult as his lips moved down the curve of her shoulder and his hands dropped to girdle her waist. Slowly, deliberately, he turned her to face him and as he did so her full skirts knocked the gloves to the floor.
Matthew stooped, picked them up and examined them. ‘These are fine.’ He ran an appreciative finger over the bullion embroidery. ‘Who gave you them?’
‘I don’t know, there was no card with them. They're the ones that arrived last night while we were in the yard with the servants. I must have left them here when we came in.’ All of that was the literal truth; her conscience was bad enough already without adding lying to her sins.
Matthew discarded them without a second glance, pulling her into his arms against his hard, disturbing body. ‘It's too hot in here,’ he murmured against her lips. ‘Come outside.’
Striving to stifle her disappointment that he was not carrying her off to their chamber, Henrietta allowed herself to be led across the orchard. Silently she chided herself for having such immodest thoughts. Matthew would come to her in their chamber at night as was fitting and wanting anything else would make her the wanton he'd teased her with.
Ducking under the low branches laden with hard, unripe apples, her hand in Matthew's, she thought only of the gloves lying on the chest in the hall. What if a servant or a guest picked them up, felt the message secreted in the finger? Oh, James, she thought despairingly, if only you'd found someone else to bequeath your secret to, how happy I could be now. But there had been no one else, and there was no one else now to pass the burden to. It was her responsibility to deal with, and quickly.
‘Matthew, stop. I must go back to the house, speak with Letty.’
‘It can wait.’ His voice was smoky with promise, lighting an answering fire in her.
‘No.’ She wriggled her fingers free of his grasp and managed to look coyly shy. ‘It is something for… a woman's ears.’
The passion was still in his eyes, but he nodded understandingly and let her go. ‘Don't be long. I will be waiting for you at the willow by the pond.’
Her heart was thudding, but not because she was running back to the house. She hated deceiving him, using womanly wiles to cajole him. But the message had to come before everything; there were lives at stake.
The gloves were where she had left them. With a sigh of thankfulness Henrietta lifted the lid and thrust them back, deep into the folds of her winter cloak, releasing a strong smell of camphor and wormwood from the stored cloth.
Matthew was waiting for her at the pond where he'd first offered her marriage that day when he had arrived so unexpectedly. Now that it was summer the old weeping willow made a canopy of green sweeping almost to the ground. Matthew held apart the branches like opening a curtain and they stepped inside the green coolness. He dropped the branches behind them. ‘I found this place the other morning. Did you realise you could conceal yourself here like this?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Henrietta clapped her hands in recollection, her worries suddenly banished. ‘Alice and James and I used to play here when we were children, but I had quite forgotten. It is like being in a room with just a window out on to the pond.’
‘And only a coot to watch us.’ His voice was suddenly husky, full of longing as he drew her down on to the dry grass.
‘Matthew? What are we doing here?’ But, joyfully, she knew only too well as his lips travelled down from her temple to the corner of her mouth.
He traced the curve of her lips with the tip of his tongue, tasting, tantalising, sending shafts of fire coursing down her limbs. Expecting him to kiss her full on the mouth, Henrietta closed her eyes and raised parted lips, but his tongue was busy now at her wrist, teasing the pulse-point, his teeth nipping the swell at the base of her thumb.
She opened her mouth to protest but only managed to whisper. ‘What if someone were to come?’
‘No one will come, they are all occupied. And none will think to seek us today of all days.’