The book hit the floor again with a thud and Theo jerked upright, feeling ashamed of himself, as though he had been watching her secretly through a window. Which was ridiculous, he told himself, smoothing out the pages. He was going to have to buy Perry another copy of the ghostly tales if he didn’t stop dropping the confounded thing.
Voyeur, his conscience scolded him. It wasn’t like that, he retorted. But he was uncomfortably aware that the sight had been arousing, even though all he had seen was a formless shadow and the movement of one arm. It had been a private, intimate moment and that was why it had seemed erotic, he told himself, tossing the banyan on top of the nightshirt and getting into bed. Nothing whatsoever to do with the young woman half-hidden under her oversized cap.
And any member of staff ought to be safe from the attentions of a gentleman, even if those attentions were confined to a desire to remove that cap and several hairpins. Theo reminded himself that he was engaged to be married to a lovely young lady, punched the pillow releasing a waft of lavender scent, and blew out the candle. It had been a long day.
It had been a long day, one that had begun well and now… Laura put down her brush and began to braid her hair. Now the house was full of men. One man, she corrected herself. Pitkin hardly counted as a shadow, the footmen were part of the household and Lord Northam’s coachman kept to the stables most of the time. It was remarkable how much room a perfectly well-mannered, pleasant male took up, not in physical space, but in her head.
She was safe enough, he would behave like a gentleman, she could tell that, even though she could sense his awareness of her as a woman. He’d not act on that, she’d been certain, even as she locked her bedchamber door. But that was habit, more than any concerns about this household. It was a relief to be here, even though she had to put on an act for Lord Northam and they had Riding Officers traipsing through the cellars. Lieutenant Morefleet had given her a nasty start until she realised who he was and that her uncle was unlikely to have called out local officialdom to search for her. Not yet.
Her uncle had been determined to get her, and her money, married off to his eldest son and heir and Laura had felt no confidence at all that he’d stop at any ploy, including sending one of his sons to her bedchamber at night. Here she felt no need to drag any furniture in front of the door to be doubly certain.
So, really, all she had to worry about was convincingly pretending to be a housekeeper for however long it was before Perry came home, Laura told herself as she blew out her candle. That would be easy enough with Mrs Bishop to help, bless her. The rest of the staff knew her of old and had nodded sympathetic understanding when she had confessed to being afraid of her uncle and his schemes. They had heard about him from the local servants’ network of gossip, but she believed them when they promised not to say a word outside these walls about her presence.
It would all be as she had planned and it could only be a month at most because Perry would be home for his house party, the one Lord Northam had been expecting to arrive for. Even Perry was not scatter-brained enough to forget that. Surely…
Chapter Three
‘Good day, gentlemen!’ Theo stood and waited for the three riders to come abreast of him. This morning, with his riding horses not yet arrived and the carriage horses resting, he had set out on foot and taken the cliff path – or what passed for cliffs in this part of Norfolk – and was keeping a wary yard or so back from the crumbling
edge.
‘Good day.’ The older of the three and probably, from the likeness between them all, the father, raised his whip to the brim of his hat. Then Theo recognised him from an earlier visit – Sir William Swinburn, if he was not mistaken. No, Walter. He recalled Perry dodging a dinner invitation and couldn’t recall why.
‘A fine day for a walk. But beware of the edge, sir, it is treacherous.’
‘Thank you for the warning, but I had recalled these cliffs are not to be trusted from the last time I visited. They must be a risk to your livestock as well as not offering safe caves for your local smugglers to hide their booty.’
‘Smugglers?’ It was the younger of the two brothers – Giles? – and he spoke sharply.
‘I assume you have them. We were visited by a Riding Officer yesterday who inspected the cellars to no avail. I could have told him as much without the need to check, but of course he was hardly likely to take a visitor’s word for it.’
‘You are staying hereabouts, sir?’ That was Sir Walter again. The older brother merely sat and stared woodenly.
A real slow-top, Theo thought, trying, and failing, to recall his name. ‘Yes. At Mannerton. I am Northam, an old friend of Manners.’
‘Sir Walter Swinburn. You are a temporary neighbour of ours, Lord Northam. My sons, Charles and Giles.’
‘I thought Manners was away,’ Giles Swinburn said, steadying his flashy chestnut as it sidled and fretted.
‘He is. I mistook the date by an entire month. If I thought I needed a rest and to get away from London that error convinced me as nothing else would!’
Sir Walter laughed, a harsh bark. ‘But you are staying nonetheless?’
‘Yes. The staff know me and Perry won’t mind.’
‘You must come and dine,’ Sir Walter said. ‘My wife has made an engagement for one day this week, damned if I can recall which evening it is off the top of my head, but I’ll send a note. Good day to you.’
The three cantered off, sending a pair of oyster catchers piping in alarm as they wheeled into the sky and leaving Theo looking after them, vaguely puzzled. That had been a very abrupt reaction to the mention of smugglers. Perhaps Morefleet had not called on them yet and therefore the topic was far from their minds.
Not an attractive trio, he thought as he began to walk again, following the path as it rose and fell. The oldest son, Charles, looked stolid to the point of stupidity, the younger, Giles, had an aggressive edge to him that Theo disliked as much as he had the spurs the man had been using on his horse. Their father looked like a bad man to cross.
Theo shrugged. A change of company would do him good, even if they were not the most congenial of associates, and it would be tactful to let the staff have an evening off following his unexpected arrival. Sea birds screamed overhead and he stopped to breathe in the fresh salty air and watch the waves crash hypnotically on the beach.
After a mile the rabbit-cropped turf sloped down and gave way to shingle and Theo turned towards the sea through the gap in the low cliffs. On the landward side was a marsh he recalled shooting over one autumn on a visit years before and, somewhere beneath his feet, he deduced, a stream made its way to the sea under the stones of the beach.
The pebbles proved hard walking so he went directly down to the high-water mark where sand was exposed, littered with shells, driftwood and scraps of fishing net and floats. And there, just in line with the gap in the cliffs and the causeway across the marsh, were the marks where a boat had been pulled up, clear of the surf.
It could be a perfectly innocent fisherman, landing with his pots laden with the small, sweet, brown crabs this coast was renowned for. But if that was the case, why not land at a beach near a village? There were few good harbours along this coast and the villages were away from it, across the marshes where the land began to rise to the fields and they were clear of flooding. But each had its beach with a causeway leading across the wetland down to where the boats were hauled up by horse or man-power.