‘I do not think I could have done,’ she confessed with an attempt at a laugh, holding out her shaking hands to show him. ‘I had not expected it to be so tense and strange.’ Guy reached behind the seat, found a lap rug and shook it out around her shoulders. Hester stood, rather blankly staring out over the Vale. ‘Guy, he did not have a mark anywhere on his face.’
‘No, and that does have me puzzled. I have been trying to remember what the ghost smelt of, and the answer is, of nothing but plain Castile soap.’
‘Which is expensive.’ Hester caught his meaning at once. ‘So it is not a groom, or some local criminal paid to break in.’
Guy leaned against the carriage beside her. His body sheltered her and she glanced up at him from under her lashes, letting herself think only about him and her feelings for him for the first time that day. The air was chill and her toes cold, but inside something burned warm and constant, a glow of trust and attraction and, she was beginning to fear, of wanting.
‘And what were you up to, sitting demurely on the chaise?’
‘There was a box which had been pushed hastily under it; all I could see were bundles of papers, and what looked like journals. But one sheet was on the floor under the table. I think it was a letter in old-fashioned handwriting. The ink was faded.’ She wrinkled her brow in an effort to recall the words and told him.
‘Moon House, precious and hide,’ Guy repeated slowly. ‘That confirms what we suspect, that there is something of value hidden there which their father did not know of and they discovered too late. And their only hope is to find and remove it before you do, or to scare you into selling the house back to them so they can pillage it at their leisure.’
Hester sighed, suddenly depressed by the whole coil. She had so much wanted peace and quiet, the chance to start afresh with her reputation intact. Now she had fallen impossibly in love and the home of her dreams was tainted by some strange mystery.
‘You are tired and frustrated by our lack of progress.’ Guy put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side. She went with the movement without conscious thought, aware only of the comfort of his body and the gentleness in his voice. ‘I w
ish I could take you away from this, take you somewhere peaceful where you could relax, sleep, forget all about it.’
‘That sounds so good,’ Hester murmured, turning her face up to smile into his. ‘Peace, sleep.’ She did not finish the thought. Guy shifted position, until he was standing facing her, pressing her back against the carriage, so close she could see the pulse in his throat above his neckcloth. He had pulled off his gloves and with gentle, bruised fingers began to untie her bonnet ribbons, ‘Guy…’ The bonnet came off and was tossed up on to the seat.
‘Mmm?’ He was trailing kisses across her forehead now, down the line where her hair grew at her temple, down her neck and up again to nibble at her ear.
‘Guy, you should not…’ I should not… we should not… Hester felt her body arch instinctively against his, moulding itself to his larger, stronger frame. Despite their heavy winter clothes she felt heat from him, knew her own breath was coming in little gasps to cloud the still air.
‘Why not?’ The murmured question seemed to burr against her ear. ‘The sun is shining, we are alone and quiet and this is a sort of heaven.’
Hester put up her hands to push him away, turned her head to look him in the eye and sternly order that he stop this outrageous, immoral, scandalous behaviour immediately. Instead her fingers clenched on Guy’s lapels, her lips sought his mouth and without conscious volition she found herself kissing him.
This was not like that kiss in her dining room when she suspected he was sending her a warning as much as taking a liberty. This was a slow, gentle, mutual exploration of scent and taste and sensation as his tongue teased and caressed, his lips gentled hers into surrender and his teeth made her gasp with sudden, delicate nips. She was aware of the sunlight on her closed lids, of the cold scent of dead leaves all around them, of the harsh cry of a pheasant and the thud of a heartbeat- hers or Guy’s she could not tell and did not care.
Her fingers moved, reached for the strong shoulders above her, found the lean, muscled column of his neck, locked into the springing, virile hair at his nape. This was the man she loved, this was how his weight felt against her, how his arms held her, how his hands and mouth and murmuring voice caressed her. The man she loved.
Reality came back and with it the memory of those hours spent facing the choices before her, the memory of the decision she had made. Marriage was out of the question for her, and that left only a choice which went hand in hand with the ostracism and humiliation she had experienced before and a shame that this time she would have earned.
‘No!’ Hester twisted her head away. ‘No.’ Furious with herself, she pushed harder than she intended, her hand slipped and she fetched Guy a glancing blow on the side of his head. Startled blue eyes met hers, then he had stepped back and was standing five feet away.
‘Hester, it was not my intention to frighten you, I am sorry.’
‘I am not frightened.’ She knew she was snapping and could not help herself. ‘I am angry.’ Guy threw up a hand in the fencer’s gesture of surrender, turned on his heel and walked away from the carriage, away from her. ‘No!’ she shouted after him. ‘Not with you. Guy, come back.’
Somehow she was moving across the springy turf, a faint scent rising from the cold thyme underfoot as she ran towards him. ‘Angry with me, not with you.’
‘Why?’ He turned back, his eyes dark. ‘Be angry with me, I should have known what would happen. I just wanted to be alone with you, hold you. Hester, my feelings for you are-’
‘Much better left unsaid,’ she interjected hastily, walking past him so she was looking out over the Vale and not at his face. ‘Nothing is possible between us other than friendship. It seems there is an attraction as well. I cannot allow that to continue, not and live the sort of life I have set out for myself.’
Where the words, and the strength to say them, came from she had no idea. Hester blinked hack what felt treacherously like tears and focused hard on the village lying below her, the white line of the post road snaking past it, the glitter of water marking the canal beyond. This was home now, the only fixed thing in her life.
He had moved silently behind her; the first she knew of it were his hands on her shoulders. They rested there, heavy but undemanding. ‘Do you believe I was intending to offer you a carte blanche?’
‘I do not know,’ she replied in as calm a voice as Guy was using. ‘But I know that I should not act in such a manner that you could be forgiven for believing such an offer would be acceptable. It would not be.’ She spun round and he dropped his hands. ‘Ever.’
His eyes had gone from dark to stormy and with a shock Hester recognised anger to match her own. Anger, and, although it was hard to believe, uncertainty, almost vulnerability. She did not want him to be vulnerable or uncertain. She wanted a rock, a supporter, a friend-and had foolishly believed she could have all that and keep her feelings hidden. What Guy’s feelings were she had hardly stopped to consider, she realised with a pang of guilt.
‘I can assure you that, whatever my intentions, offering you a position as my mistress was not one of them. You may have my word that I never will.’
His anger sparked hers into fire again. Guilt, the knowledge that she was behaving badly, the tensions of the mystery that enveloped them, flared.