The information only intrigued him all the more, but he could hardly ask why she wasn’t married and managing some ducal estate. Then he refocused on her eyes, and knew the answer; this lady was no sweet young thing and never had been. “Thank you for your assistance with the gentleman—my people will handle things from here. I’ll send word to the rectory when we know more.”
She held his gaze, brows lightly arching. She considered him for a totally unruffled moment, then said, “I vaguely recall hearing…if you’re Warnefleet, then you’re also the local magistrate. Is that correct?”
He frowned. “Yes.”
“In that case…” She drew a deep breath, and for the first time Jack glimpsed a hint of vulnerability—perhaps a touch of fright—in the dark depths of her eyes. “You need to understand that what happened to the young man was no accident. He didn’t overturn his phaeton. He was deliberately run off the road by another carriage.”
The image of a black carriage rattling off to Nailsworth flashed through Jack’s mind. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Clarice Adele Altwood folded her arms and sternly suppressed a shiver. Displaying weakness had never been her style, and she’d be damned if she let Warnefleet, the too-charming prodigal, see how unsettled she was. “I didn’t see the overturning itself—the noise of it was what brought me running—but when I reached the road, the other carriage had stopped, and the man driving had got down. He was approaching the phaeton, was about to go around it to the driver, but then he heard my footsteps and stopped. He looked up and saw me. He stared at me for a moment, then he swung around, walked back to his carriage, climbed in, whipped up his horses, and drove away.”
She could still see the scene, frozen in her mind. Could still feel the menace exuding from that large, heavy male figure, feel the weight of his consideration while he’d debated…. She blinked and refocused on the man before her, on his green-and-gold eyes. “I’d take an oath the man in the carriage meant to murder—to finish off—the gentleman in the phaeton.”
Chapter 2
“I came into the road there, through that gap in the hedge.” Clarice pointed, then looked at the wreckage a hundred yards farther on. “I stopped, surprised to see the other carriage there, then I remembered I’d heard shouting just before the crash—the young man swearing, I think.”
She glanced at the man beside her; she kept expecting him to play the autocratic male, pat her on the head, assure her all was right, and dismiss all she’d seen and more importantly sensed. Instead, he was listening, quite as grimly as she would have wished.
Instead of dismissing her assertion of foul play, he’d studied her, then asked her to accompany him back to the scene. He hadn’t tried to take her arm, but had walked beside her back down the drive. He’d ordered Crabthorpe’s lads to wait at the gates until he’d finished examining the phaeton, then asked her to show him where she’d entered the lane.
Eyes narrowed, he stood beside her, looking toward the wreck. “Describe the man.”
Any other day, any other man, and she would have taken umbrage at the bald order; today, from him, she was simply glad he was paying appropriate attention. “Tallish—taller than me. About your height. Heavily built, thick arms and legs. Close-cropped hair, light-colored, could be salt-and-pepper, but I can’t be certain.”
Folding her arms, she stared down the lane, reinvoking the moment in her mind. “He was wearing a drab topcoat, well cut enough but not of the first stare. His boots were brown, good-quality but not Hoby, not Hessians. He was wearing tan driving gloves. His skin was pale, his face rather round.” She glanced at Warnefleet. “That’s all I recall.”
He nodded. “He was going around the phaeton when he heard you, halted, and looked at you.” He caught her eye. “You said he stared.”
She held his gaze for an instant, then looked back down the road. “Yes. Just stared…thinking. Considering.” She resisted the urge to rub her hands up and down her arms to dispel the remembered chill.
“And then he turned and left?”
“Yes.”
“No acknowledgment, no sign at all?”
She shook her head. “He just turned, got back in his carriage, and drove away.”
He waved her down the road, but along the verge on the opposite side. He paced beside her. “What sort of carriage?”
“Small, black—from the back that was all I could see. It might have been one of those small carriages inns have for hire.”
“You didn’t see the horses?”
“No.”
“Why do you think the black carriage ran the phaeton off the road?”
She was positive that’s what had happened, but how did she know? She drew breath. “Three things—one, the swearing I heard just before the crash. A young man’s voice, and he was swearing at someone else—not his horse or a bird or the sun. Someone. And he was frightened. Scared. I heard that, too. I wasn’t surprised to hear the crash, nor to find the wreck.”
Glancing briefly at her interrogator’s hard-edged face, features angular and austere, as aristocratic as her own, she saw he was concentrating, taking in her every word. “I hadn’t truly been listening, not until I heard him swearing, so I hadn’t heard the wheels of two carriages—truth be told, I hadn’t even registered one.” She looked ahead. “But the second reason I’m so sure the carriage driver intended the accident was the position of his carriage. It had stopped in the middle of the road, but skewed away from the phaeton, because it had been on the same side of the road as the phaeton.”
They were almost level with the wreck; she slowed. “And lastly…” She halted. Warnefleet stopped and faced her. After a moment, she met his eyes; she owed it to the injured man to report all she’d seen. “The way the carriage driver walked toward the phaeton. He was intent. Determined. He wasn’t in a dither or upset. He was intending to do harm.” She looked across the road at the wreck. “He’d already done that much—he intended to finish what he’d started.”
She waited for Warnefleet to make some disparaging remark, to tell her her imagination had run away with her. She steeled herself to defend her view—
“Where did the carriage stop?”
She blinked, then pointed to a spot some yards farther along the road. “About there.”
Jack nodded. “Wait here.”
He had few illusions about being obeyed, but at least she let him go ahead, trailing some yards behind him as he stepped onto the lane proper and walked along, studying the surface in the area she’d indicated.
A yard farther on he found what he was looking for. Crouching, he examined the shallow ruts left by the carriage’s wheels when the driver had braked. Swiveling, he glanced back at the wreck, gauging the distance and the angle of the carriage.
Rising, he circled the area where the carriage had stood, aware Boadicea was following in his footsteps, more or less literally. Eyes on the ground, he scanned as he slowly worked his way toward the phaeton. He’d ridden over this ground; she’d led the bay from the phaeton over it. He didn’t hold much hope…but then fate smiled. He crouched again, studying the single bootprint, all that was left of the unknown driver’s trail.
Boadicea’s observations had been accurate. The print was from an ordinary, leather-soled gentleman’s boot. Its size, almost as large as his own, was consistent with the description she’d given. The even imprint, with neither toe nor heel unusually deep, suggested the wearer hadn’t been in any panic. Deliberate, she’d said; deliberate it looked.
Head tilted, she’d been watching him; when he rose, she raised her brows. “What can you tell from that?”
He glanced at her, met her dark eyes. “That you’re an observant and reliable witness.”
Watching her swallow her surprise made uttering the compliment all the more worthwhile.
She recovered quickly. “So you agree that the carriage driver intended to harm—probably to murder—the young man?”
He felt his face harden. “He wasn’t intending
to offer succor—if he had, he wouldn’t have left as he did.” He glanced from the wrecked phaeton to where the carriage had pulled up. “And you’re right on the other score, too—the carriage driver deliberately ran the phaeton off the road.”
That was what she’d been wanting to hear, yet he was instantly aware of the shiver that slithered through her, even though she turned away to hide it. Before he’d thought, he’d taken a step toward her. Self-preservation reared its head and halted him; he knew better than to touch, to reach for her and draw her into his arms…but he wanted to.
The realization made him inwardly frown. He’d never met a female more prickly and independent than Boadicea, more likely to spurn any comfort he might offer, because to offer meant he’d seen her weakness…wryly, he realized he understood her perfectly, he just hadn’t previously met a female who thought that way.
“Come.” He had to stop himself from taking her elbow, converting the instinctive movement into a wave down the road. “I’ll walk you back to the rectory.”
She hesitated, then started walking. After a moment, her head rose. “You don’t need to. I’m hardly likely to get lost.”
“Nevertheless.” He signaled to the waiting stable lads; they saw and headed for the phaeton. “Aside from all else, I should call on James and let him know I’m back.”
“I’ll be certain to tell him.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
He waited, but she made no further protest. A dark flash of her eyes when they reached the gap in the hedge and she led him through told him she knew he would trump any argument she made.
Such a small victory, yet it still tasted sweet.
Beyond the gap, the field rolled down to a dip, then the land gently rose to the knoll on which the old oak tree stood. Once past the hedge, Clarice looked around. Eventually she spied her hat hanging from the branches of a tree along the hedge line; without comment, she detoured to fetch it.
Warnefleet followed, also without comment.
Clarice tramped through the long grass, supremely conscious that her senses remained focused a few feet behind her, on the large, lean, athletic body, broad-shouldered and sleekly muscled, trailing her. In her mind’s eye, she could readily conjure not just his face, all hard angles and planes with that edge of ruthlessness peculiar to certain males of her own class, not just his body, long limbs strong, every movement both graceful and controlled, but even more telling—more evocative, more exciting—the aura that clung like a cloak about him, redolent of danger, exotic, illicit, and unnervingly tempting. Even more unsettling, and more puzzling, was a feeling that he saw her—the real her—clearly, yet found nothing in the sight to send him running.
None of that, however, explained her physical response, the sudden tension that gripped her, that tightened her nerves, the anticipation that stretched them—and left them taut when he didn’t touch her.
For her, susceptibility of that sort was unprecedented; she’d heard of such affliction, seen other ladies fall victim, but not her. Never her.
Such a reaction was definitely not her style.
Then again, he wasn’t the usual run of arrogant male. Not that she was fool enough to think him unarrogant, simply that she’d not met his like before.
Reaching the tree, she stopped and stared up at her hat. It dangled above her head, swinging gently in the breeze. She stretched up, but it was out of her reach. She jumped, but missed; she stretched as far as she could…and was still an inch short.
From over her head, a hand appeared and plucked the hat from the branch.
Her breath caught; she hadn’t known he was so close.
She whirled. Her boots tangled in the long grass, and she fell.
Directly into him.
He caught her, steadied her breast to chest against him.
Her lungs seized; she looked up on a strangled gasp.
Mortification should have slain her, except there was no room for it in her mind. Sensation welled and swamped her, trapped her wits in a web of new experience, of novel feelings.
She’d been held in men’s arms before, but it had never been like this. Never had the chest against which her breasts were pressed been so hard, never had the arm around her been so steely. Never had large hands held her so gently, or so securely. Never had her senses sighed, as if she’d found heaven.
Never had her pulse sped up, never had her skin shot with heat.
She stared into his eyes, green and gold melded into a true hazel, framed by long lashes and heavy lids, and sensed…strength. A strength as powerful as her own, not simply a strength of muscle and bone, but of mind and determination. A strength not only on the physical plane, but manifest in other ways, in other arenas….
The direction of her thoughts shocked her.
She blinked, mentally shook free of their hold, and refocused on his eyes, his face.
Realized he was watching her intently.
Realized he hadn’t moved, that he’d made no attempt to set her on her feet.
The look in his eyes was blatantly predatory and frankly interested; he made not the slightest effort to screen it, to disguise it, to hide it from her. The image that popped into her mind was of a large, powerful, prowling beast contemplating his next meal.
But he made no move to seize her. He was waiting to see what she would do.
She knew better than to turn and flee.
Clearing her throat, she discovered her hands were pressed to his shoulders; she pushed back, and he let her go easily—smoothly—but still he watched her.
Chin rising, she met his gaze and reached for her hat, with her eyes dared him to make anything whatever of that accidental moment. “Thank you.”
Before she could grasp her hat and twitch it from his fingers, he lifted it and dropped it on her head.
And smiled. Slowly, intently. “It was entirely my pleasure.”
If she’d been a weak female, easily distracted by a handsome face, a warrior’s body, and a smile that promised experience beyond her wildest dreams, after the incident with her hat she would doubtless have preserved a safe silence all the way to the rectory.
Instead, in order to ensure Warnefleet understood she wasn’t susceptible, she felt compelled to make conversation—the sort of conversation to put him in his place and make clear her opinion of him, an opinion unaffected by their recent interactions.
“So, my lord, do you plan on remaining at Avening for long?” The old oak lay ahead, her discarded basket sitting in its shade.
He didn’t immediately reply, but eventually said, “Avening’s my home. I grew up here.”
“Yes, I know. But you’ve been absent for years—I understand your interests keep you in the capital.” She put subtle emphasis on “interests,” enough to let him know she had an excellent grasp of what interests kept gentlemen like him in London.
She ducked under the ends of the oak’s lower branches, walking into the cool shadows.
He followed. “Some interests are best dealt with in town, true enough.” His drawl was easy, but as he continued, she sensed steel beneath. “But no sensible man would let business tie him to London, and most other interests are portable, not tied to any location.”
He, too, put a similar subtle emphasis on “interests”; it was patently clear he was calling her bluff.
“Indeed?” She bent and picked up the basket, then straightened, turned and met his eyes. “However, I daresay you would find it difficult to transfer sufficient of your other interests here, to the manor or village. Consequently, after dealing with whatever estate matters brought you here, I imagine you’ll be off once more, hence my question. How long do you plan to stay?”
Jack held her gaze. After a moment, he quietly said, “You don’t look like a female given to disordered imaginings.”
Her dark eyes flared; her chin set. “I’m not!”
He nodded amenably. Reaching for the basket, he took it from her; she surrendered it with barely a thought, too distract
ed. Too incipiently incensed. “So I’d thought,” he agreed with unimpaired calm. “That’s why I listened to all you had to say about the accident that wasn’t any accident. You were right about that.”
“Naturally.” She frowned at him. “I don’t imagine things.”
“Is that so?” He caught her dark gaze, held it for a pregnant instant, then quietly asked, “So why, Lady Clarice, have you taken against me? What have you imagined about me?”
She saw the trap, recognized she’d stepped into it; faint color tinged her cheeks—anger and irritation, not embarrassment. Purest alabaster, her complexion reminded him of rich cream, smooth, luscious; his fingers itched to touch, to stroke. To feel.
To make her flush with something other than anger.
She must have seen some hint of his thoughts in his eyes; her chin rose, but there was defensiveness in the gesture. “In your case, my lord, no imagination was necessary. Your actions over the years speak clearly enough.”
He’d been right; for some mystical reason she held him in contempt, even though they’d never met, never set eyes on each other, let alone communicated in any way. “Which actions are those?”
His tone would have warned most men they were treading on extremely thin ice. He was quite sure she heard the warning, read it correctly, felt equally sure as her eyes flashed that she’d dismissed it out of hand.
“I can understand that while your father lived, there was no pressing need for you to live here, no reason for you to curtail your military service.”
“Especially given the country was at war.”
Her lips thinned, but she inclined her head, acknowledging the point, conceding that much. “However”—she turned and walked out of the tree’s shade toward the rectory, a low, rambling house partially screened by the high hedge bordering the other side of the field—“once your father died, you should have returned. An estate like the manor, a village like Avening, needs someone to manage the reins. But no, you preferred to be an absentee landlord and leave Griggs to shoulder the responsibilities that should have been yours. He’s done well, but he’s not young—the years have taken their toll on him.”