‘I has to inform you, sir, that Her Ladyship is not at home,’ said Thomas, standing squarely at the open door.
‘Do you mean she is out?’ asked Captain Burnside.
‘I mean, sir,’ said Thomas regretfully, for he liked the captain, ‘that she is not at home.’
‘She won’t see me, is that it?’
‘Her Ladyship is not at home,’ said Thomas.
‘I see. Then would you ask Miss Annabelle to receive me?’
‘Miss Annabelle Howard, sir, is not at home.’
‘Damn me, Thomas, do you want me to black your eye?’
‘No, sir. Not as it’ll do you any good. Miss Annabelle is at Lady Repton’s evening reception. Being it’s my duty, I’ll now close the door.’
‘Do so,’ said the captain, ‘then kindly carry a message to Lady Caroline, advising her that if her door stays closed to me I’ll break it down.’
‘Ah, has I heard you correct, sir?’ asked Thomas.
‘You have.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Thomas, and closed the door. He carried the message upstairs to Helene, passing over the fact that Lady Caroline was pecking at her supper in the dining room.
Helene, about to go down to join the servants at supper in their hall, received the message in startlement. ‘He is not serious, Thomas?’
‘Well,’ said Thomas, ‘I didn’t like the look in his eye, I tell you that.’
‘Oh, poor Captain Burnside,’ said Helene. ‘At the first blow on the door, Lady Caroline will have him arrested. She’ll send Sammy for the Bow Street Runners. I had better go down and talk to him.’
Captain Burnside looked at her as she opened the door. ‘I hope you bring reasonable news,’ he said.
‘Sir, I hope myself you will be reasonable and go away,’ said Helene.
‘Yours is a vain hope, Helene, for at the moment I ain’t a reasonable man.’
‘I regret that won’t help,’ said Helene. ‘Lady Caroline will not see you under any circumstances, whether you are reasonable or not. Nor am I sure if it would profit you if she did see you. She is making plans to return to America.’
‘Oh, ye gods,’ said Captain Burnside. ‘Well, tell her to unmake them.’
‘Captain Burnside,’ said Helene gently, ‘it will be more than my life is worth even to tell her I’ve been talking to you.’
‘Oh, the devil,’ he said, ‘is she so out of sorts?’
Helene looked quite sadly at him. She had hoped Her Ladyship would find enough integrity and character in Captain Burnside to marry him. ‘Sir, what have you done to her?’ she asked quietly. ‘She is more than out of sorts, far more. She is suffering. She endured her bad days with – oh, I should not say so, but Lord Clarence caused her much unhappiness. She bore it all with pride. What have you done to her to make her say she wishes she were dead?’
‘Let me see her,’ said Captain Burnside.
‘I beg you won’t force yourself on her,’ said Helene. She hesitated, then whispered, ‘I am breaking a confidence, which I never have before, but tomorrow she is going to Great Wivenden, to spend her time there until she sails for America. I can speak no more with you now.’ And Helene closed the door.
Caroline saw him. She saw him from the window of her bedroom in the manor house. The August day was glorious, laying gold on the wheatfields and brightly defining his figure as he rode up the long sandy drive to the forecourt of the house. His demeanour seemed thoughtful, his back slightly bent, eyes downcast, and his horse was only ambling. It was a slow, deliberate ride to the great front doors of her country residence.
The freezing sensations returned to her body. She watched him, hating him, and she felt disgust that he should have come here, to the place she loved most. In such a place, he was an obscenity. She turned and pulled on the bell cord.
Helene came in. ‘Milady?’
‘That man is here.’
‘Your pardon?’ said Helene, although she guessed.
‘Captain Burnside. I am out, do you hear? I have gone to Brighton.’
‘He will ask—’
‘Do as I say. Tell him. Answer no questions.’ Caroline was pale, shadows around her eyes. Whenever she was able to sleep, it was only fitfully, and for the last few hours, exhaustedly. ‘Send him away.’
The front door bell sprang its peal.
Helene hurried down, intercepting Mr Frederick Jarvis, the head servant of the household. ‘I will answer it, Mr Jarvis, I know who it is,’ she said.
It was Helene whom Captain Burnside saw again when one of the double doors opened. He seemed calm but determined. He raised his beaver hat to her. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I wish to see Lady Clarence Percival.’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Helene, making an effort to look him in the eye, ‘but Her Ladyship is in Brighton.’
‘No, she ain’t.’
‘Captain Burnside—’
‘It won’t do,’ he said. ‘Be so kind as to advise her that I’m here, and that I ain’t going to depart until I’ve seen her. Further advise her that if she don’t give me a chance to talk to her, she ain’t as sweet-natured as I thought she was. Nor is she fair.’
‘Oh, Captain Burnside,’ gasped Helene, ‘I can’t tell her that. She is sweet-natured, and fair …’
‘She ain’t. Not if she won’t allow me a hearing. Advise her so.’
‘Sir, I simply cannot. And she’s in Brighton.’
‘Oh, you insist, do you, Helene?’ Captain Burnside was grim. Helene quivered, certain he was in a mood to sweep her aside and force his way into the presence of Her Ladyship. ‘Very well. Where in Brighton?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Helene, a little desperate.
‘Quite so. Why should you know? Why should anyone know? She ain’t in Brighton. She’s here.’
‘Captain Burnside, you must go about things in your own way, but I cannot let you in, and beg you won’t have me side with you against Her Ladyship, only tell you that I wish you well, which I truly do.’
‘Then at least acquaint Her Ladyship with the fact that I ain’t going to depart until she sees me. Also tell her she ain’t going back to America except over my dead body.’
‘Oh,’ said Helene. The faintest smile came. ‘You love her.’
‘Of course I love her,’ said Captain Burnside. ‘Who couldn’t? But if it comes to putting her over my knees, damned if I won’t do it.’
‘Oh, dear Lord,’ gasped Helene, and hastily closed the door. Captain Burnside, his horse tethered, sat down on the step.
‘Your Ladyship?’ Helene was tentative.
‘Well?’ Caroline, at her window again, swung round, eyes glittering.
‘He—’
‘He hasn’t gone,’ said Caroline, ‘for I haven’t seen him ride away.’
‘I beg Your Ladyship’s forbearance, but he was so determined.’
‘Really?’ Lady Caroline was icy. ‘His determination does not match mine. Did you not tell him I was in Brighton?’
‘Indeed, yes, I did. Twice.’ Helene took the plunge. ‘I am afraid he did not believe me.’
‘That would be amusing if it weren’t so wretched. How dare a man like that give the lie to anyone?’
‘Milady, what has he done?’ asked Helene bravely.
‘What does that matter? It is enough for you to know him an utterly worthless creature. When Mr Forbes returns to his office, ask him to come and see me. If you are unable to persuade Captain Burnside to go away, I shall ask Mr Forbes to intercede.’
‘Your Ladyship,’ said Helene, brave again, ‘Captain Burnside asked me to advise you he won’t depart until you consent to see him.’
‘Oh, I declare myself ravaged and racked by his importunities!’ Caroline was fierce, tearing herself apart in her bitterness. ‘Let us discover just how importunate he will be when Mr Forbes and the gardeners have locked him in the stocks.’
‘Oh, Lady Caroline, no, you cannot!’ gasped Helene. ‘Not Captain Burnside.’
Caroline’s glittering eyes transfixed her. ‘Well,’ she breathed, ‘is this what it has come to? You, whom I trust more than any other, are making sheep’s eyes at Captain Burnside like an infatuated wench or a covetous trollop?’
‘Your Ladyship,’ said Helene quietly, ‘you know that is not true.’
Caroline shivered. ‘Oh, I am sorry, Helene. Forgive me. But I won’t see Captain Burnside, ever. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Helene. But her next words were forced from her because of Captain Burnside. ‘He said if you won’t give him the chance to talk to you, you – you aren’t as sweet-natured and as fair as he thought you were.’
‘Oh, I vow that man’s arrogance unbearable, and he himself despicable!’
Drawing breath, Helene said, ‘He also assured me you are not going back to America except over his dead body.’
‘Oh!’ Caroline put her fingertips to her eyelids and pressed them in anguish. ‘Go away! Please go away!’
‘Ah, Sammy,’ said Captain Burnside.
Sammy was in the stables, about to shoe a horse. He looked young but workmanlike, and his eyes lit up to see the captain, whom he considered a rare dab hand at dealing with life. ‘Why, it’s you yourself, guv’nor. I’m that pleased to see you, sir. You’ve come to stay a bit?’
‘I’m staying, yes, you can say that,’ said the captain, and gave Sammy a friendly pat on the arm. ‘Here’s my horse. Can you rub her down and stable her?’
‘Willingly,’ said Sammy. ‘And oats, Cap’n Burnside?’
‘I’ll rely on you, but let me know how much she’s taken between now and the time I go. I’ll need to reimburse Her Ladyship.’
‘D’you mean pay, sir?’ asked Sammy, askance. ‘Lady Caroline won’t go much on that, guests paying for their ’osses’ oats.’
‘It’s a question of principle, d’you see,’ said the captain in pleasant and confiding fashion. ‘Her Ladyship and yours truly are presently in argument.’
‘Oh, Lor’,’ said Sammy, ‘that’s a stiff one to take, sir, you and Her Ladyship on an up-and-downer. And her being such a fine lady, and all. But it ain’t too serious, guv’nor?’
‘Well, critical at the moment, I must confess,’ said Captain Burnside. ‘In fact, I ain’t actually allowed into the house.’
‘Lord help us, that’s a blinder, sir,’ said Sammy, shaking his head and dislodging a stray straw from his hair.
‘We shall arrive in calmer waters eventually, though it’s stormy today. Young fellow, I ain’t proposing you should be disloyal, and I know you won’t be, but you can tell me, I hope, if Her Ladyship is regularly out and about.’
‘Ah,’ said Sammy, and examined his loyalties. Captain Burnside, he reckoned, had taken a fancy to Her Ladyship, and Her Ladyship, being in the kind of mood she’d never been in before, wasn’t making it easy for him. And she was talking about going back to America. ‘Well, guv’nor, I can tell you she ain’t one for sitting indoors when she’s here, that she ain’t. She’s been out riding several times, and bringing her ’oss back lathered.’
‘I’d like to be tipped the wink when she next rides out. Can I rely on you, Sammy?’
‘You can rely on me if she don’t tell me not to tell you,’ said Sammy. ‘If she says I ain’t to, then I ain’t a-going to, begging your pardon and all, sir.’
‘Quite right, Sammy. What she tells you you mustn’t do, you won’t do. What she doesn’t tell you to do, you can do. Excellent. You’re a capital young fellow.’
‘Guv’nor, I think you’ve just put me on the ropes,’ said Sammy.
‘It will help the calmer seas to arrive,’ said the captain. ‘I shall be within hearing distance.’
He took a stroll in the gardens below the terrace. From a drawing room, Caroline saw him again. She clenched her hands and gritted her teeth. There he was, meandering, in his beaver hat, and idly swinging his cane, as if all was well with his world. His presence was confining her. She would not, could not, go out while he was here. To meet him, to come face to face with him, would do her no good at all. Oh, how dare he put himself back in her life, how dared he have the effrontery to come and to stay? She had fared very badly. First Clarence, wholly decadent, and now this man, wholly spurious.
John Forbes appeared, walking in his deliberate way. He came up from the parkland, and she saw him turn and advance on Captain Burnside.
‘Captain Burnside?’ said Mr Forbes.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Forbes,’ said the captain.
‘You’re visiting?’ asked the steward.
‘I arrived an hour ago. I’m now taking in the tranquil effect of these gardens.’
‘You must thank George Cutts for that. He’s head gardener. Good afternoon to you, sir.’ Mr Forbes had no idea Captain Burnside was presently in argument with Her Ladyship, though he was well aware Her Ladyship was not at her best. He had no sooner reached his office a minute or so later than she appeared.
‘John,’ she said, ‘you have just been speaking to Captain Burnside. What did he say to you?’
Mr Forbes, thinking she looked unwell, said, ‘He remarked he was taking in the tranquil effect of your gardens.’
‘He has arrived uninvited,’ said Caroline coldly. ‘He has refused to go. Will you please prevail on him to take himself off? I am receiving no visitors, none.’
‘Your Ladyship, he’s refused to go?’
‘He has. I declare him unwelcome. Therefore, please see to it that he departs.’
Mr Forbes, a grave man, gave himself time to reflect. ‘Your Ladyship,’ he said, ‘am I being asked to intervene because you’ve quarrelled with Captain Burnside?’
‘How dare you!’ said Caroline.
‘It was put respectfully,’ said Mr Forbes.
‘Ask him to leave, please. Call the gardeners if he proves objectionable, and have them carry him off the estate.’ And Caroline turned and swept away.
She watched again from the drawing room. She saw Mr Forbes speaking to the captain. The captain nodded, cut off a dead rose bloom with a swish of his cane, lifted his hat to the steward, and strolled away. She lost sight of him as he made for the stables. Mr Forbes returned to the house, and reported that Captain Burnside had consented to go.
‘Thank you, John,’ said Caroline, ‘and forgive me if I was too demanding of you.’
So, he had come and he had gone. The ice around her heart turned leaden.
Captain Burnside rode back to the house under cover of darkness that night. He stabled his horse, removed his hat and coat, made a bed of a great mound of dry straw, settled himself down, composed his thoughts, and went to sleep.
‘Oh, save my soul,’ said Sammy. Captain Burnside was at the pump, shirtsleeves rolled up. He was dousing his head in the cold water. ‘Sir, you’re a hot potato, that you are. The word’s out. You ain’t permitted nowhere near the place. I’ll get stoned if I don’t see you off.’
Captain Burnside shook the water from his hair. ‘Well, there it is, Sammy, stormy as a raging south-wester,’ he said. ‘Be a good young fellow and find me a razor. I ain’t half my usual self when I’m unshaven. And a crust or two would be very welcome.’
‘Oh, Lor’, that’s another blinder,’ said Sammy. ‘Guv’nor, you’ll get me topped.’
‘Sammy, I ain’t as much in need of a few crusts as I am of a friend. Just a razor, then, how will that do?’
Sammy gave a huge grin. ‘Seeing you ain’t short of nerve, guv’nor, I’ll risk getting topped.’
‘In that case,’ said the captain, freshened by the cold water, ‘you won’t lack a consoling companion. We’ll get topped together. But not a word out of place; can I rely on that?’
‘Her Ladyship ain’t yet told me what I mustn’t do today,’ said Sammy, and sidled off.
The warm breeze blew in her face, and the sunlight danced ahead of her. The side-saddle was firm, and she was expertly at home in it, her black gelding a flyer. She galloped to take out of her heart and mind everything except the glory of the August morning. The speed of the gallop was an antidote to cold, crushing anguish. And it helped her to reject the persistent intrusion into her mind: the thought that she was in blind, obsessive martyrdom of herself.
The boundary brick wall of the estate appeared in the distance. She turned her horse, continuing her reckless gallop as she made for Wivenden Wood, its trees profuse with summer leaf. She heard a sound behind her. She looked back. A horseman, fifty yards away, his head bare, was racing up on her. She went rigid in her saddle, and her frisky gelding pulled on the bit. Her body shivered and she clenched her teeth, digging with a spur.
He had come back, he was behind her, and the suffering was a torment. She raced over the thick grass alongside the wood, heading back to the house. He raced after her. He did not attempt to catch her up. He knew that at the pace she was going, and had been going, she would run her mount to a standstill long before she reached the house. He stayed within twenty yards of her, watching her ride like a madwoman. He did not call, or shout. He let her gallop on. She looked back, more than once, and she did not utter a sound, either.
Her gelding began to flounder, to falter, at which point Captain Burnside came up beside her.
‘Kindly stop,’ he said.
‘Never! Never for you!’
‘Gently, marm, gently,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ she raged, and struck at him with her riding crop. It caught him across his jaw. Her gelding, blown and lathered, stopped, head hanging, flanks heaving. Captain Burnside pulled up and dismounted. She slapped wildly at her horse, but it was too winded to respond. The captain reached for her with long arms. She struck him again. He pulled her from her saddle, her fury almost hysterical as she tumbled into his arms, her top hat falling off. He held her, and she kicked in his arms.
‘It won’t do, marm, it won’t do at all,’ he said.
‘Let me go!’
He set her on her feet. Bitter, glittering and utterly outraged, she struck at him yet again. His arm came up, warding off the blow. He shook his head at her.
‘I ain’t ever put a woman over my knees before,’ he said, ‘but I fancy if I don’t do it now, you’ll never come to your senses.’
He bent low, he wound an arm around her, and he straightened up. Caroline screamed as she found herself hanging over his shoulder, his right arm wrapped around her skirted legs. Her hair came loose. Frenziedly, she beat at his back. He carried her into the shelter of the wood. In a clearing, he found an ideal tree stump. He seated himself, and Caroline screamed again as he brought her down over his knees. The indignity was paralysing, and horror rushed to suffuse her with fiery colour as her riding skirt and underskirt were whirled upwards over her back, uncovering her pantaloons. Oh, dear God, he really was going to do it!
‘No,’ she gasped, ‘no!’
‘Shall we talk, then, Your Ladyship?’
‘Yes – yes.’
He released her. She escaped her indignity, her skirts falling into place, her brown coat awry, her hair disordered, her face burning.
‘This ain’t an inconsequential matter, marm,’ he said, ‘it’s life and death.’
‘Your death,’ she said, but her bitter look was gone, and so was the misery of feeling locked in numbing ice. In its place was a swamping, surging tide of reborn gladness at simply being alive. What had happened to her that she had become a grey, cold, self-pitying and unproud shadow of herself? Why, here he was, the torment of her being, and she could not be called a true woman if she did not stand up and fight him. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘before I catalogue your infamies, I must congratulate you on your bravery in dragging a helpless woman from her horse and assaulting her.’
‘Helpless?’ he said, fingering his tender jaw.
‘You shall pay dearly for subjecting me to such indignity. I have discovered all your sins. You are a fraudulent wretch and a worthless deceiver.’
‘I thought, Your Ladyship, you were aware of that from the beginning.’
‘In the beginning, you led me to believe you were a professional adventurer, an unprincipled rogue and a shameless blackguard. This beginning itself, sir, was an act of contemptible fraudulence.’
‘I agree, marm, and confess it so, humbly,’ declared the captain, ‘but I’m no more than an ordinary blackguard, such as you may come across every day in London. But as things were—’
‘Ordinary?’ said Caroline, spirited now. ‘Did you not declare you would commit any crime short of assassination or murder? There are few men so lost to all grace and decency as to deliver lies of such magnitude as you did, and to one as kind and trusting as myself.’
‘Quite so, marm, but the circumstances, d’you see—’
‘You are not an adventurer, a rogue or a thief, but you are a man of deceits,’ said Caroline. She had grasped the nettle and seized the initiative. She was in her element, finding entirely new exhilaration in standing up to him instead of denying him access to her presence. ‘Why, you are not even a professional card-sharp.’
‘I’m a professional soldier, though not of the usual kind,’ he said. ‘I execute uncommon commissions for His Majesty’s government.’
‘As I have discovered to the cost of my self-respect. The Duke of Avonhurst, my father-in-law, confessed all your deceits. Do you now say, sir, that you did not compromise your adjutant’s wife or decamp with the trinkets of young ladies who thought you would marry them?’
‘God forbid I should even dream of it,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘and God forgive your father-in-law for spilling the beans.’
‘My father-in-law does not spill beans, sir. He is a gentleman of honour, and in honourable fashion he—’ Caroline broke off as Captain Burnside coughed. ‘Sir?’ she said haughtily.
‘A cough ain’t always significant, Your Ladyship.’
‘My father-in-law, as a matter of honour, felt impelled to acquaint me with all the miserable details of your two-faced activities. I have forgiven him his own part. Your part, sir, will never be forgiven. I detest myself for being a naive, trusting and sweet-natured simpleton, thinking of your professed sins not with scorn but with Christian pity.’
Captain Burnside eyed her with due gravity. Chin high, she stared him out, showing not a sign that this final confrontation had her in a state of resurgent challenge.
‘Allow me, marm, to confess myself abject, penitent and contrite,’ he said, ‘and to offer myself up for execution. But while I am all of a piece, I beg your consideration of the plight of the maidservant Betsy, so invaluable in the matter of the letter. The sweet puss—’
‘The pretty trollop?’ interjected Caroline bitingly.
‘She’s been dismissed following an investigation into the letter’s disappearance. While allowing you ain’t charitably inclined at the moment, due to my regrettable abuse of your trust and self-respect, I know you to have natural compassion and I thought, therefore, you might find her a position here at Great Wivenden. Sussex, d’you see, offers her less temptations than London, she owning too much of a weakness for gentlemen of a suspect kind.’
Caroline could not believe her ears. Merciful heavens, was the ground she had newly won to be swept from beneath her feet? Were there no limits to his outrageous audacity? Was there ever a more presumptuous villain, or a more endearing one? Her resolution trembled on the brink.
‘Sir, your impudence is breathtaking,’ she said. ‘I am to consider employing your trollop? Oh, sir, I vow you of all things conscienceless. I have found you out, discovered your perfidy, and the first thing you do is beg me to take up your fallen baggage. I am lost for words, sir, lost.’
‘Ah,’ said the captain, and coughed again. ‘I ain’t noticed it,’ he said.
Caroline could hardly contain her swamping tide of recharged spirit. There he was, standing before her, his expression that of a man being entirely reasonable. Oh, that she had denied herself this exultant confrontation until now.
‘You are shifting about, sir,’ she said. ‘You may have no shame, but you are surely not such a coward that you can’t face your deserved death bravely. But I declare myself un-vindictive. I am returning home to Charleston at the end of this month.’
‘Only over my dead body,’ said the captain.
‘Sir?’
‘You ain’t going,’ he said.
‘This conversation is over,’ said Caroline.
‘It ain’t properly begun yet. Beg to suggest, Your Ladyship, that you stop playing games.’
‘Games?’ Her head came up.
‘It’s affecting my well-being,’ said the captain.
A breeze came drifting from the Downs and lightly kissed the leafy trees. Caroline stood still, yielding nothing. The captain was poised, however, to cut off her probable, darting flight.
‘Your well-being, sir, is not my concern. I am selling Great Wivenden—’
‘No, you ain’t,’ he said.
‘Captain Burnside, there is a suspicion in my mind that you’re threatening me.’
‘Quite right,’ said the captain, ‘I am. Declare yourself permanently attached to Great Wivenden, or take the consequences.’
‘Declare those consequences, sir.’
‘Abduction, confinement, and bread and water. Sammy is presently at Pond Cottage, with your coach. Unless, marm, you come to your senses, I shall carry you there, bundle you aboard, and get Sammy to drive us to a place where I shall lock you up and feed you bread and water, which won’t necessarily be the least of it.’
‘Lock me up?’ Caroline could scarcely restrain her joy. No woman could have failed to perceive what lay behind this outrageous threat. He loved her. Not for him the timid words of a faint-hearted swain, but the calculating and uncompromising approach that carried the implication of a fate worse than death. A fate worse than death? At his hands? Oh, joy. He did love her. But she would not give in, never, until he told her so. ‘Am I dreaming?’ she asked. ‘Am I among phantoms and fantasies? Abduct me? Lock me up and feed me bread and water?’
‘Which my estimable mother always prescribed as the most salutary cure for the sulks of rebellious boys and pettish girls.’
‘Pettish girls? Pettish girls?’
‘Alas, Lady Caroline, that you should have come to girlish sulks, you who adorned Lady Chesterfield’s ball like a magnificent goddess,’ said the unblinking captain.
‘Oh, that disgraceful tongue of yours will bring you to a miserable end, Captain Burnside,’ she said, ‘and your ridiculous threats will avail you nothing. Sammy and my coach indeed – fiddlesticks, sir, fiddlesticks. You could never make a confederate of Sammy. He would never go against me.’
‘He is under the impression, Your Ladyship, that you and I are to elope.’
Caroline was further entranced. Oh, the audacious villain. ‘Elope? With you? I should leave Sammy in no doubt that you were engaged in forceful abduction, for I should fight you tooth and nail. You deceived me, lied to me, mocked me, humiliated me and made a fool of me. Have you no thought of what that did to me?’
‘Your Most Precious and Endearing Ladyship,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘what do you think it did to me, loving you hopelessly as I did from the moment I first saw you?’
He had said it at last. It took all breath from her. Dizzy rapture overtook her. Henceforward, the confrontation could only offer unparalleled delight. But all she could say for the moment was, ‘Hopelessly, Captain Burnside?’
His expression became wry. ‘I ain’t supposing you’ve any great regard for me,’ he said, ‘but all the same I’ll not stand aside and let you go back to America.’
‘So,’ she breathed, ‘you would abduct me, imprison me and starve me until I let you have your dreadful way with me? Why, you would never even get me into the coach, for I should make it plain to Sammy that you were attempting brutal abduction, no less.’
‘Unfortunately, marm,’ he said smoothly, ‘Sammy won’t be there, nor the coach. One plays a hopeful hand to see what it will achieve, and when it don’t bring forth the right results, one plays the ace. The ace is Pond Cottage. I shall carry you there, muffling all your cries for help, and keep you captive until you give up your unacceptable notion of running off to America. America won’t do, Your Ladyship, and it ain’t going to do.’
Caroline’s eyes were luminous with bliss. Joy upon joy, he was no sooner shorn of one bluff than another sprang from his facile tongue. Oh, what a divinely talkative marriage they would have.
‘Why, you disgraceful braggart,’ she said, ‘I am no weak and wailing woman, or an incapable one. I should escape the cottage with ease.’
‘I should discourage that by removing your clothes,’ said Captain Burnside, as straight of face as she was scornful of smile.
‘Removing my clothes?’
‘Ah – most of them,’ he said.
Caroline was almost delirious with inner laughter. ‘Sir, I declare you unspeakable,’ she said.
‘All is fair, marm, in love and war,’ he said.
‘Your villainy is breathtaking, sir, your love utterly suspect,’ she declared. ‘Do you think I would let you remove a single stitch of my clothing, or allow you to carry me all the way to Pond Cottage with my screams muffled?’
‘I consider you a bearable armful, Lady Caroline, and the walk ain’t beyond me, nor the muffling of your tantrums.’
‘Tantrums?’ Caroline felt that every leaf of every tree was laughing. ‘Is it a tantrum, sir, to fight for my honour? Show me how you will muffle me. There, you have given me threats, I now give you a challenge. Show me, sir, that you are as good as your vaunted boasts.’
‘Don’t shift about, sir, but show me. Yes, show me precisely how you will carry me and muffle me.’
‘Very well, Your Ladyship,’ he said, and swept her up into his arms, much to her delight. Carrying her, he began to walk, bearing her through the trees. She did not kick, nor did she scream.
‘I am, as you see, free to cry for help,’ she said, settling herself blissfully and comfortably in his arms, her hands locked around his neck. ‘So, will you come to the muffling? How is that to be done?’
‘Alas, there is only one way,’ said the captain. ‘This way.’ And he kissed her. His lips were firm and determined, making their claim and taking possession of hers, and hers broke apart. The summer breeze brought the lightest of whispers as the surging tide of love engulfed Caroline. In his arms, she drowned in warm seas of ecstasy. He carried her from the wood into the golden sunlight, and still she was muffled, each kiss more prolonged. She sighed when at last he freed her mouth. He said nothing, but he stopped, his expression that of a man not now entirely sure of himself. The responsive ardour of her mouth had bemused him.
‘Pray continue,’ said Caroline, her voice a little throaty.
‘No, I shall set you down here, having shown you how it will be done,’ he said, and he set her down.
‘Continue,’ said Caroline, her warm body breathing close to his. ‘Take me up again. You have not shown me all you intend to do to me. Continue, therefore, and when we reach Pond Cottage, show me how you will go about undressing me.’
‘Ah, I think not,’ he said.
‘I think yes,’ said Caroline, eyes loving him.
‘Why?’ he asked, wanting her.
‘Why? Why?’ Caroline laughed in rich joy. ‘Because you are my most audacious and adorable villain, because I am your willing Caroline and your sweet pleasure, and because I love you, love you, love you. Oh, dearest, dearest Charles, you will be true to me, won’t you?’
Captain Burnside, not ignorant of the reputation Lord Clarence Percival had earned for himself, said, ‘What kind of a true man would any man be if, having been gifted with the love of such a beautiful and endearing woman as you, he could not be faithful to her?’
‘Oh, how glad I am to know you aren’t going to end up on Tyburn Tree,’ said Caroline, ‘and how very glad I am that you love me. I really don’t mind going on to Pond Cottage.’
‘For what purpose, Your Ladyship?’ he smiled.
‘Darling, to fight for my honour, of course,’ said Caroline. ‘I have a dreadful feeling I shall lose, for you are a man of such singular accomplishments and I such a weak and helpless woman … Dearest, what are you laughing at?’
Captain Burnside was laughing indeed. Richly. She saw the delight he had in her, she saw the love he had for her, and she knew that this time she had made no mistake.
I am at my beginning.