And he told her then. He told her how Fitz had shown his mother a ransom letter demanding five hundred guineas for Jack’s freedom. ‘My mother,’ he explained, ‘believed the letter was genuine. But she didn’t have that kind of money. Then Fitz said, “If you marry me, I can raise the money on Charlwood.” So she married him and, of course, the Charlwood estate became Fitz’s.’
‘But I thought you told me it was the government that arranged your release!’
‘Indeed,’ he answered curtly. ‘Fitz didn’t need to raise any money on the estate—that ransom letter was a fake he concocted, then destroyed. And I believe that you, Matty, have actually seen his attempts to compose it.’
‘That letter I saw in a drawer in the library,’ she was murmuring. ‘In French.’
‘Exactly. Now, I could try to contact the War Office for evidence of the prisoner exchange, but such matters were kept highly secret in wartime. Besides, I don’t want all this dragged through the public eye. What I really want is to confront Fitz directly with proof of his fraud. If the document you saw in the library is still there—and I realise it’s a big if—it would be exactly what I need to frighten Fitz into admitting his guilt.’
The silence that followed seemed endless to him. He would not have blamed her in the slightest if she’d refused to believe him—indeed, if she wanted nothing more to do with his desperate quest. He prepared himself for it, but he realised, yet again, how it might almost destroy him now to see scorn—disgust, even—in her beautiful eyes.
‘What did you do,’ she said at last, ‘when you realised how Fitz had deceived your mother?’
Relief poured through him. She believed him. ‘What do you think I did, Matty?’
‘I’d guess—I’d hope—that you thumped him.’
He broke into laughter. ‘I certainly did. Very hard, as a matter of fact.’
‘Good. Then what did he do?’
‘Oh, he howled a bit. He said that since I was still technically in the army, he would get me court-martialled. And my mother was sobbing hysterically, so I left his fancy house in Mayfair and vowed revenge.’ He paused to drink some more of his wine. ‘After that, I’m afraid I went to the bad for a while. I shared lodgings in London with some old soldiers, I drank too much and I made a little money by gambling. I even thought of joining up again, since soldiering seemed to be the only thing I was good for.’
He paused to refill both their glasses with wine. ‘But then—then I heard how Fitz was wrecking the Charlwood estate. How he was bankrupting the tenant farmers and ruining the land. I couldn’t get Charlwood out of my head, though at the time I’d committed myself to an antiques shop in Paddington which—as you know—made hardly any money at all.’
‘Because you gave most of your profits away,’ she said steadily.
He was surprised. ‘How do you know?’
‘Susanna told me. She said you sold those relics of the war so you could give the money back to the soldiers they’d belonged to. And there’s something else.’ She faced him squarely. ‘It’s about my Roman coin. I remember you tried to say something to me at the auction—“It’s not what you think”—but I refused to listen. Were you going to give the money from my coin to your soldiers, too?’
He hesitated. ‘Since I’d not succeeded in finding you, yes.’
‘So you’re not quite the complete rogue you pretend to be. Are you, Jack?’
He was silent a moment. ‘I’m afraid there’s not a lot else I can be proud of. As I said, I’d reached a low ebb.’ He reached to take her hand. ‘One day, though, this rather exceptional girl came into my life. She had a quest. A mission that she was determined to fulfil, come what may. And I thought, “That’s what I should be doing. I should stop making excuses and get on with reclaiming Charlwood.”
‘This girl,’ he went on, ‘lives on a canal boat. She’s clever and enterprising. She is also one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. She offered to help me. She trusted me—even when she knew I was on the run and hadn’t been honest enough to tell her why. In a way, that girl saved me.’
He was still holding her hand and Matty knew she ought to move away, but she didn’t—in fact, she didn’t feel she could even breathe. Maybe he wasn’t really aware he’d done it, but his touch sent little shivers of longing all through her veins. Something had happened to her as they sat here on the deck. Was it the wine? Was it the night sky above them, warm and sprinkled with a thousand stars? No. It was this man.
He’d come to her rescue when her boat was in peril, but that alone wasn’t enough to change her mind about him. What had changed her mind was the look in his eyes when he talked about his past. When he talked about the man who’d married his mother and taken his home.
‘You’ve suffered such injustice, Jack,’ she said at last. ‘I will do everything I can to help you.’
He’d moved away a little now, letting go of her hand. Just as well, she told herself. Just as well.
But she felt cold, felt herself growing even colder when he said, ‘Matty. There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time now. You and your father sound as if you did everything together—were inseparable, in fact. So why weren’t you with him on that second visit to Charlwood Manor?’
She told him then about Alexander Corton and Jack didn’t interrupt as she talked, but she saw how his eyes darkened and the angles of his face became harder. Was it with disbelief at her gullibility? Her heart flailed and sank, but she pressed on. So be it. He had to know.
‘Corton,’ she went on, ‘came to me when I was alone on the boat and told me he had some information about the lost Roman settlement, so of course I was excited for my father’s sake. I asked Corton to wait till the next day, but he said no, he had to leave for Oxford early in the morning. He invited me to see these documents for myself at his hotel in Aylesbury, so I went. But then...’
Then she stopped, because Jack had put his arm around her.
He told himself it was for very obvious reasons. He told himself it was because she’d started shivering again and he wanted to warm her. But he wanted more than that. He wanted to hold her and cherish her until all that damned despair had vanished from her beautiful eyes...
Stop right there, he ordered himself. But he kept his arm around her. No way was he going to stop himself doing that. ‘Matty,’ he said. ‘I think I can guess the rest. You don’t have to tell me everything. Not if it upsets you.’
She tilted her chin in that determined way that tightened his heart. ‘I want to tell you, Jack. I want you to know what a fool I was. Corton led me up to his room at the hotel and of course there were no documents—he knew nothing about the Roman remains and he cared even less. Once I was in his room, he assaulted me.’
‘Oh, Matty...’
‘No!’ She put out her hand. ‘I don’t want your pity! If he thought I was easy prey, he very quickly regretted it. I slapped him and kicked him where it hurt.’ He saw her almost smile. ‘When I got back to the boat, my father was there.’ Her smile had vanished now. ‘I realised only then that he’d gone to Charlwood Manor again—this time on his own—and Jack, he looked so very ill! As I’ve told you, the man he thought was the owner, Fitz, had been there and had ordered the servants to throw him out. I sent for a doctor, but it was too late.’
She looked up at him calmly, but he saw unshed tears in her eyes. ‘He died, for which I shall never forgive myself.’
Jack wanted to hold her and never let her go. Fitz, you bastard. ‘But how on earth can that have been your fault?’
‘I was stupid,’ she said bitterly. ‘I should have realised that Alexander Corton wasn’t to be trusted. And I should have been with my father when he went to Charlwood—’
‘Matty.’ His voice was urgent now. ‘Matty, your mistakes are nothing compared to mine. Listen.’ He put his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. ‘You remember how you believed that those men who attacked the wedding party in London were after you?’
She gazed up at him. ‘And they weren’t?’
‘They weren’t your enemies, no.’ He was desperate to get the words out, get it over with. ‘They were Fitz’s men, after me, not you, but I never told you. I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t forgive me, ever, for that.’
Her gaze was steady. ‘I do know one thing, Jack,’ she said at last. ‘Fitz is my enemy, too. So...’
Jack waited.
‘So as far as I’m concerned,’ she went on, ‘we’re still in this together. We’re still heading for Charlwood. Your home.’
He found himself almost overwhelmed by the flood of sheer relief that poured through him. Then—he couldn’t help it—he touched her cheek, caressing her delicate skin with his fingertips, and a miracle happened. Because she reached out to touch his face in return and tremors ran through his whole body as she explored his jaw and trailed her fingers over his sensitive lips. Desire surged through him, hot and hard. It was with a great effort that he put his hand over hers to stop her and he saw how her face fell. She whispered, ‘You don’t like me touching you, Jack?’
‘I like it.’ His voice was almost a groan. ‘Too much.’
Her next words were almost a miracle. ‘Then please—will you kiss me?’
He attempted to steady his pounding heart. ‘No. No, Matty. This can only lead to...’
Trouble, he wanted to say. But he didn’t say it, because he was already in deep, deep trouble. ‘No,’ he said again, putting his hands to her waist this time, meaning to ease her away. ‘It’s not that I don’t like you, Matty. I like you very much. But—’
‘But what? I’m not fragile, Jack. I won’t break. Why won’t you kiss me?’ Her eyes were wide and yearning.
He said with an effort, ‘Your clothes are still wet. You must be cold. You really should change...’
He intended right that very minute to get up and move away. He truly did. But her sweet face was still turned upwards to his and God help him, it was more than he was capable of to resist those tempting, slightly parted lips; especially when she said, ‘I’m not cold with you here.’
If he was stunned by that, he was completely amazed by what happened next, because she reached up to clasp her hands around his shoulders and there was a look of such sheer longing in her lovely green eyes that he was just not capable of resisting. Not cold with you here. Her words drummed in his head and through his veins and right down to his loins. And he kissed her.
Just a kiss, he told himself, feathering his lips against hers, letting his tongue tease her mouth. Keep it brief. Yet when she kissed him back almost shyly, he felt her melt in his arms.
He drew back a little. Stop, you idiot. Stop this madness now.
But then she was moving again, arching her neck to press her lips to his again and there came an infinitesimal fraction of time when they connected, and he knew what was going to happen and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Somehow, his hands had thrown that blanket across the deck and its soft warmth cushioned them as the kiss deepened.
His thigh sprawled across her legs, his arm encompassed her waist. He could feel that her gown was still faintly damp, but beneath it her body was warm and her small breasts were temptation itself. He could see her nipples through the fabric and gently he used his thumb to caress her there until she gave a soft moan and clamped her hands tighter round him, pulling him close as their legs and arms twined.
He craved her like nothing he’d ever known. He kissed her again, clasping her hard to his chest, and this time she slid her tongue between his lips, exploring him with innocent yet fearless passion. And then he was kissing her back deeply, making love to her fervently; which was, Jack realised with an overwhelming surge of emotion, exactly what he’d wanted to do from the very first day he saw her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck to hold on as if she were in danger of losing her mind if he didn’t respond. And there was no earthly chance of him refusing her. They were on the deck of a canal boat, for God’s sake, open to the elements—but what could be more elemental, more primitive, more delicious than making love in the open, beneath the stars?
All the time, though, he was anxious not to hurt her, so he made very sure that the blanket beneath them cushioned her at least a little from the wooden planks; although it was obvious she didn’t care, since already her hands had found their way under his shirt and were digging into the muscles of his shoulders, while her legs were moving yearningly against his. He fumbled a moment, wrestling with the placket of his damned breeches, because of course he was hard and ready. Then, with his mouth still fused to hers, he reached down to the hem of her frock—poor crumpled gown, how it had suffered tonight—and pulled it up and stroked his way along her thighs and straight into her soft, scalding heat.
She moaned his name and arched against his hand and an almost painful wave of desire pounded through him afresh. ‘Matty.’ His voice was harsh with restrained passion. ‘Are you sure?’
She trusts you. Do not get her into trouble, for God’s sake.
She was still moving against him and he could feel her heat, her readiness. She was whispering, ‘Jack. I want this. Please.’ And then he took her innocence, took her virginity, although it was with the utmost tenderness. And her eyes opened very wide as he entered her, caressed her down there, while covering her with kisses. ‘Are you all right?’ he said quietly when he was deep inside her. ‘Am I hurting you?’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’ She lifted her head for his kiss again, which he gave her before bending his head to suckle her breasts, and with that she rose against him and trembled in the throes of her fulfilment. And it was up to him to withdraw and spend himself, while she held him, caressed him.
Afterwards she fell asleep in his arms, curled against his chest while the water lapped a lullaby at the sides of her boat. She’d trusted him. Trusted him in the most complete way possible. And she’d been exquisite.
Rising to his feet, Jack carefully lifted her sleeping weight and carried her down to the cabin. She stirred only slightly and he placed the most delicate of kisses on her lips before laying her on her bed, on a heap of dry blankets he’d managed to pull from one of the lockers. Then he went back up on deck and stretched out on the blanket there, this time to get some rest himself.
But he didn’t sleep a wink till long after midnight.