“One of your lovers!” He halted so abruptly that she found herself dragged backwards. “Great God, how many have you had?”
“Not nearly so many as you, I fear,” she lamented. “There are so few men that I find both interesting and desirable.” She could hardly keep the bubble of laughter out of her voice.
For a moment he stared down at her, trying to discern her face in the darkness, and then started to laugh. “I have just been hoist with my own petard, have I not?”
“You should not have tried to shock me,” she said as they started to walk on again.
“I am beginning to think that is impossible,” he said, shaking his head. “But, do you know, what shocks me most, Miss Hilton, is that you came to be betrothed to some milksop of a curate. What did the poor devil die of? Heart failure?”
“No.” Her expression became closed and the laughter left her face abruptly. “And he was not a milksop!”
“I am sorry.” He held her arm more tightly as she tried to walk ahead. “I did not mean to intrude upon your grief and I had no right to say that of a man I have never met.”
“No,” she said as they fell into step again, “you did not.”
“I suppose he would have helped you in your efforts to save Jem and succeeded, most like,” he said sourly, and then wondered what the devil was wrong with him to behave so mawkishly.
“I am sure he would have pleaded for Jem to be treated mercifully,” she said a little too quickly, then realised that she was not sure at all any more. There was something that nagged at her, something that had been at the edge of her mind since the day of the accident, but she could never quite remember what it was, what they had been discussing in the minutes before the staircase in the Tower had collapsed.
They walked on in an awkward silence, each sunk in their own uncomfortable thoughts. And then, quite suddenly, they stepped out of the darkness into the comparatively lightness of dusk that turned Pettridge Park to every hue of silver and grey.
By mutual, unspoken consent they both halted in the shadow of a large beech at the edge of the Hall’s garden. Pools of light shone out from windows of rooms in which curtains had not yet been drawn. Glancing up, she could see Mr Filmore, reading beside the drawing-room fire, Annabel playing the piano, and Piers leaning lazily across its lid.
“It does not seem you have been missed,” he said as a maid suddenly appeared at the window, and the scene was abruptly blotted out by a sweep of lined brocade.
“No,” she agreed succinctly as she remained staring at the curtained window.
He stared at her, studying her face in the dusk. For all her sharpness, her apparent self-confidence, her fierce honesty, she suddenly looked so very young, vulnerable, wistful and alone that he wanted to take her in his arms—though for very different reasons to those he had had until a moment or so ago. But now—now he was getting distinct twinges of conscience about his pursuit of Miss Janey Hilton, and about what the consequences might be for her.
“I had better go back,” he said. “Your guardians might think it a trifle odd for me to be walking alone with you in the dark.”
“They’d think you odd for choosing to walk with me at all.” She gave a slightly ragged laugh.
“Then they have no taste,” he said softly.
“All these compliments, you could turn my head, Mr Lindsay.” She strove to sound light.
“Like this?” He lifted a hand and placed his palm against her cheek, turning her face and tilting it upwards so she found herself staring into his shadowed face.
“I was speaking metaphorically,” she said a second—or was it minutes?—later. She did not know. She only knew that her face was burning beneath his hand, and that the world had seemed to stop again the moment he had touched her.
“Really? How stupid of me not to realise,” he mocked her softly and himself for being such a fool as to think she did not know the rules of the game. But there was no hurry, he told himself as his hand dropped away. Janey Hilton was like a rare vintage wine—she should be enjoyed slowly.
“You had better go in, Miss Hilton,” he said as she remained motionless.
“Yes,” she agreed, “but I cannot until you let go of my arm.”
“Of course,” he said, but still did not release her.
She swallowed. “Is there something else, Mr Lindsay?”
“Jem?” he said, not knowing where or how the sudden anxiety had arisen in his mind, but only that she had been too quiet upon the subject. “You have not any wild or reckless schemes for his rescue in mind have you?”
“No,” she said. It was not a lie. Wild and reckless simply would not do. It was going to take careful planning to save Jem. And a miracle to save herself from falling in love with Jonathan Lindsay.
“Good.” He exhaled and let go of her arm. “Because this is England, and in England, the rule of law is upheld mercilessly.”
“You need not tell me that,” she said, half-relieved, half-disappointed that he had believed her so easily.
“And neither need I tell you, I hope, that such strategies as exchanging clothes with the prisoner, or copying keys with wax and the like, only work in the pages of fiction.”
“I know.”
“Then I’ll say goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” She turned and began to walk towards the house.
“Wait!” he called softly after her. “How are you to get in?”
She stopped, turned and looked back at him. “Why, through the door, Mr Lindsay. You did not think I was going to climb the ivy in my petticoats, did you? If I had meant to do that, I’d have worn my buckskins.”
“Breeches?” He sounded shocked again, she thought with a smile.
“Buckskins are what the Indians wear, men and women—” she began to expound, and then laughed. “Never mind, Mr Lindsay, I’ll explain another time. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Miss Hilton.” His voice floated after her as she walked across the drive. And she was aware of him standing in the growing darkness, watching her, until the moment the great front door swung shut behind her.
She stood for a moment in the dimly lit hall, a half-smile on her lips. Worried as she was about Jem, and the estate, somehow, she had the absurd conviction that everything would be all right now Jonathan Lindsay had come to Southbrook.
Outside, at the same moment, Jonathan Lindsay frowned. He was feeling unaccountably guilty and it was not an emotion he was accustomed to. The trouble was, he liked Miss Janey Hilton, liked the way she looked at him, liked her cool directness and the way she smiled. He swore silently. What the devil was wrong with him? He was thinking like some greenhorn. She was just another woman, another conquest to be made…wasn’t she?
He turned away without answering his own question, whistled to Tess and strode back into the woods.
“Jane! There you are!” Mrs Filmore, her ample figure tightly upholstered in cherry silk, greeted Janey majestically from halfway up the broad flight of stairs. “I have been looking all over for you. Mr Filmore has relented. You may come down and join us—when you are suitably dressed, of course.” She frowned as she glanced derisively at Janey’s besmirched pelisse.
“I’d rather go to my room, thank you.” Janey gave Mrs Filmore her most benign smile. “I’ve been walking in the gardens and I am rather tired.”
“Walking alone in the dark!”