“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.”
Pacing beside her, Jack frowned. “I was…with my regiment.” He’d been in France, alone, but he saw no reason to tell her that. “I couldn’t simply sell out—”
“Of course you could have. Many others did.” The glance she cast him was scornful. “In our circle, elder sons—those who will inherit—don’t usually serve, and while I understand your father died unexpectedly, once he had, your place was here, not”—she gestured dismissively—“playing the dashing officer in Tunbridge Wells or wherever you were stationed.”
In France. Alone. Jack bit his tongue. What had he done to deserve this lecture? Why had he invited it—and even more pertinently, why was he putting up with it?
Why wasn’t he simply annihilating her with a setdown, putting her firmly in her place, reminding her it was no place of hers to pass judgment on him?
He glanced at her. Head up, nose elevated to a superior, distinctly haughty angle, she paced fluidly, gracefully, beside him. She had a long-legged, swinging, confident stride; he didn’t have to adjust his by much to match it.
Annihilating Boadicea wouldn’t be easy, and for some unfathomable reason, he didn’t want to meet her on any battlefield.
He did want to meet her, but on another field entirely, one with silken sheets, and a soft mattress into which she would sink…. He blinked and looked ahead.
“Then came Toulouse, but you didn’t bother to return even then. No doubt you were too busy enjoying the Victory Celebrations to remember those who’d spent the years working here for you, supporting you.”
He’d spent the months of false victory in France. Alone. Mistrusting the too-easy peace as had Dalziel and certain others, it had been he who had kept a distant eye on Elba, he who’d sent the first word that Napoleon had returned and raised the eagles again. He kept his tongue clamped between his teeth; his jaw had set.
“Even worse,” she declaimed, condemnation in every syllable, the same emotion lighting her dark eyes as she glanced, fleetingly, at him, “when everything ended at Waterloo, you compounded your slights of the past and remained in London, no doubt catching up on all you’d missed in your months abroad.”
Years. Alone. Every last week, every last month for thirteen years, all alone except for that brief, supremely dangerous, reckless three days that for him had been Waterloo. And after that, once he’d sold out, there’d been a line of pressing, very real and weighty responsibilities waiting to claim him.
Her final words had been scathing, her meaning crystal clear. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d indulged in the manner to which she was alluding; no doubt that accounted for his current state—the intense, urgent, remarkably powerful urge to slake his long-suppressed carnal appetites.
With Boadicea.
Not with any other woman. Now he’d met her, no other would do.
It had to be her.
Clearly he had his work cut out for him, but he loved challenges, especially of that sort.
An image of Boadicea—Lady Clarice—lying naked beneath him, heated, desperate, and wantonly begging, those long, long legs tensing about his hips as he thrust into her, helped immeasurably in focusing his mind. In clarifying his direction.
They’d reached the hedge surrounding the rectory. She lashed him with another of her cutting glances; he caught it, held her gaze as, by unvoiced consent, they paused in the archway leading into the rectory gardens.
He read her face, examined the dismissive contempt written in her fine features, that glowed, alive, in her lovely dark eyes. Slowly, he arched a brow. “So…you think I should remain at Avening and devote myself to my responsibilities?”
She smiled, not sweetly—condescendingly. “No—I believe we’ll all do better if you return to London and continue with your hedonistic existence there.”
He frowned. She continued, without hesitation answering his unvoiced question, “We’ve grown accustomed to managing without you. Those here no longer need a lord of the manor—they’ve elected someone else in your place.”
She held his eyes for a defiant instant, her gaze direct and ungiving, then she turned and swept on, heading for the rectory’s side door.
Frown deepening, Jack watched her—let his eyes drink in the quintessentially feminine sway of her hips, the evocative line from her nape to her waist, the promise of her curves…
She couldn’t mean what he thought she’d meant, surely?
There was one certain way to find out. About that, and all else he now wanted to know about Boadicea. Stirring, he followed her into the rectory.
He found the Rector of Avening, the Honorable James Altwood, in exactly the same place he’d left him seven years ago—in the chair behind the desk in his study, poring over some tome. Jack knew the subject of said tome without asking; James was a renowned military historian, a Fellow of Balliol among other things. He held the livings of numerous parishes, but other than overseeing the work of his curates, he spent all his days researching and analyzing military campaigns, both ancient and contemporary.
Boadicea, predictably, preceded him into the study. “James, Lord Warnefleet has returned—he’s come to speak with you.”