No Other Love (18 page)

“Ah, but you made a promise….” he reminded her.

“Yes, I did, and for that reason—and for your friend’s sake—I will do all I can to help him. But you can rest assured that I would rather spend several days in a house with a snake than be there with you! If you think that I am going to give in to your blandishments, you are fair and far off. I have no intention of sleeping with you, and, indeed, it is my wish to see as little of you as possible the whole time I’m there.”

“I have equally little desire to spend my time with a tease—worse, a sanctimonious tease.”

“Good. Then I suggest that we avoid each other.”

“I will do my best.”

“I, too.” Nicola turned and faced forward, her back as straight as a board and as far away from him as she could manage on a horse.

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

N
ICOLA AWOKE LATE THE NEXT MORNING
,
heavy-lidded with lack of sleep and feeling somehow more tired than she had when she crawled into bed. It had been not long before sunrise when she and Jack reached Tidings. Jack had climbed back up to her room with an effortless grace that she could not tear her eyes away from, no matter how hard she tried. Once inside, he had unbarricaded her door so that she could sneak into the house through the kitchen and up the backstairs to her room. She had been racked with fear that Richard might step out of his room and find her sneaking down the hall, fully dressed and obviously up to no good in the middle of the night.

She had breathed a sigh of relief when she stepped inside her room, but it had quickly turned to a curiously hollow feeling when she realized that Jack had already left without even a goodbye. She had undressed, leaving her clothes in an uncharacteristically messy heap on the floor and put on her nightgown, then collapsed on the bed.

It seemed she had barely closed her eyes when the sound of the maids’ voices in the hall awakened her. She sat up, yawning, and saw that it was already almost ten o’clock. With a sigh, she slid out of bed and rang for a maid and bathwater. Much as she would have liked to sleep on, there was much to be done today, and she could not delay. She could perhaps catch a few winks in the carriage on the way over to Buckminster Hall.

Once she was bathed and dressed and fortified with tea and toast, she felt a good deal better, and she went into her sister’s bedroom to set her plan into motion. It took little convincing to get her sister’s approval of her going to fetch their old nursemaid. Aunt Adelaide, she agreed, might not even have written the note yet if she had gotten distracted by some more important, horse-related matter. She understood, too, Nicola’s subterfuge of going to Buckminster Hall first, for, after the incident upon Nicola’s arrival, she knew that Richard would insist on sending an escort, and she also knew her sister’s fierce independence.

Richard was a somewhat tougher proposition. In a jollying tone, he chided Nicola for deserting her sister so soon, but there was a suspicious narrowing of his eyes as he looked at her. Deborah hastened to assure him that she understood and was in complete agreement, for Aunt Adelaide would doubtless be in desperate need of help with the upcoming wedding preparations. Exmoor, as aware as anyone else of Lady Buckminster’s inattention to things domestic, shrugged, and after Nicola and Deborah launched into an exhaustive account of all the things that would need to be done for the approaching nuptials of the lord of Buckminster Hall, his eyes began to glaze over and he dropped the subject, other than to say he would tell the servants to bring the carriage around to take her to her aunt’s.

Nicola returned to her room to pack, eschewing the services of a maid, who would doubtless have found it extremely odd to see the amount of herbs, bandages and medical supplies that Nicola stuffed into her bags. Clothes were a minor consideration. She had little space, for she dared not appear to pack for more than a few nights’ stay. Besides, whatever luggage she took would have to be carried on horseback from Buckminster to the highwayman’s lair in the woods.

It was still early in the afternoon when she climbed into the carriage to drive to her aunt’s house. Her sister watched her go, waving and smiling a trifle wistfully. Nicola managed to sleep much of the way over there, despite the bumpy ride of the carriage, so she arrived at her aunt’s house feeling somewhat refreshed.

The butler smoothly hid whatever astonishment he felt upon seeing the coachman unload Nicola’s luggage on their doorstep and showed Nicola politely into the informal sitting room, where the family was wont to gather. Her aunt came in a few minutes later, dressed in an old dress that ended above her ankles and equally worn boots, to which bits of mud and straw still clung. It was obvious that Adelaide had been in the stables, though from the lack of riding habit, apparently not riding.

“Nicola!” she said with sincere delight, striding in her mannish way across the drawing room to enfold her niece in an embrace. She stepped back, looking guilty. “Did I know you were coming?”

“No, Aunt Adelaide. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

The older woman’s brow cleared. “Ah, good. Well, why don’t I ring for tea? It’s a bit early, but I am famished. Been out since dawn helping Carson—my favorite mare’s foaling, and having a difficult time of it, too, I must say.”

Nicola smiled. Her aunt’s blunt way of talking doubtless raised more than a few eyebrows, but Nicola had always found Aunt Adelaide refreshing. She cared little for what other people thought, unless they happened to be experts on horseflesh, and while she would uphold all the proprieties, she often tended to be unaware of exactly what those were, as they had nothing to do with horses. Nicola often wondered how Aunt Adelaide and her other aunt, the intellectual and rather iconclastic Drusilla, could be related to their sister, Nicola’s mother, who was on the whole as dull and Society-bound a woman as one could find.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nicola sympathized. “I am sure you must be worried.”

“I am. Carson says he’ll have to turn the foal, but that’s no easy matter—painful, too.” She sighed.

“I am sure that you are not desirous of company, then,” Nicola said. “So I shall not keep you long. I came to find out what you had done about locating our old nurse.”

Aunt Adelaide looked blankly at her, then remembrance touched her eyes, and she smiled. “Oh, let’s see, when was that we talked about it?” She wrinkled her brow and thought. “You know, I don’t believe I did write her. I am sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Nicola said quickly. “I had been thinking that I should visit Nurse myself and urge her to come to Deborah.”

“That would be perfect,” Aunt Adelaide agreed. Then her brow furrowed and she said, “Are you—are you wanting me to go with you?”

“I would not dream of taking you away from your mare,” Nicola assured her. “I am quite capable of getting there on my own. But I would like to borrow a horse from you, if I may.”

“Of course.” This was a topic nearer to Lady Buckminster’s heart, and she launched into a thorough discussion of precisely which mount would suit her niece’s purposes the best.

Nicola was happy to go along with her aunt’s decision on the matter and told her so. “The only problem is Exmoor,” she told Aunt Adelaide. “If he knew I was going, he would insist on my taking his carriage and a full armed escort. He has become absolutely maniacal on the subject of this highwayman. But I am sure that he will not accost me again. And it would be so pleasant to ride. I don’t want to be cooped up in a stuffy old carriage.”

Aunt Adelaide, who felt the same way about vehicles as opposed to horseback, nodded sympathetically. “But you will have an escort of some sort, won’t you? I don’t think riding cross-country by yourself would be quite the thing,” she mused in a massive understatement.

“Of course,” Nicola lied without a qualm. “I will take one of the men from the village. The head ostler at the inn.”

“Oh? Yes, he’s good with horses,” Aunt Adelaide said in approval.

“The thing is, what if Exmoor were to come to call and find that I had gone to Nurse’s without telling him?”

“Humph!” Lady Buckminster made a disdainful noise. Though she had always been polite to Lord Exmoor, as was necessary with such a close neighbor, she had never had any liking for the man since the day she had seen him hitting his mount with his riding crop in a paroxysm of fury because the animal would not take a fence. “Damned fool,” she had sniffed. “It was his bad form that made the horse hang back. That man could ruin any animal.”

“As if he has a right to know where you are,” Adelaide said now. “Don’t worry about it. I shall instruct Huggins to say that you are out if he should have the audacity to come check up on you.”

“That would be a perfect solution!” Nicola exclaimed, feeling a twinge of remorse at deceiving her aunt this way. However, there was a man’s life at stake, she told herself, and that had to take precedence.

An hour later, she was mounted on the mare her aunt had decided on, her bags tied behind her, and riding the familiar trail to the rock where she was to meet Jack. It was an unmistakable landmark, big and layered, as if it had been built out of three rocks stacked one on top of the other. Nicola had met Gil there many times on a Sunday afternoon, and just the thought of meeting anyone else there, for any reason, made her heart constrict. It seemed somehow another disloyalty to Gil, a small betrayal to add to the weight of the large one she had committed last night by melting beneath the highwayman’s heated caresses.

Nicola didn’t know what had come over her. Certainly her behavior had been totally unlike her. Never before had she given in to such lust—indeed, never before had she
felt
the kind of unbridled passion that she had last night with Jack Moore. Only Gil had ever stirred her senses, and she had been in love with him; it had been no merely physical attraction. Since Gil, she had been interested in no man. It seemed bizarre that this stranger, this man whose face she had never even seen, should arouse such feelings in her.

But whatever the reasons for her extremely atypical behavior, Nicola was determined that it would not happen again. She was a better person than that, more moral, more devoted to her long-dead love. Moreover, she thoroughly disliked Jack, and she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that he could control her in that way. She would be aloof to him, speaking to him only when necessary, concentrating her time and attention on helping his friend get well. That was the only reason she was going back, after all—to help the wounded man. It had nothing to do with seeing Jack Moore; indeed, she reminded herself, his presence made her
not
want to go back to the house deep in the woods.

As she drew nearer and nearer to the rock, Nicola was aware of a growing sense of anticipation in her stomach. She felt edgy and jumpy, faintly excited. That, too, she assured herself, had nothing to do with Jack Moore. It was simply that she was looking forward to using her skills, to doing battle with sickness and death.

She passed under the spreading branches of three oak trees that grew beside the road, and, once beyond them, she could see the rock ahead of her, looming beside the trail. There was no sign of anyone waiting there, but when she was almost there, she heard the unmistakable whinny of a horse, and a moment later there was the sound of feet sliding on smaller rocks. She looked up to see a man coming lithely down the slope behind the rock. He disappeared from view for a moment, then came around the rock, leading a horse. Tall and broad-shouldered, dressed all in black, his face as always half-obscured by the mask, he was intensely masculine, tinged with an air of mystery. Nicola’s pulse speeded up involuntarily.

She pulled to a stop in front of him, irritation at her own response making her voice sharp, “Do you wear that mask everywhere? Is your face so fearsome?”

He grinned, his teeth gleaming white against his dark skin, and swung easily up onto his horse. “Indeed, Miss Falcourt, it is a terrible thing, my visage, the sort that sends children screaming. Worse, ‘tis a thing you could identify for the authorities.”

Nicola snorted inelegantly. “Has it not occurred to you that if I had a mind to turn you in to the authorities, I could have simply brought them with me today?”

“Aye, it occurred to me. That is why I scouted out the whole area before I settled down here, to make sure there were no men with guns waiting to seize me. It is also why I chose this point. It’s higher than the trail. From back there—” he gestured toward a pile of rocks several yards behind the landmark and quite a bit higher “—I was able to see the sweep of land behind you for a good distance, in case there was anyone riding discreetly along behind you.”

Nicola cocked an eyebrow. “I would hate to be the sort of man you are, trusting no one, always suspicious.”

He shrugged. “’Tis better than being dead or in gaol, I can assure you.”

“You make it sound as if those were the only choices in life. Surely you could have done something else with your life besides rob people.”

“Mmm,” he replied noncommittally. “Probably. But it would not have been as exciting.”

“You are impossible.”

“No doubt.” He turned and started along the smaller path that bisected the one Nicola had taken, curving around the rock and over the shoulder of the hill. Nicola urged her horse after him.

“What? No blindfold today?” she asked. The sarcasm helped, she found, kept away the odd humming awareness of him all through her body.

Jack grimaced. “To what effect? Considering the fact that you were not blindfolded most of the way last night.”

Nicola blushed, remembering the way he had torn off the scarf from her eyes as he kissed his way across her face to her earlobe. He glanced sideways at her. “I warrant you could find your way at least back to the woods. Am I right?”

His statement surprised Nicola. She had always been quick at finding her way, her sense of direction excellent, but it was odd that he should assume so. She had found that men invariably assumed a woman was poor at such things.

“We came out of Blackfell Woods, I think—the north end. Inside the woods…” She shrugged, thinking it was just as well to let him assume that she was uncertain, though the fact was that she thought she could have made her way at least a hundred yards into the wood, as well.