CHAPTER FIVE
Arrived at the low back gate in his path, Denzell vaulted over it, and hurried up to his quarry, a touch out of breath, but blue eyes quizzing her from their misty depths.
“How could you be so unkind — Miss Chaceley? Visiting the place — and then leaving before I could so much as catch a glimpse of you!”
Verena found her own breath catching in her throat, as if she had been running as hard as he. Her pulses were flurried, and it was all she could do to maintain the outward cool reserve that must distance him.
“Good morning, Mr Hawkeridge,” she managed, refusing to be drawn into responding to his provocative speech.
He grinned, bowing, as he flung aside the folds of a greatcoat that hung open. He had obviously seized it and thrown it on all anyhow in his haste to follow her, and taking no time at all to find his hat, for his head was uncovered.
“Good morning, Miss Chaceley. May I escort you home?”
She blinked, saying stupidly, “Thank you, I know my way.”
“No, do you?” he countered, on a spurious note of surprise. “Why, then you must have come this way before.”
The spurt of laughter could not be contained. She controlled it. “You are absurd, sir.”
“I know,” said Denzell, and the grin vanished. “It has become a habit with me. And for that you should take pity on me, Miss Chaceley, and indulge me just a little.”
“What, by allowing you to escort me home?”
His face lit. “You are so quick, ma’am.”
Again, Verena was obliged to bite down on a quivering lip. “And you, sir, are remarkably slow.”
“How so?”
Verena drew a breath. “What does it take to convince you, Mr Hawkeridge?”
He raised his brows. “Of what, Miss Chaceley?”
Disconcerted, she snapped, “You know perfectly well.”
Denzell eyed her for a moment, his gaze roving her features under the bronze bonnet. He had succeeded in rattling her, but that was not what he wanted. Yet if that was what it took to shake her out of that infuriating facade, then what choice had he? There was only frankness left.
“I don’t know what it takes,” he said. “I can only suggest that we pursue the matter until we find out.”
“We?”
A slow grin entered his face. “Why, I think so. Though I admit that for you, Miss Chaceley, it seems to be a case of willy-nilly.”
She almost laughed out again. Really, the man was too much. In spite of herself she warmed to him, saying in a friendly way that she had not meant at all, “In that case, I will be on my way, and you may do just as you please.”
“How magnanimous,” he murmured, turning to keep pace beside her as she began to plough across the uneven ground.
A hidden dent under a pocket of snow undid her, catching the heel of her boot. She gasped as her step faltered. But Denzell put out an instant hand, grasping her arm. “Steady!”
She straightened, glad of his support. The gratitude in her smile, as she turned to him, was genuine. “Thank you.”
His lips quivered at the edges. “That will teach you to try and run from me.”
Verena’s laughter bubbled up, but she nevertheless drew her arm from out of his grip, retorting, “It ought rather to teach you not to trouble me.”
Denzell’s features at once became serious, and his gaze held hers. “Do I trouble you?”
A flurry of confusion was set up in Verena’s chest. The automatic rebuttal came out before she could stop it.
“No!”
“I wish I might!”
Verena became aware of a tattoo battering in her bosom. She thrust down the burgeoning emotions, unaware for the moment that, though her features were composed, her eyes gave away more than she would have wished.
“Mr Hawkeridge, pray leave off this incessant badgering,” she said in the severest tone she could muster. “I am aware that you are passing the time in a fashion which you apparently find agreeable, but believe me, sir, it is not agreeable to me.”
“Because you will not allow it to be so,” he hit back, out of a sudden frustration that welled up inside him.
Verena’s instinct was to slam back at him, but she controlled it. She knew it for the truth, but that did not make his saying it any better. She could feel the tremor in her own voice, and only hoped that it did not reach his ears under the calm manner in which she answered him.
“That, sir, is no concern of yours.”
“I am all too well aware of it.”
“Then I think we understand each other. Good day, Mr Hawkeridge.”
Denzell watched her walk away, cursing himself for that instant’s foolish show of revolt. Chaste stars, but her control was ten times more effective than his own!
How little she gave away. And how swiftly she covered over every tiny lapse. It was maddening.
He sighed, turning a trifle disconsolately for home. He hardly knew now why he was persisting. She did not want anything to do with him. Why, then, should he force himself upon her notice in this ruthless fashion?
And yet … and yet she had warmed to him. Briefly, yes. But she had laughed at his sallies as she had the other night, never mind that she had damped down upon her mirth. Given time, he could succeed with her, he was sure of it.
Only, why bother? He must leave for Tuttingham soon, in any event.
He had set out to beguile the time, just as Verena Chaceley had accused.
But she had proved so intriguing that some other motive seemed to have set in, and Denzell was not at all sure he knew what it was.
He was not at all sure, moreover, that he liked it.
What, was he so set up in his own conceit that he could not endure — just as Ossie had said — to be thwarted in his interest in a woman? It was a chastening thought.
However, it did not serve, he discovered later, to deter him from renewing his explorations into Miss Chaceley’s hidden interior.
At the Lower Rooms on the following evening, whither Denzell repaired with his hosts, telling himself that he would ignore Verena if she turned up, he no sooner caught sight of her exquisite beauty — radiant, if statuesque, in a gold-spangled muslin gown that seemed to make her loose tresses glow in the candlelight — than he straight away abandoned his resolve.
Deuce take it, she was intolerably beautiful.
How the devil could a man be expected to keep his distance, when everything she was beckoned to his deepest desires?
Oh, but that was fustian. Everything she was?
He did not know what she was. How could he, when she would open nothing of herself to his sight?
A thought struck him. The brother, now. Why not investigate there? Had not Unice spoken favourably of him, of his animation? Might he not then be more forthcoming than Verena herself? He could hardly be less so. But how to beard the boy?
His ingenuity was not called upon, as it turned out, for as he glanced about the company in the large room, he discovered that the mother having been ousted from the boy’s side, he was being quizzed by none other than Unice Ruishton herself.
“Unice, present me at once,” he said, coming up smilingly and holding out his hand. “Or better still, go away and allow me to present myself. Hawkeridge, dear sir, and delighted —” leaning towards the boy with a confidential air — “to welcome a like-minded spirit in this aged desert.”
Adam shook hands, grinning. “Adam Peverill, sir.”
Unice looked from one to the other of them.
She had chosen to beard the boy for Verena’s sake, feeling that the bud of a possible friendship with her might be reinforced if she showed interest in the family.
It might serve Denzell quite as well. Finding herself already excluded from the conversation, she shrugged and left them.
She could quiz Denzell later for the gist of their conversation.
“Yes, yes, I know who you are,” Denzell was saying. “I was commiserating with your sister only the other day on giving place to a newer, brighter star.”
The young man shook his head, saying in a deprecating way, “I could never compete with Verena. Mama says she gets at least half her looks from her paternal side, although Mama is — was — herself very handsome…”
Denzell ignored the conscious way he corrected himself, and the stammer as he petered out. Capital! The youth was clearly loose-tongued.
“You are then her half-brother, I take it?”
There was reserve in his voice now, but he answered readily enough. “Yes, on Mama’s side.” He gave a light laugh — forced, Denzell thought. “There is little beauty in the Peverill family.”
“But you have taken your colouring from the other side, I think,” Denzell said, glancing at the burnished glow of the boy’s hair that was cut to rest on his collar. Keep it casual. Keep him relaxed.
“That is true.”
The lad was not at all bad-looking, he thought, and he dressed to advantage.
The suit was all of a piece in tones of brown, if rather too tight-fitting.
Denzell, himself attired once more in his claret coat, but ringing the changes with black satin breeches and the cloth waistcoat with the embroidered lapels once more, thought that the boy would do very well in a few years when he gained a man’s figure.
He smiled at him in a friendly way. “So you are on a visit? Don’t you find this place intolerably slow?”
Adam shrugged. “Oh, well. It is not much different from Fittleworth, I suppose. Except that there are far more of us in the younger bracket.”
“Fittleworth? Is that far?”
“Sussex. It is near Petworth.”
“Has not one of the racing men a stud there?”
“Yes, but we don’t race. We hunt, though. My father is the squire, and so he is Master in the area.”
So Mr Peverill was alive. Then why was his wife living with her daughter in Tunbridge Wells? And how to phrase this innocuously enough that he did not put the boy on his guard?
“So you have a decent inheritance.” He grinned. “I know what that can be like. No doubt you have all the girls of Fittleworth on the hunt for you.”