The Virtuous Cyprian. Nicola Cornick
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The list was getting rather long and she was learning far more about her sister than she had known from the first seventeen years of their lives together. As for Harriette Wilson, Lucille knew her to be a legendary Cyprian in the same mould as Susanna, but her choice in pets was beyond her. ‘Oh, well…’ she managed to sound quite vague ‘…that dreadful little, yapping creature—’
‘Miss Wilson has a wolfhound, as I recall,’ Seagrave commented, with mild irony. ‘Scarcely a small creature, and one which left a scar on your arm.’
Lucille glanced down instinctively, although she was wearing a jacket whose sleeves covered her arms from shoulder to wrist. Which arm would Susanna have injured? How could she tell? This was getting ridiculous. She cast about hastily for a change of topic.
‘And what do you call your horse, sir?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Seagrave sounded mystified at the sudden change of direction.
‘Your horse—that magnificent creature I have heard that you ride about your estate. Surely it must have some equally magnificent name?’
Seagrave laughed. ‘I named him after Alexander the Great’s steed, Miss Kellaway! A conceit, I suppose, though he is worthy of it!’
‘Bucephalus,’ Lucille said absently, then recollected herself again as Seagrave shifted slightly, giving her a look that was quizzical to say the least.
‘You have an interest in classical history, Miss Kellaway? I would never have suspected it! You must have inherited some of your father’s scholarly nature, after all!’
What did he mean, ‘after all’? Lucille bit her lip. She was bristling with indignation at the slur on her intelligence but since she knew Seagrave was actually criticising Susanna rather than herself, she realised she should not regard it. She reminded herself that Susanna would shudder to be thought a bluestocking. ‘Lud, we were always being fed such tedious facts at school,’ she said, as carelessly as she could. ‘How tiresome to discover that some of it remains with me! I would rather die than become an intellectual!’
‘No danger of that!’ Seagrave said laconically. ‘I imagine your talents must lie in other directions!’
The comprehensively assessing look he gave her made Lucille tingle suddenly with an awareness which was completely outside her experience. She shivered in the cool air. Strangely she felt no insult, as she had done with Sir Edwin. The shadows were deepening with every moment, creating a dangerously intimate atmosphere about them. The thin, sickle moon rising above the branches of the yew and the scent of honeysuckle on the breeze did nothing to dispel this illusion.
Seagrave took another step towards her. He was now so close that he could have reached out and touched her but as yet he made no move to do so. Lucille’s pulse was racing, the blood singing quick and light through her veins. Her mouth was dry and she moistened her lips nervously, watching in fascination as Seagrave’s gaze followed the movement of her tongue, the look in his eyes suddenly so sexually explicit that she caught her breath. Then Sal ran forward, barking at shadows and Lucille turned hastily towards the lych-gate.
‘I’ll bid you good evening, sir.’ She hardly recognised her own voice, so shaken it sounded.
Seagrave caught up to her at the gate. ‘I saw you coming out of the church, Miss Kellaway,’ he said abruptly. ‘Can this be some remarkable conversion to moral rectitude?’
The mocking undertone in his voice banished the magical spell his presence had cast on Lucille. She had read about physical attraction, she reminded herself sharply, and knew that it had nothing to do with loving, liking or respecting another person. No doubt she should just be grateful that Seagrave was indeed no Sir Edwin Bolt, with his insultingly lewd comments and disgusting mauling of Susanna’s naked flesh. Only she, Lucille, in her inexperience, had for a moment confused that intense physical awareness with feelings of a deeper and more meaningful kind.
‘Did you imagine that I was there to steal the candlesticks?’ she snapped, angry with herself for her susceptibility and with him for his sarcasm. She gathered up her skirts in one hand to enable her to walk away from him more quickly. ‘Do you exercise the right to decree whether your tenants attend church or not, my lord? Take care that you do not assume too many of the Almighty’s own privileges!’
Seagrave’s eyes narrowed at this before he unexpectedly burst out laughing. ‘A well-judged reproof, Miss Kellaway! What a contradictory creature you are! Come, I shall escort you back to Cookes!’
Lucille preferred not to torment herself with his company. ‘Thank you, but there is not the least need! Good night, sir!’
Seagrave, who was used to having his companionship actively sought by women rather than abruptly refused, found this rather amusing. He wished he had kissed her when he had had the chance. He watched with a rueful smile as her small, upright figure crossed the green and disappeared in at the gates of Cookes. Susanna Kellaway…He frowned abruptly, recalling what he knew of her. His wits must be a-begging to find her remotely attractive.
He knew she was supposed to exercise a powerful sexual sway over her conquests, but the attraction he had felt had been far more complex than mere lust. God alone knew what had prompted him to tell her about Salamanca. If he had not forcibly stopped himself, he imagined he would have blurted out all about his alienation from normal life, the driven madness which had possessed him when he had returned from the wars…Damnation! This sojourn in the country must be making him soft in the head! He called Sal sharply to heel and set off across the moonlit fields back to Dillingham Court.
The good weather broke the following day, and Lucille spent the morning curled up in the drawing-room with an ancient map of Dillingham that she had found in her father’s study. Each lane and dwelling was carefully labelled; Cookes was there, though at that time it was still a row of individual timbered cottages, drawn with skill and precision by the cartographer’s pen. On the other side of Dragon Hill, the only high land in the area, lay a beautifully stylised house named on the map as Dillingham Court and surrounded by its pleasure gardens. Lucille’s curiosity was whetted, but she knew it was unlikely that she would ever see the Court in real life.
There had still been no word from Susanna, and two weeks had already passed. Lucille no longer really believed that her sister would return in the time she had promised, and she itched to be away from Cookes. Wearing Susanna’s character, even without an audience, suddenly grated on her. If only Seagrave had not come to Dillingham! Lucille shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her conscience pricking her again.
Immediately after luncheon the rain ceased, driven away by a brisk wind that hurried the ragged clouds across the sky. Lucille was tired of being cooped up all day. She put on a pair of stout boots to protect her from the puddles and called for the carriage to be brought round.
‘I wish to go to the seaside, John,’ she told the startled coachman.
It was six miles to the sea at the nearest point, which was Shingle Street, and the journey was a slow one over rutted tracks. Clearly John thought that she was mad to attempt such an expedition, but Lucille did not care. Once out of the village environs, the lush green fields soon gave way to thick forest and heathland, flat, dark and empty to the horizons. On such a grey day it was both forbidding and desolate, but Lucille found it a fascinating place. When they finally reached the sea, she descended from the carriage to be met by the full force of the wind and was almost blown over. The fresh salty tang of the air was exhilarating.
Feeling much better, Lucille told John that she would walk along the shore for a little way and asked him to meet her at the gates of the only house she had seen in the vicinity. Scratching his head, the coachman watched her walk off along the shingle beach, a slight, lonely figure in her outmoded coat and boots. How could two sisters be so different? he wondered. Miss Susanna Kellaway never walked anywhere if she could ride; more fundamentally, she had never said please or thank you in all the time he had worked for her.
The walking was hard along the shingle, and the power of the waves was awesome