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‘I shall be gone.’
Or dead.
She thrust aside the thought.
‘We knew from the start it could not last, my lord.’ She turned away from him, determined not to weaken. Pride came to her aid. The stubborn pride that had helped her to make her school such a success. ‘I want to thank you for...for the pleasure your company has given me. And for your forbearance. There may be a little gossip about us, but by the time I return the fashionable set will have moved on and I shall be able to resume my business here as if we had never met.’
‘Mary, I—’
‘No!’ She turned back to face him. She felt as brittle as fine glass. One wrong word and she would shatter. ‘I am honoured by your confidences, my lord, and I shall not make this more difficult for you than it already is. Let us part now, as friends, with no hard feelings on either side.’
He looked at her, his blue eyes challenging. She knew then that if he took her in his arms they would neither of them be able to let go. Her head went up a little as she held out her hand to him.
‘Goodbye, Lord Randall.’
The steady tick, tick of the clock was all she could hear. It seemed to go on for an eternity before he came forward to take her hand. She kept her fingers straight, not giving in to the urge to cling to him. His lips brushed her skin and she forced herself not to tremble.
‘Goodbye, Mary. Bless you, my—’
He bit off the last word, turned and was gone. She listened to his footsteps as he crossed the hall, heard the outer door close with a thud, then silence.
It was over.
Chapter Eight
Randall rode to Roosbos early the following morning. Sunday. The bells were ringing, summoning the faithful to church as he left Brussels. He knew Mary would accompany her Protestant pupils to the court chapel for the service and he had to steel himself not to wheel Pompey about and detour there in the hope of seeing her. The past few weeks had been amongst the happiest, but the most frustrating of his life.
Never before had he put himself out for any woman as he had done for Mary Endacott, not even his sisters, and he was aware that by escorting her so publicly around Brussels he had aroused speculation. For Lord Randall, that confirmed bachelor, to take an interest in any single lady was bound to give rise to talk. He had made one mistake early in his career and since then his affairs had always been conducted out of the public eye. They were always brief, mutually satisfying, he hoped, and without any commitment on either side. He had also made sure the lady was well rewarded at the end of the liaison.
His friendship with Mary Endacott was very different. She asked for nothing save his company and it surprised him how much he enjoyed hers. He had quickly learned to recognise the little signs that gave away the emotion beneath her cool exterior, the way her eyes would light up with sudden humour, for instance. He soon discovered that very often he shared her amusement. She taught him to laugh, to appreciate the ridiculous. But she could be serious, too. Their very different upbringing gave them much to discuss and debate, but they always found some common ground that would bring them even closer. He liked the way her brow would crease when she considered some knotty problem or formulated an argument, and when a subject touched a raw nerve she would sink her teeth into her bottom lip as she struggled to contain her emotions.
He had seen her do so last night, when he had explained why he could not offer her marriage. She had used no tears or arguments to persuade him. Instead she had agreed, tried to make it easier for him to leave her, and in so doing the bonds between them had become even stronger. It had been as much as he could do to walk away. She was a completely new experience for him and he had not wanted to leave her, but there was no alternative. They had agreed the limits of their involvement from the start, neither of them could give more than friendship, and even then it could only be for a short time. But being friends with Mary Endacott had been a tortuous delight.
By the time he had known her a week the mere sight of her had set his temperature soaring. He was enchanted by the vision she presented with her creamy skin and dusky curls, and having held her in his arms, and carried her over his shoulder on more than one occasion he was well aware of the delectable figure hidden beneath her clothes. She liked to dress neat as a pin, but he had seen her ruffled, for example that very first time when he had kissed her and she had looked up at him, a hectic flush on her cheeks and eyes flashing with indignation, but also with the recognition of the connection between them. Since then he had kissed her only once, but he had often dreamed of it, and in his dreams he pulled the pins from her thick curls and watched that dark cloud of hair fall around her shoulders. She was not voluptuous, but neither was she thin; he judged that one gently rounded breast would fill up his hand. The thought aroused him and he shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.
‘Thank God there is a battle coming,’ he muttered as he rode into the camp. ‘That will concentrate my mind very well. And by the time it is over Mary Endacott will be but a faded memory.’
He pushed aside the nagging whisper in his brain that told him it would not be that easy to forget her.
* * *
He spent the whole day at Roosbos, and if the officers thought him more curt and demanding than usual they knew better than to mention it. By the time he returned to Brussels the daylight was fading and after a solitary supper he fell into bed and a dreamless sleep of exhaustion. But Mary was there in his thoughts again the following morning. She would be on her way to Antwerp by now. They had said their goodbyes, but while he wrote letters, issued orders and concentrated upon his duties, her presence haunted him, like a ghost at his shoulder.
* * *
An officers’ dinner at the Hôtel d’Angleterre occupied him for the evening, but when it was over he left the others drinking into the early hours of the morning while he set off for his lodgings in the Rue Ducale. However, his restless feet took him in the opposite direction. There could be no harm in it, he told himself as he walked through the dark streets towards the Rue Haute. Mary and her school had left, he merely wanted to assure himself that her property was intact, although when he asked himself what could have occurred in the few hours since she and her staff had quit Brussels he was unable to answer.
He should turn back. He had a meeting with Wellington in the morning and needed some sleep, but having come thus far he would at least walk to the school and take a look. The building came into sight, a solid square of black against the night sky. Randall stopped and stared at it, feeling a huge sigh welling up in him. She was gone and he would have to forget her.
He was just turning away when something caught his eye. A flicker of light through the cracks in the shutters. He stopped. There it was again, coming from Mary’s sitting room. Common sense told him she would have left a caretaker at the house, but it could be an intruder. He could not walk away without ascertaining the truth. Quickly he strode to the door and banged upon it.
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There was no sound from within. His hand went to the dress sword at his side. He would be a fool to investigate alone. Better to return in the morning when it was light. He was about to turn away when he heard the scrape of a bolt and the door opened a crack.
‘Mary! What the devil—! What has happened? Have you delayed your departure?’
Shaking her head, she stepped back to allow him in.
