“Undoubtedly. In fact, I’ve often thought that she told me these stories so I would have it in my mind to sail off on a grand adventure.”
Winnifred’s eyes rounded as she looked at him, her pulse leaping excitedly at the thought. “Is that your plan?”
He nodded. “Something like that.”
She waited for him to elaborate, to explain more about this grand adventure that would free him of his burdens. But he didn’t. And why should he? She was a stranger to him, and nothing more than a means to an end.
She shrugged off the sting of that knowledge, and kept to the topic of his daring Aunt Lolly. “Was her boy’s disguise successful?”
“According to the stories, the ship she’d boarded had actually belonged to a pirate.”
“No.”
He nodded. “She spent three months on the ship without being discovered for a woman. During that time, she was so small that she was relegated to the less strenuous tasks of cabin boy for the bold pirate captain, called the Mad Macaw, and kept mainly to his chamber.”
Winn imagined herself in such a scenario.
In her mind’s eye, Asher took on the role of a swarthy, handsome pirate dressed in snug breeches, his torso scandalously bare aside from a maroon embroidered waistcoat.
Across the bow of the ship, he spotted her. Beneath a forelock of wind-ruffled dark hair, his wicked gaze roamed down her form, taking in her trousers and open-necked shirt . . .
Hmm. The vision abruptly evaporated in a fog of doubt. Glancing down at herself, she knew that there wasn’t anyone who would be fooled if she dressed as a boy. Asher had been right in procuring a dress for her.
Walking along, Winnifred slid a skeptical glance at him. “You’re saying that for three entire months, he never suspected?”
“So the story goes.” Asher shrugged. “However, I suspect that he had to know. After all, why else would he have made someone so scrawny his own personal servant?”
Not to mention, Winnifred thought, Lolly would have had to conceal her monthly courses.
“Regardless,” he said, “when they reached the island, the truth was revealed.”
Again, she waited for him to elaborate. But he frowned and kept his attention on the path ahead.
“And?” She huffed. “Surely you’re not going to incite my curiosity only to withhold the conclusion.”
Didn’t he realize she was living vicariously through Aunt Lolly?
Asher cleared his throat. “It’s just that I’ve never told this story before.”
“You haven’t?” Her urgency suspended for a moment. The seconds ticked by as she looked at his uncharacteristically reserved expression.
It suddenly felt as if they were sharing something more than a walk across the countryside. Perhaps they were becoming friends of a sort. She’d never had a male friend before. And wouldn’t it be positively wondrous to forge a connection with Asher that reached further than a mere exchange of money?
Her heartbeat quickened at the thought, feeling lighter, as if the organ were lifting off in the basket of a Montgolfier balloon.
“I just realized that I’ve steered the conversation down a salacious avenue. Again,” he said, absently grazing a hand along his stubbled jaw, his brow furrowed in contemplation. “Under the circumstances, it would be best to avoid the topics that would naturally lead to flirtations.”
All at once, her little balloon of hope and friendship erupted in a ball of flame and crashed to the earth.
“Fear not,” she said tightly, batting away a few stray curls caught by the cool breeze. “I am under no delusion that you have any interest in my person whatsoever. Therefore, you are welcome to tell me what happened next.”
He eyed her with patent curiosity. “Winn, do you know when a man is flirting with you?”
“Of course,” she said with a flippant wave of her hand. “And a scoundrel simply flirts for the sake of flirting. Scandalous words flow as naturally from your lips as honey from a hive. I understand this and think nothing of it. I’ll merely consider this aspect of your nature as part of my research. I’m making a mental note of it now.”
A rather convincing lie, if she did say so herself. But she wasn’t about to admit that no man had ever bothered to flirt with her. In her entire life.
“Very well, then. I’ll not try so hard to subdue my nature.”
A slow roguish grin curled at the corners of his mouth as if she’d just handed him the key to her bedchamber door. Her breath hitched in a warm rush that spread over the surface of her skin.
“For the moment, however,” he said with a wink, “I’ll stay with the lesser of two evils and continue Aunt Lolly’s story.”
She swallowed, wondering if she’d been too hasty in inviting him to essentially say anything he liked. And yet . . . it would be good for her research.
“They’d just reached the island,” she reminded.
Asher nodded, prodding the ground with his long stick. “The Mad Macaw had been to the island many times in his travels. So often, in fact, that he’d built a veritable palace at the foot of a mountain. He had elaborate gardens of tropical trees and wild birds, a stream that led into a cave, and a warm spring at the foot of the mountain. And, on the first night of his return, he told his cabin boy to bathe in that pool.”
“Well, that seems sensible. After all, they’d been aboard a ship for—”
“Alongside him.”
Winnifred tripped. Her misstep caused her to stagger off the path, but he captured her elbow, steadying her.
Perhaps this was a rather salacious topic of conversation to be having with a man. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Well? Did she?”
Asher Holt’s eyes glinted with a devil’s charm, his fingertips skimming the sensitive inner curve of her elbow. “What would you have done, Winn?”
“I suppose,” she hemmed, biting down on her lip as she tried to ignore the way her pulse skittered beneath his touch and seemingly everywhere else, “after three months on a ship, I’d long for a bath.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Of course it is.” She slipped free of his grasp and started on the path again.
“No,” he said from behind her. “You told me what you’d like, not if you would have the courage to act on it.”
She thought for a moment and came up with the perfect response. Grinning, she lifted her finger and said, “I would get into the pool, but I would keep my clothes on. That way, everyone is satisfied.”
“That’s what Lolly thought, too,” he said, then paused long enough to draw out a few erratic heartbeats, leaving her in breathless suspense. “But she was wrong.”
“She . . . she was?”
Beside her again, he nodded slowly. Sagely. “He wasn’t satisfied until they were both completely . . . and thoroughly . . .”
“I understand now. You don’t have to say more.”
“Nude,” he said anyway. “In the buff. Without a stitch. Naked as Adam and Eve.”
“You’re a wicked man.”
“I appreciate that you fully accept this part of my nature.”
When he flashed a grin, she rolled her eyes.
Yet as they walked on for a time, that story was still soaking in a steamy bath in the center of her brain. And getting prunier by the minute.
When she simply couldn’t stand it any longer, she finally asked, “And then what happened? I mean, obviously the Mad Macaw didn’t have her killed for her deception if she’s still alive.”
“No. He certainly didn’t kill her.” He laughed, then cleared his throat. “He did, however, keep her as his cabin boy for years afterward.”
She gasped in outrage. “You mean to say that he enslaved her?”
Poor Lolly!
“Not exactly. It was more of a . . . mutual understanding,” he said. “He wanted her all to himself. So he kept her as his cabin boy whenever they sailed, but spent most of his life on the island with her.”
�
��Oh,” she said, her lips curving in a dreamy smile. “That turned into a lovely story. Please tell me that Aunt Lolly is well.”
“She is,” he said, a softer smile on his lips, too. He reached out and playfully tugged a stray lock of her hair. “She writes to me often with more stories of her adventures.”
“Oh, what it must be like to travel to far off places.”
“You’re traveling now, Winn.”
“I suppose I am.” She inhaled deeply, absorbing the moment. Her gaze flitted over him and the view of the rolling hills behind him as the wind buffeted his coat and mussed his hair. And she thought of how astonishing it was that the pinnacle of her life’s adventures should happen with him.
“And there will be other adventures,” he added with certainty.
She shook her head. “Aunt Myrtle suffered an injury to her leg years ago and she never leaves Avemore Abbey. But she keeps her spirits high, nonetheless. In her letters to me, she refers to her home as Old Crow Abbey, writing that she may as well name it after herself and the other inhabitants that keep her company.”
“How long has it been since you’ve visited her?”
“More than ten years.” A sudden chill swept over her as the clouds began to gather overhead. “That was when my father cut her out of his life for refusing to marry a gentleman who was—as my father put it—her best prospect. And that is also the reason I know he will never welcome me home again.”
* * *
Julian Humphries, Viscount Waldenfield, paced his study, fuming at the ormolu clock on the mantel. Where was that bloody investigator? He should have returned with a full report by now. It had been two hours since Winnifred had gone. Two damnable hours!
He stared down at the wrinkled page in his fist, the words already seared into his cornea.
Dear Father,
I cannot marry Mr. Woodbine today, or ever. And while I know this will disappoint and anger you, I would rather be cut out of your life entirely than to exist solely to do your bidding and then my husband’s from this day forward.
I am my own person. I have my own mind and my own beating heart that cannot be owned by you or any man. I deserve more than to be handed over like a sack of money. So I must away for my own sake.
In case we never see each other again, please be kind to Mother.
Winnifred
He still couldn’t believe she’d actually run away, and after all that he’d done, arranging everything so that she could be a duchess one day.
He crumpled her note again. He’d done so a dozen times, then smoothed it out just as often. Now the paper was too soft, too like crushing a handkerchief. There was no satisfaction in the act. Even so, he could still shake it at his wife, which he did the instant he heard her return to the study. They’d both been pacing in their own parts of the house.
“Perhaps if you had spent more time preparing our daughter on what was expected of her, then this wouldn’t have happened,” he said, voice rising, his blood heating like steam in a locomotive.
Too used to his outbursts, Imogene merely regarded him with cool blue eyes. “Ever since you announced her betrothal to that bumptious peacock—and without speaking to me, I might add—I’ve done nothing but prepare her for the bitter disappointments of marriage.”
“Well, one of us had to act on her behalf, and I was tired of waiting for you to clear your social calendar to have a moment of your time. If you’re not shopping, then you’re attending dinners at the Duke of Tuttlesby’s until the wee hours of the morning.”
“Don’t give me that look,” she warned, lips tight, stubborn chin notching higher. “You’re the one who aligned our houses with the betrothal. And because of you, Winnifred had to face an abysmal life with a man who’s already in love with someone else. At least I was trying to make her stronger so that she wouldn’t have to bear heartache as I have done.”
He scoffed, flattening out the page over the desk blotter. “What are you even talking about?”
“Ha. Are your affections for the countess so inconstant that I must remind you of her? Likely not, since you still carry the snuffbox that she gave you.”
“You’re being preposterous.”
And yet, he could feel the weight of the object in his pocket, pressing against his chest. He always kept it close.
“I’ve seen the engraving,” she sneered, smoothing her hands down her skirts, where—only now—did he notice the wrinkles. She must have gripped the fabric, a habit she did whenever she was too worried to think about appearances. “For Julian, and the love that was lost but can always be rekindled . . . if you but speak the word. Your countess.”
“My friendship with the countess has no bearing on this situation,” he said absently, still distracted by the motion of her hands, the flawless ivory skin, and the faint tremor that revealed her fears.
Lifting his gaze, he noticed the barest tinge of redness beneath a light dusting of fresh powder on her cheeks and nose. She’d been crying. And it shocked him how much he wanted to walk up to her and take her in his arms.
But it had been years and years since he’d had the liberty to do so.
“You’re absolutely right,” she said, a slight catch in her voice as she turned to fuss with a pillow. “Winnifred is what matters. She’s all we have left.”
Memories flashed in his mind, one after the other, of Imogene’s lovely face shredded in tears and their stillborn sons in her arms.
A profound pain throbbed in the center of his chest. It was the kind of ache that never healed. It surrounded emptiness where there had once been so much hope and so much love that he thought he couldn’t bear it.
But he’d been wrong. It was the loss of it that kept tearing him apart, day by day.
Before he was aware of it, he took two steps to cross the room to her. But then the butler appeared, the investigator close behind.
Julian pivoted on his heel and dismissed the butler with an agitated wave of his hand. Then he glowered at the investigator, already impatient. “Well?”
“You were correct, Lord Waldenfield,” the investigator said. “Your daughter was not alone in the carriage. There was a gentleman with her.”
Imogene gasped. “No! It isn’t possible.”
But Julian, on the other hand, wasn’t surprised. He’d only been waiting for confirmation. In fact, he already knew the blackguard’s name.
Holt.
Chapter 11
Asher adjusted the tail of his shirtsleeves and refastened his fall front as he waited for Winn on the opposite side of the tree line. They’d both required a moment of privacy to see to necessary matters on their lengthy trek northward.
Thus far, keeping to the side roads had not resulted in the happenstance of a farmer or anyone offering them a trip into the next vicarage. Instead of conveyances, they’d encountered varieties of flora and fauna, the animal life including cows, sheep, and a cantankerous groundskeeper who had threatened to beat them both with a stick if they didn’t get off the master’s land.
The episode had warned Asher to be even more cautious. If he were recognized and seen in the company of a runaway heiress, then whatever future plans either of them had would incinerate into curls of smoke. Any debutante’s family would demand they marry for the sake of her reputation.
Then again, Winn seemed to believe that her father was unforgiving and apt to completely cut her out of his life. Having met the blustering Waldenfield only once, Asher couldn’t be certain. Not that it mattered, however. Shettlemane would ensure their marriage, by any means necessary.
He frowned, absently looking skyward at the dark clouds gathering overhead. “Winn, it’s time we’re on our way again.”
She didn’t answer.
With his father’s despicable nature lingering in his thoughts, Asher’s mind flashed to an image of Winn’s face, pale and terror-stricken, as they’d fled from the henchmen in London. That hollow stare was something he’d never forget.
Instantly, the pulse at h
is throat jolted, beating faster. But he shook his head and muttered, “Don’t be a fool, Holt. Only little old ladies fret over triflings.”
The most likely reason Winn hadn’t responded was because she’d moved farther down the hedgerow for more privacy. Women were often shy about these matters.
Therefore, like a man who understood the nature of things, he patiently waited another five minutes—though, in reality, it might have been only a few seconds—then called her name louder this time.
Surely she should be finished by now.
Still there was no answer.
She couldn’t have gotten far. Certainly not so far away that she couldn’t hear the sound of his voice. Not unless . . . someone had taken her. After all, she was a veritable magnet for disaster.
A lance of unease sent his pulse galloping, regardless of his efforts to the contrary.
Bollocks. Asher didn’t wait another instant. He pushed through the spindly branches and broke free on the other side. And his fears were confirmed.
She wasn’t there. His cravat seemed to close around his neck, his breath coming in short, strangled bursts.
Scanning the landscape, he noticed a long strip of flattened grass leading away from the hedges and up, over the low hill. He broke into a run, racing as fast as his legs would carry him. “Winn!”
It wasn’t until he crested the hill that he saw her.
She was standing on a wooden stile, holding a bouquet of violet-tipped clover under the nose of a glossy-coated, sorrel horse. And she dared to look over her shoulder and laugh, the impish melody carried on the breeze.
“You’re huffing harder than a chimney sweep,” she called out to him. “I should think a scoundrel—and one who’s likely run away from many a furious husband—would have better stamina.”
Asher’s brow flattened into a line, his lungs burning. A stream of reprimands crowded on his tongue. But then her face lit with a sudden radiant smile, and he forgot what he was going to say.
He blinked, dumbstruck as she absently brushed aside wind-buffeted curls from her cheeks and shoulders. This couldn’t be the same woman he’d met this morning. There was nothing stiff or scared in her manner. In fact, she was fairly glowing. And gone, too, was the grumpy caterpillar in the voluminous, scratchy dress.
Lord Holt Takes a Bride Page 10
