She snapped her face forward, her eyes wide. “Of me?”
Nodding, he said, “Of you. I had planned to travel to Cornwall after my return from India. To pay you court.”
“What a ridiculous tease you are. Is this stage two of wooing?”
“Not in the least, unless honest confession counts as a stage of courtship.”
“Oh, good heavens.” She waved her muff. “We’re already married. You needn’t court me.”
“No? Then I’ve already won your heart? A record this must be. A single visit to the lake, and you’re already madly in love with me.”
Hazel buried her face in her muff and mumbled unintelligibly. Her shoulders shook with embarrassed laughter. It took her some time to recover from her fit of hilarity, or whatever it was her reaction showed, but when she sat up and schooled her features, she asked, “Why would you come to Cornwall to court me? Why not fall in love with some beautiful, flighty creature of your acquaintance? How silly of you to want to court a complete stranger.”
“But you weren’t a stranger. I grew up knowing we were intended for each other. For me, that was a greater intimacy than any acquaintance could afford. I never gave another woman a second glance. To you, I was faithful.”
“Oh.” Hazel stared at her muff.
They had drifted further across the lake, moving out of sightline from the boathouse and bank. He dropped the oars into the reflective surface to guide them back to sightline.
After he brought the oars to rest in the boat, she asked, “How would you have courted me in Cornwall?”
“Hmm. I’d not gotten that far in my plan to be honest. I don’t suppose there are any lakes with rowboats near Teghyiy Hall?”
She shook her head. “You hadn’t a plan because you were overconfident of your success. We were, as you said, intended. You would have stridden into the hall, full of expectations and arrogance.”
“Quite the opposite, my dear. I would have feared you’d already promised your heart to a freckle-faced lad of your acquaintance with no thought to the stranger your father wanted you to marry. I would have arrived with a genuine and heartfelt suit, knowing I would be pitting myself against every face you knew, handsome or otherwise.”
“Oh,” she said again. “And if you had arrived to discover I was pockmarked with dragon breath?”
Harold chuckled. “I would have made an elaborate excuse for being in Cornwall then ridden back to Devonshire by first light of the following morning.”
“Nonsense! You would have remained loyal even if I were ugly,” she said.
“Then it’s fortunate I’ve found you the most exquisite of beauties instead.”
She had nothing to say to that, only to turn her head to take in the leafless trees. They shared silence, each shivering in the cold, the temperature all the colder for being out on the lake. He could not feel his lower half anymore.
“Do you row well?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“Out of practice, but before India, I rowed every morning.”
“Then impress me.”
Harold arched a single brow, his lips angling into a grin. He sliced the water with the oars and said, “Brace yourself.”
With a powerful lean and pull, he lunged them across the lake, ripples waking the sleeping waters. His muscles burned from lack of practice, but he put his weight into it, rowing them well past the sightline and around the bend to the length of the lake that ran across much of the estate grounds. He went for speed and agility, aiming to send the wind whistling past their ears and to untidy her carefully rowed curls. Hazel squealed and grasped the bench. Her muff lay forgotten in her lap. When they reached the edge of Mr. Jones’ land, he used both oars to spin them in the tightest circle his muscles could muster, one arm pulling, one arm pushing, his enjoyment at her reaction fueling his daring. As they whipped into one circle then two then a final third before turning back the way they had come, Hazel threw her head back and laughed, begging for more.
By the time they reached the deepest part of the lake and set to drift once more, Harold’s teeth were chattering. He did not dare end the fun. Not until she was ready to return to the warmth of the house. If she so desired, he would stay here all day and freeze for her pleasure.
Tucking her hands into the muff, she said, “While we’re confessing, I’ll admit I’ve thought on more than one occasion we might have noticed each other had it not been for our parents’ promise. That was my only objection to you, you see. My father’s expectation of the match.” She teased him with a smile before adding, “Well, that and my first impression of you.”
“Pray tell what was so objectionable?” He scowled.
“You walked into the supper party looking…rustic. I was almost embarrassed for you.”
Harold crossed his arms over his chest. “I see.”
Unperturbed by his reaction, Hazel continued, “Your hair was unpowdered, sir! And that tan!” She tutted. “For all your posh demeanor, you looked like a gardener.”
“Right. So, you’d prefer a foppish peacock.”
Her smile deepened in wickedness. “That’s what every proper young lady wants. But I’ve never admitted to being a proper young lady. In fact…I thought I might faint when I saw you on the wilderness walk that day after you’d mended the fence, or whatever it was you said you were doing. Not faint of fright, mind, but faint in the hopes you’d have to carry me back to the house.”
Uncrossing his arms, he reached up to loosen his cravat. She watched him, her eyes widening as he unknotted the linen. Leaving it to hang about his neck, he slipped the top two buttons of his waistcoat through the holes and parted the stiff fabric to expose the hollow of his throat to the frosty air. He shivered at the kiss of cold but was undaunted. Hazel pursed her lips, saying nothing as she continued to watch.
Holding onto the bench, he leaned over the side of the boat and cupped an icy palmful of water. With a quick glance to ensure she was still focused on him, he dumped the water on his hair, followed by two more scoops until his hair was decidedly soaked. Hair powder streamed down his temples. He shuddered when the frigid droplets dribbled under his shirt collar and down his back. He combed his fingers through his curls and gave them a fierce shake.
Since he could not see himself, he could not truthfully say if he looked frightful or masculinely disheveled. Wishing for the latter, he asked, “Am I rustic enough now to entice you into a hot chocolate in the sitting room?”
She visibly swallowed, her eyes still wide as teacup saucers.
“In fear of ruining my potential success during stage one,” he said when she showed no signs of responding, “I’m going to admit that with or without the enticement, I’m for the sitting room and hot chocolate because my teeth are chattering, and I can’t feel my face. I do, however, hope you’ll join me.”
This time, the hearth fire in the sitting room roared with a fiery passion. Hazel wrapped the blanket around her, still trembling despite the warmth of the flames. That she had nearly frozen on the lake did not bother her one whit, for it had been the most fun she could remember having.
Harold shared the sentiment. He, too, was buried beneath the warmth of a blanket, contentedly smiling regardless of his wet hair. At least he had taken a moment to rinse out the remaining hair powder when they had returned to change clothes in their separate dressing rooms. For her part, her lady’s maid could not work the laces and pins fast enough. Hazel had been giddy for more of his company, more of his flirts and compliments, all so unexpected from the reserved toff she had originally thought of him.
Though they shared the chaise longue, neither touched, each snug in their own coverlet. She wondered if they would warm faster by sharing a blanket. However exciting the thought, she dared not say such a thing to him. But she thought it. An ever-present desire to inch closer.
Tucking the blanket around her stockin
ged feet, slippers having been tossed to the floor the moment she found comfort, she asked, “Is this stage two of your wooing strategy?”
Russet strands curled as they dried, framing Harold’s lean face. Although he so rarely wore powder, unlike the other gentlemen of her acquaintance, seeing him so undressed felt intimate somehow. Did other wives’ husbands sport natural hair in private? Powdered or unpowdered, he was handsome. Not the kind of handsome she was accustomed to or ever thought to be attracted to, certainly not the kind of handsome found in fashionable circles. There was no denying, though, that he sent her pulse racing, more so with each conversation. As far as she could recall, no one had affected her thus, not even Lord Brooks. But she did not want to think of anyone else, only Harold.
Her husband drew the blanket more tightly about himself. “To which this are you referring as a potential stage two? The secluded setting? The decadent chocolate? The shared settee? Our shivering state?”
“Any of those. All of those. Methods not immediately evident could be at play, as well, all deviously contrived to win your suit.”
His grin was positively diabolical. “I can’t give away all of my secrets. You’ll only know if I’ve employed stage two after you’ve succumbed to the charm of said stage.”
She giggled and hoped she did not sound too vapid for doing so. The half-lidded look he gave her told her he did not find her remotely vapid. His flattery and flirting had all the appearance of being genuine. Harold liked her. He had thought of her while rowing another woman on the lake!
Tugging at her bottom lip with her teeth, she asked, “Will you promise to answer me honestly if I ask you a question?”
A quizzical quirk of his head. A blink. A nod. “Ask me anything.”
“If you hadn’t discovered the truth…you know, about the…parlor…would you have ever been able to look past it, or even if it had been true, would you have ever forgiven me enough to, um, woo me?”
“Hazel, understand this,” he said, sitting up straighter. “I looked past it the moment I said I will. I wanted to win your affection even when I believed the scandal was true. A challenge, yes. Impossible, perhaps. Outside my purview, no. My concern was not the scandal but if you had any room in your heart for someone other than him.”
“Oh.” She said the word she had already repeated uncountable times today. The blanket seemed overwarm of a sudden. She slipped her feet out from under it.
“I can’t deny that knowing the truth is a weight lifted. I don’t have to compete with the memory of some great, lost love. I have only to compete with your ideal of a perfect husband, whatever that might be. Have I answered your question? Was that all you wanted to know?”
Hazel nodded. “Lord Kissinger was right about you.”
He leaned towards her, propping his elbow on his thigh. “I beg your pardon.”
“He called on me when you were in London. Said you were the very best of men.”
“Did he now? The sly dog.” Harold chuckled. “Is that all he said?”
Grinning, Hazel looked at him sidelong. “He might have said more. But what’s said between friends stays between friends, so you shan’t wheedle anything more out of me.”
Harold clucked his tongue. “I see how it is. Betrayed by my dearest friend the moment I turn my back.”
Brave, Hazel drew her legs onto the chaise, tucked her feet under the blanket, then dared to inch one of her feet across the cushion to the edge of Harold’s blanket. She watched him watch her foot slide beneath the fabric. The corner of his lips twitched, eyes trained on the outline of the foot. A flex of her toes and she found his thigh. She wiggled her toes against him, then pulled her foot back to the safety of her blanket.
In dramatized slowness, Harold’s gaze followed the path her foot had taken before meeting her stare. “I believe you’re flirting with me, Mrs. Hobbs.”
“Who says I don’t have my own stages of wooing?” She drew her bottom lip between her teeth again and fluttered her eyelashes.
“Then in the name of fairness, you must allow me a question in return.”
“Go on then.”
“If I were to fetch a bit of paper, would you permit me to sketch you as you are now? Between the firelight flickering on your features and the sunlight haloing your hair, you’re angelic. I want to capture it.”
Hazel’s heartbeat quickened. “You’re an artist?”
“I dabble. May I? It won’t take a moment to grab my things.”
She nodded, at a loss for words. Which was more surprising, that he was an artist or that he wanted to draw her, she could not say. Both perhaps. He folded his blanket and slipped into his bedchamber for only a moment before returning with paper, wooden tablet, and graphite in hand. When he sat down, he was startlingly close, his leg brushing against her tucked foot.
“No need to move, Hazel. You’re perfect as you are.” Holding the tablet in his lap, his free hand arced across the paper with a furious flurry of movements.
“Did your grandfather teach you?” she asked, craning her neck to see the paper as he worked.
He tilted it just out of sight, never moving his focus from her face. “Self-taught. No one in my family knows. There, you know a secret about me.”
“But your grandfather was an artist. Why didn’t he teach you?”
The graphite strokes stopped midway across the page. “My grandfather was a gamester, not an artist. His addiction to gambling nearly ruined him. To the great fortune of my father, he won the largest amount of his life days before his death. I suspect it’s why my father—” He stopped midsentence, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “Why would you think my grandfather was an artist?”
“Because he was,” she insisted. “Has Nana never shown you his work? He was prolific. Her entire bedchamber is covered with his art.”
Harold sat back and studied her. Hazel hoped she had not disclosed a secret Nana had entrusted her with. It had not seemed like a secret.
“She’s never spoken a word about it to me,” he said.
The bone and graphite drawing instrument rested between his index and middle finger as he reached for his hot chocolate. Staring into the cup, he swirled it one way then another. Hazel peered over his hand at the sketch, taking advantage of his distraction.
Harold snapped the tablet sideways with a “Ha!” before setting down his cup and resuming his sketch. “I’ll ask her about it this evening,” he said. “Curious she never told me about it. I wasn’t close to my grandfather. He wasn’t close to anyone that I know of; he was a man who kept to himself when not out gaming.”
“Oh, but theirs was a love match!”
His hand stilled again. “Was it? I didn’t realize. But then, he was in his sixties by the time I was born. Had no patience for children, only his vices. I know nothing of his youth.”
“She’s never spoken of his later years. The way she speaks of him, you’d think he was still alive, both of them young and deeply in love. It’s all delightfully romantic.”
He smiled. “She must confide in you for that reason.”
Angling for a peek again, Hazel asked, “Do you have other sketches? May I see them? What do you sketch?”
“Yes, yes, and mostly landscapes. I sneaked a portrait or two in India from subjects none the wiser, mostly street vendors and urchins. You’re my first permitted subject.”
Graphite between his fingers again, he reached a hand to her, hesitated at her cheek, then tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered there. Then with a slow sweep of his fingertips, he traced the heartbeat thumping along her neck. The pads of his fingers, in their tender caress, trailed a path of fire, Hazel’s skin aflame where they touched, the warmth spreading through her body, igniting an inferno in her abdomen.
When his fingertips reached the top of the blanket, just above her collarbone, she laughed softly. “This
must be stage two.”
He did not respond right away, and she wondered if he had heard her. But then his eyes met hers, his lids hooded, the brown of his irises so dark they were nearly black. His thumb traced her lips, slightly parting them.
“May I kiss you?”
Her heart pounding and her hands trembling, she nodded and closed her eyes in anticipation.
Rather than press his lips to hers, as she expected, he brushed them, a featherlight touch of his to hers. Tender and gentle, a tease of skin to skin. He exhaled shakily, his breath tickling her cheek, scented of cocoa. Only after tempting, coaxing, courting, did he press more firmly, but even then, his kiss was soft and pliant, not demanding, rather kneading. She parted her lips, bracing for the invasion. Instead, he teased his tongue along the seam of her lips, flicking the tip of hers with a taunt. Her stomach fluttered. Her breath shuddered. Her toes curled.
Her eyes were still closed, her lips still puckered when she realized he had long since backed away. How had she missed the end of the kiss? She shivered from the heat coursing through her.
Harold was looking back at her when she opened her eyes. The sketch was held up for her to see. Although she stared at the paper, she could not make immediate sense of the blends and shades, still dazed from the life-altering kiss, the kiss she had always wanted, the kiss as she had dreamt kisses should be.
“Well?” he prodded.
She focused on the drawing, forcing herself to make sense of the lines.
Goodness! Captured on paper, but a moment’s work, was her perfect likeness, only not as she saw herself but how he must see her, unblemished by imperfections, the shading creating an aura, her likeness radiating happiness. It was breathtaking. More so than the chalk sketches she had seen before. Hazel pressed a hand to her chest.
“It’s captivating,” she said. “I’m breathless, in awe.”
“This is how I see you. I can’t capture the inner qualities with graphite alone, your loyalty, your kindness, your cleverness, but it is, as best I can create in a handful of minutes, how I see you.”
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