Long before Alastair came calling, chastity was going to kill him.
• • •
Young Daniel was running a slight fever, but Michael felt it safe to declare him on the mend, particularly after the boy evidenced a healthy appetite by attacking Mrs. Chudderley’s basket of custards. Mrs. Broward, heavily pregnant, insisted on tea, and a half hour and two pots later, Michael sat on a small chair, desperately trying to rearrange his limbs in a way that did not suggest the extreme discomfort occasioned by furniture designed for a much shorter man.
Or perhaps his discomfort came from the slow dissolution of his best defense against the widow. Lady Bountifuls did not impress him; too often their good intentions were diminished by their transparent distaste for the objects of their compassion. Yet Mrs. Chudderley seemed easy in the Browards’ company, and her attitude fostered an atmosphere of informal good cheer. Mrs. Broward, one hand on her great belly, wondered if Mrs. Chudderley hadn’t any suggestions for names. Young Miss Broward solicited her opinions on London fashions. Various little ones tugged at her skirts. At one point an ominous ripping sound was heard, but while Mrs. Broward gasped and yanked the offending tyke away, Mrs. Chudderley only laughed.
This was clearly not the first time she had visited the Browards. Nor would it be the last, judging by the warm invitations that followed them as they finally took their leave, all of which centered on the prospect of her return as soon as the babe was born.
“Well,” he said as they stepped back into the village lane. So she enjoyed the company of farmers. So he rather liked her for it. No matter. Circumstances dictated that he take his leave all the more quickly as a result. “I must get to my other patients. I’ll bid you farewell.”
Mrs. Chudderley, caught in the process of untangling the ribbons of her parasol, slanted him a look. “Running off so soon?”
He hesitated. “That’s a great lot of ribbons on that parasol. Do they serve any purpose?”
She laughed. “Beauty,” she said. “That is their purpose.”
Then the ribbons weren’t required. Her eyes were the only adornment she needed. They were extraordinary, such a pale shade of green, and they tilted ever so slightly at the outward corners. They put him in mind, somehow, of the cat statues in the Egyptian wing of the British Museum. Ancient eyes, much older than the face they graced.
Out of nowhere, he recalled her tears upon waking a week ago. What, or who, had made her weep?
It is none of your business.
“Anyway,” she said, “your home and mine lie in the same direction. Shan’t we walk together?”
Shaking out the parasol a final time, she started down the road without a backward glance—assuming, as women of her beauty usually did, that he would follow.
Their respective destinations did lie down the same road. He could think of no excuse to go back into town. And so, with a sigh, he followed her—as men, he supposed, usually did.
“You seem to know the Browards well,” he said as he fell into step beside her. It struck him as unusual. Most country gentry strove to distinguish themselves from their tenants.
“Indeed,” she said. “I fund their eldest sons’ educations. Very bright lads, one at Harrington, the other at University College in London. And I’ve known Mary and Thomas—Mr. and Mrs. Broward—since we were children.”
“Ah. You grew up in this district, then.”
“In the winters, yes. Didn’t you know?” She sighed. “And here I imagined that nobody in Bosbrea had any topic of discussion more interesting than me.”
Her rueful smile lent her remark a self-deprecating air, one he liked very much. His better instincts warred against habit. Habit won. “That is difficult to imagine,” he said.
His reward was a flutter of mink-brown lashes. “How kind of you. In fact, I’m kin to the Browards through my mother. My father bought Havilland Hall to keep her from growing too homesick.”
A mésalliance, then. Startling to hear her divulge it so casually. “I see.”
She lifted a brow. “Yes, I’m sure you do. Not the most glorious match for Papa, of course. His family was most displeased. But . . .” Her mouth pulled in a sideways smile. “Mama and Papa loved each other dreadfully. Eventually they won over even the stoniest of his relatives.”
The cynic in him rather doubted that. But it made a good tale for circulation. “So you’re related to some of your tenants. That’s bound to be messy.”
The slightest edge entered her voice. “I suppose it might be, if the landlord is unjust.”
In return, he felt mildly annoyed by her accidental implication: that his own family behaved less than justly with their own people. Of course, she thought him a mere doctor. Nevertheless . . . “With crop prices sinking, economies become necessary. One might say that causes an inevitable tension between those who own the land and those who work it.”
She gave a little laugh. “You sound like a university lecturer.”
Good God. What he’d sounded like was Alastair. “Perish the thought, Mrs. Chudderley.”
“Or . . . like a man who has some personal experience of land management?” Her pause plainly invited him to elaborate. When he did not, she added pointedly, “In the north, no doubt.”
Ah. He allowed his smile to widen. Clearly his reserve had pricked her. “What an excellent memory you have. In the north, indeed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I do believe you’re teasing me now.”
“You might be right.” It gratified something foolish in him to be the cause of her rising color—and to be studied so closely by such magnificent eyes. He lifted a brow, and watched her blush deepen.
Really, she was surprisingly easy to ruffle for a professional beauty. A man could make a hobby of it.
“Now you’re staring,” she said tartly.
“Surely you’re accustomed to that,” he said. “I imagine it’s almost obligatory.”
No false pretense of modesty from this widow: she did not even blink. “I’m accustomed to a great many things,” she said. “Polite conversation, for instance—which generally commences with a frank discussion of one’s natal place. But perhaps such niceties are only common in the south of the country. I will leave it to you to enlighten me.”
Oh, but she was clever. He vaguely recalled tales of her wildness, but none of her wit. Typical unfairness, that. “It’s true, we northerners are famously reticent savages. But I promise you, we abandoned most of our more boorish customs once the Picts fell from power. You’re quite safe with me.”
“Oh, I do not think you a savage,” she said sweetly. “In fact, you seem a much more evolved specimen—a man whose favorite subjects do not include himself. Why, I’m not certain I’ve ever encountered your kind before!”
He laughed. In fact, only the barest thread of common sense leashed his tongue, for a man’s instinct, when holding such a woman’s attention, was to babble endlessly, lest she find a reason to look away.
Christ, but she was beautiful. He wondered how wild she became, exactly. He had a brief vision of her dancing atop a table, garbed only in a string of black pearls. Alas, it seemed a bit too Parisian, even for her.
“You find me amusing?” She sounded pleased by the notion.
“I find you persistent—particularly in the face of such boorishly northern company.”
Her nose wrinkled. “You are not nearly the northerner you claim to be. Your address shows breeding; the way you walk suggests a lifetime of sport. Cricket, I think?”
“Rugby,” he answered before he could think better of it.
“Ah.” She sounded satisfied, as well she might. Rugby was a sport most often confined to public school playing fields. But he had not given himself away.
“A common game in the north,” he said. “Mr. Pershall also played it as a boy.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. Nevertheless . . . yes, I find your presentation suspiciously polished for a boor. Your apparel, on the other hand . . .” She shook her head. “Y
ou do know we have a very fine haberdasher in Brosbrea? You’ve just now met his wife.”
Now his laughter was full-throated, impossible to contain. “A blunt-spoken woman! Mrs. Chudderley, if my kind is rare, yours is rarer.”
Her smile widened to a grin. “Then what a pair we are! But you, I think, are determined to remain a mystery, while I am an open book.”
Ah, but these lies left him feeling uneasy. It was not guilt that troubled him, precisely. He undertook this masquerade as plain Mr. Grey partially for his brother’s sake: were he to use his true name, word would eventually reach London that the Duke of Marwick’s brother had abandoned the hospital to live quietly in rural Cornwall, and speculation would run rampant as to the cause. He would not make Alastair the brunt of gossip until and unless his brother left him no choice. By the same token . . . to incite such gossip would be to squander one of the only weapons he had in this ridiculous little game they were playing.
But sound motives did not make for an easy frame of mind. He ought to be in London right now. This situation was absurd in the extreme.
“On the contrary,” he said, “I am as you see me. The only mysteries in my life are medical. I did briefly entertain a different mystery last week, but in the days since, my rosebushes have disappointed me.”
He expected a coy reply, or perhaps even a retort born of embarrassment. Instead she looked at him in surprise, and then burst into laughter—and his breath stopped. He nearly stopped, the better to behold her. What kind of laugh was this? Not a polite and controlled sound, smothered behind a palm, as society ladies favored, but a surprisingly loud bellow: a laugh without a trace of self-consciousness. She laughed like a barmaid, with her entire body.
Perhaps she was Parisian at heart.
For a moment, he permitted himself to feel the full effect of this possibility: the hot leap of desire, the dazzled giddiness. To be walking in the sun with a beautiful woman, who gazed on him as though he were the most fascinating riddle she had ever encountered, and then laughed as though no one could amuse her better . . .
The next moment, he checked himself. His bloody romantic temperament had gotten him into enough scrapes to last a lifetime. Perfection, he always decided within the course of five minutes’ conversation, only to conclude, two or four or six weeks later, that perfection was only a very good disguise for disaster. It never lasted.
Besides, she knew nothing of him. She teased and flirted by nature, and would have done so no doubt with the roughest-spun laborer. He understood that, and he approved of it. She was not a snob, Mrs. Chudderley. She took fun where she found it.
“Have you other patients to see?” she asked. “If not, I will show you around the area.”
Damn the circumstances. In any other time or place, he would have been rampantly eager to amuse her. “In fact—”
“It will work to your advantage to be seen with me,” she said lightly. “If you wish to establish your credentials, that is. You will find that people in these parts are inclined to mistrust a stranger, even if his medical skills recommend him.”
“A very generous offer, for which I am properly grateful. But—”
“And I find myself willing, because the day is so fine, to show you one of my favorite places,” she continued, and something gay and carefree in her manner tugged out a similar feeling within him, leaping and laughter-prone, much younger than he felt these days. He realized that he was grinning.
Well . . . why not accompany her? He was bored; he had neither enough patients nor books here to keep him occupied. Attraction did not require him to act. And prolonged acquaintance with her surely would cure this budding interest he felt.
Besides, to offend her would be unwise. If Bosbrea’s most famous citizen set out to blacken his name, prospective patients would be deterred from consulting him. Then he’d truly be out of hand.
Oh, yes. Very sound logic, not at all self-serving. He bit his cheek. “Very well. If it’s near.”
“It’s all near.” They walked side by side, past the last few houses, into the open country. “In fact, my land begins at this hedgerow.”
He looked out. Havilland Hall was not visible from this vantage, but the scene had its own charms. Summer lay like a warm breath over the fields, and butterflies danced up out of the long, quivering grasses. “A lovely piece of earth.”
“More than a piece,” she said. “Nearly five thousand acres—all mine now.”
Did a trace of sadness color her words? “You have no siblings, then?”
“No brothers, you mean.” She cast him an arch look. “No, I was an only child. Another way in which my mother disappointed Papa’s family. But Papa never minded it. He spoiled me terribly, almost as terribly as he spoiled her.”
Ah. Perhaps she wasn’t romanticizing her parents’ marriage.
At the thought, he felt the stirring of a very old emotion, disbelief and wistfulness entwined. As a boy on holiday at friends’ homes, over dinner tables and in drawing rooms before supper, he had watched with amazement as the lord and lady of the house exchanged glances, or brushed against each other. What a rare and wondrous thing it must be, to have had happy parents. “It was a great romance, I take it.”
“Of course! But I’m hardly an objective critic. I suppose most children idealize their parents.” She gave him a merry look. “Yours were also perfect, no doubt.”
He could barely fathom the fortune it required to produce such naiveté. “In fact, my brother raised me.” For all intents and purposes, Alastair had played both mother and father to him.
Her expression instantly sobered. “I’m so sorry, sir. How awful for you!”
She imagined he’d been raised an orphan, he gathered. He could not permit that misunderstanding to stand. “My parents were . . . engaged elsewhere.” Embroiled in their own private war, they’d had little time to spare on their children, save insofar as sons made excellent pawns. “Not often present in our lives. My brother saw to my . . .” Safety. Sanity. Not politic remarks. “Well-being,” he said.
“Oh.” She frowned a little. “Well . . . who knows, sir? Perhaps you’re the better for it. I often suspect that a happy marriage is a terrible example to inflict on a child.”
Surely she meant that as a joke. “A rather wonderful one, I’d think.”
“Oh, for the husband and wife, no doubt. But imagine the expectations it creates! That anyone can have such love—or that a man who falls madly in love with a woman will never fall out of it. A child nursed on such fairy tales is bound to develop the wildest expectations.”
The frank remark startled him only briefly. Over the past two months, he’d discovered that this kind of intimacy happened a good deal when people looked at him and saw only a country doctor. Where his reputation did not precede him, honest friendships seemed to proliferate.
“Such cynicism,” he said. “Surely you’re too young to be so wise.”
She laughed. “Now your flattery grows transparent. I am, after all, a widow.”
He opened his mouth, then paused. Did she mean that comment as an invitation to ask after her marriage?
If so . . . good God. His curiosity suddenly felt as large as any hunger he’d known. Why are you hiding here in the country? For she owned London’s heart: her face was in the shop windows; society would throw itself at her feet if only she deigned to grace it with her presence.
What a pity that their paths had not crossed earlier. He might have approached her openly, with a frank invitation. His liaisons did not usually last longer than a few weeks, but with her, he could imagine making an exception. Most of London’s fashionable beauties cultivated a coy air of mysterious reserve—or its reverse, an overblown sensuality that turned every other word into a veiled invitation. Her charm, on the other hand, seemed connected to her frankness. He found her honesty strangely . . . refreshing.
Paired with a lack of self-consciousness, honesty would be a great asset to lovemaking. Tell me what you like, he’d say. Show
me.
“Have I shocked you?” she asked.
Her question amused him. If only she knew where his own thoughts had been leading. “Not at all,” he said. Beware, old boy. You are not free for seductions at present. And she looked too impossibly vivid in her gown, like the spirit of summer itself, with the green fields rolling out behind her, for him to imagine that a friendship between them would be uncomplicated by baser temptations.
So he forced himself to make a neutral remark. “The realities of love aside, I suppose it must be useful to have an ideal in mind.”
“Do you? Then we must debate on it. Do you enjoy debating?”
“On occasion,” he said.
Her head tipped; she studied the clouds overhead. This new view revealed imperfections: a mole high on her cheekbone; the oddly blunted tip of her nose. Her photographs, he suspected, were never taken in profile. This was a view that would never be given to the public.
The thought strangely fascinated him. These were secrets waiting to be discovered. He found himself studying her more closely yet, avid to find more. The shape of her ear was not shell-like, her earlobe a touch too large for that pretty description—stretched, perhaps, by years of heavy earrings. But ideal for a kiss. The faint freckle on her throat sent another thrill through him. He wanted to touch it, to whisper against it, I’ve found you. For that matter, the slope of her neck begged to be brushed with a hand. His hand, before he cupped her nape and guided her gently backward onto a bed . . .
“Then let us debate this proposal,” she said, blithely unaware of his rapidly developing . . . condition. “Love is one of the more dangerous ideals a young girl might have. Why, the first man who declares himself will inevitably appear to her like her destiny, leading her to ignore all manner of other considerations.”
“Perhaps.” He spoke slowly, for it was a battle now between his wits and his body, which wanted to embarrass him like a schoolboy. Good God. He’d never approved of men who used brothels, but if celibacy spelled the end of his dignity, he might reconsider his contempt. “Or perhaps . . . her expectations will guide her to the best of matches, and steer her safely past those roués who look for something less than love in a marriage.”
That Scandalous Summer Page 6
