April Moon

by Merline Lovelace

  He smiled at her fondly. She was being either very steadfast and brave, or very pigheaded and stubborn, or more likely, given that it was Sophie, an equal measure of both.

  “There’s no sin to admitting you’re tired, Sophie,” he said. “You’re not being a weakling if you do.”

  “I am perfectly fine,” she said, raising her chin. “We squandered Heaven knows how much time at the Peacock. The last thing we need now is to stop at another inn, not if we wish to make any progress at all.”

  “But I’ll wager most nights at this hour you’re already abed, aren’t you?”

  She glanced at him suspiciously. “Most nights I am asleep, yes,” she said. “But on most nights I do not have to reach Winchester by the next day. We’ve been graced with a full moon that makes everything bright as day, and it would be shameful not to make use of it.”

  Harry sighed impatiently. Here while he’d been pleasantly considering the romantic possibilities of the moonlight, she’d been regarding it as little more than a glorified lantern to light her dogged way.

  “But if you don’t ease your journey, then—”

  “I’m not going to another inn with you, Harry Burton,” she said firmly. “I don’t regret stopping at the Peacock, because we found a horse for me, and listening to the music and watching the wedding party was enjoyable. But what if anyone had seen us together? A governess like me, alone in the company of a nobleman of your reputation? For you do have a certain reputation with—with ladies, Harry. You cannot deny it.”

  “Of course I won’t,” he said righteously. “Damnation, you should be more concerned if I did, for it would mean I spent my days like an old woman, reading sermons and eating shirred eggs with a tortoise-shell teaspoon. A gentleman requires such a reputation.”

  But she didn’t laugh the way he’d intended, instead looking away from him to stare down at the reins in her hands. Hell, how had he misstepped now?

  “I am very sorry to hear that, Harry,” she said, her disappointment palpable. “Though it does prove what I—”

  “All it proves is that the wretches who write the scandal sheets are far better at fiction than fact,” he said firmly. “Sophie. Sophie, look at me. If I squired even a quarter of the ladies attributed to me, then I’d scarce be able to hobble about, I’d be that taxed and riddled with pox.”

  She looked at him sadly, her face shaded by that wretched bonnet. “I cannot believe you are a saint, Harry.”

  “Damnation, Sophie, I’m not saying I am,” he said. He couldn’t begin to guess what answer she sought, any more than he could deny that there’d been other women in his life. Sophie wasn’t a fool, and for that matter, neither was he. The best he could offer her now was what she deserved, and that was the truth. He could only hope that was enough.

  “When I returned from France,” he began again, “and you were gone, and—and another time as well, I was—well, then I was no saint. There, that’s the truth. But women like that don’t help beyond a night or two. I know that now. And it’s what I was, lass, not what I am.”

  “Thank you, Harry. Thank you for telling me that, but I’m still not going to another inn with you.” She sighed mightily, twisting the reins more tightly around her fingers. “If I did, I might as well scatter my references to the winds for all the good they’d do me then.”

  “No inn, then. But what of that bridge ahead?” he asked, pointed toward an old, low stone bridge over a stream not far in the distance. The banks sloped gently, with ancient willow trees dipping their long branches into the stream on either side. “We could stop there and water the horses, and leave your governess’s reputation as unbesmirched as ever.”

  Her mouth twisted, considering. “We could pause there, yes,” she said slowly. “For the sake of the horses, not for me.”

  “Oh, entirely.” He guided his horse ahead, leading Sophie to the bridge and down the sloping bank. The grass had just begun to come back with the spring, the sprouts soft and new near the water, and the reeds were starting to grow again beneath the mossy stone arch of the bridge. The water rushed and gurgled, echoing back like elfin laughter from beneath the curving stones, while the moon’s reflection became a fragmented disc glittering on the dappled surface.

  He climbed down and turned to help her from her horse, but she’d already slipped down on her own and was leading her mare to the stream to drink. She’d never needed much coddling when she’d been a girl, and clearly she still didn’t, he thought wryly: in this as in so much else about her, Sophie had remained a woman of her word.

  “Should we see what Connor put up for us to eat?” he asked, patting the bulging saddlebag. “A late supper?”

  She shook her head. “Thank you, no, I’m not hungry,” she said absently as she crouched down in the grass beside the water. “Look, Harry, lilies of the valley, the first I’ve seen this spring.”

  Carefully she picked a stem of the delicate flowers and held it up for him to see, the tiny white bells quivering from their arched stalks as she sniffed their fragrance.

  “Ah, Harry, is there anything sweeter?” she marveled. “Each year, every year, they come with the spring. Some things never do change, do they?”

  “Some things never do,” he agreed softly, coming forward to take her hand with the flower. She held the lilies up to his nose, but it wasn’t the lilies that interested him. “Some things remain exactly the same, no matter how many years pass.”

  “Others don’t,” she said wryly. “Look at you. You left for France a boy with a sunburned nose and a shy smile, and now—now you’ve become a black-clad highwayman, full of menace.”

  “That’s only on the outside, and in a few of my darker corners,” he said, even though he knew it wasn’t true. He had changed—he’d only to think of George to realize how much—which was one of the reasons he wanted so desperately to recover a measure of those happier days with her.

  He raised her up, and awkwardly she began to collapse back down, making him catch her around the waist to keep her from falling.

  “My legs are jelly,” she confessed sheepishly, trying to push back and steady herself. “It must be from the riding, and that foolish lady-saddle.”

  “I’d rather think it was my effect upon you,” he said, keeping his arm around her waist, enjoying how she’d let herself depend upon him, if only in this slight way. “And no one will see you here, lass, I promise.”

  Her mouth twitched up at the corners, seemingly against her will, yet just enough to make her dimples show.

  “It’s the lilies, Harry,” she said, using the flowers to trace lightly along his jaw, “not you.”

  “Oh, it’s never me.” He looped the end of one bonnet ribbon around his finger and slowly pulled, drawing the strand outward until the bow beneath her chin gave way. Another tug of the ribbon, and the hat slipped from the back of her head and tumbled to the grass behind her, exactly as Harry had intended.

  Too late she gasped, her hands clutching at her hair as she looked over her shoulder to where the bonnet now lay in the damp grass. “Harry Burton, that bonnet was new last week! I paid my own good money for it, to make a favorable impression upon Sir William!”

  “I would buy you a score of new ones in its stead,” he said, gently plucking the hairpins from her tightly coiled hair, “except that any hat that’s as ugly as that one should not be replaced.”

  “That bonnet is eminently respectable,” she declared, though she was making no move whatsoever to salvage the hairpins. “Not that you would understand such a notion.”

  “It was so eminently ugly, Sophie, that it frightened the horses.” He worked the last pin free, and the thick coil of her hair pinwheeled free, slipping and sliding down her back with the old unbridled luxuriance. She’d always been too impatient as a girl to fuss with her hair, and the few times someone else had pinned it into a more ladylike knot for her instead of her usual haphazard plait, it was usually flopping undone within the hour, exactly as it was now.

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nbsp; She shook her hair over her shoulders and turned back to face him, tucking the lilies behind her ear with a jaunty defiance. All her primness seemed to have vanished, her eyes now full of the old challenge he remembered, and he felt his blood quicken and his body harden in response.

  “So, tell me, Harry,” she said, her voice husky and low. “Does mussing my hair like this make you happy, then? Now that I must look like some tumbled, tawdry hussy after haying, shall I no longer scare the horses?”

  But before he could answer she reached up and grabbed his own broad-brimmed hat, sailing it away across the grass like a black, beaver-felt bat.

  She didn’t bother to keep the triumph from her voice. “Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.”

  He tightened his arm around her waist, drawing her closer. He could feel the warmth of her body through the rough wool of her clothes, the soft curve between her waist and hips. “The goose shall find herself cooked if she isn’t more careful about taunting the gander.”

  “Oh, butter and beans,” she scoffed, her expression becoming oddly solemn as she leaned back into the crook of his arm, her hands resting on his chest with her fingers fanned apart. “I suppose now you shall try to kiss me again, as you promised.”

  “I could,” he said, lowering his mouth over hers, the familiar fragrance of her skin mingling with the scent of the flowers in her hair. “I can.”

  “No,” she said, ducking her head away as she pushed harder against his chest. “No, Harry, please.”

  Disappointment and frustration welled up within him. “Hell, Sophie, if you’re going to bring up all that damned nonsense again about you being a governess who can’t—”

  “No nonsense,” she whispered, slipping her hands around his shoulders to draw his face down to hers. “I just wanted to kiss you before you kissed me.”

  Instinctively her mouth found his, turning the exact distance for their lips to meet and meld, and for Harry to forget any idea whatsoever of protesting how, once again, she’d foxed him. He forgot, and remembered everything else he’d so loved about kissing her: how eagerly she’d sigh as her lips parted for him, how warm her mouth could be, how she seemed to melt against him, as if making her body touch his in as many ways as she could, how she tasted and smelled and felt and loved—yes, loved—him in return. They kissed, and it was as if his letters had never been returned unread. They kissed, and everything in life seemed once again possible, as long as she was there to share it with him.

  He deepened the kiss, his hands sliding along her sides to pull her hips closer to his own and to let her feel the hard proof of how much he wanted her, how much he needed her. He’d sensed he’d somehow blundered when earlier she’d asked him about the other women in his life, and he didn’t want to blunder again.

  “Ah, Sophie, Sophie,” he murmured, threading his fingers into her hair to hold her face before him. Lightly he feathered kisses over her cheeks, along the curve of her jaw and throat that he knew was most sensitive. “My own lass.”

  With a shuddering sigh, she gently twisted her face away from his lips, drawing far enough away from him to study his face. Her lips were wet and parted, her breathing rapid, leaving no doubt in his mind that she’d relished their kiss as much as he. Yet in the moonlight her eyes were enormous with uncertainty, their confusion punctuated by the spiky shadows of her lashes falling across her cheeks.

  “I told you we weren’t done, Sophie,” he whispered, running his hand up and down her back, hoping the caress would comfort and reassure her, as well as remind her of the pleasure in what they had been doing before she’d pulled away. “I told you the moonlight would make—”

  “No, no, no!” she cried plaintively as she pressed her fingers over his mouth to silence him. “That’s not what I intended, Harry, not at all! I thought I could kiss you this once, for the last time—the farewell kiss we never had. I thought I was strong enough to do that, but instead I’m—”

  But the crack of a gunshot at close range cut her off, the sound echoing sharply against the stone bridge as the acrid scent of the gunpowder filled the air. Automatically Harry pulled Sophie down, pushing her beneath the arch of the bridge and shielding her with his own body for extra measure. Now he heard horses on the road overhead, the jingle of harnesses and the scrape of the iron-bound wheels of a carriage or wagon, men’s voices turned harsh and grim.

  Damnation, why had he grown so blasted careless? Why had he dropped his guard so low that it might as well be lying across the toes of his boots?

  “Who is it, Harry?” asked Sophie beside him, breathless now with excitement rather than desire. “Who would fire upon us?”

  “Thieves, vagabonds, deserters,” he said, pulling one of this pistols from his belt to check the powder. “There’s a thousand possibilities. Damnation, Sophie, keep back in the shadows, where they can’t see you!”

  “Then let me have the other gun,” she said, holding out her hand. “As you recall, I’m every bit as good a shot as you are.”

  “I don’t care whether you are or not,” he whispered sharply as another shot ricocheted off the stones. With two pistols, he would have two shots, while the others on the road would have—well, they’d have a great many more from the sounds of them, and he would rather not picture the outcome. “The pistols are our last resort. We’ll have a far better chance hiding under here.”

  She made a harrumph of disdain, smoothing her hair back behind her ears. “I thought highwaymen always wished to make a brave stand before their enemies.”

  “Not always.” He’d grandly told himself and his friends countless times that he didn’t care whether he died or lived, but at present living seemed to be the vastly more appealing prospect. “And never with ladies in tow.”

  “Oh, yes, in tow, exactly like some aging coal scow.” She sniffed, and leaned around him to peer out into the darkness. “And we’re not exactly hiding from them, Harry. They already know we’re here, else they wouldn’t have bothered firing at us in the first place. Besides, even if they didn’t see us, they would have seen the horses by now, there in your magical moonlight.”

  “Why the devil can’t you be a bit less rational?” demanded Harry as he, too, looked at the horses, whinnying uneasily and tugging at their tethers. “Why can’t you make less sense and simply be frightened, like other women?”

  “Because I’m not like other women, Harry,” she said, unconsciously proving his point. “Because that is how I am, and I cannot—”

  “Come out, in the name of the sheriff of this county!” roared a man from the road. “Show your damned faces, you cowardly bastards, before we come in after you!”

  “The blasted sheriff,” muttered Harry crossly. “Oh, hell. I suppose I must go.”

  “Wait!” Anxiously Sophie caught at his arm. “How do you know he’s the sheriff? How do you know he’s not lying?”

  “I don’t,” admitted Harry, tucking the pistol back into his belt. “But I’d rather go out to him then have him come here and find you, too.”

  “Then I’ll come with you,” she declared, taking his arm. “I’ll not let you go alone, Harry.”

  “You’ll stay here,” he said firmly, slipping free of her arm. “I mean it, Sophie. Stay where you’ll be safe. What would Sir William do without a governess for his boys?”

  “Oh, bother Sir William,” she said, reaching up to kiss him quickly on the cheek. Perhaps she was like other women after all; trust Sophie to find a way to be both practical and tender at once. “Settle things with them, then come back to me. But take care, Harry, please. Don’t try to be a hero for my sake, mind?”

  Don’t try to be a hero for my sake: wasn’t that precisely what he’d told George when he’d left with his regiment? And look at the sorrow that had come of that warning….

  “I’ll be quick, lass,” he said, stopping just short of saying he loved her before he stepped out from beneath the arch and into the moonlight, his heart pounding and his mouth dry.

  Ah,
Sophie, Sophie, I do love you, even if I hadn’t the courage to tell you.

  He’d never be a hero. He hadn’t been one to George, and he doubted he’d be one to Sophie, either. All he could be was his own sorry self.

  And pray that, this time, that would be enough.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IF SOPHIE PRESSED her back against the underside of the bridge and leaned far to one side, she could watch Harry as he climbed up the bank, holding his hands out on either side to prove that he’d kept the pistols in his belt. Of course, this time he’d left off his highwayman’s mask, and because she’d sailed his hat into the grass, his face was as unhidden as a man’s could be. Surely that would be enough to show any sheriff—if in fact it was the sheriff waiting on the road—that Harry meant no harm, so they would hold their fire.

  Please, please, please, Harry, keep both your temper and your wits about you!

  He was either swaggering or sauntering, she couldn’t say which for sure, except that his whole person seemed to announce that he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Oh, Harry, you great brave lordly daredevil, take care, take care!

  “Good day to you, sheriff,” he called in his best lordly drawl, even before he could see any of the men himself. “I am Harry Burton, earl of Atherwall. Is there some crisis in your county, sheriff, that you must waste your powder and balls shooting at me?”

  Now, thanks to the moonlight, she could see a carriage, waiting on the road just beyond the bridge. On the box beside the liveried driver sat two rough-looking men with muskets, and another pair were on horseback behind the carriage, and every one of their guns were pointed directly at Harry’s chest.

  Don’t you dare try to be a hero, Harry Burton, not on this night, not before I’ve told you how much I love you. Don’t do it, Harry, else I shall never, ever forgive you.