“Tomorrow we will walk to the grove and you shall make another attempt at it,” he said. “One final activity here upon the eve of our departure.”
Only the slightest beat of lashes revealed her surprise. She turned her face askance and peered at him from the corner of her eye. “And I would like to learn how to milk the cow.”
“Would you?”
Her lips twitched. Then she smiled fully, and he felt that smile in every corner of his body. He was, quite possibly, the greatest fool alive.
Kitty Blackwood could not arrive soon enough. If she did not appear and take Diantha away he would surely do something unwise and not in either of their best interests. Something quite thoroughly ungentlemanlike.
And this time nothing would stop him.
Chapter 18
“My gown is growing mold.” She held it up to the morning light peeking through the window.
“All that rain.” Mrs. Polley took up Diantha’s other gown. “And this one a shambles with no iron to be found.”
“Perhaps the mold can be washed out.” Diantha scrubbed at the misty smear on the hem of the pin-striped muslin, but it clung. The green gown truly was a shambles, torn at the hem and horrendously crumpled from when she’d followed Mr. Eads over the stile.
She sighed. She’d wanted to look especially like a lady today. Perhaps even as elegant as the lady whose house they camped in now. “We haven’t yet looked in the attic!”
“I’ll not go prying into other folks’ closets.”
“Mrs. Polley, you knocked a stranger over the head with a cheese crock yet you will not peek into an attic now in search of an iron?”
“It was a shame to ruin that crockery.” Mrs. Polley shook her head. “If I’d had a flatiron I would’ve used it on him instead.”
Diantha stifled a giggle and went into the corridor to the attic door. Wyn had taken Galahad out for a ride, and Owen was collecting eggs. Her feet were cold, but she could wander about in her shift and petticoat without concern for propriety. Wyn had already seen her naked breasts, of course, but he didn’t remember it so he may as well not have.
She climbed stairs to the room at the top of the house, its ceiling narrowing to a point. Like in the attic at Glenhaven Hall, traveling trunks and old furniture were everywhere. She found an unlocked trunk and the pungent scent of camphor balls sprang forth. Then she sighed in sheer pleasure. Drawing out one after another fine gown, tenderly stroking muslin, silk, and wool, she sighed again and missed her own clothing acutely.
Her gaze darted to the next trunk. She reached for it. Slippers, boots, pattens, fichus, petticoats, shifts, stays, ribbons, reticules, garters, stockings, shawls, pelisses, and handkerchiefs with initials embroidered into them—all smelling of camphor—tumbled into her hands. But she didn’t care about the odor. She could live with a wrinkled nose for a day if the rest of her weren’t wrinkled.
She plucked up a gown and held it before her. It was short by several inches. Her petticoat would show. But not if she wore the lady’s petticoat too.
She paused a moment in her head-on rush toward more thievery to consider. But she could not see the crime in it. She would return the garments in neat order before they departed the abbey tomorrow. Also, Wyn wouldn’t care if he saw her ankles. He had threatened a man who jeopardized her safety with a pistol, caressed her intimately while foxed, and walked through a torrential downpour leading her horse for an entire day. And she had seen him—touched him—in his shirtsleeves, without a cravat. Also, she’d made his bed. They may as well be on ankle-glimpsing terms too.
Before she could delay another moment—because Guilt was even now poking up its ugly head—she grabbed a gown of figured blue muslin and an armful of undergarments, slammed the trunks shut with her toes, and hurried down the stairs.
She halted abruptly.
As though arrested in mid-stride, Wyn stood in the corridor in coat and breeches and boots, looking remarkably well and directly at her. Then his gaze dropped to her breasts.
At that moment Diantha discovered another useful thing: standing before a gentleman, in stays and petticoat and in the bright light of day, was not in fact the same as being furtively divested of those garments by him in the darkness. It was thrilling, in a ladies-are-taught-not-to-do-precisely-this-unless-they-are-quite-wanton manner, and she felt not merely underdressed but entirely naked beneath his sober regard. Every inch of her body flushed with heat.
His gaze snapped away and she shoved the borrowed garments in front of her breasts.
“Good day, Miss Lucas,” he said to a floorboard in the region of her bare feet. “It seems you have visited the attic.”
“Yes.” Her tongue was a piece of flypaper on the roof of her mouth. “In search of fresh clothing. Mine is somewhat bedraggled.”
“Ah.” Slowly his gaze traveled from her feet, along her legs, past her hips and the clothing in her arms, to her face. But he said nothing more.
“These smell strongly of camphor,” she mumbled. “But I can probably mask the odor with perfume.” Nerves made her shrug. His attention shifted to her shoulder, then her bare arm.
“I should say so.” He sounded a little hoarse. “Quite a lot of perfume will be necessary, no doubt.”
“I suppose so.”
“Vast quantities.”
“Oh. Yes.”
The horrible awkwardness again, like in the kitchen the previous day. It made her feel a little ill. Ducking around him in the narrow corridor, she ran to her bedchamber, threw the door shut and sank against it.
“What’s gone and frightened you, miss?” Mrs. Polley hurried forward. “Have you seen a ghost?”
Only a man. “Mrs. Polley, I would like to try to look pretty today.”
Her companion crinkled up her brow. But she did as Diantha wished.
In the end it didn’t matter that Mrs. Polley spent a quarter hour arranging Diantha’s hair, or that her gown while reaching barely to her ankles was only moderately creased from storage and the color nearly matched her eyes, nor that the fringe on her paisley shawl fluttered in the breeze like butterfly wings and her shoes were perfectly unexceptionable footwear for a lady. Wyn barely glanced at her as they left the house.
Owen went with them, tossing a stick for Ramses and chattering about the mines.
“I think losing his sister was terribly hard for him,” she said when Owen ran ahead along the canal after the dog. “He speaks so often of the mines.”
“It was his life until recently.” Wyn walked beside her, hands clasped loosely behind his back, black coat and snowy cravat elegant as always, boots sparkling. The sun shone again, golden like a ripe peach, and the breeze was cool slipping across Diantha’s cheeks, which seemed perpetually warm now when he was near.
“She is always in the stories he tells. Perhaps he misses her.”
“Perhaps.”
“You rarely speak of your life.”
He cast her a swift glance. “I haven’t any cause to.”
“A man threatening us with violence seems sufficient cause, if you ask me.”
“Since you cleared away that particular trouble again yesterday without my assistance, the point is moot.”
“I realize I am not supposed to ask after your health, but . . . would you have been able to assist?”
“I am fairly certain you know the answer to that question.”
She did. If he had known she was in danger, he would have done whatever he must to defend her, as he was now defending her even from himself by avoiding drink.
“Then, you are feeling better?”
“As well as can be expected.”
“Would you like your pistol and bullets returned?”
“Yes, thank you.” At a fence that ran with vines of big white flowers, he plucked one and proffered it to her with a bow. “For saving me from the wrath of Duncan Eads.”
She tucked it into her hair. “Well, I could not allow him to kill you.”
“Naturally.” But
now he was not smiling.
For the remainder of the walk to the orchard he was unfailingly polite. He remained by her side and said nothing that he might not say to any lady whose acquaintance he had recently made and who had not seen him suffering because she had driven him to it. He assisted her over the stile with a firm hand but held hers only as long as necessary. When they came upon her lost slipper poking from the grass, he restored it to her without comment, as though gentlemen encountered ladies’ footwear along mossy canals every day.
Owen found the bucket and set off for the grove, but he was more interested in eating apples than picking them and soon grew tired of the activity. He waded across the canal flowing swiftly from the rains and threw himself onto the grass on the opposite hill. Ramses followed, settling down with his tongue lolling out.
Then Owen fell asleep, and everything changed, as though the hand of a god who had drawn a curtain now pushed it aside. Approaching her from behind, beneath the boughs of a gnarled old tree, Wyn said, “It seems that you did not don perfume after all.” His voice was low and sent tingles through her.
“I did not.” She turned. In the dappled sunshine falling through the tree branches his eyes seemed to glitter. “I suppose I give off the most horrid aroma of camphor.”
The slightest crease appeared in his cheek. “I would never say so.” He drew forth a cigar he’d carried from the house.
“But you are probably thinking it.”
“No. That is not what I am thinking now.” He moved away. She could not help but follow; it seemed natural to her now, as a bird that did not ponder flying south for the winter but simply did.
“Will you teach me how to smoke?”
He looked over his shoulder, brow raised, the corner of his mouth tilted up. “If you wish.”
“I have always wanted to smoke a cigar but I never before had the opportunity. That is, the opportunity to ask a gentleman who would not think I was a hoyden for asking. But with you that cat is already out of the bag, as it were.”
“I do not think you are a hoyden.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, but at the cigar.
“Now you have twice said what you don’t think, but not what you do.”
What Wyn thought was that he could quite easily lay this girl down in the grass and make love to her for a week. Her eyes sparkled the truest blue beneath the autumn sky and her cheeks glowed from the walk and he wanted to touch her. He would begin where her slender ankles peeked out from beneath the too-short gown, peeling her stockings away and slipping his hands along the shapeliness of her legs, upward.
“Have I?”
Her brow knit. “You are evasive.”
“And you are far too curious, minx.”
She curtsied. “Hoyden.” Her dimples flashed, and rather predictably his groin tightened.
He proffered the cigar. Perhaps if she were smoking she would not smile so and he would not descend again into the drooling fool who’d discovered her by the attic door with her beautiful bosom spilling from her undergarments. Within moments his imagination had seen her breasts fallen fully from the shift, corset, and petticoat, and their perfect tips in his mouth.
“This is yours.” She refused the cigar. “Don’t you have another?”
“This is my last.” Only decades of practice at deception schooled his voice to its regular cadence. “Learn on this, or learn not at all. As you wish.”
“I probably shan’t have this opportunity again.” She chewed the edge of her berry lips, and quite abruptly Wyn’s years of practice went to the devil.
“Probably not.” His voice sounded rough even to his own ears. Her gaze shot up, but he could not look away from her lips. Beautiful lips, dark pink and slightly parted and God, he wanted to taste her again. He wanted to feel her tongue against his and make her moan.
She closed her lips and they were no less sweet sealed. He imagined what it would take to urge them apart again. If he kissed her now, what she would do . . .
He made himself speak. “The cigar, Miss Lucas?”
“Thank you, Mr. Yale.” She took it. “What must I do?”
Press her beautiful body to his and submit to him. “Inhale, but very lightly, and try not to actually breathe.”
“How does one inhale without— Ach! Eh!” She wheezed, coughed, and grabbed her mouth, a rush of smoke escaping between her fingers. “I cannot have done that right.”
“Had enough?”
“No! If making another attempt means you will smile at me again as you have just done, I shall do it.”
Dear God, he’d lost every ounce of discipline over himself with this woman. “How did I smile at you?”
“As though you like me.” She stated it without any coquetry. So he replied as honestly.
“There is no ‘as though’ about it, Diantha.”
She smiled and poked the cigar back into her mouth. Her lips puckered and the smoke rose between them, and he nearly snatched the thing away and used her lips himself.
Torture. Possibly worse than the fevered nights he’d just survived. At least then he’d had the comfort of imagining he might die.
She coughed again. “I shan’t be sick,” she said upon a gasp, “if you are worried about that.”
“No worries. Not on my account.”
“Why on earth do you smoke these things?”
“Because it is what gentlemen do. And at this time in particular, it eases the desire for brandy.”
“Oh.” She seemed to accept that without trouble, as she had accepted everything about this adventure, with many questions but without distress. Except at one moment, the moment in his bedchamber that stilled his heart to recall.
“I’d like to get it right,” she said.
“You are tenacious.”
Her mouth tilted into an uncertain smile, the dimples reluctant.
“But I think both of us already knew that,” he added, and handed her the cigar once more. She made another attempt. Eventually she conquered it, as she conquered all she wished to conquer, including him. He gazed upon her face gently marked with the mementos of her youth, a naturally lovely face made lovelier by the spirit that shone from within. He had traveled thousands of miles, trekked through jungles and drawing rooms, monsoons and secret chambers, since the age of fifteen rarely pausing for a moment in any one place, and through all of this the road had never troubled him. Yet now within sight of his own house, looking into a pair of blue eyes, he was, quite possibly, lost.
“Congratulations, Miss Lucas.” His voice was unsteady. “You may now apply for membership at any one of the gentlemen’s clubs of London.”
“Splendid.” She returned the cigar to him, brushing her fingers against his, and moved away. “At times I have wished fervently to be a gentleman, you know. They have all sorts of adventures—obviously.” She gestured to him as she set her foot on the lowest branch of a tree and reached up. “And some gentlemen can even be counted upon to rescue a damsel in distress.”
He followed to the base of the tree, the unsteadiness becoming complete, like the tremors that had seized him days ago. But this was new. This was not suffering. “Yet, despite all they have seen of such damsels, some gentlemen are nevertheless somewhat astounded when said damsels take to the sudden climbing of trees.”
“Oh, an ordinary gentleman might be. But a hero is never surprised by unexpected turns.” She pulled herself onto a thick branch and climbed to the next, providing him a delectable view of the calves he wished to caress. “Especially when the damsel is merely seeking a treasure in said tree.” She pointed toward a bird’s nest tucked in the crook of a branch, stretching to peer over its edge. “See?”
“I do. Now that you have found your treasure, will you come down before I am obliged to watch you fall and break your neck?”
“I don’t suppose you would like it if I died such an undramatic death, after all the trouble I have put you through.”
“Especially not given that, it’s true.”
&
nbsp; “Do you think the parents are far?”
“Why? Do you hope to steal the eggs and fetch them up to Mrs. Polley to cook for dinner?”
“No!” Her head cocked to the side. “I think you are speaking from experience.”
“You are probably right about that.”
She twisted her lips. “How old were you?”
“Young enough to be considered blameless for the misdeed.” Blameless for his misdeed. His breaths came short. “Now will you come down before I climb up there and retrieve you?”
She dimpled. “You wouldn’t.”
He moved toward the trunk.
She scrambled down. As she came to the last branch he offered his hand, then his other. Any young lady who could climb a tree with such alacrity could get herself down from it. But he wanted to hold her. He grasped her waist and she allowed him to draw her to the ground.
He knew why he had done this. A sennight ago she would have taken this opportunity to invite him to touch her further. But now her lashes only flickered, her breasts rising on a quick breath, and with a small smile she slipped out of his grasp. He let her go. She knew now of what he was capable, and she would not make the mistake of putting herself in his hands again. Her swift departure from the corridor that morning proved it.
She glanced back up at the nest. “Then, I am to understand you have been a thief since your boyhood, like Owen?”
“No.”
She lifted a skeptical brow.
He smiled. “Not continuously, that is. Now, come. Mrs. Polley will have dinner waiting, and there is a cow to be milked.”
“Eggs and bread again. And apples. I will be very glad for a change in menu soon. Will we truly leave tomorrow?”
“Truly.” Or he would go mad. Kitty and Leam would have arrived already if they were in London. He may have to take her there himself. But he knew now that she was too clever to deceive. When they reached England he would tell her their destination. She might balk, but he didn’t believe she would. She had learned the true nature of men, and she was wary now.
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