by Maya Rodale
The rain had tapered off to a slight drizzle, but Amelia was still vibrating with excitement and glee. Her heart was pounding hard and she was gasping for breath but . . . That. Had. Been. Fun.
She giggled, recalling the shocked expression of the Runner when she smacked him on the head with a parasol. Oh, the duchess would have been aghast had she seen it! Just imagining the duchess’s reaction made her giggle more. It felt so splendid to laugh and run and feel the raindrops on her skin. It felt almost as good as kissing Alistair.
And then she noticed that Alistair was no longer running alongside her. She paused, noticing that he had slowed to a walk.
“What are you doing?”
“Walking,” he said, stating the obvious. “We are already wet straight through. Why rush?”
“That is an excellent point,” she said, falling into step beside him. She slowed and turned her face up to the raindrops. They were warm and plump and felt wonderful on her skin. “I need to catch my breath anyway.”
And so they walked through the rain, hand in hand, aware of the curious and flabbergasted stares of people huddling under makeshift shelters.
“Doesn’t it feel so defiant to be walking slowly in the rain?” Amelia asked.
They walked like that for a while, as if a little water never hurt anybody. Every step of the way, their hands remained clasped together until it just felt right. She used to hold James’s hand. Or one of her older sisters. But it never felt like this. Like her fingers belonged intertwined with another’s. With his.
“You know, this is the second time I have found myself soaking wet in public this season,” she remarked.
“The second? And here I thought I was your first.”
She laughed a little. “The first occasion was at a garden party. We were rowing. I might have rocked the boat.”
He paused. “Might have?”
She grinned. “Definitely.”
“Scandalous.”
“But also refreshing.”
“Like this?”
“This is better. So much better.” And she looked down at their hands and back up at him. He smiled at her with such sweetness and longing and, she suspected, feelings.
In which Lady Boswell never.
“Well I never,” Lady Boswell huffed.
“That was very exciting, Grandmother.”
“No, it was not, Matilda,” she admonished vehemently. One had to swiftly disabuse a child of such ideas as soon as they took hold. Otherwise, her granddaughter would end up like . . . that girl and her companion who caused the melee. Given the presence of all those Bow Street Runners, she assumed they were probably criminals. “It was a stunning lapse of elegant behavior and I’m certain terrible things are in store for that girl. That’s what happens when you cause scenes. So you mustn’t get any ideas, my dear.”
But Matilda was already dashing out into the rain, spinning around and knocking into people who dared to venture out from the gazebo, the recent site of a shocking brawl. In broad daylight! At Vauxhall!
“Stop running!”
“But she is running,” Matilda said, pointing to the girl dashing through the rain, making her escape. A Bow Street Runner dashed after her, but then tripped on a parasol lying on the pathway and sprawled face-first on the ground.
Lady Boswell could not be certain, but that girl looked familiar. She’d caught a glimpse of her during the brawl, and again as she dashed past during her escape. The girl looked back at them, and the scene she was leaving behind.
“I daresay she looks like one of those Cavendish girls,” Lady Boswell murmured to herself. “But that cannot be; the duchess would never allow it.”
Lady Boswell strained to get a glimpse of the gentleman. She noted only dark hair and a figure a bit taller than average.
First, she wrangled her granddaughter. Then she approached one of the Runners in the red coats.
“Sir, what was the meaning of all this?”
“We’re looking for a runaway lady,” he said.
Lady Boswell gasped. Her brain, frantically churning to put all the pieces together.
“Dammit, Watson, don’t you know what discretion means?”
Watson cleared his throat and apologized. His superior stepped in to add, “There is nothing to see here any longer, ma’am. Our apologies for the disturbance.”
Nothing to see here indeed. Hmmph.
Chapter 11
In which our hero and heroine embark on an awkward ferry ride.
4:52 in the afternoon
Alistair stood at the front of the ferry they had boarded to take them across the Thames and back to the north side of the river. She stood beside him, finding amusement by listing to herself all the rules she was breaking: she was out without a chaperone, she was soaking wet, she was alone with a gentleman, she had been kissing said gentleman, which perhaps meant he wasn’t a gentleman. Thus she was out, unchaperoned, with a scoundrel. And kissing him. And liking it.
Not to mention publicly brawling. Best not to mention that.
Beside her Alistair was silent and she wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t have mentioned that she made a habit of causing scenes and scandals. According to everyone, men didn’t want to marry women prone to trouble or embarrassing episodes. She didn’t think he was the sort to care—they got along splendidly and he had even encouraged her participation in that brawl—but now he was silent. Pensive.
And in that silence she realized that she wanted him to think of her as marriageable. At least, not dispensable. Not the sort of woman one frolicked with and then forgot. She wanted him to remember her and this day.
Actually, she didn’t want it to end.
She glanced over and found him gazing at her. He drank her in with those dark eyes of his. The way he was looking at her . . . well . . . it felt a little bit wicked and still quite wonderful.
“You are looking at me,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You are looking at me like you are having thoughts about me,” she said, a roundabout way of asking.
“Mmm.” He just smiled. His eyes sparkled. Her heart did a flip-flop followed by a cartwheel.
“But I cannot tell what you’re thinking,” she continued. “And you are obviously thinking something by the way your eyes are sparkling, and by that dreamy half smile.”
“My eyes are sparkling? I’m not sure what that says about my masculinity.”
She scoffed. “We’re not talking about your masculinity, which is not in question, but what you’re thinking. About me.”
It had suddenly become imperative that she know what he thought of her. Did he consider her a terrible hoyden with whom he’d have a spot of fun and then forget? Or was she more?
“I am thinking that you remind me of me,” he said. “Or rather, the way I used to be.”
“Used to be? Do tell.”
“Before I had to grow up.”
“Oh.”
Her voice was flat. If there was one thing she hated, it was being called childish, which was what he just said, in so many words. She’d heard it all her life, especially when her siblings didn’t want to explain something to her or wanted to leave her out of an activity.
When they arrived in London, it seemed all the duchess ever said to her was, You must grow up, Amelia. You must act like a proper young lady. You must put away your childish notions and start to think about marriage.
She had to dress like a woman, stuffed into corsets that molded her into the prefect feminine shape—but still remain completely innocent. She was supposed to be witty and provocative but also ladylike. She had to ride sidesaddle at a walk when she really wanted to wear breeches and stand atop a galloping horse.
She was caught between these states of childhood and womanhood, neither one quite satisfying her. And now Alistair saw her as childish, and it gave her the mad urge to put on lip paint and sway her hips and say seductive, womanly things. She wanted him to see her as a woman, not a wild and silly girl.
/> Lud, she must like him. She must like him. She must like him in a way that wasn’t childish at all.
As if sensing her distress, he tried to verbally dig himself out of the hole.
“Which is not to say that you are childish. Quite the contrary in fact.” Here, she noted, that his cheeks reddened. So proper, so English of him to blush at such an indirect way of saying that he noticed her person. “I wouldn’t have . . . we wouldn’t have if . . .”
She knew what he meant to say: he wouldn’t have kissed her like a woman, as he’d done, if he’d found her at all childish.
This whole conversation had suddenly become unbearably awkward. Her emotions had flared; that made him uncomfortable. As they were on a boat, she could not walk away. She loosened her grip on the railing and considered launching herself overboard, escaping into the murky depths of the Thames. And why not? She was already soaking wet.
Finally, after a long moment of excruciating silence, Alistair spoke.
“I lost someone.”
“How very careless of you to lose a whole person,” she quipped, because if they could just stick to lighthearted, easy banter it would be so much easier.
“You know what I mean,” Alistair said seriously. “He was my best friend. Like a brother. My only family. Before that moment I didn’t know loss, or that sense of responsibility that dulls everything. When I thought everything was a possibility. So you remind me of me, before I knew those things and when I lived like nothing could ever go wrong.”
Like she was an innocent. Who hadn’t lived. But whose fault was that?
“It’s a wonderful quality,” he said. “I miss it.”
“I’m sorry about your loss,” she said.
“It’s not your fault. It was my fault.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t anyone’s fault. And you’re not the only one to have lost people.”
“But . . .” He changed his mind about whatever he was going to say. “Never mind.”
Alistair’s hand found hers and their fingers intertwined in a now familiar way and they stood there in silence for a while. She wanted to say that it was companionable and wonderful—look at us, we can be so comfortable in silence together! But she could not. The silence felt awkward and uncomfortable, like they were both teetering on the edge of a cliff debating whether to dive into the waters below.
Like they were tightrope walkers, pausing before taking that next step.
She burned with curiosity to know who he had lost, and why it was his fault. But it seemed like asking him wouldn’t end well. He would either brush her off, and she would feel pushed aside when she wanted to be closer to him, or perhaps he would tell her a heartbreaking tale, tugging on every last one of her heartstrings and leading to an emotional entanglement.
She might be falling for this man, but there was still a certain something warning her to keep her distance.
Besides, if she were to ask him, he might ask the same of her. To speak of loss and locked-away secrets was to open up in a way she might not be ready for. He could ask her why she was in England. Why she was running away from school. Wouldn’t her parents be worried about her? Oh, they were dead? How long, and how, and what few memories did she have of them . . . ?
She sighed. Perhaps it was immature of her, but she didn’t want to talk about any of it. She didn’t want to cry like a child, on a ferry, into the starched cravat of a man she barely knew.
Too many questions. One would lead to another and her carefully constructed story might unravel. Perhaps it was the same with him.
Besides, who wanted to speak of such serious things on a carefree day?
But, Amelia thought as the ferry approached the shore, perhaps it was time for her to grow up, just a little. Especially if—here she stole another glance at Alistair, all dark-eyed and dreamy—if it involved kissing.
Alistair was kicking himself, figuratively speaking, as they disembarked and walked back toward Mayfair, back to their regular lives, back to rules and responsibility and away from this horrid charade that had somehow gone much farther than he had intended—too far, even. He had said the wrong thing earlier and it was plain to see how just a few words could plunge her into despair. Her gaze dulled, and drifted away from him.
At least he could see what she was feeling and could try to make everything better, instead of ignorantly carrying on and inadvertently making everything worse. But in his efforts to explain himself and console her, he started talking about Elliot. Sort of. And thinking about Elliot had him in a state of despair.
He wanted to know who she had lost, but he didn’t want to ask, because he didn’t want to explain about his stupid, idiotic, childish behavior leading to Elliot’s death.
Feelings. They were messy, complicated things that were best ignored.
“I suppose we ought to do something about these wet clothes,” he said. And then he mentally kicked himself again because God, if that didn’t make him sound like some sort of lecher. “And perhaps we should return home. You have been gone quite a long time now.”
“And you have business matters to attend to,” she added.
Right. He was attending to those business matters right now. Not that he could say that. He wasn’t a complete idiot.
After disembarking from the ferry, they found themselves on a fairly desolate stretch of road on the north side of the river. The rain had sent people seeking shelter indoors and many had yet to venture back out.
“Do you think we’ll be able to find a hack?” Amelia asked anxiously, peering to the left and then to the right and then back again. There were almost none to be seen, at the moment.
He did not. The streets were empty. The few hacks passing by were already carrying passengers.
“We might have to walk,” he suggested after a few moments in which they had no luck in securing transportation.
“It seems far though, doesn’t it?” she said, quite reasonably. “I have never felt so far away from home.”
This, from a woman who had lived, until recently, on another continent.
“We managed the walk this morning,” he pointed out. “In fact, I daresay we had a pleasant time of it.”
She looked at him curiously, as if wondering why on earth he would argue with her about something as mundane as taking a hack back home when they were both uncomfortable in wet clothes and tired from a long day of walking halfway across the city. But he wasn’t arguing so much as providing an alternative mode of transportation when their first choice seemed impossible.
“Yes, but this morning we were in dry clothes,” Amelia pointed out, now sounding quite peevish.
Oh God, she wanted a carriage. Ladies always wanted a carriage. They never wanted to walk and they especially weren’t keen to walk when the conditions were not optimal: a cloud in the sky, too much sunshine, rain the day before or the threat of rain tomorrow, imperfect footwear, an inconvenient hour, a distance just a bit too far, the temperature a degree too high or low . . .
“I doubt we’ll find one, especially with the rain,” he said. “Perhaps we could procure horses.” He was not hopeful of this, even as he suggested it.
“But what if it starts to rain again?”
“We are already wet. Besides, there are no hacks to be had.”
“I’m sure we can find something. And I have money to pay for it.”
But she didn’t have money. He knew this because just hours earlier he had robbed her of it and spent it on admission to the amphitheater and Vauxhall Gardens.
He watched as she reached into her pocket, three, two, one second away from discovering it empty.
“My money!” Frantically she dug around in her pockets, turning them inside out. “I have been robbed!”
He said the first thing that came to mind.
“Calm down. It will be all right.”
“Calm down?” she echoed in the sort of calm fury that was more terrifying that the shrieks of a hysterical woman. Very well that was the wrong thing to say. It
was so wrong, if he had three wishes, he would use one to take the words back. “How can you tell me to calm down in a moment like this?”
“Because I am just a man who doesn’t know what to say in a moment like this. I only said the first thing that came to mind. I don’t mean it at all. Do not calm down.”
That gave her pause. In that pause, she took a breath. And that calmed her down marginally.
“Let us walk back to my lodgings and try to secure a hack along the way,” he said gently. “We can have a meal by the fire as our clothes dry. And then I’ll see that you get back to school safely.”
“That is a terribly scandalous idea.” She sniffed. “But one I find very enticing at the moment.”
Returning to Alistair’s flat was a terribly scandalous idea. It was beyond scandalous. But she had to admit it was also enticing. The prospect of removing this sodden dress was all she could think about. That rainstorm—and their insistence in reveling in it—meant that each layer was soaked, right down to her skin. The wet fabric was heavy, and cold. She wanted to remove it all and sink into a hot bath.
She suddenly had a new respect and even longing for the comforts of Durham House.
She and Alistair walked along in silence and she considered somehow finding her way home directly. This was more complicated that it seemed: she still did not know the way and now she had the lie about finishing school to maintain.
Lud, this was quite a situation.
She needed a good pot of hot tea before she could sort it all out. Never mind to have the strength required to contend with the inevitable brouhaha when she returned home.
Yes, she simply needed to let her dress dry, warm up before a fire and sip a fortifying cup of tea. Then she would concoct a story to get herself home.
One thing at a time. One small step in front of the other, just like the tightrope walker. One step closer to removing this wet and wretched dress.
It dawned on her just then that she would require Alistair’s assistance with the dress. Alistair, who had been walking beside her quietly—and with whom she’d been exchanging those sly, darting glances. Was he looking? Oh goodness, he was looking! Quick look away! But . . . her gaze was drawn back to his eyes, his mouth.
