Dair Devil

by Lucinda Brant

  “Knowing Jamie, he is preoccupied with his new microscope, and when I walk into the book room and make my presence known, he will look up and smile and think I have been there all along. You may think he looks like my brother Charles, but he has his mother’s sweet nature, for which I am profoundly grateful.” He went to pick her up again, then hesitated, and said with a frown, “Do you mind—about Jamie—about—the Banks family?”

  “Mind? I don’t know what you mean.”

  He scooped her up again and rejoined the path.

  “No. No, I suppose you don’t. I will have to rectify that before I—I think it is important I tell you, about them and about me, before we take this any further.”

  Rory held her breath, wondering what he wanted to confide in her, and equally interesting, what he meant by further… Take what further?

  “If that is your wish,” she said calmly.

  He nodded. “Good.”

  And that was the last word he spoke on that subject, as they had come to the jetty. Here he put her to firm ground just as Lady Grasby came out onto the deck of the barge. She gave such a start that Rory thought her sister-in-law about to faint, and breathed a sigh of relief when a quick-thinking footman pushed a chair under her before she collapsed. Her personal maid produced a fan to cool her mistress’s heaving bosom. But a glance over her shoulder, and Rory realized it was not her return which had caused her sister-in-law such distress, but the sight of William Watkins with an arm across Grasby’s shoulder and a bloodied handkerchief up to his nose.

  “I fear your journey home is not going to be as uneventful as the one here,” Dair said at Rory’s ear as he bowed over her hand in farewell. “I just hope you can ignore the high drama and find a quiet corner to discuss pineapple cultivation with Mr. Humphrey, uninterrupted.”

  “Oh! Is he here? On the barge?”

  “Yes. He should be aboard awaiting you. I thought it only fair you have the opportunity of Humphrey’s undivided expertise for a few hours, given Jamie monopolized him while you were at Banks House.”

  “That was thoughtful of you, my lord. Thank you.” She dimpled. “I will have to think of a suitable way to repay you.”

  Dair raised an eyebrow and said blandly, “No need to think too hard. I am but a simple soldier, thus my needs are equally simple.” He bowed again and said just as Grasby and William Watkins arrived at the jetty, “I look forward to dining with you and Lord Shrewsbury at the Gatehouse Lodge in the coming weeks, and having the mysteries of pineapple cultivation explained to me.” He nodded to Grasby, and said to the secretary with tongue firmly in cheek, “I do believe I’ve added character to your face, Weasel. Don’t thank me now. Later, when the swelling has gone, will be soon enough.” He then turned on a boot heel and wandered off, back up the path, hands shoved deep in his frock coat pockets

  Rory watched him go, gaze lingering on his back longer than was polite. To her shame, pineapple cultivation was the last thing on her mind.

  TWENTY

  TREAT, HAMPSHIRE: THE ROXTON DUCAL SEAT

  JULY 1777

  D AIR CAME OVER THE RISE of manicured lawn and strolled down to the jetty that jutted out into the lake, and where bobbed several moored skiffs. The sun was high in a bright blue sky, with no clouds and no breeze. It was the perfect weather for a swim. Not for the first time did he gaze enviously out across the fresh blue water of a lake stocked with fish and dotted with islands. How he wished to strip, dive in and cool off. But such longing was quickly overtaken by dread. He squared his shoulders, drew back on his cheroot, and ignored the heat under his stock. He also ignored the woman at his back, who had followed him from the Duchess’s summer pavilion.

  He had found her there, alone with her needlework. She was waiting for her young mistress to return from her swim. A basket by a squat table had been emptied of its afternoon tea contents and was laid out on a linen table cloth. The silver teapot on its pedestal and the necessary attendant tea things he knew had come courtesy of the Elizabethan dower house up on the hill. The Duchess of Kinross was due home any day; so the housekeeper had told him when he had arrived unannounced on the doorstep the night before, with his valet and his portmanteaux.

  He had just spent a trying fortnight at Fitzstuart Hall in Buckinghamshire, his family seat. He meant to stay only a week, but felt obliged to remain because his widowed sister Lady Mary and her daughter Theodora arrived the day before he was to depart. They were so happy to see him he could not, in good conscience, offend them by not extending his stay. Besides, he was genuinely fond of Mary and his tomboy niece. Teddy begged her Uncle Dair to take her riding and hawking, anything to keep them outdoors, so she could escape her well-intentioned mother’s attempts to fashion her into a young lady. He could not refuse her, and it gave him the excuse he needed to avoid the indoors, too.

  But staying on meant enduring more of his mother’s overly dramatic lamentations about his brother’s socially unacceptable and disastrous (in her eyes) elopement. Never mind Charles was a traitor to king and country, that was as nothing compared to the unsuitability of his choice of bride. Dair made no comment. What was the use when there was only her point of view? He was also required to lend a sympathetic ear to his sister’s predicament. Mary vented her humiliation at the terms under which she was now forced to live, courtesy of her late husband’s despicable will, and the man (Mary called him a fiend and a monster) who was charged with administering the estate until its heir, Sir John Cavendish, reached his majority.

  When Dair ventured to point out she was extremely fortunate not to be evicted from a house and lands to which she no longer had any claim, Mary’s response was to accuse him of being an unfeeling brute, who had no notion of what it was like to go cap-in-hand to a functionary for every little thing required to make a woman’s life bearable. As Lady Mary was wearing a gown of the most costly silk embroidered with gold thread, matching mules and mitts, and was able to change her gowns twice daily, Dair suspected that the “monster,” whose name he knew but at that moment escaped his memory, was generous to a fault.

  And when Dair made the observation that he did indeed know what it was like to be financially beholden to another, and that she had all his sympathies, Lady Mary instantly and tearfully apologized, well aware her brother had no control over his inheritance and all decisions regarding the estate were made by their cousin, the Duke of Roxton.

  The Countess’s response was to sigh tragically and bemoan her eldest son’s continued unmarried state. All that was required for Dair to take control of what was rightfully his and end the family shame of Roxton’s rule over them, was for him to marry.

  That was the end of his patience, and cemented his resolve. Not a truer word had his mother spoken. He apologized for not taking her advice sooner. And with that he excused himself and went off in search of the steward. Whereupon he shut himself up with the old retainer for two days. He then departed Fitzstuart Hall, his relatives none the wiser as to his motives and intentions, leaving the steward with a long list of requests and requirements he couldn’t wait to put into immediate effect.

  Dair rode into Hampshire more content with life than he had ever been.

  His cousin Antonia was one of three people who had brought him to the Roxton ducal seat, Treat. Lord Shrewsbury was another. He needed to debrief him about his mission to Portugal. But it was the third person he most wanted to see, and it was she who was presently enjoying the refreshing waters of the lake.

  When he had offered to fetch her mistress, so the maid could remain in the coolness of the pavilion, the woman had vigorously shook her head and declared that she, and all the servants, had been given strict instructions Miss Talbot was not to be left alone. That had raised one of Dair’s black eyebrows, for surely Miss Talbot was alone now, in the lake. The maid had blushed and corrected her pronouncement: Miss Talbot was not to be left alone with any gentleman other than her grandfather or her brother. Dair made no comment, turned on a boot heel and off he went to fi
nd Miss Talbot, her maid on the skirts of his cream linen frock coat.

  He was almost at the jetty when he caught sight of Rory. Well, part of her. He heard a splash, was quick to look to the right of the skiffs and glimpsed bare flesh. Her round derriere bobbed up in the water then disappeared with a kick of her legs below the water line with the rest of her. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the maid huffing, a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from glare, and said casually, pointing over to a clump of willows on the embankment,

  “Go sit in the shade. You will still be in line of sight of the jetty and can say with confidence you did not leave Miss Talbot alone—with me.”

  The sun’s summer heat decided the maid, and she was gone to the shade, leaving Dair to approach the jetty, something he did with cloaked trepidation, and without looking down between the wooden boards to the water below. He had all the outward appearance of calm confidence, but the long fingers which brought the cheroot up to his mouth twitched. He cursed his Achilles' heel; cursing his father more for inflicting it upon him. But most of all, he cursed himself for not being able to overcome such a weakness, for he knew it was all in his mind.

  Such bitter thoughts evaporated on spying Rory’s walking stick and a pile of clothes at the end of the jetty. Using the carved amber handle of the walking stick, he prodded the clothes and picked up each article for inspection. He was well-versed in female attire and its underpinnings, and the diaphanous garments told him Miss Talbot was, quite sensibly, wearing as few layers as possible during this unusual hot spell. She had given up wearing stays under her light muslin gown, went barefoot, though there was a pair of white stockings scuffed with grass stains on the foot, and perhaps worn for modesty’s sake. And unless he was much mistaken, she had eschewed a linen bathing costume as well. He set the walking stick against a fat bollard, and with the cheroot between his teeth and his right hand shielding his eyes, he searched out across the water for any tell-tale breaks in its glassy surface.

  “Hello! What are you doing here?”

  The voice was behind him. It was cheerful and held no anxiety—that he had come upon her swimming naked in the lake. He turned but did not look down at the water but out over the skiffs to the embankment. It had nothing to do with propriety, and everything to do with calm water. Still, he managed to sound offhand, removing the cheroot from between his teeth.

  “I’ve come to kiss you.”

  When she gurgled with laughter, he grinned. But still he did not look down at her.

  “You kept your beard.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you keep it for me?”

  “Yes. Much to my mother’s chagrin. She says I present as a swarthy vagrant. I will have to shave before I return to—”

  “But you just got here—”

  “—Fitzstuart Hall.”

  “Oh… You can look, y’know. Most of me is hidden behind a boat.”

  He smoked his cheroot, doing his best to remain calm and in control, and to forget that just a few feet under his boot heels was reed-filled still lake water. It never ceased to puzzle him that he did not have the same reaction when boarding a ship to set sail on open ocean. He would have thought vast stretches of sea water, with the constant rolling motion of the waves, the salt air, and the lack of land in any direction, would have held more fear for him. But no. It was the glassy stillness of a lake, the black pit nothingness, and the inevitable entanglement in the grasping tendrils of reeds, that set his heart racing. It also sent his mind hurtling back to his tenth birthday, when he was held under water until almost drowned, lungs filling with water as he flailed about, desperate for air, his brother’s screams and his father’s fury ringing in his ears, as he was brought to the surface and dunked time and again. His father meant to teach him a life lesson. All it did was make Dair hate him all the more.

  “Down here, at your feet,” Rory called, waving an arm above her head to get his attention.

  The movement broke Dair’s abstraction with the past and he shook himself free of such melancholy, dark eyes finally locking on her.

  Rory had anchored her elbows over the side of the skiff and rested her chin on her hands, so that all he saw of her was her bare arms and face. She smiled up at him, hair plastered to her scalp and falling about her shoulders in long, dripping coiled tendrils. In turn, he rested a buttock on the bollard and returned her smile.

  “Farrier warned me the lake was inhabited by mermaids, but I did not believe him. For one thing, mermaids are sea creatures.”

  “Farrier…?”

  “My batman since before the war in the Americas. You may have seen him about recently, fishing from a skiff, or casting a line from the weir. He is on a fortnight’s angling holiday, his reward for spending a month cooped up in the Tower in my place. He has the Duke’s permission to catch as much trout and game as he can eat, to sleep under the stars wherever he pleases, and to observe mermaids at his leisure.”

  “Is he a bald gentleman with a scar to his cheek and a silver hook for a hand?”

  “That’s Farrier.”

  Rory shook her head. “I’ve not seen him, but Grand described him to me, and warned me the Duke had a guest using the lake.”

  “And still you swim naked…?”

  Rory pouted and was suddenly uncomfortable.

  “It’s obvious you’ve never had to swim in what amounts to a bed gown. Hideous article! More a hindrance than a help, and likely to drown its wearer.” She dimpled. “Without it, I am an exceptionally good swimmer; practically a fish. Not surprising your batman thought he had seen a mermaid.”

  He let his dark eyes flicker over her slim arms and shoulders, and down the tangle of long wet hair that framed her heart-shaped face and disappeared to dip in the water. She did indeed present as a beautiful mermaid. He wondered if not only her narrow back but also her round buttocks were visible above the waterline, and for the first and only time begrudged Farrier his well-earned holiday. His batman was in his skiff, halfway between the jetty and the island, with a line in the water. But if he was angling, Dair would eat his boot. The man was directly behind Rory, with the best seat in the house. Dair made a mental note to order Farrier to remove himself as far as possible from the dower house jetty and its resident mermaid for the rest of his little angling adventure.

  He pointed the end of her walking stick over her fair head in direction of Farrier’s skiff.

  “If you do not wish to be caught on the end of his hook, I suggest you come up to the pavilion for nuncheon.”

  A glance over her shoulder, and Rory took in the small boat and its occupant. When the angler dared to doff his hat, she gave a squeal of revelation and disappeared below the water line to Dair’s laughter. She resurfaced on the other side of the jetty, hidden from Farrier’s line of sight but now in full view of her shocked maid and, had Dair peered over the side of the wooden planks, in full view of him, too. He swiveled to face her but remained where he was.

  “I shall head back to the pavilion so your maid can help you dress. I suspect being a mermaid makes you ravenous.”

  Rory remained silent a moment, then said quietly, so quietly he came across to the edge of the jetty to hear her,

  “Perhaps you’d like to take a swim first? It is so warm… You must be hot in that frock coat…”

  “Thank you for the offer, but I—”

  “Oh! Oh, I won’t stay. I didn’t mean you take a swim with me,” she quickly corrected, embarrassed at being rejected. “You can have the lake all to yourself. And men don’t need to strip to nothing. They can swim in their breeches. I wore Grasby’s cast-offs to learn to swim, so I know how easy it is for men to—Or not,” she added quickly, because of the way he was looking out across the water, but not down at her. “You don’t have to swim in your breeches, if you don’t want to. You can—”

  “Rory. There is nothing I would like more than to swim naked with you.”

  It was the truth. There was nothing he desired more. Correction. There
was one thing, but that could wait. And if there was ever a moment to overcome his dread of lake water, this was it, and with her. But instead of seizing the moment, because the moment would have to wait until he knew how matters stood between them, he politely declined, saying gently,

  “I will keep your offer for another day. I’m going to send Farrier away now, so you can dress. I’ll be up at the pavilion waiting. I have something important to discuss with you.”

  “What is so important?” she asked him half an hour later, coming up the steps to join him in the shade of the Duchess’s pretty pavilion.

  She had dressed in haste. Her bodice was damp in patches where she had improperly dried her skin of moisture, most notably at her bust line, and her hair, though scraped back off her face and tied up with a satin ribbon at her nape, still dripped. But that was not a bad thing. With no breeze, even the shade of the pavilion afforded only minimal relief from the summer heat.

  Dair had stripped out of his frock coat and was in his sleeveless silk waistcoat and shirtsleeves, booted legs sprawled out across a line of tapestry cushions, a hand under his head. He was staring up at the painted ceiling. He had almost dozed off when Rory’s question brought him to life. He sat up and offered her the cushions opposite him at the squat table laden with a modest nuncheon: A wheel of Cheshire cheese, a jar of chutney, a loaf of fresh bread, slices of cold beef, pickled onions, and a salad of greens. As well as the silver teapot on its stand and tea things on a tray, there was a jug of pear cider, once sitting on ice, now melted to cold water, in a porcelain bucket. It was at the jug Rory looked at in puzzlement as she set aside her stick.

  “Courtesy of Cousin Duchess’s kitchen, just like the teapot,” Dair said, pouring her out a tumbler of cider. “Tea is well and good, but in this heat, it is best to start with a cold drink. Are those really necessary, and in this heat?” he added sternly, when Rory’s maid Edith came forward with a pair of ankle boots.

  Rory shook her head and Edith retreated to resume her seat between two fat columns by the pavilion steps. She picked up her needlework, one ear to the conversation.