“I always come right sooner or later, Esther.” He assayed a smile that would not have fooled their nearly blind grandmamma. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
She could lambaste him, she could lecture him, or she could accept the olive branch he was holding out. “I have found some interesting poetry in the Morrisette library, and Quimbey is a wonderfully down-to-earth fellow.”
“Also a confirmed bachelor.”
“One more thing to like about him. Promise me you won’t play too deeply, Michael. You cannot afford the losses, and I cannot afford the scandal.”
“We are not widely known as cousins by this august assemblage, so cease carping, Esther Louise.” He rose and extended a hand to her. “I’ve seen Lord Tony Windham on your arm from time to time. Any chance you could reel him in?”
Like a carp? “He’s friendly, nothing more.” And he’d appeared more than once when Jasper Layton had come sidling about, a coincidence Esther was not going to examine too closely.
“You could try being friendly, Cousin.”
This went beyond bad advice to something approaching interfamilial treason. Esther propped her fists on her hips and glared at her cousin. “As far as these people are concerned, I have no dowry, my come out was two years ago, and I’m too tall. Do you know what friendliness would merit me in this company?”
Michael’s handsome features shuttered as Esther’s meaning sank in.
A banging of the conservatory door spared Esther whatever protest Michael would have made.
“There you are!” Lord Tony Windham covered the length of the conservatory in double time. “Miss Himmelfarb, I have need of your company this instant. Sir, you will excuse the lady. She has promised to walk the gardens with me immediately.”
He nodded at Michael, who offered Esther the merest glance to ascertain her consent before stepping back. “Miss Himmelfarb, good day. Lord Anthony.”
“Right, good day, good afternoon, good morning.” Lord Anthony linked his arm through Esther’s and lowered his voice. “Time is of the essence, my lady. You must attend to the flowers in the rose salon immediately.”
This was not the affable, smiling Lord Tony whom Esther had come to know in recent days. This was a fellow with urgent business on his mind.
“I must?”
“Indeed. It is of utmost importance that you do.” He hustled her along, not stopping until they were outside the door of the parlor in question.
The closed door.
“Lord Anthony, what’s afoot here?”
He opened the door and gave Esther a gently muscular shove. “My thanks for your company.”
The tableau that greeted Esther spoke for itself. In a dress far too low cut for daylight hours, Charlotte Pankhurst reclined on a chaise, while Lord Percival stood over her, looking exasperated.
“Miss Himmelfarb.” He bowed to her very low, his expression one of banked relief. “A pleasure to see you. Miss Pankhurst is feeling unwell, and I was just about to—”
The door from the blue salon next door opened abruptly, revealing Lady Morrisette and several of the other older women in attendance.
“I knew I heard voices!” Lady Morrisette’s shrill observation rang out over the room while her cronies crowded in behind her.
“It’s well you’re here, my lady,” Esther said before Charlotte could open her fool mouth. “I came in to check on the flowers and found Miss Pankhurst feeling poorly. Lord Percival stopped by and offered his aid when he perceived the lady was in distress. Perhaps the physician should be summoned?”
The distressed lady—for she clearly was distressed now—bolted to a sitting position. “That will not be necessary.”
Lady Morrisette rose to the challenge after the merest blink of frustrated disbelief. “Perhaps it was the kippers at breakfast, my dear. They don’t always agree with one. How fortunate his lordship and Miss Himmelfarb were here to render you aid.”
Charlotte’s expression turned from mulish to murderous as Lord Tony came sauntering in. “Greetings, all. Percy, the horses are being saddled as we speak, and you’re not yet in riding attire. Miss Himmelfarb, I believe you were to join us?”
This was farce, but from the look in Charlotte’s eyes, deadly farce.
Esther turned a dazzling smile on Lord Tony. “Just let me change into my habit, your lordship. Miss Pankhurst, I wish you a swift recovery.”
She curtsied to all and sundry, spared a dozen wilted bouquets half a thought, and sidled past Lord Tony into the hallway.
“Oh, Miss Himmelfarb!” Lady Morrisette’s voice jerked Esther to a stop as effectively as if Esther were a spaniel upon whose leash the woman had tramped.
“My lady?”
Esther’s hostess approached, glancing to the left and right as she did. “Charlotte is my goddaughter, and one can’t blame her for trying. I’ll understand if you have to depart early.”
What was the woman saying? “Are you asking me to leave?”
“Oh, good Lord, no.” Lady Morrisette’s smile was feral. “What ensues now should be very interesting indeed. I’m simply saying if you do decide your mother has an ague, for example, or your younger sister should come down with lung fever, then I will be happy to make your excuses to the company. I know my goddaughter, and she does not deal well with disappointment.”
A warning, then. “I appreciate your understanding. If you’ll excuse me, I must change into my riding habit.”
Lady Morrisette gave Esther a little salute. “Go down fighting, I always say. Enjoy your ride.”
The innuendo was cheerful, vulgar, and snide. Contemplating that Parthian shot, Esther felt as if she’d been the one to consume a quantity of bad kippers—and in the next two weeks, the feeling could only get worse.
***
Percival Windham did not believe in shirking his responsibilities. He boosted Esther Himmelfarb into the saddle, arranged her skirts over her boots, and remained standing by her stirrup.
“I am in your never-ending, eternal, perpetual debt, Miss Himmelfarb. I cannot thank you enough for your timely appearance in that salon. I’d received a note, you see, ostensibly from Lady Morrisette.”
Several yards away, Tony was fussing with his horse’s girth, no doubt sensible that the moment called for groveling.
“You should thank your brother, my lord, though I cannot think why he didn’t simply intervene himself.”
The lady’s words bore a slight chill, something more than politesse but less than indignation. This did not bode well for a fellow who’d reached the inescapable conclusion that he’d met his one true love.
“Had Tony come upon us alone in that room, he would have been honor bound to relate what he saw to our mother, Her Grace, and she would have been delighted to accept Miss Pankhurst as a prospective daughter-in-law. You see before you a man in receipt of nothing less than a divine pardon, Miss Himmelfarb, and you the angel of its deliverance.”
“That’s laying it on a bit thick, your lordship.”
Had her lips quirked? Was humor alight in her lovely green eyes?
“It is the God’s honest truth, madam. You will consider what boon I might grant you in repayment.”
He left her with that offer to consider—a stroke of genius if he did say so himself—and swung up onto his bay gelding. Two grooms mounted up on cobs, while Tony climbed onto a leggy gray.
“Would you like to see Morelands, Miss Himmelfarb? It’s not five miles east cross-country.”
“Lead on, your lordship. Any hour out of doors on such a lovely day is time well spent.”
Esther Himmelfarb rode with the casual grace of one who’d been put in the saddle early and often, and while her habit was several years out of fashion, her sidesaddle was in excellent repair and superbly fitted to her seat.
Five
miles passed quickly, with Tony falling behind a dozen yards to confer with the grooms.
“Let’s take the next turning. There’s somebody I’d like you to meet.”
At his suggestion, Miss Himmelfarb nudged her mare to the left, down a bridle path that ran between two high hedges.
They hadn’t gone twenty yards before she drew her horse up. “You wanted me to meet somebody in a graveyard?”
“I did, in fact.” He swung down, handed the horse off to a groom, and assisted the lady to dismount. She put her hands on his shoulders and slid to the ground, the closest they’d stood in days, close enough that his good intentions could be assailed by the scent of lavender and the feel of a slender female waist under his very hands.
“Come.” Percy grasped her gloved fingers in his. “Mrs. Wood bides here. This is the Windham family plot. All the best people are to be found in its confines.”
She gave him a look suggesting he’d gone barmy, but kept pace as he circled the small plot. Tony, may the Almighty bless and keep him, had signaled that he’d assist the grooms to water the horses at a small burn a furlong away on the other side of the hedges.
“When I was a small boy and periodically suffused with indignation, I’d come here to seek consolation. Peter always knew where to find me.”
He led her to a bench under an enormous oak.
“Peter would be the Marquess of Pembroke?”
“Tony still calls him Petey, if you can credit that.” He drew her down to the bench and kept her hand in his. He was not going to part with that pretty feminine appendage until Doomsday or something of equal magnitude required it.
“Who is the cherub? Eustace Penhaligon Drysdale Fortinbras Windham? That’s a lot of names for somebody who lived only… five years.”
“My older brother, though I never knew him. He fell from his pony, and that was that. Peter says Eustace was a daredevil but always laughing. My mother adored him, or so my father says.”
“It would break my heart to lose a child, and how your mother must have prayed for you and Lord Anthony, joining the cavalry and crossing the seas.”
In the quiet, pretty graveyard, their hands joined, he wanted to tell her that being with her, was comfortable in a way he hadn’t experienced in all his varied undertakings with the fair sex. Esther Himmelfarb’s company gave him a sense of coming home to a place he’d never been but always hoped existed.
“You would pray for your children, Esther. May I call you Esther?”
She did not withdraw her hand, but she pulled away somehow in silence. “When we are private, you may.”
“Are you going to remind me that we’re of different stations, Esther? Your grandfather was an earl. I’m a commoner, and I associate with whom I please.”
“I will pay for that scene in the rose parlor, your lordship. You will not. Commoner you might be, but I am to all appearances undowered. I did not take, I am plain, and I have not ingratiated myself to the people who matter.”
She was utterly convinced of her words, also utterly wrong.
“You are lovely. I’m glad you did not take, or some other fellow would have long since snatched you up, and I respect mightily that you have not ingratiated yourself with people who think they matter.”
She straightened, and Percival realized his tone was nearly argumentative.
“You mentioned a boon, your lordship.”
The female mind was not to be underestimated. “Don’t ask me to ignore you, my dear. You’ve proven that you’re a loyal friend, and don’t tell me you can’t use a friend too.”
Friendship was progress, wasn’t it? The exact dimensions of friendship with a female would be new territory for him, but the term seemed appropriate for the circumstances, and to Percival Windham, all females were deserving of beneficent regard, at least initially.
His new, reluctant friend was clutching his hand rather snugly, too. “I want you to teach me how to kiss.”
While Percival calculated whether he could peel off her glove and press his lips to her knuckles, Esther withdrew her hand and rose, pacing down a raked gravel walk to little Eustace’s headstone. To pursue, or to sit on the hard bench and drink in how lovely, how right, she looked among the Windhams of days past?
And how blessedly convenient her request was to Percival’s own plans for the lady.
He stuffed his gloves in his pocket and let himself stand behind her, close enough to drink in her lavender scent and to appreciate that, in riding attire, a woman was a more approachable creature indeed.
“You want me to teach you to kiss?”
She turned, the headstone at her back, which meant a marble angel’s outstretched wings protected them from view. “I want you to teach me much more than that, Percival Windham, but there’s a limit to my presumption—and to my folly. You are reputed to be proficient at kissing, and I would avail myself of your expertise.”
Kissing was wonderful folly, though when undertaken with this woman, it was also going to be in absolute earnest.
“Esther, if folly and presumption and those other obfuscations were not a consideration, what boon would you ask of me?”
She stared at a point several inches above his heart for a long, lavender-scented moment.
“I am a poor relation in training.”
Which made no sense, because upon inquiry, it turned out that Herr Jacob Himmelfarb was rumored to be quite well fixed. “And you’re a veritable hag, and children run from you when the moon is full.” He caught a strand of golden hair fluttering around her chin and tucked it back over her ear. “Ask me, Esther. I can deny you nothing.”
She stared at his chest so hard, she was perhaps trying to see his heart beat as it thundered between his ribs.
“Teach me to kiss, and I shall be content.”
No, she would not. If he had anything to say to it, she’d be burning with frustration and unspent lust.
Or perhaps, if God were generous and the lady willing, spent lust.
“We have an agreement.” He brushed his lips over her cheek, not touching her anywhere else. “I shall teach you to kiss in exchange for your having spared me a lifetime of marital misery. I do not regard this as an adequate boon to compensate you for your kindness and quick thinking, but it’s where we shall start.”
Blond brows drew down as she tugged off a riding glove and touched two fingers to the spot on her cheek where his lips had wanted badly to linger. “That’s it? You kiss my cheek and announce we have a bargain?”
“Your first lesson: anticipation or surprise should be part of any kiss that seeks to leave an impression. And rest assured, my dear, when it comes to kissing you, I shall be impressive indeed.”
He bussed her other cheek and drew away.
This did not appear to mollify the lady, nor was it intended to. “You have only two weeks, my lord. I hope the entire course of your pedagogy is not limited to lectures.”
Oh, how starchy she sounded. How determined.
“There will be practical instruction as well, Esther my dear.” And lots of it.
Three
Percival fell silent for a moment, and then Esther felt warm male fingers closing around her hand. He brought her knuckles to his lips and pressed a kiss there, then did not let go of her hand.
“How would you describe that kiss, Miss Himmelfarb?”
He wanted to talk about kissing? With Miss Himmelfarb? “I’d describe it as brief and uninteresting. Proper.”
She put as much disgust into her description as she dared, and the dratted man chuckled. When Esther would have wrenched her hand free, he tightened his grip on her fingers. “Tell me about the kisses you’d like to receive, Esther. I must have some sense of my goal, for I am very intent on reaching it.”
He had an odd way of showing his intentions.
Not one she’d been bold enough to consider, and certainly not one she’d ever been encouraged to consider.
“I want kisses that I can feel through my whole body, through my heart and soul. I want kisses that render me speechless and helpless with longing for more kisses just like them. From you, I want kisses so… profound that every time I catch the scent of cedar and spices, my knees go a little weak and I smile in a way that makes all the gentlemen around me, even the old men, take notice and smile a little too.”
He was rubbing his thumb slowly across her knuckles, as if waiting for her to go on.
“More than that,” Esther said, “I suppose I want kisses that defy description.”
“Passionate kisses?” Oh, how casual he sounded.
“Not only passion. I’ve been mauled and slobbered over. A man’s passion strikes me as an undignified, selfish thing.”
“Then you want kisses to inspire your own passion?”
She had the sense he was toying with her, trying to verbally back her into some corner where her dignity and her wits could not join her. Before common sense or some equally inconvenient virtue could stop her, Esther pushed him back so he sat on the headstone, and situated herself with a knee on either side of his hips—a somewhat athletic undertaking, given her riding skirts.
“Enough talk, Percival Windham.” She fisted a hand in the hair at his nape. “I’m tired of talk, and you promised, and I will not be put off by your lectures and interrogations. All day long I step and fetch and smile and pretend, and just this once, I want somebody to attend me. The other girls know to make the men toady to them, but all I get is—”
He kissed her, a fleeting press of warm, soft lips to her mouth. “Do hush, love. You’ll bring Tony with the grooms, and at the very least, for such kisses as you describe, we deserve privacy.”
Esther felt his arm encircle her waist, snugging her to his larger frame, and then a series of little tugs to her scalp.
The Courtship Page 5
