“In the twirl of a pig’s tail,” she promised. “By the time you have everything in a wagon outside, I will meet you with a basket of goodies.”
True to her word, Eleanor found Grayson dragging a small cart, with a shovel, a pickaxe, some rope and string, a lantern, and a sack, which she assumed contained the spyglass and compass.
She placed their basket of food in the cart, as well. Then, clapping her hands, she could hardly stop herself from running on ahead.
“Finally, we are on our quest, and not for a silly gold beetle either.”
“There is no one I would rather be questing with than you, Miss Eleanor.”
“Nor I,” she confessed. “Look how glorious it is when the sun shines. I believe we appreciate it here more than anywhere else in the world for the sheer scarcity of bright British sunshine.”
“You may be right,” he said. “If I’m going to be in constant rain, though, I’m happier here than in London.”
She scrunched up her face at the thought. Heavy rain in Town was a nightmare, with the streets turning to rivers of muddy water and stinking sewage. And even when it rained, the Season continued with the added nuisance of trailing sodden, filthy hems around the dancefloor if one were unlucky enough to have been splashed on the way inside. Not to mention the slippery tiles!
Wellies would be useful sometimes on the ballroom floor, she thought, imagining them poking out from under one of her evening gowns.
“What has you smiling so broadly?” he asked.
“The sheer joy of being alive and here with you. And for my Wellies and my straw hat, too.”
“Indeed,” he said, “you are blessed with an abundance of riches. We both are.”
In companionable silence, they trekked over the pasture. They did not go down the same path to the river which they’d gone before and which she’d traversed many times over the years. Instead, after another few minutes walking parallel to the Ouse, Grayson pointed out a large birch.
“This marks the path to the rock,” he said, and they finally turned into the trees.
It wasn’t such a broad or clear-cut path as the other one, but it was easy to follow. She noted how some of it looked as though it had recently been cleared, for the ends of small branches and twigs were fresh and green.
Except for the sound of the still-dripping leaves, the only noise was from the occasional bird, and in the distance, the sound of the swollen River Great Ouse rushing along its full bed.
“Are we there yet? Are we close?” she asked after a few hundred feet as Grayson pushed aside a low-hanging branch and let her pass before he and the wagon followed.
“Nearly. The journey is half the fun, though, isn’t it?”
“True, but I have been dreaming of seeing the bishop’s hostel for many days now. You cannot blame me for being eager.”
Another twenty yards or so and there was a glade with a towering boulder that must have been moved there eons ago by an ice flow.
“Look at it!” she exclaimed. “It’s magnificent.”
His gentle laughter filled her ears though the river was very loud.
“I never thought of this rock as magnificent,” he said, “but I will from now on.”
“Have you climbed it many times?” She started to circle the giant sarsen, trailing her gloved hand on its craggy surface as she walked.
“Yes,” he said, dropping the wagon handle and following her.
It took her forty paces to get around it, examining the mossy green sections and the gray and white lichen. When she got back to where she started, she looked up.
“Well, Mr. O’Connor, I wore my riding habit, so my skirt is not as constricting as my day gown, but I confess, I don’t see the easiest path.”
He stepped closer, pretending to study the rock as he placed a hand on either side of her.
“You might want to do that handy trick with your skirts the way you did when we climbed the tree.”
He gazed down into her eyes, and Eleanor’s stomach flipped delightfully, exactly as if jumping a fence on a good, swift horse.
“I shall do so, if you think it best.”
He said nothing, staring down at her, his glance moving to her mouth.
She drew in a quick breath as his intentions were clear. He claimed her lips in a slow assault, and her knees weakened at once.
Thankfully, she had a rock, albeit a damp one, at her back, and the muscular planes of a man at her front. She opened her lips to him and let his tongue explore, unable to keep from sucking it gently.
When his hands left the rock and took hold of her waist, she sighed. Everything was perfect when he touched her and kissed her. She loved the smell of him, the feel of his cheeks, the way he tasted.
Her body was humming by the time he lifted his head.
“Kissing you is one of the most pleasurable things I have ever done.”
One of them? Hm. Her thoughts flew to his trips to London, which Maggie had told her about. Kissing her, no matter how enjoyable, could not compete with making love to his paramours.
“Why did my remark make you look sad?”
She shook her head, refusing to disclose her jealous thoughts. After all, at some point, if Grayson were being sincere and not toying with her affections, then she might experience the rest of the pleasures that occurred between a man and woman. The very same she’d seen animals do when she was younger—though she’d read it was more enjoyable than how it looked.
Moreover, she’d caught a glimpse of human mating during the Season when she’d inadvertently happened upon a couple in a garden during a ball, and once by wandering into the wrong room at a dinner party. They certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves.
“And now your smile is back,” he said. “How I wish I could know your myriad and flittering thoughts.”
She stroked his cheek with her gloved hand, already a little damp and leaving a dirty mark on his face. At the same time, somewhere far away to the east, there was an ominous roll of thunder.
“Show me the way up the rock, please.”
“Yes, my lady.” He returned to the wagon and slung the small sack over his head and shoulder, leaving his arms free while she reached between her legs and drew up her skirts to tuck into her waistband.
“Come around again,” he instructed. “There are a few crevices in which to put your feet.”
Sure enough, the second time around, when she wasn’t solely looking upward at the boulder’s height, she spied the fissures that cleaved it, top to bottom.
“I think it best if I stay below and give you a push from behind,” Grayson said. “Should you fall back, I can catch you.”
“Agreed,” she said, though she’d climbed many trees and even a few rocks in her life, as well as fence railings and stone walls, and she had never fallen.
With the toe of her boot in the lowest of the clefts and her hands finding purchase in the craggy rock sides, she drew herself up. While finding the next best place for her other foot, Eleanor shrieked and nearly let go as his hands took a firm hold of her bottom.
“Sorry to have startled you,” he apologized. “Keep going. I’m right behind you.”
“Yes, I had gathered that.” Rolling her eyes, she continued upward.
The sarsen was about fifteen feet high and got narrower at the top, but after she reached the pinnacle, with Grayson occasionally putting a helpful hand on her rear end, she found a fairly level top of about eight yards in circumference, like a large stone table.
“Wonderful! The bishop’s hostel. We have arrived.”
Staying in the center, she peered over the side, then glanced out over the river. “The view!”
Though still yards from the Great Ouse, there were no trees in front of them, and they had a private performance as it tumbled and raced along, frothing and churning.
Grayson stood beside her, feet planted, hands on his hips, admiring the view.
“It is rather wonderful, isn’t it? Though the farmers down river
will feel happier when she settles back into her bed.”
“She?” Eleanor mused.
He shrugged. “The way everyone refers to the river.” Then he glanced down at her. “Shall we eat? I heard your stomach rumbling. I hope you brought bottles of—” he cut himself off. “Dammit all! I meant to tie the picnic basket to the rope and haul it up after.”
She laughed at his forgetfulness. “How could you forget our picnic?” she teased. “We’ve talked about it for days.”
“Truthfully?”
“Yes,” she said.
“As soon as you started to climb and I touched your…touched you, every thought went out of my brain.”
She grinned. “Oh, so it’s my fault?”
“Yes,” he said emphatically, his arms going around her. “For being so enticing.”
Enticing? Was she?
Grayson kissed her again, but Eleanor fought the usual delirium, mindful of being on a rather small area on a very high rock.
When he lifted his head, she asked him, “Have you ever brought anybody else up here?”
“Yes,” he confessed immediately. “Cam, of course.”
“Anyone else?”
“Are you a jealous wench?”
“Maybe I am,” she said, thinking how novel and unwanted the feeling. But where Grayson was concerned, she had to confess, she felt proprietary.
“Only you,” he promised. “Shall I go get the picnic basket?”
“Not until you show me the devil’s seat. In any case, it wasn’t my stomach rumbling, and you know it. But the thunder sounds quite far.”
“Very well,” he agreed. “We’ll eat later. But we must get on our knees, for the seat is on the edge.”
Doing as he said, Eleanor dropped to all fours and followed him to where the rock dropped away, not overlooking the river but cattycorner to it.
Before her was a vista of trees, which made sense when she considered Kidd’s puzzle. They were looking, after all, for a large tree with at least seven branches.
And a death’s head.
“This is the devil’s seat,” he said.
She stared, frowning. It wasn’t more than a slight indentation in the rock’s surface.
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am this is the bishop’s hostel,” he answered measuredly.
“But why would anyone call it such?”
“Sit upon it,” he suggested.
She eased her legs over the side and fit her bottom into the indentation. It was obscenely uncomfortable, with a sharp rock digging in one soft cheek.
“Painful!” she exclaimed.
“And that’s why. Only the devil himself would be happy seated there.”
“Well, we’re here now. Sit beside me, and let’s use the spyglass.”
Chapter Fourteen
Gray settled beside Eleanor, his legs dangling next to hers. He was peaceful, content, extremely happy, and irrevocably in love with this sweet miss.
Pulling the bag off his shoulder, he dug in it, pulled out the telescope, and handed it to her.
“Am I to do this?” she asked.
“You figured out most of the puzzle,” he said. “You should spy the death’s head first.”
Her eyes sparkling up at him were nearly his undoing. He wanted to kiss her again, knew he always would, but at that moment, it was better to stick to the plan. Falling to their deaths in a lover’s embrace was not the ending to this adventure he hoped for.
“Help me, then,” Eleanor asked. “I haven’t a clue.”
He drew out the compass. Though figuring out degrees of latitude and longitude were not skills he truly possessed, since he’d hooked up the skull himself in the dark in the rainstorm, he could certainly fake the directions.
“First, we must find northeast by north, as the instructions said.” He held out the compass as another rumble of thunder sounded, a little closer, causing the hair on the back of his neck to raise. The wind had shifted, too, heralding a rainstorm heading their way.
Holding the compass flat in front of him, he waited for the needle to settle and then showed her before pointing in the direction.
She lifted the spyglass to her eye and looked.
“Tell me if you see a tree with anything strange. When this was written, it was twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes above the visible horizon.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“In truth,” he said, as thunder boomed again much closer, “I had to look it up.” Glancing behind them, he saw the thunderheads rolling in from the horizon. They didn’t have much time, and now, he feared, all they would get done was spotting the death’s head and then have to seek cover.
“The horizon is zero and directly above us is ninety degrees, so twenty-one is about two of my fists up from the horizon.”
Eleanor dutifully pointed the telescope in the direction and at the level in which he pointed. Unfortunately, it was growing darker quickly.
“What are minutes?” she asked.
“Trickier. Those are smaller than degrees, so I suggest you find the twenty-one degrees and then go up and down a little until you see—”
“Something white, like bones.”
“Yes, exactly,” he agreed. “If you see it, let me know.”
“That’s what I mean. I see something very white, like bleached bones. It is round and could be a skull.”
“Remarkable!” He felt a thrill almost as if they were truly discovering Kidd’s treasure.
“I’m focusing in on it,” she said. “Yes! It is a skull, for I see eye sockets.”
And then the first fat raindrops hit them.
“Bollocks,” he said, not curbing his tongue around her, knowing she wouldn’t mind.
“I suppose we’d best descend before we are skewered and sizzled by lightning,” Eleanor said, not sounding the least frightened. “But first, mark which tree. Do you see it? Do you see the skull?”
She was still peering through the glass and pointing, waggling her finger around in front of her, which made him smile. If he didn’t know which tree it was, he would not have been able to tell from her excited gesticulating.
“Yes, I see it now,” he said. “It’s an oak tree and has quite wide spacing between the branches. Good for climbing. If it were better weather, I would have you stay here while, with your direction, I went to mark it.”
“That would be a good plan,” she agreed. “But from the relation to the other trees and the river and the distance from this rock, I believe we can find the tree again from the ground.”
“Time to go,” he said.
Taking the telescope from her, he put it and the compass away. Shouldering the bag, he stood and offered her a hand. In a manner of minutes, they were on the ground once again, with their outer layers totally soaked.
“At least we’re not in London,” she reminded him, looking up with the brim of her tightly woven straw hat dripping.
He chuckled. “You are a gem, Eleanor. Come along. I know some shelter without having to go all the way back to the hall.
He and Cam had explored every inch of the riverbank between Turvey House and Angsley Hall. And this wasn’t the first time he’d been caught in a storm. It was, however, the first he’d been caught with a beautiful woman. He hoped she would accept the humble shelter he knew was nearby.
An old fishing lean-to, which Lord Angsley kept in decent repair, greeted them a few yards along the river. He led her and the wagon into the small, three-sided structure made from planks, hoping she didn’t mind the damp, musty smell of it. There were only tree stumps for seats, but the roof didn’t leak, and he knew she would appreciate the unencumbered view.
“Perfect.” She clapped her hands, looking around the cozy interior. “And now my stomach is rumbling. I do hope this rain shower passes over, and we can find the tree again.” She settled onto one of the stumps.
“If we can’t, we could leave the wagon with the shovel and other supplies here.”
“A grand idea,” Eleanor agreed, opening the basket and bringing out a stoppered bottle of lemonade and two beakers. She poured them each a cup and handed him one.
Next, she brought out four pickled eggs, which they ate ravenously.
“What else do you have in there?” He leaned over and tried to peek.
She laughed. “I have whatever I could grab quickly and be eaten with our hands. I have scones and thinly sliced ham, which you can roll and—”
He popped some ham in his mouth and took a bite of a scone. The rest was gone in a second bite. She handed him another scone and more ham, and then ate some herself, looking a darn sight daintier than he had.
“Delicious,” he said. “Anything else?”
She laughed. “I hope we don’t get stuck here for days because you have eaten all rations except the last. Yesterday’s raspberry tarts from teatime.” She handed him two, and he devoured them.
Watching her bite into a tart and seeing the sticky jam disappear into her mouth was dangerously arousing. He should have kept looking past the rain to the river rushing by. But it was too late. When she popped in the last bite and licked her lips, he groaned before he could stop himself.
Her eyes widened. She really had no idea how artlessly lovely she was or how she could inflame his desire with a smile or a flick of her pink tongue.
He had wanted her to find the treasure first before he went any further with their lovemaking. He had wanted her to know the depths of his feelings, as well as his intentions, which she would discover with the treasure. But the plans had gone awry, and the weather had contrived to put them alone in a shelter with a dry floor and no one nearby.
What’s more, it was up to him to protect her virtue, to behave like a gentleman, and to restrain himself.
He grasped his fingers together in his lap and turned away from her.
Eleanor had seen the look in Grayson’s eyes, and the answering call of her body frightened her. She yearned for him in every way, and knowing he felt it, too, and was experiencing the same intense desire made her do something extremely ill-advised.
Eleanor placed her hand on his thigh. His gaze flew to hers, and she nearly retreated. This was no timid boy she was playing with. This was a passionate, experienced man who was signaling one thing: I want you.
The Midnight Hour: All-Hallows’ Brides Page 65
