He looked amused instead of offended. “Quite possibly, if I was allowed to design wings that might lower me safely.”
Argghhhh! Men! She struggled to find better words.
“I cannot become attached to you,” she protested desperately, knowing how weak that sounded. “It will not suit at all. Now help me down, please. This is most inappropriate. I had no idea . . .”
She knew she was chattering mindlessly, but she was too shaken to find a coherent argument a man of science would accept.
***
Having just touched those heavenly plump breasts, Theo was in no condition to be rational. He could no more hide his arousal than Lady Azenor could hide her red curls and blushing cheeks. He stepped closer to where she sat, wrapped his arms around her waist, buried his face in her hair, and his lower half in her skirts, dangerously near his goal. “I can make you hate me,” he said helpfully. “What if I make you hate my house as well?”
The fluffy witch battered his upper arms with her useless fists. “Just put me down. Put me down, now.”
Steeling himself, he lifted his irate guest from the table and set her down in front of him so that she faced the door and not him. He still kept one arm around her waist, because once one touched a heavenly body, it would be insane to let go. He was quite confident that she would drive him mad with lust before her irrationality overtook him and he lost his mind completely. “Look at all the trouble we’d save ourselves if we found each other compatible,” he whispered in her ear.
She didn’t lean into him as he’d hoped, but broke free. She bent over to retrieve her stick, and limped for the door. “That is not happening with disaster hanging over us. You need a helpmate, not a general.” She added this last with distaste.
So, he’d succeeded in irritating her with that reference. Fine. He’d keep irritating her—and seducing her. She kissed like a choir of angels. Probably a stupid metaphor but he was an astronomer, not a poet. He wasn’t about to give her up.
“You haven’t proved to me that you aren’t in my chart,” he insisted, taking her arm to irk her more. “I don’t want to have to kiss every woman you introduce to me if I’m perfectly happy with the way you kiss.”
“Marriage isn’t about kissing,” she said, jerking open the door to return to the house. “It’s about compatibility and responsibility and helping each other and . . .”
“Making babies,” he said with a leer she couldn’t see since she was marching ahead of him—like a general off to war. “Kissing leads to making babies, and that’s uppermost on my mind these days.”
She hissed in alarm before replying furiously, “Any young female can make babies.” She thumped her stick against the floor. “Don’t be ridiculous. Go find a new star or moon. I must see if there is anything edible in your kitchen or you will have rebellion on your hands.”
For the first time in his memory, Theo had no interest in finding a new star—because he’d found one right here on earth. He was amazed at how this shimmering creature could fascinate him as much as Saturn’s moons. Could he be the gravitational pull to make her orbit him? How?
“I’ll have to show you where the kitchen is,” he said, looking for more ways to vex her. “There are more stairs involved, and I think I should carry you.”
***
Agitated, Aster attempted to escape Lord Theo’s overwhelming proximity. After what had just happened, the simple awareness of his presence threatened to set her aflame. The mention of babies had her nerves on fire.
With the danger signs in her chart, she daren’t have babies—the thought would make her cry if she let it. Just holding a baby had killed one already—and she had known the danger and ignored it. Never again.
She preferred to keep busy rather than dwell on what she couldn’t have. “Don’t you have stewards to interview? Brothers to berate? Go away and leave me alone. If this should happen again, I shall have to leave.”
“Stewards to interview arriving tomorrow,” he said, with a cold formality unlike his earlier warm flattery.
Perhaps she’d finally convinced him to retreat from his pursuit. Stupidly, she was rather disappointed that he gave up so easily. Babies, she reminded herself. He wanted babies.
“Call for your minions if you cannot be trusted with me,” he continued with what sounded like arrogance. “I’ll not have you falling down the kitchen stairs. Or expiring of horror once you’re there.”
That was better. Anger and disdain, she could handle. “Fine, then. I shall sit in the salon while you summon servants so I might inquire into the kitchen’s needs. What time do you generally dine?”
“Whenever we’re hungry.” He led her to the front of the house. “Cook usually leaves cold platters on the buffet. I’m assuming whoever he left in charge will do the same. You had no need to dress for dinner.”
“If I am to set an example, I most certainly do.” Still uneasy after her shocking surrender to temptation, Aster shook off his attempt to hold her arm. “Order does not emerge from chaos overnight.”
“If only people operated on the same gravitational principles as the moons and planets, we might orbit each other in a more organized fashion,” he retorted.
Aster cast him a look of disbelief, but Lord Theo actually seemed to be considering this theory. Orbiting people, indeed! But while he worked out his philosophical notion, he didn’t argue or attempt to distract her. She chose a dog-hair-covered sofa in the dusty salon and propped her injured foot on a battered stool.
“Orbit elsewhere,” she told him crossly when he paced, looking tall and more scrumptious than any gentleman should in wrinkled linen.
Being attracted to the lanky scientist would be a serious complication if she decided she should marry his brother.
Would his brother want babies? It would be safer if he would settle for a general.
“The universe would appear to be a riot of erratic objects,” Lord Theo expounded with the wave of an ink-stained hand. “But gravitational forces prevent the earth and moon from bouncing off other objects like billiard balls.”
“I don’t believe mathematics or gravity will separate your brothers from my friends and family,” she said dryly, hearing masculine voices and feminine laughter on the stairs. “If you will be so kind as to fetch them, we can descend on the kitchen and terrify the inhabitants into producing dinner.”
“Better yet, let Lady Briana and Miss Deirdre go to the kitchen while you sit here and rest your ankle. I believe you were the one who suggested we share duties,” he said with condescension.
Lord Theo marched off in a huff of brown-gold locks and rumpled broadcloth, leaving Azenor to sink into the cushions with weariness. Her ankle throbbed, but . . . not as much as her lips and heart ached, one from desire and the other from loneliness.
She so much wanted a family of her own.
For years, she had kept hoping her chart would open up and free her to love again. She had only just recently resigned herself to the shelf. She didn’t need a bossy astronomer knocking all her vows cock-a-hoop simply because he was too lazy to court anyone else.
Bree and Dee fluttered in, exuding excitement and trailing three males. The blond one Aster knew as Jacques. He was accompanied by an unfamiliar Ives gentleman in rough country clothes, and a young boy who was no doubt an Ives as well, although he had yet to grow into his ears and nose.
“Tell us what we are to do in our expedition to the kitchen,” Bree said cheerfully. “Lord Theo said we are to terrify the occupants, but I’d rather scare up food. I’m famished.”
Ignoring her sister’s effervescent foolishness, Aster held out her hand to the unknown Ives. “It is common in good company to introduce one’s self, as my sister has plainly forgotten. I am Lady Azenor Dougall, astrologist and eldest daughter of the Earl of Lochmas. I take it you have met my sister, Lady Briana, and my cousin, the Honorable Deirdre McDowell.”
Younger than Theo, with burly shoulders and square features framed by burnished bronze ha
ir, the unknown Ives bowed over her hand. “William Ives- Madden, at your service. I believe I’ve been labeled the guilty party in Cook’s departure. I beg your pardon, my lady, and will do all that I can to rectify the situation.”
“My word, a Pisces Ives, the world will never be the same.” Aster settled against the cushions and studied another of the late earl’s illegitimate sons. They were far more interesting in person than in her charts. “You may remove your animals to the conservatory, where they will be much happier surrounded by earth and sun. I recommend finding a servant to tend them. It is not a job for kitchen staff.”
“We haven’t staff enough to keep the conservatory warm in winter, my lady. The dogs are trained to use the back doors in the one room that always has people about. But I shall remove them for warmer months,” he offered gruffly.
Aster looked from this tweed-and-leather dressed, very masculine Ives to her wide-eyed and fascinated female relations. “His intentions are not honorable. You will steer our guests away from him.”
“I will happily leave the respectable ladies to Theo,” William agreed with a shrug. “But do not trust Jacques, either.” He elbowed the blond, amiable gentleman who had entered with him. “He may seem simple, but he’s devious.”
Making a dramatic bow, Jacques gestured for the boy to step forward. “And I don’t believe you’ve met Hartley Ives-Weldon.”
Dark auburn with a sprinkle of freckles, Hartley bowed formally over Aster’s hand. “A pleasure, my lady.” He couldn’t be much more than ten, but he behaved with more dignity than his elders.
“Ah, this one shows evidence of a mother.” Aster vaguely recalled an actress on the marquess’s charts but couldn’t recall the specifics. And Hartley was only one of a pair of twins if she recalled correctly. She would have to be wary that they didn’t attempt to fool her with their appearances.
“Very good. Hartley,” she said. “If you and William would begin removing animals from the kitchen, we might have some hope of retaining kitchen staff. Bree, you and Dee see if the staff needs any help in putting together dinner, please. How many of us are there? I will see what I can do about setting up a table.”
“There’s just us,” Jacques said cheerfully. “Dunc eats in his chambers, and Theo has gone out to deal with rioting farmers. Hugh is never to be found. And I’m not simple or devious. I just lack that exhausting Ives ambition.”
“You’re Aries. That’s to be expected.” Aster gestured dismissively, focusing on the more important topic with a frisson of fear. “Rioting farmers? Is this an occupational hazard in the country? I don’t wish to invite guests if there is any danger.”
All three Ives brothers shrugged as if riots were a daily occurrence, like the sun rising at dawn.
“Theo just needs to find the instigators. Foraging for food is a better use of our time,” Jacques said cheerfully. “Ladies, if you’ll follow us, we’ll hold our own private riot in the kitchen.”
Aster desperately wanted to follow them. She also wanted to run after Theo and warn him again of the assassination parts in his family sector.
But as usual, she was good for nothing except as a Prophetess of Doom.
Thirteen
Sir, this is to advise you and the other Parson Justasses to make your wills. If your threshing machines are not destroyed directly we shall commence our labours. Captain Swing
Theo cursed the notorious message carried to their door by a neighbor lad who had been handed it at the tavern. He cursed the bloody-minded farmers who hated change and forced him to ride out in the damp night when he’d rather be at his telescope. He cursed them for obliging him to leave the lovely Lady Azenor to his brothers. And he cursed Duncan for getting himself injured so he didn’t have to deal with these bafflewits.
And he cursed even more when Duncan’s eldest twin cantered up half way into the village. “What the devil are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be home with your mother?”
“She has a new beau,” Hugh said cheerfully. “She says we are to learn to be rich men.”
The twins’ mother was an actress and the daughter of an actress. They lived in a society between classes, choosing which rules they wished to obey. With the burden of duty weighing on him, Theo admired their freedom.
“I trust that means she wants you to learn to work hard,” Theo said dryly. “I don’t think it means you are to follow me to the tavern.”
“If I do what you do, won’t that teach me?” he asked with the aggravating simplicity of a ten-year-old. “I used to follow Father, but he’s not much fun anymore.”
Devil take it. Of course the twins were accustomed to Duncan telling them what to do. It must be even more confusing for them than it was for Theo to have Duncan living in a sour cave.
“I doubt your father takes you to the tavern. Where’s Hartley?”
“He’s following William. He likes animals. I don’t. Father says I’m the eldest and should learn to run the estate.” Hugh darted him a look from beneath an overlong hank of auburn. “I know I can’t have a title, so don’t lecture.”
“The bloody title is nothing but a headache anyway,” Theo muttered. “But I can’t teach you what I don’t know. You should be back at the house eating dinner or irritating your father.”
He rode into the inn yard and scanned the lights in the tavern, seeing nothing unusual. But spying a phaeton in front of the stable, his irritation escalated and he swung down despite the lack of activity. “You don’t belong in a tavern or around disreputable rogues,” he warned his nephew.
“I want to see how you stop a riot. Will you hire men to shoot the farmers?”
“Bloodthirsty ghoul. There will be no shooting on my watch.” He didn’t have time to fling the boy over his saddle and take him home. Hugh would have to learn the hard way that Theo was a lousy teacher. He had no idea how Dunc would handle the wretched farmers. He just wanted to rid the world of vermin so he could return to his studies.
Of course, the vermin he had his eye on now wasn’t a farmer but the person who had driven that phaeton earlier.
Striding into the dim tavern and spotting his drunken sot of a neighbor in a booth as expected, Theo almost forgot the damned farmers and the murderous Captain Swing.
But conscious of his duty and the brat on his heels, Theo approached Samuel, the innkeeper behind the bar, and signaled for his usual ale.
“Who’s the instigator this time?” he asked. Duncan had dealt with the Swing rioters last summer. Theo hadn’t paid the incident much attention then, but he remembered Samuel as being on Duncan’s side.
“Outsiders,” Samuel replied, understanding without explanation. He pulled a tankard and glanced at Hugh. “That Pamela’s whelp? Is she back in town?”
“My mother is in Oxford,” Hugh replied with pompous politeness—a product of repetition since his mother was invariably an object of village curiosity. “I am staying with my father, the marquess of Ashford.”
Samuel snorted. “Even the ginger can’t hide Ives arrogance.”
Theo thumped the boy’s shoulder. “He’s teaching me to farm. Are the outsiders staying here?”
“One or two. The rest . . .” Samuel glanced toward the drunk in the booth. “They be staying with tenants here and about.”
Theo understood the innkeeper’s inference—with Montfort’s tenants.
Lord Henry Montfort owned the land north of Iveston, but it was his lackwit son, Roderick, who lived in the manse. Duncan had told Theo that Roderick had harbored the criminals last summer. He attracted the desperate sort because decent folk wouldn’t pay the ridiculous rents he charged for unrepaired cottages and poor farmland.
“Well, look, and if it isn’t the milksop and the cub,” Roderick chuckled drunkenly from his corner. “What drags you out of your books to see what real men do in the evening?”
Theo was no stranger to the insults for his preference for books over fisticuffs. He placed a warning hand on Hugh’s head. “Bullies never grow beyond
adolescence,” he said loudly, for Montfort’s benefit as well as the boy’s. “True gentlemen needn’t denigrate others to make themselves feel better.”
Obviously too drunk or ignorant to grasp the insult, Roderick raised his tankard. “They’re burning your fields as we speak. The Ives pedants will have to give up changing the way things are always done and do it like the rest of us, or go broke.”
“Or go broke like the rest of you?” Theo asked idly, concealing his alarm. It wouldn’t do to ride off in a panic over gossip from a sot. Besides, he had another interest that came first. “Exhausting your fields is how you paid for that phaeton?”
“Won that in a race,” Roderick said proudly. “That’s how a gentleman does it, not by grubbing in the dirt.”
That was all the confirmation he needed.
“Go outside, Hugh,” Theo warned in a low voice. Insults rolled off his back, but now that he’d verified the phaeton’s ownership, justice was required. “It’s about to get ugly in here.”
“How am I supposed to learn to be a gentleman?” Hugh asked indignantly. “I’ll just stand here and watch along with these other coves.”
Theo was aware that other men watched. If he put his mind to it, he might even know their names. But Montfort was the source of his anger.
Leaving the boy under Samuel’s protection, Theo carried his mug over to the booth.
“Now, yer lordship, we don’t want no trouble in here,” Samuel called.
“No trouble,” Theo said, glaring at the fair-haired rogue in the booth. “I just see a grinning toad who needs a lesson. He ran ladies off the road today and nearly destroyed a good team and my coachman by racing that phaeton and leaving them injured in a ditch without even stopping to offer aid. Don’t you think that requires a lesson?”
He heard grumbles of assent, and chairs pushing back as some of the cowards ran from trouble.
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