The Magic of His Touch (May Day Mischief)

by Monajem, Barbara

  A distant whinny jerked Alexis from his trance. Hell and damnation! That must be Elderwood’s horse. He leaped to prevent his own mount’s answering whinny; he mustn’t let his friend get a glimpse of this naked girl. Elderwood wouldn’t force her if she didn’t want it—he wasn’t that sort of man—but faced with such temptation, he could be very persuasive, and he would doubtless offer her compensation...

  The very thought offended Alexis beyond belief. He dashed into the meadow.

  * * *

  “Get up! Get dressed!”

  Peony froze in midroll. A strange man bounded toward her, gesturing, his voice low but urgent. She scrambled to her feet, a shriek catching in her throat.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said, but he kept on coming. Her heart clambering into her gullet, she tried to cover herself with her hands.

  “Who—What—” She couldn’t get a word out.

  “Don’t stand there like an idiot, girl! I already know what you look like naked.” A blush crowded up her neck and burned her cheeks. “Get your clothes on, and be quick about it.” With brisk, shooing motions he herded her toward the hawthorn where she’d left her shift and gown.

  Anger swelled up, overcoming her fear. How dare he order her about? “Go away,” she said, hating how her voice trembled as she fled before him. “What are you doing here? You have no right.” A little way round the circle of meadow, she spied a horse, cropping the grass at the edge of the wood.

  “You should be thankful I’m here,” he said, stopping several feet away when she reached the hawthorn. “I don’t know what foolishness you’re up to, but clearly your lover isn’t coming, and—”

  “No, because you spoiled everything,” she said. Her hair had fallen out of its ribbon and stuck wetly to her face. She clawed it away, wanting to hit him. Her chance at finding love was gone. “Go away!”

  He folded his arms and just stood there, scowling—and looking at her as if, underneath that frown, he was enjoying himself. “Not until you put your clothes on and be off home where you belong.”

  Another flush overwhelmed her, this time of shame and misery, as she realized what he meant. He thought she’d come out here to tryst with some likely village lad, as if she were a scullery maid. And who was he, anyway? She’d never seen him before. He was dressed like a gentleman and spoke like one, too, but he didn’t belong here.

  “Who gave you the right to order me about?” she demanded. “This is private land.”

  His eyes widened. “You silly little fool, I’m trying to protect you. I traveled here with a friend. To him, a naked woman is a blatant invitation. You’re lucky it’s I who came upon you and not he.”

  She grabbed her shift and turned it right side out. “Stop staring at me.”

  “You’re a beautiful girl without any clothes on,” he said. “I wouldn’t be much of a man if I didn’t stare.”

  At that bold statement, she should have taken fright once again, but...she didn’t. Instead, a rush of unexpected heat shimmered through her from the tips of her nipples to the place between her thighs.

  Appalled at herself, she struggled to pull the shift over her head. She was wet with dew, and bits of grass stuck to her everywhere, and so did the shift.

  And she wasn’t beautiful, either—she was too tall and entirely the wrong shape, and passably pretty at best. Perhaps that was why she’d had such a shocking reaction to what he’d said.

  “A lovely girl like you deserves better than this,” the man said.

  She wanted to scream at him. She wasn’t lovely at all. She’d been assured of that often enough. His words hurt, which was ridiculous, seeing as she didn’t know him and didn’t care what he thought. Covering herself took forever and made her angrier with each passing second, at both him and herself.

  When she finally emerged, he wasn’t watching her anymore, but gazing across the meadow as if alert for something. His lecherous friend?

  Unnerved, she hastened into her gown and settled the skirts about her. “You may leave now,” she said with what she hoped passed for icy dignity.

  He turned and eyed her. The corner of his mouth curled up. “Your stockings and boots.”

  It was infuriatingly obvious that he wouldn’t budge until she obeyed him. She sat on the cold, damp ground and pulled on her stockings and then her boots. She stood and grabbed her shawl.

  “Ho!” came a distant voice. “Where are you, old fellow?”

  “Coming!” cried her persecutor. “Go home,” he said softly. He vaulted onto his horse and was gone.

  Deprived of even the pleasure of stalking away in high dudgeon, Peony did as she was told.

  When Lucasta tapped on her bedchamber door a while later, Peony was stark naked again. “You may come in if you don’t laugh,” she said bitterly, turning the key in the door.

  Lucasta slipped in, her usually tidy hair falling down around her ears, and mud, leaves and several white blossoms clinging to her gown.

  Peony burst into giggles. “Whatever happened to you? All that mud! Your gown is ruined.” She locked the door again.

  “A stray bull,” Lucasta said, “and it’s all your fault. I saw you were gone and went out to check on you, but the horrid creature took a fancy to me. I’m lucky I arrived home intact.” She eyed Peony and snorted. “You’ve bits of grass and weeds stuck all over you.”

  Peony shivered, returning to the painstaking task of picking every bit of greenery from her skin. “I should love to wash it off, but I daren’t ask for a bath. The maids will be sure to tell Mrs. Groggins, and she’ll tell Aunt Edna and Papa, and then I’ll really be in the soup.”

  “Let me help.” Lucasta shed her gown. “We can say the mud and grass were stuck on me. I shall explain that I went out to check precisely where the sun first falls on the Enchanted Meadow on May Day. I’ll say it’s significant in an ancient Beltane rite.”

  “Thank you,” Peony said dully. “Is it?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s absurd enough to be plausible.” She poured wash water into the basin, wet a towel and wrung it out, and began to swab the debris from Peony’s goose-pimpled skin.

  Her cheerfully sympathetic expression only made Peony feel worse.

  “I gather rolling in the dew produced no result,” Lucasta said after a while.

  Peony shivered all over, and it wasn’t just from being naked and cold. She pushed the memories of the man who’d ruined everything to the back of her mind, along with her inappropriate reaction to him. “It was freezing cold and sopping wet, and I felt horridly exposed. Now what am I to do?”

  “Maybe you could try something that will give Lord Elderwood an immediate disgust of you, such as passing wind at dinner. Your father and Aunt Edna won’t dare to push you at him after that.”

  That made Peony laugh, but of course she would never do anything so impolite.Later that afternoon, she made her way slowly downstairs to cross the Great Hall to the drawing room, still casting about for ways to convince Aunt Edna to give up on Lord Elderwood, when a bustle at the front door made her pause.

  Surely not. Please, not yet!

  Her heart pummeled inside her breast. She backed up a few stairs. At the sound of male voices, she backed up even more.

  “Whatever are you doing?” said Aunt Edna from the landing above. “Sir Alexis and Lord Elderwood are here. Their coach just drew up outside.”

  Peony whirled. “I need to...change my hair ribbon,” she said desperately.

 
“Nonsense. Your hair is a tediously insipid color and unmanageable to boot, and a different ribbon will do nothing to alter that.” Aunt Edna gripped Peony by the arm and marched her down the stairs. If only she’d said there was something in her shoe, poking into her foot. Her aunt couldn’t very well have forced her to limp to the door. Peony never, ever thought of clever rejoinders until it was too late.

  “Come along now and strive to make a tolerable impression,” Aunt Edna said. “Albert! Where are you?”

  Papa bustled out of his study and joined them. With him on one side and Aunt Edna on the other, Peony plodded like a prisoner being conducted to her execution. She was doomed to make a bad impression and be blamed for it. Very well, but she would at least summon the courage to meet the earl with composure, just as Lucasta would do.

  Groggins, the butler, had the door wide open; footmen were carrying trunks and valises. Papa hurried ahead, rubbing his hands. “Welcome, welcome!”

  Two men turned at the sound of his voice. One was Lord Elderwood, as cool and unnerving as ever. The other...

  Had seen her stark naked at dawn.

  * * *

  Alexis watched the blood drain from Miss Whistleby’s face and wondered for a moment if she might faint, but she got herself under control and came forward, pale as ice, curtsying first to Elderwood and then to himself. She gave Lord Elderwood a wavering smile, but treated Alexis to a defiant stare.

  He gave her his most appreciative grin in return. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Whistleby.” At some point in their conversation this morning, he’d realized the girl was gently bred and wondered if they might meet again at some dinner or evening party. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might be the daughter of his host.

  His grin didn’t have the expected effect; she looked tense and rigid. Was that embarrassment, or did she imagine he would tattle to her father about her tryst? Much as he disapproved of her behavior, it was no concern of his if she chose to ruin herself—and with the sort of coward who would run off when another man appeared. For all the fellow knew, Alexis might have been a ravening lecher.

  Lucasta appeared through a door from the rear, complete with ink-stained fingers and an abstracted expression. They’d been friends growing up in the same village, and he couldn’t have found a better woman with whom to have a false betrothal. She’d gone on a more or less permanent visit to her cousin, Miss Whistleby, so he’d only had to dance attendance on her briefly during the London Seasons. In less than a year, she would reach her twenty-fifth birthday, at which time she would come into control of her inheritance and break off the engagement.

  And then, alas, he would have to start evading his mother’s matchmaking attempts again. His mother simply had no idea what would suit him. Definitely not one of the fashionable ninnies she preferred, who seldom had two thoughts to rub together. He wanted a woman with a mind of her own and the courage of her convictions—who at the same time would cooperate with and depend on a man. Most likely such a woman didn’t exist, in which case remaining single suited him perfectly well.

  Lucasta’s sharp eyes took in Lord Elderwood with sardonic amusement and swept him a mocking curtsy. She had a poor opinion of men in general, but she greeted Alexis with her typical brisk cheerfulness. “How lovely to see you. It’s been ages.”

  “How’s the opus going?” he asked. She really was writing a massive tome and preferred scholarship to marriage. He wondered if she knew that her supposedly innocent cousin had a lover. Should he mention it to her? He didn’t rightly know. It would be damned awkward, but the thought of that lovely girl taken advantage of by a louse made him burn up inside.

  The housekeeper arrived to escort them to their rooms. Alexis had almost finished changing for dinner when a tap sounded on the door, followed by Lucasta’s voice. “Are you decent?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Alexis said, opening the door. It was improper, but this wasn’t the first time Lucasta had seen him in his shirtsleeves. They’d never stood on ceremony; one didn’t, when one had been friends since the age of two. “Unlike Elderwood, who has already exchanged ogling glances with several of the housemaids. Have you come to compromise me and force a speedy marriage? I warn you, I should make a horrid husband.”

  She rolled her eyes, slipped in and shut the door. “As a matter of fact, I think you’d make a perfect husband—for a woman who wants to get married. You’re kind and patient and protective and not the least bit overbearing.”

  “Thank you,” he said, after an instant of dread that she might have decided she liked him a little too much. She was wrong in her assessment; he wouldn’t make a good husband unless that perfect woman he sought came along. Oh, he would do his best to be kind, patient, et cetera, but both husband and wife deserved more than that...affection, for example, and respect—even love, a rare commodity these days.

  Qualities that Miss Whistleby couldn’t have found in her paramour. Anger and uneasiness roiled together in Alexis’s gut.

  Lucasta took a seat on the sofa, a gilt-wood affair of the sort popular two or three decades earlier. “I’ve got to talk to you about Peony.”

  He frowned. “Miss Whistleby? What about her?”

  “Her father and Aunt Edna have told her to set her cap at Lord Elderwood,” Lucasta said, “but she doesn’t want to.”

  This hardly came as a surprise. “Because she has a tendre for some other man.”

  She stared. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her, so he said, “I assumed there must be some local fellow she prefers, since most women are only too happy to set their caps at an earl.” He fetched his coat from where he’d thrown it over a chair.

  “Not at all. The problem is that Peony is too tall and boyish, so she is socially awkward and has never learned to put herself forward where men are concerned.”

  Miss Whistleby had seemed extraordinarily bold and not at all boyish this morning, but again, Alexis found himself unable to correct his betrothed. He tugged his coat on and adjusted it.

  “Besides, she took a dislike to Lord Elderwood last Season,” Lucasta said.

  At last, something he could believe. “He does tend to put people off,” Alexis said, “except the benighted women who throw themselves at him, whom nothing can deter.”

  Lucasta sniffed. “Would you mind asking a favor of him? That is, if he is capable of suspending both odiousness and seduction for a week or two.”

  Alexis blinked. “Have you taken a dislike to him, as well?”

  Lucasta made a face. “I hardly know him. I’m concerned for Peony, that’s all. I’ve never heard anything to Elderwood’s credit, but since you’re his friend, I thought he might deign to be helpful if you were the one to ask.”

  It was unlike Lucasta to pass judgment based purely on reputation, but he let that go. “What do you want him to do?”

  “Merely to discourage Aunt Edna and Mr. Whistleby without making it appear that Peony isn’t doing her best. They make her life miserable, but it’s not her fault she’s not very appealing to the opposite sex.”

  Again, he wondered if he should correct her, but a disinclination to discuss Miss Whistleby held him back. “I’ll see what I can do.” He just wasn’t sure about what. He would get Lord Elderwood’s cooperation easily enough, but the more he imagined Miss Whistleby stripping naked again for her lover—a secret she’d kept even from Lucasta—the more it ate away at him.

  * * *

  Aunt
Edna hustled Peony upstairs to dress for dinner. She scolded relentlessly while she and her abigail pinned, tucked, twisted and turned Peony to the point of dizzy exhaustion.

  “I suppose that will have to do,” her aunt said. “You’ll never be anything but dull, but you could have had the squire’s son if only you’d put some effort into captivating him. Instead, you made him look like a fool.”

  This was entirely unfair. True, the squire’s son had shown some interest in her, but that had vanished completely after he’d tried spending a night in the Haunted Bedchamber. He had emerged gibbering after only a little while, but how was that her fault? It was no use protesting, as Aunt Edna disapproved of Peony’s friendly relations with the ghosts and bogeys, even though she claimed not to believe in them.

  “Why couldn’t you have been endowed with a proper bosom?” she demanded, putting a last twitch to Peony’s bodice. “Try as I may, I can do nothing to disguise such a flaw. One can only pray on bended knee that Lord Elderwood will forgive that and all your other shortcomings.”

  Aunt Edna finally went away to her own bedchamber, adjuring Peony to wait for her before going downstairs, because she was sure to say something foolish and put up the earl’s back. If only it were that simple, Peony thought, she would go straight down and play the fool while Aunt Edna wasn’t watching, but she suspected idiotic rejoinders would be as difficult for her as clever ones. Perhaps she should go to Lucasta for moral support.

  She opened the door to her room and peeked out just in time to see her cousin slipping out of a bedchamber a few doors down, with Sir Alexis right behind her. Heavens, that was his room—how improper of them! Lucasta went up on tiptoe and kissed her betrothed’s cheek.

  Envy swarmed over Peony like a cloud of gnats. How she wished she had a fiancé to kiss! She wondered what it would be like to kiss Sir Alexis’s cheek.

  Or his mouth...