“Wait a moment,” he murmured. “If the rest of them are entertained, I think it is time for you to see my most precious secret here at Wentworth Hall.”
A faint rosy glow brushed her cheeks. “Damon, I should remain with Miriam.”
“Your sister has your father to watch over her, and we shall be thoroughly chaperoned as well, I assure you.”
“Who?”
“Come, and you shall see.”
For a moment, she hesitated, then she nodded. At her unspoken trust, which no one had offered him in longer than he could recall, something inside him leaped like a stag crossing the leas. He offered his arm, and she let him lead her to another door.
He wondered if she suspected how he would as lief sweep her into his arms and up the stairs, far from the others. Did she have any idea what power those exotic eyes had on him? Or how he was fascinated by the soft warmth of her whisper as she agreed to come with him? Surely she must know the magic spell just the touch of her fingers sent swirling about him, an enchantment that stole all thoughts but of her from his head. Thoughts of giving his fingers free license to roam about the slender curves that were emphasized so beguilingly by her simple gown. Thoughts of perusing her sweet body with the fervor of opening a long-awaited book, savoring each new revelation, sampling each pleasure. Thoughts of bringing her to the bedroom that belonged to the lord of Wentworth Hall, seeking every rapture and unleashing every ecstasy until her softness merged with him in the sweetest rhythms of love.
He silenced the groan as he forced the enticing, excruciating fantasy from his head. Emily Talcott would be aghast to discover the course of his thoughts. Or would she?
“Where are we going?” she asked quietly.
He noted the tremor in her voice. Mayhap her mind was enmeshed in images not so different from those plaguing him, although he had to own, if such thoughts were a plague, he wished never to recover.
“Patience,” he replied to her as much as to himself. He motioned to a serving lass who was waiting by the stairs. Taking the bonnet she held out, he handed it to Emily. “Your abigail parted with this reluctantly.”
She smiled. “Kilmartin takes her duties very seriously.”
“Something I suspect she learned from her mistress.” When he saw her smile waver, he hurried to say, “A most admirable trait.”
“You make it sound quite the opposite.”
“How can you say that when you see what obligations I have saddled myself with?”
“This beautiful house?”
“You think it’s beautiful?”
“Oh, yes!”
He could not doubt her sincerity as they walked out a side door and onto the broken stone of what once had been a fine walkway leading into the garden. The storm had washed away the day’s heat and left raindrops glittering on the grass. “It is in need of much work.”
“A work in progress is still a thing of beauty.” She tied her bonnet in place, but tipped it so he could see past the lacy brim to her smile. “In fact, sometimes it is more beautiful, because one can imagine how it will become even more perfect.”
“Like a half-remembered dream?”
Her eyes twinkled with merriment. “Damon, you have the devil’s own way with words.”
“As you do.” He put his hand over hers on his arm as he noted how she tensed. Resisting the temptation to ask the question burning on his tongue, he said, “You have planted the seed of an idea in my mind, and I intend to let it grow into something lovely while I continue my work on Wentworth Hall.”
“You do have a lot of work ahead of you.”
Damon chuckled as he followed her gaze back toward the house which had been old centuries ago. The familiar, comfortable sensation of being just exactly where he should be filled him. The ancestors of Wentworths had held this land even before the Conquest, and some undefinable tether drew him back here again and again to infuse him with life. If not for his businesses in London …
If not for his businesses in London, he would not have had the chance to meet Emily and sample her lips. A craving tore through him like a whetted blade. He wanted to push aside the smothering mantle of respectability and taste those lips again. Right now, right here where anyone might see.
“M’lord?” called a cheerful voice.
Feeling anything but cheerful at the interruption, Damon forced a smile for the lanky man striding around the wall of hedge at the end of the path. No one would ever call Sanders handsome, for the man was ginger-hackled with freckles pocking his face. Not even a straw hat and a turned-up collar could lessen the scarlet left by his long hours in the sun. From the first hour of planting until winter lessened his time in the sun, Sanders looked like a snake peeling off its skin.
“I thought you’d be out to check our progress before this,” Sanders continued in his gusty shout. He paused in mid-step and tipped the brim of his hat. “Sorry, miss. Didn’t see you.”
Damon smiled as his gardener glanced at him with a dozen questions flying out of his eyes like birds being flushed from the bushes. “Emily, this is Wentworth Hall’s gardener, Sanders.” He squeezed her hand before adding, “Sanders, Miss Emily Talcott from London.”
“Lor’!” gasped the man.
Emily said, “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Sanders.”
“Just Sanders, miss. Don’t go for titles here at Wentworth Hall, do we, m’lord?”
Biting her lip to keep from smiling at the man’s contradictory words, she said, “Just Sanders it shall be.”
“Sanders,” Damon said, “we are ready to see what you have to show us.”
“Aye, m’lord.” He tipped his wide-brimmed hat to her again and walked back along the path. He paused only to throw a grin over his shoulder before disappearing within the shadows of a hedge.
“Come along.” Damon tugged on her arm. “Sanders will be distressed if we delay.”
She laughed. “Can I hope that this finally is the surprise you have teased me about?”
“You shall see it was worth your endearing curiosity.”
When they came around the corner, Emily gasped. She heard Damon’s low chuckle as she walked toward the bushes that had been hidden behind the hedge. She reached out to touch the outlines of a dragon that must be twice the length of a coach and four and nearly as tall. Beyond the reclining dragon, a collection of what might be chess pieces were growing in different shades of green. She could not keep from laughing when she saw what appeared to be Mother Goose’s cow jumping over a boxwood moon.
“Do you like it?” Damon asked.
“It is incredible!” she whispered, afraid if she spoke louder the magic would vanish.
“It will be.”
“It is now!” she insisted. When she saw his grin, she looked at the shrubs again. “Is this your work, Damon?”
“My ideas and Sanders’s patient toil.”
“I knew you loved plants, but this is remarkable.”
He chuckled again as he sat on a low stone wall that was nearly lost beneath the hedge. Pushing aside a vagrant branch, he said, “I have been told I inherited all my worst habits from my father.”
“All of them?”
He arched a brow in his most rakish expression. “Hard to believe there could be two men in one family who were seduced by Lady Luck at the card table and who terrorized the grande dames of the ton with their reputations, isn’t it?”
“But you are not just Demon Wentworth.”
“I knew you were more perceptive than the rest of the Polite World, Emily.” He put his finger under her chin and brought her face toward him. “Don’t blush. That name does not bother me.”
“I’m not blushing.”
“But you are.”
“I don’t blush.”
“Then there must be another cause for that lovely rose in your cheeks.”
She edged away. He must know well the reason her color was high. To be here with him in this glorious garden as the first stars began to pierce the n
avy-blue sky was the consummation of a dream she had barely dared to dream. So easily the words “I love you” could slip from her lips.
“I did get one virtue from my father,” he continued.
“Yes?” She kept her voice even on that single word.
“He instilled a love of botany in me. Some of my earliest memories are of him sitting in his book-room as he catalogued the finds he brought back from America.”
“America? He was in America?”
He smiled. Clasping his hands around his knee, he said, “Father sailed there on a Talcott ship. The Talcott Treasure, I believe.”
“Yes, it must have been the Treasure.”
He gazed at the raw edges of the hedges that were being trained into topiary. “Father was a second son, so he had the luxury of exploring such distant lands before his older brother died and left him the obligations of Wentworth Hall.”
“You could travel to America, if you wish.” You could travel with me, she thought before she could squelch it.
“This garden is so tame compared to what waits there. Ofttimes, I consider it my misfortune to have been an only son. If I had been born second or beyond, I could have left Wentworth Hall to someone else and allowed myself to be tempted by the wanderlust that urges me to far horizons.”
“Some dreams must remain only dreams.”
“Unfortunately so.” He drew her to sit next to him. “What dream have you put on the shelf, Emily?”
“On the shelf?” She laughed. “Odd that you should choose that phrase.”
“I meant no insult.”
“Of course not!” she hastened to reassure him, astonished he would apologize when his words had not wounded her. Again she recalled how many times he had surprised her.
Searching her mind, she sought the dreams she had set aside when she assumed the management of her father’s household. She was surprised, and more than a bit sad, when she discovered she could not recall any, save her own craving to travel. She feared she had lost the younger, more naïve Emily.
Damon’s finger under her chin brought her face close to his. “If you wish to keep your dreams to yourself …”
“No, that is not why I hesitate.” Coming to her feet, she walked toward the bush that would someday have the outline of a chess queen.
Sanders grinned at her from where he was snipping branches off a fruit tree that was nearly lost amid the berry bushes clinging to its trunk.
“My old dreams seem less important than what is happening right now,” she said. “Mayhap it is because I have no time for them.”
“You should always make time for dreaming.”
She turned, for his words brushed the back of her neck. Looking up into his gray eyes, she whispered, “I can see how you have made your dream come true here.”
“You do not sound surprised that I would have such a prosaic dream.”
“I’m not.” Boldly, she took his hands in hers and smiled. “Once I would have been. Who would have guessed that Demon Wentworth was hiding such a life in the country and that he came to Town only to maintain an image which protected him from mamas with marriageable daughters?”
“That is not the only reason.” When her forehead ruffled in puzzlement, he said, “If it were, I would never stray from here. However, my plans to restore this grand manor house to its former glory drain even the Wentworth fortune.” His eyes sparkled as he bent so their gazes were even. “My dear friend Emily, you should have guessed by now that I go to London to deal with the business matters that a titled gentleman should not concern himself with.”
“Not to play cards?”
“I would toss aside the flats without a second thought if I could stay here.”
“Then why—?”
“Why do I sit at the board of green cloth and play the devil’s books with what my foes call Satan’s own luck?” His eyes became silvery slits. “I inherited all of my father’s faults. I like winning, Emily, whether it is in a business deal or at the card table or here where Sanders is helping me wrest beauty from chaos.” Standing straighter, he chuckled. “And think what your friend Valeria Fanning would say if I came to one of her soirées and discussed the balancing of account books or the cost of importing a marble carver from Italy to resurrect the friezes in the drawing room.”
“I daresay she would find you quite boring.”
“Or, more likely, she would waste no time in trying to provide me with a lady to oversee the task.” He laughed and held out his arm. “I am grateful you have refrained from offering your opinions on my plans.”
“They are your plans.”
“Exactly.” As he led her down chipped stairs toward a water garden that once must have been grand, he said, “If I had thought you would plague me with suggestions, I would never have asked you here.”
Emily smiled and nodded, but something unsettled curled inside her. For once, Damon had not guessed the course of her thoughts, for she had so many ideas of how to enhance his gardens with the flowers she had read about in the book Damon had suggested to her in Mr. Homsby’s shop. As for the interior of the house, she could imagine Axminster rugs in the foyer and repainting the fretwork along the stairs and … She silenced her thoughts. Damon was correct. It was his house, and he should be the one to determine how it was restored.
“Show me the rest,” she said softly. “Do you have anything else as grand as the dragon?”
He laughed. “That is my favorite as well, but I warn you it is, in truth, a sea serpent which has crawled all the way from the shore to devour Wentworth Hall. Someday it may be large enough to do so.”
As she walked by his side, listening to his enthusiasm, Emily wished this walk could go on forever, for she had never been happier.
Chapter Sixteen
Taking a sip of cocoa, Emily opened her satchel and set it in the middle of the huge tester bed. She shoved aside the ivory bed curtains as she searched the bag again. She was certain she had placed her notebook in here. Although the few scribbled poems would be no loss, she did not want someone to find it and discover the poems written in her hand.
“Your green book, Emily?” Kilmartin asked as she set out Emily’s favorite yellow dress. “I have not seen it since you packed it at the inn.”
“So I did put it in the bag then?”
“It was on the bed. I assumed you put it in your bag.”
Emily frowned as she tried to remember if she had. The hour before they had left the inn had been frenzied. Papa had come to check on them, and Miriam had scurried in and out like a small creature preparing for the winter. Mayhap Miriam had picked it by mistake and put it in her bag.
She prayed not. Miriam could not read French, but her sister was certain to guess what language the poems were written in and in whose hand.
“Kilmartin, will you check with Miriam?”
“Of course. I—” She rushed to the door as a knock sounded. With a smile, she stepped back and said, “Miss Emily, here is Miss Miriam right now.”
“What have you done to this room?” gasped Miriam as she entered, looking like one of the pretty daisies in the fields with her blond hair in curls and her simple white gown.
Emily smiled wryly. The doors of the mahogany armoire were half open, and undergarments peeked out of the drawers. Both chairs were covered with clothes, and a vase of fresh flowers was almost hidden behind a tilting stack of books. The latter two items had been waiting for her when she returned from breakfast along with a note from Damon to enjoy them. She would have savored the scent of the rose blossoms and the books on topairy if she had not been bothered with her own misplaced book.
“I lost something,” she answered.
“What? Your mind?”
She laughed, although her stomach cramped with dismay. “My green notebook. Could it be in among your things?”
“No.” Miriam picked up a stocking and handed it to Kilmartin. “However, I suspect it could easily be here amid all this.” As Emily turned to continue her search
, Miriam said, “Will you sit a moment, Emily? I wish to talk to you.”
“Of course.” She sat on a red tufted chair, fighting the need to look for the book.
“I am worried about you.” Miriam chose a chair facing her. “You seemed exhausted all evening.”
“It was a long ride.”
“Was it only that? I had thought you might be looking for any excuse to retire. Emily, I know you were eager to enable me to leave London for this short trip, but you need not suffer Lord Wentworth’s attentions.”
“I am not suffering them.”
“You welcome them?”
“Do you welcome André’s? Anyone who saw the two of you together might believe you are falling in love with him.”
Miriam laughed, but the sound was dull as it echoed against the wide stone sills and the high ceiling. “Anyone? Graham Simpkins does not see. Or he does not care.”
“Mr. Simpkins? But I thought—”
“Dear Emily,” she said as she knelt next to Emily, “you may be the older, but you have no experience in matters of the heart. I have been in love, and I know what it is like. Splendid and appalling at the same time. I do not have those feelings for André.”
“But I believe he hopes you might love him enough to buckle your life to his.”
“Perhaps I will.”
“Miriam!”
She set herself on her feet. “Don’t fly up into the boughs! What does it matter whom I wed when I cannot have my beloved Mr. Simkins?” Covering her face with her hands, she moaned, “I love a man who cares nothing for me. André wishes to make me happy.”
“But do you think of Mr. Simpkins when you are with André?”
Miriam’s face lost all color. When she walked out of the bedroom, Emily did not follow. Instead, she gazed out the window at the gardens. She had to find a way to ease her sister’s suffering, but, for the first time, Emily was unsure how to help.
No, she knew the solution. The time had come to speak the truth and damn the devil … and herself.
Damon checked the saddle on his horse before turning to watch his guests spill out the front door of Wentworth Hall. The village fathers of Wentworth Bridge could not have selected a better day to play out the old traditions. Even though the last of the curtain wall stood between him and the small village on the other side of the bridge that gave the village its name, he could hear lilting music. It would not end until midnight. By that time, several casks of good ale and a roasted ox would be consumed down to the bones thrown to the dogs. This day was as old as the Hall.
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