Portrait of My Heart

by Patricia Cabot

  It only took Maggie a second or two to notice that Jeremy’s eyes, which she had always considered a somewhat bland shade of gray, were actually not quite as colorless as she’d remembered. They were really a very subtle shade of light blue, with small dashes of silver within them—and they were not focused anywhere near her face. They appeared, in fact, to be glued to her chest. When Maggie followed the direction of their gaze, she saw that the button she’d lost climbing the oak had actually been a rather integral one, and that her considerable cleavage was spilling out from beneath the front of her white dress.

  Instantly, Maggie found herself drowning in a flood of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, there was a comic element to the situation that even in the throes of the excruciating embarrassment which immediately consumed her, Maggie could not fail to recognize. Bare-breasted in front of the Duke of Rawlings! What would Lady Herbert say? On the other hand, there wasn’t anything comical about the way the Duke of Rawlings was looking at her. If she’d harbored any doubts before as to whether or not Jeremy’d changed since she’d last seen him, the look on his face just then abolished them. She had never seen him wear a look like that before … .

  At least, not directed at her.

  This was exactly the sort of look she’d been attracting lately, however. She’d seen it on the faces of strangers as she walked past them in the village; an admiring look, to be sure, and yet there was also something more there than simple admiration, something she could only describe as … well, lust.

  Lust ?

  From Jeremy?

  And it was then that Maggie realized that this was no longer any children’s game. This was a man, over twenty years of age, not a boy, lying on top of her. And she was a woman—well, just about—and he had better get the hell off, before anyone happened to stroll by, or look out one of the manor house windows … .

  “Get off me,” Maggie grunted, unpropping her elbows, though doing so lowered her head and shoulders back onto the ground and increased the overall impropriety of the situation. It allowed her, however, to grapple with the opening at the front of her dress.

  Jeremy, enjoying Maggie’s discomfort as much as he was enjoying the view, remarked, almost offhandedly, “You appear to be missing a button, Mags.”

  “You think I don’t know that, you smarmy git?” Maggie could not look him in the face. His eyes, like the rest of him, had changed, and now they seemed to have some kind of strange effect on her, an effect that was as much the reason for her crimson cheeks as her missing button. Observing her struggles with a single raised eyebrow, Jeremy said, “You look as if you could use some assistance. May I?”

  Maggie, her embarrassment quickly turning to outrage, slapped at his hands—big brown hands, she saw with alarm, heavily callused and considerably larger than her own—while clutching the front of her dress closed with her other fingers. “No, you may not,” she said, emphasizing each word with a swat at him. “Get off me this instant!”

  “Given the fact you that you jumped me, Mags,” Jeremy pointed out, “your current indignation, is heartily misplaced.”

  “Get off!” Maggie glanced around. “My God, someone might see us!”

  “Again, you might have thought of that, young lady, before you so violently unseated me from my horse.” Jeremy, noting with disappointment that she had finally managed to close her dress, looked down at her clenched fingers with a frown. “Why are you fussing so much, anyway? I’ve seen you in your altogether before, you know. Though not, I’ll admit, since you developed such a smashing figure—”

  “Get off!” Thoroughly mortified, Maggie rammed the side of his head with the elbow of her free arm. Though the blow could not have hurt—much—Jeremy did look very surprised. It couldn’t be all that often, Maggie supposed, that the Duke of Rawlings got it upside the head. What kind of girl would want to offend a duke, particularly an eligible one? But then, Maggie wasn’t all that concerned about what the Duke of Rawlings—or any other duke, for that matter—thought.

  Perhaps that was just as well. Because what the Duke of Rawlings was thinking was that he’d been a fool to stay away from home so long. What he said, however, was, “I say, that wasn’t very sporting.” Rubbing his ear, he tried to look displeased. “You haven’t turned into one of those silly slapping sort of girls, have you?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Maggie snapped. “Get off me. My father might be watching.”

  “That,” Jeremy said emphatically, “is the only sensible reason I can think of for ending this highly enjoyable interlude.”

  And he slowly disengaged himself, being careful to observe, as he did so, the way her skirt had hiked up, revealing a pair of calves so superbly rounded, they’d have been the envy of any chorus girl. And that wasn’t all he noticed. After he’d climbed to his feet, he extended a hand to help her to her own, and managed, while doing so, to catch a glimpse of the spot where her stockings ended and her garters began, just inside the curve of a smooth white thigh.

  Maggie, on the ground, didn’t miss Jeremy’s swift glance between her legs, and in a tizzy of confusion, she shoved her skirt down before looking up, suspiciously, at the hand he held down toward her.

  “What?” Jeremy exclaimed, noticing her narrowed eyes. “I’m offering you a helping hand, that’s all, you silly girl. You needn’t look at me as if I were going to bite you.”

  Maggie swallowed. That’s precisely what he looked like he was about to do … bite her, or something worse. Handsome as he’d turned out, it seemed pretty likely that there were a lot of girls to whom Jeremy had offered a bit more than a helping hand … and done a lot more than bite.

  Misunderstanding the reason for her hesitation, Jeremy rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to dunk you in the reflecting pool again, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he informed her. “I think we’re both old enough now to forgo those kinds of childish pranks, your recent ambush aside.”

  Knowing she was being ridiculous, Maggie lifted a hand, careful to keep the front of her dress anchored with the other. The moment Jeremy’s strong fingers closed over hers, she knew she was in trouble. His was not the kind of grip that was easily broken. He was going to hang on exactly as long as he wanted to, and there wasn’t a blessed thing she could do about it.

  But despite the strength in those long fingers, he was surprisingly gentle, not yanking her at all as he might have done when they were younger. It was a good thing he hung on to her a little longer than necessary, too, because as soon as she was fully upright, Maggie suffered the biggest shock of all.

  Jeremy was taller than she was.

  Not just taller than she was. A lot taller than she was. Her head only reached to his shoulder. Her nose would have smacked right into the middle of his chest if he hadn’t tightened his grip on her hand when she stumbled in shock.

  “Maggie?” Jeremy peered down at her, a quizzical expression on his face. “Are you all right? You didn’t break anything after all, did you?”

  Dazed, Maggie shook her head. Jeremy Rawlings, taller than she was? And not just a little taller, either, but at least six inches taller than she was! When had this happened? The last time she’d seen him, she’d towered over him by half a foot at least. He had grown twelve inches in five years. Good God, he was as tall as Lord Edward!

  “I never would have thought it,” Jeremy said wonderingly. “Maggie Herbert, a fainter and a slapper! How times have changed. I never thought you’d turn out to be such a delicate flower.”

  That was all it took to bring Maggie out of her stupor. Lifting her head—she couldn’t believe she actually had to lift her head to look him in the eye—she snapped, “I’m no fainter. And I didn’t slap you, I elbowed you, and you deserved it. Now let go of my hand.”

  Jeremy smiled, and she quickly looked away. His smile seemed to have the same devastating effect on her heart as his eyes. They both made it do some kind of flip inside her chest. “Same old Mags,” he said, lifting her fingers to his lips in hearty
tribute. “Despite the fresh new curves.”

  Maggie, horrified at both the casual reference to her bosom and the way his eyes so carefully gauged her reaction as his lips caressed her knuckles, immediately and ineffectually tried to pull her hand away. But Jeremy, a knowing smirk spreading across his face, kept hold of her fingers, and even flipped them over, to study her nails.

  “Ah,” he said. “Vermilion, magenta, and a bit of … what’s that, now? Oh, yes, flake white. I see we’re still painting. And how are Dame Ashforth’s cats? She must have enough portraits of them by now to fill the Great Hall—”

  “Let go of my hand.” Maggie tried to keep her voice steady, but it wasn’t easy, since she was a few seconds away from panicking. “I mean it, Jerry. Let go!”

  “‘Let go of my hand,’” Jeremy mimicked. “‘Get off me.’ What sort of way is that to greet an old friend, one you haven’t seen in half a decade?”

  That distracted her, and she quit pulling so frantically on her fingers. “Friend?” Maggie echoed. Then she gave a snort. “Since when were we ever friends? Enemies would be more like it.”

  “You were the one who harbored all the adversarial feelings,” Jeremy said, mockly hurt. “I never understood why. You lived to make my life a misery, when all I ever wanted to do was—”

  “All you ever wanted to do was lord it over everybody,” she interrupted. It was her turn to mimic. “‘You can’t be the pirate captain, Maggie. I’m the duke, / get to be the pirate captain. You can’t have the last cherry popover, Maggie. I’m the duke, I get the last cherry popover. You have to do as I say, Maggie, because I’m the—’”

  “So what?” Jeremy cut her off, managing to look supremely unconcerned. “It’s not as if you ever did what I told you anyway.”

  “Good thing somebody wouldn’t let you browbreat them,” Maggie pointed out. “Or you might have grown up to be a nasty sort of man who wouldn’t let go of girls’ hands when they asked you to.”

  “Nasty? So I’m nasty, am I?” He grinned, seeming to like the sound of that, though Maggie had hardly meant it as a compliment. But he dropped her hand anyway, and stood looking down at her, a bit speculatively, Maggie thought. She wondered what he was thinking, and then defensively folded her arms across her chest. So he liked her new figure, did he? And had the audacity to admit it, to her face! Lord, how her sister Anne would have fainted if she’d overheard that conversation!

  Maggie’s sister would have done more than faint if she could have been privy to Jeremy’s thoughts just then. He was mentally kicking himself for not having attempted to seduce Sir Arthur Herbert’s youngest daughter years before. How could he not have seen it? he asked himself. How could he not have known she’d turn into such a delectable morsel? True, none of her sisters had been anything much, so he hadn’t had a lot of warning, but Maggie … What a find! He’d never had this much fun with a girl he hadn’t paid for. There was something about her, something in that uninhibited impertinence of hers, that hinted that though the girl might only just be out of the schoolroom, there wasn’t a bit of schoolroom in the girl. It looked as though his visit home might just turn out not to be such a bore after all … .

  For Maggie’s part, she was not liking this turn of events. Not liking it at all. There weren’t a lot of people Maggie saw on a day-to-day basis who were bigger than she was, and so she wasn’t used to being made to feel small, but Jeremy, whom she’d pretty much bullied for years, now had the advantage of being able to make her feel so. Worse, he was so much bigger that he actually made her feel a little afraid. And the last thing Maggie liked to feel was afraid. She considered herself fearless, having—unlike her elder sisters—aversions to neither heights nor water, mice nor insects, enclosed spaces nor the dark. How she could possibly be afraid of Jeremy Rawlings, she wasn’t certain, but the trepidation was there, all right, and she was going to have to do something about it, or admit to herself that there was one thing she feared … but whether that thing was Jeremy Rawlings, or how he made her feel, she wasn’t sure.

  Risking a glance toward Jeremy’s face, she saw that he was still looking down at her, and still wearing the same thoughtful expression. Lord, he was attractive! How could she not have noticed that before? Not that she liked good-looking men … well, except for Lord Edward, and Alistair Cartwright, her brother-in-law. But in general, Maggie thought handsome men tended to think entirely too well of themselves. She supposed Jeremy had a reason to feel superior, since he’d turned out to be good-looking, and had more money than the queen, as well. But in his case, both his looks and his money were gifts of fortune. Only a fool took pride in gifts from God … .

  Then Maggie’s gaze strayed past his broad shoulders. “Uh, Jeremy,” she said.

  “Yes?” Both of his eyebrows lifted expectantly.

  “You might want to catch your horse. He’s running away.”

  Startled, Jeremy turned around to see King trotting off toward the south pasture, where the fillies were grazing.

  “Hell,” Jeremy swore. He turned quickly back to Maggie. “Stay here,” he said, making a gesture rather like Yorkshire shepherds made to their collies when they wanted them to stay in one place. “All right? I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said, nodding seriously. “Of course.”

  The minute his back was turned, however, she started heading toward the house … not running, exactly, because that was hard to do while holding the bodice of one’s dress closed—and besides, she didn’t want him to think she was running away—but walking very briskly. Retreat seemed the best strategy at that point. She needed to make repairs to more than just her dress … her mind was in a veritable whirl, after having been bombarded with so many new sensations at once. Jeremy Rawlings, looking just as manly and strong as the local blacksmith’s sons, whom she’d been admiring from afar for well over a year now? Jeremy Rawlings, looking down at her with lust in his eyes, eyes she’d once thought dull, but which now shone as brightly as her mother’s silver tea service? Jeremy Rawlings, taller than she was?

  What was her world coming to?

  It was too much for a girl like Maggie to assimilate all at once. Used to quiet country living, she wasn’t at all sure how to react to this new turn of events. She needed time for reflection, time to pull herself together—both literally and figuratively—time to figure Out how best to beat this new and disturbing discovery: She was afraid of Jeremy Rawlings.

  She never had a chance. She’d hardly made it past the turnaround in front of the rambling, three-storied manor house, before she heard a deep voice—Lord, even his voice had changed!—call her name. Damn! Maggie stopped dead in her tracks, looked heavenward for strength, then slowly pivoted toward him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Jeremy’s voice, though deep, had a note of amusement in it that Maggie recognized. It was the same tone in which he’d often addressed her, shortly after suffering through one of her innumerable pranks.

  “Uh,” Maggie said. “Nowhere. Inside. To find a button.” Mentally, she kicked herself. Oh, brilliant conversation, Maggie!

  “Come with me,” Jeremy said. He had caught King, and now stood panting from the exertion and looking, in Maggie’s opinion, far too handsome, with the sun bringing out blue highlights in his jet-black hair—he’d apparently lost his hat in their tumble—and his cravat untied just enough to reveal a few dark curls of chest hair at the base of his throat.

  “Uh,” Maggie said. Again, she was having trouble with her tongue. Normally, she couldn’t keep it still, but today, it was as heavy as a brick inside her mouth. “No. I can’t. I’ve really got to—”

  “Just come with me while I get this beast safely stabled away.” He was grinning down at her as if her reluctance were one of the funniest things he’d ever seen. “Then we’ll go inside and find you a button. Come on.”

  “I really can’t, Jeremy. My mother—”

  “Oh, dash your mother.” The silver eyes flashed challengingly, as the gri
n on his face grew wider. “What are you afraid of?”

  Maggie froze. “Nothing,” she said, too quickly. Nothing wrong with her tongue anymore.

  The silver eyes glinted. “You wouldn’t be afraid of me, now would you, Mags?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Are you lying to me, Mags?”

  “No …”

  The grin turned into a smile so wide that she could see all of his white, even teeth. “No, of course not. I didn’t think so. So come on.” He turned to present her with the crook of his free arm. “Walk with me. I want to hear all about how you’ve been keeping yourself these past five years. You’re still painting, obviously. But what else have you been doing?”

  Maggie cast one last, longing glance at the large double doors of the manor house. Beyond them lay safety, sanity, and a maid with a sewing kit. But Maggie had never been able to abide cowardice, least of all in herself. So, sighing, she crossed the drive and slipped a hand through the crook of Jeremy’s elbow.

  “Oh,” she said, breezily. “Not much.”

  Chapter 4

  It had been too easy. All it had taken was a goad at her pride, and she was his. Well, not really his … not yet, anyway. But he’d managed to discover her weakness—or rather, rediscover it, since he remembered now, quite clearly, that Maggie could always be coerced into doing just about anything by one simple sentence: You’re not afraid, are you, Mags?

  She was doing a very good job of looking unafraid, supremely unafraid, at the moment, perched on a bale of hay just outside of King’s stall, her feet swinging above the floor as she leaned back against a wooden post. Unfortunately, she still kept one hand clenched around the front of her bodice, depriving him of another glimpse of the curves of those pale beauties. He didn’t think it would be long, however, before he got to do more than just look at them. Now that he knew what to say to get a rise out of her, he had no doubt that soon, very soon, he’d finally be getting revenge on Maggie Herbert for all those tricks she’d played on him in their childhood … .