“Everyone is going to start looking at the little contre temps on the hill if you don’t do something to distract them.” Ditey handed her a bow and towed her along to stand in front of one of the targets across the way.
“They aren’t arguing. They are talking.” Minerva tugged on her shooting guard and Ditey stood next to her adjusting it over the sleeve of her gown.
“I take it your conversation with the colonel did not go well.”
“I have shown the colonel the last thing I care to show him, Aphrodite. Is that understood?” She picked over the arrows arrayed on a little wrought iron table.
The other girls had gathered to one side to watch her. And talk about her. And giggle. Life was certainly simple when all anyone expected of you was to watch, gossip, and giggle. She hoped they all found husbands who loved horses and hounds above all else, had three mistresses, and tasted of garlic.
“Perhaps you had better not shoot,” Ditey suggested. “You look as if you are ready to do murder.” She glanced at the assemblage of hopeful young ladies.
“Nonsense.” She took aim and loosed an arrow. It hit the target dead center. A smattering of applause from the ladies and raucous cheers from the groups of gentlemen about the lawn distracted Sebastian and Creighton enough to follow Fitzhugh down the rise for a better view.
“Is it all resolved between you and Colonel Brightworth then?” Ditey whispered, her voice tinged with an edge of apology.
“It was resolved between us nine years ago, Ditey. He doesn’t want anything from me. He is simply being a man.”
“How dare he.”
“Indeed. Good shot, Miss Worthy.”
Minerva wanted to walk straight into the house, into her chambers, and not come out until the morning of the wedding. And there would be a wedding. She was more determined now than ever to go through with it. Whatever Sebastian hoped to accomplish, whatever rubbish of an idea he had in his head, it had nothing to do with her. She’d had enough of men who didn’t want her, but didn’t want anyone else to have her.
“Your shot, Mrs. Faircloth,” a plump redhead with very blue eyes and a sincere smile announced.
Minerva fitted an arrow to her bow. God had apparently created men first, forgotten to give them any sense at all, and decided to give it all to women. She had a thing or two to say to God once she got to heaven. Being the sensible one all the time was an unconscionable pain in the—
“By gad, I do believe you’ve shot him in the arse, Mrs. Faircloth.”
Minerva stared at the commodious Lord Bottleby and frowned. “I’ve what?”
Ditey turned her just enough to see a group of gentlemen standing a good distance from the row of targets. Mr. Darcy. Lord Creighton. Lord Fitzhugh. A spotty-faced young lord whose name she could never remember. And—
Her friend patted her gently on the back. “I am not certain if you meant to, dear, but you appear to have shot Colonel Brightworth in the arse.”
Stealing Minerva: Chapter Nine
Sebastian stood on the second-floor landing and watched his fellow guests mill about below, waiting to make the pilgrimage to the blue drawing room before dinner. He wasn’t crying craven, but not by much. He did not look forward to more comments about the afternoon’s events and his wounded fundament. Not when so many other things occupied his thoughts. Truthfully, only one thing – one person.
“Shall I have them put an extra cushion on your chair for dinner, Colonel?” Bottleby patted him on the shoulder, guffawed, and clumped down the stairs to join the others.
He’d never live it down. For the next twenty years, ton lore of wedding festivities and fortnights in the country would include the tale of Colonel Sebastian Brightworth taken down like a prize stag by the bride-to-be. The ribald jests had started the minute Fitzhugh began to bray like a damned drunk donkey at the sight of the arrow protruding from Sebastian’s left buttock.
A laughing debate then ensued as to how best to remove the offending arrow. A debate which ended in the men’s bows and sudden silence when Minerva marched up, studied the protruding shaft from all angles, and unceremoniously snatched it free of his flesh. Fortunately, Sebastian had braced for almost anything on Minerva’s approach. He’d managed to flinch but a little and cry out not at all.
“A flesh wound,” she’d determined briskly. “A bandage and a good night’s rest, and you should be fine to ride to London.”
“Am I riding to London?” The other guests had seen only her no-nonsense attitude and her air of unconcern. He saw more. The pale tint of her skin. The slight tremble of her bottom lip. The nervous fluttering of her hands. Sebastian had detected the relief in her tone, underneath the acrimony and frustration.
“Oh, I don’t know if he’ll be able to sit a horse until after the wedding, my dear.” Creighton had peered around Sebastian to observe the wound and then exchanged a look with Fitzhugh behind Minerva’s back.
“I doubt it will hinder him in sitting a horse. It may well hinder his ability to think,” Minerva had replied as she started towards the house.
“Are you suggesting Brightworth’s wits are in his arse?” Of course, Darcy had been the one to call out after her.
Minerva had turned, looked Sebastian up and down, and replied, “I can detect no higher origin of thought.”
Sebastian smiled at the memory of her words and more at her graceful curtsy and return to the house. He couldn’t agree with her more. Now if he could only come up with a way to straighten out the mess he’d made of seducing Minerva. Seducing, the devil. At this point he’d settle for a civil word. Preferably without the aid of falling windows, biting dogs, and flying arrows. She accused him of being responsible for her clumsiness. It seemed she had a similar effect on him. Except his lack of grace was limited to his ability to talk to her, to make her see sense. Once he decided what that was.
“Ready to go down and face the slings and arrows?” Fitzhugh ambled up behind him, sporting a self-satisfied grin.
“I live to be a source of amusement for you,” Sebastian replied as they descended the stairs together.
“You’ve outdone yourself this time. I believe you have provided amusement for the entire household.” They reached the landing and turned up the wide carpeted corridor towards the drawing room. “Are you certain you are well enough to sit down to dinner?” His emphasis on “sit down” made Sebastian flinch.
“I will forget you asked that. I had Tibbles sew it up. Only took a stitch or two. He hasn’t forgotten how to dress a wound and his horse liniment can cure almost anything.”
“If it doesn’t burn the hide off first. I remember that liniment. You made him put it on my foot after Badajoz. I was begging the surgeon to amputate before it stopped burning.”
“Bugaboo.”
“Bell swagger.” Fitzhugh slowed his steps at the sight of a bevy of Lady Creighton’s invited young ladies congregated outside the first door into the drawing room. “I would have thought you’d persuade Creighton’s huntress bride to sew you up.”
“She ordered Melghem to do it.” Sebastian shuddered at the thought.
“Lady Creighton’s maid?”
“The very same.”
“Your Mrs. Faircloth has a mean streak.”
“You have no idea.” Sebastian had no idea either. Whatever meanness Minerva turned on him for the rest of his stay he likely deserved. He did. She did not. She’d admitted to signing on for a loveless, passionless marriage, and he wanted to know why. Desire was as much a part of her as breathing. Their courtship nine years ago had been brief but passionate. Dreams of the hours he’d spent in her arms had kept him alive during the war. The few times he’d had her in his arms since he’d arrived at Creighton Hall proved her appetite for passion had not diminished. Why, then? More important, why had he lain awake all night in search of an answer – for her actions. And for his.
“Dinner is served,” Peel intoned just as Sebastian and Fitzhugh entered the drawing room.
“Thank Go
d,” Fitzhugh muttered. “I am too hungry and too wary to make polite conversation with all of these husband hunters.”
“The young ladies or the mamas?” Sebastian asked as they followed everyone into the dining room.
“Both.”
They stood in the doorway and looked for their seats. This evening’s meal was a bit less formal. Sebastian glanced at the sideboards on either side of the room and at the dinner service on the table. Apparently, the meal was to be served a la franḉais. Which suited him fine. Less time to have to sit at the table and suffer everyone’s jibes and jests.
Fitzhugh murmured something and made for the far side of the table. He was seated towards the front, a few people down from Creighton. A set of delicate fingers curved around Sebastian’s upper arm. Minerva. She led him to a seat towards the middle of the table, halfway between Creighton and the dowager countess, who had maneuvered herself back into the position of hostess, for the evening at least.
“Lady Creighton seated you next to me to prove we are still friends,” Minerva informed him as they took their seats.
“Knowing Lady Creighton, are you certain she did not mean for us to finish each other off?” A bit of knocking around and the shaking of cutlery and glassware to Sebastian’s right announced the arrival of his other dinner companion – Lord Bottleby, of all people.
“There is that.” Minerva smiled and spoke to the young lady seated next to her.
Sebastian nodded as a footman offered to fill his wine glass. “Are we friends, Mrs. Faircloth?”
Bottleby was blathering away at the unfortunate soul seated on his other side, thank goodness.
“You are one of Creighton’s closest friends. I suspect we shall see a deal of each other in the future. It would be better if we are friends.” She wore a gown of blue silk tonight. Jet beadwork drew attention to the neckline. Not that he needed any sort of encouragement to look at Minerva. All she had to do was walk into a room. He suspected not even that. She existed on this earth. She inhabited his dreams. Old and blind he’d still want to see her.
“So, we are stuck with one another.” He tried for flippant indifference.
“I am afraid so.” She sighed softly and he watched the rise and fall of her breasts just below the line of polished black beads of her bodice. “Sebastian, I—”
“Here we go, Brightworth. These will have you recovered in no time. No one keeps a better cook than Creighton.” Bottleby shoved a bowl of potatoes in cream sauce at him.
“I don’t care for potatoes.” Sebastian did his best to ignore the dish. The opulence of Creighton Hall’s formal dining room glittered in the light of four large chandeliers replete with candles. Every sideboard sported candelabra. The heavy mahogany dining table, with all of the leaves let out supported four more. And Sebastian shrugged ever so slightly to send the trickle of sweat between his shoulder blades on its way.
“Nonsense.” Bottleby ladled six small potatoes onto Sebastian’s plate. “No good Englishman turns down potatoes. You try those. Creighton’s cook is a magician I tell you. No Frenchie food here. Potatoes are good English fare.” He covered the potatoes with sauce.
“Of course the colonel will have them, Lord Bottleby,” Lady Creighton assured him from her end of the table. She pinned Sebastian with a disapproving glare.
“Mother,” Creighton started. Then he caught the imperceptible head shake Sebastian gave him. His friend took a savage bite of roast pork. His fingers tightened on his knife and fork.
Almost in the same moment a rude clatter of cutlery hitting the dowager’s best china came from the direction of Fitzhugh’s seat. At seeing Fitzhugh’s half-opened mouth and saturnine expression, Sebastian stared at his plate and again shook his head.
The brief pause in the conversation stuttered into motion. Dishes were passed around with the assistance of the footmen. Glasses were filled. The day’s events were discussed. The thick press of voices accompanied by the musical tittering of china, silver, and glass closed in like enemy gunfire. Sebastian picked up his fork and willed his hand to stillness.
Bottleby stole a glance or two at Sebastian’s plate. Someone had put a slice of pork and a generous helping of peas, his favorite, on it. Sebastian concentrated on eating those. If he squinted, he found the potatoes appeared smaller. Sixteen years had passed. Somewhere in his mind, they had not. Somewhere, in a head that pounded from too much candlelight and too much inane chatter, a twelve-year-old boy screamed. Sebastian fought not to let Creighton’s guests hear him.
Something bumped his left arm. Bottleby, on his right, had struck up a conversation with one of Lady Creighton’s army of hopeful mamas. Sebastian’s left hand brushed against a hand sliding away from his plate. He looked up in time to see Minerva fork a potato into her mouth. She obviously liked them, as the space on her plate where her helping of potatoes had been stood clean. A check of his own plate startled him. Four potatoes. Bottleby had served him six. He knew because he’d counted them and wondered how he would force himself to eat so many. He searched the table directly in front of his plate. Perhaps he’d pushed them off in his haste to get to the pork, which was very good. Even better because it was not potatoes.
“Colonel, is the salt cellar near to your hand?” Minerva inquired. “Miss Worthy is in need of it.”
Sebastian cast about in search of the cellar. “Bottleby.” The man continued to prate on at his unfortunate captive audience. “Bottleby, the salt.” The old windbag managed to grope about the fine linen tablecloth in front of his plate and shoved the salt cellar towards Sebastian’s outstretched hand. All without stopping his one-sided conversation with the poor lady seated next to him.
“Here it is.” Sebastian turned to hand it to Minerva. As he did his eyes fell to his plate. Two potatoes. What the devil! He glanced to his left. Nodding at something Miss Worthy said, Minerva’s throat worked to swallow. He watched the long column of her neck.
Her skin is so soft there.
He blinked a few times and shook his head. Of all the places to run mad, the grand dining room at Creighton Hall in the middle of a formal dinner had never come to mind. Battlefields all over Europe had not conquered him. Surely Lady Creighton’s gentile spite and Bottleby’s insistent congeniality had not done the job.
Sebastian stabbed blindly at his plate. The soft chink of silver on silver drew his gaze down the length of his arm, down his hand, down his fork to where it crossed with another. Slowly that fork slid across his plate. It rose just enough to clear the gold rimmed edge of the countess’s Limoges. From there it ducked just under the tablecloth and came up to deliver a potato to the most beautiful lips he had ever known.
Her eyes widened ever so slightly. She chewed so daintily her face barely moved. Sebastian’s throat tightened. He neither swallowed nor breathed. The lump in the middle of his neck did not allow it. He’d never again complain of the constriction a neckcloth afforded, for those white folds and knots hid a great deal. He gazed blindly at one of the ghastly centerpieces and managed a brief, shaky breath.
Minerva laughed softly at something someone said and spirited the last of his potatoes from his plate. Sebastian took up his knife and fork and tried to slice into the done-to-perfection roast pork. His knife slid from his hand. He needed to breathe any moment now or risk embarrassing himself at table. A delicate hand rested on the middle of his back for a moment or two. He inhaled deeply and reveled in the rise and fall of her touch just before it slipped away.
The meal continued and Sebastian forced himself to take part in the conversation and general nonsense society called a formal dinner. Two young ladies made no secret of their contempt for Minerva. Time after time they returned the conversation to her shooting Sebastian. Each time she deflected their veiled insults and turned everyone’s attention back to the impending nuptials. The dowager countess resembled a tea pot long past the point of boiling over, not that Creighton appeared to notice. He pointedly ignored the woman.
Every now and agai
n Sebastian caught Fitzhugh or Creighton eying him. An attempt to ascertain his mood, no doubt. He wished them better luck than he’d had. He knew neither his heart nor his head. His body thrummed with an awareness of Minerva more keen than any rapier’s blade. He who prided himself on his talent for knowing when to extend much effort to a proposition and when to let it pass him by now had no idea what to do or how to go about doing it.
He was lost.
Somewhere he’d not allowed himself to be in a very long time.
The noise of chairs pushed back and gentlemen rising to their feet woke him from his reverie. The ladies fluttered out of the dining room like so many elegant birds. Sebastian was in no fit temper for port, cigars, and more japes at his expense. He backed into one of the French windows that opened onto the side terrace, raised the latch, and stepped outside.
Cool air and the chance to stretch his legs soon revived him. He strode to the far end of the terrace and leaned over the balustrade. Torches had been lit down the steps and into the side gardens. The scent of honeysuckle and lavender rose out of the night. If he remembered correctly the gardens on this side of the house sported a series of trellises and arbors for flowering vines of every color imaginable. And no hyacinths. It suddenly occurred to him. He didn’t mind hyacinths so much. He loved their color and heavy perfume. He’d avoided them for years, like potatoes, and now he wanted to see hyacinths and perhaps plant some in his small garden in London. If he had a country estate he could plant whatever he liked, as much as he liked.
And live very much alone in an even bigger house than the one he occupied now. What in hell’s name was wrong with him? A brief memory of Minerva Faircloth sneaking potatoes from his plate in the middle of a dinner to honor her coming marriage came to mind. He leaned his forearms onto the wide stone balustrade and hung his head.
It was time for him to go. He should never have agreed to such an underhanded task in the first place. He, Fitzhugh, and Creighton all had their demons to face. It was about time they got to it instead of protecting each other into letting things lie. Bravery on the battlefield was easy. Bravery in life, in families, was terrifying. He had only one more thing to do.
Her Perfect Gentleman: A Regency Romance Anthology Page 71
