An Unexpected Encounter ( Half Moon House, Novella 1) (9 page)

“To what end?”

Giving up on distance, she stepped closer.
Perhaps that would do the trick, allow her to drive her point home.
“To give someone the chance to get to know you!” She softened her
tone. “You’ve so much to give. You need only to let someone close
enough to see it.”

His smile shone gently down over her. “You
are very kind to be concerned.” A breeze swept by, unsettling the
leaves in the little grove and brushing the dark lock of hair that
had once again fallen over his brow. At her side, her fingers
twitched. “But I forget that you are so young.”

She raised her chin. “Age is irrelevant to
the conversation.”

“Not really. All of this,” he waved toward
the departing Ashburns, “feels vitally important when you are
young, I know.”

“I don’t think it’s important because I’m
young, sir. I think it’s important because it is. It isn’t a good
thing to withdraw from the world. Not for Aurelia, and not for
you.”

“Something else you’ll learn with age, Miss
Moreton, is that it does no good to rail against what cannot be
changed. I’ve been out in Society, it did not go well.”

“Perhaps you need to try again.”

“Do you find me so pudding-hearted? I never
did give up easily and didn’t on this. When things did not go my
way in Town, I retired to our estate. I thought I might do better
with country society. At one of the local assemblies, I overheard
two young ladies discussing me. One wished to pursue me so she
could marry without having to endure a London Season. The other
scoffed and stated she would categorically avoid me—His Dullness, I
believe she called me—because she was afraid her father would
stumble upon the same idea and she would
miss
her
Season.”

He hardened his gaze. “You’ll have to trust
my greater experience in this matter, Miss Moreton, and believe me
when I tell you that there is no point in trying to make up to Miss
Ashburn, or any other girl like her. My eyebrows have grown back,
but nothing else has changed. My clothes are still in constant
disarray. My hands are still stained and scorched. My head is
filled with equations of force and mass instead of the latest
on
dit
. My interests revolve around mechanics, lifts and clockwork
rather than racing, wenching and gaming.” He shook his head. “The
ton
and I have already been acquainted. We parted ways to
our mutual satisfaction.”

He’d drawn nearer. She shifted nervously.
Perhaps he had a point to drive home too. She felt suddenly,
vibrantly aware of the dappled shade cooling the hot flush of her
skin and the sun burnishing his broad form with light. It made him
appear even larger and more intimidating. But she was listening
again, hearing all the things he didn’t say. She summoned strength
and spoke the truth. “You use all of that to push them away.”

“It’s easier that way.”

Her heart skipped.

“And while we’re discussing contrasts, let me
share with you the very large one that I noted during that
exchange.”

She had the sudden, certain feeling that this
was not a topic to which she’d wish to listen.

Edmund stared.

Her dress was fawn colored today,
high-necked, long-sleeved and form fitting. In it, she nearly
disappeared into the shaded grove. Only her eyes shone, whites wide
and vivid next to sky-blue pupils lined in midnight. He stepped
into the shade with her and it was like they’d disappeared into a
different world. Beyond the line of trees lay light and reality.
Somewhere nearby he could hear Aurelia crooning to her new pet. But
here . . . there existed only sizzle in the soft air, tension
stretching between them—and her.

“Miss Ashburn has all the advantages of birth
and wealth. She’s well-spoken and well-educated.” He cocked his
head. “Yet so are you.”

She shook her head but he continued,
relentless. “She is likely to be a darling of the
beau
monde
. She possesses the right family, the right clothes, the
right air of sophisticated
ennui
. Yet that girl and her ilk,
none of them hold a candle to you, Miss Moreton. I cannot imagine
her acting as champion for an orphaned girl she’s just met. She
could never work alongside my high-in-the-instep servants and win
their hearts at the same time. She would never walk into my filthy
laboratory and see a birthplace instead of a mess.”

“Please,” she whispered.

He held his place, not wanting to frighten
her, yet holding her captive with the force of his gaze. “Those
girls do not have your grace or generosity. They don’t come within
a mile of having your spirit. You, a girl acting as a servant in my
home, are the lady that she is not. Your good birth has been
apparent since we met and has shone through more every day since. I
want to know. It’s time you explained. Who are you? What were you
doing alone in the British Museum with your portmanteau?”

She held utterly still, tense and on the
verge of bolting. He cursed himself for pushing too hard—but then
she relaxed. Looking away, she answered.

“Running,” she said.

“From what?”

“Marriage.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yet you just felt
comfortable enough pushing me in that direction.” Was every female
born with that compulsion?

“It’s not the same!” she protested. “You can
choose anyone you like. Miss Ashburn might be unpleasant, but
surely there are worthy women in Society.”

“There are no women like you.” Words
unbidden, yet no less true.

But she didn’t take it as the compliment he
intended. Bitterness tinged her short laugh. “Yes, so I have
repeatedly heard.” She whirled away. “And it’s not true!
I
might have been out last year or this. I might have been in
Society. You might have been introduced to me here, during the
fashionable hour, or perhaps even at tomorrow’s garden party.”

The thought arrested him. He imagined her
smiling, dancing, chatting. He pictured her in a soft, filmy gown,
her hair elaborate and soft arms and rich décolletage exposed to
his eye—and that of every other useless
ton
dandy’s too. His
blood, already simmering, surged to a sudden, insistent flood, even
as his mind protested.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

She let her head rest against the rough bark
of a tree.

“Cattle,” she said.

She’d managed to surprise him. “What?”

“Cattle. Do you remember when you wondered
why I did not take Aurelia to Green Park? It’s because the
guidebooks say they keep milk cows there. And right now, I find
them to be a distasteful reminder.”

“Of what?” he asked, mystified.

“Of my misery.” She sighed. “Let me tell it
properly, if you please.”

“I do.” He waved. “Please.”

“Two years ago, I was nearly eighteen and
looking forward to my first Season, when my father died.”

“I’m sorry.” He waited a moment before
prompting, “His heir?”

“My brother, William. Willie. He was five at
the time.”

“Ah.” All of their conversations rolled
through his head. “So you took on . . . what? Everything?”

“I already ran the household in my mother’s
stead. I took over the home farm and the stables. We hired a land
agent to help with the tenants and the rest of the acreage.”

“That explains much. Except perhaps why you
did not come out last spring?”

“My father was a gentleman, a landowner, but
my mother is the fourth daughter of Viscount Brandt. Some called it
a misalliance, said she married down. But he was rich and she was
pretty. It was a love match. My mother is silly and vain, but she
loved my father and he her. She adored the way he pampered and
cosseted her.” She swallowed. “When he died, she was just . . .
lost. As if she didn’t know who she was without his arm to
decorate, his parties to plan, his compliments to accept as her
due.”

Edmund began to understand. “Until someone
else began to compliment her?”

She threw her head back. It did lovely things
to her profile, etched as it was against the brighter backdrop of
the open park ground. She was all dark, delicious curves against
the light.

“A local gentleman. Plans for my come-out
were changed to wedding plans. They were married just a few weeks
after her official mourning ended.” She sighed. “The land agent was
let go—and my help was no longer needed.”

He could imagine that it did not go over
easily. “He didn’t know what he was up against.”

Her mouth twitched. “We did butt heads a few
times.” She glanced over. “But he was so often wrong!”

He laughed. “I’m sure he was.” Sobering, he
asked the pertinent question. “And this year? What happened?” It
must have been something momentous for her to have left home
alone.

“My stepfather decided that there was no
reason to spend money on a Season for me—a girl so unnaturally
tall, with strange looks and an odd kick to her gallop. I’d had
hold of the reins too long, no
ton
beau was going to want a
headstrong girl like me. He thought it far better to wait and spend
the blunt on my younger sister. Celia, in his opinion, is prettier
and more biddable. A better investment.”

He’d like to meet the man. Perhaps sometime
when he had a whip to hand. The thought triggered another. “But the
cows? Where do they come in?”

“He didn’t want to go to the expense of
bringing me out, but neither did he want to keep me around. He’d
turned out the sheep in favor of a fine herd of longhorn cattle—and
he figured he would trade my hand for the local squire’s prized
heifer.”

A whipping was too good for the man.

“My mother argued. A little. But she allowed
herself to be convinced.” She sent a pleading look his way. “I had
to go.” Her head ducked away again. “I had a friend, a gentleman in
the
ton
. He’d been sent down to rusticate at the estate next
door for some months. We grew close.” She hastened to explain. “He
was a friend, not a suitor. Not really.”

Edmund reached out to touch her hand. “Then
he was a fool.”

She drew in a quavering breath. “I wrote him
and asked for help.”

“He was to meet you at the museum.” He said
it flatly, but a riot of emotion whirled in his gut. Anger at her
family, at her faithless friend. Wonder that she’d endured all of
that and still managed to come into his home and give of herself to
Aurelia, and all the rest of them too. And a deep, irresistible
urge to comfort her, to show her all the shining qualities that he
found in her.

She nodded miserably. “He said he would take
me to his mother’s house. That they would support me in my refusal
to go along with the betrothal. But it would seem that my
stepfather was right all along—no gentleman is interested in a
headstrong, willful girl.”

They ought to be shot, the pair of them.
Criminal, what two men had so casually done to a sensitive,
determined, giving girl.
Useful, not ornamental
, she’d said.
She’d given her all and had it devalued. She’d asked for help and
been abandoned. Now she believed herself to be less than the
beautiful, generous, amazing creature she truly was.

“Your stepfather was not right.” He slid his
touch around to find the delicate skin at her wrist. “Both of those
men are proud, blind fools.” His finger traveled, trailing up soft
fabric of her sleeve until he reached the fair, silky skin of her
nape. He allowed it to rest there, feeling the swift patter of her
pulse, watching the breath move quickly through her parted lips.
“And you—you are a treasure.”

Again, she held so still that he feared she
was about to pull away. She kept her eyes downcast. The shadows
were thickening now, beneath the trees.

He’d kept himself quiet and dark, like this
spot, for so long. Channeled all of his energy and passion into the
one bright spot of his mechanical work. No longer. Miss
Moreteon—Lisbeth—was working on him, like the sun and the
inevitable turn of the earth worked on frozen winter ground. Blood
surged in him with the force of a river in flood. His temperature
hiked high enough to heat the vicinity, to curl the leaves on the
trees. God knows he’d fought, but she was dragging him forcibly,
violently back to life.

He broke, sliding his hand around to cup her
nape. Easing down, he erased the distance between them and captured
her mouth with his.

She made a noise. Neither protest nor
surrender. Perhaps just
at last
. That’s what he felt as his
lips moved over the wonder of her mouth.

She gave way beneath him, pulling him in,
calling him closer. He followed and one of her hands crept upward,
taking its time, drifting higher until it reached his shoulder and
spread wide. Her other hand tucked into his waist. Ah, but her
mouth? Her mouth opened wide, tempting, beckoning him with velvet
softness.

He answered, sliding deep to taste her, claim
her. Damn the other men in her life for fools, but Edmund was
neither blind nor stupid. He tugged her against him, branding her
with his body and his deepening kiss. She sighed, melted against
him with a breathless sigh—but she gave him more than surrender.
She kissed him back with growing confidence—and the world shifted.
This. This was what he’d been waiting for. His question, her
answer, the perfect fit of her against him—it was a gift. With a
pounding heart, he accepted it.

“Miss Moreton?” Aurelia’s call came from
beyond the trees. “Sir?”

He pulled away, stared down into Lisbeth’s
bemused face. His hands, his body, they had not yet caught on to
the interruption. He held her tight still, pressed all along her
curve and sway, reluctant to let go.

She made a soft sound, of pleasure and
regret. Began to move away. He fought not to snatch her back. So
long. So long since he had allowed himself to want. Now, like a
river trapped behind a dam, want and need grew deeper, climbed
higher, threatened to spill over.