“Uh…” He coughed. Grinned. Coughed again. “I apologize,” he finally managed, his expression suitably serious.
For a heartbeat or two.
The next moment his face split into a wide grin. “Still. Very pretty stockings.” He pointed to her foot, which still rested on his thigh. Gently he cupped her foot in his hand, rubbed his thumb over the forget-me-nots embroidered on the white stocking. “Sweet.”
Delightful tingles spread up her leg, but not wanting to let him see how much this simple touch affected her, Amy said primly, “I take much pride in my stockings, I must inform you.”
“Pride, eh?” His hand crept up her calf and made her grip the edge of the bench because she suddenly felt rather weak.
And warm.
Definitely warm.
His eyes twinkled mischievously as he met her gaze. “So you admit to harboring peacockish feelings? How very shocking, Miss Bourne!”
She opened her mouth for a reply, but he chose that moment to brush his finger in a feather-light caress across the hollow of her knee. “Oooh,” she breathed.
His expression softened. “Yes, ‘oh,’” he murmured, and leaned in to drink her sigh from her lips. “Sweet.” He drew back to smile at her. “Very sweet.” With swift fingers he opened the bow at the top of the stocking and slid it down in a smooth stroke, all the while not breaking eye contact. Only when the stocking was off did he look down. His lips curved. “And sweet feet, too.” He tapped against her pink toes, ahhed and oohed over the bruise on the back of her foot. When he bowed his head to actually kiss it better, Amy closed her eyes and decided she was way beyond blushes, beyond mortification.
However, Fox soon proved her wrong. He started scattering kisses on her ankle and from there moved upward, bunching her pelisse and dress in one hand.
“What—?” Amy’s eyes shot open. “
Fox
!” Instead of an answer, he tickled her instep. “Stop it!” she gasped between giggles.
They engaged in a short, laughter-filled tussle over whether her dress would go up or not, and ended up kissing. Not short pecks this time, oh no! Hot, open-mouthed kisses that made her head swim and her heart sing. Somehow her fetching hat came to land on the ground behind the bench, and somehow his cravat became rumpled and halfway undone.
By the time they finally walked back to the house, Amy felt terribly tousled: her lips still tingled from his kisses; she could feel her hairdo hanging askew; and her hat would need a new ostrich feather. Yet Fox hadn’t fared better: cravat no longer immaculate nor snowy white, mud stains on his stockings and breeches, and his hat—she really wondered what had happened to his hat. One of them must have inadvertently leaned upon it.
“Heavens!” she groaned. “We must slip in through a side door. And creep up the back stairs!”
He laughed and pressed her hand. “Relax.”
“There is a backdoor, isn’t there? Oh, what would your family think if they caught us like this?” They would think her a wanton, that was for sure!
“Don’t fret.” He pressed a quick kiss onto her temple. “They will think we are very much in love.”
“But it is unseemly!” she wailed. She might have blown up any number of things in the past, why, she had even turned a whole manor house blue, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been taught about proper conduct and decorum. What
was
wrong with her?
His eyes widened in mock horror. “That we’re very much in love?”
She sent him a glare. “No, you great oaf. That we’re behaving like… like…”
“People very much in love?” he asked helpfully.
She swatted at his arm. “Like barbarians! Savages!”
“Savages, eh?” he mused. “I like the sound of that!”
“Fox!”
“Amy.”
With his eyes all shiny and sparkling, how could she possibly be mad at him? She sighed. The next moment, however, her head jerked around. “Did you hear that? There’s somebody coming! Quick, what shall we do?”
Manfully, he tried to hold back his laughter. “J-jump into the bushes?” he teased.
She cast wild looks here and there. “A statue? We could hide behind a statue,” she whispered urgently. “Where’s a statue?”
Fox pointed toward a small cherub. “This one?” He cocked his head to the side and eyed it thoughtfully. “On second thought, I hardly think both of us would fit behind it, do you?” He quivered with suppressed laughter. The sheephead! She gritted her teeth and kept walking.
But then they reached the crossways, where they met—
“Isabella!” Amy exclaimed in surprise.
The other young woman visibly started, then colored. However, she quickly caught herself. “Amelia.” She raised her chin. “And Mr. Stapleton.”
Amy goggled at her. “Whatever are you doing out here? Didn’t you say the vaporous air—”
Isabella sniffed. “I took my watercolors.” She held up the rumpled bag she was carrying. Glass clicked against glass. At the sound, her blush returned. Hastily she dropped the bag and let it dangle down her side once more. “Well,” she said, “I must be going. All that wet weather…” And she marched off.
Perplexed, Amy stared after her. “Whatever has got into her?” She looked up at Fox, but he only shrugged.
“Oh, I don’t know. Well, on the other hand”—he flashed her another of those devilish grins—“we might simply have shocked her witless.”
Amy narrowed her eyes at him. “How so?”
“Well,”—he cleared his throat, then leaned down to whisper confidentially—“given that you look utterly ravished…” He burst out laughing as she punched his arm. Still laughing, he slung an arm around her shoulder and pressed her to his side, so her mortified groan was muffled against the sleeve of his coat.
Chapter Eight
In the afternoon, Lady Rawdon showed Amy and Isabella around the house. “The original structure of the house is Jacobean,” she told them. “Before that Rawdon was a simple, small manor house, but when Sir Henry Stapleton bought the property in the early decades of the seventeenth century, he was determined to convert it into the most magnificent aristocratic house of his time—never mind that he was only a newly created baronet!”
They entered a long room lined by portraits all set in polished black frames. These formed an intriguing contrast to the walls done in terra-cotta red.
“The Red Picture Gallery,” the countess explained, “where all members of the Rawdon family are neatly lined up.”
“Like hens on a perch.” Amy grinned. Allegedly, her uncle’s house, Three Elms, had once sported such a picture gallery too, until a spell gone wrong had bounced through the gallery and the paintings had come alive—in a manner of speaking. Afterwards the people in the paintings and portraits had developed the uncanny habit of ogling everybody who walked past. As if this weren’t bad enough, one from the sixteenth century, showing a seedy fellow with a moth-eaten beard and an eye patch, had whistled after the maids, while another, Uncle Bourne’s great-great-something-aunt, had screeched, “My kittens! My kittens!” whenever it spotted somebody coming its way. It had been enough, Aunt Maria used to say whenever the conversation turned to the Bourne portrait gallery, to unnerve the bravest soul. In the end, she had banished all of the portraits to one of the rooms in the attic and had conveniently lost the key.
Amy had always suspected the story was concocted by her aunt in order to get rid of portraits that she had never liked in the first place.
Lady Rawdon chuckled. “
Exactly
like hens on a perch.”
At the repetition of her words, Amy’s amusement momentarily abated. Why did this phrase sound so eerily familiar? Almost as if…
She frowned.
Almost as if she had said it once before.
She shook her head, annoyed. Gracious, one could be led to assume that her head was full of cobwebs! And so she smiled wryly and stepped up to Lady Rawdon and Isabella, who had stopped in front of a small, dark portrait.
“And here he is: Sir Henry.” The countess grimaced. “He looks a rather disagreeable little man, doesn’t he? The conversion of Rawdon Park ruined him. He simply didn’t have enough funds to see it all through.”
No wonder then that Sir Henry made such a sour face in his portrait!
“However, he did hire one of the best architects of his time, Robert Lyminge, who also built Hatfield House for the Earl of Salisbury and later converted Blickling Hall. Indeed, Rawdon Park looks remarkably like Blickling.” The countess heaved a small sigh. “Unfortunately, Sir Henry died before everything was finished.”
“And then?” Isabella asked as they continued walking.
“His son”—the countess pointed to the next portrait in line—“had the building work stopped at once. I assume the family regarded Rawdon Park as a burden. But because it was the only estate they had, they couldn’t very well sell it. In subsequent years the family kept a low profile.”
“Good for them during the Civil War, I assume.” Amy looked at the portraits that followed: men with large, ruffled collars and women with voluminous, glittering dresses with lace at the necklines and sleeves. Many of them were depicted with their favorite dogs and their small children, the sex of the latter made undistinguishable by infant skirts and caps.
“Quite so. The family came through the Civil War and the Protectorate mostly unscathed.” The countess contemplated the next two portraits. “In those days the Fens were still undrained in large parts and quite unnavigable if you didn’t know the land. So the Stapletons ducked their heads and”—a mischievous smile played around Lady Rawdon’s lips—“stayed put.”
“But how did they become the Earls of Rawdon?” Isabella asked, and for the first time she seemed genuinely interested.
Lady Rawdon stopped in front of the next picture, a larger-than-life portrait of a beautiful woman clad in splendid silks and muslin, with skin as pale as milk, a full rosebud mouth, and ebony dark hair laid in tight ringlets. Next to her stood a young black girl who offered her a large shell full of pearls. “That was all due to her, Henrietta, the sister of the fifth baronet, and mistress of George II.”
Isabella looked scandalized. “You mean—?” she spluttered.
Lady Rawdon sighed. “I’m afraid so.”
“Oh dear.” Amy bit her lip to suppress a giggle. From baronet to earl—all on account of one lusty sister! “Who is the black girl?”
“Flavia, her serving maid.” Thoughtfully the countess regarded the young maid. “It is said that the king bought her for Henrietta from the captain of a slave ship.”
A shudder ran down Amy’s spine. She was more than glad to leave the picture gallery behind and to be shown through the salons and the formal Brown Drawing Room.
The main house of Rawdon Park was built around a courtyard, with towers on all four corners and an additional clock tower rising over the main entrance at the front. The heart of the latter consisted of a wooden construction that seemed alarmingly fragile as they climbed the narrow staircase to the small platform underneath the bell in order to enjoy the view.
Yet what met them at the top were two small boys with guilty faces.
“Mother!”
“I say!” The countess put her hands on her hips. “Were you not told to stay with your sister’s nursery maid as long as Mr. Ford is away?”
Not meeting her eye, her sons looked down and scraped their feet over the floor. “Mmhm.”
Lady Rawdon sighed. “Well come then, you two rascals.”
Shamefaced, Dick and Pip trotted after their mother as she marched down the stairs of the clock tower. Isabella grimaced and followed, but not without muttering something about unruly brats under her breath.
Amy rolled her eyes. Trust Isabella to find fault even with children! For a moment she allowed herself to enjoy the view from the clock tower before she hurried after them.
When they reached the Long Gallery, the countess stopped and turned to her sons. “And what can you tell our guests about our library?”
Her eldest threw Amy and Isabella a skeptical look as if he could hardly believe anybody might be interested in an old library. He took a deep breath. “Great-grandfather had the bookcases installed. He liked books.”
“But the ceiling was there long before great-grandfather.” Pip craned his neck. “There are allegories of the five senses—look, there’s the sense of smell.” He pointed.
Amy looked up to admire the intricate stucco work. “I see.”
Pip skipped a few paces ahead. “And here’s the fireplace. Grandfather had all fireplaces converted to fit Rumford grates.” He beamed at them, which prominently displayed his gap-teeth. The pride he took in the new, modern grates was endearing.
“Much to our delight.” Lady Rawdon smiled. “If you like reading, Miss Bentham, Miss Bourne, do feel free to help yourselves to the books in our library.” She winked at them. “We also have a very nice selection of gothic novels and Minerva Press books.”
“And chapbooks, of course,” Amy said cheerfully.
“Of course.” Lady Rawdon laughed. “How do you like
The Horrible Histories
, Miss Bourne?” They continued walking down the gallery.
“Exceedingly well,” Amy responded. “I’ve just reached the episode in which Markander slays the horrible three-headed monster poodle by hitting it over the head with
The Historie of Britannia
, and is granted knighthood as a result of it.” She chuckled. “The question of course is whether he hit the poodle only over one head or over all three of them!”
The countess’s lips twitched. “A grave and serious question indeed!” She turned to Isabella. “Do you also enjoy chapbooks, Miss Bentham?”
“Chapbooks!” The young woman’s horrified face was almost comical. She made it sound as if reading chapbooks were akin to running naked through the streets. “Indeed I do not!” she said.
Lady Rawdon seemed taken aback. “Oh.”
There was an awkward pause.
Amy cleared her throat. “Speaking of slaying beasts by hitting them over the head with a book, didn’t an Oxonian kill a boar that way?”
Pip, who was skipping alongside her, crowed, “Uncle Stapleton went to Oxford!”
“Did he?” Amy couldn’t help that a broad smile spread across her face. How extraordinarily pleasing to learn new things about her beloved! So pleasing in fact, that she wanted to hug herself with joy.