Dair Devil (27 page)

He left her bewildered and adrift.

“Oh hell…” he muttered. “Hell and bloody damnation…”

F
URIOUS
WITH
HIMSELF
for vocalizing his frustration at an inability to articulate his thoughts in any meaningful way that would convey the earth shattering nature of his revelation, Dair gave up the attempt. He might not be able to explain to her how he felt, but he could certainly show her. So he kissed Rory a second time.

Hands spanning her small waist, he pressed his mouth to hers, all reticence shattered.

A
RDENT
AND
ALL
-
CONSUMING
, this kiss left Rory in no doubts as to his desire. And if she did breathe, she was not conscious of doing so. If she had a single thought, it was that she had dreamed of this moment, of this particular kiss, and with this particular man, since her thirteenth summer, when Alisdair Fitzstuart had called in his regimental uniform to take leave of her grandfather and brother.

Bereft of a sense of time and space, she was aware only of his mouth, the lingering insistence of his tongue, and the wonderful way he made her feel. She wilted, yet was more alive all over than she had ever been. She wanted him to pick her up and carry her to a shady spot under the trees and lie with her amongst the wildflowers. She wanted him to undress before her, so that she could again admire him naked, but this time all of him; and she wanted to caress him, everywhere. More than anything, she wanted him to make love to her as the couple in the temple tapestries made love, bodies unashamedly naked and entwined, and in the throes of an all-consuming passion.

But not here. Not on Banks House land. Not within walking distance of the house where lived his son and the woman he would have married, had it not been deemed an unequal match. Not with him being called from afar, so insistently, like a servant scratching at the door with some urgent purpose, and who would not go away no matter how many times ordered to do so. But… Old Bert was not one of her grandfather’s servants… Why would he be calling out to her, and to his lordship…

That broke the spell.

With a hand hard-pressed to Dair’s chest, she untangled her legs from their anchorage about his thighs, pulled her mouth from his and sat up. She flashed him a warning then bowed her head, hands back in her lap, fingers clenched tightly together. She did not know why she dropped her chin in such a cowardly fashion, because she was not ashamed of kissing him. It was an instinctive reaction, as if she had been caught out being terribly wicked, though this was not how she felt in the least. Yet she realized her actions must have signaled this to him because his hands loosened from her waist and he stepped away from the wall and from her, with an inarticulate apology she did not quite catch, such was her preoccupation with her own cowardice, though the sincerity of his apology was clear enough in his tone.

Had she been attentive, not only to the essence of his apology but the actual words spoken, she would have realized there and then that something momentous had happened, far beyond the kiss they had shared. He had called her
Delight
, as he had at Romney’s Studio. It was only later, when Mr. William Watkins and her brother arrived on the scene, that she recalled Dair’s apology and his use of the moniker Delight, and it changed everything.

For now, sitting on the half-wall of stone between the Physic Garden and Banks House, Rory was too caught up in salvaging what dignity was left to her. She slowly lifted her hands and proceeded to the mundane task of smoothing and repinning her mussed hair, not a second look at the Major. Nonetheless, she was acutely aware of his proximity, that the masculine scent of him still lingered, and the salty taste of him remained on her tongue, and her face flamed to a guilty hue of pomegranate.

S
TILL
GROGGY
with desire and caught in the moment, Dair was slow to react to rejection. Breathing ragged, he stared at her, confused, not understanding why she had broken off such a perfectly wonderful kiss. Had he been too insistent? Should he have been gentler? She was young and inexperienced… That had to be it. He needed to take matters one step at a time. His ardency had frightened her. God, he was an inconsiderate loggerhead! Musing on this, he put a hand to his cheek and felt the hair under his fingertips. He pulled a face, but it gave him an idea. What if it was his beard that had made her baulk? She had not recoiled at Romney’s Studio, far from it, so why now? It had to be the facial hair. Damn it! He should have shaved at Portsmouth before heading out. But he had been too eager to get home to spend the day with his son on his birthday. And he’d not even managed to do that right! Great blunderhead that he was!

One too many times acting the part of Rodomonte, the boastful boisterous hero of Ariosto, had turned him into the same. For the first time in his life he was not only annoyed but also ashamed at allowing his desire and his gadso to dictate his manners. He had an overwhelming need to take her in his arms and console her, to tell her of his intentions, but now was not the moment; and she would hardly believe him, given his actions.

So he stepped away from the wall with a respectful bow, hand in his frock coat pocket clenching his silver cheroot case, and muttering an apology that was out of his mouth before he thought much about it. And that’s when he, too, heard his name and swiveled about on a booted heel to discover Old Bert tramping across the open field, and holding aloft a wide-brimmed straw hat with blue silk ribbons trailing in the breeze. The old retainer was red in the face and puffing. He must have run most of the way.

When he reached Dair, Old Bert gave him the hat with a nod and then dropped his gaze to the grass, not a look at Rory. His furtiveness was evidence enough he had witnessed their intimacy. That he remained where he stood after being dismissed had Dair move a step closer, realizing the old man wanted to tell him something. He just hoped that with permission to speak, Old Bert had the wherewithal to remain as one blind, as all good servants were wont, and wasn’t about to mention the obvious.

“Beggin’ your lordship’s pardon. There be a gentleman in yonder garden watching. I seen him from the trees, when his head popped out of the hedgerow. Reason for callin’ out in the way I did. I meant no disrespect or offence.”

“None taken. What’s he look like?”

“Hatchet-faced. Small eyes. Fancy hair.”

“Tall or short?”

“Short.”

“Seen him before?”

Old Bert shook his bald head.

Then it wasn’t Grasby. Not that his best friend was given to skulking in the shrubbery. Had it been Grasby, he’d have marched straight up to him, pulled his sister off, and rightly punched his nose. Grasby wasn’t a coward, and he wasn’t short. But he knew one of the party on Shrewsbury’s barge who was both. He hoped his intuition proved him right. He itched to rearrange the officious weasel’s neckcloth.

“This sneakup got any muscle to speak of? Do I need to brace myself?”

Old Bert gave a snort of derision and smiled a toothless grin. “Not on y’life, m’lord! He’s a milksop as ever I seen one. Not that I seen one. But I’d know one if I did, and he’s it! You’d only have to poke him with y’finger and he’d be to the ground in an instant, with his two hands over his head and whimpering like a girl!”

“That about sums up the Weasel. Good. I’ll save the new skin on my knuckles. Is he still in the shrubbery?”

“No, m’lord. As soon as y’turned your back he showed h’self—”

“Did he indeed.”

“—and went direct to your sweetling, where he be now in conversation.”

Dair resisted the urge to turn around. He put up a black eyebrow at Old Bert’s moniker for Miss Talbot, but made no comment. Fiddling with the blue silk ribbons of Rory’s straw hat, he said flatly,

“Tell Jamie I’ll be back up at the house within the quarter hour. And Mrs. Banks has permission to go through my satchels. There are a couple of bottles of port, a string bag full of oranges for the boys, and a mountain of laundry. And I need my razors sharpened.”

“I’ll do the razors for ye lordship!”

Dair didn’t have the heart to refuse the old retainer. What Farrier would think of letting anyone else near his master’s personal grooming implements he would deal with when the time came. For now he just had to get this beard off his face so Miss Aurora Talbot had no excuse not to kiss him again. And he would kiss her again, of that he was as certain as day followed night. And the next time there would be no excuses, no interruptions, and no weasel-like Peeping Tom in the shrubbery.

He watched Old Bert trudge back up to Banks House the way he came, the old retainer whistling as he went, thinking about the best way to deal with Mr. William Watkins and his perfidious propensities.

He might refer to Watkins by his Harrow schoolboy nickname Weasel, but the man was not a weasel, he was a snake. He was a backstabbing sanctimonious coward who had slithered his way through school and had done the same to become the smug know-it-all-secretary to England’s Spymaster General, and by virtue of his sister’s marriage to Grasby.

The man didn’t deserve to put his knobby knees under the desk of secretary to Lord Shrewsbury, where he had access to all manner of state and personal secrets; particularly the personal. There was no higher moral ground with Watkins. He was no selfless functionary doing his bit for his country. He was not motivated by a sense of duty, or the imperative to keep papal tyranny from England’s shores, or the patriotic need to uphold the right of every Englishmen to live in the most liberal-minded country on earth. And he certainly had never offered to get his hands dirty by carrying out covert missions beyond the paperwork on his desk.

Dair had wondered how a man of Shrewsbury’s masterful cunning and superior insight could employ such a self-server, only to be enlightened by the Spymaster that he knew exactly what type of creature he had employed, and that it was best to keep a snake close than to allow it to slither off into the tall grass not knowing its movements, and thus be unaware when it would strike.

Now, squaring his shoulders, Dair braced himself to play the arrogant blusterer. It never failed to put Watkins on edge, that at any moment he might be met with physical violence. But when he turned to saunter back to the wall, dangling the wide brimmed straw bergere by its blue silk ribbons, he was confronted with a most astonishing sight.

Mr. William Watkins was doing his best to keep hold of Miss Talbot’s hand, while she was equally determined to have her fingers released. And when the man rose up off one bended knee to lunge at Miss Talbot, she thrusting out her arms to keep him at a distance, Dair’s intended pretense evaporated like a popped soap bubble.

He broke into a stride, gripped by the primal urge to protect, regardless of the personal consequences to himself. It was an instinct first experienced upon the birth of his son, and most recently at Brooklyn Heights, when he had rescued a loyalist widow and her two small children caught in the crossfire of battle. But there was something new in the emotional mix this time, something he had never experienced before, and one that surprised and vexed him further. He was covetous—irately so.

No one touched what was now his—
no one
.

S
EVENTEEN

H 
OW
M
R
. W
ILLIAM
W
ATKINS
came to be on bended knee before Rory, with a wrathful Dair Fitzstuart bearing down upon him like a wounded bull, could be traced to a conversation with Drusilla, Lady Grasby, an hour earlier.

Brother and sister had partaken of nuncheon in the opulent cabin of Lord Shrewsbury’s shallop. The gold damask curtains were drawn together on those windows where the liveried rowers were eating their fare, while those cabin windows with a view of watercraft plying the Thames were cracked open to allow for a pleasant breeze.

There was enough food and drink for a party of six, but Lady Grasby and Mr. Watkins were the only ones to sit down to snap peas, salmagundi salad, terrine of duck, a variety of cheeses and the various fruits of the season. They ate in silence, and to the accompaniment of laughter and conversation from their servants, who had taken a picnic ashore under the shade of the willows along the bank. Such merriment merely underscored the irritation and embarrassment of brother and sister at being abandoned by Lord Grasby and his sister.

“I understand your continued annoyance with your husband for his behavior at Romney’s studio,” said William Watkins, pushing aside his empty Worcester plate, “but you must find it in your heart to forgive
and
forget. If you do not, there will be no heir, and you will find yourself divorced and both of us disgraced.”

“
Divorced
?” Lady Grasby sat up, eyes wide with fright. She swallowed; fingers hard about the closed black-lacquered sticks of her chinoiserie fan. “I do not want to divorce Grasby. I like being his wife. I like him. I may even be in love with him… And I want to be Countess of Shrewsbury, William. I
must
be.”

“Then give him a child, any child, boy or girl, will do for the present. That is how far you have fallen in Lord Shrewsbury’s estimation. A child will show you are capable of breeding, and seal the breach. When the longed-for son arrives, you will be forever cemented in Grasby’s heart and in his life. Nothing can touch you then. You will be Countess of Shrewsbury, my dear.”

“It is all the fault of
that man
, William. If Fitzstuart had died in battle, Grasby could have mourned his friend, and our life without him would’ve been perfectly wonderful. It is unchristian of me to say so, but that is how I
feel
. I was so happy when he joined his regiment in the Colonies and left us alone. I prayed—yes,
prayed
—he would not return! The last thing I expected was for him to come back a war hero.
That man
has turned me into a bad person, William. Please, please tell me it is not my fault.”