Elisabeth Fairchild (19 page)

The noisy, crowded brilliance of the Hall was a marked transition from the dark, musty silence of the attic. Driven indoors by the rain, the house milled with people. Among them, where he had not the privacy required to argue his case, Aurora spoke to him in a politely lowered voice, their conversation lost in the babble that flowed around them.

“Will you now leave me unmolested by your presence for the remainder of my time at Holkham Hall? I’ve no desire to be troubled further by lessons in lovemaking, sir.”

She made her request stiff-backed and proud, cheeks suffused in embarrassed color, eyes never remaining in contact with his for more than a moment. Gathering pride about her like a cloak, she slipped his coat from her shoulders.

Miles knew better than to challenge her edict. He knew, from long experience, not to press a point when it served only to irritate.

“Your wish is my command.” He bowed. “You have but to ask and it is done.” With no more argument than that he turned and walked away, the smell of her, the very heat from her body gathered up in his arms in the folds of the coat she had worn. As he walked away he could feel her gaze follow him.

His heart, his very soul cried out to him to stop, to turn, to fall at her feet and beg her forgiveness, but intellect saved him from the error of responding in such a foolish, lovelorn manner--intellect and experience. He would make his peace with Aurora, when both of their emotions were more settled. He knew she was as affected by their kisses as he. He had awakened passion, perhaps for the first time within her. But, this frightened, infant passion must be allowed time to grow and mature. He would wait for a more precipitous time and place to press his suit with Miss Aurora Ramsay. He had pressed it too far today, perhaps irrevocably so.

Aurora spent a restless evening playing cards in a room jammed with people. Never alone, either with Miles Fletcher or with her own thoughts, she could not remember a time when she had felt lonelier. In the darkness of her bedroom, she spent an even more restless night, tossing and turning, reliving the dark moment of her weakness in the attic, surprised and unsettled. Kissed by a man, passionately kissed, her lips still burned to think of such kisses! Who was to blame? No one but herself. She had wantonly rushed into Miles Fletcher’s arms! Her fear of the dark was not excuse enough for such loose behavior.

Admittedly, Miles had taken advantage of her mad dash in the dark, but she had allowed him, even encouraged him to do so! Aurora was mortified. Whatever had taken possession of her better senses?

Feelings she had never before encountered had been unleashed, feelings intimately connected with the brilliant, passionate, larger-than-life canvases hidden away in the darkness above her head. The imagery of those paintings would not release their hold on her consciousness any more than the tactile sense of the warmth of her comforter could be disassociated from warm memories of Miles Fletcher’s comforting arms when she had admitted her fear of the dark.

As a result, Aurora woke the following morning with a sense of dissatisfaction and hunger. Breakfast did not satisfy the emptiness within. She could not wait to be in the saddle. She yearned for the familiar pounding rhythm of a horse beneath her at full gallop. That she must first put herself in the company of Lord Walsh and concentrate on pleasantries so that he might be drawn to her in the very manner Miles Fletcher had been, seemed an almost unbearable irony. Aurora was thus sorely out of sorts when she met Lord Walsh in the teaming doorway to the stablesas planned.

“Good morning.” He shouted to be heard above the noise of the sheep and those gathered for the day’s shearing, inside the stables. The skies were clear but the grounds were muddy. “Are you ready to ride?”

“Never more so!” said she with a level of vehemence and passion that exceeded even the noise such conversation must overcome. Her tone gave him a moment’s pause before he threw her into the saddle with an accommodating, “Let’s be off, then.”

To Aurora’s profound relief, Walsh, unlike Fletcher, was not especially cheerful or talkative of a morning. He focused instead on his mount, the heavy ground and the route they would take. Aurora gladly followed suit. Happy in the surging, heart-racing, mind-numbing exertion of a flat-out, mud-flinging gallop, she found exhilarating release from all that troubled her.

It occurred to her later, as she relived every moment of the morning, that her ride with Walsh had been like a dash across the countryside with a shadow of herself. They were superbly matched riders. Like a team of horses they never fell out of step or questioned one another’s direction. Their skills, their knowledge, the very subject matter they discussed--for they did at last begin to talk when the horses were exhausted and their own breath came in identical clouds of chill morning steam--was of a gratifying equality.

They spoke of the ground they had ridden over, the condition of the horses, the suitability of one bit over another. Both evidenced appreciation for the abundance of trees Coke was in the habit of planting, heartily approved his plans to reclaim land along the seafront and the layout of the model village he proposed to erect. The superiority of the stock to be seen grazing on his land was discussed at length, neither of them surprised to discover that their philosophies of breeding technique ran almost perfectly parallel.

Parallelism became a source of amusement to Aurora, so nearly did they agree on every issue. The only surprise in their conversation was its very compatibility. Aurora could not have scripted a more amiable exchange.

Humor was the only area in which they seemed at odds. Several times Aurora made a particularly clever turn of phrase, twice she interjected the perfect pun into the midst of serious discussion, in hopes of lightening the mood, but each time her jest flew right over Lord Walsh’s head. Miles Fletcher would have rolled his gill-flower blue eyes with delight in each circumstance, but she reminded herself she did not take this agreeable jaunt to think of Miles. She came to forget him.

She made a concerted effort to forget Miles Fletcher’s smiles, eyes and most of all, his mouth. She convinced herself that Miles Fletcher’s kisses had not shaken her any more than another man’s kisses might. She did in fact study rather intently the curve of Walsh’s lips in the midst of something he was saying. Surely these lips would rouse within her the same restlessness that had kept her tossing through the night.

“Would you care to be on hand, Miss Ramsay?” her companion inquired in that instant. “I know some females find such an event not at all to their taste.”

Oh dear! She had not been attending. On hand for what? She could not tell him she had been woolgathering with regard to his lips in the midst of one of his most animated soliloquies. The man she meant to have as husband would surely judge her distraction harshly.

“And when is this to take place?” she asked, wondering if she might formulate her response based on related information.

“The day after tomorrow. The mare is to be brought to Coke’s stable from a neighboring farm where I have put her to graze. put her

Breeding. They had been talking about the breeding of colts. Of course! He was asking her if she wished to be on hand for the covering of his mare. “I’d be honored,” she said, winning a nod of approval.

With that nod the morning might be deemed a complete success. Lord Walsh asked if she cared to take breakfast with him when they had stabled their mounts. Over ham, toast and tea, they arranged to meet again, to tour a display of farm implements.

The morning was seamless perfection, an unruffling
fait accompli
. When at last she and Walsh parted, Aurora could not for the life of her decide why she was so completely miserable.

She halfway convinced herself that lack of sleep was to blame, nothing more. She went to her room to lie down. There the answer to her dissatisfaction stared at her from the mantelpiece. A bouquet of fresh wildflowers had been arranged there, every one of them a bloom she had identified for Miles Fletcher. Tucked among them was the love knot Fletcher had once handed to her along with a proposition. This time it came with a note.

The love knot made Aurora frown. She pulled it from the midst of the flowers as if it were a snake, ready to bite her. This braided bit of grass and all it stood for made her realize exactly what stood between her and her happiness with Walsh. Miles Fletcher! Miles Fletcher and the kiss in the attic, that surprising, baffling, overwhelmingly satisfying kiss she had exchanged with a man who in no way matched her temperament or purpose as well as Walsh did.

Her mouth! Her treacherous, traitorous mouth. Why must her lips tingle every time she so much as thought of Miles Fletcher? She ran a hand across her lips and opened the note.

Aurora

I have not forgotten the bargain we made, nor the reason it was agreed upon in the first place. I would still deliver on my promises. If you can find it in your heart to forgive my recent lapse of both manners and judgment, meet me in the marble hall at two. I would like very much to dance with you.

On my word, I will be a gentleman,

Miles

Miles pulled a plump, gold turnip from his pocket and flicked open the ornately chased watch casing. Ten minutes until two. He came early to the entry hall he had chosen as meeting place. What better spot to decide Fate than in a hall modeled after Fortuna Virilis, the Roman temple of Justice?

This marble-walled entry was a cool relief after the heat outdoors. An imposing work of artistry, the space was meant for little more than walking through. But what a walk! From the flowing, marble stairway that led to the sunken center of the hall, to the vaulted heights of the intricately coffered ceiling with bands of cherubs, fruit and flowers, every inch, top to bottom, had been planned to make an impression. First impressions were important, after all.

Miles remembered distinctly his first impression of Aurora. He wondered what her first impression of him had been as he took a seat on the wooden bench at the foot of the steps and stared at cherubs above.

Perhaps a cupid lurked. He hoped so. Miles felt as if he and Aurora entered into a new stage in their relationship if this meeting took place. They had come to an entry hall of their own, a place where each must choose between any number of doors leading either deeper into what lay between them, or out of it altogether. He flicked open the face of his watch again. could not look at the beautiful tangled chasing on its casing without thinking of the love knot he had left in Aurora’s room. Would she come? It was almost two, the designated time of their assignation.

Wheels and hoof beats sounded, then a flurry of footsteps outside and the entry hall was suddenly loud with guests arriving. A retinue of servants flew to meet them. Like a summer shower, the cloud of visitors moved through the entry hall into the main body of the house, shedding hats, cloaks, canes and gloves like rain. The noise of them faded away. Miles consulted his watch again. Two exactly.

Was that footsteps? He closed his eyes, the better to concentrate. Footfall loomed and then faded away--false hope. He opened his eyes, snapped shut the watch and stroked the uneven surface of its casing. He would wait until two-fifteen.

The friezes to be seen between fluted alabaster columns lining the overhanging gallery and the smooth polished marble that faced the walls of the sunken center of the room were distraction enough to keep his mind occupied for a minute or two. The walls here, the very columns, had about them the look of milk and coffee poured together but not yet stirred. Splashes of rich brown swirled through creamy white. These weightless, swirling, cloud-like masses of marble were hemmed in and earth-bound by two dark, chocolate-colored bands of Greek wave pattern.

There was just such a bold pattern to Miles’s asking Aurora to meet him here, a mix of light and dark. The salesman within Miles knew that sometimes the best way to sell a client on what they wanted was to demonstrate its superior qualities, then deny any desire to sell. Miles meant to do just that in this dancing lesson. His goal was clearly lodged in his mind. He would teach Aurora Ramsay to dance as promised. He would teach her so that she might dance away from his arms and into Walsh’s, but he meant to teach her in such a way that every step she took would have her thinking of him, just as he’d had thoughts of nothing and no one else since that amazing moment of darkness in the attic when she had thrown herself against his chest and willingly submitted to his kisses.

Another squall of people swept through the doors. Miles stared, unseeing, at the golden knots that held back time. Absent-mindedly he greeted an acquaintance, who called out his name in passing.

He had known his heart was lost from the moment he had kissed Aurora Ramsay over an
entente
fan, but he had not known her heart was equally engaged until she had kissed him in the rain-scented attic. She was, he was certain, as affected as he by an undeniable passion.