Elisabeth Fairchild (17 page)

“Do I?” He turned to look at her, eyes bright, his features stark in the flood of golden light. So very handsome, a chiseled, gilded statue of Apollo. Unreachable. Beyond her mortal touch. She was but a governess, and he—

“It troubles me . . .” He bent, picked up a stone, tension eddying between them like the ripples on the lake when he threw it. “That my daughter fears me, that she finds little to say to me.”

“She is . . .”
Mortal. Like me.

“Easily wounded?” he asked, and turned to look her way.

“Yes.”
Walking wounded. The child forgotten. As I was forgotten by a father who drank, who forgot my very existence, my future
.

What to say to this father who did not forget? Who looked at her in such a way she would not have him look away?

The voice of the lake soothed her, the water’s gentle movement, the bird’s settling calls, the fact that he kept his distance and spoke of his daughter’s needs.

“Give her time,” she suggested. “And the right questions. You will draw her out. She wants to talk to you.”

“Did your father know the right questions to ask?”

She remained silent a moment, remembering, sadness stealing over her like the shadow of night. “We rarely spoke.”

“Is that so?” Interest in his response, in the arrested arc of his arm, a stone temporarily stayed from its watery end.

I did not mean to rouse this interest. This keen look in his eyes. Did I?

“A foolish man, then?”

How to get out of this conversation? Too keen these delving looks, this quickening within. “On occasion all men are foolish.”

“And women?” His voice lowered, lent deeper meaning to the question, his tone almost seductive.

“Doubly so.”
Am I foolish now to revel in his interest, in the sunset cerulean of his eyes?

“What stimulated your father’s foolishness, that he would not recognize his daughter’s longing?”

She swallowed hard, a frisson of expectation accompanying his words. Did he know he stimulated longings as he stood there? As they opened hearts and souls in the glimmering light of dusk? She did not want to tell him her father’s foolishness, did not want to look into the knowing blue of sunstruck eyes. He recognized her thoughts and feelings far better than her father ever had. In that way he became dangerous.

“Come. Come. A simple question surely, Miss Deering.”

She shook her head, dared a quick glance up at him, as the light faded, the gleam in his eyes doused along with the sun. “You will not like the answer.”

“How so?”

The last of the sun, the last glint in his eyes.

“He was foolish,” she blurted. “In the same manner you once were.”

“A rogue?” So swift the question, his tone defensive. Gravel scraped harshly beneath his boot. She found herself surprised she no longer considered the description apt.

“Women were not father’s downfall.”

He stared at her a moment, lips pursed--thinking, tossing the stone from hand to hand. The pink wash of color in the sky softened the harder edges of his features even as shadows gathered in the hollows of cheek and brow. She could see by the movement of his eyes the moment in which the answer came to him. He flung the stone.

“A drinker, then.”

She nodded.

He leaned forward with an expression of disbelief, of regret as gray and overshadowing as the coming night.

She said softly, the words flowing like water, “A profound and angry drinker. It destroyed his good temper, his marriage, his sense of purpose, his love of friends and family. And when there was nothing left of fortune, or future to lay waste to, it destroyed his will to go on.”

He met this revelatory outpouring of words with shocked silence. Even the birds ceased their chatter. Only the voice of the lake gathered and ebbed between them like the last of the light. Fingers of darkness threatened to steal his face from view.

I should not have told him. Not thus. Too harsh the words. Too bald.

“I am sorry,” he said then, an earnest weight to the words, and she did not want him sorry, did not want pity. Then he said, “I have been operating under a misassumption.”

Misassumption?

He moved closer. “I thought you hesitated for other reasons.”

“Hesitated?”

He closed the distance between them with a fluid grace, nothing awkward in his movements as he loomed closer. So dark his eyes now, deeply shadowed, wells of knowing. As if he saw her, really saw her, even in the gloom. As if he knew far more than she wished him to know in that enveloping darkness as the mountains closed in, encroaching upon the silvered light sparkling upon the dark silk of the lake.

“In coming to Wales.”

Out of the gloom rose specter of Palmer in the dark shape of Lord Wharton--too close--he stood too close--closing in like the darkness, like the mountains, like her fear.

Her heart thudded hard. She clenched her hands at her sides, prepared to fend him off.

“Am I very much like him?” he asked, no more than a silhouette against the lake’s pewter gleam.

Her head jerked, her breath caught on her surprise. Did he mean her father? Or Palmer? It did not matter, really, the answer was the same either way. “No. Not in the least.”

A shadow among the shadows, features swallowed by the night, his voice teasing, seductive, all too dangerous, spoke from the gathering gloom.

“But then, you have never seen me at my worst.”

She rubbed her hands together. Nervous. Cold. “No. Nor never hope to, my lord. I should have to leave you under such circumstances.”

“A dire threat indeed.” He sounded amused.

She hung her head, stung.

Better able to see than she--his back to the reflection of the lake, her face fully to it--he reached out from the darkness to cup her chin in kid gloved hand, the sudden soft friction a pleasantly sensual shock. Elaine opened her eyes wider, pulling in a sudden breath, the leathery scent of him. She struggled to catch glimpse of him, struggled with the sudden rush of desire that spread from the point of her chin where his touch, gloved though it was, warmed her flesh.

“Come. Come, Miss Deering,” he murmured. “No downcast looks.”

She listened for the hint of seduction in the fascinating, silken undertone of his voice. Soft, like his touch, gloved like his hand, and yet heat pulsed in his every word.

“I’ve no desire to lose you. I give you no good reason to leave my service, do I?”

She took a deep, steadying breath, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, away from his hand, the heat--the lure of both. So stiff her voice sounded in response. “Not yet, my lord.”

She turned to go.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice so very gentle she must stop and turn.

How warm my cheeks. How loud my heartbeat. His touch, like a candle’s, burns.

The darkness could not claim him entirely. She caught the gleam of his eyes, the pale edge of his neckcloth against the dark wedge of the mountains. “What would you thank me for, my lord?”

“For answering difficult questions forthrightly. For allowing me a glimpse into my daughter’s mind.”

“Yes, my lord.” She took a step away from the lure of his voice, his gratitude, her desire for more of both.

“And now, before you slip away, Miss Deering,” His voice reached out to stay her. “I would--”

“Yes, my lord?” she whispered, afraid if she spoke any louder her voice might give her away, afraid he must hear in it her desire to stay with him here in the darkness, lulled by the magic of the night air, and the voice of the waves upon the shore. Afraid he would feel the building heat within, a desire that seemed born of the darkness--and the memory of his touch upon her chin.

“I would tell you the tale of the lake.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Legend has it, you see, that there is a palace under the waters of Llyn Tegid.”

“A palace?”

The lake hushed against the bank, hushed the secrets he would reveal. He closed the distance between them again to whisper, “A hidden treasure, Miss Deering, in the lake’s dark, watery depths. It is said that a court musician tried to warn the king that his kingdom would soon be lost to the lake, but the king would not listen to his faithful servant.”

He stepped too close in the darkness, his whispered tone provocative.

The feeling, the throbbing heat he roused within her was strange treasure. A treasure she could not refuse. Her own golden palace. A hidden lake of burgeoning desire. The breeze off the water moved like cool fingers through her hair, cooling her chin where he had cupped her face in gloved palm. She ached with a startlingly strong need for him to touch her again. She pictured for a moment his taking her in his arms, as Palmer had. Pressing her to a wall, body and lips a liquid lake in mouths met.

“Intriguing idea, is it not?”

She blinked, shook her head and turned her back to him. He meant the drowned palace, not these wild, wanton thoughts.
I must drown these feelings. This shocking need. Bury them deep.

“The idea of anything precious lost forever is undeniably intriguing. What happened?” She could hear wistfulness, an undisguised trace of sadness in her voice. She hoped it was lost in the darkness, in the unending wash of the waves, like the palace in the lake, like the possibility that this man, of all men, might ever have occasion to honorably quench the knifelike flame of her desire.

He followed her in the darkness, closed the distance between them once more.

“The fair musician, a harpist, was swept up on the wings of a magical bird to the top of one of the local peaks.” His arms spread wide behind her like wings, and he pointed over her shoulder toward the hills, his body blocking the wind. She wanted to lean into him, to feel the strength of his chest against her back, but she refrained.

“And the king?”

“Oh, but I am not done with the harpist, yet.” He leaned closer, voice dropping, breath warm against her ear. She closed her eyes, savoring the smell of his cologne. “She spent a cold night alone on the mountain top.”

She tilted her head, that his breath might touch her neck. “Yes?”

“A good word, yes. The king should have said it to her more often.”

“Oh?”

He moved, his whisper finding her other ear, the touch of his breath caressing the other side of her neck. “Yes. For she woke to find the king, whom she did love, and all his court were lost to the lake’s watery embrace, which overtook them in the night.”

She sighed.
A dangerous thing, to be overtaken in the night.
She took a deep breath and stepped away from the dangerous warmth on her neck. What madness was this, born of moonlight and fairy tales? She contemplated trifling with a known rogue, an admitted rogue! A dangerous undertaking. The height of foolishness to give him any hint of surrender. There were no fairy tale palaces for a plain governess who allowed her virtue to be compromised.

“Good night, my lord,” she said firmly, as she turned her back on the moonlight and a magical tale with which he meant to seduce her. “I thank you for sharing the story.”

From the darkness, his voice drifted, so gentle she could not be sure she heard correctly.

“Good night, my Deering.”

V
al arranged for a boat the following day.

“Whatever would we be needing a boat for?” Mrs. Olive was not at all pleased.

“Why to see the lake, of course, and perhaps to fish.”

Just like when I was a boy.

“Fish? The girl will not be wanting to fish. It’s a daughter you have, my lord, not a son.”

“She might like to fish,” Miss Deering ventured quietly.

“Do you fish?” he asked, ignoring Mrs. Olive’s wrinkled nose.

“As it happens, my sisters and I are quite the anglers. Of the six, only Florence did not care to fish.”

Six! Six sisters? So much I do not know of Miss Deering.

“Sensible girl.” Mrs. Olive was unusually opposed to the excursion. “You will not catch me fishing. Nasty, smelly things, fish. No, I shall keep my feet firmly on terra firma, if you please,” she said, demonstrating the only Latin she knew. And then she muttered, “I thought we were in a hurry to get to St. David.”

“The horses needed a rest,” Val said. “As do we all.”

Six! Has she brothers in addition?

“Do you not long to be quit of the coach and rattling along over uneven roads for another day?”

Six dowries. Six husbands to be found. No wonder she wound up a governess.

“A day on the lake sounds splendid,” Felicity rushed to agree.

Six dear Deerings! How did a father manage?

“You are welcome to take the day to do as you will, Mrs. Olive,” Val said.

Mrs. Olive brightened. “Do you mean it, my lord?”

How did a mother of six manage, her husband a drinker, a wastral?

“We leave you to your own devices, the lads as well, unless they wish to come.”

The footmen were more than happy to go fishing, but the coachman shook his head and said he would prefer to walk about a bit. And as the old codger was rather smitten with Mrs. Olive, Val was none too surprised to hear it.

It proved a perfect day for boating, not so good for fishing. They did not seem to be biting, or did not care for the bait at any rate, but no one seemed to mind. The sky was clear and blue. The mountains cast their reflections the length of the lake, as if into a mirror.

Felicity could not bring herself to hook a worm without squealing, but she managed to convince the footmen to replenish her bait whenever required, and so they were all quite happy to laze about with their poles, soaking up sunshine, listening to the water lap and the boat creak as the breeze like a gentle hand pushed them along.

There came a point when Felicity was thus entertained, and the footmen intent on replenishing their lines, that Val sat himself down next to dear Miss Deering, the neck of her stiflingly, high necked dress intriguingly unhooked, as she lifted her face to the breeze, eyes closed, an uncharacteristically relaxed expression softening her features.