Elisabeth Fairchild (20 page)

She sighed heavily, said unhappily, “Yours did not seem a conversation that ought to be interrupted, my lord.”

“Ah!  So it was a kindness not to announce your presence?”

“No more a kindness than eavesdropping, my lord.” She bowed her head, her bonnet hiding guilt-laden features. “I am terribly sorry. . .” she sighed again, “--for such an impertinence.”

Hand outstretched, he asked brusquely. “May I assist you in rising?”

She did not immediately grasp his fingers. “Most kind of you, my lord. But if you will just give me a moment. The feeling only now begins to return to my toes. I fear I would collapse if I tried to stand.”

He laughed. It really was a laughable situation, dreadful as it was to think she had heard far more than he should have liked her to. “I would be happy to catch you,” he drawled, deliberately suggestive, the dragon of his anger turning on her.

That got her attention. The bonnet tilted back. Her face caught the last of the day’s light, pale pink, pearl-like. “Quite unnecessary, I assure you.”

“Oh, but it might prove amusing,” he teased, knowing his tone unsettled her, perhaps as much as he had been unsettled to find her here.

“My limbs are rather more painful than amusing at the moment.” She stretched out her right leg and waggled toes again, revealing a rather provocative view of her ankle.

“Off with your shoes,” he ordered.

“My lord?”

“Come, come. It is a matter of circulation, Miss Deering. Your shoes most likely contribute to the problem.” He reached for her heel.

She struggled to pull away, wincing.

“It would not be--”

“Appropriate?” He laughed, and capturing her heel loosed the laces of her walking shoe, tipping out a rather shapely foot cased in worsted wool. “How ironic that you only now consider impropriety.”

He reached for her other shoe, well-preserved leather, much polished, worn down at the heels. A most serviceable specimen, entirely appropriate footwear for a governess, entirely inappropriate that he should loose the laces and slide it from her foot.

“You do not think I mean to take advantage, do you Miss Deering? Or perhaps I have revenge in mind, and would bare your legs for your most improper silence while I bared my heart to the woman I once loved?”

Her bonnet shook a no, and yet she watched him uneasily, suspicious. He touched on truth with his taunts.

 She ought to be suspicious of any man who would cradle the all too intimate warmth of her stockinged foot in the palm of his hand. Of course he did not tell her as much. He lied, as he applied pressure to her heel.

“It would be a great unkindness in you to think I take advantage, when my only aim is to restore proper circulation to your sleeping limb.”

With the same assuredness with which he chastised her, he took the calf of her leg between his hands, resting a much-darned, wool stockinged heel upon his thigh, and kneaded her muscle as if it were bread dough.

She flinched, cried out, “Pins and needles. Oh, pins and needles!”

“I know, I know,” he soothed, thinking she deserved as much, her punishment for listening to his heartbreak. “My batman used to do this to my feet of an evening, after I had spent all day in the saddle. Right here.” He pressed the arch of her foot, remembering the shooting pain, the heat scorching all the way up his leg to his groin. “It used to hurt the most right where the metal stirrup bit into my boot. That spot carried the weight of my entire body most of the day.”

She could not stop a moan escaping her lips, could not avoid arching her foot against his thigh.

He pressed his lips together, trying not to evidence satisfaction as his hands moved higher, beneath the mended edge of her skirt, smoothing rumpled wool, kneading the ankle, her calf, squeezing and gently pulling at her toes through the knit of thin stocking, as if her foot were a mittened udder and he would milk it.

Dear Miss Deering’s breath caught more than once in her throat as he worked, as muscle and nerve melted to his touch. He would lay odds she had never before been touched thus, that her legs were no longer in the least bit numb. He would lay odds he would touch much more before he was done with her.

“The stocking ought to come off as well,” he suggested, wondering how far he might push his luck. “No need to be shy. I can see little in this light.”

Indeed the sun’s rose and gold had almost completely faded from the sky, so that they peered at one another in a growing darkness, the edges of everything gone soft, like his anger, like her resistance, like the rumpled edge of her petticoat, the white fabric catching and holding the light as much as it held his attention.

He delved deeper its hidden mysteries. He did not need to see. The feel of her was enough, the high sensitive arches of her feet, the tight round apples of her calves, the stocking stretched across the bone of her knee. He imagined undoing stocking tapes with the same deftness he had slipped off her shoes, a deftness born of practice, the heat of his fingers, his palm, radiating against bare skin.

“My lord. I do not think--”

Her breath caught as he delved a particularly sensitive spot.

“Do not think,” he said. “Do not object. Simply answer the question you have been so neatly avoiding, Miss Deering.”

Lost in his touch, she repeated faintly, “Question, my lord? Do you mind repeating? I have quite forgotten . . .”

“Your first kiss?”

She stiffened, might have pulled away, but he drew her foot deeper into the snare of his hands, hard against the flexed muscle of his thigh. “Was it so dreadful?”

“I do try to forget it, my lord.”

Her voice was brittle, the tension in her foot more resistant than before.

“Try to forget a kiss? But in that there is a mystery, for kissing is meant to be memorable.”

Like the feel of her beneath his hands, the growing heat. He longed for more, for the taste of almonds--sweet marzipan kisses--for the heat of flesh against flesh.

His hands stilled a moment. “Was it Palmer?”

She nodded, head down, bonnet in the way. He almost reached for the ribbon--to undo it, as he had undone her laces, as he meant to undo her stocking tapes, and yet Palmer stopped him.
Damn the man.

“A most unpleasant experience, my lord,” she said. “A kiss under protest.”

He sighed, closing his eyes to the dark lure of desire, his mind to the reckless need that drove him to imprudent behavior--Palmer’s wantonness--he let go of her foot, reached for her shoe, held it as a cobbler might, that she might slide her all too delectable, almond-scented foot back into it, that she might put leather and laces between them. “Never one before Palmer?” He tied the shoe snug, as the dragon within thrashed and raged.

“No.” How pitiful that single syllable.

“No mistletoe kisses?” He reached for the other shoe. Resolute. Resigned.

“No, my lord.” She grew a little impatient with him. “With so many sisters there were other lips to compete for the lad’s attentions.”

 “But this is a tragedy, Miss Deering.” He cradled her heel a moment longer, heat in the palm of his hand, her shoe waiting, tongue lolling. Desire seared through him, ached heavy in his groin, throbbed with the beat of his heart. Like the burning need for drink she raged through him. Innocence in the palm of his hand. First kisses. How he longed to educate this governess in the arts of lovemaking. And yet, she would leave him, he knew, as she had left Palmer.

Inappropriate, his thoughts, his desire, his intentions. Like Palmer--and he would not be anything like the man. Never again. He drew a deep, fortifying breath as he drew the shoe snug about her foot, and gave it a tidy bow, tying up his need, his desire.

He stood to give himself distance, air, to stop himself from taking her into his arms.

She took a deep breath, looked up at him, from beneath the lip of the confounded bonnet. “Surely tragedy is too strong a word, my lord.”

No, not too strong. Not strong enough.

“Perhaps, had you been better kissed you would better understand.” He extended his hand to her while the idea hung between them, seemed to vibrate from the tips of his fingers, an invitation.

She stared a moment at his hand. As governess, an employee beholden to his generosity, her giving in to desire, to kisses, would change everything--from this day forward. He knew that. She knew it, too.

“Perhaps one day I shall better understand,” she said as she put her hand in his, a gentle clasp, her eyes downcast, allowing him to assist her in rising. He waited for her gaze to rise as well. He meant to kiss her if she looked up. He would take it as a signal if desire spoke to him in her eyes, in a look.

But, she did not look up. And when he did not immediately relinquish his hold on her when she had gained her feet, hoping that at last she must look up, if only in question, she surprised him in saying, very gently, “Thank you. Most kind of you. I have yet to offer you my deepest condolences on the death of your father, my lord.”

In this mention of his father he felt the weight of responsibility to do what his father would have chided him to do. He released his hold on her, and turned to lead the way down. It pained him a little to let go to the potential of her arms and lips--sweet almond-scented comfort on a day he much needed it.

“Thank you,” he said. “You would have liked him, I think. I am quite sure he would have liked you.”

He focused on the path that would take them down from this burial ground of kings, from this beacon hill where lovers carved their names, this place where he had almost made a fool of himself for the second time that evening.

He did not expect the question she posed, as she slid down the path after him, indeed her voice in the darkness quite took his breath away.

“Might I ask your intentions, my lord?”

“I
ntentions?” he drawled sarcastically, as if she asked something completely untoward--or suggestive.

Elaine stopped, stunned. He had been so kind in his ministrations to her feet, and legs, and all the time she had worried, prepared herself for his advances, inappropriate advances--like Palmer. She was sure, in such a compromised situation, he would attempt to take advantage--attempt to take kisses--like Palmer, and yet not like Palmer. She had halfway hoped for kisses from this man, never from Palmer.

But he had refrained, been all that was gentlemanly and restrained, despite the tension that hummed between them, beneath his hands, beneath her skirt, not the rogue he was painted to be--not interested perhaps, as she was sure he would be, must be, should be--but in no way cruel or sarcastic until now. Why now?

May I ask your intentions, my lord?

Of all the words she might have chosen, these were certainly open to misinterpretation in such a moment--hard on the heels of his hands--Oh God his hands! His touch. His heat. She had not wanted him to stop--all the while she had known he must. She rushed to clarify.

“For the trip, my lord? Do you mean to go back, or to press on to St. David?”

He laughed, the sound drifting back over his shoulder, a snide laugh, a sarcastic laugh--knowing. “No worries, Miss Deering.” His voice grew faint as he navigated the downward slope. “I will inform you of my intentions, when I have formed them.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Ironic, is it not?” He seemed to be waiting for her to catch up.

She plunged after him into the darkness, her legs still tingling with the memory of his touch. “What’s that, my lord?”

“The trip that I planned to bring me closer to an understanding of my father has taken me away from him entirely--forever.”

She paused a moment out of respect for his despair, and out of respect for the unevenness of the path, which caught at her feet in most unexpected ways, either leading her into a stumble, or sending her in a downward slide. She remembered her own despair after her father’s death. “He is still with you in memory, my lord. In spirit.”

Fallen silent, he went faster in the deepening twilight, helping her in her slipping, sliding progress as she hurried to catch up, shoes skidding out from under her. He always seemed to be standing in precisely the right spot on the slope to catch her, to grip arm, or elbow, or shoulders, to stop the slide of her now very lively if none-too-coordinated feet. Such grace he possessed, even in darkness. A sure-footed balance that had her thinking of his hands the whole way down, on her legs, and his legs, the distractingly well-shaped muscle and sinew of those horseman’s legs, a centaur’s legs, legs above her touch, beyond her touch.

There was something indescribably intimate in their progress, few words said, just the communication of a steadying grip, of exchanged glances, and the remembered comfort and intimacy of his fingers on stockinged feet, pins and needles as she came to life, more completely alive than she had ever been before.

“Steady on,” he said, and, “Tread carefully now!”

She could not seem to stop careening into him. The more she tried, it seemed the worse her ability to navigate became. He did not mind, indeed, he laughed on more than one occasion, on this day in which she had not thought to find a breath of laughter in him. This day of loss--a loss of potential for both of them--a day of mourning, for fathers and kisses, and the possibilities inherent in both.

She blushed, in the darkness, feeling foolish. Her sensibilities ran a gamut: from nervous embarrassment, to heated flashes of the most wanton desire she had ever experienced for this quietly grieving man.

She could not help thinking of Palmer. He would have taken advantage of the numerous collisions of arms, hands, shoulder and feet. He would have used his sorrows to milk her sympathy. He most certainly would have tried to kiss her. She could not help wishing, and then hated herself for wishing, that Valentine Wharton might be more the rogue she had heard described, and less the man she found him to be.

For the first time in her life, Elaine Deering longed for a seductive whisper in her ear, the strayed touch, a breathtaking kiss beneath the stars, arms enfolding her.