He
watched her summon her wits, saw her baffled blue gaze clear, and
waited for her answer.
She
leaned toward him and whispered, "I beg you will not place too
much credence in what Papa says about my time in London. I cannot
think where he comes by the notion that I am a femme fatale. Perhaps
he has confused me with my Aunt Clothilde. She was a famous beauty.
She is still, actually. Men are always falling in love with her."
Alistair
leaned toward her. "Perhaps it runs in the family," he
whispered back.
She
gave him a quick, uncomprehending look, then coloring, drew back.
"Oh," she said. "You are flirting with me."
If
only it were so simple and innocent. But it was not. The game he
played at present was more dangerous than mere flirtation. He knew
this, but he couldn't—or wouldn't—help himself.
"Do
you mind?" he said.
"No."
Her brow wrinkled. "Doubtless you find it more amusing than date
palms. But I am out of practice, and—" She broke off and
looked about the room. "Where is Papa? Where is Crewe?"
Alistair
gave the room a quick survey. Their chaperons were nowhere in sight.
"They seem to have abandoned us," he said softly. "I
wish you would take advantage."
"Of
what?"
"Me,"
he said. "I am helpless, confined to this chair. I am not to put
any weight on my left foot. I am completely at your mercy. Break my
heart. Please. Get it over with."
"You
are delirious," she said. "Papa was talking about camphor
trees, wasn't he? I must tell Mrs. Entwhistle not to let—"
"Very
well. If you will make me leave my chair…" Al-istair
started to get up.
She
sprang up from her chair, thrust her hand against his chest, and
pushed him back down.
He
looked up at her. Her hand stayed on his chest. She didn't move,
didn't speak, only watched him, her gaze scanning his face.
Finally,
she lifted her hand. He waited for the slap he so richly deserved.
She
laid the palm of her hand against his cheek. It was nothing, really,
the merest touch, but it was everything, too, to him, and he might as
well have been struck by lightning, for it blasted to pieces what
remained of his judgment and all those noble principles regarding the
lines a gentleman may and may not cross.
He
turned his head and pressed his lips against the soft flesh of her
hand, and heard her quick intake of breath.
His
own breathing grew hurried. He'd done nothing but miss her and
indulge in hopeless fantasies since she'd left this room in the dark
hours of morning.
He
couldn't banish the memory of her scent and the supple curves of her
body.
Now
he drank in that scent while tracing the soft curves of her palm with
his lips. Her hand trembled, but she didn't draw it away, and when he
kissed her wrist, he found her pulse beating as frantically as his
heart did.
Her
fingers curled into a fist against his cheek. He kissed her knuckles.
She
pulled her hand away. He looked up.
Her
countenance was wiped clean of expression. From behind him came a
small, disapproving cough. Alistair suppressed the oath rising to his
lips, turned toward his valet, and said, "Oh there you are,
Crewe. I wondered where you'd got to."
"I
beg your pardon, sir," the valet said. "Thinking Mr.
Oldridge had remained, I assumed my presence was not required, and
stepped into the next room to attend to a few tasks."
"I
collect it was the date palms," said Miss Oldridge coolly. "They
have driven me to distant parts of the house often enough. When that
subject comes up, the wisest course is flight. I applaud your good
sense, Crewe."
She
turned an unreadable gaze upon Alistair. "Perhaps I had better
warn you about the camphor tree of Sumatra. Papa has recently read an
Asiatic Journal article devoted to the topic."
"I
am not sure I know what a camphor tree is," Alistair said.
"I
strongly recommend that you do not ask him to enlighten you,"
she said.
"I
certainly shan't ask Mr. Oldridge to read the article to me,"
Alistair said. "Your father has a soothing voice, and botanical
prose is terrifically boring. I'll only fall asleep without learning
a thing. Look at what he brought this time. Can you wonder at my
preferring to discuss date palms with him?"
Miss
Oldridge glanced at the table, where a copy of De Candolle's
Elementary Principles of Botany lay.
"In
any case, I like conversing with your father," Alistair said
quite truthfully. Despite what he'd learned about Oldridge as well as
what Alistair observed and what he'd surmised, he couldn't dislike
the gentleman.
"No
one converses with my father," the daughter said. "Not as
normal human beings understand conversation. It is all detours and
tangents and non sequiturs."
"You
have too many responsibilities pressing upon you," Alistair
said. "You haven't time to follow the mean-derings of his mind,
let alone sort them out. I, however, am completely at leisure at
present. I can listen and puzzle over the connections between one
idea and the next. It is fascinating."
Her
expression sharpened, and her blue gaze fixed upon him with an
intensity he could only wish were amorous.
But
he knew better. He had said something wrong. He didn't know what it
was, but he had no doubt he was about to suffer the consequences.
"Fascinating,"
she said quietly. "Of course you would say so. You are such a
good listener. You let him ramble on about botany the way you let the
other gentlemen hold forth about their hounds and poachers and mole
catchers."
Something
was springing out at Alistair from the darkness of her mind, but he
could not yet make out what it was.
"Mole
catchers?" he said lightly while he braced himself to be torn to
pieces.
"I
listened all day to ladies' remedies for ailments ranging from warts
to consumption," she said. "It was tedious and annoying.
But the exercise resulted in my neighbors thinking more kindly of
me."
Alistair
caught on. "Miss Oldridge, it is not—"
"When
you first came here, you told me why you'd contacted Papa first,"
she said. "Since he's the largest landowner hereabouts, you
assumed his opinion of the canal would carry great weight with his
neighbors. I thought that by now you would have realized my father
takes no notice of practical concerns, such as the prospect of coal
barges or passenger boats filled with drunken aristocrats cruising
through his meadows."
"Miss
Oldridge—"
"You
are wasting your time cultivating my father," she said. "In
the first place, he dotes upon you already. In the second, he hasn't
the remotest interest in your canal." She lifted her chin. "In
your place I should stick to seducing his daughter, since she, as
anyone can tell you, is your most dangerous—and
determined—opposition."
"Miss—"
But
she, knowing a good exit line when she'd uttered one, swept out of
the room before he could utter another syllable.
He
listened to her footsteps fade.
From
another corner of the room came a pitying cough.
LATE
the following afternoon, Mirabel was in her father's study, answering
his correspondence.
She
had found the perfect way of keeping Mr. Carsing-ton at the very back
of her mind, instead of occupying every cubic inch of that organ:
property law. She was locked in a desperate battle with the legal
jargon of a letter from her father's solicitor when she became aware
of a series of faint thumps from the hall.
She
assumed a servant had dropped something. If the problem was serious,
she'd soon learn of it.
She
returned to the solicitor's letter.
"I
must speak to you," a voice rumbled from near at hand—and
nearly catapulted her from her chair.
But
composure was reflexive. Mirabel kept her seat, dropping only the pen
with which she'd been making notes. Replevins, mesnes, distreins, and
writs of cessavit, however, all flew out of her head.
Mr.
Carsington stood in the doorway, leaning on a cane. He was fully
dressed. His linen was immaculately white and crisply starched. His
sleek brown coat hugged his broad shoulders as though it were a
second—and costly—skin. She was not sufficiently versed
in men's fashion to identify his inexpressibles as pantaloons,
breeches, or trousers. All she knew was that they fit snugly,
outlining the long, muscular legs she'd seen in their natural state.
That
recollection brought a host of others, and a rush of longing swept in
with them, and in that moment she saw the truth, so stark there was
no disregarding it.
She'd
crossed a boundary.
She
was infatuated.
She'd
done it without realizing, and now that she understood, it was too
late. She had no way back to safety.
She
must simply endure it, and hide it, pretending she felt nothing,
that, for instance, the room had not grown too small, suddenly, and
too warm.
"This
is most unwise," she told him. "Your ankle is not strong
enough for traipsing about the house."
"Today
Dr. Woodfrey told me I might take some mild exercise, as long as I
used a cane, and put as little weight upon my foot as possible,"
he said, advancing into the room, which seemed to shrink further. "My
leg has given me a good deal of practice with the method."
Cautiously
she stood. She braced her hands on the desk. "I strongly doubt
that Dr. Woodfrey's idea of 'mild exercise' is a hike from the guest
wing, down a long staircase, and several hundred feet to the coldest
part of the house," she said.
"I
don't care what his idea is," Mr. Carsington said. His voice
dropped to a throbbing undercurrent. "I must speak to you. About
yesterday. You accused me of seducing you."
"You
need not announce it to the household." Mirabel hastily skirted
the desk, and him, and closed the door. She stood in front of the
door, in case she needed to make a speedy exit… before she
added a blatant outrage to her rapidly mounting heap of
indiscretions, something she couldn't cover up with sarcasm or by
taking the offensive, as she'd done previously.
He
remained where he was, but a pace or two away.
"You
announced it in front of my valet," he said.
"I
forgot he was there," she said. "Crewe is discreet to the
point of invisibility."
"His
master is not," said Mr. Carsington. "I am indiscreet, and
very stupid at times, but I am not duplicitous. I do not go about
seducing women in order to further business aims."
"I
see," she said. "You do it merely for amusement."
He
regarded her with half-closed eyes, yet she detected the glitter in
them. "I am not the one who left London strewn with broken
hearts," he said.
Was
he mocking her? "I told you that was nonsense," she said
tightly.
"You
made a start at breaking mine," he said.
"I
what?" She could not believe her ears. "Are you delirious?"
"You
accused me of seducing you," he said. "You seem to have
forgotten who made the first move."
It
had been she, and she couldn't pretend otherwise. Heat washed over
her, not all of it from shame.
She
remembered the feel of his mouth against her hand, and the way the
world had gone away. She experienced again the spill of sensations
she had no name for, and the sense of toppling off balance. She did
not know how to come right, and wasn't sure she wanted to.
She
looked up and saw his mouth curve a very little. It seemed like a
taunt, daring her to contradict him. She didn't want to. All she
wanted to do was lay her fingers over his mouth and feel those
sensations again. She didn't want to talk or listen or think. She
didn't want to be sensible. She was always sensible and thinking
ahead. She was one and thirty years old. Why could she not be a fool
this once?