Pemberly’s valet moved to take her by the arm. Terror rattled inside of her, and she shrugged away his hand.
“The parrot?” she asked frantically. “The duel?
Les bijoux indiscrets?
”
“Oh, yes, the parrot!” Pemberly said, nodding, and waved away his valet with a flap of one hand. “Yes, I remember you. And the fee,” he smirked at Blake.
Blake’s pale cheeks flushed bright red.
Though she wasn’t exactly sure what Pemberly meant, she could guess, and her cheeks burned scarlet as well.
Did Blake brag about it this morning?
she thought angrily.
The bastard!
Then she remembered that there had not been much to brag about. Or rather, that there could have been far, far more to brag about – and yet he had stopped short. She was confused all over again.
“So, is this your masterpiece?” Pemberly sighed.
“I will let you be the judge of that, m’lord.”
“Lovely,” he said, in a tone that indicated he thought it was anything but.
He took the package from her hands and turned to get in the carriage.
“M’lord,” she said.
Pemberly paused wearily, then turned around with a tight smile on his face. “Yes?”
“Please keep it safe, m’lord. It is my only copy.”
“Ohhhh, your only copy. In that case, I shall try to remember not to wipe my arse with it during my trip,” Pemberly said, and turned back to the carriage.
“M’lord,” she said, anger rising in her voice.
Blake looked like he was about to have a heart attack.
“WHAT?” Pemberly snapped as he whirled around, then immediately held his hand to his forehead, winced in pain, and steadied himself against the carriage.
“Whether you publish it or not, do I have your word that you will keep my manuscript safe until I can retrieve it?”
“Until you can…” Pemberly repeated with a mumble, then laughed mockingly. “Miss… Willows, was it? I assure you, I shall guard it as jealously as I would the golden fleece.”
She tried to add humor to what was turning into an ugly farewell. “Then beware men named Jason, m’lord.”
“Yes, well,
you
should beware men named Evan, lest he attempt to put his hands on your own…”
Here Pemberly’s eyes dropped lasciviously down beneath her waist.
“…golden fleece.”
As Pemberly climbed into the carriage, she saw Blake ball up his fists. His face darkened.
“If only he would try, m’lord,” she answered. “But I think he would rather stay in his boat.”
All the anger drained from Blake as he looked at her in shock.
Pemberly laughed uproariously and leaned through the open window of the carriage door.
“I must say, I am now one thousand percent more interested in your manuscript, Miss Willows. And you!” he barked as he pointed at Blake. “Attend to your fee! Never work for free, man! Pemberly’s First Posulate of Publishing!”
As Blake blushed fiery red once again, Pemberly pounded on the carriage wall. “Away, Nicholls!”
The driver snapped his whip, and the carriage started down the drive. Pemberly’s right arm jutted out of the window and waved before disappearing back inside.
Blake did not watch the departing carriage, though. He stared only at Marian.
Without looking at him – indeed, she had not met his gaze once the entire time – she haughtily turned her back on him and went inside.
Weeks passed, and the warmth of spring gave way to the heat of summer. This year was unusually hot and muggy, worse than any in recent memory. The temperature alone would have made life uncomfortable, but the humidity made it unbearable.
Evan rode alone through the meadows of Blakewood. He wore only a loose shirt along with his trousers and boots, and still he was drenched in sweat. Shimmers of heat rose up over the dry grass, and insects buzzed all around him.
It had been two weeks since Pemberly’s visit, with no word of how badly he had fared with his father.
In that same time, Andrew’s anger at him had not abated. The temporary thaw at dinner that night had lapsed back into deepest winter.
Worse, it had been two weeks since had spoken to or even seen Marian.
He had caught glimpses of her in the hallways, but nothing more. When he did see her, she would immediately turn and walk the other direction, or disappear into one of the passageways the servants used.
Every time, it was a needle through his heart. But he was not about to run after her.
Part of him was angry. Had he not given her the opportunity of her young life by introducing her to Pemberly? She was a common servant girl, and yet he had delivered her work into the hands of a publisher.
Well, not an established publisher…
…or even a successful one… yet.
But a publisher nonetheless.
Then he would remember the morning of Pemberly’s departure and groan inwardly.
Evan had woken that morning with a pounding headache. As the events of the night before came back to him like hazy memories of a dream, he was seized with both ecstasy and shame.
The ecstasy was understandable. For a moment he had held in his arms the woman he wanted more than any other. For a moment, he had everything that he wanted.
The shame was more complicated. Part of him was aghast that he had broken his rule. He had crossed the line he had drawn for himself, and almost taken the honor of a young woman who was under his protection.
He argued with himself that she was far less innocent than she seemed – but that did not invalidate his rule, nor excuse him breaking it.
But there was a shame that galled him on a deeper level. He had wanted her so badly – why had he
not
taken her? What man would look upon the gates of Paradise and then flee from them?
It was not as though he were forcing himself on her. She had welcomed – nay, enthusiastically returned his advances!
That part of him – the dark voice that sneered at his ‘honor,’ that berated his weakness – insisted that should he ever get the chance again, he must seize it. No more of this limp moralizing. He should take what he wanted, without remorse or indecision.
That part of him had grown louder in the passing weeks. At the same time, it had also become clear that Marian was consciously spurning him.
And he knew why. He had acted like a petrified schoolboy. He had behaved like a man no woman would ever want in her bed.
Evan had hoped that his dishonorable actions of the night before would recede into the distance, and that he would never have to be reminded of them again.
But then Marian appeared. When she did not pine like a lovelorn maiden, nor play along as though nothing had happened, but instead refused to even acknowledge his existence – that had mortified him further.
Then Pemberly had to the gall to utter the crudest of remarks – to not only insult her honor, but Evan’s as well!
But rather than be shocked and outraged, she had returned his vulgarity with one of her own! One that left no question how she viewed Evan: as a neutered, impotent eunuch.
Once again, the shame.
And the anger – at her, at Pemberly –
But mostly at himself.
She had thrust a mirror before him that revealed how she saw him. All his faults and insufficiencies were laid bare in its cruel reflection.
He knew, though, that Pemberly had meant his comments in jest.
She had not.
It still galled him.
The effrontery!
Even now, he returned from his daydreams to the real world and found his teeth set on edge.
He sighed, wiped the sweat from his brow, and forced Bucephalus onward.
A swim would do him good.
About a mile from the house was a pond. It sat at the edge of a deep woods where the men of the family had hunted for generations. The pond was about an acre in size, and unusually clear and deep. Evan and Andrew had spent many a boyhood summer day there swimming and play-fighting in its cool waters.
He wanted nothing more than to get away from the house, if only for a little while. The swelter of the heat was bad enough; the knowledge that Marian was somewhere within its walls, avoiding him, was even worse.
As his horse came around the edge of the woods and was about to break into the clearing where the pond lay, Evan heard splashing. He cursed silently. It was probably children from the neighboring farms and parcels of land his family owned. He could not very well bathe naked with a gaggle of children staring at him, and though the land was off-limits to them, he was not about to run off a bunch of boys trying to escape the oppressive heat. He sighed. He would wait in the cooler shadows of the trees. Perhaps they would finish soon, and he could swim in peace.
But as he dismounted from Bucephalus and tied his reins to a tree, he was surprised by how quiet the children were. No cries, no screams of laughter, no thrashing in the water.
He walked quietly through the trees and came to the edge of the woods.
There were no children in the water.
It was a woman, young and beautiful.
She was turned away from him so he could not see her face. She was about fifteen feet away from the shore, waist-deep in the pond. She wore only a simple cotton shift. She had obviously been all the way underwater, because the soaked cloth clung to her curves. He could see the rosy pink of her skin under the wet cotton, which was not only translucent but almost transparent. Her wet hair hung in dark, golden tangles down her neck and over one shoulder.
Evan felt his face flush. His manhood began to expand and thicken with desire.
He knew he should not be here watching her. It was ungentlemanly. He was taking advantage of her by staying here. He must leave.
But after weeks of unresolved longing for Marian, and all his fruitless obsession over her, he wanted desperately to not want her anymore – and here was a woman just as beautiful as she, a fantasy made flesh.
I only want to see her face,
he thought, not admitting that if she turned, he would see much more of the woman than her face, given how the wet cotton plastered itself to her skin.
I only want to see her face, and then I shall leave.
Seconds later, the woman completely submerged in the water. When she stood up again, she turned around towards Evan.
It was Marian.
His heart stopped beating, then suddenly began to race like a galloping horse.
Her head was tilted back so that her hair hung straight behind her. Her face was glorious and fresh. The sunlight on the water sparkled across her skin.
And the rest of her…
Evan could hardly breathe.
The wet cotton gave away so much, she might as well have been naked. He could see the delicious swell of her breasts, the dark circles of her areolas beneath the cloth. Her neck was graceful, her arms slender and strong. The beads of water running down her skin made her shimmer like some water nymph from the Greek myths.
Her eyes were still closed as she pushed wet strands of hair away from her forehead.
A flurry of thoughts tumbled through Evan’s head.
What is she doing out here?
She should not be here!
If the housekeeper finds out she has shirked her duties, the old woman will be furious!
And the last and most conflicted thought of all:
I should not be watching this!
But still he stayed. His eyes were drawn to her like magnets. His gaze moved back and forth between her breasts and her face, never lingering long in one place before they flitted back to the other.
After a few more seconds he knew he had to leave.
Though he had had nowhere near his fill of watching her, he tore himself away. ‘Reluctantly’ is too weak a word to describe his distress; it took a supreme act of will to make himself turn away from such a vision of beauty.
You are a gentleman, and a gentleman does not take advantage of a woman,
he told himself over and over as he winded his way back through the trees to his horse.
Spying on her like a common criminal…
There was a noise somewhere behind him, the sound of twigs snapping. He froze and listened, wondering if she had seen him and followed him into the woods – but then there was silence.
Probably just an animal,
he thought as he continued on his way.
A deer or a fox.
When he reached Bucephalus, he turned back and looked longingly at the woods… but in the end, he mounted his horse and turned towards home.
He was less than a tenth of a mile away when he heard her scream.
Marian felt like she was suffocating.
The house baked like an oven. There was no respite whatsoever. Hours of boring work as the beads of sweat crept down her back and soaked her dress.
For days and days on end.
Finally she could take no more. She crept through the deserted east wing of the house, climbed out a window on the first floor, and ran parallel with the house until she was far enough away that no one could see her.
As long as she was back within an hour, she doubted whether anyone would notice. Most of the servants had entered a state of torpor, their strength sapped by the oppressive heat. Even her aunt, the Housekeeper, had ceased to criticize them. It took too much energy, none of which she could spare.
Over the last two weeks she had taken to walking in the evenings instead of writing. The words would not come; she could think of nothing but Evan. So she had taken to walking out in the fields around the property.
She avoided the gardens. Her memories of what had happened there were too unhappy.
The grounds were magnificent, a luxury she realized she had not taken advantage of properly – though there was no time to explore during the day. So she roamed them at night once her eyes became accustomed to the dark. She walked for hours, hoping to tire herself out so that she would fall asleep the instant her head hit the pillow.
It didn’t work. She would lie awake, her heart aching, and wonder why he had refused to touch her.