The Rambunctious Lady Royston (28 page)

Zachary, however, was painfully aware of a marked friction between his bride and himself since their argument, an argument that Samantha seemed in no great hurry to resolve.

His concern for Samantha was intensified by his sure knowledge that this new, docile Samantha who now lived beneath his roof could only be considered a temporary resident.

At long last St. John was beginning to have a better understanding of the workings of his wife's distressingly volatile mind. He made it a point to keep himself as close to Samantha's side as possible at all times, waiting for the moment when she would take to the countryside in an effort to brighten her melancholy mood.

He didn't have much longer to wait. Samantha was even then upstairs pacing her room, her thoughts a jangle of doubts and vague longings.

It wasn't due to any meanness of spirit that Robin's return had served to upset her so. Oh, no. She was much too tenderhearted a person to find fault in another's good fortune. Robin was safe; Isabella was in alt over their engagement; the dowager was so delighted she had unbent sufficiently to consider all the unhappiness of the past ancient history and had made her peace with Zachary; and St. John himself no longer felt the lack of either his brother or his once delinquent zest for life.

It was all very well that the situations of all these people had come about so neatly. But, to Samantha's mind, all this good fortune had left her a bit of an encumbrance: a physical reminder of an indulgence of folly on St. John's part that was no longer wanted or needed. Her presence in the Royston household was become superfluous, but what does one do with a Countess who has outstayed her welcome—outlived her usefulness, so to speak?

"Confound it all anyway!" Samantha told the silent room. "He wanted me, now he's stuck with me, for good or ill. He'll just have to reconcile himself to that fact!"

Ah, but I must pity the poor man, she told herself silently—for he could not have known he was saddling himself with a sad trial of a girl who plagued him half out of his mind with hoydenish pranks and infantile mischief, such as her poking fun at Society with outlandish parasols or the daring taking of snuff. She must make him very uncomfortable at times, even though he had made pains to hide his distaste in the past. But now that Samantha was to be released from her position of resident court jester, her husband's patience was sure to diminish in proportion to the increase in his embarrassment.

Knowing she was only compounding the problem, aware that she might even be deliberately instigating a nasty confrontation—and in the end deciding that she didn't really give a tinker's damn either way—she ripped into the drawer of a highboy chest and dragged out Wally's breeches.

From his position behind some artistically clipped shrubbery in the garden, Zachary spied out Samantha's breeches-clad figure as it tiptoed stealthily out the French doors and out onto the crushed stone pathway.

So much for all my lectures on propriety, he mused, not really surprised. I may as well have tried to tame the wind. But, not exactly being a citadel of propriety himself, he mentally shrugged and forgave his bride her lapse, then set off to follow her at a discreet distance. This dogging of Samantha's footsteps was fair bidding to become an everyday occurrence, and he chuckled silently as his eyes ran appreciatively over the delectably outlined derriere—one of the original causes of his being brought to this pretty pass—playing Bow Street Runner to his wife's escaping felon in the first place.

Ah, Sam, my sweet skipbrain, he asked her silently, could it be you have been placed here as punishment for my sins, just to have become my reward for something good I don't recall ever doing?

He was sorely tempted to call out to her once they had both entered the home woods, but he was curious to see just what maggot she had taken into her head now, that required her present attire to adequately indulge herself in it. His curiosity stayed him, just in time, from calling out her name.

Pushing branches out of his way and watching where he stepped—as he could not risk being spied out on the path and was forced to keep to the woods—St. John reflected yet again on his folly in compromising Samantha into marriage in the first place, He loved her (he now admitted that to himself quite freely), but he had started off their married life on the wrong foot, feeding her that Banbury Tale as he did. Oh, yes, he reminded himself ruefully: there had been more than a little truth in his arguments more's the pity—but had he left it too late for Samantha to forgive him and begin again?

She may have declared her love for him in days past, but her recent behavior had not been in the least lover-like. He could only hope she would not be so cruel as to flaunt her lovers in his face when he was a decrepit old man (as she was so fond of calling him) and she still a beautiful young woman.

Breaking out of the trees to find himself at the edge of a field dotted with the wagons and stalls that declared a country fair to be in progress, St. John came to himself with a start and called a halt to his melancholy musings.

How had she known there was a fair in area? Probably one of the servants had told her, or she had asked. Samantha was always asking questions ... and servants all seemed happy to answer them.

Now where was that termagant? His eyes roamed over the booths in the field, passing by the gaily decorated gypsy-wagons and the freak shows featuring a dwarf and his physical opposite—a great giant of a man who was just then flexing his immense muscles, to the awed amazement of the crowd of farmers, laborers, and village children.

St. John threaded his way past a whirling acrobat, weaved through a small crowd watching a rope dancer displaying his special talents, and neatly dodged a dancing bear that seemed to have designs on the Earl's new curly- brimmed beaver.

"Damn and blast," he muttered under his breath. "Where in thunder could she have disappeared to now? That girl is enough to plague a man half out of his mind."

He thought he had spied her out standing at one of the booths purchasing a "fairing"—an inexpensive trinket meant to be a remembrance of the day—but lost her again as two young lads of no more than ten fell into fighting with each other, rolling about on the grass as a crowd gathered around them. Instead of separating the boys, the crowd busied itself making a ring around them and began laying bets on the eventual winner. By the time St. John could get past, Samantha was once more out of sight.

His breath hissed audibly between his teeth as he cursed his ill luck, and he tipped his hat back on his head as he searched the blue sky above him—as if he were seeking heavenly assistance.

His wish was granted, for as he raised his eyes he could see far off at the edge of the fair, a huge red and white checked balloon. A smile dissolved his hitherto solemn expression as he clapped one hand to his hat, and—showing none of the dignity that should by rights have gone with his modish dress (now sadly sprinkled with leaves, twigs, and other debris from his travels through the home woods)—he loped off towards the balloon and (he was sure) his own dear Samantha.

She was just then engaged in her first close inspection of a real balloon gondola, and was therefore startled into giving a slight squeal of alarm as a hand came down heavily on her shoulders. "Planning an excursion into the skies, Mr. Smythe-Wright?" Zachary's voice asked silkily, a trace of humor in his tone.

Her initial nervousness fled as she whirled from his grasp and turned to confront her tormentor. "Spying again, Zachary? And now you're going to read me yet another of your famous scolds, I have no doubt. Well, go on. Get it over with," she challenged him heatedly.

But Samantha's beautiful face—made even more appealing by the heightened color her indignation lent her—framed as it was now by her beaver hat and high shirt points, only served to cause Zachary to lapse even more deeply into a rollicking mood.

"Please credit me with more elegance of mind than to berate you in public, my dear," he teased her gently. "I've only approached you here so that we may at last speak together with some modicum of privacy. I may be abominably slow about some things—a side-effect of my advanced years, no doubt—but I'm confused as to why you have been avoiding me these last days."

"Your mind must be failing if you cannot recall a certain blow to the cheek you received at my hand," Samantha rebutted. "Perhaps the shock of it addled your wits, but if you so wish your memory refreshed I can repeat the exercise."

St. John lifted his hand and rubbed at his cheek. "I'm not such a zany as to have forgotten the incident, or so arrogant as to claim it wasn't heartily deserved. But, having got your revenge, Samantha, surely you're satisfied? It is not like you to hold a grudge."

It was time and enough she told him she had overheard the conversation with Robin that had taken place after they believed her out of earshot and she did so now, not sparing herself in the recital.

"So that rankled, did it?" St. John gibed at her, and then added, "I didn't mean a word of it, infant. I was merely having Robin on, as has been our custom whenever we're together. Robin didn't believe a word of it, of course, and neither would you if you could have seen as well as heard our interchange. Poor puss," he ended softly. "All this suffering for no good reason."

"I did not weep millstones, if that's any comfort to you," she returned, her chin thrust out aggressively.

Zachary was looking down at her in such a self-satisfied way—the sight of the tears shining in her eyes providing him final proof that she did care for him at least a little bit. Before Samantha's anger could cause her to say something that might take them off on another tangent, he told her sweetly, "I love you, you know, infant. Quite to distraction, actually."

"Say that again," she asked him softly.

"I love you," he told her, this time with no hint of a smile in his voice. "I've loved you forever, and I'll love you forever. Even when you scare the bloody hell out of me when I think about how very much I love you."

Samantha's moist eyes became quite dazed with sudden bliss as she gave back an incoherent answer and launched herself at her husband.

He lifted her in his arms, and they spun crazily in a circle until he had the happy notion of dumping her into the gondola.

"Idiot!" she spluttered from her ignominious position on the floor of the basket. "You've gone stark, staring mad!"

Vaulting gracefully over the rim to join his wife inside the basket, Zachary busily began loosing the moorings holding the balloon to the ground.

When Samantha protested (quite vocally, actually), he merely turned to her and quipped, "You must have the poorest opinion of me, not to believe I can navigate this thing. Have you no desire to go sailing with me in the sky on such a glorious day?"

Samantha's ready sense of adventure (not to mention her love of the ridiculous) came to the fore, and she sprang up to help him with the ropes, telling him, "I'm not such a zany as to believe the Devil incapable of anything. But we must be quick about it, dearest, as some rather large men are fast approaching, and I don't think they appreciate us, er, borrowing their balloon."

The men Samantha had seen—certainly the owners of the balloon—were most predictably not pleased at the sight of their property rising slowly out of reach. As they vainly jumped in the air to try to grab at the trailing ropes, Zachary and Samantha bid them a cheery adieu and waved at the gathering crowd.

The balloon soared above the treetops, and with the aid of a friendly breeze was soon sailing across the countryside as a delighted Samantha squealed and clapped her hands in delight.

"Whee!"
she shouted, as she threw her arms wide. "Look at me! I'm flying!"

Zachary hastily restrained her flailing arms and caught her up in his embrace. Her last barriers crumbled at his touch, and they sank together to the cushiony, woven floor of the gondola in a heated embrace.

Just as things were getting just a bit out of hand, Samantha pulled back to ask if Zachary was bothered overmuch by her penchant for setting the ton on its ears, via her parasols and the like. Now that she knew he loved her, she was anxious to ascertain whether or not he liked her as well.

He quickly denied any discomfit at her shenanigans—between playful nibbles at her ear, that is—and told her that her very unpredictability was a major part of her charm.

"That's good," she sighed, as his lips descended to wreak havoc with the pulse at the base of her throat. All her earlier thoughts of becoming a model young matron were thus summarily dashed without a smidgen of regret. "But I am weary of parasols, Zachary. Snuff, too, for that matter. I have all but decided to start sporting a walking stick."

"Umm?" Zachary returned vaguely, his mind not really on the subject. "What sort of stick, love?" he asked at last.

Samantha launched immediately into a description of various sticks she had seen, and was just telling him of one such remarkable stick that had a hidden recess for keeping money or other valuables, when Zachary was forced to interrupt her.

"Later, my pet," he whispered hoarsely. "We will talk of this later." He blazed a trail with his lips in the direction of her mouth, and just before claiming his prize said once again, "Much later."

As the setting sun glinted off the red and white silk of the large balloon that had mysteriously appeared in the middle of Seth Brumbley's barley field, and the gathering crowd of villagers
oohed
and
aahed
while trying to figure out just how it had got there in the first place, a pair of slightly disheveled looking gentlemen were settling into their room at a local inn. The pair had been oblivious to the curious looks and open stares of the patrons drinking ale in the common room as they mounted the stairs arm in arm.

And, indeed, what concern could it possibly be to others as to the time and place a couple picks as the perfect spot to spend their belated honeymoon?

After all, it was only the mutual inclination of the couple involved that mattered—wasn't it?