Chapter Fifteen
Rider Hall,
July 14, 1812
Banallt got down from his curricle and handed the vehicle off to the groom who appeared from the side of the house. He headed for the door, his greatcoat flapping in the breeze. Tommy ought to be out of bed by now, for God’s sake. It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, and Banallt himself had been up since ten. He did not reach the house, however, because he caught a glimpse of white and stopped to see what had distracted him.
Ah. The delectable Mrs. Evans.
She was sitting on a swing hung from a walnut tree. One foot trailed on the ground beneath her, slowly rocking. She had her nose buried in a book and apparently no idea of the damage she must be doing by dragging her slipper through the dirt. She swung forward, blissfully absorbed by her reading. He felt an odd pang in his chest. What was it, exactly? As if he were home after many years’ absence and she was the only reason he’d returned at all. Which was quite ridiculous. He did not care for Rider Hall as a place a gentleman might live, its chief defect being it was too bloody remote from the entertainment he enjoyed best.
Mrs. Evans was the rare exception to that defect of country living. She might be ridiculously prim, but she was also clever. Amusing. Kindhearted. Fascinating. Enthralling. Oh, and he wanted her. More than any woman he’d known. He’d begun dreaming about her, too; the most explicitly erotic dreams imaginable. Even when he was in London he dreamed of her. In his dreams, she was in no way proper or prim.
He walked to the swing. Lost in the world of her book, she rocked herself forward and turned a page, completely unaware of his approach. Her clothes were very much in the country style, favoring comfort over fashion, though he would allow she had put herself together well. She wore muslin with green leaves printed in two stripes down the middle of the gown. The bodice made a heart shape of her bosom with the skin above covered by white gauze. He stopped a few feet from the swing. “Ma’am?”
“Oh!” She fumbled her book and only just saved her place.
He bowed. “Forgive me if I startled you.”
“Lord Banallt.” Her eyes flashed with a thousand emotions, and before he could quite put a name to any of them, the wall came down and he read nothing there at all. He’d never known a woman so frighteningly adept at hiding her thoughts from him. “What are you doing here?”
He cocked his head. “Visiting. Perhaps you don’t recall that I came down yesterday with your husband.”
Well. And so. She did not find him amusing. “I am aware, my lord. I mean, what are you doing here in this very spot? Outside. Are you certain your constitution can withstand the fresh air?”
He raised his hands and drew a deep breath. “No fatal effects as of yet. Be so kind, won’t you, as to notify my cousin Harry Llewellyn if I should fall dead at your feet.”
That got a smile from her. All sorts of fascinating things happened to her face when she smiled. “I will, my lord.” He stood there, smiling at her like a half-wit. How could a woman who wasn’t beautiful be, in fact, beautiful? “Surely you don’t mean to tell me you want to swing?”
“Good Lord, no. I had rather not do anything so undignified for a man of my position.” He walked behind her and gripped the ropes that held the swing. She twisted to look at him with a quizzical expression. He pulled back on the ropes and then released the swing. “Good book?”
She got her dangling foot up just in time. “Oh yes.” She tried to hold the book and the ropes of the swing at the same time and did neither well. From the back, he noted, her bottom made an interesting heart shape where the fabric tucked beneath her. Well now. Wasn’t that interesting? Stimulating, rather.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
“Who’s the Murderer?”
“By…Mrs. Sleath?”
“Yes.” She looked at him over her shoulder, smiling. “You do know your Romance, don’t you?”
He teased her because he wanted her to smile just to confirm the effect on her features. “Proper women don’t read such books.”
She twisted to look at him. Light danced in her eyes, dazzling him. But then her usual gravity replaced the humor. “Considering your opinion of ladies who read and write, I should think you might hold me to a lower standard.”
When she swung back, he put his hands beneath her shoulder blades and pushed. During her forward arc, she lifted her legs to try for greater height. The hem of her skirt flipped up enough to show him the tips of her slippers, one of them soiled, and two very slender ankles. Any more stimulation and he was going to have to watch the lay of his coat over his breeches. “I assure you, Mrs. Evans, I hold you to the very highest standard.”
The swing arced back, and he brought it to a stop, keeping both his hands on the ropes. She bowed her head and then turned slightly so that he could see only a portion of her cheek. He released the swing and leaned against the tree trunk, arms crossed over his chest with one knee bent so the sole of his boot pressed flat against the base of the tree. “Considering the source, I’m not overly concerned,” she said.
“Have you just insulted me?”
She lifted her head and looked at him. That prim little look of hers that involved her mouth going tense and a narrowing of her eyes came back. “Do you like being a rake?”
From his position against the tree, he looked her up and down and answered her honestly. “No,” he said. “I don’t. But I like sex, Mrs. Evans, too much to think of giving up my carnal pleasures. If that makes me a rake, so be it.” He admired the pink in her cheeks. “I am discreet when necessary.”
“You? Discreet?”
“I’ve had any number of affairs of which you’ve heard nothing. And never shall.”
Her cheeks turned pinker yet. She didn’t look away. Nor did she stand up and march back to the house, mortally offended. She had her feet planted on the ground now, and she rocked the swing back and forth just to the point of her heels coming off the ground. Forward and back. He leaned closer. He could smell her hair. Orange water, he thought.
She stood up and walked toward him, leaving her book on the swing, until she stood within a foot of his chest with her arms crossed under her bosom. “I wonder if you’re all talk, my lord.”
Banallt thought that if only he could hold her in his arms, she’d understand how he felt about her. Jesus, her hair was lovely even if she was a brunette. A man might pine away for want of her mouth. He uncrossed his arms and, as if he hadn’t anything at all in mind, peeled off his driving gloves. She watched him warily. “Your pride will get you in trouble yet,” he said, dropping his gloves into a pocket of his greatcoat. “It is, perhaps, your one great fault. You are too proud.”
“Proud?” She tipped her head. “How so?”
“You know what they say, don’t you?” he said in a soft voice. She was quite close enough. He took her free hand, her right, in one of his. “Your pride, darling, is standing on the edge of a precipice.” She was really too small for him. But he was wild for her regardless. “If you aren’t more careful with me, your pride will plunge us over the edge.”
“You don’t scare me.” She wore yellow gloves. With great deliberation he pulled off her glove and put that in his pocket, too. Her eyes followed the motion. “That’s mine.”
“Not anymore.” He curled his fingers around her bare hand. She had long fingers and short but strong nails. Ink stained the side of her middle finger. He turned her hand over and brushed the back of his fingertips across her palm. “What lovely hands you have, Sophie.” She frowned at his use of her given name and tried to withdraw her hand. He didn’t permit it. “Were you writing again last night?”
“Yes.”
“And what’s happened to poor Beatrice now? Has her odious cousin taken advantage?” He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingertips, one after the other.
“Let go, my lord.” Her eyes—very hard and unswerving—fixed on his mouth until he released her hand. Banallt was beginning to think she was immune to seduction. And yet Tommy Evans had managed it. Surely she could be brought around to succumb to him as well.
“Tell me about your story, then.” He settled against the tree trunk, hands in his greatcoat pockets. He fingered her glove.
She retreated to the swing but sat facing him with her book on her lap and her toe dragging in the dirt. She let out a puff of air. “Everything sounds so foolish.”
“Not to me.” She wrinkled her nose at that, and Banallt found that oddly charming. She really had no idea of her gifts. Her stories enthralled him—every one that he’d read. Including the one she was working on now. “I’ve not your talent for words, Mrs. Evans. Anything I write is wretched beyond endurance.”
She leaned forward, and he got a glimpse of the top curve of her bosom. An excruciatingly modest view to be sure. Her bosom, so surprisingly revealed by her frock, suggested the existence of more curves than he’d previously suspected. He wondered about the shape of her naked breasts, how she would fit his palm, and the color of her nipples. With her complexion, he guessed pale pink. “You write?” she asked.
“In my callow youth, I once set my hand to a story. But now?” He shuddered. “Most assuredly not. Believe what you will of me, but I’ve grown wise enough to know my limitations.”
She frowned and leaned back. His belly went taut as she examined him. Her eyes slayed him, pulled him in to drown. “I don’t understand you at all. One minute you’re a rogue and a cur—”
He waggled his eyebrows at her. “A scoundrel?”
“A rake.”
“A libertine?”
“A cad.”
“No, Mrs. Evans.” He stopped smiling. “Not that. I am never a cad. No matter what you have heard.”
“Reprobate, then.”
“Quite possibly.” He pulled his hands from his pockets.
“What am I to do with you?”
A dozen wickedly suggestive answers came to mind, but he kept them back. Most unlike him. “Tell me what you’ve done to Beatrice. Did she escape from the crypt or did her guardian have his way with her?”
“Dungeon,” she said. She frowned and pushed herself on the swing again, without taking her feet from the ground. Her slippers were going to be quite ruined. “I changed the crypt to a dungeon.”
“Manacled to an icy wall?”
“Do you think that would work? It seems so cruel.” She got a faraway look in her eyes. “She escaped through a secret tunnel, but perhaps Ralf ought to put her in chains first.”
“Her guardian is a cruel man, after all. And is he not already married?”
Her eyes sparkled with humor, and Banallt felt the impact in his gut. Her eyes were nothing short of spectacular. Dark lashes, naturally, since she was a brunette, but eyes for a man to drown in. Large, and such a luscious color in so serious and prim a face, her eyes were a blue green shade uncannily bright. “To a woman who’s left him to become a nun,” she said.
“And yet he remains bound by his marriage vows. He is not free to love Beatrice.”
She tilted her chin in order to look into his face. He’d never made love to a woman as delicate as she was, and he wondered if it would be inconvenient, with him awkwardly reaching for her interesting parts, or if he’d find it exhilarating. How could a man not feel his virility when his partner, with all those delicious and unexpected curves, was so dainty? Still, he did not care to worry about hurting his lover from the mere difference in their size. “But he does love her,” she said. “He has no control over his heart.”
Banallt snorted. “He was careless of it, then. No man with even half the wits he was born with loses his heart like that. He ought to have seen from the start the thing was impossible. A true villain would seduce her, perhaps marry her illegally—a sham ceremony—if that’s what must be done to secure her person.”
“Ah.”
Banallt could tell from her eyes that she was wondering if his suggestion came of personal experience. “No,” he replied to the question she wasn’t asking. “If I wish to secure a woman’s person, I don’t resort to trickery. It’s unsporting.”
Once more her expression shut down. “And after Ralf deceives her, what then?”
“Then the bedroom doors close upon the loving, deluded bride and her faithless lover.”
With the toe of her slipper, she pushed the swing forward half an inch. “You wrote a tragedy, didn’t you?”
He laughed. “There’s no doubt the result was a tragedy. No, I now adhere to the principles of Aristotle. If ever I put pen to paper again, I shall write a play. In three acts. Perfect in every way.”
“By the end everyone is dead?” She snorted. “I wonder what Aristotle would have written on the subject of art had he read Mrs. Radcliffe.” She crossed her eyes. “He would not have written anything.”
“Pray tell, why not?”
She looked over her shoulder, and for a moment, a shadow passed over her face. “Because, he’d have been up all night reading straight through to the end, heart in his mouth every moment. By midday, he’d have fallen asleep and never written his treatise.”
Banallt looked toward the house, too. Tommy was crossing the lawn toward them. He was hatless and barely dressed; a shirt with a cravat hanging untied across the back of his neck. Waistcoat and coat unbuttoned. Breeches respectable, boots in need of polish. Sunlight glinted off his golden curls. The man’s dissipation had yet to affect his looks.
“Sophie,” Tommy cried when he saw them. “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” He shot a questioning glance at Banallt. “Why the devil would you be out here?”
“It’s a lovely day,” Sophie replied.
“Not so loud.” He put a hand to his head and winced. “I’m in a bad way this morning.”
“I’m very sorry for it,” she replied in a lower voice. “Perhaps you ought to have had less to drink if you don’t care to rue the morning.”
“It’s afternoon now anyway,” Tommy replied sharply. He yanked on the ends of his neckcloth. “My damned valet is useless with cravats, Sophie, you know he is. You must tie me. I can’t go out like this.” He dropped a hand on her shoulder and addressed Banallt. “Why are you looking so chipper, Banallt? You drank just the same as I did last night.”
“Constitution of iron,” Banallt replied. In truth, he hadn’t had much to drink at all, but Tommy hadn’t been in any condition to know.
“Sit down,” Sophie said to her husband. Banallt reached in and took Sophie’s book. “Thank you, my lord.” Tommy sat on the swing and slipped off his coat to give her unimpeded access to his neck. She tied Tommy’s cravat quickly with a stunning result.
“What do you call that knot?” Banallt asked.
Sophie tugged a bit on one of the ends. “Neat and tidy, my lord.”
“Can you teach it to my valet?”
She faced him, and he got another dose of her blue green gaze. She held out her hand for her book, which he gave to her. Jesus, she had a courtesan’s eyes. “Why?”
“Never mind why.” Tommy settled his coat over his shoulders and sent his wife a sour look. “Show him and there’s an end to it.”
Her mouth thinned. “It’s not proper.”
“Banallt’s cravat isn’t very neat.” Tommy buttoned his waistcoat. “Tie his and then he can go show his bloody valet himself.”
She might have turned to stone, she was so still. The color drained from her cheeks not from anger, he realized, but from embarrassment. Banallt felt another of those pangs in his chest. “Of course,” she said. “Won’t you sit, my lord?”
“It’s not necessary,” Banallt said. Was he that great a fool? This was a perfect opportunity to have her near him.
Tommy stood and slapped him on the back. “Of course it is. Can’t have you going into town looking like that, can we?”
“I had rather thought we were staying at Rider Hall today.”
Tommy glanced at his wife, standing with her book in her hand. “Quentin invited us to luncheon at the Stag and Thistle. I said we’d come.” The Stag and Thistle housed a gaming hell in the basement and was next door to a bawdy house. Considering he wasn’t getting anywhere with Mrs. Evans, he could at least slake the surface needs of his body. “Go on, Soph,” Tommy said. “See if you can make Banallt presentable.”
The thought of having Mrs. Evans so close to his person seemed quite a delicious encounter, but when he saw her face, he said, “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Evans, I prefer King tie my cravats.”
She looked rather too relieved. Mightn’t she be just a little disappointed?
“I’ll write out the instructions for him, my lord. Will that do?”
He bowed. “I’m sure it will, ma’am.”
He and Tommy walked toward the stables. When he was certain he was out of earshot of Mrs. Evans, Banallt said, “I don’t see why I should fix my cravat when I’ll only have it off in an hour.”
He had the feeling he’d be dreaming of Mrs. Evans again tonight. Something wicked, he thought, involving novel uses of a cravat. They visited the bawdy house after luncheon, and damned if he didn’t call out Sophie’s name when his crisis came.