Cam wasn’t sure whether he wanted to kiss Gemma or spank her.
“I’m not a child, Cam,” she said with a roll of her eyes, which alerted him to the fact he’d spoken the thought aloud. “I do know what happens between men and women.”
“But that isn’t…” he searched for the right words. “That is to say, that sort of…”
Gemma sighed, and patted him on the hand. “I know this has upset your sense of propriety,” she told him kindly, “but we had best not sit here in the drive of Pearson Close or Mr. Northman will suspect our reasons for being here weren’t quite as carnal as I made them out to be.”
Cam blinked. Then realized she was right.
But rather than turning toward the main road that led to Beauchamp House, he directed the horses in the other direction.
“Where are we going?” Gemma asked, looking far more suspicious than a woman who had just admitted to taking her betrothed to someone else’s rooms because it stimulated her had a right to be.
“So now you don’t trust me?” Cam asked with a raised brow.
“That was pretend and you know it,” she said haughtily.
“It wasn’t pretend when you put your tongue in my m—”
“Lord Cameron,” she said in a not unconvincing impersonation of Fanshawe, “I was playing a part. Nothing more. Pray do not refer to it again.”
He had a very good idea of just how much—or little—of a part she’d been playing, but they would save that argument for another time.
“I dropped the papers out the window,” he said smugly. “When we were … you know.”
She didn’t remark on his inability to name what it was they’d been engaged in, for which he was thankful.
“Oh! I wondered what you were doing,” she said with what sounded like awe. “That was a brilliant idea. I’m sorry for doubting you.”
“Do not praise me yet,” he said ruefully. “I dropped two sheaves of papers out of a third story window. The odds of them not having scattered all over the garden are very low.”
“Do not be such a pessimist,” Gemma chided him. “At least we have them.”
“I am a realist,” he responded as he brought the curricle to a halt on the path he’d seen tradesmen take to the kitchens at Pearson Close.
Cam tied the horses to a tree branch, then stepped around to grasp Gemma by the waist and lift her down from the vehicle.
He was grateful he’d instructed the grooms yesterday to give his matched pair a rest. He had no doubt that this pair of carriage horses they kept in Beauchamp House stables would be far more amenable to remaining tied up outdoors in this weather. The grays would have broken the reins or injured themselves at such an indignity.
Just as temperamental as the grays, but equally as valuable he’d come to realize, was the lady in his arms at the moment.
When she got her feet beneath her, he saw a spark of desire in her eyes, but then she’d shaken it off and pushed him away.
“Come on,” she ordered, stomping forward over the shell-covered path.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said in an undertone as he followed her.
It was just as well that she was keeping the focus, he reflected as he caught up to her.
He’d forgot for a time that their betrothal and everything that went with it was only temporary. It wouldn’t do to mistake lust and friendship for anything more permanent.
Once he was walking beside her, he was careful to keep them to the edge of the wood so that they would be less visible from the house. But it was slow going thanks to the mud and ice. The hems of Gemma’s garments were soon filthy, but she didn’t complain once.
“Which window?” Gemma asked as they neared the path alongside the house.
Cam had calculated the location based on his view out his own window, and its proximity to Sir Everard’s rooms. But it had been the papers contrasting with the dark green of the holly bushes growing beneath the windows that gave him the precise location. Fortunately the wind had been blowing toward the side of the house rather than crossways, so the pages were in a relatively tidy pile.
Unfortunately, aforementioned holly bushes were well over seven feet tall. A height neither of them could boast even on their toes.
“You’ll have to boost me up,” Gemma said frowning up at the top of the hedge. “Make a step with your hands. Like so.”
She threaded her fingers together and proffered them in the way she wanted him to do it.
Cam shook his head. “That won’t work.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “I’ll get the height I need.”
“But you’ve got nothing to hold on to,” he argued. “You’ll have to climb onto my shoulders.”
He said it with an air of apology.
“I certainly will not,” Gemma said emphatically. “Not in this gown.”
She glanced around them, as if looking for some alternative means of getting the papers.
“Gemma,” Cam said in a soothing tone, “It’s the only way. You need enough time to be able to gather them all and I certainly can’t climb onto your back.”
“But it’s … it’s … it’s unseemly,” she finally finished.
“Where is the lady who confessed to enjoying lovemaking more in the bedchambers of other people?” he asked wryly.
“That was different,” she hissed. “That didn’t entail you putting your head up my skirt.”
“If you’re doing it right it does,” he said with a shrug.
“I hate you,” she said hotly.
“I know you do,” he said. “But it’s the only way.”
Even as he spoke, he knelt and held out his hand to help her climb up.
Gemma scowled. Then when he didn’t relent, she gave a very unladylike curse.
“Do not look,” she ordered. He did his best to obey, but it was impossible not to peek just a little.
From the corner of his eye he watched as she gathered her skirts between her legs, then lifted them so high her garters were showing.
Her legs were long and slender, and he was forced to think about the mineral composition of his latest soil samples in order to suppress the image of those legs over his shoulders in a very different circumstance than the present one.
The frigid temperature did the rest.
“If you ever tell anyone about this I will murder you,” Gemma said tightly as she climbed onto his shoulders. “With a rusty knife.”
“You have my word,” he said, reaching up to grasp her by first one stockinged leg, then the other.
Despite his attempts at distraction, it was impossible to ignore the fact that if he were to turn his head just a fraction he’d be able to kiss the soft skin of her inner thigh. He closed his eyes and counted to ten.
“Stand up,” Gemma ordered, pulling on his hair. “It’s cold.”
He felt a shiver run through her and cursed himself.
Without reply, he stood to his full height and walked slowly so that she was close enough to the top of the neatly trimmed holly bushes.
“A little to the right,” she instructed him, and Cam did as she asked.
“Here.”
It took much less time than he’d have expected, probably because she was cold and when he offered to rub her legs to make them warmer she’d told him to go to the devil.
Finally, when she had them all, she handed the sheaf of papers down to him and ordered him to kneel so she could climb off. He wasn’t even completely on his knee when she hopped off and dropped her skirts down and began smoothing them.
With an imperious hand she indicated that he should hand her the papers.
He did so, deciding that she had earned the right to order him about for a little while.
Without a word to him, she set off back toward where they’d tied up the curricle and horses.
“We will not speak of this again,” she said firmly as he came up beside her.
“Was it so bad?” he asked. “It only took a quarter hour at most.”
“You take off your breeches and climb up on someone else’s shoulders in the freezing cold where anyone might happen upon you at any minute, and tell me how much it matters that it only lasted a quarter hour.”
“You have a point,” he said.
Then, he heard her sniff. And had that been a wobble in her voice?
She tried to hurry forward, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“Gemma,” he said gently, “are you all right?”
She didn’t turn but he could see that her shoulders, normally proud and strong, were sagging.
“Cameron, my day has consisted of finding a dead body, discovering that the fossil I hoped would help me establish myself as a legitimate scholar missing, kissing my brother-in-law, being hurried into a betrothal with said brother-in-law, breaking into a dead man’s bedchamber, pretending I enjoy lovemaking in other people’s homes, and exposing my lower limbs in the outdoors in the freezing cold where anyone might see them. I am most assuredly not all right.”
Her voice broke on that last, and Cam muttered a curse and lifted her into his arms.
She clutched the papers to her chest, but didn’t protest him carrying her because she was shivering too badly to speak.
“I’m an idiot,” he said to himself. If she caught her death of a cold from this he’d never forgive himself.
The walk to the curricle was brief, thankfully, and when he climbed in after untethering the horses, he shrugged out of his greatcoat.
“What are you doing?” she demanded through chattering teeth. “It’s freezing.”
“For once in your life, do not argue.” He wrapped the coat, still warm from his body, around her, and turned to rouse the horses.
“There’s room enough for a family of four beneath this coat,” she said after they’d gone a few hundred feet. “You must be cold too.”
Realizing that she would very likely argue until he succumbed, he allowed her to drape the coat over his upper body, too. Before they were halfway back to Beauchamp House, she’d snuggled up against his side and fallen fast asleep.
Cam shook his head ruefully.
If he didn’t watch it he was going to find himself married to her.
He was no longer entirely sure that would be a bad thing.