Duchess Quartet - A Wild Pursuit Part 7

"Goat," she said, in the low, threatening tone she had perfected on her four smaller sisters. "Goat, give me that garment."

The goat stopped chewing for a second and looked at her, and Bea knew she had him.

She walked over, ignoring the Puritan's shouts. Apparently Fairfax-Lacy had realized she was serious and seemed perturbed that she might get injured.

"Don't even think about kicking me," she told the goat. "I'll tie your ears in a bow and you'll look so stupid that no lady goat will ever look at you again."

He stopped chewing. Bea took another step and then held out her hand. "Drop that coat!" she said sharply.

The goat just stared at her, so she used the meanest tone she had, the one she reserved for little sisters who were caught painting their cheeks with her Liquid Bloom of Roses. "Drop it!"

He did, naturally.

Bea cast a triumphant look over her shoulder and bent to pick up her coat. Fairfax-Lacy was tramping across the field after her, no doubt impressed by her magnetic effect on animals.

Time has a way of softening memories. Yes, her meanest tone had been successful. But how could she have forgotten that her wicked little sisters often found retribution?

The kick landed squarely on her bottom and actually picked her off her feet. She landed with a tremendous splash, just at the feet of Mr. Stephen Fairfax-Lacy.

"Ow!"

At least he didn't laugh at her. He squatted next to her, and his blue eyes were so compa.s.sionate that they made her fee! a little teary. Or perhaps that was due to the throbbing in her bottom. "You've still got your spencer," he said rea.s.suringly.

Bea looked down at her hand, and sure enough, she was clutching a muddy, chewed-up garment. The goat may have got his revenge, but she'd kept his supper. She started to giggle. A smile was biting at the corners of the Puritan's mouth too. A splatter of warm rain fell on Bea's cheeks, the kind that falls through sunshine. Water slid behind her ears and pattered on the leaves of a little birch. Bea licked her lips. Then, as suddenly as it started, the shower stopped.

"I didn't realize how much you treasure your clothing," he said, touching her cheek. For a moment Bea didn't know what he was doing, and then she realized he was wiping mud from her face. Without even thinking, she leaned against the Puritan and just let laughter pour out of her. She howled with laughter, the way she used to, back when she and her sisters would lark around in the nursery. The way she did when the world was bright and fresh and new.

She laughed so hard that she almost cried, so she stopped.

He wasn't laughing with her. d.a.m.ned if the Puritan didn't have the sweetest eyes in the whole world. He

scooped her off the ground and then strode over to the birch and sat down, back against its spindly trunk. Bea found it very interesting that when he sat down he didn't put her on the gra.s.s, but on his lap. "You have triumphed," he told her. Sunlight filtered through the birch leaves in a curiously pale, watery sort of way. It made his eyes look dark blue, an azure bottom-of-the-sea type of blue. She raised an eyebrow. Actually, now that she thought of it, all the color she'd put into her eyebrows and lashes had probably made its way down her cheek. Oh well, he likely thought it was just mud. "A goat conqueror." "One of my many skills," she said, feeling a little uncomfortable. "I just want to suggest that you rest on your laurels," he said, and his eyes had a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt that made Bea feel almost... almost weak. She never felt weak. So she leaned against him and thought about how good that felt. Except she wasn't quite following the conversation.

"What do you mean?" she finally asked.

There was a definite current of laughter in his voice. "Your bonnet."

Bea shrieked and clapped a hand to her head, only just realizing that she had felt rain falling on her head as well.

"There." He pointed to the right. The d.a.m.ned goat was chewing up her very best hat. The green plume hung drunkenly from his mouth, and he seemed to be grinning at her.

Bea started up with a shriek of rage.

"I think not!" The Puritan had arms like steel. He didn't pay a bit of attention to her wiggling, just picked her up and turned her around. When she looked up at his face, she suddenly stopped protesting.

He didn't kiss like a Puritan. Or an old man either.

He kissed like a hungry man. Bea's first sensation was triumph. So the Puritan had pretended that he didn't notice her charms. Ha! That was all an act. He was just... he was just like... but then somehow, insidiously, she lost her train of thought.

He was kissing her so sweetly, as if she were the merest babe in arms. He didn't even seem to wish to push his tongue into her mouth. Instead he rubbed his lips against hers, danced on her mouth, his hands cupping her head so tenderly that she almost shivered. She quite liked this.

Oh, she felt his tongue. It sung on her lips, patient and tasting like raspberries. Without thinking, her own tongue tangled with his for a second. Then she realized what she was doing and clamped her mouth shut. There was nothing she hated more than a man pushing his great tongue where it didn't belong.

But he didn't. His lips drifted across her face and pressed her eyes shut, and then closed back on her lips with a ravenous hunger that made her soften, ache deep inside.

He probably thinks I'm a virgin, Bea thought in a foggy sort of way.

His mouth was leaving little trails of fire. He was nibbling her ear, and she was tingling all over. In fact, she wanted-she wanted him to try again. Come back, she coaxed silently, turning her face toward his lips. Try to kiss me, really kiss me. But he didn't. Instead, his tongue curled around the delicate whorls of her ear, and Bea made a hoa.r.s.e sound in her throat. He answered it by nipping her earlobe, which sent another twinge deep between her legs.

He tugged her hair and she obediently tipped her face back, eyes closed, and allowed him to taste her throat, all the time begging silently that he return, return, kiss her again... But he seemed to be feasting on her throat. She opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment he apparently decided he had tormented her enough, and his mouth closed over hers.

She could no more fight that masculine strength than she could rise to her feet. He didn't coax this time; he took, and she gave. And it wasn't like all the other times, when she'd tolerated a moment or two of this kind of kissing. The Puritan's kiss was dark and sweet and savage all at once. It sent quivers through her legs and made her strain to be closer. His hands moved down her back, a.s.sured, possessive. In a moment he would bring them around to her front, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were aching for...

That was the thought that woke Bea. She hadn't been thinking of grappling in the field when she'd dressed in the morning. These particular b.r.e.a.s.t.s weren't meant to withstand a man's hand. There was more cotton than flesh. She tore her mouth away, gasping, and stared at him. She didn't even think about giving him a seductive glance. She was too stunned.

"I like you when you're like this," he said, and there was that sweetness to his eyes again. He reached out and rubbed a splatter of mud from her cheek. "You look rain-washed and very young. Also rather startled. It seemed to me that you've been inviting kisses. Was I wrong?"

"No," she said, trying hard to think what to say next. All her practiced seductive lines seemed to have fled from her head.

"Alas," he said, even more gently, tucking her hair behind her ear. "I can hardly offer marriage to a woman half my age. So I'm afraid that I shall have to leave your kisses, sweet though they are, to some younger man."

Bea's mouth almost fell open. Marriage? Didn't he know who she was? "I don't want-" she began, but her voice was hoa.r.s.e. She stopped. "As it happens, I am not interested in marriage either," she said quite sedately. "I find that I am, however, very interested in you!" She twisted forward and kissed his lips, a promise of pleasure. And she was absolutely honest about that. With him, there would be no boundaries.

But it was he who pulled back. She had been so sure he would lunge at her that she'd smiled-but the smile faded.

He was a Puritan. His eyes had gone cold, dark, condemning. "I thought you played the l.u.s.ty trollop for fun."

She raised her chin. "Actually, no," she said, and she was very pleased to find her tone utterly calm and with just a hint of sarcasm. "I play myself."

"Yourself? Do you even know who you are, under all that face paint?"

"I a.s.sure you that I do."

"You play a part you needn't," he said, eyes fixed on hers. "You are young and beautiful, Beatrix. You should marry and have children."

"I think not."

"Why?"

"You simply want to make me like everyone else," she said sharply. "I like wearing macquillage. I would rather not look like myself, as you put it. And I find it incalculably difficult to imagine myself sitting by the fire wearing a lace cap and chattering about my brood of children."

"I think yourself is beautiful. All your paints have washed away at the moment. You never needed them."

"I didn't say I needed them. I enjoy them," she retorted, and then added, deliberately, "just as I occasionally enjoy the company of a man in my bedchamber."

For a moment they just looked at each other, Puritan to trollop. "Am I to understand that you are not interested in taking a mistress?" she asked, meeting his eyes. She was no child to be whipped by his condemnation.

"Actually, I am," he said. "But I have little interest in one so... practiced."

Bea got to her feet, shaking out her skirts. Then she bent over and picked up her mangled spencer, shaking it out and folding it over her arm, taking a moment to make absolutely certain that her face wouldn't reveal even for a second what she felt.

"I have often noticed that men of your years seem to overprize naivete," she replied calmly.

He showed no reaction, but her quip was so untrue that she gained no joy from saying it. He wasn't old. Suddenly, she decided to be honest. Looking him in the eye, she said, "That was cruel, and quite shabby, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy. I would not have expected it of you."

"I'm sorry."

She nodded and began to turn toward the gate. After all, she'd had much worse things said to her, mostly by women, but then there was her dear father. So when he caught her arm, she turned toward him with a little smile that was almost genuine.

"Don't you think we should take our bedraggled selves home?"

There was real anguish in his eyes. "I feel like the worst sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Kissing you in a field and then insulting you."

At that, she grinned. "I gather you wish I were an innocent, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy. But I am not. I truly enjoyed that kiss." The smile she gave him was as wicked and lazy as any she'd ever bestowed on a man. "And I would very much have enjoyed your company in my bedchamber as well. But I have never forced myself on a man. I fully understand that you are looking for a far more respectable mistress." Helene was an altogether perfect alternative.

At that moment, Bea made up her mind. Helene would never be able to lure the Puritan on her own. She, Beatrix, would have to help, if only to prove that she didn't hold grudges, even when rejected. She would give him to Helene as a present.

She turned and made her way across the field, and when the goat rolled his wicked eyes and snapped his lips over a Pomona green satin ribbon, all that remained of her bonnet, she just smiled at him.

Which startled the animal so much that he galloped off to the other end of the field, leaving her hat behind.

Chapter 8.

The Sewing Circle.

Esme's great relief, Mrs. Cable swept into her morning parlor on the very strike of ten o'clock. Esme had been putting crooked st.i.tches into a sheet for at least five, perhaps even ten, minutes and hadn't got further than two hands' lengths. She hastily bundled the sheet to the side to greet her guest.

"My goodness, Lady Rawlings!" Mrs. Cable said. "How very becoming that cap looks on you! You are verily an ill.u.s.tration of the good book of Timothy, which says that women should adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety rather than gold and pearls."

Esme touched her head self-consciously. It was the very first time that she had ever worn a cap, and she felt like a fool. Like one of those Renaissance fools, with bells hanging off their caps. It felt like rank hypocrisy, as if wearing a trifling bit of lace on top of one's head would make up for the fact that two days ago she'd reveled in indecencies with her gardener. One could only imagine what would happen if her guest knew the truth!

Esme pushed away that thought and offered Mrs. Cable some tea.

"I would be grateful," Mrs. Cable said, plumping herself onto the settee next to Esme, and showing no inclination whatsoever to pick up an unhemmed piece of cotton. "For a body must have sustenance, and that's a fact!"

"I quite agree," Esme said, pouring tea into a cup and ruthlessly repressing visions of other kinds of bodily sustenance, types of which she doubted Mrs. Cable would approve quite so heartily.

Mrs. Cable sipped and raised her eyebrows. "She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar."

Esme was not someone with a facility in biblical verses. Oddly enough, contact with Mrs. Cable seemed to be increasing her irritation rather than her piety. "Indeed?"

"Proverbs," Mrs. Cable said briskly. "This is India tea, is it not? An expense, a dear expense, but quite delicious. I have brought with me six sheets, which I managed to hem in my spare time this week."

"How marvelously industrious you are!" Esme gushed. She herself couldn't seem to sew anything except under the direct supervision of the Circle itself, so she never partic.i.p.ated in the weekly count of completed sheets.

"You must have a great deal of time on your hands these days, Lady Rawlings."

Esme resisted the temptation to tell Mrs. Cable that having a houseful of dissolute guests made for rather a lot of work. "So one would think."

Luckily Slope opened the door. "Lady Winifred," he announced, "and Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq."

"What a pleasure to see you, Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq."

Esme exclaimed. "And here we thought you were enjoying yourself in London and we wouldn't see you until the season ended!"

"We are all a.s.sembled," Mrs. Cable put in, "as when the good book says that the elders were a.s.sembled."

"I'd take it as a personal compliment if you'd not refer to me as an elder, Mrs. Cable," Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq snapped. "Lucy and I have fled London for a week or so. The poor girl is quite, quite worn out by all the festivities. As am I," she added, looking remarkably robust. "Sponsoring a debut is a quite exhausting business." Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq's sister had recently died, leaving her to administer her niece's debut.

"And by all accounts, Lucy is having a particularly exciting time," Lady Winifred said with a good-natured chuckle. Lady Winifred had three grown daughters living in London; while she no longer traveled to the city for the season, she seemed to know of even the tiniest event.

Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq leveled a glare at Lady Winifred, who was demurely threading a needle. "I expect that, as always, accounts of the incident have been grossly exaggerated."

Mrs. Cable's eyes were bulging out with pure excitement. "Never tell me that something happened to sweet Miss Aiken! Your niece could not create a scandal. There must be some mistake!" Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq's mouth twisted. She was a rather corpulent woman, whose body seemed to have focused itself in her bosom; it jutted below her chin like the white cliffs of Dover. Generally, she had an air of victory, but today she looked rather deflated. Esme put down her sheet. "What on earth has happened to Miss Aiken?" she asked. Lucy Aiken had always seemed a pallidly unimaginative girl and certainly not one to achieve notoriety. "It's her father's blood coming out," Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq said heavily. Mrs. Cable gasped. "Never say so!" "I do say so! If my sister hadn't married beneath her, none of this would have happened!" "It didn't sound particularly outrageous to me," Lady Winifred observed, turning the corner on her hem.

"After all, many girls do foolish things in their first season. It's almost expected. And it's not as if she created some sort of true scandal!" Aha, Esme thought to herself. That would have been my role... in the old days. She was astounded that neither Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq nor Lady Winifred had mentioned her cap. Did they really think she was old enough, stodgy enough, widowed enough, to wear one of these? Even Arabella didn't wear a cap!

"My niece insulted the great Brummell himself," Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq said heavily.

"What on earth did Miss Aiken say to him?" Esme asked, fascinated despite herself. She'd often wanted to insult Brummell. "He did her the inestimable honor of complimenting her complexion, and then asked what preparation she used on her freckles." Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq shuddered. "Lucy was rather tired, and apparently she did not entirely understand the breadth of Mr. Brummell's importance in the ton. Or so she tells me."

"And?" Mrs. Cable said.

"She snapped at the man," Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq admitted. "She informed him that any preparations she chose to use on her complexion were her business, and no one else's."

"The snare of vanity," Mrs. Cable said darkly.

"The vanity is all Mr. Brummell's," Esme pointed out. "The man takes a spiteful delight in pointing out the faults that one most wants to hide."