I’d be more than happy to let you survey my physical perfection in its entirety. But only if I get to see you, too.” To her shocked silence, he replied, “It’s only fair. Tit for tat.”
“How is that fair? You've seen countless tits.
Pauline, she could almost imagine it to say. Pauline, Pauline, Pauline.
That couldn’t be right. It had to be saying something else.
Probably, You fool, you fool, you fool.
Somewhere nearby, love was an ominous, gaping hole in the earth, widening every moment. Unless she were very careful, she’d be sure to fall straight in..
Tags: hr
This?” the duchess asked.
“Yes. That.”
“I will tell you exactly what this is.” She lifted her chin, then turned to Pauline. “It’s exceedingly poor handiwork. Very bad indeed, Miss Simms. I expected better of you.” She cast the entire mess of yarn into the coal grate.
Pauline rolled her eyes at the Bible. “Hypocrite,” she pronounced softly, with perfect diction.
Bram stared into a pair of wide, dark eyes. Eyes that reflected a surprising glimmer of intelligence. This might be the rare female a man could reason with.
“Now, then,” he said. “We can do this the easy way, or we can make things difficult.”
With a soft snort, she turned her head. It was as if he’d ceased to exist.
Bram shifted his weight to his good leg, feeling the stab to his pride. He was a lieutenant colonel in the British army, and at over six feet tall, he was said to cut an imposing figure. Typically, a pointed glance from his quarter would quell the slightest hint of disobedience. He was not accustomed to being ignored.
“Listen sharp now.” He gave her ear a rough tweak and sank his voice to a low threat. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as I say.”
Though she spoke not a word, her reply was clear: You can kiss my great woolly arse.
Confounded sheep.
“Ah, the English countryside. So charming. So…fragrant.” Colin approached, stripped of his London-best topcoat, wading hip-deep through the river of wool. Blotting the sheen of perspiration from his brow with his sleeve, he asked, “I don’t suppose this means we can simply turn back?”
Ahead of them, a boy pushing a handcart had overturned his cargo, strewing corn all over the road. It was an open buffet, and every ram and ewe in Sussex appeared to have answered the invitation. A vast throng of sheep bustled and bleated around the unfortunate youth, gorging themselves on the spilled grain-and completely obstructing Bram’s wagons.
“Can we walk the teams in reverse?” Colin asked. “Perhaps we can go around, find another road.”
Bram gestured at the surrounding landscape. “There is no other road.”
They stood in the middle of the rutted dirt lane, which occupied a kind of narrow, winding valley. A steep bank of gorse rose up on one side, and on the other, some dozen yards of heath separated the road from dramatic bluffs. And below those-far below those-lay the sparkling turquoise sea. If the air was seasonably dry and clear, and Bram squinted hard at that thin indigo line of the horizon, he might even glimpse the northern coast of France.
So close. He’d get there. Not today, but soon. He had a task to accomplish here, and the sooner he completed it, the sooner he could rejoin his regiment. He wasn’t stopping for anything.
Except sheep. Blast it. It would seem they were stopping for sheep.
A rough voice said, “I’ll take care of them.”
Thorne joined their group. Bram flicked his gaze to the side and spied his hulking mountain of a corporal shouldering a flintlock rifle.
“We can’t simply shoot them, Thorne.”
Obedient as ever, Thorne lowered his gun. “Then I’ve a cutlass. Just sharpened the blade last night.”
“We can’t butcher them, either.”
Thorne shrugged. “I’m hungry.”
Yes, that was Thorne-straightforward, practical. Ruthless.
“We’re all hungry.” Bram’s stomach rumbled in support of the statement. “But clearing the way is our aim at the moment, and a dead sheep’s harder to move than a live one. We’ll just have to nudge them along.”
Thorne lowered the hammer of his rifle, disarming it, then flipped the weapon with an agile motion and rammed the butt end against a woolly flank. “Move on, you bleeding beast.
Tranquility is the soul of our community.”
Not a quarter mile’s distance away, Susanna Finch sat in the lace-curtained parlor of the Queen’s Ruby, a rooming house for gently bred young ladies. With her were the room house’s newest prospective residents, a Mrs. Highwood and her three unmarried daughters.
“Here in Spindle Cove, young ladies enjoy a wholesome, improving atmosphere.” Susanna indicated a knot of ladies clustered by the hearth, industriously engaged in needlework. “See? The picture of good health and genteel refinement.”
In unison, the young ladies looked up from their work and smiled placid, demure smiles.
Excellent. She gave them an approving nod.
Ordinarily, the ladies of Spindle Cove would never waste such a beautiful afternoon stitching indoors. They would be rambling the countryside, or sea bathing in the cove, or climbing the bluffs. But on days like these, when new visitors came to the village, everyone understood some pretense at propriety was necessary. Susanna was not above a little harmless deceit when it came to saving a young woman’s life.
“Will you take more tea?” she asked, accepting a fresh pot from Mrs. Nichols, the inn’s aging proprietress. If Mrs. Highwood examined the young ladies too closely, she might notice that mild Gaelic obscenities occupied the center of Kate Taylor’s sampler. Or that Violet Winterbottom’s needle didn’t even have thread.
This is absurd,” Colin grumbled. “At this rate, we’ll arrive next Tuesday.”
“Stop talking. Start moving.” Bram nudged a sheep with his boot, wincing as he did. With his leg already killing him, the last thing he needed was a pain in the arse, but that’s exactly what he’d inherited, along with all his father’s accounts and possessions: responsibility for his wastrel cousin, Colin Sandhurst, Lord Payne.
He swatted at another sheep’s flank, earning himself an indignant bleat and a few inches more.
“I have an idea,” Colin said.
Bram grunted, unsurprised. As men, he and Colin were little more than strangers. But during the few years they’d overlapped at Eton, he recalled his younger cousin as being just full of ideas. Ideas that had landed him shin-deep in excrement. Literally, on at least one occasion.
Colin looked from Bram to Thorne and back again, eyes keen. “I ask you, gentlemen. Are we, or are we not, in possession of a great quantity of black powder?
I still have no choice but to bring out Minerva instead.”
“But Minerva doesn’t care about men,” young Charlotte said helpfully. “She prefers dirt and rocks.”
“It’s called geology,” Minerva said. “It’s a science.”
“It’s certain spinsterhood, is what it is! Unnatural girl. Do sit straight in your chair, at least.” Mrs. Highwood sighed and fanned harder. To Susanna, she said, “I despair of her, truly. This is why Diana must get well, you see. Can you imagine Minerva in Society?”
Susanna bit back a smile, all too easily imagining the scene. It would probably resemble her own debut. Like Minerva, she had been absorbed in unladylike pursuits, and the object of her female relations’ oft-voiced despair. At balls, she’d been that freckled Amazon in the corner, who would have been all too happy to blend into the wallpaper, if only her hair color would have allowed it.
As for the gentlemen she’d met…not a one of them had managed to sweep her off her feet. To be fair, none of them had tried very hard.
She shrugged off the awkward memories. That time was behind her now.
Mrs. Highwood’s gaze fell on a book at the corner of the table. “I am gratified to see you keep Mrs. Worthington close at hand.”
“Oh yes,” Susanna replied, reaching for the blue, leatherbound tome. “You’ll find copies of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom scattered everywhere throughout the village. We find it a very useful book.”
“Hear that, Minerva? You would do well to learn it by heart.” When Minerva rolled her eyes, Mrs. Highwood said, “Charlotte, open it now. Read aloud the beginning of Chapter Twelve.”
Charlotte reached for the book and opened it, then cleared her throat and read aloud in a dramatic voice. “’Chapter Twelve. The perils of excessive education. A young lady’s intellect should be in all ways like her undergarments. Present, pristine, and imperceptible to the casual observer.’”
Mrs. Highwood harrumphed. “Yes. Just so. Hear and believe it, Minerva. Hear and believe every word. As Miss Finch says, you will find that book very useful.”
Susanna took a leisurely sip of tea, swallowing with it a bitter lump of indignation. She wasn’t an angry or resentful person, as a matter of course. But once provoked, her passions required formidable effort to conceal.
That book provoked her, no end.
Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies was the bane of sensible girls the world over, crammed with insipid, damaging advice on every page. Susanna could have gleefully crushed its pages to powder with a mortar and pestle, labeled the vial with a skull and crossbones, and placed it on the highest shelf in her stillroom, right beside the dried foxglove leaves and deadly nightshade berries.
Instead, she’d made it her mission to remove as many copies as possible from circulation. A sort of quarantine. Former residents of the Queen’s Ruby sent the books from all corners of England. One couldn’t enter a room in Spindle Cove without finding a copy or three of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom. And just as Susanna had told Mrs. Highwood, they found the book very useful indeed. It was the perfect size for propping a window open. It also made an excellent doorstop or paperweight. Susanna used her personal copies for pressing herbs. Or occasionally, for target practice.
She motioned to Charlotte. “May I?” Taking the volume from the girl’s grip, she raised the book high. Then, with a brisk thwack, she used it to crush a bothersome gnat.
With a calm smile, she placed the book on a side table. “Very useful indeed.
When they rolled to a stop, she found herself pinned by a tremendous, huffing weight. And pierced by an intense green gaze.
“Wh-?” Her breath rushed out in question.
Boom, the world answered.
Susanna ducked her head, burrowing into the protection of what she’d recognized to be an officer’s coat. The knob of a brass button pressed into her cheek. The man’s bulk formed a comforting shield as a shower of dirt clods rained down on them both. He smelled of whiskey and gunpowder.
After the dust cleared, she brushed the hair from his brow, searching his gaze for signs of confusion or pain. His eyes were alert and intelligent, and still that startling shade of green-as hard and richly hued as jade.
She asked, “Are you well?”
“Yes.” His voice was a deep rasp. “Are you?”
She nodded, expecting him to release her at the confirmation. When he showed no signs of moving, she puzzled at it. Either he was gravely injured or seriously impertinent. “Sir, you’re…er, you’re rather heavy.” Surely he could not fail to miss that hint.
He replied, “You’re soft.”
Good Lord. Who was this man? Where had he come from? And how was he still atop her?
“You have a small wound.” With trembling fingers, she brushed a reddish knot high on his temple, near his hairline. “Here.” She pressed her hand to his throat, feeling for his pulse. She found it, thumping strong and steady against her gloved fingertips.
“Ah. That’s nice.”
Her face blazed with heat. “Are you seeing double?”
“Perhaps. I see two lips, two eyes, two flushed cheeks…a thousand freckles.”
She stared at him.
“Don’t concern yourself, miss. It’s nothing.” His gaze darkened with some mysterious intent. “Nothing a little kiss won’t mend.”
And before she could even catch her breath, he pressed his lips to hers.
A kiss. His mouth, touching hers. It was warm and firm, and then…it was over.
Her first real kiss in all her five-and-twenty years, and it was finished in a heartbeat.
She asked, “Are you well?”
“Yes.” His voice was a deep rasp. “Are you?”
She nodded, expecting him to release her at the confirmation. When he showed no signs of moving, she puzzled at it. Either he was gravely injured or seriously impertinent. “Sir, you’re…er, you’re rather heavy.” Surely he could not fail to miss that hint.
He replied, “You’re soft.”
Good Lord. Who was this man? Where had he come from? And how was he still atop her?
“You have a small wound.” With trembling fingers, she brushed a reddish knot high on his temple, near his hairline. “Here.” She pressed her hand to his throat, feeling for his pulse. She found it, thumping strong and steady against her gloved fingertips.
“Ah. That’s nice.”
Her face blazed with heat. “Are you seeing double?”
“Perhaps. I see two lips, two eyes, two flushed cheeks…a thousand freckles.”
She stared at him.
“Don’t concern yourself, miss. It’s nothing.” His gaze darkened with some mysterious intent. “Nothing a little kiss won’t mend.”
And before she could even catch her breath, he pressed his lips to hers.
A kiss. His mouth, touching hers. It was warm and firm, and then…it was over.
Her first real kiss in all her five-and-twenty years, and it was finished in a heartbeat. Just a memory now, save for the faint bite of whiskey on her lips. And the heat. She still tasted his scorching, masculine heat. Belatedly, she closed her eyes.
“There, now,” he murmured. “All better.”
Better? Worse? The darkness behind her eyelids held no answers, so she opened them again.
Different. This strange, strong man held her in his protective embrace, and she was lost in his intriguing green stare, and his kiss reverberated in her bones with more force than a powder blast. And now she felt different.
The heat and weight of him…they were like an answer. The answer to a question Susanna hadn’t even been aware her body was asking. So this was how it would be, to lie beneath a man. To feel shaped by him, her flesh giving in some places and resisting in others. Heat building between two bodies; dueling heartbeats pounding both sides of the same drum.
Maybe…just maybe…this was what she’d been waiting to feel all her life. Not swept her off her feet-but flung across the lane and sent tumbling head over heels while the world exploded around her.
He rolled onto his side, giving her room to breathe. “Where did you come from?”
“I think I should ask you that.” She struggled up on one elbow. “Who are you? What on earth are you doing here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” His tone was grave. “We’re bombing the sheep.”
“Oh. Oh dear. Of course you are.” Inside her, empathy twined with despair. Of course, he was cracked in the head. One of those poor soldiers addled by war. She ought to have known it. No sane man had ever looked at her this way.
She pushed aside her disappointment. At least he had come to the right place. And landed on the right woman. She was far more skilled in treating head wounds than fielding gentlemen’s advances. The key here was to stop thinking of him as an immense, virile man and simply regard him as a person who needed her help. An unattractive, poxy, eunuch sort of person.
Reaching out to him, she traced one fingertip over his brow. “Don’t be frightened,” she said in a calm, even tone. “All is well. You’re going to be just fine.” She cupped his cheek and met his gaze directly. “The sheep can’t hurt you here.
Do you know what day it is?” she asked, peering at him.
“Don’t you?”
“Here in Spindle Cove, we ladies have a schedule. Mondays are country walks. Tuesdays, sea bathing. Wednesdays, you’d find us in the garden.” She touched the back of her hand to his forehead. “What is it we do on Mondays?”
“We didn’t get to Thursdays.”
“Thursdays are irrelevant. I’m testing your ability to recall information. Do you remember Mondays?”
He stifled a laugh. God, her touch felt good. If she kept petting and stroking him like this, he might very well go mad.
“Tell me your name,” he said. “I promise to recall it.” A bit forward, perhaps. But any chance for formal introductions had already fallen casualty to the powder charge.
Speaking of the powder charge, here came the brilliant mastermind of the sheep siege. Damn his eyes.
“Are you well, miss?” Colin asked.
“I’m well,” she answered. “I’m afraid I can’t say the same for your friend.”
“Bram?” Colin prodded him with a boot. “You look all of a piece.”
No thanks to you.
“He’s completely addled, the poor soul.” The girl patted his cheek. “Was it the war? How long has he been like this?”
“Like this?” Colin smirked down at him. “Oh, all his life.”
“All his life?”
“He’s my cousin. I should know.”
A flush pressed to her cheeks, overwhelming her freckles. “If you’re his cousin, you should take better care of him. What are you thinking, allowing him to wander the countryside, waging war on flocks of sheep?”
Ah, that was sweet. The lass cared. She would see him settled in a very comfortable asylum, she would. Perhaps Thursdays would be her day to visit and lay cool cloths to his brow.
“I know, I know,” Colin replied gravely. “He’s a certifiable fool. Completely unstable. Sometimes the poor bastard even drools. But the hell of it is, he controls my fortune. Every last penny. I can’t tell him what to do.”
“That’ll be enough,” Bram said. Time to put a stop to this nonsense. It was one thing to enjoy a moment’s rest and a woman’s touch, and another to surrender all pride.
He gained his feet without too much struggle and helped her to a standing position, too. He managed a slight bow. “Lieutenant Colonel Victor Bramwell. I assure you, I’m in possession of perfect health, a sound mind, and one good-for-nothing cousin.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Those blasts…”
“Just powder charges. We embedded them in the road, to scare off the sheep.”
“You laid black powder charges. To move a flock of sheep.” Pulling her hand from his grip, she studied the craters in the road. “Sir, I remain unconvinced of your sanity. But there’s no question you are male.”
He raised a brow. “That much was never in doubt.”
Her only answer was a faint deepening of her blush.
“I assure you, all the lunacy is my cousin’s. Lord Payne was merely teasing, having a bit of sport at my expense.”
“I see. And you were having a bit of sport at my expense, pretending to be injured.”
“Come, now.” He leaned forward her and murmured, “Are you going to pretend you didn’t enjoy it?”
Her eyebrows lifted. And lifted, until they formed perfect twin archer’s bows, ready to dispatch poison-tipped darts. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.
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