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“She’s made him move something. I heard her complaining about the bees. There!” she cried triumphantly as they reached a bed entirely stripped of the bergamot it had once contained. “He hasn’t replanted yet.”
“Of course not, in this heat. If you knew anything about gardening, Miss Desmond—”
“I don’t need to know anything.” She turned shining eyes upon him. “Because she knows nothing of ancient Greek horticulture. We’ll tell her it’s an experiment.”
She dragged Jack off to the potting shed, where, after a brief discussion with the distracted gardener, they possessed themselves of a few tools and several healthy seedlings.
After a brief argument, Jack dug the hole. Miss Desmond placed the book in its grave, waited until he had thrown some dirt upon it, then began stuffing plants into the loose soil. Jack knelt beside her.
“They’ll die,” he said, eying the seedlings. Some were packed into dirt so deeply that only the very tops showed. “It’s too hot and I’m sure you’ve done it wrong.”
“Then we’ll blame it on the Greeks.” Miss Desmond thrust a stray lock of hair back from her face.
It was very hot, indeed. The air was as thick as new-churned butter. Mr. Langdon had removed his coat, but his waistcoat was plastered to his shirt, which was stuck to his skin. He noted that Miss Desmond had rubbed a dirty smudge onto her right cheekbone. He was about to offer his handkerchief when he saw a bead of perspiration trickle down from her temples past the smudge, along her slender white neck, past her collarbone and on down until it disappeared at the edge of her bodice. The air must have grown heavier still, because Mr. Langdon suddenly found it quite impossible to breathe.
Miss Desmond looked towards him then. Her eyes widened slightly and her cheeks began to glow faintly pink. She scrambled up very quickly. Too quickly, apparently, in the heat, because he saw her hand go to her head as she began to sway.
Jack rose hastily. “Miss Desmond, are you ill?” he asked, putting out his hand to assist her.
“No,” she said, backing away. “Just dizzy for a moment. I—”
She did not complete the thought because she tripped on the trowel and lost her balance.
Fortunately, she stumbled forwards instead of backwards, and Jack was able to catch her before she fell. Unfortunately, once he’d caught her, he was presented with an interesting example of the mind-body dichotomy. His mind told him to let go of her. His hands clasped her upper arms more firmly. Then his gaze locked with hers and, drawn like the tides to the moon, his head bent slowly until his lips met soft ones, tasting slightly of salt, and while his brain watched, horrified and helpless, he kissed her.
Mr. Atkins had no business in the garden. Though Desmond had put him off in his usual urbanely evasive way, Lady Potterby had made plain her disapproval of the publisher’s unexpected visit. Naturally she would not approve. He carried with him that distasteful aroma of the City which only aristocrats could discern. No doubt she thought him a mushroom, presuming upon a chance acquaintance with the Desmonds in order to encroach his way into noble households.
Mr. Atkins could not afford to be thin-skinned, however. He had delayed his departure well beyond the limits of her ladyship’s patience because he must leave empty-handed, which meant he would be ruined, and he was as reluctant to face ruin as any more sensitive fellow.
He had stolen into the garden because he was grasping at straws. Why had Mr. Langdon clutched that curious volume to his breast as though it were his firstborn? Why had Miss Desmond been so eager to hustle the young man out of the house?
Hoping desperately that the answers to these questions would somehow lead him to the manuscripts, Mr. Atkins trespassed quietly past the herb garden and on towards the perennial beds. There he found the puzzle solved and his hopes dashed. In short, he caught sight of the pair at the precise moment in which Mr. Langdon was confronting the mind-body dichotomy.
Mr. Atkins’s head began to throb as he turned and headed back to his gig—and, he was certain, bankruptcy.
Miss Desmond was not altogether shocked at first. She had seen the same hot light before in other men’s eyes. Though she was surprised to see it in Mr. Langdon’s, she’d sensed what was coming and instinctively backed away. The trouble was, this sober young man had an uncanny knack for leading her to step wrong—today quite literally.
Once she found herself in his arms, she’d decided she might as well let him steal his kiss—only because she was curious—and thereafter reward him with severe bodily injury. These admirable intentions had been delayed of execution because the first tentative touch had softened her stony heart. He was too shy to really kiss her, poor man. In a moment he would jump back, embarrassed, stammering every sort of apology.
What followed in that moment could not have been more opposed to her expectations. His hands slid to her back, and in an instant, it seemed, the kiss became sure, thorough, and... debilitating.
Miss Desmond had rarely before suffered a kiss for more than a few seconds. She knew too well the consequences, especially for one of her dubious heritage. Now those seconds had passed, she found herself slipping into uncharted and surprisingly stormy waters.
As his mouth, tender but sure, moved over hers, she was strangely unable to do anything but respond in kind. In the next moment, without warning, the bright afternoon sun was submerged in the dark wave that engulfed her as his lips grew more demanding and his hands pressed her closer. Her mind grew dark as well.
There was far too much warmth, suddenly, and something like electricity darting through her as his arms tightened about her to crush her against his chest. Her own muscles grew weak, as though his drew their strength from them. It was, finally, the trembling of her weakening limbs that alerted her, that made her recollect to what—and whom—she was succumbing.
She jerked herself free and slapped him as hard as she could. Then she only stood where she was, because though she was furious—and perhaps a tad alarmed—she was too weak-kneed to storm off as she wished to.
Had she been herself, the blow would have staggered him. As it was, he scarcely winced, only stared at her in horror. “Oh, my God,” he said, as his face reddened to match the mark she’d left there.
“You—you cur!” she spat out. “How dare you? But of course you dare, you—you wolf in bookworm’s clothing. You’re just like all the rest.”
“Miss Desmond, please. I beg your pardon. I cannot think what I—”
“I can think what you are. You can count yourself lucky I hadn’t my pistol with me or you’d never think again.”
“Oh, my God.” He stared blindly about him, his expression that of a man who has just trodden upon a nest of angry cobras. “Am I losing my mind?” He turned to her then, and in his grey eyes she saw, outraged as she was, genuine anguish.
“As an excuse, that is hardly original—or complimentary,” she said tartly.
“Miss Desmond, I cannot make any excuse. I can scarcely imagine any apology that would be remotely adequate. It is simply—” He hesitated.
“Yes, it is simply a matter of taking me for a lightskirts—which is, naturally, what everyone does, and I suppose I should be used to it by now.”
“It’s nothing of the sort.” He ran his fingers through his hair, which she noted was already untidy.
Good grief, Delilah thought, had she made it so? She could not remember where her own hands had been a few moments before. She wanted to dash into the house and up to her room where she could hide under the bed, but she had too much pride to retreat. She stood waiting, watching, as he seemed to struggle with something. Finally, he spoke.
“Miss Desmond, I find there is—I mean, I have an intensity of... feeling for you that... that I cannot understand—or control, apparently,” he ended feebly.
“It is usually called lust, Mr. Langdon,” she snapped as the recollection of his recent power over her stirred up her fury again. “Though I’m relieved to hear you don’t understand it, because I certa
inly could not. After all, I am not paper and ink and bound in morocco. Or will you claim you were touched by the sun and took me for a volume of Ptolemy? That would be far more original than this equivalent of ‘I don’t know what came over me.’”
His grey eyes darkened, and his face became rigid. Even before he spoke, Delilah knew she’d gone too far.
“Whatever my tastes, madam—and I do admit I am more than average fond of reading—I am not made of paper and ink, either,” he said coldly. “I am still a man. I suppose I may have moments of weakness like other men? We all of us, despite our best intentions, occasionally forget we are gentlemen. I had such a moment, and I do humbly beg your pardon. Or is there some further penance you wish to exact?”
Delilah knew what penance he referred to. She knew she had, technically, a right to claim he’d compromised her. For an instant she was even tempted to do so, because she could think of no more fitting punishment than to make him marry her, disgrace his name, outrage his family, and be miserable all the rest of his days. Pride—and perhaps a twinge of guilt—overcame anger, however. She was not so desperate for a husband. Furthermore, it was most unwise to arouse his enmity, considering all he knew about the manuscript.
“Now you are being unfair,” she said. “It’s the lady’s prerogative to be insulted and the gentleman’s to be penitent. You did far better when you were all abject apologies. You were so beautifully insincere.”
“I was entirely sincere,” he returned angrily.
“If you were, then why do you pick on me now? If you must be wicked enough to try to seduce me in my great-aunt’s garden, you might at least allow me to be insulted and faint and scream and become hysterical. That’s supposed to be how it’s done.”
He opened his mouth to retort, then shut it and looked around instead for his coat. He snatched it up from a bush and shrugged himself into it. It was a very well-made coat, Delilah noted, even as she was wondering how to mollify him. It fit him quite nicely.
