I replaced my hat and extended my arm for her to take. “Very well. Let us slip quietly into the forest, that none shall be the wiser.”
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “I do not know what your word is worth, but can I trust you, sir?”
“Miss Bennet, I will guard you like you were my own sister. You may depend on it.”
“Hah! I already know that for a falsehood.”
“Not at all.” She wasn’t taking my arm, so I clasped her hand and gently tugged her forward. “No harm ever befell my sister when I was present, and so far,Ihave been the only one injured when you and I are in company. I ought instead to be asking for assurance from you that you will refrain from wounding me.”
She clamped her teeth into her lower lip, and her eyes fluttered closed in a long-suffering sigh. “I cannot believe I am doing this.”
Elizabethledmetothe cow barn and, after looking inside to be certain we were alone, proceeded to climb the ladder up to the hayloft. Was she… serious? That was not the sort of business I had in mind.
“Are you coming?” she asked when she gained the top. I still had not set my foot on the rung because I was so consumed with watching her. Was it hot in that barn? I seemed to be having some trouble breathing.
This was over my head. I’d only come to Longbourn to ask a few questions, and now I was climbing into a hayloft with the only woman who ever made me lose track of my brain. I would be lucky if I came back down with my sanity intact.
But there was nothing else for it, so I tested the ladder and carefully made my way up.
She had already settled herself in a sort of nest amid the loose hay; her crossed arms resting on her knees. The toes of her shoes peeped from under her skirts, and she was waiting for me with a satirical smile.
“Don’t tell me you have never climbed a ladder before. I thought that was one of the tools of your trade.”
“Only when necessary.” I ducked under the low roof, removing my hat and searching for a place to sit. The hay was mounded in such a way that there was nowhere to sit that did not leave me almost touching her. Exactly what I’d been afraid of.
“Why are you even here?”
I shuffled my seat a little more deeply into the hay. “Perhaps it is best if you go first. My errand will not be quick to explain.”
“Very well. There is a… a thing. I need it back.”
I folded my hands on my knee. “Perhaps you would care to elaborate.”
She rolled her eyes and blew out a sigh. “A sculpture. It is about this high—” she held her hand roughly eighteen inches above the hay floor—“and made of marble. My father has sold it to… well, to someone, and now I need someone of your…” She swept those dark eyes over me, head to toe. “Expertise.”
“What expertise is that? So far, the only thing you know for a certainty that I can do is—”
“I do not need to be kissed.”
I stopped, and a slow grin overtook my face. I couldn’t help it. Heaven have mercy, but she was delicious. “More is the pity.”
“Well, that seems to be what you do best,” she snapped. “Have you any other talents, or are you all a sham?”
“Lest we forget, the second time,youwere the one who kissedme.”
She examined her fingernails. “I was only exploiting a weakness, and it worked.”
“It was a pleasant distraction, I’ll admit, but I did not entirely forget the reason I came to speak with you. Nor have I now.”
“Right. So, can you do it, or can’t you?”
“Do what? You’ve told me nothing except there is a statue, and you think me a talented kisser.”
Her cheeks flamed. “I did not say that.”
I grinned. I might be in the middle of the worst crisis ever to tarnish my family’s name. But there in the dusky loft, with the air balmy and our voices muted to intimate whispers, all thoughts of sculptures and scandals faded. I was staring fixedly at her plump, sweet lips, my breath coming in shallow bursts and my core buzzing as if I had had too much wine.
“You said,” I reminded her, “that it was my particular expertise. Have you many examples to compare me to?”
