She smiled, her cheek against his shoulder. “Yes, John,” she said. “Or to her.”
“Just one more question,” he said, looking down at her. “And then no more for today, I promise.”
She smiled up at him once more, eyebrows raised.
“May I kiss you again?” he asked. “Here, among the daffodils?”
“I think I have always yearned more at daffodil blooming time than any other to be kissed,” she said. “To be loved. By you.” She turned and set her arms about his waist and lifted her face to him. “Yes.”
He smiled at her and lowered his mouth to hers, while Patch, sensing another lengthy delay in her morning’s walk, stretched out among the daffodils at their feet, set her head down on her forepaws, and gazed up at them, waiting patiently for the resumption of something interesting.
The Betrothal Ball
She was trapped at the very top of the library steps. In her nightgown. With her hair loose down her back. The candlestick, with its hastily blown-out candle, was still clutched in her left hand, while her right hand held the book she had taken from a shelf just below the ceiling but had not had time to open. Three minutes more—even two minutes—and she might have been down the ladder, out of the library, and back upstairs in her room. Safe.
Instead of which, she was trapped at the top of the movable steps and might be there for the rest of the night for all she knew. She looked down gingerly at her bare feet and wondered if it would be possible to move down one step and sit down without either falling or making a noise. Heights had always made her dizzy, and this was a high-ceilinged room. She would feel safer if she did not have to rely upon her knees to hold her up.
She felt foolish. And alarmed.
Very alarmed. When she was finally free to move again, the room would be in darkness—unless it was after dawn—and she had no means with which to relight her candle. She would have to feel her way down the steps and across the room to the door. She glanced down again. The steps looked alarmingly steep.
How stupid she had been. How very stupid to have forgotten that there had been one essential change in the house during the day. How foolish to have forgotten that he had come home. Not that she had forgotten exactly. How could she forget? It was the very fact of his return that had kept her awake thinking about her first encounter with him, when she should have been sleeping. It was her wakefulness that had brought her down to the library in search of a book. She had done it before several times. And having discovered that the whole household retired early, she had learned that there was never any need to be furtive. Or to dress and put up her hair beneath a decent cap.
She had become bold and careless.
Although she had not forgotten that he had come home, she had neglected to consider the possibility that he might not follow the habits of his household, that he might not himself retire early.
And there he was in the library below her, seated in a large leather chair close to the fireplace, though there was no fire, it being a warm summer night. From where she stood, only the top of his dark hair was visible over the high back of the chair—and well-shaped, long legs encased in tight pantaloons stretched out comfortably on the hearth in front of him.
He had been dressed immaculately when he had appeared unexpectedly in the schoolroom late in the morning. He had worn shining, white-tasseled Hessian boots over buff-colored pantaloons, and a form-fitting green tailed coat over a paler green waistcoat and gleaming white frilled shirt and neckcloth. He had looked as she imagined a London gentleman would look, only finer. But then, of course, he was a London gentleman, who rarely put in an appearance at the country home and estate he had inherited, along with his title, a little over a year ago on the death of his elder brother.
When he had opened the schoolroom door and stood in the doorway, Bea had squealed and gone hurtling across the room and into his arms.
“Uncle Bram!” she had shrieked. “You have come home.”
“As you see, child,” he had said, hugging her briefly before setting her firmly at arm’s length. “You are growing remarkably pretty. But your manners make me shudder. Young ladies—or older ones, for that matter—do not shriek or yell or rush, Beatrice. And they most certainly do not hurl themselves into gentlemen’s arms, much as gentlemen may regret the fact. Have you not been taught these things?”
“What did you bring me from London?” Bea had asked, uncowed by the scolding, taking one of his well-manicured, heavily ringed hands in hers and lifting it to her cheek. “You brought me a gift, Uncle Bram?”
He had grimaced. “Wait and see,” he had said, “greedy imp. You have a new companion? And have kept her longer than usual, I hear?”
“Oh, Miss Melfort,” Bea had said carelessly. “How long must I wait? Don’t tease Uncle Bram. Is it a bonnet? A parasol?”
But Bramwell Lattrell, Earl of Dearborne, had shifted his attention to Bea’s governess—she deeply resented being referred to as a companion. Bea was not very teachable, but nevertheless Laura Melfort was a teacher. She was trying every method she knew of to teach Bea to read. It was not easy when Bea was fifteen years old and had a brain made entirely of feathers—or so Laura believed in her less charitable moments.
But companion or governess, she was without any doubt a servant, a paid employee of the Earl of Dearborne. She had been made fully aware of that as he had looked her over unhurriedly from head to toe with pale blue eyes. She had looked steadily back at him, resisting the foolish urge to glance down at herself to make sure that she was clothed. His eyes had made her feel as if she were not.
He had nodded coolly to her before turning away to address a few more remarks to his niece. He had flicked one long, careless finger beneath Bea’s chin before telling her that she might dine with him in the evening if she was very good and promised not to squeal even once.
Bea’s response had been a squeal and clapped hands.
The invitation had not been extended to Bea’s governess.
Now he was not nearly so formally dressed. He wore leather slippers with his dark pantaloons, and his lace-trimmed white shirt, his only other garment, was open at the neck. Indeed, it was open almost to the waist. Laura had seen that when he had come into the room, carrying a full branch of candles. She had extinguished her own candle as soon as she had heard the doorknob turning.
She had assumed—oh, how foolish of her—that he had come in merely for a few moments, to retrieve a letter from the desk, perhaps, or to pick up a book. She had expected him to be gone without delay and had held her breath, praying with frantic fervency that he would not look up into the shadows and see her there, where she had no business being. In his library.
And in embarrassing dishabille.
