“Why did you never write?” she whispered. “Three years, Redmond, and my maid was loyal. She would have passed on a–”
In an instant, he swivelled, face a scowl. “Ya fare steal a man’s pride, do ya not, Bea? Along with his heart.” A hand with swollen knuckles pushed through his hair. “I hid it all from ya, back then, but…the truth of it is…I never learned… I cannot write.” And he silently stalked out.
Leaving her nerves in bloody tatters.
GOBLIN’SFINGERS,Kidney Vetch, Lady’s Bedstraw and Bachelor’s Buttons – they smothered this fallow meadow in weaves of colour and Ernest breathed deep as their scent released from beneath the hooves of his horse.
The spring flowers had brought bright yellows and engendered hope after the sodden weather, but the summer now begot a fragrance like no other, of sunshine and richness. It reminded him of running wild in the fields as a stripling. No parents who cared or tutors to defy.
Father had forever been in London, spending money that didn’t exist, and Mother had not cared for scruffy little boys with filthy nails. Half the village had thought him a servant’s get, so wild had he been – togs torn from scrambling though brambles and hair muddied from swimming in the moat.
But he’d learned the land – from Grampy Tom – the shape of clouds that signified rain, the plants that rendered the horses ill and how to tend a bird’s injured wing.
Of course, all that had changed when Father had died and Casper had inherited and begun to turn the estate’s fortunes around, sending Ernest off to Eton then Oxford… And when he’d returned from there, commanding him to London.
Stanley snickered, bored with his master’s introspection, but then it wasn’t often Ernest thought on the past. Most probably due to his tavern visit last night, where a Wychmere local had clapped a palm to his back and said he’d read in the rags all about the Town rake that Ernest had become.
Was that all he was now?
A debauched rake with seduction in mind as he stared at the pretty blond widow in damson cotton sitting with sketchbook in hand amongst a lake of summer flowers.
Everything felt different here.
Hewas different here, but neither could Ernest deny that he desired Mrs Locke in the most rakish of ways too. He yearned for those artist’s fingers gripping his chest and her endless hanks of hair in his fist. He wanted to lie her down in the warm meadow grass and decorate her naked skin with cornflowers. To make her arch and cry his name as he pushed deep…
“Coo-ee, Lord Ernest!”
Mayhap not with her aunt watching. He wasn’tthatdebauched.
“Mrs Cassell.” And he guided Stanley to the ladies’ little patch of heaven. The aunt had snaffled the shaded half of a blanket beneath a beech but Mrs Locke appeared quite content to sit in the sunshine alongside, her nose pink.
Dismounting and leaving Stanley to forage with the mares, he then bowed low. “It was remiss of me to not greet you previously, Mrs Cassell, but I was in Witney this morning and yesterday Lydia demanded all my energies.” He slid his gaze sideways, saw Mrs Locke glower, thought possibly she’d also growled.
Ravishing.
“Lydia?” Mrs Cassell asked with a wince.
“Hmm. Is your room comfortable, Mrs Cassell? Do you have all you need?”
They chatted of inconsequential matters as Mrs Locke ignored him, and as at the Prince’s hell, he found he liked the aunt – an honest, open and warm woman.
At length, he twisted. “And how are you today, Mrs Locke?” He stole a corner of her blanket, sitting without invitation, and noted her lips tighten. “You look enchanting this morn, a worthy competitor for the wildness and beauty that surrounds you.”
The aunt gleefully sighed.
Mrs Locke glowered at her sketchpad. “So trite.”
The aunt mournfully sighed.
“A Lothario such as yourself,” Mrs Locke continued, “with a trail of broken hearts, must keep a store of rehearsed compliments.”
“To be truthful, I do my utmost to not break hearts and am only ever honest with my intentions.”
She glanced over with a stare that could close a summer flower. “When we were first introduced at the Plymtrees’ by your brother, you confessed to being a scoundrel and libertine, incapable of resisting temptation.”
“Ah, youthful folly.”
“It was four months ago!”
