One hand cradling the bird close to her chest while it fought her, she tried to untangle it, but her cold fingers achieved little. She was concentrating so hard that the first she knew of Lord Wennington swimming back up behind her was when he spoke.
“I’ll need to cut it off.” And lo and behold, he had a penknife with him, which he unfolded beside her. Their limbs brushed as they both treaded water, which was almost as disconcerting as him being back in the water with her. So close she could see the copper flecks in his whiskey-colored irises and the dark stubble on his chin. “Hold him still.”
With no better plan, she did exactly that, keeping the gosling’s wings from flapping while Lord Wennington held the trapped foot and carefully set about cutting each thread so as not to hurt it.
“Blasted poachers.” His eyes flicked to hers briefly. “Like to help themselves to my carp but can’t ever be bothered to clean up after themselves.” She got the impression he was more annoyed at the litter they left behind than the theft of his fish. Then, in a more surprising turn of events, he paused the cutting to stroke the head of the young goose, those usually hard eyes uncharacteristically tender. “I won’t hurt you, little one, I promise.” Miraculously, that seemed to do the trick as the bird stopped struggling, allowing him to slice through a few more threads while he continued to soothe it. “Not long now. You’ll soon be back with your mother.” His eyes lifted to hers again, warily this time. “And on the subject of his mother…”
Lottie pulled a face, all too aware of how territorial and aggressive certain geese could be. “I’ve not seen her.”
“Then keep your eyes peeled. After my dip in this ice bath I’d rather not be pecked to death today.”
As if that warning summoned her, a very large, very angry goose immediately swooped down from the sky, plopped on the water inches away, and began to hiss. Her powerful wings arching, ready to attack.
“Marvelous.” Bizarrely, Lord Wennington was surprisingly matter-of-fact about being pecked to death now that it was a very real possibility. Instead, he swiftly maneuvered his body so that his back was to the gosling’s mother, his newly stiffened posture the only clue he was braced. “Just when you think your morning can’t get any worse…” He winced as the adult goose went for him but still kept his focus on freeing her offspring. Although Lottie really didn’t want to have to give him any credit for anything, his selfless dedication to the cause was rather impressive. “Hold him still, Miss Travers, for the love of God!”
“Easier said than done.” Especially with the adult goose landing a few blows on her.
Several fraught moments later and the last of the net fell away from the gosling’s foot and with considerable relief, she let it go. It hurried to its mother’s side while both she and the vexing viscount waved their arms about to send the mother packing. To begin with, the goose refused to back down, but when her baby was well clear she swam away, her head turned backward as she did, so that she could hiss some more.
“Well—that was fun.” Lord Wennington slicked back his dark hair. “I take it that a mermaid like yourself doesn’t need my help to get back to the shore?” It was a rhetorical question because he had already set off, forcing her to follow behind.
She considered speeding up and racing him as she would have done with any one of her four brothers but quickly dismissed the idea. He might well have just saved a goose but the curmudgeon lived with a permanent storm cloud over his handsome head and no joy in his soul. He would find racing a pointless activity. He also likely wouldn’t take kindly to her beating him. But she could be magnanimous if it was required, and diving in to save her and then being gentle with a goose did make him more agreeable.
When he hauled himself up to stand, however, as his wet linen shirt stuck to him like a translucent second skin, she could not help noticing that parts of him were more than agreeable. He had a magnificent pair of shoulders and a nice, tight bottom. As he waded toward the bank, he shook his head like a shaggy dog, raising his arms to squeeze the last ofthe water out of his hair, and Lottie’s breath caught at the solid shape of his biceps as they bunched and flexed. Then he turned to check on her progress and she almost gulped in half the pond again. All because he’d lifted the hem of his shirt to wring the water out of it and she was confronted by the sheer, solid perfection of his naked abdomen.
His taut skin too golden to have not seen the sun, which suggested he wasn’t averse to stripping his shirt off outside. An image she really didn’t need but that now gave her vivid imagination scandalous ideas. All involving bunching muscles and nudity. While her mind conjured all manner of improper scenarios, her eyes shamelessly following the dark dusting of hair that arrowed down his flat belly and disappeared beneath the waistband of his breeches. Like a signpost promising more.
Conscious that she was now staring at his crotch, she wrenched her eyes upward, only to see through the wet linen of his shirt how that intriguing arrow of dark hair fanned to cover an equally impressive chest that caused highly improper things to happen in the region of her own crotch.
Good heavens above!
What he lacked in likability he more than made up for in raw and blatant masculinity. A soggy and half-dressed Lord Wennington was, not to put too fine a point on it, absolutely… sublime.
Thankfully, he read her dithering as difficulty getting out of the water rather than difficulty breathing because of all the shameless ogling she was doing at his fine physique. He rolled his eyes, letting her know with an accompanying huff that in no uncertain terms, he thought her the most dreadful inconvenience before he waded back a few yards. He held out his hand to yank her out of the pond and, to her complete disgust, she was more than a little off-kilter as she took it. Then, to her further astonishment, went from off-kilter to all aquiver in an erratic heartbeat when his sun-kissed wet skin touched hers.
Lottie knew what desire was because she had felt it a time or two—but was stunned to be feeling it for him.
Him!The most obnoxious and disagreeable man on the planet!
Her stupefaction must have showed because he frowned at her as hehelped her onto the bank, immediately ripping his hand away the moment her feet left the water to fetch his sodden clothes. His ferocious scowl telling her that he wasn’t happy with her at all.
“I have urgent business to attend to.” He slapped his wet coat over Zeus’s saddle. His mesmerizing muscles bunched again, still doing all manner of inappropriate, tingly things to certain parts of her body that annoyed her as he bent again to retrieve his boots and empty them of water. “Another set of perfectly good clothing ruined thanks to you!” Yet rather than glare at her in blame as she expected, he kept his face averted as he wrestled them on.
“I did not ask you to dive in, Lord Wennington. You did that of your own volition.”
His only response was a grunt as he heaved himself onto the Arabian’s back.
“I trust you can find your own way back, Miss Travers?” He glanced her way briefly, all furrowed brows and outraged prickliness, then quickly looked away when she nodded. “Splendid.”
Then he was gone.
Galloping off with not so much as a polite nod, let alone a “good day.” Leaving her oddly… flustered. Perhaps more flustered than she had ever been by a man because she felt… ripe. A state which, frankly, horrified her, but was hardly a surprise after his fine body in that translucent shirt had thoroughly seduced her.
Absently, she placed her flattened palm over the layer of damp linen covering her racing heart and had the most awful epiphany. Because if the bracing pond water had rendered his shirt so transparent that it left nothing to the imagination, then it had probably made her blouse transparent too.
One glance downward confirmed her worst fears, because her sopping-wet garment left nothing to the imagination either. Especially as she had, as usual, come out riding without the constraints of stays to cover her modesty. In fact, judging by the very visible and jutting pink peaks of her chilled and shriveled nipples, she might as well be topless!
And that really was mortifying.
