Page 4 of The Pleasure in Persuasion

Chapter Two

“You are a naughty, naughty cow,” Lily Grayling grumbled as she guided Blythe through the barn doors and into her stall before securing the latch with exaggerated care.

“I really am quite cross with you,” she went on, her voice stern even as she reached across the gate to give the sweet cow a scratch behind the ear. “I thought we were friends, yet you refused to come home with me, and it was only when that man came along—a perfect stranger, mind you—that you finally decided to behave like a lady.”

Blythe gave her snout a slow swipe with her long black tongue, seeming somehow both contrite and embarrassed, although Lily was well aware of her own propensity for seeing what she wanted to see.

Still, she couldn’t help but take pity on the dear girl.

“I know,” she said, patting Blythe’s sinewy neck. “He was a handsome man, and handsome men can be difficult to resist.”

Blythe let out a mournful low, making Lily laugh. “Even so, next time you might want to remember who it is that feeds you, hm?”

With one last scratch behind Blythe’s velvety ears, she left the barn and headed for the inn, her thoughts straying to the handsome stranger who had so gallantly come to her aid.

She hadn’t asked for his help, and certainly hadn’t welcomed it, but she had to admit she was glad he’d come along. If he hadn’t, she and Blythe would likely be on the road right now, still playing tug-of-war with no end in sight.

Still, the encounter had left her feeling unaccountably peevish. His kindness, his charm, his handsome face and deliciously broad shoulders made a powerfully attractive package, and Lily had most definitely been attracted. Any woman would be.

With his glossy black hair, warm blue eyes, and roguish grin, he was an exemplar of the male sex, and he knew it. Worse, he knew she knew it, which was precisely why she hadn’t bothered to deny it.

She hadn’t been so attracted to a man in ages, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit. Neither did she like the twinge of regret she felt that she had not learned his name.

Fortunately for her, he was long gone now, and she would never see him again.

Determined to put the encounter behind her, she shoved the stranger from her mind and made her way inside the inn. She passed a quick glance over the almost-empty dining room, exchanging a nod of greeting with Roger Witherspoon, a kindly old farmer who stopped by the inn nearly every afternoon for a mug of ale and a bread-and-butter sandwich.

Lily headed for the kitchen and was greeted by the delicious scent of baking bread, which made her stomach growl. She paused in the doorway just as her diminutive, gray-haired grandmother glanced up from her place at the well-worn wooden table.

She did not pause in her work, her wrinkled hands, still strong and graceful, continuing to knead the ball of bread dough with the speedy confidence of one who had done so a thousand times before.

“There you are,” Charlotte Grayling said, smashing the dough ball onto the table and sending a puff of flour into the air before continuing with her kneading. “You found Blythe then? Is the sweet, daft girl all right?”

Lily nodded. “She’s fine. She was in Mr. Richardson’s field again, happily munching his grass.”

She did not see the need to mention that she’d had help from a certain stranger. Telling her grandmother would serve no purpose, and Lily was supposed to be forgetting the man, anyway.

“She does love it there, doesn’t she?” Gran said with a chuckle, her deep brown eyes warm with affection. “We’ll have to find a way to keep that gate closed. We’ve been lucky so far, but next time Blythe could be hurt.”

“You’re right,” Lily replied. “I’ll take a look at it later today.”

But she would do no such thing, of course. There was no need to. The gate was in perfect working order, as long as it was properly latched, but Lily didn’t have the heart to say so. It was her grandmother who had milked Blythe this morning, as she did every morning, and it was she who had left the gate unlocked.

This was the third time in as many months that Gran had forgotten to latch the gate, and Lily worried that her forgetfulness was worsening.

She couldn’t bring herself to mention it, though, and risk hurting the one person in the world who had always been there for her. So, instead, she pretended the problem didn’t exist and hoped it would somehow correct itself on its own.

“By the way,” Gran said, “your Mr. Carstairs asked after you on his way out. He was most disappointed to miss you.”

Lily bit her tongue to keep from insisting—again—that he was not her Mr. Carstairs. “Did he?” she asked disinterestedly. “And what was it the gentleman needed?”

“He didn’t need anything, Lily. He wanted to see you.”

Lily wrinkled her nose. “I can’t imagine why.”

Gran gave her A Look. “Poppycock. You know why. The gentleman likes you.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she repeated, this time with an edge of exasperation as she perched on a stool at the table. “I’ve given him no reason to like me. And no encouragement to continue doing so.”