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Oh, how sweet of him to warn her that he wasn’t going to be able to point out the best route up it.
‘There’s no need to worry. Although I haven’t climbed a tree since I was a girl, this one looks remarkably easy. Even hampered as I am by skirts.’
‘Well, that’s good. Yes. Very good.’
A determined look came over his face. He stepped up to the tree. Set one foot on the knot she’d just pointed out. Looked further up the trunk. As though he had no idea what to do next.
‘Do you know?’ she said with a touch of amusement. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’ve never climbed any tree before—never mind that one.’
His shoulders stiffened. Oh, dear, she shouldn’t have teased him. Some men could take it, and some men couldn’t. Funny, but she’d thought he was the type who could. He’d been remarkably forgiving so far, about all sorts of things she’d done to him.
Without a word he reached up for the most obvious handhold, then scrambled very clumsily up to the first branch thick enough to bear his weight. With only the minimum of cursing he pulled himself up and onto it, swinging one leg over so that he sat astride.
Then he turned and grinned down at her. ‘Nothing to it!’
She gasped. ‘I was only joking before, but it’s true, isn’t it? You never have climbed a tree, have you?’
He gave an insouciant shrug. ‘Well, no. But I always suspected that if other boys could do it I could.’
‘What kind of boy never climbed trees?’
‘One whose parents were terrified of some harm befalling him and had him watched over night and day,’ he replied.
‘Oh. That sounds—’ Very restricting. And a total contrast to her own childhood. Compared with her life in Stoketown, it had taken on a rosy hue in her memory. But, if she looked at it honestly, it must have been a very precarious sort of existence.
‘I suppose,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘that is what parents do. Even mine—I mean, since they couldn’t protect me from actual danger, they did what they could to stop me from being afraid by making light of all the upheavals and privations of army life. Treating it all—in front of me, at least—as though it was all some grand adventure.’
‘Which is why nothing scares you now?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that,’ she countered. Right this minute she was, if not exactly scared, certainly very wary of climbing up to join him. Because she’d suddenly become very aware that learning to climb trees was not the kind of activity that should have formed part of her education, if there were even some boys, like Gregory, who hadn’t been allowed to do it. And also, more to the point, that when she’d been a girl she hadn’t cared about showing off her legs.
‘Come on,’ he said, leaning down and holding out his hand to her. ‘Up you get.’
‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘I need to take some precautionary measures.’
She hitched up her gown and her petticoat as high as she dared, then reached between her legs and pulled the bunched material from behind through to the front, forming a sort of shortened, baggy set of breeches. It was the best she could do. She only hoped nobody came up over the rise and saw her display of legs bare to the thigh. With one hand clutching her skirts, and her face on fire, she set her foot on the knot she’d shown him earlier, took his hand, and let him haul her up onto the branch next to him.
‘What a pity it is that ladies’ fashions demand they cover their legs so completely,’ he said, running his eyes over hers.
‘Impractical, too,’ she said with a nonchalant toss of her head, since it was impossible to blush any hotter. ‘When a lady decides she needs to climb a tree, breeches would make it far easier.’
He grinned at her again, then shuffled along the branch to the top of the wall, slid across it, and dropped down into the shrubbery that grew right up to the base of the wall on the other side. He turned to her and held out his arms.
‘All you need to do is slide to the edge and drop down. I’ll catch you,’ he said.
All she had to do? In a gown that was hitched almost to her waist?
‘It’s all very well for you. You are wearing breeches.’ Which protected his vulnerable parts. It was no joke, shuffling over a crumbling brick wall when shielded only by a cotton chemise and a bit of kerseymere, since his jacket was trailing uselessly behind her.
But at last she was right at the edge of the wall, her legs dangling down into the park. With Gregory standing below, a wide grin on his face.
‘Enjoying the view?’ she asked tartly.
