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Kipper was flopped on her side between them, wheezing happily, already asleep. Pea reached out absently to stroke her just as the Count did the same. They both froze and pulled back. She shot him an awkward smile, but he wasn’t looking at her.
Pea ate some strawberries. For some reason, she didn’t have much appetite. It felt as though there was a knot, low down in her belly. She absently sucked the strawberry juice from her fingers until the Count irritably cleared his throat and handed her a napkin from the picnic basket.
He picked another one out of the basket and studied it in surprise. “Did Cook give you these?” They were thick, heavy linen, embroidered with the ducal crest.
“No. I found them in a linen cupboard near the dining room. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He wiped his already clean fingers and tossed the napkin back in the basket. “I should get back.”
“Already?” He had only eaten one sandwich. Surely that wasn’t enough for such a big man.
“Duty calls,” he said with another hint of a smile.
“But…”
But what? She had failed at her plan, that’s what. She was meant to be showing him the beauty of the world, and instead they had talked of politics and her brother and eaten uninspired sandwiches in the company of an ancient and admittedly flatulent dog.
“Look, are those apples ripe already?” said Pea.
The Count glanced up at the tree under which they sat. “Not even remotely.”
“Not those ones. The tree over by the hedge, up the bank.” She sprang to her feet. At the end of the garden was a small bank of earth, probably from the long-ago excavation of the orangery’s foundations. It had been planted with a beech hedge, now grown wild. An apple tree grew up among the hedge at the top of the wildflower-strewn bank. Golden apples hung heavily from its boughs.
“I’m sure I can reach them,” she said.
“Pea, wait…”
She trotted over and up the steep bank, wild plants and long grass scratching at her bare calves. The slope made it difficult to reach high enough, so she tried to find a toehold on the trunk to climb.
She got about three feet up before her foot slipped and she scraped her way painfully down the trunk. “Ouch!”
The Count was there, cursing her for a fool, asking if she was alright. But she paid him no heed. It was only the tiniest scrape, and besides, just at that moment, a yellow apple fell with a heavy thud at their feet. She picked it up triumphantly and took a bite. It was delicious.
Except…her legs were stinging. She looked down and saw the angry red hives beginning to form.
“I tried to warn you,” said the Count. “This place is full of stinging nettles.”
Leo
Leo led Pea into the cool of the cottage’s farmhouse kitchen, her hand on his right elbow, the picnic basket on his left, Kipper at his heels.
“Sit,” barked Leo, directing Pea to a wooden chair. She did. So did Kipper, on the flagstone floor next to her, looking up at him with her tongue lolling. Leo pinched the bridge of his nose.
The ridiculous girl was still holding the apple. She was white and wincing with pain, but she still offered it to him for a bite, blood oozing from several scrapes on her knees and shins, her hair dishevelled, her feet filthy, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright. “You really should try this.”
“You are a harridan of virtue,” he said irritably.
“Don’t you mean paragon?”
“No.” He glanced around the kitchen and stalked toward the cupboards. “There must be a first aid kit in this place for the guests. Stay there,” he said, giving up on his search of the kitchen. “I’ll look in the bathroom.”
He went upstairs. It was no surprise to Leo that Peony was messy. The bathroom was littered with wet towels and discarded clothes. The warm, damp air smelled of shower steam and far too much like her. He caught a flash of pink hanging over the edge of the laundry basket. The bra she had been wearing yesterday.
Part of him wanted to pick it up, touch the lace of the straps and press it to his face. The other, better, part of him forced himself to stay still, hands clenched at his sides. But he knew that this room and the lingerie in it would feature in his fantasies later, when he relieved some of this tension in private. Peony would feature too, of course. She always did. God help him, he thought of no other woman.
Leo found a green first aid box in the cupboard under the sink. He grabbed a clean towel too and some bottles of lotion because there had been dirt in the scrapes on her knees.
When he returned to the kitchen, Peony was where he had left her, the half-eaten apple in one hand, the other stroking the head of his dog, which rested lovingly on her knee.
