A Night Like This

by Julia Quinn

  He tilted his head to the right. “I believe she’s off rooting about in the bushes.”

  Anne followed his gaze uneasily. “Rooting?”

  “She told me she was practicing for the next play.”

  Anne blinked at him, not following.

  “For when she gets to be a unicorn.”

  “Oh, of course.” She chuckled. “She is rather tenacious, that one.”

  Lord Winstead grinned, and Anne’s stomach did a little flip. He had such a lovely smile. Wickedly mischievous, but with . . . oh, Anne had no idea how to describe it except that he was good man, an honorable man who knew right from wrong, and no matter how naughty his grins . . .

  She knew he would not hurt her.

  Even her own father had not proved so dependable.

  “You look very serious of a sudden,” Lord Winstead said.

  Anne blinked herself out of her reverie. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said quickly, hoping she wasn’t blushing. Sometimes she had to remind herself that he could not peer straight into her thoughts. She looked over at Harriet and Elizabeth, who were still arguing, although by now they had moved off the topic of the intelligence (or lack thereof) of the beautiful princess and had started in on—

  Good Lord, were they discussing wild boars?

  “I think we need to take a break,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Lord Winstead said. “I am not playing the boar.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry on that score,” Anne said. “Frances will certainly snatch that one up.”

  He looked at her. She looked at him. And together they burst out laughing, so hard that even Harriet and Elizabeth stopped their sniping.

  “What’s so funny?” Harriet asked, followed by Elizabeth’s extremely suspicious “Are you laughing at me?”

  “We’re laughing at everyone,” Lord Winstead said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Even ourselves.”

  “I’m hungry,” Frances announced, emerging from the bushes. There were a few leaves stuck to her dress and a small stick jutting out from the side of her head. Anne didn’t think it was meant to be a unicorn’s horn, but the effect was quite charming nonetheless.

  “I’m hungry, too,” Harriet said with a sigh.

  “Why doesn’t one of you run back to the house and ask the kitchen for a picnic hamper?” Anne suggested. “We could all use some sustenance.”

  “I’ll go,” Frances offered.

  “I’ll go with you,” Harriet told her. “I do some of my best thinking while I’m walking.”

  Elizabeth looked at her sisters, then at the adults. “Well, I’m not going to stay here by myself,” she said, the adults apparently not counting as proper company, and the three girls took off for the house, their pace quickly moving from brisk walk to out-and-out race.

  Anne watched as they disappeared over the rise. She probably shouldn’t be out here alone with Lord Winstead, but it was difficult to muster an objection. It was the middle of the day, and they were out of doors, and more to the point, she’d had so much fun that afternoon that she didn’t think she could muster an objection to anything just then.

  She had a smile on her face, and she was quite happy to keep it there.

  “I would think you could remove your sash,” Lord Winstead suggested. “No one needs to be evil all the time.”

  Anne laughed, her fingers sliding along the length of black ribbon. “I don’t know. I find I’m rather enjoying being evil.”

  “As well you should. I must confess, I’m rather jealous of your evildoings. Poor Lord Finstead, or whatever his name turns out to be, could use a bit more malevolence. He’s a rather hapless fellow.”

  “Ah, but he wins the princess in the end,” Anne reminded him, “and the evil queen must live the rest of her life in an attic.”

  “Which begs the question,” he said, turning toward her with furrowed brow. “Why is Lord Finstead’s tale sad? The strange bit is abundantly clear, but if the evil queen ends up in the attic—”

  “It’s his attic,” Anne interrupted.

  “Oh.” He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Well, that changes everything.”

  And then they did laugh. The both of them. Together.

  Again.

  “Oh, I’m hungry, too,” Anne said, once her mirth had melted down to a smile. “I hope the girls don’t take too long.”

  And then she felt Lord Winstead’s hand take hers. “I hope they take long enough,” he murmured. He tugged her to him, and she let him, far too happy in the moment to remember all the ways he would surely break her heart.

  “I told you I would kiss you again,” he whispered.

  “You told me you would try.”

  His lips touched hers. “I knew I would succeed.”

  He kissed her again, and she pulled away, but only an inch or so. “You’re rather sure of yourself.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” His lips found the corner of her mouth, then floated softly along her skin until she couldn’t help herself and her head fell back to allow him access to the curve of her neck.

  Her pelisse slipped away, baring more of her skin to the cool afternoon air, and he kissed her, right along the edge of her bodice, before coming back to her mouth. “Dear God, I want you so much,” he said, his voice nothing more than a rasp. He held her more tightly, both of his hands cupping her bottom and pulling her forward . . . up . . . until she was seized by a mad urge to wrap her legs around him. It was what he wanted, and God help her, it was what she wanted, too.

  Thank heavens for her skirt, which was possibly the only thing stopping her from behaving with utter shamelessness. But still, when one of his hands reached into her bodice, she didn’t refuse. And when his palm gently grazed her nipple, all she did was moan.

  This would have to stop. But not just yet.

  “I dreamed about you last night,” he whispered against her skin. “Do you want to know what it was?”

  She shook her head, even though she did, desperately. But she knew her limits. She could go down this road only so far. If she heard his dreams, heard the words from his lips as they rained down softly against her, she would want it, everything he said.

  And it hurt too much to want something she could never have.

  “What did you dream about?” he asked.

  “I don’t dream,” she replied.

  He went still, then drew back so that he could look at her. His eyes—that amazingly bright light blue—were filled with curiosity. And maybe a touch of sadness.

  “I don’t dream,” she said again. “I haven’t for years.” She said it with a shrug. It was such a normal thing for her now; it hadn’t occurred to her until that moment how strange it might seem to others.

  “But you did as a child?” he asked.

  She nodded. She hadn’t really thought about it before, or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to think about it. But if she had dreamed since she left Northumberland eight years earlier, she had not remembered. Every morning before she opened her eyes, there was nothing but the black of the night. A perfectly empty space, filled with absolute emptiness. No hopes. No dreams.

  But also no nightmares.

  It seemed a small price to pay. She wasted enough of her waking hours worrying about George Chervil and his mad quest for revenge.

  “You don’t find that strange?” he asked.

  “That I don’t dream?” She knew what he’d meant, but for some reason she’d needed to state it out loud.

  He nodded.

  “No.” Her voice came out flat. But certain. Maybe it was strange, but it was also safe.

  He didn’t say anything, but his eyes searched hers with penetrating intensity until she had to look away. He was seeing far too much of her. In less than a week this man had uncovered more of her than she’d revealed to anyone in the past eight years. It was unsettling.

  It was dangerous.

  Reluctantly she pulled herself from his embrace, stepping just far enough away so that he cou
ld not reach out for her. She bent to retrieve her pelisse from where it lay on the grass, and without speaking she refastened it around her shoulders. “The girls will be back soon,” she said, even though she knew that they wouldn’t. It would be at least another quarter of an hour before they returned, probably more.

  “Let’s take a stroll, then,” he suggested, offering her his arm.

  She eyed him suspiciously.

  “Not everything I do is with lascivious intent,” he said with a laugh. “I thought I might show you one of my favorite places here at Whipple Hill.” As she placed her hand on his arm he added, “We’re only a quarter mile or so from the lake.”

  “Is it stocked?” she asked. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone fishing, but oh, how she had enjoyed it as a child. She and Charlotte had been the bane of their mother, who had wanted them to pursue more feminine activities. Which they had, eventually. But even after Anne had become obsessed with frocks and gowns and keeping tally of every single time an eligible gentleman glanced at an eligible young lady . . .

  She’d still loved to go fishing. She’d even been happy to do the gutting and cleaning. And of course the eating. One could not understate the satisfaction to be found in catching one’s own food.

  “It should be stocked,” Lord Winstead said. “It always was before I left, and I would not think that my steward would have had cause to change the directive.” Her eyes must have been shining with delight, for he smiled indulgently and asked, “Do you like to fish, then?”

  “Oh, very much so,” she said with a wistful sigh. “When I was a child . . .” But she did not finish her sentence. She’d forgotten that she did not speak of her childhood.

  But if he was curious—and she was quite certain he must be—he did not show it. As they walked down the gentle slope toward a leafy stand of trees, he said only, “I loved to fish as a child, too. I came all the time with Marcus—Lord Chatteris,” he added, since of course she was not on a first-name basis with the earl.

  Anne took in the landscape around her. It was a glorious spring day, and there seemed a hundred different shades of green rippling along the leaves and grass. The world felt terribly new, and deceptively hopeful. “Did Lord Chatteris visit often as a child?” she asked, eager to keep the conversation on benign matters.

  “Constantly,” Lord Winstead replied. “Or at least every school holiday. By the time we were thirteen I don’t know that I ever came home without him.” They walked a bit more, then he reached out to pluck a low-hanging leaf. He looked at it, frowned, then finally set it aloft with a little flick of his fingers. It went spiraling through the air, and something about the fluttery motion must have been mesmerizing, because they both stopped walking to watch it make its way back down to the grass.

  And then, as if the moment had never happened, Lord Winstead quietly picked up the conversation where it had been left off. “Marcus has no family to speak of. No siblings, and his mother died when he was quite young.”

  “What about his father?”

  “Oh, he hardly spoke to him,” Lord Winstead replied. But he said it with such nonchalance, as if there was nothing at all peculiar about a father and son who did not speak. It was rather unlike him, Anne thought. Not uncaring, precisely, but . . . Well, she didn’t know what it was, except that it surprised her. And then she was surprised that she knew him well enough to notice such a thing.

  Surprised and perhaps a little bit alarmed, because she shouldn’t know him so well. It was not her place, and such a connection could lead only to heartbreak. She knew that, and so should he.

  “Were they estranged?” she asked, still curious about Lord Chatteris. She had only met the earl once, and briefly at that, but it seemed they had something in common.

  Lord Winstead shook his head. “No. I rather think the elder Lord Chatteris simply had nothing to say.”

  “To his own son?”

  He shrugged. “It is not so uncommon, really. Half of my schoolmates probably couldn’t have told you the color of their parents’ eyes.”

  “Blue,” Anne whispered, suddenly overcome by a huge, churning wave of homesickness. “And green.” And her sisters’ eyes were also blue and green, but she regained her composure before she blurted that out, too.

  He tilted his head toward her, but he did not ask her any questions, for which she was desperately grateful. Instead he said, “My father had eyes exactly like mine.”

  “And your mother?” Anne had met his mother, but she had had no cause to take note of her eyes. And she did want to keep the conversation centered on him. Everything was easier that way.

  Not to mention that it was a topic in which she seemed to have great interest.

  “My mother’s eyes are also blue,” he said, “but a darker shade. Not as dark as yours—” He turned his head, looking at her quite intently. “But I have to say, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen eyes quite like yours. They almost look violet.” His head tilted the tiniest bit to the side. “But they don’t. They’re still blue.”

  Anne smiled and looked away. She’d always been proud of her eyes. It was the one vanity she still allowed herself. “From far away they look brown,” she said.

  “All the more reason to cherish the time one spends in close proximity,” he murmured.

  Her breath caught and she stole a glance at him, but he was no longer looking at her. Instead he was motioning ahead with his free arm, saying, “Can you see the lake? Just through those trees.”

  Anne craned her neck just enough to catch a silvery glint peeking between the tree trunks.

  “In the winter you can see it quite well, but once the leaves come out, it’s obscured.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Anne said sincerely. Even now, unable to see most of the water, it was idyllic. “Does it get warm enough to swim in?”

  “Not on purpose, but every member of my family has managed to be submerged at one point or another.”

  Anne felt a laugh tickle her lips. “Oh, dear.”

  “Some of us more than once,” Lord Winstead said sheepishly.

  She looked over at him, and he looked so adorably boyish that she quite simply lost her breath. What would her life have been if she had met him instead of George Chervil when she was sixteen? Or if not him (since she could never have married an earl, even as Annelise Shawcross), then someone just like him. Someone named Daniel Smythe, or Daniel Smith. But he would have been Daniel. Her Daniel.

  He would have been heir to a baronetcy, or heir to nothing at all, just a common country squire with a snug and comfortable home, ten acres of land, and a pack of lazy hounds.

  And she would have loved it. Every last mundane moment.

  Had she really once craved excitement? At sixteen she’d thought she wanted to come to London and go to the theater, and the opera, and every party for which she was issued an invitation. A dashing young matron—that’s what she had told Charlotte she wanted to be.

  But that had been the folly of youth. Surely, even if she had married a man who would whisk her off to the capital and immerse her in the glittering life of the ton . . . Surely she would have tired of it all and wanted to return to Northumberland, where the clocks seemed to tick more slowly, and the air turned gray with fog instead of soot.

  All the things she had learned, she had learned too late.

  “Shall we go fishing this week?” he asked as they came to the shore of the lake.

  “Oh, I should love that above all things.” The words rushed from her lips in a happy flurry. “We’ll have to bring the girls, of course.”

  “Of course,” he murmured, the perfect gentleman.

  For some time they stood in silence. Anne could have remained there all day, staring out at the still, smooth water. Every now and then a fish would pop to the surface and break through, sending tiny ripples out like rings on a bull’s-eye.

  “If I were a boy,” Daniel said, as transfixed by the water as she, “I would have to throw a rock. I would have
to.”

  Daniel. When had she started to think of him as such?

  “If I were a girl,” she said, “I would have to take off my shoes and stockings.”

  He nodded, and then with a funny half smile, he admitted, “I would have probably pushed you in.”

  She kept her eyes on the water. “Oh, I would have taken you with me.”

  He chuckled, and then fell back into silence, happy just to watch the water, and the fish, and bits of dandelion fluff that stuck to the surface near the shore.

  “This has been a perfect day,” Anne said quietly.

  “Almost,” Daniel whispered, and then she was in his arms again. He kissed her, but it was different this time. Less urgent. Less fiery. The touch of their lips was achingly soft, and maybe it didn’t make her feel crazed, like she wanted to press herself against him and take him within her. Maybe instead he made her feel weightless, as if she could take his hand and float away, just so long as he never stopped kissing her. Her entire body tingled, and she stood on her tiptoes, almost waiting for the moment she left the ground.

  And then he broke the kiss, pulling back just far enough to rest his forehead against hers. “There,” he said, cradling her face in his hands. “Now it’s a perfect day.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Almost precisely one day later, Daniel was sitting in Whipple Hill’s wood-paneled library, wondering how it had come to pass that this day was so utterly less perfect than the one before.

  After he had kissed Miss Wynter down by the lake, they had hiked back up to the clearing where poor Lord Finstead had been courting his beautiful but dim-witted princess, arriving only moments before Harriet, Elizabeth, and Frances did, accompanied by two footmen with picnic hampers. After a hearty meal, they had read from The Strange, Sad Tragedy of Lord Finstead for several more hours, until Daniel had begged for mercy, claiming that his sides hurt from so much laughter.

  Even Harriet, who kept trying to remind them that her masterwork was not a comedy, took no offense.

  Back to the house they’d gone, only to discover that Daniel’s mother and sister had arrived. And while everyone was greeting everyone else as if they had not seen each other just two days earlier, Miss Wynter slipped away and retired to her room.