by Dare, Tessa
He shifted unhappily on the carriage seat. “Did you really have to bring that bird?”
“Yes.” She stroked the otter’s sleek brown coat. “I think Alexandra and Chase will take her in. Their two girls love to play pirates. But as you pointed out, Delilah’s vocabulary needs a bit of reformation, so I’m trying to instill some wholesome phrases in her repertoire. Considering that I’ve only a fortnight, I can’t afford to waste a day.” She leaned in close to the birdcage and brightly cooed—as she had no fewer than a hundred times since they’d departed Bloom Square—“I love you.”
The bird whistled. “Pretty girl.”
“I love you.”
“Fancy a fuck, love?”
“I love you.”
The bird ruffled its garish plumage. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
She was undaunted. “I love y—“
“It’s pointless,” he interjected. “A waste of time. Even if you succeed in teaching the bird a new phrase or two, it’s never going to forget the old ones. Years of filth won’t simply wash off with one good rain. That’s like saying you’d lose your finishing school airs with a single”—soul-stirring, passionate kiss—“act of mild rebellion.”
She squared her posture, pulling her spine fence-post straight. “I don’t have finishing school airs.”
“To be sure, you don’t,” he grumbled. “Keep telling yourself that, Your Ladyship.”
“Will you please stop addressing me that way. Everyone I’m close to calls me Penny.”
“We’re not close.”
“We are the very definition of close.”
Good God. Did she have to point it out? They were altogether too close in this carriage, in a way that made him ache to be closer. His body was painfully aware of hers.
Gabe despised the aristocracy. He’d told himself he could never lust after a fine lady.
Apparently, he’d told himself lies.
“We are neighbors,” she said. “Our houses stand right beside each other. That makes us close.”
“It doesn’t make us friends.”
She turned her attention back to the parrot, resuming her singsong torture. “I love you. I loooove you.”
“Enough.” Gabe wrestled out of his coat—no small accomplishment in a carriage—and draped it over the birdcage. “The bird needs a rest.” I need a rest.
She pouted a bit, and he was unmoved.
Pretty girl, fancy a fuck, I love you, I love you, I love you . . .
The words were becoming a jumble in his mind—and his mind was a place where “fuck,” “love,” and one particular “pretty girl” must remain separate things.
“You can stop staring at me,” he said.
“Sorry. I was wondering if I could actually watch your whiskers grow. When we left London, you were clean-shaven. Now it’s not even noon, and you’re raspy already. It’s like weeds after a rain. Fascinating.” She shook herself. “Tell me where it is we’re going.”
“The country home of a gentleman I know. His son has been begging for a ferret.”
“Hubert isn’t a ferret! He’s an otter.”
“As far as this boy is concerned, he’s a ferret. Just follow my lead.”
“Surely you’re joking.”
“He’s five years old. He won’t know the difference.”
“He won’t stay five years old forever.”
“Yes, but by then it won’t matter. It’s like that children’s story with the swan’s egg in the duck’s nest. He’ll be The Ugly Ferret.”
“A five-year-old child can’t take proper care of an otter. Or a ferret for that matter.”
“So you’ll leave specific instructions.”
She shook her head. “You may as well turn the carriage around now. This is not in the terms of our agreement.”
“You wanted a loving home. He’ll be adored.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But not for himself. Not for the otter he truly is, deep down.”
Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ve come this far. I’m not turning back now.”
“Waste the time if you like. I won’t leave him there.”
“I think you will. You can tell me you intend to refuse. But once we’re there, and you’re standing before a bright-eyed, hopeful boy? You won’t be able to say no. Your heart is too soft.”
Her body was too soft, too.
She leaned forward, holding the otter in one arm and reaching for a basket with the other—a pose which just happened to give him a view straight down her bodice. Her sweet, tempting breasts pushed across the muslin shelf of her bodice.
Gabe clenched his hands into fists at his sides.
Just when he’d managed to stop ogling her breasts—although he hadn’t yet managed to cease thinking of them—the carriage slammed to a halt.
Lady Penelope bounced off her seat, straight into his lap.
Breasts and all.
As landings went, Penny’s wasn’t a graceful one. When the carriage abruptly halted, she wished she could claim she’d made an elegant slide into his waiting, heroically muscled arms.
Sadly, the truth was quite different.
When the carriage lurched to a halt, she’d been leaning forward to retrieve a morsel for Hubert. The force launched her from her seat, propelling her toward Gabriel. She landed with her nose mashed against his chest and her breasts spilled across his lap.
Marvelous. Simply marvelous. What a lady she was.
He hooked his hands under her arms and lifted, peeling her face from his satin waistcoat. He settled her on his knee. “Good God. Tell me you’re not hurt.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“Can you move all your fingers? Your toes?”
“I think so.”
Apparently, he found these assurances unsatisfactory. He untied her bonnet and flung it aside. His eyes darkened with concern as he searched her face. Taking hold of her chin, he turned her head to either side, scanning her cheeks and temples for bruises. Then he skimmed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms. All the way to her fingertips, which he gave a firm squeeze.
Inspection complete, he laid a hand to her cheek. His thumb brushed her bottom lip. “You’re certain you’re not injured?”
She shook her head.
Injured? No.
Electrified? Possibly.
Most definitely breathless.
She was dizzied by his closeness, his touch, and above all, his unexpected tenderness. A shaft of sunlight pierced the carriage, dividing her between hot and cool. She felt the fierce pounding of a heartbeat. Hers, probably, but she couldn’t be certain.
Penny was so disoriented, in fact, that she did the unthinkable.
She completely forgot about the animals. For several seconds, at least. Perhaps a minute, or even two.
A squawk jolted her back to her senses.
“Delilah.” She scrambled to her feet and searched the carriage. “Hubert.”
Happily, she found both parrot and otter at her feet. By the way Delilah bounced and flapped about her upended cage, she was rattled but uninjured. Penny scooped Hubert into her arms, rolling him over to look for any wounds or bleeding.
Finding none, she exhaled with relief.
By now, Gabriel had alighted from the carriage, presumably to investigate the reason for their sudden stop. Within moments, he returned—looking every bit restored to his typically unpleasant self.
“These damned country roads. The carriage went into a rut, and now one of the wheels needs repair.”
He offered her his hand, and she accepted it, rearranging her disheveled frock as she alighted from the coach and her boots met the rutted dirt road.
“There’s a village we passed, a mile or two back. The coachman will walk there to find a smith or wheelwright.” He looked about them, taking in the sunny countryside. “I suppose this is as good a place as any to stop. The horses will be needing a rest and water, at any rate. Looks as though there’s a stream.” He nodded toward a line of trees a
“We may as well make the most of the delay.” Penny retrieved a hamper from inside the coach and looped it over one wrist, tucking Hubert under her other arm. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry.”
“I brought sandwiches. Assuming they weren’t completely smashed in the upheaval.”
She walked toward the creek and selected a spot that was sufficiently shaded by budding branches, but not too damp underneath. She withdrew a square of gaily printed linen from the hamper, snapped it open, and spread it over the ground. “We can have a picnic.”
He frowned. “What, on the ground?”
“That’s what a picnic is, usually,” she teased. “Have you never attended a picnic before?”
He didn’t answer, which was an answer itself. He had never attended a picnic before. Too busy ruining fortunes and seizing property, she supposed.
“Then you must come and join this one,” she said.
Penny made herself comfortable, tucking her ankles beneath her skirts as she sat on the ground. Hubert stretched out beside her, angling for a belly rub. She couldn’t possibly refuse.
As it happened, the sandwiches were only slightly smashed. Penny unpacked them from their brown paper wrapping and arranged them prettily on a wooden cheeseboard.
“I packed fizzy lemonade, as well.” She withdrew a corked jug. “Although considering our recent tumble, we might want to hold off on opening it.” She presented him with the platter of sandwiches. “Here.”
He took one from the tray and angled it for inspection. “What sort of sandwiches are these?”
“Just try them.”
Penny knew from experience that revealing her recipes in advance wasn’t a good idea. People tended to look askance at her unconventional ingredients. But once given a fair try, her sandwiches never failed to win over even the most choosy of palates.
“Go on,” she said. “I made them myself. Have a taste.”
Oh, God. The taste.
As his teeth sank through the sandwich, Gabe experienced a sensation that, for him, was exceedingly rare.
Regret.
The flavor hit him like a punch to the face. His jaw muscles ceased to function. They simply refused to chew. The mouthful of . . . whatever this was, as it clearly did not qualify as food . . . sat on his tongue, growing softer and slimier.
“What,” he said, finally choking it down, “was that?”
“It’s my latest recipe.” She beamed. “Roast leaf.”
“It’s gone off. That’s not like any roast beef sandwich I’ve ever tasted.”
“No, no. Not roast beef. Roast leaf.”
He stared at her.
“I’m a vegetarian,” she explained. “I don’t eat meat. So I create my own substitutions with vegetables. Roast leaf, for example. I start with whatever greens are in the market, boil and mash them with salt, then press them into a roast for the oven. According to the cookery book, it’s every bit as satisfying as the real thing.”
“Your cookery book is a book of lies.”
To her credit, she took it gamely. “I’m still perfecting the roast leaf. Perhaps it needs more work. Try the others. The ones on brown bread are tuna-ish—brined turnip flakes in place of fish—and the white bread is sham. Sham is everyone’s favorite. Doesn’t the color look just like ham? The secret is beetroot.”
Gabe tried them both. The tuna-ish was a dubious improvement over the roast leaf. As for the sham . . . it might very well be his favorite of the three. But considering the choices, that wasn’t saying much. He stuffed the remainder of the sandwich into his mouth and chewed.
“Well?” she prompted.
“Are you asking my honest opinion?”
“But of course.”
“They’re revolting.” He swallowed with reluctance. “All of them.”
“I like them. My friends like them.”
“No, they don’t. Your friends find your sandwiches revolting, too. They just don’t want to tell you so, because they’re afraid of hurting your feelings.” He shook his head as he reached for another triangle of white bread and sham.
“If the sandwiches are so revolting, why are you eating more of them?”
“Because I’m hungry, and I don’t waste food. Unlike you and your friends, I never had the luxury of being choosy.”
He tore off half the sandwich with a resentful bite. As a boy on the streets, he would have begged for the scraps she threw her dog. In the workhouse, on the two days a week they were given meat, he’d sucked the gristle and marrow from every last bone.
This woman—no, this lady—could fill her dinner table until it creaked beneath the weight of roasts, joints of mutton, game fowl, lobster.
Instead, she ate this. On purpose.
The thought made him viscerally, irrationally angry.
He pulled the shilling from his waistcoat pocket and tapped it against his thigh. “I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain. You wouldn’t understand. Can’t understand. You’ve never known true deprivation.”
“You’re right,” she agreed.
Gabe didn’t want her to agree. He wanted to stay angry.
“I haven’t known that kind of hunger. I choose not to eat animals, and I know it’s a luxury to have that choice. It’s a luxury to have any choice. And I also know people find me ridiculous.”
“Not ridiculous.” He flipped the shilling into the air and caught it one-handed, his fingers trapping the coin against his palm. “Sheltered. Trusting and naïve.”
“I’m not so sheltered and naïve as you imagine.”
He could only laugh.
“I’m being sincere.” She picked at a blade of grass. “My youth wasn’t idyllic, either.”
“Let me guess. Beau Brummell snubbed you at a party once. I can only imagine how the nightmares haunt you to this day.”
“You know nothing of my life.”
“So there were more trials, were there?” He flipped the shilling into the air again, catching it easily. “The milliner’s ran out of pink ribbon.”
“Stop being cruel.”
“The world is cruel. This world is, anyway. Tell me, Your Ladyship, what’s it like in your fairy-tale land?”
She snatched the shilling from his hand. As he looked on in irritation, she stood, cocked her arm, and winged the coin with all her strength.
He pushed to his feet. “You just tossed away a perfectly good shilling. I can’t imagine a better example of your pampered existence. That’s a day’s wages for a workingman.”
“You have millions of shillings, as you’re so fond of telling everyone.”
“Yes, but I never forget that I came from far less. I couldn’t forget that, even if I tried.”
“I have tried to forget. To forget where I came from, to deny the past. You don’t know how I’ve tried.” Her voice crumbled at the edges. “I may not have known poverty, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t known pain.”
Gabe pushed a hand through his hair. He recognized the ring of truth in her voice. She was being honest, and he was being an ass.
Her character was finally coming into focus. He didn’t know who or what had hurt her, but the blade had sunk deep. The world didn’t hold enough kittens to fill that wound—but that hadn’t stopped her from trying.
Gabe gentled his voice. “Listen . . .”
“Oh, no.” She wheeled around. “Hubert’s missing.”
“Who’s missing?”
“Hubert! The otter. The only reason we’re stranded here in Buckinghamshire, remember?”
Oh, yes. That Hubert.
“How could I have been so careless?” She shaded her eyes with one hand and searched the area. “Where could he have gone?”
“Considering that he’s a river otter, I’m going to take a wild guess and say the river.”
She’d apparently come to the same conclusion. Gabe followed her as she raced toward the stream’s edge.
“Hubert!” She cupped her hands around her mouth like a trumpet. “Hyoooo-bert!” She plopped down in the damp grasses and began tugging at her bootlaces.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to look for him.”
Once she had the boots kicked off, she hiked up her skirts, untied a beguiling pink garter, and began rolling the white stocking down the tempting contours of her leg.
Sweet glory.
Gabe shook himself. This would be the moment to avert his gaze, he supposed. Actually, the gentlemanly moment would have been several seconds ago—but he didn’t play by gentlemen’s rules, and peeling one’s gaze from that sort of beauty wasn’t so easily accomplished. He was drawn to the sight the way an otter was drawn to the river.
Once she’d divested herself of both stockings, she stood and gathered her skirts in one hand, holding them above her ankles as she picked her way down the riverbank.
Gabe sighed. He should go after her. Not because he cared about catching Hubert, but because she was likely to stumble on the rocks and break her neck.
“Let him be.” He caught up to her and offered his hand as a means of balance. “You wanted them to have good homes. He’s saved us the trouble and found one for himself.”
“He’s been living with me since he was a pup. He can’t survive in the wild.”
“The wild? We’re in the English Midlands. This is hardly the wild.”
Her demeanor brightened. “I see him. Over there.”
Over by the opposite riverbank, a slinky brown tail disappeared beneath the water’s surface with a splash.
She tugged him by the hand. “We have to rescue him.”
“He doesn’t need rescuing.”
Ignoring him, she lifted her skirts to the knee and dipped her toes into the river.
“No.” Gabe planted his foot on the muddy bank and held her back. “Absolutely not. We are not going into the water.”
She lunged forward.
They were going into the water.
Goddamn, it was cold. By his second step, the river had swallowed him to the knee, sending water rushing to fill his boots. His new, finest-quality-outrageous-sums-of-money-could-buy boots.
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