But fate intervened. “I had no intention to become fast friends with her again. Not as we once were.”
“Why not?”
He’d stick to the professional reason. “My future is so uncertain.”
“Surely the Corps is headed by men who understand the normal desire to marry.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to court any woman, not knowing what I must do or where I’ll go.” Blake had explained to Charlton he had a choice to make and soon, too. As head of his estate, he should remain home to run the barony. But to do that, he’d have to resign his commission. For a Royal Engineer to resign his commission was an unusual act. His years of training had been extensive and expensive to the Government. His years abroad, the finest teacher. From what he’d heard from others who wished to learn their futures with the Corps, those who had been in Spain and France were most prized for the service they could give in the future to the Country by serving abroad.
The wars over, his fellow engineers expected to be posted far from home with great regularity. The Empire, now protected, needed to be surveyed, mapped, afforded infrastructure of roads and towns, government buildings, city halls, military barracks, fortresses with impregnable bastions and the thousand different accessories which conquering nations must command. To court a lady, promising a hazy future traversing the globe on meager salaries, was not a venture that boded well. Indeed, it would create more problems than it might solve. What woman—especially a gently reared one—was inclined to leave her home country in exchange for hardship, travel to jungles and deserts and for the prospect of savages upon her doorstep?
“Yet you knew she’d be here, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t certain. I know she is a distant relative to Northington and I accepted your invitation to accompany you because I purposely came to see him. But I hoped I might keep my distance and let her enjoy her friends, Esme and Fifi and the others.”
Charlton’s grey eyes danced. “Fifi, is it?”
Blake gave his friend a wistful glance. “Fifi is what her friends call her.”
“It suits her.”
Blake nodded, laughter on his lips. “And you, I see.”
“Pardon my intrusion, sirs.” Another footman stood in the entrance.
“Yes?” Charlton looked up.
“The ice, the tea, more bandages and brandy await you in Lady Fiona’s rooms, my lord.”
“Well, then.” He rose. “I’m off to do my doctoring.”
“Get to it, Charlton.” He got to his feet. “I’m off to join the party.”
“To explore new possibilities, I do hope.”
I’d like to hope. “We shall see.”
Chapter 5
“When you’re finished, Welles, I’m certain Lady Fiona would like your help sorting her wardrobe.” Though concerned about Fifi and her injury, Mary needed to discuss Blake’s sudden appearance. Just when she’d told herself she applauded the benefits of spinsterhood, she was presented with the man she’d urged herself to forget.
Her maid nodded. “Yes, my lady. I’ll go in a few minutes.”
Mary hurried down the hall to the next room where the door stood wide open.
Inside, Lord Charlton bent over Fifi’s bare foot. Bare ankle. Bare leg…to her knee!
No maid, no footman was in attendance.
“There you are, Mary! Do come in. See what Lord Charlton is doing.” Fifi pointed to her swollen foot. “He claims to be an expert at healing twisted ankles.”
Mary took a position next to Fifi’s chair with full view of her injury, bruising like an eggplant. “Is that so, sir?”
He glanced up at her, a rueful arc to his brows, his hands stilled at his task. “We are—I assure you, Lady Mary—perfectly respectable. Do note the door is open. I have not accosted your friend. Have I, Lady Fifi?”
“Not in the least,” Fifi said, too absorbed in Charlton’s wrapping of her ankle in a strip of flannel to notice his use of her familiar little name.
“You’ve done this often?” Mary inquired of him.
“Battlefield surgeons are few and far between, my lady. A commander must perform as leader, confessor, scribe and doctor.”
“Of course.” She had nothing for it but to join the reception of the rest of the guests downstairs in the main salon. “Will you come downstairs, my lord, after you finish here?”
“I will. So will Lady Fifi.”
“Oh, no, I won’t. I’m not going down there like this.”
“Why not?” He paused in his ministrations and scowled at her. “Does your ankle prohibit you from laughing?”
Fifi glared at him. “Never.”
“Well then.”
“You are irritating, my lord.” Fifi crossed her arms, then met Mary’s gaze. “We’ll adjourn to the salon in a few minutes.”
Charlton looked marginally relieved as he caught Mary’s frown. “A few more minutes, then.”
The man was a bear. Dismissing her, no less! Worse, Fifi was not asking for her to remain.
But Welles appeared. With a suitable chaperone at hand, Mary would have to discuss her thoughts on the comforts of renewing old friendships another time.
Plus she knew when to yield. “I’ll see you both downstairs.”
* * *
Blake found himself ambushed in one corner by two young ladies whom he was informed were former school friends of Mary and Fifi. Lady Ivy or her twin sister, Lady Grace Livingstone, daughters of an earl whom he’d never met, were not only dressed in the same white muslin but possessed the same features save for one. They had the same round faces, the same dimples in their left cheeks, the same bright emerald eyes, same height and dulcet tone of voice. But Ivy had a halo of white blonde hair and Grace a riot of autumn red. Both were eager talkers.
“I know who you are now,” Lady Ivy informed him with self-satisfaction. “Mary spoke often of you. Since the first day she came to Miss Shipley’s, she talked of the boy who was her friend who lived across the river.”
“You,” said Lady Grace, “are the one who saved her when she fell and injured her leg.”
“Indeed,” said Ivy and put down her tea cup and saucer as the footman offered a tray. “You came each day with gifts.”
“Her most prized is her acorn,” said her sister.
“An acorn?” He had no idea Mary would have kept it. The little brown bit was an insignificant present, one he picked from the forest carpet when he was worried she would die because he’d been foolish and competitive and allowed her to run ahead of him.
“Yes, the one you gave her,” Ivy said. “She keeps it as a talisman.”
“Chivalry,” said Grace, “is not dead.”
He took the compliments with ease but with greater gratification for the fact of Mary’s acclaim for him. “I assure you I was no knight. I took full blame for her injury.”
“Oh? But why?” Ivy checked her sister’s expression. “You weren’t responsible for her falling.”
“No, but I am older and should have been wiser not to let her run ahead.”
“Ha!” said Grace with a wince. “As if you could deter Mary from doing anything.”
“A point to the lady in white.” Ivy tipped her fan toward her sister.
“Mary was always focused, determined.”
“Do you speak of me?” She joined their little circle. Her hair ordered after the disarray in the accident, she’d also changed her gown to a pink confection that flattered her complexion. If she seemed out of sorts, Blake thought it unusual and soon to pass.
“We do,” Blake admitted, wishing the other two ladies would drift off to other guests.
“How is Fifi?” Ivy asked. “I assumed you checked before you came down.”
“I did. She’s…better. In less pain, I think, but over the shock of the accident.”
“Lord Charlton looked as if he had the situation in hand,” Ivy said widening her gaze to imply what else the man might have tamed.
Mary fixed her gaze on Blake’s. �
��I would say he does.”
“Does?” Ivy pressed.
“He applies a new bandage as we speak.”
“His silk cravat,” Blake added, “was not the strongest wrap.”
The twins chuckled.
“Is that what it was?” Grace put a hand to her throat. “His cravat. Good thinking.”
“Will she join us?” Ivy asked.
Blake spied Charlton on the threshold. “She does.”
“My, my,” Grace said as she fanned herself. “His lordship never tires, does he?”
Blake grinned at the sight of his friend with the lady securely in his embrace. “Charlton has had many long years of sleepless nights.”
“You refer to the battlefield, I assume?” Grace offered, her gaze never leaving the couple at the door.
“I do. My friend is an infantry officer of the highest caliber. Responsible for many victories, but also a man whose quick thinking afterward has saved many of his soldiers from certain death. Lady Fiona is his newest patient.”
“Will you excuse us?” Ivy asked him and Mary. “Grace and I have not seen Fifi in months.”
He and Mary turned aside to let them pass.
“Do you think he’ll be kind to her?” Mary did not take her gaze from the couple.
“He is, Mary. Always.” Her focus on her friend and his irritated him. “Come tell me about your roses and why you think they are not thriving this year.”
That brought her attention to him. “The leaves are brown. I’ve no idea why. I’ve turned the soil twice since February and added in fresh manure I got from the Carper estate outside of town.”
“Perhaps you added too much?”
“Not likely. Three cups is what I use each year in that garden frame.”
“Then the weather is at fault. It is colder this spring.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“That calls for a wind screen. Have you tried that? Or a glass cover? Removable, of course.”
The light in her sea blue eyes turned to a radiance that paused his beating heart. He wanted to put his lips to each one. Feel the fire in her gaze.
“A marvelous solution!”
“I’m pleased to help.”
She clasped her hands. “You wonderful man! Oh, where have you been? I have needed you for years.”
Her acclaim filled him with the impulse to haul her near and drop kisses to her pretty lips. His arms ached to do it. His fingers curled in restraint. Successfully enchanting Mary could be as simple as teaching her how to make all her flowers bloom. With the light in her eyes and the lure of her smile, he could grow flowers, ford rivers, build aqueducts to rival the Romans’. How could he not?
She stepped near and put her fingers to his sleeve. Against the rules of contact, he covered her hand and pressed her warmth to his. Her spontaneity was a boon to the despair he’d suffered at the loss of so many of his friends in battle. Here in her own lovely body was the one female whose smile could spark his own. Could her heart find solace with his? Here at home or anywhere he might be sent? Had he not fought so she and others might find peace and love and quiet contentment?
She moved ever so slightly. He knew it was so that others in the room might not see how she kept her hand on his arm and looked into his eyes with a regard far beyond the friendship they’d resurrected in the coach.
A primal sense told him the room was emptying.
Someone noted that a buffet was available in the dining room.
Mary watched those at the door and her happy blue gaze shot to his. “Alone,” she mouthed the word.
His opportunity to taste her arrived.
He stepped scandalously close to her and cupped her cheeks. She nestled against him, her lure the echo of that one which resonated in him ever since he’d kissed her two years ago. Fitting him so perfectly, she rose on her toes. Her hips met his, her breasts rubbed against his chest, her arms went around him and locked him to her. Her lips were a whisper away, his restraint fled in gay abandon.
He brushed his mouth over hers. The silken texture of her lips could provide dreams for decades to come.
She sighed and closed her eyes. “I’ve missed you so.”
The dam of his resistance broke. He bent and took her lips in a feral urgency he could contrast only to the madness of cannon fire and the hell of sabers and blood and men falling in their tracks. But she was soft and yielding, sweet succor, her mouth as eager as his to taste and nip and take.
Voices drifted in the air.
He crushed her close and gave her one parting kiss, a benediction and a promise. “I hate that we must stop.”
She pressed her cheek to his chest and hugged him so dearly he thought angels must embrace each other with just such adoration.
He stepped back and offered his arm. “Refreshment.”
She blushed, wild and red as berries, then laughed in that full-throated way that no one could match. “I think you and I have just had ours.”
Chapter 6
After dinner, Mary shot from her chair and headed down the hall to the main salon where Lady Courtland had invited the guests to adjourn. At dinner Blake had been placed between Grace and Millicent Weaver. Grace had monopolized conversation with him offering wide smiles and demure blushes. Jealousy, new and ugly, meant Mary had picked at her meal.
She stood on the threshold scanning the room only to find Blake talking with Ivy. The feel of his lips on her own lingered even now and she required another taste to assure herself his need of her was not a delusion. Her desire warred with her envy and she turned fidgety and restless. So much so that throughout supper, she’d not paid proper courteous attention to the men to each side of her. Lord Marleigh and Lord Greyson had done their best to provide conversation, but she’d not been a good listener.
Meanwhile, to add frustration to her battlefield, Fifi and Charlton, who’d sat next to each other at table, continued to spar. That man’s attentions to her friend meant Fifi had little time to engage the gentleman on her other side, let alone find a suitor, real or imagined.
Well! Mary had a plan for that. If she couldn’t enjoy Blake’s company, she’d help her friend. Mary’s cousin Winston, the Earl of Dalworthy, would be a perfect choice for Fifi. Handsome and witty, a scholar of Greek and Latin writers, he had been working in London recently with the Secretary of War’s office. After Napoleon was sent off to St. Helena, Winston had retired home to Dalworthy Manor.
She spotted Winston excusing himself from a brief conversation with another gentleman, Lord Collingswood. Mary hurried to put herself in her cousin’s path.
“I’m glad to see you here, Mary. How are you?”
“I’m well. Thank you.” They had not seen each other since she had last been in London in the autumn. Always cordial to her, Winston had been especially kind after her father died two years ago. That had been soon after her mother’s demise and she was not herself. As the seventh earl of Dalworthy, Winston was solicitous of her feelings about his assumption of her home and her father’s place in the world. He’d generously offered her the ability to remain in Dalworthy Manor until she deemed herself ready to move permanently to the house in Bath. He had resided in London, diligently employed round the clock with winning the war. “I’m pleased to see you here, too. You’ve worked very hard to aid the war effort and deserve a rest.”
“Time to do what I should with the estate. I’ve examined the books and surveyed the land and it is,” he said with frankness in his grey eyes, “a daunting task.”
“I’m sure Mister Hawthorn is an asset to you.” Hawthorn had been her father’s estate manager for more than a decade, as had Hawthorn’s father before him for three times that many years.
“He’s ill, Mary. Very ill. His breathing becomes more difficult.”
“No! That’s terrible to hear. I shall write to him. Send him a new wool shawl. He favors a special lamb’s wool from the Highlands.”
“Kind of you. His son takes good care of him and learns the estate
in the meantime. He means to take over for his father when it becomes necessary.”
“You have no problems with that, I assume? The Hawthorns are a fixture on the Dalworthy estate.”
“No problems at all. I think both men well suited to their job.”
“And how is your mother?” Mrs. Ralston Finch was Mary’s second cousin by marriage on her father’s side. Tall, with hair the color of snow, she was jovial but very much like Lady Courtland in that she could push her offspring often and in public, too. “I wondered if she would come to this party this year.”
“Past her seventieth birthday now, she declares she’ll take prerogatives of age. She cannot sit for long periods so she prefers not to travel too far. But the truth is, she minds coming into such rarified society. It makes her nervous and she makes faux pas. She knows it and dislikes her impetuosity to do so.”
Mary let a smile escape at his frankness. “Does she still demand you eat more vegetables?”
He grinned. “She does. Only now she has a new goal for me.”
“Oh?” His mother often talked of her great marital ambitions for her only child, especially now that he was an earl.
He took a glass of brandy from a passing footman. “I’m sure you know what it is.”
Refusing the servant’s offer of sherry, she beamed at her hope they might discuss a topic she liked. “Marriage?”
“Precisely.”
“Any candidates?”
“Not any in London.” His gaze strayed around the room.
“Here?” This conversation did march her way.
“I confess I tire of Mama’s incessant harping on the matter. Then too, I am aware that my father died at thirty-six.”
“Very young.”
“Disturbingly so.” He frowned.
She sought to lift his spirits. “You look quite healthy to me, Winston.”
“I am. I think. But with only three more years to meet my father’s mark, I must devote myself to the task of finding a wife and getting an heir. The alternative is not appealing to me, my mother or either of the Hawthorns.”
Lady Mary's May Day Mischief: Four Weddings and a Frolic, Book 2 Page 5