by Julia Quinn
This took him aback only for a moment. Then a slight smile traced its way across his lips and to her surprise he laughed. “Then I’d best accompany you . . . to see that you don’t fall off.”
Then he reached down and caught up her case. Took it right out of her hand. If she hadn’t been so startled by the rich tones of his laughter, and the way it shivered down her spine, she would have had the wherewithal to stop him.
Why, of all the imperious . . .
“I can carry that.” She went to retrieve it but he held it out of her reach.
“I’m quite certain you can.” And then he shifted it to his far side and sent her one of those withering glances that only an English lord could manage. The sort that brooked no opposition.
The sort that said, Go where you please, but you are going with me.
Then he set off in the direction of the ruin, leaving Cordelia with no choice but to follow him.
After all, he had her sketch box.
Still, she wasn’t one to give up easily. “Members of the RSE always carry their own burdens.”
“This is hardly what I’d call a burden,” he replied, his mouth set in a mulish line.
Well, at least one thing hadn’t changed. Christopher Talcott was still the most stubborn male alive.
What else hadn’t changed? That question prodded at her insatiable curiosity.
“How is it that you—” she began. Never went to sea? Or followed your dreams? Turned into such a stuffy wreck?
“That I what?”
“Didn’t go to sea like you planned. I know you inherited and all, but that hardly seems a good enough reason—”
He flinched, only slightly, and she knew that she’d waded in too far.
But now that she was up to her neck in it . . .
“You could have still gone,” she offered, seeing the wrinkle of his brow, the sudden pinch of his lips. The turmoil behind them.
Frustration. Anger. Regret.
Feelings she understood only too well.
He shook his head. “You obviously don’t remember my father.”
She thought for a moment and realized she didn’t recall the previous earl, not in the least. But then again she’d been a child and hardly worthy of being presented to the neighboring lord.
“He had a general horror of Drew inheriting,” he supplied.
Cordelia couldn’t help herself; she laughed a little. “Not without good reason. He was such a dreadful scamp.”
“Still is,” Kipp told her. “I’d warn your Mrs. Harrington.”
Cordelia nodded politely. It might do well to warn Captain Talcott about Mrs. Harrington, but she wasn’t about to tell Kipp that, given his current obsession with propriety.
Instead she went back to the subject at hand. “So you stayed behind.”
“Yes, and Drew was sent in my place.”
Cordelia paused, as did Kipp. “I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching out and placing her hand on his sleeve.
She didn’t know why she’d done it, but the moment her fingers curled around his forearm, she regretted it utterly. For suddenly it made this entire farce of a betrothal seem very real.
He looked down at her hand first and then into her eyes, and Cordelia realized that their easy familiarity as children was nothing like being intimate as adults—for this close, all she could think of was Rule 18, and all that it implied.
Offered. Promised.
And from the wary light in his glance, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was having the same thoughts. And if he was . . .
She panicked and snatched her hand back. Oh, that would never do.
So instead, she continued walking, Kipp in her wake, and both of them ignoring that uncomfortable moment.
Still, she thought as she slanted a glance at him, it was slightly unfortunate he wasn’t more of a scapegrace like his brother.
“You’ve changed, if you don’t mind me saying,” she told him.
“You have not.”
That hardly sounded like a compliment.
Not that she was angling for one, but still, it pricked at her feminine heart. “Not at all?”
He glanced over at her. “Oh, you’ve grown up.”
“Well, thank you for noticing.”
“It’s rather difficult not to.”
She supposed that might be a compliment, but since she’d never been offered one by a man she hadn’t any idea what to expect.
But she had thought one might be more effusive with his praise, if one was to offer a compliment.
They turned the corner in the road, and the entire reason Cordelia had set out in this direction came into view. Just off the road stood an old ruined castle, which was more a pile of rubble than fortress, the once lofty walls having been pilfered for centuries by the nearby villagers.
In the far western horizon the sun was beginning to settle in for the night, throwing off the day’s labors by bathing the sky in brilliant shades of pink and red, while the humble yellow stones of the castle glowed back with an ancient fire—that flicker of twilight where day and night entwined and embraced.
They both stopped, and Cordelia couldn’t help herself, she reached over and caught hold of his hand.
“Have you ever seen—”
“No, I haven’t. At least not in a very long time.” Then he surprised her utterly. “Thank you, Cordelia, for asking me—to come along and all. I had forgotten—”
She nodded, for she knew exactly what he meant. It had been a long time since she’d stood with someone who understood. Understood her.
“If you are going to sketch, you’d best hurry,” he told her.
“Oh dear, I nearly forgot,” she said, reluctantly letting go of his hand and reaching for her case. With it in hand, she plopped down in a grassy spot, quickly sorting out what she needed and opening her sketchbook.
And then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
After a few moments, Kipp coughed a little. “Whatever are you doing?”
Slowly she opened her eyes. “Summoning all my senses. If I am to draw this scene, I want to be part of it—all of it. The wind, the grass, the birds—” She tipped her head toward a nearby hedge where trilling notes rose from a hidden bit of feathers. “Is that a robin?”
He listened as well. “No, a lark.”
She smiled and nodded, cataloguing that away. “A friend of my father’s—a Hindu priest—he also liked to draw, and always said that if one wanted to capture a moment, one needed to be in the moment. Have a sense of the place.” She looked up and found him studying her. “Try it. Close your eyes.”
“Hardly. Knowing you, this is one of your tricks to escape my detection.”
“If I wanted to escape you, I would have already done so,” she told him tartly.
“Then I will take your presence as a compliment.”
“So you do know what one is,” she muttered without thinking.
“Pardon?”
“Oh, nothing,” she hurried to say. And then changed the subject as she studied the castle and horizon for the best vantage. “It is rather magnificent,” she said, studying the sky, her head tipped slightly.
He nodded in agreement. “In London one doesn’t get the chance to . . . that is, I don’t get to . . . well, with my obligations and such.”
“I’m so sorry.” Though whether it was for the loss of his dreams or her impetuous touch earlier, she wasn’t sure. So she made certain she was clear on the subject. “That you inherited.”
“Not the usual sentiment one hears. Most people would suggest that I have the devil’s own luck.” He moved over to one of the toppled stones and sat down on it.
When she looked over, she had a vision of him that she couldn’t explain, sitting there on that ancient stone, like a king of lore. So she flipped the page and started anew.
“Anyone who doesn’t understand is obviously not a founding member of the RSE,” she told him, nose tucked in the air.
Kipp laughed again. �
��If life is not an adventure it is hardly worth living.”
Those words caught her unaware, pulling her concentration up from the sketch beginning to unfold before her. “Oh, you do remember!”
“Of course I remember. It is a fine motto for a society.”
“Secret society,” she corrected.
“Oh yes, very secret. And a good thing it is. I do believe there is a codicil about cannibalism in our list of rules. As a member of the House of Lords, it would hardly do if it were nosed about that I had once endorsed the eating of my fellow noblemen.”
“Yes, but only in the case of extreme starvation,” she pointed out. “And as I recall it was only gentlemen ranking below an earl who could be consumed.”
They both glanced at each other and then laughed. Heartily.
Heavens, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like this.
“Yes, I suppose it is a good thing the RSE canon has been lost to the ages,” she said.
His brows twitched slightly and he glanced away.
“Kipp, it is lost, isn’t it?”
He made a slip of his shoulder. “Until a few weeks ago I would have said as much, but as luck would have it, I was going through the library and found it tucked behind that giant atlas we used to drag about.”
“How providential,” she remarked. No wonder he’d remembered Rule 18. “Would have made my case much easier to prove yesterday if I’d had it to quote from.”
“I daresay I’d forgotten most of the nonsense we’d written there.” He glanced over at her, and if she wasn’t mistaken, his eyes sparkled a bit, just like the mischievous boy she remembered.
Though as a lad, he’d protested quite heatedly to the addition of Rule 18 to the Royal Society charter.
He pushed off the stone and came to sit down beside her. “Whatever are you drawing?”
When he reached for her sketchbook, she bounded to her feet. “Oh, nothing. Besides, the light has shifted; I’ll need to start over.”
He rose as well, looking over at the horizon and back at her. “I don’t think the sun has moved all that much. Whatever are you hiding, Cordie?”
Cordie . . .
Oh, he did still know her. She glanced up at him and found he’d moved closer than she’d first realized. A whiff of bay rum and horses and something very masculine teased her. So close she could see the darkening stubble at his chin. That if she were to rise up on her toes and catch his coat lapels in her grasp, tip her lips up toward his . . .
“I’m not hiding . . . that is . . . it isn’t much,” she told him, holding the book behind her back.
For actually, it was everything.
And he reached for it, and then just as quickly they were all entangled.
Kipp reached out to steady Cordelia and found himself holding her, surrounded by the exotic air of her perfume and the soft curves of her body pressed to his.
In an instance, he knew he shouldn’t have come along on this madcap adventure—for here was all the ruin he’d been chastising Drew about since his brother had come home from sea.
Yet with Cordie in his arms, all he could think about was Rule 18.
That one line that had made him smile when he’d read it.
Upon the unlikely event that an RSE member never marries and reaches the matronly age of five and twenty . . .
Cordelia had insisted that specific codicil be added to their charter, much to his vehement protests. Now, looking down at the starry light in her eyes and the soft, inviting turn of her lips, parted just so in invitation, he couldn’t think of a single objection to her rule.
And it had been her rule. Now all he had to do was endorse it.
He leaned down slightly, wondering in shock at his own reaction to having this improper miss in his arms.
He should be setting her aside, apologizing, anything that put him back in his proper place. That made them both remember that this was all a fiction.
Yet how could he when here was Cordelia Padley, all grown up?
Her hair all a tumble, stray strands falling in an enticing array of dishabille. He reached out and tucked one of the curls back behind her ear, marveling at the shiver that ran through her.
Tempting him to come closer.
However had she known, all those years ago, that one day they would meet again and . . . find themselves like this . . .
That is until the high piping notes of the lark in a nearby hedge drummed him back to the present, along with the warning clop of horse hooves and the crunch of cartwheels that said they wouldn’t be alone for long.
He glanced up at the farmer coming around the corner, the tired-looking man eyeing the pair with an arched and disapproving brow—the sort of look Josiah Holt had sent toward the wastrels and rakes who’d dallied too close to his daughter.
A look that thrust Kipp back into the present. Where he was the Earl of Thornton. And nearly betrothed.
To someone else.
So no matter what he’d vowed all those years ago, it was a promise he could no longer keep.
“Yes, well, if you don’t want to share your drawing,” he managed, setting her back on her feet and taking a step away, until the teasing air of her perfume no longer curled around him like a lure.
For her part, Cordelia righted herself with all the affronted air of a cat that had been stroked the wrong way, the mischievous spell that had entwined them both shattering.
“It’s nothing much,” she told him as she brushed her hands over her hair, tucking the stray strands back into place. But each time she managed to quell one unruly curl, another seemed to find a way to tumble loose.
Just like the lady herself. Utterly untamable.
But oh, what would it be like to try?
“What is nothing?” he asked absently, still utterly distracted by her tangled hair.
“The sketch you wanted to see.”
Ah, yes, the sketch. He’d entirely forgotten.
She opened her book and then held it up for him. There was the castle quickly outlined, with the lines of the horizon faintly added.
“Good heavens, that’s excellent,” he said, coming to stand beside her. “You’ve got quite the talent.”
“No, my mother was the talented one. I’m but a poor imitator.” She looked down at the page. “But this will be much improved when I have a chance to touch it up with some watercolors.”
She smiled warily and then moved away from him, taking up a spot a few yards away, and continued to sketch.
Kipp returned to his spot on the stone, and thankfully they sat in silence for some time, until the scratching from her pencil stopped.
“Do you still draw maps?” she asked, looking up from her work.
He shook his head. “No. Hardly any point.”
She set down her pencil and turned to him. “Why ever not? It was all you ever wanted to do.”
“Do you still want what you desired at eight?” He couldn’t help himself; he waggled his brows a bit, if only to tease her.
She blushed, like the way a dab of watercolor spread over a damp page—but that moment of discomfiture didn’t last long. She straightened. “You mean go explore Africa?”
He laughed a little. “Yes, if that is what you want to call it.”
She pointedly ignored his teasing. “Considering I cannot even walk across a village alone, I would assume the notion of a lady venturing into the furthest reaches of Africa would also be frowned upon.”
“I daresay,” he said, with a bit more chastisement in his voice than she obviously cared to hear.
She snapped her sketchbook closed. “Oh, not you as well.”
“Miss Padley, that just isn’t done.”
She began to gather up her belongings. “You can do whatever you like, Lord Thornton. Travel. Make maps. Explore the world—though for some inexplicable reason you’ve decided to cast aside all your dreams.”
She stood facing him, her haphazardly gathered belongings jutting out from every angle, her m
outh set, her eyes ablaze.
Something about her ire poked at him. “I grew up and left such childish notions behind,” he told her.
“Bah!” she huffed. Suddenly she was eight again, all indignant over his assertions that she couldn’t form a royal society, couldn’t explore the world, all for the simple and ridiculous bit of happenstance that she was female.
He doggedly ignored the fact that she’d changed his mind back then. “I don’t know how things are managed in India, but here in England there is a very set way of how things were done. What is considered appropriate.”
He couldn’t imagine Pamela making such a suggestion. The closest Pamela would ever get to the Nile was the carved crocodile legs on her sofa.
“Appropriate?” A flash of sparks illuminated Cordelia’s eyes. Like a warning. She set aside her belongings and marched toward him, stopping when she could poke her finger into his chest. “You, Lord Thornton, can follow any of those adventures we came up with simply because you are a man.”
“How can you think it is that simple?”
“Because it is,” she shot back. “A man can set his own course, where a woman is . . .”
“A woman is what?” He thought of Pamela and how she had nearly every unmarried man in London lapping at the hem of her skirts. “Being a woman hasn’t stopped you. My God! As you pointed out, you’ve been to India and back.”
“And yet here I am, trying to foil society’s demand that I shackle myself to some tallow clerk or I will be deemed something less than a woman. Yes, I must marry, or, horrors upon horrors, I might end up a spinster.”
A spinster. He nearly laughed. The last thing he could ever see Cordelia Padley becoming was some colorless spinster, especially when her perfume curled at his senses, enticing and sharp, full of an exotic world he’d never know, never see.
“If, my lord, you were so overly concerned about what is appropriate, if you have—as you claim—left behind your dreams, whatever are you doing here? Why did you come along with me?”
Her question took him aback.
Why, indeed?
He looked around at their very English setting, of the ruins before him, and he was reminded of his own pressing duties.