Ernst, on the other hand, looked perfectly at ease. He pushed his new bicycle with the wicker hamper affixed to the handle, chattering gaily about the contraption’s braking system. Finally he stopped. “Here. It is a lovely place, yes?”
“Yes, it’s charming,” Evelyn said. It didn’t look appreciably different to her from any of the other half dozen places they’d passed.
“I think that in the hamper you carry I have packed a nice blanket. If you would be so kind?”
“Gladly.” She gave her heartfelt assent. She could use a spot of respite. She flipped open the hamper and withdrew a heavy wool blanket. She gave it a sharp snap and settled it on the grass beneath a huge oak.
Gratefully, she sank to her knees while Ernst carefully leaned his bicycle against the trunk and returned with the other picnic basket. He sat down beside her and said shyly, “Perhaps you would do the honors, Miss Evelyn.”
Evelyn looked at him blankly. “Excuse me?”
He wagged his finger in a jocular fashion. “I always loved watching my mother make the preparations for our meals. There was something so feminine about the way she arranged things and set things out. I have missed a woman’s presence in my life.”
“Oh.” Flattered, if a trifle doubtful, she dutifully began pulling things out of the hamper. She unloaded and arranged cutlery, plates, napkins, glasses, and several items wrapped in waxed brown paper, found a thermos and mugs, and, after looking at Ernst, who said, “Please, do,” filled them with iced coffee.
Ernst sighed happily and lay back on the blanket. Evelyn gave a mental shrug and unwrapped a loaf of bread, a quarter round of cheese, several apples, and a haunch of ham. After another encouraging nod from Ernst, she sawed through meat and bread and created heroically proportioned sandwiches, one of which she then presented to Ernst.
Ernst, who’d been dreamily studying the cloud configurations overhead, came to with a blink and accepted the plate.
“How restful it is here, is it not?” he asked, leaning on his elbow and gazing blissfully into her eyes. “Everything is perfect.”
Evelyn had been on the cusp of responding that she would give him her opinion regarding the restfulness of the setting after she’d actually experienced a few minutes of it, but the look in his eye forbade her. He looked so content. And so young.
“Just peachy,” she said, taking a bite of sandwich.
Ernst talked while he ate. He spoke of his mother and father, of the little castle in Bavaria where he’d grown up—Gads, not another moldy white elephant, thought Evelyn—and his brother’s ill health. He asked her about her family, was suitably impressed that her grandfather was a duke, but not so impressed that it was awkward, and remarked how amazing it was that someone as accomplished as she was not yet some man’s treasured wife. Clearly, she had high standards, as well she should, but was there someone who, perhaps, had some hope of making her his?
It was the last that broke through Evelyn’s pedestrian concern with blisters and jettisoned her right back into the realms of romance. She’d never had one offer of marriage and here Ernst took it for granted that she had had several offers, all of which she’d turned down. And he was serious!
She finished the last bite of her sandwich and put down her plate, cupping her chin in her palm and staring raptly into his eyes. “No. No one.”
Except Justin.
Her eyes widened in horror. Where had that come from? And it wasn’t even true!
“Is something wrong?” Ernst asked solicitously. “You look surprised. Unhappily surprised. A bug, perhaps?”
“No. Oh, no.” Evelyn tittered nervously. “Now, you were saying . . . ?”
“I was saying how surprising it is that a woman with your qualities, so capable and so charming, so little, yet so very . . .” She never found out what he’d been about to say because at that moment he leaned forward and kissed her.
A real, honest-to-heaven kiss.
He pressed his lips firmly against hers and made an appropriately kissy sound. His mouth was warm and his mustache tickled a little. And that was about it.
It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t wet. It was even pleasant. But it was not anything she was going to lose sleep over. Or dream about.
“I am sorry,” Ernst exclaimed worriedly. Trying to read her expression. “It is only, well, I was carried away.”
Perhaps kissing was an acquired taste. Like Roquefort cheese. Well, she was certainly willing to give it another go and from the look on Ernst’s face, so was he. She smiled encouragingly and he reached out, gently clasping her shoulders. He closed his eyes. Should she close hers? He leaned in, closer, closer . . .
Something rustled loudly in the limbs of a nearby oak.
Her head snapped up, Ernst’s kiss went amiss, and Justin Powell fell out of the tree.
Chapter 14
“JUSTIN?” EVELYN STARED disbelievingly. Even though the tree he’d fallen from was forty feet away, she could see his face was red. As well it should be.
She rose in a flurry of serviceable brown worsted and unadorned cotton petticoats and marched over to him, Ernst hastening after her. A few feet away, she stopped, set her hands on her hips, and tapped her toe. He didn’t look up until he’d finished dusting himself off. And why now he should evince interest in his personal appearance when he hadn’t shown any before could only be construed as suspicious.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I’ve torn the knee in these trousers,” he said severely, as if this were somehow her fault. “I liked these trousers.”
“Are you all right, Mr. Powell?” Ernst asked anxiously. Dear Ernst, trust him to show kindness in the face of such monstrous intrusiveness. “That was a nasty fall.”
“I didn’t fall,” Justin said with quelling hauteur. “I jumped down and lost my balance. Jumping being my only recourse given the goings-on I unwillingly witnessed.”
She opened her mouth to respond to such patent swill but all that came out was a choked sound. “Ah!”
Poor Ernst turned pale. “I assure you, I have—”
“Save your assurances, Blumfield. What you and Miss Powell do is none of my concern.”
“We weren’t doing anything!”
Justin managed to look superior and bored and disbelieving all at once. No small feat for a man who’d just fallen from a tree. “Hm. As you say. Regardless, it is no concern of mine. My only concern is Bubo Formosa Plurimus. Minor.”
Ernst’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“It’s a bird, Mr. Blumfield,” Evelyn explained, eyeing Justin. He raised his brow defiantly, daring her to disbelieve him. She wavered in her indignation. She supposed it wasn’t inconceivable he’d been up that tree watching birds.
“I was so close to the female I could have touched her,” he said. “Then you two came along. I did my best to ignore you, hoping that you’d tuck into your dinner and be off. But as soon as it became apparent that things of a private nature were taking place, I made myself known.”
“By falling out of the tree?” Evelyn asked.
He turned an injured expression on her. “By leaping from the tree. And scaring poor little Bubo in the process, I might add. You should have seen her ruffled feathers.”
“You mean to say that you’d been up that tree since before our arrival?” she asked.
“No,” he rejoined sarcastically. “I crawled on my stomach through the grass and then scaled the tree, all without your noticing.”
She began to feel a tad foolish, and perhaps a shade embarrassed. “Hm.”
“I am afraid, Lady Evelyn,” Justin turned a cursory glance toward Ernst, “and Mr. Blumfield, that it is you who impinged upon my solitude. Not vice versa.”
“I am most sorry, Mr. Powell,” Ernst apologized.
Justin inclined his head graciously. “You didn’t know.”
“Oh!” When Justin went up that tree was beside the point. A gentleman would have made his presence known at once. And even though she understo
od that the proximity of his bird might have made him wish he could ignore that social edict, he still shouldn’t have done so.
And Ernst shouldn’t be standing there in stalwart misery, wringing his hands. He should be demanding an apology. Yes, she knew she should make allowances for him as a foreigner, but she wasn’t in a very charitable frame of mind. In fact, she was damn irritated.
Her gown was glued to her with perspiration. It itched. Her face was sunburned, and she’d a bruise on her thigh from where that blasted basket had banged it. And The Kiss, The First Kiss, the focal point of years of fantasies and conjecture, had been nothing more than a . . . a canapé. Not even a delicious canapé. It had been more like a carrot stick. Deplorably wholesome.
In his heyday as a skirt-chasing scoundrel, Justin had probably doled out the caviar of kisses. The good Russian beluga stuff, too, not shad roe.
The more Evelyn thought about it—the interminable hike, her sweat-stained dress and sunburned cheeks, making sandwiches like a farmhand while Ernst snoozed, and then having her first kiss not only be so anticlimactic, but having the anticlimax witnessed! By him . . . ! —the more enraged she grew.
“Ah!” the high, tight cry escaped from deep in her throat.
Both men immediately stopped making conciliatory sounds at one another and stared at her in alarm.
“Ah!” She flounced around and stalked off down the hill.
“Miss Whyte?”
“I say, Blumfield,” Justin said, “it looks to me like she’s decamping.”
“Miss Whyte! Please, Miss Whyte! Come back! There are so many things to carry!”
“Ah!” The cry escaped again before she could strangle it. She stomped down the hill, crossed the foully idyllic creek, and clambered up the ditch to where the pony grazed. By the time she’d caught him, Ernst arrived breathless and red-faced, his bicycle buried under blankets and hampers.
“Here! You sit, Miss Whyte. I will attach the pony.”
He then threw the paraphernalia into the back of the wagon, hitched the pony, and climbed in beside her. “I am so sorry, Lady Evelyn. Only what is wrong? Please, you must tell me!”
“What is wrong?”
He flinched. At once her outrage shrank. He smiled weakly, his expression so filled with apprehension and contrition that the rest of her anger withered and died. He honestly hadn’t any notion of what was wrong.
It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t dressed for an overland expedition. Nor was it his fault that Justin had been in that tree. And it certainly wasn’t Ernst’s fault that his kiss had been a carrot stick. She liked carrot sticks. She’d just been expecting caviar. She owed him an apology.
“What is wrong is that I was embarrassed Mr. Powell witnessed a private moment. Unfortunately, when I’m embarrassed I sometimes act childishly. I am sorry.”
He blew out a sigh so replete with relief that she couldn’t help smile. “I thought perhaps it was something I had done.”
“No,” she assured him. “Can you forgive me for acting like a spoiled brat?”
“You? Spoiled? Never,” he said. “You are a very special lady. It was unfortunate, the occurrence with Mr. Powell.”
She glanced at the trees, expecting to see Justin climbing back up one of them, and was surprised to see him leap lightly across the creek and saunter toward them. Accusingly, Evelyn turned to Ernst.
“He says his little bird is gone now and there is no reason for him to stay,” Ernst explained. “So, I thought it neighborly to offer him a ride.”
Justin arrived wreathed in smiles and vaulted into the wagon bed. He sat down, threw his arm over the back of the front seat, and looked at her. “Damned good sport Blumfield is, eh, Evie?”
“Very.”
Justin was the picture of bland aristocratic camaraderie, all “good-chap” and hearty “heigh-ho’s” when only a short while before he’d been filled with stuffy indignation. Her expression smoothed as she turned around, her thoughts in a whirl.
Justin rode all the way to North Cross Abbey studying the back of Evie’s head. Just as well.
He had the uncomfortable suspicion that Evie had uncomfortable suspicions and that, in and of itself, rattled him a bit. He was very good at being a chameleon. His life had often depended on his ability to slip seamlessly into one of a half-dozen guises. The one he most oft wore was that of the harmless, thin-blooded dilettante. But she wasn’t buying it.
Fascinating. He wondered why.
He was sure he’d convinced both Evie and Blumfield that he’d been sitting up that tree hours before their arrival. The truth was that he’d gone round to Blumfield’s rented cottage earlier. When his knocks went unanswered, he decided to go aloft.
A handy trellis allowed Justin to silently hoist himself eye level with the bottom of the upstairs window’s sill. Sure enough, a young man lay abed facing Justin. His eyes were closed and the side of his face not pressed into the pillow was completely unmarred. And the other?
Letting go of the sill with one hand, Justin had dug in his pocket for a tuppence piece. He found one and tossed it through the open window, hearing it skitter across the floor. Then he’d lifted himself back up and looked in. The young man had raised himself up and was looking in the direction of the penny, giving Justin a clear view of his other profile. Flawless.
Disappointed, Justin climbed down. So, it hadn’t been Gregory Blumfield. It could still be Ernst. The thought perked him up considerably and, not wanting to waste time waiting for Blumfield to return Evie to find out if he sported a bruise, Justin had decided to go in pursuit of them.
With that in mind, he cut across the field and went toward the part of the forest where earlier he’d seen Blumfield unhitching his wagon. He looked around until he spotted Evie and Blumfield trudging up a distant hill, heading for the huge old oak atop it.
Now, he hadn’t actually crawled through the grass on his hands and knees. At least, not much of the way. Most of the distance, he simply crouched.
Once to the wood, it was easy going. A quick scramble up an obliging tree and he’d settled his binoculars against his eyes and peered at Ernst Blumfield’s face. Unfortunately, with all his flushing and blushing, it was nearly impossible to tell if there was any discoloration on his jaw. And when the Prussian bounder had the temerity to put his hands on Evie’s shoulders . . .
Justin sat back, forcing his jaw muscles to relax. It had been a pitiful kiss. Instead of acting as if he’d insulted her, Evie should thank him for falling—er, leaping—out of that tree.
So, he’d spied. He was a spy. It was what he did. And he’d achieved his goal. Close but surreptitious scrutiny revealed that Ernst Blumfield had no bruises on his face. Not that he wouldn’t look damn good ornamented with a few manly lumps.
Justin’s mouth twisted sourly. Besides, he wasn’t ready to cross Ernst off his list of suspicious characters quite yet. Blumfield could have hired someone to raid the abbey. Just as he could be pretending to be an anxious, lovelorn ass.
Justin was enjoying imagining a scenario in which he personally obliged Ernst in the acquisition of a more manly patina—specifically, one that encircled both eyes—when they reached North Cross Abbey. Evie, who hadn’t said a word to him since they’d started out, allowed Blumfield to help her from the carriage. The young man made way too much of it. Fussing and beaming and . . . Disgusting.
Justin jumped out, landing beside Evie. “Say thank you to the nice gentleman, Evie.”
She ignored him, giving her hand to Ernst. “Thank you for the picnic, Mr. Blumfield. I enjoyed it.”
“It has been my great pleasure,” Ernst said, bowing over her hand and kissing the back of it warmly.
Justin yawned and, catching Ernst’s eye, waved him on. “Sorry. All that sunshine has made me positively inert. Please, don’t mind me. You two go on.”
“You might consider that,” Evelyn said sweetly. “Going, I mean.”
“Oh? Am I de trop?” Justin asked, wide-eyed. “Sorry. Frigh
tfully dull of me, what? Just want to slide in my own spot of thanks, don’tcha know? Thanks so awfully, Ernst, old boy. You’re a corker!”
Evie closed her eyes briefly. Her lips trembled. When she opened her eyes, she looked firmly away from Justin.
Justin smiled vacuously at Blumfield. “Well. Ta, old bean! Oh! That’s right, I was going. Ha!”
Evie’s cheeks dished in and Justin would have bet ten pounds she was biting them, holding back laughter. He clapped Blumfield on the shoulder and walked to the front door of the abbey, turned as though he were about to wave good-bye, and froze. He let his mouth drop open, staring at the bushes beyond the wagon. With every indication of excitement, he raised his binoculars to his eyes.
Blumfield cleared his throat and regained Evie’s hand. “Lady Evelyn. I am so pleased we have had this chance to get to know one another—”
“Please!” Justin whispered frantically, snatching the binoculars from his eyes and glowering at them. “It’s Bubo! Right here! Now!”
“Oh!” Ernst answered. He glanced at the bushes, swallowed, and drew nearer to Evie. “Lady Evelyn,” he whispered, “if I might have the honor of calling again—”
“I beg you, please be quiet!” Justin whispered urgently, keeping the binoculars glued to his eyes, one hand clasped to his heart in supplication. “She is getting agitated!”
With a harassed and unhappy air, Blumfield bobbed his head, crept on tiptoe past Evie, and eased himself into the wagon. Carefully, he gathered the reins.
“Thank you!” Justin mouthed.
Blumfield nodded, quickly whispering, “I bring the bicycle another day for you to ride!” to Evie, and set off down the drive.
Evie watched him go until he disappeared before turning. Her gaze found Justin with targetlike precision. He spat out the blade of grass he’d stuck between his teeth as soon as Blumfield had left, and smiled.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she said, coming toward him.
“Oh, I am,” he assured her. “Most of the time. But today,” he paused, considering, “no, I don’t think so.”
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