“Well . . . you were a soldier, were you not?”
“Aye. I was a soldier.”
“I’ve brought a picnic.” She lifted her other arm; a basket dangled from it.
“Oh, well, in that case.” He rolled his eyes.
“Do women in America shoot muskets, Connor?”
He smiled at the shameless appeal to his favorite topic of conversation: America. A place he longed to visit, and one day planned to call home. Rebecca had always been a rapt audience for his musings about America.
“No doubt American women shoot all manner of things with muskets, wee Becca. Wild beasts, Indians, their husbands. But you,” he reminded her, “are English.”
Rebecca held both the musket and the picnic basket up before her, mutely beseeching.
She would go whether he accompanied her or not, of that Connor was certain; she’d probably find a book about how to load muskets, or some such nonsense, and attempt it herself. He sighed. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to teach Lord Edelston’s future wife how to fire a musket.
“Have ye powder and shot?”
“In the basket.”
“May I see the musket, please?”
Wordlessly, she handed it to him. Just as Connor had suspected, it was in pristine condition. Sir Henry cleaned his guns for the same reason other men read books or whittled wood: because he found it soothing.
“All right, then,” Connor told her. “We’ll go out to the wood.”
Rebecca gave a cheerful little hop.
Rebecca’s mare danced and frisked so much as they rode out to the wood edging the Tremaines’ property that Rebecca struggled to keep her seat.
“Ye didna come riding yesterday afternoon, wee Becca. Pepper is happy to be out with you.”
He sympathized with Pepper. By the time the sun had fallen yesterday, Connor had realized he measured his own days by Rebecca’s visits to the stable. And this will be what it is like when she is married, he had thought. This . . . absence. This silence.
“I could not come riding, as I was being fitted for a shroud,” Rebecca said darkly.
“Well, and isn’t that clever, to plan your wedding and funeral both at once.”
“I was being fitted for a wedding dress, Connor. Oh, and it will be quite lovely, too,” she said bitterly. “Trimmed in silver ribbon, as we’ve no time for beads.”
Connor opened his mouth to reply, but the image of Rebecca gleaming in pale satin and silver, her bright hair perhaps coiled and tamed beneath a circlet on her head, defeated his stock of glib responses. Rebecca, being led from the church by Lord Edelston, who no doubt at this moment was simply counting the hours before he could return to the gaming tables and spend his bride’s money . . .
Connor cleared his throat. “It sounds like a fine gown indeed, wee Becca.”
Rebecca snorted. “Well, no doubt you will see for yourself in two weeks’ time, as all the servants are invited to our . . . celebration.”
Two weeks. Connor rode in heavy silence for a time, taunted by disquieting images: Rebecca in her wedding gown, on Edelston’s arm, in Edelston’s bed, her face, usually so glowing and animated, instead taut with misery . . .
In Edelston’s bed? But she was still just a girl, wasn’t she?
And yet, in less than a fortnight, she would be someone’s wife.
Connor shook himself out of his bleak reverie and pulled his horse to a halt. They had reached the edge of the wood lining Sir Henry Tremaine’s property, out of earshot of the house and a safe distance from anyone or anything that might accidentally be blown to bits by an errant musket ball.
“See that large rock, wee Becca? We’ll put our apples on it, and use them for targets.”
Rebecca dismounted eagerly, leaving Pepper to nip at short grass. She poked about in the picnic basket for an apple, and then carefully arranged it on the rock and almost skipped back to where Connor stood.
“All right, wee Becca. Do I need to give a speech about how ye’ll blow your own sweet head off unless ye’re very careful?”
“Father gave me that speech before he taught me to fire a pistol, Connor.”
“Very well. Watch closely.”
Connor hefted the musket in his hand, then peeked into Rebecca’s basket. Bread and cheese and cold fowl and apples and a water flask and . . . two paper cartridges containing powder and balls. He smiled to himself. A very unorthodox picnic.
It had been years since he had performed this very drill, but it was still as innate to him as breathing; he often lived it again in his sleep. Crisply, he tore the cartridge with his teeth and took the ball in his mouth, shook a bit of powder into the pan and closed it, rammed the remaining powder, the ball, and the empty paper cartridge down the barrel, and pulled the cock all the way back. And then he lifted the musket to his shoulder.
All in less than a minute.
Rebecca gave a gratifying little gasp of awe.
“And will we be pretending the target is Lord Edelston, wee Becca?” Connor had drawn a bead on the apple.
“Oh, no, he’s much too handsome to shoot.”
Connor lowered the musket, feeling an unusual fit of pique welling up.
“So the lordling is handsome now, is he?”
“I never said he wasn’t handsome, Connor. For heaven’s sake, just look at the man. You’ve seen him, have you not? A veritable Adonis.”
“An Adonis?”
“Yes. A frightfully dim Adonis, I’m afraid. The first time I met him, when asked whether he thought women should serve in the army—”
“Oh, now, why’d you go and ask him a question like that, wee Becca?” Connor sounded pained. “A question calculated to fluster any man?”
“It would not fluster you.”
“Aye, but I am accustomed to you, wee Becca. And that, I assure ye, didna happen in one day.”
She made a face at him.
“Well, and what did Lord Edelston say when you asked him such a question?”
“He said . . . he said: ‘Well, you see, war is a messy business. One can get hurt. I am not even certain men should serve in the army.’ ”
A delighted smile spread slowly across Connor’s face.
“Did he now? Is that what he said, truly?”
“He was not jesting, Connor.”
“Which is what makes it so delightful, of course.”
“As I said: dim. What do you think, Connor? Should women serve in the army?”
“Well, if you must know, it’s my thought that they already do, wee Becca, though they do not collect a soldier’s wage. They tend the sick and wounded. They take care of homes and land and children while they wait for the men to come home. They suffer just as much as the soldiers, in different ways.”
“I knew you would understand.”
“Aye, I am like that,” Connor said with mock solemnity. “Very understanding. Now, shall I shoot the apple?”
“Yes, please, Connor. Perhaps we can pretend the apple is . . . the regrettable circumstance of my engagement.”
Connor pretended the apple was Lord Edelston.
A deafening roar later, the apple was in smithereens, and smoke puffed around them. Rebecca coughed and clapped delightedly. Connor gave a bow, lowering the musket to the ground.
“My turn please, Connor!”
She scurried through the smoke to place another apple on the rock, and then held her arms out for the musket.
Connor talked her through the loading steps: “Aye, very good, tear the cartridge with your teeth and take the ball in your mouth, but dinna swallow it; no, dinna laugh, or ye will swallow it; close the pan now, good girl, just like that—all right, now spit the ball into your hand and load it and the powder and—good, good—now cock it.”
Rebecca leveled the musket at the apple, her finger on the trigger; Connor rested his hands on her shoulders briefly to give her form a gentle adjustment. And then he stood behind her, just shy of touching her.
“Fire, wee Becca,” he sai
d softly.
She pulled the trigger.
The shock of the firing launched her back a step into Connor. His arms went around her; his senses briefly took in firm female and the scent of something sweet and heady; her hair, perhaps, or the nape of her neck. He exhaled slowly, loath to relinquish the scent of her, and pushed her gently upright again.
They waited for the smoke to clear before ascertaining that the apple had indeed been blown to Kingdom Come.
“Well done, wee Becca. Wellington would have been proud.”
“Thank you, Connor. But I suppose that’s all the shooting we can do. I could only find the two cartridges.” Her face was a study in regret.
He smiled crookedly. Rebecca was a vision, all long thick eyelashes and pink riding habit, her lips powder-blackened where she’d bitten the cartridge. Unconsciously, he reached out his thumb to rub the powder from her mouth.
The silky, generous give of her lip beneath his thumb shocked him. He froze, staring down at her for a moment, bewildered. He had reached out to rub Rebecca clean, and he had instead touched what felt very much like . . . like a woman.
A woman who would be someone’s wife in a mere fortnight.
He pictured Edelston forcing his rake’s mouth down upon that tender pink mouth . . . and he no longer found a shred of amusement in the image. He was rigid with disbelief that someone who was so much less than Rebecca would soon be solely entitled to her, to all of her, her soft lips and strong young body, for the rest of his born days.
Connor dropped his hand. “You’ve . . . powder . . . ” He motioned to his own mouth.
“Oh!” She laughed. “You, too.”
Rebecca fought valiantly to stifle a yawn, but the yawn was winning. Abruptly she bent to bury her face in one of her father’s prized damask roses, and the unfortunate rose took the yawn full force. Edelston, absorbed as he was in his own conversation—he was nattering on about wine, or something; she’d lost track as well as interest long ago—strolled on without her, and never noticed her quick pause. She caught up with him with one long stride before he turned toward her again. He did that periodically, Rebecca had noticed—turned his face toward her in order to maintain the pretense of including her in the conversation. Much like a weather vane in a spring breeze.
Papa had insisted Edelston come to call on her and take her for strolls, just as though he’d been courting her for ages, as though he hadn’t compromised her in this very same garden only a few nights before. So now she was trapped here with him, and it was a glorious clear day and Pepper remained in her stall again with no one to ride her. For the first ten minutes or so of her stroll with Edelston, she had diverted herself by admiring, in a very objective way, his handsome features. His gold hair lay in lovely tidy spirals all over his head, and he had very fine bold blue eyes—a bit small, perhaps, but effective when considered along with his Greek statue cheekbones and his elegant, piquantly tilted nose. His lower lip dipped in a sultry curve.
It was truly a pity he was so excruciatingly dull.
Edelston did one of his head turns then, and Rebecca, startled in the midst of her thoughts of boredom, made her eyes go wide and bright and interested.
Perhaps too wide and bright and interested.
Edelston slowed his stride. “And what thoughts do you have on the subject of wine, Miss Tremaine?” he asked, sounding peeved. “Do you agree with me that the Bordeaux region supplies the best grapes?”
“Thoughts?” Rebecca replied sweetly. “You wish me to have thoughts, my lord? You seem to have so many of your own, I hesitate to burden you with mine.”
Edelston narrowed his eyes and stopped midstride to look her over thoroughly.
Oh, dear, Rebecca thought.
A great galloping rustic, Edelston had thought when he’d first met Rebecca Tremaine, but then again, any woman compared to the fair Lorelei was likely to suffer a similar description.
But as he followed the line of Rebecca’s body with his eyes, he could see she was slim and sweetly curved, a fact that was apparent despite the fact that nearly every inch of her was covered in an unpresuming gray printed cotton. He discreetly considered her rounded bosom, and found himself nostalgic for the deeper necklines popular a few years ago. Her clear gray-green eyes, a very singular shade, regarded him coolly through her chestnut lashes, and a lock of red-gold hair, which she seemed to have rather a lot of, had escaped from its confines and was fluttering about her mouth. Edelston remembered pressing his lips against those plush lips. Of course, his intent at the time had been to compromise and thus snare a different girl entirely.
She’s really rather lovely. Very lovely. For some reason, the realization irritated him. And the chit was actually bored. He was unaccustomed to being considered anything other than fascinating. When one had a godlike profile and golden hair one was fascinating by default; everyone knew this was virtually nature’s law.
“What shall we talk about instead, Miss Tremaine? Shall we talk about gowns? Shall we talk about the best way to serve a roast of beef?”
“If you’d like me to join the conversation, sir, perhaps we can talk about circulatory problems.” The words were innocent enough, but her eyes were glinting strangely, and her left brow had lifted in the faintest hint of challenge.
“Circulatory prob—what on earth are you running on about?”
“It seems that many diseases of middle age can be traced to circulatory problems.” She appeared to be warming to her subject.
Edelston forced himself not to splutter.
“Miss Tremaine?”
“Yes, Lord Edelston?”
“Did you enjoy my kiss the other evening?” This he asked in the patented low fierce murmur that never failed to render innocent young ladies weak with fascination. It was a desperate ploy, designed to knock the unnaturally poised Miss Rebecca Tremaine off her mark.
“Oh? Was that a kiss, Lord Edelston? I have very little experience in these things, you see, and so I could not be certain.” Again, the innocent tone, the glinting eyes, the upraised brow.
Edelston gaped at her in astonishment until he realized he was gaping and clapped his mouth shut.
“Perhaps I should demonstrate it for you again, Miss Tremaine.”
“Perhaps you should behave like a gentleman, Lord Edelston.”
“If I were a gentleman, Miss Tremaine, we would not at the moment be engaged to be married.”
Rebecca paused as though conceding the truth of this to herself and contemplated Edelston warily. “Perhaps you can demonstrate it again on our wedding day,” she said finally. An effort at diplomacy.
Edelston was lost amid the strangest exchange of words with a woman he had ever experienced, and his cool detachment and godlike profile were proving of no use whatsoever. His composure utterly deserted him, and he floundered for a way, any way, to vanquish the alien creature that stood before him.
“I hope you are aware, Miss Tremaine, that when we are married I shall be your lord and master—by law. I shall forbid you to discuss circulatory problems. I shall kiss you whenever I wish. I shall beat you whenever I wish. I am beginning to suspect that I may wish to beat you rather frequently.”
“I suppose you could try, sir.”
“And how do you propose to stop me?”
A moment later Edelston was on his back in the dust on the garden path, the breath knocked out of his lungs.
“Your friend Robbie Denslowe taught me to do that. Hook one foot behind your opponent’s knees and down he goes. The trick, however, is to take your opponent by surprise.” Rebecca’s gray-green eyes laughed down at him.
Edelston stayed on his back for a moment, staring up at that plush laughing mouth. And then something happened. The bottom seemed to drop out of his world, and yet he felt weightless, buoyant. The colors in his field of vision sharpened to a supernatural brilliance, and as he gazed up at Rebecca, transfixed, he could have sworn, as he blinked, that a nimbus of gold light outlined her head.
Edelston, for the first time in his life completely confused, out of his depth with a woman and stripped of all his defenses, could perhaps be forgiven for what he did next: he fell madly in love with Rebecca Tremaine.
Chapter Four
He’s writing poetry to me, now, Connor. I cannot bear it. And I’m expected to walk about with him every day.”
Rebecca spoke across Sultan’s back while Connor industriously applied the currycomb to Sultan’s flank.
“Poetry?” Connor repeated, amused.
“Yes, very bad poetry, as a matter of fact. He rhymed ‘rose’ with ‘nose,’ of all things.”
“What did he have to say about your nose?” Connor was curious despite himself.
“That is beside the point, Connor,” Rebecca said, exasperated. “Edelston is a boor.”
“The man is merely besotted, wee Becca. The besotted are frequently boors or figures of amusement, or both.”
“Besotted? With me?” Rebecca was bemused. “No one has ever been besotted with me before. Hmph. Besotted, you say? How could that be?”
“Aye, woman, besotted.” Connor sounded a little exasperated himself. “You told me you knocked the laddie into the dirt and then laughed at him. Could anything be more irresistible?”
Rebecca giggled. “Still, I don’t believe anyone has ever been besotted with me before. It’s rather novel.”
“What about Robbie Denslowe?”
“But he was a boy. Edelston is a man. A baron,” Rebecca added unnecessarily.
Connor felt another unusual fit of pique welling up. “Will you wed the lordling simply so that you may have poetry about your nose every day?”
“Good heavens, what a thought!” Rebecca looked shocked. “It’s just that it’s a novel experience. I suppose it’s flattering,” she added rather wistfully. “I have never seen myself as particularly special in anyone else’s eyes.”
“Trust me, wee Becca. You are special indeed.”
Connor kept his voice sarcastic and his face averted, so that she would laugh and not be startled by the vehement sincerity of his expression.
“Oh, Connor. I’m not sure which version of Edelston I prefer—the rude, pompous boor or the fawning, poetry-spouting boor. And he still has not grasped the art of including me in conversation. So I listen to his monologues interspersed with poetry, and every now and then, just to keep from going mad with boredom, I ask him a difficult question.”
Julie Anne Long Page 4