The Viscount's Betrothal

by Louise Allen

  With Pru as well, of course, and with Bates, but there was no need to feel guilty about them being out of reach of a doctor, for they were both doing well. Pru had even spent two hours sitting by the bedroom fire yesterday afternoon after her bath.

  Decima sat up, reached for her shawl and listened to the regular sound of Pru’s breathing.

  Yet there was a creeping unease as she thought about Adam. Last night, when all the chores were done and they had sat either side of the fire in the drawing room, he had seemed strangely distant, almost formal, as though she was a chance acquaintance he was having to entertain.

  They had spoken of commonplace matters, quite easily and pleasantly. At the time, tired and warm, nothing had struck her as different. Now, thinking back, it seemed that the spark of intimacy between them had gone. She had lost the feeling that she could tell him anything, and he no longer gave back to her the warm feeling that her company amused and stimulated him.

  Shaking her head at herself for being fanciful, Decima got out of bed and lifted the can of water she had left in the hearth. It was still warm and she washed and dressed quietly. But not quietly enough.

  ‘Miss Dessy! Let me lace your stays properly—like any respectable lady should be laced!’

  Pru insisted on getting up to sit in the armchair once she had had her wash and Decima had helped her braid her long mousy brown plait. ‘Are there any more journals, Miss Dessy?’ she asked. ‘Some general ones, not just the ladies’ fashion journals?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can find,’ Decima promised. ‘His lordship obviously keeps a good supply of reading matter for his guests.’

  When she opened the door she could hear Adam arguing with Bates from across the landing. ‘Wait a minute and let me shave you or else grow a beard, man! You’ll cut your own throat at this rate.’ There was a grumble from the groom.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ she called through the crack where the door stood ajar and jumped as it swung open to reveal Adam in his shirt-sleeves, an open razor in one hand and a towel in the other. He was half shaven, one side of his chin still a mass of soapy foam. Behind him she could see Bates, looking mulish, sitting up in bed with blood-flecked foam on his face.

  ‘And to you,’ Adam rejoined. ‘If I succeed in getting the pair of us clean shaven to greet the new year, I will join you in the kitchen shortly.’

  Decima found she was blushing, yet her feet did not want to move. She had never seen a man shaving before. It was curiously intimate and Adam was dressed only in breeches and his shirt, his stockinged feet shoeless.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Oh, this really will not do, she chided herself as she began to assemble breakfast, bustling around with unnecessary briskness. Adam had made it quite clear last night that he wanted to maintain a decent distance and formality. Then why open the bedroom door half dressed? Whatever he felt and whatever his motives, she had to remember that he was an experienced man of the world and she, despite her age, was a singularly sheltered virgin.

  But she was certainly garnering a wide variety of experiences and sensations with which to begin her new, independent life. Perhaps she might even have the confidence to venture up to London for a week or two this Season. That would scandalise Charlton.

  ‘A penny for them.’ Adam had come into the kitchen and was regarding her quizzically. ‘You are standing in the middle of the room, a platter of bacon in your hands and a decided smirk on your lips.’

  ‘What a horrible word. I never smirk.’ Decima put down the bacon and went to find the frying pan. ‘I have just thought of something I would like to do, which will scandalise Charlton.’

  ‘What, more than the discovery that you have spent several nights unchaperoned with a man? Poor Charlton, I am beginning to have considerable fellow feeling for him.’

  Decima stared at him. ‘I have not the slightest intention of telling Charlton about this. Good Heavens, the fuss he would make! He would be on your doorstep demanding you marry me or some such dreadful nonsense.’

  ‘Very right and proper,’ Adam observed coolly. ‘That is exactly what an outraged brother should do. It is what I would do if it happened to one of my sisters when they were unmarried.’

  ‘But nothing has happened.’ Decima shook her head in bafflement at his obtuseness. ‘And Charlton won’t know about it. When I get home I will write and say I had a difficult journey because of the snow, which will make him feel superior because he warned me not to start out in the first place, and Augusta does not know when to expect me so she won’t be worrying, either.’

  Adam took the platter from her and began to lay rashers in the frying pan. ‘Should you be telling me this? Perhaps the only reason you are safe with me is that I am expecting your brother to come in search of you at any moment.’

  ‘Now I have shocked you and so you are trying to frighten me for my own good,’ Decima said with a sigh. ‘You notice I did not say anything when we first met about who was expecting me and when—I am not completely naïve. Now I know I can trust you, so it does not matter.’

  ‘And if my sense of honour demands I go and confess all?’ Adam shook the pan over the heat and set it down again.

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ Surely he was teasing her? But the grey-green eyes were serious and steady. ‘That would be dreadful.’ To have avoided all those reluctant, horrified suitors only to find the one man she had ever found who she liked forced to offer for her—that was the stuff of nightmares. ‘I don’t want to marry you, and you certainly do not want to marry me. Promise me you will not tell Charlton.’ He shrugged and Decima came round the table hastily to grasp his wrist. ‘Please, promise, Adam.’

  His other hand closed over hers. Under her fingers she could feel the beat of his pulse, hard and steady like his eyes. Then he smiled. ‘I was teasing you, Decima. I promise.’

  Furious with him, she shook off his hand and whisked round the table, banging plates down to emphasise her irritation. But it was not all anger; part of it was the humiliating awareness that she had lied and would like nothing more than to be married to Adam Grantham. But only if that was what he wanted, too.

  She tried to maintain a lofty silence, marching off to take the invalids their breakfast, then settling down in an affronted flounce of skirts to eat her own. After a minute she realised that Adam was watching her with a decidedly satirical twinkle in his eyes.

  ‘What?’ she demanded inelegantly. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘You are a very bad sulker, Decima; I can only conclude you do it rarely. My sisters are all champions at it, so I am a good judge.’

  ‘No, I suppose I don’t. Truth be told, I always used to spinelessly do what was required of me or just pretend horrid things were not happening. I never did anything as positive as sulking. Is it effective?’

  ‘It’s a game,’ Adam admitted with a grin. ‘Emily and Sally would sulk and pout and wheedle and I would pretend to be hard and uncaring and then, nine times out of ten, I would give them what they wanted. They were only practising the tricks they now play on their husbands.’

  Decima chewed thoughtfully. ‘Without wanting to criticise your sisters, that seems rather…unsatisfactory. I don’t think I would want a relationship where I had to pout and wheedle to get things. I would rather discuss it and argue my case.’

  ‘As you do with Charlton?’ he enquired.

  Decima felt herself flush. ‘As I intend to do in future, yes.’

  ‘Leave the dishes,’ Adam said as she began to gather them up. ‘No housework on New Year’s Day. Wrap up, and we’ll go and look at the horses.’

  It was all right for men, Decima thought wryly as she went to put on her thick shawl and check on Pru. They just issued orders and the women and servants did as they were told. For a moment she was tempted to announce that she intended to sit by the fire with Pru reading all day, then she remembered what Adam had said about playing in the snow.

  ‘Pru, I�
��ll be outside if you need me,’ she called, seizing her gloves and running downstairs in her heaviest boots.

  Adam was already in the stables as she made her away across the yard. She began to skirt the treacherous slick of ice where Bates had fallen, then looked at it with new eyes. Every year she and Augusta skated on the frozen mere half a mile from the house; how was this any different?

  She took a run up and slid a full twelve feet, arms waving until she caught her balance. Laughing, she went into the stables to join Adam.

  The clear ripple of amusement brought him to look over the door of the stall where he was forking fresh straw. It was even more charming than her giggle. Damn it. Why couldn’t the woman do something to give him a disgust of her? Last evening, respectable and staid as it had been, had done nothing to put his unruly feelings back on track.

  At first it had seemed to work just as he had hoped: formality, social chitchat and unexceptional subject matter had reduced Decima to a shadow of her vibrant self.

  She had agreed politely with everything he’d said, followed all his conversational leads, never ventured a single opinion of her own and had sat, hands folded, feet together by the hearth. If it were possible for a tall, attractive woman to become invisible, she had almost managed it. It should have made him feel safe. Instead, he hated it. It was as though someone had snuffed a candle, leaving him alone in the darkness.

  He pushed away the enormity of what that implied. ‘What is so amusing?’

  Decima twinkled at him as she went towards Fox’s stall. ‘I’ll show you when we go outside. Hello, handsome!’

  Fox put his head over the half-door, pushing expectantly at her caressing hand. ‘Yes, I have sugar. This is outrageous cupboard love, you wretch.’ She turned to Adam, still rubbing the one spot on the big stallion’s nose that seemed to reduce him to a blissful trance. He found himself watching her hands. ‘I have been thinking of breeding from my mare, Spindrift. You wouldn’t consider putting Fox to her?’

  She said it so practically, without the trace of a blush. Adam swallowed. ‘He is a big horse—seventeen hands.’ Now how, exactly, did one put this without becoming coarse?

  ‘You think the foal would be too large for her?’ Decima regarded Fox, head on one side. ‘She is sixteen hands, I am sure that would not be a problem. Of course, we would have to draw up a proper agreement and I would naturally pay the correct fee for a successful foal.’

  ‘She’s a large mare.’ It was all he could think of saying.

  ‘She needs to be,’ Decima countered with a grimace. ‘What do you think? Obviously you want to be careful about bloodlines, but I can let you see Spindrift’s. She’s one-quarter Arab.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t see why not. We’ll discuss it.’ It was a feeble answer, but Adam turned back abruptly to his task. The thought of putting his stallion to her mare produced such a flood of primitive emotions in him that he didn’t think he could face her. Decima appeared to have not the slightest idea of her own effect on him, of the earthy sensuality she exuded when she was not being the prim and proper spinster miss. Even when she was being prim and proper, come to that. Surely men had made overtures to her before, surely she was aware of the effect she had?

  They finished in the stables and went outside. ‘Now, tell me, what made you laugh?’ Anything to stop thinking about her, tall, slender, lithe and naked in his arms.

  ‘This.’ Decima took a few running steps, then slid elegantly across the ice slick, arms out for seemingly effortless balance. He froze, terrified that she would fall. She turned and slid back, laughing at his expression. ‘Can’t you skate?’

  ‘No, I’ve never tried. Stop it, you’ll fall and break something.’

  Decima came to a controlled halt a few feet away. ‘I will not! I am an excellent skater, watch.’ And to his horror she took a gliding step and spun round, full circle. ‘See?’

  ‘Come off the ice. Now.’ Adam felt his voice catch in his throat. He did not know what it was: the sudden vision of her lying injured on the treacherous surface or the reality of her, her hair flying out behind her, her cheeks pink, her bosom rising and falling with her breathing.

  Something must have shown in his face because she stopped and slid carefully towards him. ‘Very well, if you insist.’ Her voice was meek, but rebellion flared in her eyes and Adam realised he didn’t trust her an inch not to pirouette away at the last moment. As she came within reach he seized her arm and spun her off the ice onto the trodden snow. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he stated harshly.

  Decima gasped as she was jerked against Adam, her arm held in a grip that left her in no doubt that it could close like a vice around her wrist if he so chose. ‘Let me go.’ There was heat in those grey-green eyes, a spark as though flint had struck iron. ‘Don’t be so dictatorial, Adam—you are as bad as Charlton.’

  But that was not true; being reproved by her half-brother felt nothing like this. That provoked resentment and embarrassment, but not a flare of temper to match his, not a pounding of her heart as though she had been running. And she would not be racked with the shameful desire that he would drag her closer, fix those hard arms round her until she could not struggle and could only yield to him.

  Adam’s anger—if that was what it was—flickered and was gone, replaced by rueful amusement. ‘To be compared to Charlton is an insult indeed. Just promise me you will not slide on the ice again. I don’t want to have to set your broken leg.’

  ‘I promise.’ She looked up at him, struck yet again by the novelty of a man she could look in the face without having to stoop. ‘I am a very good skater, though.’

  ‘I am sure you are, and if you had proper skates and a doctor within five miles I would not turn a hair. And don’t pout at me.’ He let her go abruptly and walked away towards a wide stretch of virgin snow.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Decima protested, stamping after him through the crunching whiteness. ‘And if I was, why shouldn’t I?’

  Adam turned, his eyes on her mouth. ‘Because it makes me want to nibble your lower lip, if you must know.’ He carried on walking.

  ‘Oh!’ Decima stared at his retreating back. Nibble? He did not sound very pleased at the prospect, more like someone warning a child that if they did not stop doing something naughty they would have to be spanked. There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that, or anything to do, other than to retreat inside, all injured dignity, or pretend she had not heard him. Nibble? Would that be pleasant? Was it even normal? Now what was he doing? Adam had stopped and, crouching, began to roll a snowball in the snow. It got bigger and bigger, leaving a clear track of muddy green where it had passed. At last, apparently satisfied, he stopped and began the whole process over again.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Decima approached cautiously.

  ‘Building a snowman. You do a smaller ball for his head.’

  ‘But I haven’t built a snowman since I was—’ She broke off, racking her brains. ‘Eight. I must have been eight.’

  ‘I don’t think I have, either.’ Adam lifted the snowman’s torso up with a grunt and settled it on the base. ‘But as we do not have any eight-year-olds to hand, and all this good snow is going to waste, it seems a pity not to take advantage.’

  Decima looked from the half-built snow figure to Adam and then hastily back again. The sudden dark mood by the ice patch had vanished; he was quite obviously intending to play. His eyes sparkled, his grin was infectious—but there was nothing in the least childlike about the breadth of his shoulders or the length of leg where the muscles rippled as he bent and lifted.

  Decima had always considered that she and Augusta had enjoyed themselves quite light-heartedly whenever the mood took them. Skating in the winter, picnics in the summer, riding and shopping and socialising with neighbours all the year round. But it had never occurred to her to do something so spontaneous, so undignified, so unladylike, as to play in the snow.

  She bent and gathered up a handful of snow, shaped it into a ball and began to pu
sh it along, patting and shaping as it grew. When it seemed big enough she lifted it and set it in place, only to find Adam had vanished. The snowman appeared well built, but somewhat lacking in features. Decima went and picked up broken branches from under a tree and set them in as arms, then had another idea and ran to the coal shed, returning with enough small pieces for eyes, buttons and a row of black teeth.

  She was just standing back to view the effect when Adam reappeared from the stables, his arms full.

  ‘There.’ He set a battered tricorne on the figure’s head, fashioned a scarf out of sacking and added one of the bruised carrots that were used in the horses’ feed for a nose.

  They backed off to admire their work. Decima found she was taking the most ridiculous amount of pleasure from the crude figure and turned, laughing, to look at Adam. He was regarding it with an expression of smug satisfaction that struck her as so typically male that she gathered up a handful of snow and threw it, hitting him neatly in mid chest.

  ‘Why, you little…’

  Decima took to her heels, but not before a snowball broke against her backside with a resounding thump. She whirled round, convinced that was no random shot, and saw from the wicked grin that he had struck her exactly where he had intended.

  Grabbing snow, she retaliated with a throw that hit Adam in the top vee of his coat. ‘This is cheating,’ he said, frantically shaking snow out before it melted. ‘Girls are not supposed to be able to throw, let alone hit anything.’

  Laughing, Decima began shaping another missile, only to back away hastily as Adam scooped up a double handful of loose snow and began to run towards her. ‘No! You wouldn’t! You beast…’

  Breathless and gasping with laughter, she found herself backed up against the stables wall with no escape. ‘No, Adam, you wouldn’t…please…’

  With a teasing grin he lifted his hands, then opened them, letting the snow shower harmlessly down between their bodies. Suddenly they were very close indeed, their breath mingling as steam on the cold air.