She stopped abruptly and spun around. He showed her a caterpillar in his palm, laying the blame on that tiny creature, which must have fallen from the trees to her hair. But she saw the gleam in his eyes, and Sophie knew how it felt to be taken by surprise, kidnapped and held ransom by a sudden sensation, a desire that came unwanted, unbidden.
The only sound in that covert was of their feet through the grass, the warbling wood pigeons, and the occasional drowsy burr of a wasp.
He reached out his hand again and ran those wayward fingertips along another loose lock of hair that fell to her shoulder. There was no excuse to be had this time, no caterpillar or likewise impertinent insect.
Then he took his hand away quickly, as if abruptly remembering his manners and how she’d shouted at him before, and motioned her on ahead. She turned without a word and continued onward, glad of the shady trees to help cool her blood, although the peacefulness made her heart beat only that much louder in her ears. Why had she run after him? What did she expect to happen?
Something. Anything.
There was no avoiding it any longer. Her desire for him would not be quenched, and James’s recent kiss only highlighted that great empty ache in her heart. Her skin prickled when Lazarus was near, the expectation of his touch almost too much for her sanity. It made her ashamed, this pointless hankering for someone so unsuitable. But she couldn’t stop it. She’d given up trying. Surely, like a bad itch from an insect bite, it would work itself out of her soon, and she would recover from this foolish fancy.
At last they spied some mushrooms peeping out from the damp grass, and together they picked them, each newly discovered bundle bringing a small cry of delight from her lips as she swooped down to claim it before he did.
“When my strawberry beds bear fruit, Miss Valentine, you must come and pick them with me. Your aunt tells me it was once one of your favorite things to do.”
She looked up in surprise and wondered when he’d spoken to her aunt.
“As long as you promise not to eat them all,” he added.
She wiped an arm across her brow. “She told you of my lack of willpower?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well, I was very young, and when I ate one, I just couldn’t seem to stop.” As a child, she’d eaten three times as many strawberries as she picked one day, and subsequently suffered a terrible stomachache. “I learned my lesson. Now I know when I’ve had enough.”
He leaned against a tree and watched her, emerald shade and gilt spatters spinning across his face. “I hope so, because my berries will be the sweetest you’ve ever tasted, and you might be tempted beyond endurance.”
“Pride is a sin, Mr. Kane.”
He pushed away from the tree trunk, stepped over gnarled roots, and came toward her. “One of many.” She could smell the warm earth on his roughened fingertips as they brushed, unbearably gently, across her lips. She was overwhelmed by it all—this onslaught against her senses.
Above them the leaves shivered. Branches creaked and danced, suddenly caught up in a jig.
“You shouldn’t have bought me a gift,” she muttered. “It’s not…”
He leaned his head down to her, and his dark gaze caressed her lips, following the path of his fingers. And then, as if he saw it there all along, he satisfied the secret, clamoring need within her. Hands on her elbows, he drew her gently against his body.
She should protest. She had plenty of time.
But she said nothing. Sophie moved her lips toward him, just a little. Just enough.
He tasted her slowly, carefully. His hands cupped her face, holding her still, his fingertips in her hair. She knew she should object, but she was in a wayward mood today…here in the trees where no one could see.
Their mouths drifted apart, and her lashes flickered open.
She wondered if he did this often. It seemed likely he stole kisses from other women too.
Now his face was unreadable, and when she continued to study it, he suddenly stooped to pick another mushroom.
Think of something else, she chided herself. Think practically. He was ignoring it had happened. Perhaps she should do the same. Then she understood exactly what she was doing there, why she’d run after him that morning.
As he bent over and she searched her mind for sensible matters, she saw a stain on his shirt. He always wore the same clothes. Even to work on the farm, he wore the same breeches, and on any day of the week, he might be seen in that fancy, embroidered waistcoat. The shirt he wore today, with the sleeves rolled up, was made of rich silk. She remembered what her brother said about the tailor in Morecroft fashioning one suit of clothes for Lazarus, paid for by bank notes hidden in his boots.
“Mr. Kane, have you no other clothes but these?”
He glanced up over his shoulder.
She added, “I don’t mean to offend.”
Straightening up, he tossed a handful of mushrooms into her apron. “You don’t offend. And yes, I have only one set of clothes. Why else do you think I take off my shirt to work in the farmyard?”
“Pure vanity, Mr. Kane?” When he laughed at that, she smiled. “Another of your sins.”
His eyes were on her lips again, and blood hot with anticipation rushed through her. It was as if a dam had broken.
“Miss Valentine, I’m not a rich man,” he confessed. “I know it might seem that way to you and to others, but my fortune is far from infinite. The money I have will soon be spent.”
She was startled by the sudden change of subject. Lavinia, she mused to herself, would call it improper to talk about money with a man who was practically a stranger. What, she wondered wickedly, would Lavinia think of her question to Lazarus about his clothes? He hadn’t seemed to care. Perhaps there was no “improper” in this man’s mind.
“The admiral agreed I can live at Souls Dryft until the end of harvest,” he added. “I’ll pay my rent by managing the farm and maintaining the old house. He’ll take one-third of the harvest profit this year. The remaining two-thirds are mine.”
His lease was only until the autumn. She felt her heart skipping too many beats. He wouldn’t stay long, then.
It was strangely gratifying to be taken into his confidence.
“I saved a little of my army pay,” he added ruefully, “but one shilling a day doesn’t go far.”
“You were a soldier?”
He nodded as they walked on. “An enlisted man.”
She was silent, politely waiting for more.
“I was born fatherless and destitute, Miss Valentine, on the streets of London. I found work wherever it could be got, turning my hand to anything required”—his lip turned up in a wry smile—“not always on the right side of the law. When I joined the army, I hoped to turn my life around.”
“You had no family?”
He blinked, and she saw a subtle hardening of his jaw, a tense movement. “A sister. A few years older than me. She died…in childbirth.”
“I’m so sorry.” She shook her head. “How awful.”
“She was only seventeen. The sweetest girl…” He stopped, catching his breath. When he didn’t continue, she asked his sister’s name, and he told her, “Becky. She’d be twenty-seven now. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of her.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she muttered sadly, feeling for his loss and the loneliness he must have suffered. “What…what happened to her baby?”
He stopped and looked off into the distance. “I wanted to keep him with me, but I was only fourteen, just dismissed from my post a few months earlier, and I couldn’t get work without a reference. That’s when I joined the army. I left the boy with a woman I knew, but a few years later, I found out she was in the workhouse, and so was he. After I…got out of the army, I fetched him out of there and found him a place in a shop. They give him room and board for helping out, running deliveries—that sort of thing. He’s doing well enough. Growing up. I send money when I can. Soon he’ll start an apprenticeship.” He looked down at h
is hands. “One day, perhaps, I’ll tell him about his mother.”
She knew she probably shouldn’t ask, but she did. “And his father?”
His smile became further twisted; his shoulders flexed. “Perhaps I’ll meet him one day, too. I’ve a few things to get off my chest.”
“Yes.” She didn’t know what else to say about that.
“I thought, one day when I settled, I’d bring young Rafe to live with me.” He looked up at the trees as another breeze shook the thick branches. “I’d like that.” He paused, one hand to his chest. “Ah, but for now, he’s better off where he is.”
She wondered how it could be better for the boy to live with strangers. “You never knew your own father?”
“No. When I was young, I met an old man who helped me. I suppose he was the closest thing I had to a father—found me work sometimes, places to stay. When he died about five years ago, he left me his life savings. That was enough to set me up here after I got out…” He paused, his face dark, half-turned away from her. “After I left the army.”
His story had tumbled out of him, as if he’d held it in too long, waiting for the opportunity.
“It doesn’t matter to me, whatever you are,” she said. “Rich or poor. We can be friends, I hope, no matter what our circumstances. For as long as you stay.”
He looked at her oddly. “Friends?”
She stared down at the grass around her feet. “Are you still in need of a tutor?”
No reply.
“If so,” she added, “I’d be glad to offer my services.”
“How much will it cost me? You’ll expect payment.”
She clutched the apron of mushrooms between them. “No, no…good heavens! I would not accept anything at all.” Her gaze drifted to his shirt. “You’ll need some new clothes soon,” she murmured. “Would you like me to wash it for you, Mr. Kane?” When he assured her he did his own laundry, she exclaimed, “I never met a man who did his own laundry. Can this be true?”
“Oh yes. As you once said to me, Miss Valentine”—he leaned toward her and teased gently—“I, too, have looked after myself all my life and managed to survive. Long before I thought to acquire a wife.”
Now she looked down at her feet again.
“Forgive me,” he mumbled. “Once a man’s been rejected, he should know better than to make a fool of himself and mention it again.”
She swung her apron bundle again and forced a cheery smile. “I wonder why you want a wife, since you do your own laundry.”
“Well, there are some things I cannot do for myself.” He coughed and looked away. “Not the way a wife can do them for me.”
Her fingers picked at the knots holding the bundle together. “There are many women in this village who would be glad to provide any service you need, Mr. Kane.”
“Not quite all I need.”
She bit her lip. They should not be talking of this. It was terribly improper. Henry would expire on the spot if he knew she was even alone with Lazarus Kane.
Chapter 17
Sophie Valentine was clearly a woman with secret passions and curiosities. Kane knew little about wooing, but there were other things he knew.
He shot another quick glance at her. She could have had a husband by now. She certainly didn’t need to write an advertisement for one, but Sophie Valentine—the real one, the one she tried to hide—was looking for something more, something even she didn’t understand.
They walked on together, slowly moving out into the sun again, and soon they were within sight of Souls Dryft, its crooked chimneys lifted to the sky like twisted, blackened tree trunks, and the waving, moss-covered roof defying Mr. Newton’s laws of gravity.
“You’ve been very busy at the house,” she said, her gaze following his. “It hasn’t been so well maintained in years.”
She was changing the subject.
He stopped walking once again. “Perhaps I can find some other way to pay you for those lessons you offered.”
Sophie looked startled, a little paler than usual.
“Or are you interested only in the theory?” he added quietly.
She stared. “I don’t understand.”
Oh, yes she did. “One of your lessons for one of mine.”
“Lessons?”
“Lessons in love, Miss Valentine. Repairs to a broken heart free of charge.”
Her mouth flapped open, and she closed it again quickly
“I saw your book that day when it dropped from the chestnut tree. Remember?”
The prim schoolmistress shook her head, trying to deny what he’d seen, her eyes misting over, her face set in that stubborn, haughty way.
“When I heard about that advertisement, I thought you a woman of gumption,” he added. “Now I see you’re a timid female who daren’t take on a man with a few rough edges and prefers instead to study the safe sketches in a book.” He took the apron of mushrooms out of her hands and set it on the grass by his feet. “Well, madam?”
“I…I don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
Moving swiftly, he captured her restless hands and drew her close again. “I promise to devote myself to your education, if you devote yourself to mine. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Much to his amusement, her eyes sparked with indignation, like little fireworks spinning and sputtering. “You’re very sure of yourself, but of course you’re a young man of twenty-five and can afford to be so.” She sniffed. “The arrogance of youth!”
“Four.”
“Four what?” she snapped irritably.
“Twenty-four.”
She exhaled. “Oh, Lord!”
He laughed and tipped back on his heels. “I’ll be twenty-five in September. Why? What’s the matter?” When she shook her head, he laughed again and eased her closer until her breasts brushed the front of his shirt. He could feel her every breath, could smell the sun on her hair. His groin tightened instantly; his shaft thickened and grew. She did this to him without even trying. “How long do you need to make up your mind, Miss Valentine?” he whispered. “How long did you think before you put ink to paper and wrote that advertisement? How long did you think before you leapt from a balcony?”
She held her lips tight, playing the mute.
“Perhaps I’m asking you too many questions.” Now he made his face solemn. Or tried. “Very well, then, I’ll let you ask one of me.”
A slight pause followed, while she apparently struggled for a question. Finally, she muttered awkwardly, “You took a great chance in coming here to marry a woman you’d never met. Why would you do that?”
“I take chances every day of my life, every morning when I wake and every night when I lie down to find sleep. I never know when it could be the last time I do so.” He paused. “As it is for everyone, I suppose.”
She nodded, but he sensed she’d barely heard. Her gaze passed over the branches above, searching for something.
“What is it to be, then, Miss Valentine? Do you accept the offer of my private lessons in exchange for yours?”
She stepped back. “I don’t…”
He waited, but she couldn’t finish.
He picked up her apron, handed it back to her, and walked on across the field. After a moment, he heard her quick steps following him, her skirt brushing the long grass. He reached the stile and leaned there, waiting for her to catch up. “If you need time to consider, I’ll give it to you,” he said calmly.
***
A swirl of lighter color broke through the darkness under his lashes and, as he leaned with one elbow resting on the wooden post, he was almost too casual.
“Thank you, Mr. Kane.” She couldn’t resist a little sarcasm. “I’m most grateful for the opportunity to learn the wondrous things you could teach me. I’m sure they’re plentiful.”
He grabbed her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it firmly. She tried to slip her hand from his, but he wouldn’t relinquish it. “Time’s up. What will it be?”
&nbs
p; She inhaled sharply. “That was unfair.”
“I said I’d give you time. Never said how much.”
“You’re a trickster, sir!” Again she tried to retrieve her hand, but the villain kept it and tugged gently on her fingers, drawing her back to him. She tripped the last small distance, until his lips were almost upon hers. “I know things are different where you come from,” she gasped. “In Sydney Dovedale, gentlemen do not kiss ladies in public!”
His mouth hadn’t yet touched hers, and now he pretended it was never his idea to kiss her again. “Is that your way of asking for a kiss, Miss Valentine?”
Her temper up, she jerked her hand away, but in that same moment, he caught her around the waist. He pulled her against him, holding her there tightly, her breasts crushed to his hard chest. Again he lowered his mouth to hers and pried her lips apart with his own. She felt his warm tongue pressing hers, seeking a response, demanding it.
The heat of his body melded with hers, and they became as one, locked together in an embrace surely too savage and improper. She dropped her apron of mushrooms as her hands moved up his thick arms to his shoulders and then to his neck, which was almost too broad for the span of her fingers. He slanted his mouth to hers, not giving her a moment to breathe. One of his large hands moved down over her hair and then lower, falling to her bottom. He shockingly caressed it in the same manner, urging her upward slightly to fit more securely against his hard groin. Her belly was very warm, and her bones softening, one by one. His hand squeezed her right buttock, fingers spread, gripping her with too much possession, too much strength. Although he’d been bold with her before, this was more than he’d ever dared. It seemed today he was determined to leave his mark on her.
As he expelled a harsh, shuddering groan, his lips finally released hers, and she slid back to earth, wilting down his body, her legs trembling against his iron-hard thighs. His eyes were closed, but hers were wide open, and her gaze drifted down to his breeches to where she’d felt that eager, jutting beast pressed against her thigh and her belly.
Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine Page 13