“Heavens, no.” Well, she wouldn’t mind if Harriet won, but she had no intention of aiding Biddy with anything.
“Good. Very good.” Bran fell silent again, which only emphasized the gulf that had grown between them. “Cora…” He took hold of her hand. “Ah, it appears to be our turn.”
Confused, Cora took her throw. She felt Bran’s gaze upon her back and could make no sense of it. Had he been trying to tell her something? Had he—heaven forbid—found someone he wished to wed?
Her ball struck the wooden men so hard it was a wonder they didn’t splinter. As it was, they leapt out of their places and scattered.
Behind her, applause broke out. Over the top of which she heard Bran cry, “Yes!” in triumph. Cora turned in time to see him snatch a floral display off the windowsill. Then as she stared at him perplexed, he launched himself towards her, falling onto his knees so that he slid across the polished floor. Bran came to rest with a bump at her feet.
“Cora,” he began, as he had done at the start of her turn. Then he cleared his throat. “My dear thing, my darling, Miss Reeve—Cora.” He stretched the stolen posy towards her, clearly meaning for her to accept it. This was all a little theatrical. He’d seen her make a strike on countless occasions.
“Will you be mine? Will you marry me, my most majestic lovely? It’s obvious to me from that strike that we’re meant for one another.”
What? What was he saying?
A broad grin stretched across Bran’s face, thinning his plump upper lip, but making his merry green eyes twinkle.
Heat seared her cheeks. “Don’t,” she murmured, realizing his posturing had drawn everyone’s attention. “Don’t say things that you don’t mean.” Couldn’t he see the hurt he caused?
“You did say you wanted to win.” He pushed the posy a fraction higher. When she didn’t accept it, he bounced up onto his feet. “Shall we jump the broomstick together, Cora, and make merry in the hay?” He linked his arm with hers and turned a full circle.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You did say you wanted to win.”
“The skittles, aye.”
Bran stopped jigging and thumbed his jaw as he ruminated on her reply. “Ah—” He sobered, but only a little. “So, you didn’t intend me to propose?”
“I didn’t intend for you to do anything.” She spoke loud enough to make sure everyone heard. Charlotte would not have grounds on which to accuse her later. She’d had no hand in his gesture.
“Then your answer?” He picked apart the bouquet until only a few flowers remained, which he tucked into the ribbons that criss-crossed the front of her dress.
“No.”
What else could she say? He didn’t mean it.
“You don’t genuinely mean for me to become your wife. Please don’t speak to me like this again.” She wasn’t at all sure she ever wanted him to speak to her again.
Blinking back tears, Cora fled the room.
Chapter Two
Of Mint & Pea-pod Wine
“Damn the goddamned woman to hell!” Bran slumped onto the marble bench at the front of the mock Corinthian folly and swore vehemently at the sky, the fountain, and whomever goddamn else happened to overhear him, which, as it happened, turned out to be the blasted woman’s mother. He scowled, causing the mouse-like Mrs. Reeve to pale down to her furbelows and shuffle backwards into the towering fronds of foliage.
“It’s nothing to get your rump in a toss over,” he mumbled at her retreating silhouette.
How the woman had come to produce such a romp of a daughter quite confounded him, then again, he’d heard more than one rumour to the effect that Miss Cora Reeve was in actuality the issue of her father’s mistress, Tessa de Lacy rather than that of his timid, bespectacled, wife. Considering the colouring and demeanour of the three women, and after the outrageous handling he’d been subjected to, he could well believe it. Tessa de Lacy notoriously reduced grown men to tears, something Cora had brought him near to.
Genuine! If he’d sewn his heart onto his sleeve and then ripped the whole out at the seams he couldn’t have been more sincere in his affections. He thought she of all people would realize that.
As for Mrs. Reeve, well, she ought not to be so nosy if she didn’t care for his cursing. Nor should she follow him into the shrubbery after dark. Didn’t she realise there were sufficient rakehells about tonight to form an army? He stared at the dark hollow amongst the overgrown lavender into which the woman had retreated, and only when he was quite sure she had gone did he allow his head to sag forward into his hands.
Cora, Cora… What was he to do? This moment ought to have been one of rambunctious declarations and all round celebratory hell-raising. Instead, it was about as exciting as watching a donkey race the day after the Derby.
He and the delectable Miss Reeve were a perfect match. Admittedly, he’d been slow in realization of that fact, but familiarity did tend to make one a little blind. He trusted Cora was suffering from a similar affliction.
The woman was an absolute hoyden for turning him down. She hadn’t even given it a moment’s thought, and all because of that dreadful wager she’d made with the giggling bunch of ninnies he was supposed to be wooing.
As if he’d make a mockery of something so important to her, to his, to their future happiness. He’d half a mind to go and find her again and shout out the damn proposal while swinging from that ridiculous oversized chandelier Egremont had recently installed in the family drawing room. Except, if one flamboyant gesture had already failed, what chance had a second?
If she turned him down again, laughed, he might find himself contemplating a deep dive into the river rather than a simple trip to the far end of the blasted garden.
“Cora, I want you. Not any of your preposterous friends!” he bellowed at the night sky. Why did she have to be so blinkered?
Bran shuffled on the stone plinth, the cold already beginning to seep into his bottom, so that the skin had become numb. He settled his back against the privet and looked for inspiration among the stars. The search didn’t do him any good, just resulted in leaves in his hair and an uncomfortable recollection of having his knuckles rapped by his tutor for failure to identify Pegasus. Damned Greek horse looked more like an oversized kite than a foal bearing thunderbolts. He still wasn’t sure that he had the constellation. Was it that big square, or the off-centred diamond?
The crunch of approaching footsteps set Bran onto his feet. While he hoped it would be Cora, his ears told him well enough that the tread was too deep. Cora moved like a spring breeze over water. When she danced, her body rippled next to his, and he floated with her whenever her skirts brushed his thigh. The approaching figure moved like he was wading through horse manure with his best Persian slippers on, which at least narrowed things down a bit as to who it might be.
“Tink, are you here? Where are you, I can’t see a thing in this blasted dark.” The cry reached him over the hedgerow.
“Here, Hugh.”
His robust friend ambled into the sparse clearing before the folly a moment later, with his arms stretched ahead of him. “Ah, good, I did strike out right. Thought I heard you muttering a minute ago. I’ve brought you a tipple to quell your humours. Figured you might need one, after all the to-do with Miss Reeve.” He winked at Bran, before slumping down onto the stone plinth. “It’s a dreadful sticky mess you’ve waded into. Your sister seems to believe you were being genuine.” The incredulity in his voice suggested Hugh, like Cora, believed otherwise. At least Charlotte knew him well enough to recognise his plight. Charlotte had seen enough of his home life to know he hadn’t always been the court jester. Nope, by twelve he’d had nearly all his humour beaten out of him.
“I was sincere.”
“Ah! You do realize that you didn’t exactly sound it? Not coming on the tail of that wager.” Hugh raised the glass in his hand to his lips, only to pause before drinking. He offered up the liquor to Bran instead. “You’d best be having this.
I find it’s the best cure for when they don’t take you. A nice jig with the faeries soon sets you straight again, and you realise she just wasn’t the one.”
Hugh would know. Polly Perkins had made it rejection number six last Wednesday eve. Probability said sooner or later one of the dames he asked would bite. It wasn’t as if Hugh didn’t have plenty to offer: a nice Cotswold estate, a pedigree dating back to the Norman Conquest and a very warm and gracious heart. What he didn’t have was a pretty or in any way handsome face. Hugh had a nose on par with an elephant’s, which coupled with his beady sparrow-like eyes made him look more caricature than man, and completely overrode the Swansbrooke name.
“Best you forget it, Tinker and try for another one. You’re not short of admirers. The right one will come along.”
Bran heaved a sigh though his nose. Relationship advice from the most rejected man in England, just what he needed. “I’m not giving up on her.” He didn’t even want to contemplate a shared existence with another woman. Besides, in his heart, refusal aside, Cora was already his. He’d been wandering about with her image in his head and another pressed to his heart too long to yield after the first hurdle. He couldn’t, wouldn’t let her escape.
“What are you going to do?” Hugh asked after they’d spent a minute or two staring into the darkness. He offered up the drink to Bran again, who took it, and a mighty gulp.
The liquid left Bran’s mouth again almost immediately. “Jesus and damnation! What is that muck?” He wiped the residue from his lips with his coat cuff, although the sharp and tart taste continued to burn his tongue.
Hugh offered him a sympathetic shrug and patted him on the back to help with the expulsion. “That’d be Reeve’s Special Mint and Pea Pod Wine. Fierce, ain’t it?”
It was certainly something, although fierce wasn’t top of the list of adjectives he’d have used. God-awful and muck featured rather more prominently, along with dreadful and piss. “Who the devil looks at a pea pod and thinks, I know, let’s turn it into wine?”
“I believe Reeve has a fascination with watching the maids shell the peas, and well, waste not want not…” Hugh seized the glass and drained the remainder, giving a sigh as it went down. “But you know, Tink, you never did answer me. What will you do? She’s not a flighty creature. She’s one of the stubborn ones, and if she’s said no, I can’t see that she’d change her mind.”
She hadn’t precisely said no. She’d simply not believed him serious. Although, Hugh had a valid point, the minx would probably think a second proposal a mere continuation of the same theme.
“All suggestions welcome,” he said.
Hugh peered forlornly at the empty glass. “What does the father say?”
“Reeve? He told me he’d be only too delighted for me to take her off his hands, and could I please make it prompt so as he can retire to his sheep farm in Cumbria before the shearing starts. Also he’d like to get back to the business of tupping his mistress rather than being flounced around London like a prize bullock with golden cobs. There was a tad more than that, something involving a haberdasher, but I didn’t catch all of it.”
“So, you’ve his blessing.”
“If you can call it that.”
Hugh dug his elbow into his thigh and rested his chin upon his open palm. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not short of stuffing her in a sack and refusing to let her out until she agrees. Can’t see how else you’re going to change her heart.”
He didn’t want to change her heart. He wanted her to sit and listen and acknowledge the fact that the offer was real. If she still said no, then so be it. He’d have to assume the love between them was exclusively on his part, and that perhaps no amount of courting would change that. First though, he needed to get her to listen and realise he wasn’t making a mockery, but that he genuinely did love and admire her. No other woman would ever accept him in the way Cora would, or be so comprehensively involved in his life.
“You know,” he remarked, while swiping his hand through the undergrowth. The heads of several flowers toppled on to the path. “The sack idea’s not such an appalling concept.”
“Bran, it’s a truly revolting idea. No woman’s going to want you after you’ve tied her in a sack.”
“Then for heaven’s sake give me an alternate way of getting her alone.”
“You don’t need me to tell you that. You’re adept at it. What was it you were saying was your favourite game the other week, that variant on hide and seek?”
“Hugh!” Bran threw his arms around his friend and smacked a kiss upon his cheek. “Of course, you’re a genius.”
Hugh cocked a brow. “So, you’re going to suggest hide and seek?”
“Nope.” He bundled his friend off the bench and back onto his feet. “You’ll have to suggest it. If I announce it, it’ll just raise suspicions. Come along now, back to the house.”
Chapter Three
Of Buffets & Games
“But what if he was serious?”
Cora tapped the tip of her fan to her pout and glared at her friend. She could only see Harriet’s back for the other woman was huddled behind the privy screen adjusting the ribbon ties of her stockings. Cora didn’t even want to contemplate that possibility. Better that she accepted it as the insincere nonsense it had been. “He made me look foolish with all that overzealous posturing and his declarations.” Her gaze strayed from Harriet to the nosegay of foxgloves and baby’s breath Bran had pinned to her bodice. Annoyed, she tore it off and cast into the nearby grate. “He only did it because Biddy told him of our contest. He wouldn’t even have thought of it otherwise.”
“I don’t know, Cora. Doesn’t it say something that he was at least prepared to attempt to win you a prize? As for his posturing... He has always been one for flamboyance.”
Cora shook her head refusing to let herself believe. If Bran had stripped her naked, stuck a number on her rump and paraded her around the room like a prize heifer she wasn’t sure it would have hurt so much, but to dangle something she wanted so badly before her like that… that hurt. She clenched her fists tight as the splinter of shock that still remained embedded in her heart worked itself loose.
He simply couldn’t have been serious.
She’d seen how he looked at Tessa de Lacy, all wide eyed and slack jawed. He’d never stared at her like that. Although to be fair, there weren’t many men who didn’t stare at Aunt Tessa in that way.
Some folks said she and Tessa looked alike, but Cora couldn’t see it. Tessa had hair the colour of honey, like buttercups scattered across a meadow. Cora's hair was more brassy and held none of the light, nor did it curl quite so prettily.
But what if he had been serious? And he took her at her word, and never did address her thus again. Might she have just ruined everything?
“Are you done?” she asked Harriet. “We ought to get on with this business of hiding. They’ll start seeking soon.”
“I’m done. Where shall we go?” Harriet emerged with her wide apple-blossom and gold skirts fanned around her. “I thought I might take the window seat next door, the curtains are of a similar fabric, so I might blend in.”
Cora’s gaze dropped to her own outfit, deep ocean-blue with sprays of turquoise, emerald and jet. She’d be accused of not trying, which would only make her mother upset. “Go ahead, I’ll find somewhere else.”
Harriet scampered off, and Cora turned in the opposite direction. She slipped across the corridor and stepped around the hounds in the dog-parlour, making her way to the concealed buffet. The cubby-hole contained only a few dusty knickknacks, which were easily pushed into one corner. Having folded her voluminous skirts around her, she climbed inside and inched the door closed behind her.
There wasn’t much air in the cupboard, and it was fusty and dark. Cora spent the first few minutes pressed to the door frame, sucking in breaths from around the gap in a state of nervous anticipation. When after what felt like five or more minutes had passed, she grew impatient, shuffli
ng her feet, and finally sagged against the rear wall with her eyes closed.
When Bran had got down before her holding that posy, she’d so desperately, desperately wanted it to be real. A wry smile claimed her lips. The sting of tears in her eyes soon followed. She refused to let them fall. Listening to him say all those things she’d dreamed of hearing him say and knowing he meant not a single word of it, hurt like a tear in her chest. Even now, she could hardly catch her breath at the thought of it. Only for a split second had she contemplated saying yes. Accepting him was what she wanted, but she loved him too much to bind him to match he didn’t genuinely desire. He had to want her every bit as much as she wanted him.
The sound of movement in the room beyond provoked an irritated snort. “Oh, just find me. Let this be over with, so that I can retire,” she muttered under her breath. She’d plead a headache, and no one would miss her. The racing pulse in her temples certainly resembled a migraine, even if it was her heart that was really afflicted.
The motion ceased and she supposed maybe it had only been the dogs shuffling about.
Damn you, Branwell, for not loving me back. Why couldn’t he love her back?
The buffet door opened, prompting a small gasp to escape her throat. Bran smiled on spying her, but instead of hollering out that she was found, he squeezed into the cupboard beside her.
Cora pulled herself up straight.
Little light penetrated the cupboard, but enough to see his ruffled forelock and the red-gold glint of his lopsided queue. “What are you about?” she demanded.
“Hiding. Weren’t you listening? The seekers are to hide alongside the hiders, until we’re all squashed together and everyone is found.”
“Oh!” If she’d known, she’d have opted for a curtained window bay likewise little Harriet. “Were there others following you?”
Bran grin broadened so that she saw the gleam of his teeth. “No. Most of them headed into the other wing.”
So, they were alone.
Capturing Cora Page 2