by Megan Daniel
“Actually,” Roxanna continued, “widowhood has very nearly done me in. If one can actually die of boredom, I am close to breathing my last.”
“Naturally,” he said. “You got no Jerry around to amuse you.” He offered another of his insouciant grins. The day was mild, and he wore no coat, no waistcoat, no cravat. His linen shirt was open halfway to his waist, showing off the thickly curling blanket of black hair that lay beneath it.
Roxanna’s appreciation of the sight he offered was as obvious as his had been for her. “Damned right,” she muttered, and moved toward him. “Now, give me a proper kiss hello.” She pulled him down to meet her lips; he gave no resistance.
The silence of the clearing was broken only by the soft moans of pleasure that escaped her. It was some time before he pulled away. With hands on her shoulders, he held her at arm’s length. “Now, then, Roxie girl. Pretty as I am, I know you got some other reason for getting me here. I’ll hear it now.”
She was having difficulty breathing. Her skin felt on fire. She had been far too long without a man. “Later,” she murmured from deep in her throat, and made as if to pull his lips back to hers.
But he held her off. “Now, Roxie—” he began.
“I told you later!” She moved out of his arms and walked purposefully toward the door of the cottage. With a shrug and a smile, he followed her, kicking the door shut behind him.
Lord Devlin was riding his pinto gelding that day, another of his magnificent mustangs. Everyone in the field was duly impressed. As usual, he rode in the lead.
Francesca, chafing at the bit, as it were, to let her horse out of its full stride, could finally stand it no more. Caspar would just have to do without her for the time being. She broke away from him and charged ahead just before the dogs caught up with their hapless quarry.
She was at least in at the kill. And then the hunt was over for the day.
They were several miles from Hockleigh, and the trip back was far more leisurely than the ride out. Francesca, greatly in need of a respite from her flirtations, came up to ride beside Devlin. “Really, you know,” she said, “I begin to wonder if all this is worth it. What a perfectly ridiculous day I have had!”
“Poor sweet,” he said with a smile of real sympathy. “I suppose I must be grateful that Priscilla cannot hunt just yet, else I’d be in the same position. The girl simply cannot ride.” His voice was edged with disgust
“Of course she cannot But you needn’t let it worry you. She will be far too busy having your babies anyway.”
“I can hope.”
“Well, I cannot hope that Caspar will be so occupied!”
“I suppose it would prove a bit difficult Been uphill work, has it?” For answer he got only a grimace. “You will just have to bring him up to scratch, then. Once the fish is netted, the fisherman can relax, you know.”
“Don’t be vulgar!” she snapped irritably. But Francesca was nothing if not fair, and she quickly retreated into a self-conscious smile. “The truth is often vulgar, is it not?”
“Too often.”
“And speaking of coming up to scratch, when do you plan to speak to Pris? You are like to lose your reputation as a man of action if you delay much longer.”
“Well, really, you know,” he began, “I scarce know the girl, and I—”
“Oh, give over, Dev! I shouldn’t have thought such hedging was in your nature.”
“Well, she might refuse, you know.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why ever should she?” she said, asking herself what girl in her right mind would refuse such an offer. “Priscilla couldn’t say ‘Boo!’ to a goose.
She is certainly not going to say no to you. Just tell the girl she is to marry you, and there’s an end to it.”
“How odiously high-handed you make me sound.”
“Well, you are,” she replied, but she was grinning. “Really, Dev, I do think you are missing your best chance if you don’t get on with it soon.”
“I suppose so.” He looked glum.
“Come on, man. The deed is always worse in the worrying about than in the doing. She will accept, you know.”
“I know she will.” He still looked glum. They rode on to the house in silence.
“So you shouldn’t have the least trouble,” Roxanna was explaining as she buttoned up the jacket of her forest-green habit. “No one will have reason to expect such a thing, and no one knows anything at all about you or your presence here.”
“And the girl?” asked Jerry Parsons. “What’s she like to offer me?”
Roxanna smiled an admiring smile, taking in his magnificent physique with her eyes. “No more than you can handle.” He was stretched out on a pile of straw in one comer of the one-room cottage, his hands clasped casually behind his head, entirely at his ease. Unable to restrain herself, Roxanna leaned over and kissed his bare chest. “I am almost inclined to be jealous of the girl,” she murmured.
“What’s she like? Pretty?”
She abruptly stopped kissing and nibbling him, straightened up, and set about arranging her disheveled hair. “I suppose if one were partial to blonds, one might call her pretty in a washed-out sort of way.”
“I got nothing against blonds,” he replied with his usual grin.
“She will offer you no sport!” Roxanna snapped. “They call her the Ice Goddess.”
His grin grew. “Ice melts pretty fast when the thaw hits. The thawing’s half the sport.”
She flounced her shoulder in his direction, looking around for her hat. “Well, you are welcome to try your luck with her. Just so that you don’t let her get away.”
“How long you want me to keep her?”
“Long enough so that she will be thoroughly ruined in the eyes of Society, so that she may not hold up her head among us again. Long enough so that she will never make a fit wife for a baron!”
“More like she won’t want no baron, not after the likes of Jerry Parsons.”
“Your handsomeness and virility, my dear Jerry, are exceeded only by your arrogance,” she cooed, watching him lace up Ids breeches.
“Say, Rox, how comes it you ain’t never been ‘ruined’ like that? Don’t no one know about you?”
“No!” she snapped. “And they never will. Because I am far too clever for them all.”
“Won’t let a real toff touch you, eh?” he asked astutely. He shrugged his linen shirt over his head and stuffed it casually into his pants. “Too bad for the toffs.”
“And lucky for you,” she said, pulling a fat roll of bills from her pocket. She caused it to follow his shirttails, allowed her hand to linger there a moment, then, with a laugh, patted the bulge the money made in the front of his breeches.
His returning laugh echoed around the tiny cottage as he pulled her to him for another long kiss. But when he looked at her again, his laugh was gone. There was earnestness in his black eyes. “Give it up, girl,” he said simply. Roxanna only looked puzzled. “What do you want with a baron? Come off with me, Rox. We’re good together.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” was the only answer he got. She pulled out of his arms and turned away, brushing straw from her heavy skirts. She did not see the hard look that glittered in his black eyes, hard and very cold. She fussed with her hair and tried to arrange her Hussar hat with its gay orange-tipped yellow plumes on her head. “I look a mess,” she complained. Even before she could finish the words, Jerry was handing her a comb and a small piece of mirror that he pulled from a saddlebag flung into a comer.
“Y’see how well I know you, Rox,” he said, his easy smile back in place. But there was less warmth, less |oy than usual behind it. “Tomorrow soon enough for you?” he asked as she adjusted her hat before the inadequate mirror.
“Tomorrow is perfect.” She gathered up her crop and her lemon-yellow gloves and quickly outlined once again the plan they had been discussing. She wanted no detail to go wrong. She took a small flat parcel wrapped in white paper from Jerry and tucked i
t carefully into her pocket “I shall do my part. But remember, no one is to connect my name with any of this.” She walked from die cottage, her skirt making a whooshing sound on the straw.
Jerry tossed her up onto her horse. She smiled down at him, her most seductive smile. “It’s been good to see you again, Jerry. When this is over, I think I shall have to find a place for you in London.” She reached down and touched his black hair. “And then you will forget that Lady Francesca Waringham ever existed.”
He flashed his snowy smile and offered her a salute as she turned up the path. But as she rode away, his brilliant smile faded and his eyes narrowed. He stood there a long while in thought.
There was to be no formal entertainment that evening, but the young Duchess had arranged for there to be music after dinner for those of the young people who felt inclined to “sport a toe.” It was not a ball or anything like, but the younger guests stood up with each other for a few country dances and a waltz or two while the oldsters, Lady Braethon and her ilk, settled down to cards in the adjoining room.
Priscilla was allowed—or perhaps “forced” is a more accurate word—to join the group of dancers. Tonight she had been dressed up in a mound up puce tulle, a color far too old for a girl of her youth and a design far too fussy for anyone.
As the number of dances was limited, there was nothing odd in a gentleman standing up with the same young lady for several dances. It was a very informal affair. But Lord Devlin outdid himself. He danced three times with Priscilla and three times with Lady Francesca, more or less alternately. Roxanna barely noticed the dances he bestowed on Pris and casually dismissed them as of no importance when she did. But his dances with Francesca were noted, recorded, and tucked away in a dark comer of her mind to feed her growing resentment of her supposed rival.
Lord Devlin was having an uncomfortable evening. Reluctantly accepting Francesca’s advice, he had decided to make his offer this night. But he was having a deal of trouble getting on with it.
“Miss Pennington . . .” he began during a country dance. “Priscilla . . .” he corrected himself. “You . . . you are looking very pretty tonight.”
She looked down at the inappropriate mass of netting encircling her. He was being kind again. “Thank you, my lord,” she said quietly, looking down as though wondering whether her feet were perhaps making incorrect moves and needed checking up on.
“We have missed you in the field,” he went on. “Will you be feeling well enough to join us tomorrow?”
No one could miss the despair that attacked her at the very thought. “I ... I don’t know, my lord. I suppose
SO;”
The movements of the dance separated them. Watching her as she moved, not ungracefully, through the steps of the dance, he tried, for the first time really, to pot himself in her skin. And he thought he came to know something of her. In a moment they were beside each other again. “You do not wish to ride, do you, Priscilla?” he said gently.
She did not look up, and answered so softly he had to bend his head down to hear her. “No, my lord,” she said. “Then you must not.”
“Mama will make me,” she said even more softly. He looked about for Mrs. Pennington. She would indeed try to force the girl. Such a mother-in-law was going to take some dealing with. He would have to take a firm hand from the outset
“You need not ride anymore, Priscilla,” he said. She looked at him in puzzled surprise. “/ will tell your mother that you need not”
“Oh, but, my lord, she—”
“I think she will listen to me. Do not you?”
Relief mingled with the wretchedness still in her face. “Oh, yes, my lord. She will listen to you.”
“Good. I hope she will have cause to listen to me many times in the future. . . .” The dance took them apart again, and the next thing he knew, it was over. Mr. Hollys appeared as if out of nowhere to carry her off for the next dance.
This was a waltz, and Devlin swooped down upon Francesca and carried her onto the floor without so much as a by-your-leave. “Really, Dev!” she protested. “I was to have had this dance with Caspar.”
“You may dance with him after you are married,” he muttered.
“Now, what has got you in the boughs? Never say she refused you!”
“I haven’t asked her yet. I am not at all sure, Cesca, that I can stand the thought of such a mother-in-law.”
“Stuff! You are making excuses. She will not bother you in the least once you are married, I promise you.”
“What is Caspar’s mother like?”
“I haven’t a notion. She never comes to town. But I am sure I shall have no trouble with her.”
“I wish you luck of it,” he answered, and they finished the dance in silence, forgetting their difficulties with their soon-to-be spouses and giving themselves up to the pleasure of having a partner so perfectly in tune with oneself. They drew apart reluctantly when the music at last crescendoed and came to an end.
Devlin’s next attempt with Pris was no more successful than the first. Oh, there were hints and innuendos aplenty from him. He talked around the notion of marriage so thoroughly that no girl could escape his meaning. But, much to Priscilla’s relief, the final fatal question was left unspoken. She was left with a great deal to think about as she danced off with Sir Algernon for the next set And Devlin was left to wonder why he could not simply ask her and get it over with.
He was cornered for the waltz by Roxanna She had been giving serious thought for days to how best to capture and hold his interest A thorough study of Francesca had convinced her that she would have to modify her usual style a bit
The change in Cesca the past few days had not escaped Roxanna, nor had the smiles and admiring glances of Lord Devlin whenever he chanced to look at her. She looked simpler, sweeter somehow. She must have reason to believe that her new look was more to his lordship’s taste. And if so, then it would be Roxanna’s taste as well.
And so she had raised an eyebrow or two when she made her entrance that evening, but not for the usual reasons. A thorough search of her wardrobe, together with a quick plying of her abigail’s needle, had come up with a muslin dinner gown of soft rose with a prettily filled- in dicolletage, short puffed sleeves of point lace and velvet ribbons trimming the hem in a deeper rose. Her hair had been arranged i la MSduse, which was softly flattering to her piquant face, and she had limited her jewelry to a cameo brooch and a carved ivory bracelet.
Her appearance could not have been called maidenly —she was far past that stage—but she looked fresher and younger and really very appealing. Only the slightly brittle glint in her eyes remained to give her away to anyone who looked closely, along with a certain determined set to her jaw whenever she looked at Devlin and Francesca.
She spoke nothing but generalities and inoffensive witticisms as they danced. But she used her flashing eyes and the natural seductiveness of her fluty voice to advantage. She was light on her feet, had a quick mind, and was an excellent partner. Devlin surprised himself by enjoying the dance.
“I see the Widow is still after you,” said Francesca when next he partnered her.
“Yes. But you know, she can be a pleasant-enough companion when she manages to tone down her flirtation a bit. She’s a devilish pretty piece of baggage, you must admit.”
“Stunning,” she answered dryly. “With Priscilla for a wife, I daresay you will need to seek more exciting diversion elsewhere. Perhaps Roxanna would care to apply for the post.”
“I doubt it. With some other gentleman, perhaps, or after she is safely remarried. But not yet. I have seen the light of matrimony glittering in too many feminine eyes not to recognize it. She is holding out for a ring at present.” He looked down at her with that intimate smile that he saved only for her. “And besides, I have a rather more interesting candidate in mind for that job.”
She felt herself flushing deeply, a circumstance that had grown deplorably frequent of late. She was vastly relieved when the fig
ures of the dance separated them. She found it increasingly difficult to think when he was looking at her just so.
There was no mistaking the intent of his comment. She realized that she had no desire to mistake it. Just how she would feel about such an “arrangement” after she was married to Caspar, she had no idea. Perhaps her husband, and later her children, would be enough for her. Perhaps they would give her all the warmth and affection she could want. But when she looked at Devlin, she had to doubt it. And what would she do about that? She thought perhaps she had better try to discover just what she could feel with Caspar, her soon-to-be husband.
She moved back toward Devlin, but the rest of their conversation was desultory, as each was wrapped up in his own thoughts.
The final waltz of the evening came, Devlin’s last chance to make his offer that night. He was determined to do it.
But he had shown his hand a bit too clearly. Priscilla had been frightened into talkativeness. He had more words from her in the next twenty minutes—a vertitable torrent of them, and all of them nonsense—than he had had in the previous week. All the while blushing an unattractive beet red, she chattered on this and that and the other subject, making little sense and leaving him little chance to say anything more than yes and no. She felt a complete fool, but she did not care. Anything was better than to allow him to say what he was so obviously about to say.
Francesca had saved the final waltz for Caspar, and she now beckoned him with her eyes. To her satisfaction, he promptly answered the summons, came to her side, and danced her onto the floor. That was good. He was falling nicely into the habit of bowing to her wishes. She put all her formidable powers of charm into play, until the poor man was completely bemused.