by Hale Deborah
“Your leg. Oh dear. Were you wounded in action?”
“Alas, yes. My fighting days are over. I’ve recovered sufficiently to walk…and dance, though slowly. But I’ll never be up to the rigors of campaigning again.”
“What a pity! My brother is with Colonel Ebbett’s regiment. Which did you serve in?”
“The Fourth Somerset Rifles.” No one who heard his tone of pride could have doubted Morse on that score.
“A Rifleman—how dashing!” Some glint of a spring twilight in Leonora’s eyes told Morse she was not counterfeiting. “I have relations all over Somerset. What part of the county do you hail from?”
“My mother’s people were from Somerset, but I grew up in India where my father was on the governor’s staff. But, really, I’m not the least interesting. You must tell me all about yourself, Miss Husbandhunter.” He took her hand in his. “Do you come to Bath often? Where is your home? Whereabouts in Portugal is your brother’s regiment, now?”
“That isn’t fair, Morse…I mean, Maurice,” Leonora pulled her fingers from his grasp. “How can I drill you in your cover story when you turn the tables like that?”
Morse sprawled back on the chaise. “Because that’s what I’ll do, Leonora. If some wet goose sets to quizzing me like you just did, I’ll simply set her talking about herself. That’s what most people want to talk about, anyway.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She softened her words with a grin. “Thank heavens you can think on your feet, Morse. I doubt we’ll meet anyone in Bath clever enough to trip you up.”
A strange warmth blossomed within Morse and spread through him, as though he’d just imbibed some intoxicating potion.
“A Rifleman has to be ready to take the initiative.” He shrugged off her compliment by quoting the precepts of Sir John Moore. “Never you worry now, Leonora. I’ll win you this wager, whatever it takes.”
Somehow, his hand got tangled up with hers. He squeezed it—for reassurance.
To his surprise, she did not pull back this time. Instead, she brought her other hand to cover his.
“I believe you will, Morse.” An aura of vague sadness shadowed the confidence of her words and her touch. “If I’d had any notion of how much work it would entail, I’d have been less cocksure about accepting Uncle’s wager, I can tell you. I doubt anyone else could have brought it off. I see now why Cousin Wes placed such faith in you.”
If she had fastened a medal to his chest, or placed a crown of laurels on his brow, Morse could not have been more edified. If she had gutted him with a saber, he could not have been more stricken.
He turned his face from Leonora, not wanting her to witness the unmanly evidence of his regret. “Perhaps he shouldn’t have placed so much trust in me. I wasn’t able to save him.”
Though he wanted to say more, Morse feared the thickness in his voice would betray him.
Another woman might have retreated from the grim spectacle of his distress, but not Leonora.
The next thing Morse knew, she had one hand on either side of his face, turning it inexorably toward her.
“You listen to me, Morse Archer.” Her tone resonated with bone-deep conviction. “You are not responsible for Wesley’s death. Uncle has his connections in the War Ministry and we know what happened. There is blame enough to go around, by all accounts. But none of it extends to you.”
He could not bring himself to meet her gaze, though he felt it boring into him. All the same, her words wrapped themselves around him.
“If Wesley were here—” The catch in her voice enticed Morse to glance up.
A fine mist glistened in her eyes like the pearly daybreak fog on a green summer morning.
Leonora was not ashamed of her grief. She did not let the rising tears daunt her. “If Wesley were here, he would be the first to dun it into your proud head. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.”
Since that day at Bucaso, it had seemed to Morse Archer as though a band of iron encased his chest. Never tight enough to crush him, but never allowing him the luxury of an easy breath, either.
Now a blacksmith had struck the lock holding that band in place. His heart could beat as hard as it pleased without restraint. He could laugh or cry with all the passion that was in him.
And he could breathe freely again.
Suddenly, Morse noticed Leonora’s face coming nearer his own. Was she pulling him toward her, or was he approaching in spite of her?
Morse could scarcely tell.
He only knew that his gratitude and a hundred other jumbled but powerful feelings for this woman could find no better means of expression than in the homage of his lips.
It was not until they had made contact—moist, hot, sweet contact—and his arms had locked around her that misgivings assailed Morse.
Would Leonora push him away, as she had before? Would she mistake his kiss for another selfish bid to manipulate her?
Her hands had not released their hold on his face—that heartened Morse. In fact, they exerted a gentle pressure to tilt his head. The tentative flutter of her lips and tongue roused him more than the artful preludes to seduction of other women he’d known.
Morse did not stop to consider what it meant. He only knew that he wanted this woman. And he did not want to let her go—ever.
Emboldened by her innocent ardor, he kissed her harder, bringing one hand up to stroke her hair and caress her neck. The other, he gave rein to rove over her body, charting the gentle curves and tempting clefts.
Perhaps a knock of warning sounded. The blood was pounding too thunderously in Morse’s ears for him to have heard it.
But he was not so far lost to desire that he could ignore Elsie Taylor throwing wide the door and exclaiming, “Excuse me, miss, I thought I might have left my sewing basket in—”
Morse and Leonora flew apart, hands fumbling to adjust their clothes, looking anywhere but at each other.
“I believe it’s on the window seat,” squeaked Leonora, jumping from the chaise. “Here, let me help you look for it.”
Morse glared murder at Miss Taylor. What on earth could she want with a sewing basket at this hour?
To his astonishment, she glared back, leaving Morse in no doubt that she’d interrupted them on purpose.
He tried to quell his craving for Leonora long enough to marshal his thoughts. He would have some explaining to do once Elsie Taylor fetched her benighted sewing gear out of there—an apology might be in order, too.
“Why look at the time!” Leonora shadowed Elsie as the girl collected her basket. “I must get to bed. We want to be well rested for Uncle’s party, after all.”
She followed Elsie out the door, without once glancing up at him. “Good night, Captain Archibald. Don’t stay awake too late.”
As the door swung shut behind the women, Morse leaped up and kicked the chaise.
“Ow!” He cursed the throbbing pain in his toes. At least it distracted him from a more intimate ache ignited by Leonora’s kiss.
At length he subdued the emotions rampaging within him. At least enough that he was able to go off in search of Algie and the brandy decanter. An hour of Blenkinsop’s cheerful, undemanding chatter and a generous snifter of Sir Hugo’s brandy might secure him a few hours’ untroubled slumber.
But Morse heartily doubted it.
Chapter Eleven
Well rested for the party?
Leonora might have laughed at the notion had she not been so thoroughly wrought up. Rolling over in bed, she pounded her pillow, wishing for all the world it could transform into Morse Archer.
So she could pound him—or so he could share her bed? Leonora was not certain. A little of both, perhaps.
What might have happened in the sitting room if Elsie Taylor had not interrupted? Leonora’s belly boiled with panic at the very thought. At the same time, her lower regions simmered with carnal curiosity. She could not decide whether she wanted to raise Elsie’s wages or to dismiss the girl without a reference.
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What must Morse Archer think of her now? After she had taken advantage of his distress to entrap him into a moment of intimacy? After the way she had thrown herself at his head, he must despise her for a pathetic, desperate, man-starved spinster.
And would he be so far wrong?
Leonora cringed at the memory of how easily she’d fallen for his pretended lovemaking. This time she’d initiated their kiss—driven to it by the physical yearning for him she’d struggled to suppress ever since.
Not that he’d pushed her away.
Her body still smarted with remembered heat where his ravenous touch had scorched her. If she gave herself up to the memory of those intense but fleeting moments, her flesh and blood pulsed with a raw hunger she scarcely dared guess how to satisfy.
With a moan of frustration, Leonora bolted out of bed and lit a candle. Tearing off her nightgown, she poured cold water into her washbasin. With a cloth soaked in the frigid water, she scoured her body until gooseflesh rose and her skin took on the blue-white caste of skim milk.
If only Morse Archer had not been thrust into her life, making her question the direction of her safely mapped future. Longing for things that had no place in that future.
Things like desire. And love.
Yet, when she tried to picture a life in which she had never met him, its colors seemed faded and dull. Its spaces empty. And herself but an insignificant speck in one corner.
A great carbuncle on the face of Laurelwood—that’s what he’d be!
With Sir Hugo’s party about to start, Morse asked Dickon to retie his stock in an effort to loosen his high formal shirt collar. True, he looked the part of a gentleman. But he had come to realize there was more to that role than outward appearance.
Morse felt the lack within himself.
For the longest time he’d despised their ilk, determined to diminish those who would lord over him. But he’d been wrong. That type were not gentlemen at all, for all their wealth and impressive pedigrees.
The true mark of a gentleman was his code of honor and his philosophy of living. Wesley Peverill had been an authentic gentleman. For all his bumbling and guileless good cheer, Algie Blenkinsop was one, too. Morse was not certain he could define the quality, let alone hope to emulate it.
He had a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach that even the petty gentry of rural Wiltshire would see through his flimsy ruse in a minute.
If only he could have talked to Leonora. Somehow Morse knew she would have found the right words to hearten and steady him. But after their aborted encounter of the previous night, she had taken pains to avoid being alone in his company all day.
He longed to explain himself. To discover how she felt about what had happened. Was she angry with him? With herself? Did it mean anything to her, or was it a rash impulse born of the potent emotions of the moment?
Unwisely indulged. Immediately regretted.
Hearing a discreet tap on the door, he wheeled away from Dickon, who had finished with his stock and was now giving his coat a final brush.
“Oh, it’s you Algie. Come in.”
“Well, don’t you look smart.” Algie ambled over to Morse’s shaving table, eyeing him from head to toe. “Wish I had a figure like yours, old fellow, instead of being the cursed beanpole I am. The most expensive tailor on Bond Street couldn’t make me cut a dash like you will tonight.”
Morse marveled at how the fellow could admit such a thing without the least hint of mean envy. As though he accepted his own shortcomings with good cheer and only a trace of regret, meanwhile exulting in another’s good fortune.
For all that, Algie and Leonora were not meant to be husband and wife.
Morse wondered if his conviction might be born of self-interest. But when he looked deep into his heart, he was pleased to discover otherwise.
“Ta, Algie.” Morse inserted a finger between his neck and his collar as he tried to coax a smile. “I don’t feel very dashing, I can tell you. I doubt I’ll make the right impression on any of Sir Hugo’s guests tonight. Let alone all the swells at Bath.”
“Nonsense!” Algie tucked the fillets of Morse’s stock into the breast of his waistcoat. “I’ll bet my month’s allowance you’ll be the beau of the ball.”
Braying with laughter at his own jest, he threw a lanky arm over Morse’s shoulder. “Not if you skulk up in your room all night, though. Come along, and let’s help Sir Hugo welcome his guests. If you find yourself cornered by some disagreeable female, tonight, just catch my eye and I’ll come rescue you by asking her to dance.”
Fortunately for Algie, Morse did not take his wager of a month’s allowance. For Captain Archibald’s fledgling flight in society turned out a proper triumph.
Perhaps it was the warmth of Algie’s reassurance. Or the fact that the ladies outnumbered the gentlemen by a wide margin. Or it might have been his determination to not let Leonora down.
Whatever the reason, Morse soon found himself surrounded by admirers. Charming these well-born ladies with slightly more polished versions of the gestures and flattery he’d used with such finesse upon barmaids and camp followers.
Prompted by some broad hints, he squired several of Sir Hugo’s female guests on the dance floor despite an agony of nerves over his performance. As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. His partners were quick to attribute any misstep to his unfortunate leg injury or his long absence from polite society while in the Rifles.
The greater his success, the more his ease and confidence grew. The more confident his manner, the more Sir Hugo’s guests flocked to him. By the time the party had been in progress an hour, Morse began to think Algie’s prediction would be amply fulfilled.
More than once he tried to catch Leonora’s eye for a smile or a look that would commend his achievement. But she did not once glance in his direction. Instead, she seemed occupied with a clutch of female guests whom Morse finally recognized as girls from the village who attended her evening classes.
He tried to ignore his own childish stab of disappointment. It was not as though he needed her seal of approval before he could take pleasure in his own triumph.
Yet that was how it felt.
Only when he overheard the remark of a pasty-faced stripling guest—a remark he felt certain was meant to be overheard—did Morse understand why Leonora hovered around her charges.
“What can old Peverill have been thinking?” sneered the young fellow who affected a languid slouch. “Why, one of those girls is the daughter of our gardener. Picture me asking that to dance—me, the nephew of a baronet.”
Some of the girls might not have heard him, but Elsie Taylor certainly had, and perhaps one other—the butt of the young monster’s mockery. The way their cheeks reddened and their eyes found the floor left Morse in no doubt.
His hands itched to close around the pompous puppy’s throat and throttle him, but Morse took a deep breath and restrained himself for Leonora’s sake.
Instead, he disengaged himself from the elder of Colonel Morrison’s nieces and approached Leonora’s pupils. He could not quite bring himself to forgive Elsie Taylor for barging into the sitting room the night before, so instead he offered his arm to the gardener’s blushing daughter.
“Miss…Yates?” Morse prayed he hadn’t mistaken the name from their brief introduction.
She glanced up at him with the eyes of a suffering wild creature caught in a snare.
“May I request the honor of this dance? I fear you’ll have to go slowly and excuse my awkwardness on account of my lame leg.”
The ghost of a smile hovered on her lips, and she cast the pasty-faced youth a look of disdain that made Morse long to applaud. “Thank you, Captain Archibald.” She spoke the words as correctly as any dowager duchess. “I should be very pleased to accept your invitation.”
With a toss of her curls and a proud tilt of her chin, she took the floor on Morse’s arm where she acquitted herself most gracefully.
Out of the corner of
his eye, Morse saw Algie approach Miss Taylor and offer his arm.
During the next half hour the pair of them saw to it that each of Leonora’s pupils got at least one dance. Several other gentlemen followed suit, and a number of the ladies helped the girls to punch and cultivated conversations with them.
The baronet’s obnoxious nephew, by comparison, had several of his dance invitations politely refused on one pretext or another.
By the time Morse felt his duty dispatched, his leg was crying out for respite. A whispered word in Dickon’s ear produced a more potent cup of punch than the rest of the company was enjoying. Morse limped over to a chair in a dim corner alcove of the hall and flung himself down, propping his aching leg up on a handy footstool.
He took several deep drafts from his cup and closed his eyes, waiting for the spirits to numb his pain. Though he heard the faint rustle of a woman’s skirt and breathed a subtle floral scent he could not identify, Morse kept his eyes shut. He did not need some tittering female hovering around him just now.
“Thank you, Morse.” Warm with approval, Leonora’s voice washed over him, blotting out the worst of his pain.
Opening his eyes, he drank in the sight of her. She wore a gown the rich color of claret wine. It brightened her complexion and warmed the dark hue of her hair. The bodice was modestly cut, for the fashion of the times. Yet the soft fabric draped around her with seductive elegance.
He wanted her in a different way than he’d ever wanted any other woman—save one. Morse wasn’t certain whether the notion tempted or terrified him.
“You must mean Maurice,” he whispered. “I’m not acquainted with anyone named Morse.”
She glanced toward the rest of the company, as if judging their risk of being overheard above the convivial hubbub. Then she knelt beside his chair and leaned close.
“Well, I know someone named Morse,” she murmured. “And a good fellow he is. I can’t tell you how proud I am of him tonight.”