“Where are we going?” The unwelcome guest ducked under a branch.
Abby pushed away another oak branch, laden with dew-spotted leaves. She passed by it, holding it away from her, then released the branch. The resounding slap and Charles Farrington III’s grunt made Abby roll her lips in a smirk.
“Classy dame.” His retort was laden with sarcasm mixed with flirtation. “You know …” Charles Farrington III’s booted feet slogged in the damp earth behind her. He just wasn’t going to stop chattering on like a smitten squirrel, was he? “I’ve never fly-fished before, however there is beautiful scenery here.”
Abby ignored him, but she could feel warmth creep up her neck. Maybe he meant the scenery, but his tone insinuated he meant her.
“Of course”—the man nattered on—“some gentlemen might find it a tad embarrassing to learn from a woman, but I’m certain I am going to enjoy it. Significantly.”
For all the fish in the river! Abby whirled, considering her options as her heel took its little spin. But her eyes collided with Charles Farrington III’s and she was suddenly tongue-tied.
“Has anyone ever told you that your eyes are as feisty as gingersnaps on fire?” His voice dropped a notch. Abby swallowed. She ran her thumb under the leather strap that straddled her shoulder and attached to her fishing basket.
His finger darted forward and flicked her flirtatiously on the nose. Improper at least, horrifying at best. Abby staggered backward. Papa should not have her guiding a man alone. It was improper. But what choice did they have? Two guests required two guides if they were to have multiple outdoor experiences.
“That is quite enough, Charles Farrington the Third.” His full name sputtered through her outraged lips like poetry spit at a black bear.
His dark eyebrow rose over his left eye. A quirk to his mouth and that rapscallion-like narrowing of his eyes rounded out the perfect picture of a Milwaukee playboy. “Charles. Just call me Charles.”
“No.” It was all she could think to say. Abby righted her insides and stiffened her shoulders. She wasn’t going to make company with the long line of women he must have left behind him in Milwaukee. Women who had fallen for his cocoa-charms and hot-coffee suave. And, by glory, she would call him “Charles Farrington the Third” until his little recreation spree to the Northwoods was over. Anything more was too gentlemanly for this rake, and anything less was—well—it was too familiar. Familiar was not a place Abby wished to be when it came to Charles Farrington III.
He had met many debutante women, but Abigail Nessling wasn’t one of them. Charles followed the tiny, nymph-like girl who was all of five foot two inches and had a waist smaller than one of his legs. In fact, at first glance, he’d been convinced that she wasn’t even sixteen, but his best friend and partner, Jonathon Strauss, informed him later that she was well past her marrying prime. The ripe old age of twenty-four and counting.
Now, Charles appreciated her as he followed. From her wispy, white-blond hair twisted into a fine ribbon down her back, to her delicate neck and confident pace. She owned these woods. That, and the fact she had enough fire in her to burn down the entire forest, completely intrigued him.
“She is off limits, Charles.”
He heard Jonathon’s warning even as he considered the memory of her rosy lips pursed in bewilderment when he’d flirted just a moment before.
Charles stepped over a fallen branch. His boots were muddy, and the forest floor was a bed of moist leaves and moss. The sound of the river rolling over rocks met his ears. Abby paused in her step long enough to tip the ends of the fly rods lower to avoid tangling with a tree, then pressed on.
“Off. Limits.”
Jonathon had reiterated it with a hissed whisper when he’d veered off with Abby’s father to go further upriver. Charles had only wagged his eyebrows, which drew a scowl. He had no investment in this trip, so he really had nothing to lose with a little flirtation. The Strauss family apparently had connections to Abby Nessling’s father, and sure, why wouldn’t he jump at the chance to go on a recreational adventure in the late summer? If he were honest with himself, which was a rarity, Charles was beyond weary with life in Milwaukee. He followed in his father’s shadow and the brewing industry that he was in line to inherit. It burdened him rather than drew any passion, and Charles knew his father was already braced for more disappointment from his youngest son. So why even try? His social life was all that kept things exciting, and while he wasn’t the rogue that some believed him to be, he did enjoy a fun little chase.
Charles waved at a fly that dipped and buzzed at his face. A little chase never hurt anyone. Well, he didn’t think it did, although Jonathon seemed to believe Charles left a trail of broken hearts in his wake.
Abby’s frame was silhouetted in the clearing as the woods opened up to a rocky shoreline and the glistening waters of the Flambeau River. The blue sky haloed her hair and, as she turned, the tree line behind her made her pale skin look almost angelic.
Before Charles could react, Abby shoved a fly rod into his hand. Their fingers brushed and while she appeared completely unaffected, Charles couldn’t help the frown that tipped his brows into a V. She wasn’t supposed to affect him, he was supposed to affect her. But it appeared that if he was going to charm his way into her good graces he was going to have to work harder. Little Miss Fisherwoman was already flipping open her tin fly-box and eyeing up the flies with the tenacity of someone who wouldn’t be easily deterred from her duty.
“Well, Little Miss, let’s fish!” Charles didn’t bother to hide his grin as she leveled him with a well-placed glare of golden-brown eyes. For sure, she would be a spot of fun. But it was the shadow that flickered quickly in her eyes that gave Charles pause. A shadow that stilled his jovial game and cautioned his senses. He adjusted his grip on the fly rod. If he knew how to read a woman, and he believed he did, this one hid something. Something from everyone. Something she had no intention of sharing and he had every intention of finding out. Someone as pretty as Abby Nessling, with her man-trousers and billowing plaid shirt tucked into the waist, did not deserve to hide shadows in her eyes. She should be filled with laughter and joy and carefree spirit. Something he was—or tried to be. If he could only forget the life he left behind in Milwaukee, his father, and, if truth be told, memories that tormented him when nighttime fell and the world became quiet.
Fine then. Maybe he and Abby Nessling shared a hidden shadow of something, but for the next two weeks, maybe they could forget it. That’s what he was good at. Fun, frenzy, and forgetting. Because remembering was just too painful.
Chapter Two
The river is that way.” Charles Farrington III pointed toward the broad river, whose blue-green waters rolled and tripped over rocks in a tempestuous whirl of whitewater.
“I know.” Abby wasn’t going to try to explain anything to the fly-fishing novice. Their rods weren’t weighted enough to hook a bass or for certain, a muskellunge. Those larger fish made for exciting catches, but if she had to take this interloper into her world, she may as well manage a little enjoyment in the process. Which meant she would border the river and wind parallel to it until she found her stream that fed into the Flambeau’s waters and hid a special harvest of brook trout.
The rippling music of the stream met Abby’s ears, and she couldn’t help the slight smile that tilted her lips. She drew in a deep breath of peace as she ducked under a sweeping pine branch. It didn’t matter that mister rich boy followed in her steps. No. At this moment, she was in her place of solitude. Every vibrant forest color reminded her of her paint palette back at the cabin that she shared with her father. Shades of rich evergreen, delightful moss, and touches of river-blue met with the glossy tones of browns and yellows that dotted and swept across the body of the trout they were about to snag.
“So, about the river …”
Abby waved Charles Farrington III to silence. The stream cut its delightful path through the forest, tumbled over a small rocky ledge,
and wove around a corner where it would soon meet up with the river. She eyed the surface of the water, noting the undercut banks where the trout were sure to be lurking and watching for the water to be broken by the small vibration of a fly hitting its surface. Abby crouched by the water’s edge, her fly rod held firmly in her left hand, and studied the water. There wasn’t a hatch of flies this afternoon. She nodded. She knew what fly they would need. When she’d looked in her fly-box minutes earlier, she’d taken a guess. It was nice to know her instincts were right.
Charles Farrington III cleared his throat, and Abby stifled a retort, exchanging it for a sigh of long-suffering.
“Jonathon told me we’d be fishing the river.” The man wasn’t going to honor the golden wonder of silence, was he?
Abby straightened. She handed Charles Farrington III her fly rod and he reached for it to balance with his own. The tips of his fingers brushed hers and she darted a glance into his brown eyes. They sparked with life, like the forest around him, and it was all too apparent he hoped the physical touch would unnerve her.
Well, it didn’t. Really. Truly. It didn’t.
“My father is taking Mr. Strauss on the river today. I am taking you here.”
“Wither thou goest, I shall go.” His jaunty mockery of the Biblical passage from Ruth made Abby turn her attention to her fishing basket so she could hide the rolling of her eyes. The man wasn’t even that fantastic at charming. He was … foolish. Handsome, but utterly foolish.
Abby pulled out her tin fly-box and opened it, the hinges splitting the box into two deep halves with flies hooked into the material she’d padded both sides with. Wet flies lined the case. Hooks she tied herself with thread and feathers. A small bead butted up against the eye of the hook, with thread woven around the shank and around feathers to make the soft body of the fly. She’d tied a tiny bit of feather at the bend in the hook and once again along the shank so they would imitate wings. The brown of the feathers would turn dark once wet, and the line, if properly maneuvered through the waters, would float the imitation fly directly past the waiting trout.
A waft of cologne drifted into Abby’s senses. She was startled as she realized Charles Farrington III had nosed up behind her and was staring over her shoulder into her fly-box. The smell of him was rather intoxicating. Woody, citrusy, maybe even undertones of cardamom.
“Yes?” His dark eyebrow cocked quizzically, and Abby realized she’d been caught lingering on his face as she drifted away with the scent of his cologne.
Who wore cologne in the woods anyway?
“Give me the fly rod.”
“Say ‘please’?” His mouth titled upward in a smile.
Bother. He wasn’t supposed to get under her skin. She was made of thicker stuff than this.
“Never mind.” Abby snatched one of the rods he held in his grip, thankful to feel the familiar hexagonal shape of the pole. She spent the next few minutes preparing the line and tying the fly to it.
“You do know how to fly-fish, yes?” she asked as she adjusted the line with a turn of the circular reel.
Charles Farrington III crossed his arms over his chest in playful offense. “Most assuredly not.”
Abby didn’t try to hide her short sigh of exasperation. She pushed the rod into his hand and exchanged it for her rod which she propped against a tree. So much for fishing on her own. What rich dandy decided to travel by rail to the Northwoods to do something they had no inclination how to do?
“You’ll teach me.” His eyelid dropped in the fiftieth wink of the morning. He winked so often he was going to end up fishing with one eye closed!
“Do you have something in your eye?” Abby quipped as she held the fly in her fingers and smoothed back the feathers. The line swooped up to the rod Charles Farrington III held in strong, but sorely incapable hands.
He grinned, long dimples creasing both cheeks and emphasizing his square jaw. “I do. You.”
Abby cast him a withering glare that only prompted a broader smirk. He waggled his eyebrows, which in turn made the toothpick in his mouth dance a jig.
“Teach me, my dear, the ways of a woman and a fly rod.”
He wanted it to be all light and fluffy and silly, but Charles Farrington III was soon to find out that fly-fishing wasn’t the same as tossing a worm and hook into the water with a spinning reel and winding it in. It was finesse and strategy. It was serious and contemplative. It was … art. Something Charles Farrington III obviously knew nothing about.
By three o’clock in the afternoon, Charles found he’d stripped himself of his wool jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and spent the better part of the last few hours attempting to avoid snagging every blasted, godforsaken tree branch that surrounded him. The smug look on Abigail Nessling’s face did nothing to assuage his growing irritation. Jonathon and his fabulous idea of a woodland getaway. “All the rage,” he’d said. “Find oneself and one’s peace with nature.” Peace? Between the knotted fly line, hooking his hat with a brown, be-feathered fishing hook, and having absolutely no luck at all in garnering one smile from his feminine guide, Charles was ready to return to the cabin.
“Having fun?”
The bubble of humor in his pretty escort’s voice helped him muster up some wit for the challenge.
“Quite!” he bantered back, while he spun and unwrapped the long line from around his shoulders.
“Mmm, hmm.” Abby reached out and he willingly pushed the rod into her hands. Her eyes pierced him with the intense concentration of someone who took her sport very seriously. “I told you. Because we have all the trees around us, you can’t sweep the line backward, it will tangle.”
Charles watched Abby’s fluid motion as she flipped the rod and somehow, the long wad of line draped through the air and rested on the water. The fly drifted just below the surface as the current carried it forward.
Abby was biting her bottom lip. Charles found himself watching that rather than the line.
“Mr. Farrington?”
He blinked. She was piercing him again with those eyes. “My apologies.”
“You need to pay attention if you’ve any hope of fly-fishing.”
He didn’t have many hopes. Not really. But that was a thought he’d shove down like he always did. Hopes and dreams were flimsy creations. It was better to live in the moment until it passed by and left you searching for another momentary distraction.
“So you see where the line drapes from the tip of the rod and hits the water?”
“Yes.” Fine, he’d play along.
“Make that your anchor. Hold your hand so it’s about perpendicular to your mouth and then …” A flick of her wrist and twist of the rod and Abby had rolled the line over the stream and landed the fly back up the water, right along the edge of the shoreline. “Now, as the fly is carried down, you may need to pull the line in, just a tad. You don’t want too much slack. Pull with your fingers, don’t reel.”
She mumbled on until Charles became quite content to watch her. She probably didn’t even notice when he slouched against the base of the tree and finally, the afternoon’s slog drained away. She was rather entrancing to watch. Abby didn’t seem to care that he was hardly interested in fly-fishing, and instead, she engrossed herself in the study of the water.
Within a few minutes, her left hand gave a sharp pull to the line and her right yanked the rod up from the water.
“Fish on!” A smile broke over her face, something he’d been trying to coerce all day. Abby was an enigma. He could make almost any woman smile and simper and fan herself. But Abigail Nessling? No, she did that for a trout. Apparently, he needed to transform into a fish.
Charles scampered to his feet as Abby pulled in line, never bothering to drop her hand to the reel. A glistening trout flipped on the end of the line and Abby knelt on the shore, gliding her hand through the water until she grasped the trout gently.
A quick survey of the area, and Charles grabbed the fishing basket Abby had carried with the
m. He knelt beside her on the ground, her wispy blond hair escaping its braid and feather-brushing across his face. She ignored him as she carefully maneuvered the hook from the trout’s jaw.
“Look at him,” Abby breathed. Charles couldn’t. She had altered from a stiff, rigid female to a woman enraptured by what she perceived to be beauty. “Look!” she urged.
Charles dropped his gaze to the fish in her hand. Its underside was golden and cream, and its back dotted with brown, black, and orange spots. It had tiger-like eyes and a gaping jaw. Okay. It was—pretty. If a fish could be called that.
Abby lowered her hand and urged the trout back into the water. With a flip of its tail, it twisted and disappeared back into the riffle.
“Hey!” Charles drew back with a quizzical frown. “That’s my supper!”
Abby straightened and for the first time, cast him a brilliant smile encased with sugary-sweet mischief. “No, no, Charles Farrington the Third. That was my fish.” She pushed the rod into his hands. “If you want supper, you’ll need to catch your own.”
She pushed herself from the creek bank and sauntered over to the tree he’d been half-dozing against, making herself comfortable by its base. She gave him a small wave of her hand. “The fish are biting. Have a go!”
Oy, that saucy little self had been hiding inside of her all along. Charles grinned and tightened his hold on the rod. Suddenly, fly-fishing held a much greater appeal. If for no other reason than to show Abigail Nessling that she wasn’t the only one who was master of mischief.
Chapter Three
Campfire smoke drifted through the air and the fire crackled, making the cool, late summer night even more pleasant. Charles glanced across the clearing to the Nessling cabin. They were a fascinating pair, Abby and her father. Living in one cabin while renting out another to people like him and Jonathon. It had to be an adventurous life, if not lacking some privacy as they invited strangers into their beloved wilderness. Mr. Nessling was welcoming and very hospitable, but Abby, for certain, didn’t make much attempt to hide her disdain of wealthy vacationers such as himself and Jonathon.
Of Rags and Riches Romance Collection Page 43