“What a foolishly self-important way to view such a tragedy.” Melton waved a hand in a vaguely apologetic gesture. “But I have no wish to speak ill of the dead. I read of your uncle’s passing several years ago.”
David nodded, still reeling from the discovery he might have been mistaken about his neighbors’ reaction to the suicide. “Yes, he died in Yorkshire, managing one of my properties there.”
“He didn’t much care for these parts, did he? He left almost the instant you reached your majority.”
“He went at my request, actually—as a favor to me, to see to the Yorkshire estate.” A feeling of disquiet crept over David as he spoke the half-truths. He still questioned whether he’d done the right thing, sending his uncle away so precipitously, but at the time it had seemed his only choice. “The house had been much neglected.”
“Ah. And Lady Frederick? Is she still living?”
David’s disquiet was full-blown unease now. “She remarried almost two years ago—a French naval officer. She lives on the Continent now.”
“Does she? Well, I hope she’s happy. I never really knew her, I admit, but on those rare occasions when I saw her out and about, she always struck me as something of a lost soul. It can’t have been easy, being married to a stickler like your uncle—er, no offense, Deal.”
David nodded and pretended to brush a speck of dust from his coat, determined that the tension welling up inside him shouldn’t show. “She was well when I last had report of her.”
He heard footsteps, and looked up as the two ladies reappeared at the top of the stairs. Rosalie no sooner glanced down at him than her eyes widened.
On swift feet, she hurried down the stairs to his side. “My, what beautiful children you have, Mr. Melton!” she said brightly, taking David’s arm. “And on what a memorable evening we’ve come, for it appears your elder son has just lost his first tooth.” To David’s surprise, she quickly and surreptitiously gave his biceps a squeeze.
Melton laughed. “Has it finally come out, then? He’s been wiggling and worrying that tooth for the better part of a week. Nothing would do but that he had to show every Tom, Dick and Harry how it was only hanging on by a thread.”
Mrs. Melton beamed, her smile lending her rather plain face a gentle beauty. “He’s thrilled to have lost it at last. We made a ceremony out of throwing it into the fire so no witches could get it.”
“Those old superstitions...” Melton shook his head. “I remember my grandmother had me do the same thing when I was a boy—though she was of a generation that might really have believed in the witches.”
“He has a charming gap now in his smile,” Rosalie said. “He can even stick his tongue through it, at least part of the way. His sister is quite envious.”
Melton laughed. “I can believe that. Ellie is always determined to be the center of attention.”
They went on chattering around David, and gradually he relaxed. He had the impression that when Rosalie reappeared she’d sensed the strain he was under, and she was intentionally giving him the breathing room he needed to regain his equilibrium. Your face changes when you talk about it, she’d told him once, when he’d referred obliquely to his past. He hoped the change hadn’t been as obvious to the Meltons.
After another minute or two of desultory small talk, the four of them went in to Radcombe Priory’s cozy dining room and sat down to eat. It was a good meal even if it was clear the Meltons hadn’t really been expecting them. Mr. and Mrs. Melton proved to be warm and friendly people, clearly a loving couple as well as doting parents.
Rosalie recounted several stories of her travels, winning laughs from the Meltons with a tale of her trip to Egypt and her encounter there with a particularly irritable camel. She finished with her recent trip to America, touching briefly on her father’s death and the role it had played in her engagement. David added his own version of the story, offering an observation or two on America.
“The people there think us exceedingly stuffy and outmoded,” he said in answer to a question from Mrs. Melton, “while they pride themselves on their own forward thinking and modernity. The sports writer for the newspaper I owned in New York told me he could never understand why England prizes Chaucer and Shakespeare when he could make himself understood twice as well as they could, and neither poet had anything useful to say about boxing.”
Melton smiled. “I’ve met a few Americans, and they seemed a friendly lot.”
“They’re certainly that. They strike up acquaintanceships at the drop of a hat, and think of the whole world as one small brotherhood. One coachman asked me with the greatest familiarity if my accent meant I was an Englishman, and when I confirmed I was, he exclaimed, ‘Why, then, you must know young Joe, the boy who mucks out the stables. He comes from England, too!’”
Melton chuckled.
“I was recommended to a greengrocer and a dancing master for the same reason. I began to think I should deny being an Englishman, and speak Italian everywhere I went.”
“Deal is a great student of language,” Rosalie said.
“Not a great student.”
Mrs. Melton smiled at his disavowal. “But it’s one of your interests, Lord Deal?”
“It is. Did you know the Americans have retained a number of meanings Shakespeare would have recognized, but which we no longer use? Mad can mean angry there, for example, and homely means ill-favored.”
Rosalie beamed. “There, do you see? I told you he was a great student of language. He knows a good deal of Shakespeare, too, whereas most of my knowledge in that quarter comes from the puns my father loved to make.”
“Your father loved puns about Shakespeare?” Melton asked.
Rosalie broke into an impish grin. “My father loved puns about everything. For example, who is the greatest chicken killer in Shakespeare’s plays?”
Mrs. Melton obliged her. “Who?”
“Hamlet’s uncle,” Rosalie said with a twinkle, “because he did murder most fowl.”
Oh, gad. David groaned along with the Meltons—a chorus so resounding and unanimous, they ended up laughing in spite of themselves.
For the next five minutes, all four of them vied to outdo the late Lord Whitwell with their store of execrable puns. By the end of the contest, Mrs. Melton was wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, and both David and the Meltons were forced to acknowledge that Rosalie and her father deserved the palm.
Or perhaps just Rosalie, given the mischievous glint with which she’d delivered every line. Now that David thought about it, he’d first begun to fall in love with her on the Neptune’s Fancy when she’d told him that dreadful pun about the goat and the buttonhole. It wasn’t the pun itself, though as a lover of language, he supposed he was susceptible to even the most unfunny wordplay. No, it was more the optimism lurking behind her joke, her blind faith in its silly humor and his own willingness to laugh at it, despite his thirty-one years and his often chilly manner. Someday when she was forty-five and other women her age were swanning about in turbans and an air of world-weary sophistication, she would still be laughing her musical laugh, still finding the absurdity and the goodwill in the people around her.
Too soon, the meal drew to a close. As a footman cleared away the plates, Mrs. Melton offered David a shy smile. “I must confess something to you, Lord Deal. I’ve been much mistaken in my opinion of your character. The few times we crossed paths before today, I was quite awed by you. In fact, I thought you terribly haughty. I’d heard talk to that effect from several of our neighbors, too. But you’re so different from what I expected, so much friendlier and more amusing, I wish we’d invited you here years ago.”
Rosalie nodded. “I thought the same thing when I was just coming to know him, Mrs. Melton—that he was nothing like my first impression of him, and quite different from his reputation.”
“While we’re making our confessions,” Melton said, “I fear I owe you both an apology. When I received your note canceling our original dinner plans
, I didn’t believe Lady Deal was truly unwell. I thought it merely a convenient fiction to justify canceling the engagement.” He begged her indulgence with a lift of one shoulder. “Forgive me, Lady Deal, but we had met only that morning, and you seemed hale enough at the time.”
“But then we spoke with Mr. Cousins after church on Sunday,” Mrs. Melton said. “Imagine our embarrassment when he informed us Lady Deal was very ill indeed.”
David looked down into his wineglass. “Yet you seemed surprised to see us when we arrived tonight.”
“Yes.” Melton’s tone was penitent. “I assumed that even if the excuse you’d sent was real, you’d still be reluctant to come. I see now how uncharitable that was of me.”
David felt deeply gratified—and a bit ashamed of himself, too, remembering the poor grace with which he’d penned his regrets on the night Rosalie fell ill. He had been reluctant, and he’d done a poor job of hiding it.
Melton smiled at him. “We mustn’t be such strangers in the future. I’m glad Lady Deal forced the issue.”
“Yes, let’s hope this is only the first of many such dinners together,” his wife said.
David looked from one to the other. He was used to thinking of the Meltons as part of them, the gentry around Lyningthorp who’d judged him unworthy of their society, turning their backs on him when he was only a boy. He’d told himself they were tiresome and narrow-minded and he wouldn’t care for their company anyway. He’d almost made himself believe it. Now, it felt strange to be accepted and possibly even—he was almost afraid to think the word—to be liked.
Riding home in the coach with Rosalie half an hour later, David wondered if it was only the amount of wine he’d drunk that accounted for his strange feeling of elation, as if the twilight sky were twice as starry as usual and nothing from his past could touch him any longer.
Beside him, Rosalie looked bright-eyed and lovely. He smiled at her. “I believe the Meltons took quite a liking to you, my dear.”
“And to you, too, David.”
Impulsively, he took her hand in his. She glanced down at their laced fingers, then raised her eyes to his, her lips half-parted in surprise.
It was only as he took in her look of astonishment that David realized it was the first time since the night he’d proposed that he’d reached out to her with anything resembling affection.
* * *
Though midsummer was fast approaching, bringing with it the longest day of the year, darkness had already fallen by the time their carriage pulled up before the front steps of Lyningthorp. Having so recently been ill, Rosalie was tired enough that she had to hide a yawn. “I believe I’ll go right up to bed, if you don’t mind.”
David gave her a languid smile as a footman opened the carriage door. “I’ll go up with you.”
Rosalie’s heart skipped. What did that mean? Was it an overture, or was she reading too much into the remark?
Inside, David paused only to collect a branch of candles from the console table in the hall before accompanying her to the stairs. They made their way up, then along the corridor to her bedroom. He stopped with her outside her door.
She turned to face him. He was standing very close, only inches from her, holding the candles aloft in his left hand. Her pulse beat faster. How handsome he looked in his evening clothes! The amber light of the candles flickered in his dark eyes, waking an answering flicker of excitement within her. She held her breath. Would he kiss her good-night?
Instead he raised his right hand—a bit unsteadily, it appeared—and caressed the base of her throat. “You have a very pretty supraclavicular fossa.” At her questioning look, he said, “It’s Latin for ‘the hollow above the little key.’ Anatomically speaking, this—” he paused to sweep his fingers lightly over her collarbone, “—is your little key.”
She laughed, though his touch made her shiver. “I do believe you’re tipsy, David.”
“A trifle bosky,” he agreed with a lopsided smile. “Melton keeps a fine cellar.”
His hand lingered against her skin. She gazed up at him expectantly. His fingertips were warm, and there was none of the tenseness about him she was used to seeing.
He leaned in and kissed her. She was still not entirely sure how much experience he had with women—what should she make of a man as mercurial as David, or a wedding night like the one they’d passed?—but he kissed her as if he knew every secret every woman had ever kept. The kiss deepened, and his hand slid possessively from the base of her throat and up her neck, a slow caress that ended with his palm cradling the back of her head.
She opened her mouth, and his tongue stroked hers. She detected no doubt, no hesitation, no uncertainty—just expertise coupled with a strong dose of desire. She tasted it on him, tasted the sensuality and the sexual attraction, more intoxicating than Robert Melton’s claret. It was only half an embrace, since David’s left hand still held the candelabrum aloft, but it made her heart race and a rush of heat warm her from the tips of her breasts to the place between her legs.
Had she really been tired, riding home in the carriage? She’d never felt so awake before. She clung hungrily to his shoulders, her breasts pressed tight against the broad expanse of his chest, her hips tilting against his.
David’s eyes were closed. They went on kissing, and he grew hard against her, a reaction her aunt Whitwell had explained in detail on the eve of her wedding. In a flash of belated understanding, Rosalie realized why he’d pushed her away that time they’d kissed aboard the Neptune’s Fancy. An iron length strained against the black wool of his tight-fitting pantaloons, as insistent as it was undeniable. First on the ship, now here—and not even in her bedroom, but in the semi-public space of the corridor. He did want her, he must want her.
With a surge of excitement, she broke off their kiss to gulp for air. He nuzzled her neck, dropping his hand from where he’d buried it in her hair to the low neckline of her evening gown. She almost breathed his name—oh, David—but she was afraid to break the spell. With practiced assurance, he slipped his hand into the top of her gown, pressing a kiss to her throat at the same time. The thin silk of her bodice rustled as his fingers teased her nipple into a taut peak. A jolt of desire lanced through her, raw and hot.
She was so ready for this. She wanted to moan, to open the door of her bedroom and pull him inside, to tear off his elegant and no doubt staggeringly expensive suit of evening clothes and drop them in a wrinkled heap on the floor. She wanted to get a good look at his body, naked and hard with need. She wanted to run her hands over every inch of his bare flesh, his skin and his muscles and that rigid, demanding part of him. More than that, she wanted the thrill and the closeness of having him inside her.
Carefully, cautiously, she reached for the doorknob. The slight inclination of her body led David to follow suit, and the branch of candles he was holding tilted a fraction—just enough to allow hot wax to drip from the candles and onto his hand.
He straightened with a quick hiss of indrawn breath.
It was over. Whatever charm had been at work, whatever trance David had fallen into, he snapped out of it with startling suddenness. Instantly, his expression changed from one of flushed desire to a look of dismay.
“Come inside,” she said quickly. “You can put down the candles and we’ll—”
He took a step back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...you’ve been ill.”
“No, don’t say that. I’m perfectly fine!” Oh, how could she plunge so quickly from leaping excitement to flat despair? Everything had felt so good, so right. He’d actually wanted her. “It was wonderful, David, really.”
“I had too much wine with dinner tonight.” He shook his head. “I’m drunk.”
“No you’re not. Not really. And even if you were, it wouldn’t matter when we both want—”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Still holding the candles, he started for his room without so much as a backward glance, leaving Rosalie standing alone at her door
in the dark.
Chapter Fourteen
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green...
But out, alack! He was but one hour mine...
— William Shakespeare
Sipping her breakfast chocolate as David drank his tea, Rosalie gazed out the morning room window at the sunlit garden. She was trying her best not to think about the night before, not to dwell on the kiss outside her bedroom or the lowering frustration of having spent another night alone. And David, as far as she could tell, was doing the same. Neither of them had said a word about it, but he kept stealing glances at her over the rim of his teacup, glances that appeared simultaneously hunted and apologetic.
Reminding herself that she’d pledged to let him set the pace in their marriage, she suppressed a sigh and focused instead on the garden outside. Warblers, thrushes and greenfinches sang in a chorus from the trees, and butterflies flitted from one spring bloom to the next. During her years of travel, she’d missed the gentle warmth and green pathways of England. Whether in the shimmering heat of Egypt, the sweltering tropical air of the West Indies or the biting cold of Canada, she’d remembered with longing her mother’s rose arbor at Beckford Park. It remained the touchstone by which Rosalie judged all other places. And today, the view from the morning room window not only met that standard, it exceeded it.
David set his cup down in its saucer. “Something tells me you’re itching to be outdoors. I’ve already finished the day’s business with my steward. How are you feeling—strong enough now for us to take a walk together?”
Was he trying to atone for the night before? She dragged her eyes from the view to smile in his direction. “Definitely strong enough. I’m completely recovered, I promise, and I’d love to go walking with you.”
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