Did she actually believe that? What complete and utter nonsense. He searched her face and saw no hint of deviousness. In fact, she looked as panicked as he had ever seen her. “All right. I’ll look.”
She lowered her dress and put her back against a tree. He came close and leaned over her. He could feel her soft breath on his head, smell the morning dew on her neck, but could barely see the mark that had so upset her. If this was her idea of flirting he would banish her to her room for the rest of their quarantine.
“You are wrong, you know.” He turned his head to try to see the damn bug bite. “Men would line up to dance with you even if you had two noses.” He spoke the truth, if only to distract her.
He would lie about the mark, though. The bite lay in a spot easier felt than seen, at the curve where the soft roundness was shadowed by her cleavage. Touching her in such an intimate spot asked entirely too much of both of them. Mrs. Cantwell could confirm his diagnosis later. “It’s a bite from an insect, I am sure of it.”
Without saying a word Mia turned from him and slipped the dress over her head. Despite the fact that he could have helped her, she reached around and tied the ribbon at her neck with an ease most women could not match.
She faced him again, her cheeks flushed. “Why would a man dance with me even if I had two noses?”
“Men are attracted to you, like hummingbirds to a flower. You embrace every moment of life and think to make it dance to your tune. It is very appealing at a ball or in the park. But as Lord William learned, it is not nearly as appealing in the day-to-day stuff of life, when every hour must be styled to suit you. When no is the only word one hears.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I should have known better than to ask. With you even a compliment can be made into an insult.”
If she thought him unfeeling, so much the better. He would not undo almost two days of separation by making her smile. Better that she label him with every unsavory word she could think of than to know how much one guitar concert had altered his understanding of her.
“I will leave you now,” David announced. Without waiting for her answer he turned back.
“No.”
He relaxed, relieved that his life was back in balance.
“I want to know how you can tell the difference between a bug bite and a smallpox.”
David kept his place several yards away from her as he answered. “The surgeon told me that smallpox first appears as a rash. Your mark is distinctively a bite with a dot at the center. Completely different.” He’d almost convinced himself. “And the rash almost always comes after the fever and starts in the mouth, then moves to the face.”
“The rash is always the last symptom to show? You could not tell me that before?”
“Miss Castellano, you were not inclined to listen to anything I said. Do not pose me as a man looking to take advantage.” He calmed himself with a deep breath. “You begged me not to wait.”
“I suppose so.” She made a face, as though she had agreed just to appear civil when he knew she could not think of a way to use no in the sentence.
“Do not start sulking because I gave in to your hysteria.”
“I am not sulking.” She walked along the riverbank to a pool of water formed by a man-made stack of rock. “You cannot know what it is like to live with the fear of disfigurement and death.”
“You are not the only one who worries about such things. I woke up with a headache yesterday morning, and it took all of Novins’s skill to convince me I was not sick.”
She had just pulled the creel from the water; she dropped it in again and stood quickly, without her usual grace. “You have not had the vaccination?”
“I was in Mexico when the rest of the family had the inoculation. The disease is common in Mexico. I never took ill and supposed that I was immune. Now I’m not sure. I will have the vaccination as soon as I can arrange for it.”
“Now I must worry about you, too.”
To his surprise, she didn’t let loose a tirade over his lack of foresight. He wondered who else had a place on her list of worries.
She would worry about Elena, at least until her child came into the world. Janina. Not many. At least not many that he knew of. He should feel honored.
David watched her haul the creel out of the water again.
“I hope you like trout, my lord. There is plenty for dinner tonight. Even without Bruce.”
How nice, he thought with some surprise, that she did not harp on the point of their mutual fear. He held out his hand and she gave him the creel. It weighed more than he expected. She must have read his expression. “I threw back the smallest,” she said with some pride.
“How many did you catch?” he asked, astonished at her skill.
“About ten. I didn’t count.”
He laughed, which surprised her. “I don’t believe that, any more than you would believe I do not mind losing a boxing match.”
“Fifteen,” she whispered into his ear. She straightened quickly and went on in a rush, “But Bruce escaped for the second time.” She went ahead of him as they found the path from the river up to the house.
David moved automatically, wondering how one whispered number could undo hours of self-discipline. He watched the way the morning breeze picked at the strands of hair that had slipped from the knot she had fashioned at the back of her neck. Mia Castellano managed amazingly well without a maid, even to the point of lacing her own stays.
As he watched her climb the short, steep path to the lawn, David realized that she had an amazing suppleness. The way she had climbed up to the top of the carriage. Her ability to slip away from him.
Gabriel, the man of science, would call it double-jointed. David called it incredibly distracting, especially since it made him wonder what other ways she could bend and twist her body.
Add that to what he’d learned from observation. Despite her reputation as a chatterbox, David realized how little he knew about her. He’d learned more about her when he listened to her play the guitar than he had in conversation.
How interesting that someone so sociable kept her own counsel as thoroughly as he did. He never would have guessed that Mia Castellano could fish, for example, much less that she would like it.
“How did you learn angling?” he had to ask.
She stopped abruptly and he almost ran into her. He searched the grass for a rabbit hole or something else that might have given her pause.
“You asked me a question, Lord David.”
She seemed genuinely surprised. Or pleased. Her smile always left him feeling confused. “Yes. I want to know where you learned to fish.”
“You see? That is what you usually do. Command. You never ask.”
He closed his eyes and wished for a rabbit hole that he could step into, sprain his ankle if not break his leg, and completely forestall the approaching lecture.
“This is important, my lord. I told myself that the first time you asked me a question, the first time you truly wanted to know something about me, instead of relying on what you have heard or what you assume, I would forgive all your past bad manners.” She beamed at him as though he had given her the greatest gift and she returned the gesture.
If he had thought Mia only interested in buying elegant clothes, right down to an embroidered chemise, of buying hats she forgot to wear, or gloves she always left behind, he was wrong. She liked to fish, of all things, and seemed to find as much happiness alone by the river as she did in a crowded ballroom.
There was more to her than he had ever imagined. Shame on him for never being interested enough to ask her a question.
Before David could think of what to say, before he could think more than Mia Castellano is a riddle it would take a lifetime to solve, she started back across the lawn. He followed her. Damn times two, he did want to know how and why she learned to fish.
“I learned angling with a fly from my father.”
“I thought he died when you were stil
l a child.”
“He died when I was twelve. I began angling with a fly when I was eight, closer to nine.”
“But you’re so at home in the city, I would have thought you joking if I had not seen it with my own eyes.” Dressed in a white-on-white embroidered shift and stays with roses picked out in pink. Apparently that was another memory he would always have.
“Yes, but my father loved to fish and he took me with him when he went to the country. I do not handle boredom well, so he taught me how to cast a line. And he insisted that if I caught a fish I needed to know what to do with it.”
“This must have been before you became an expert at the many variations of the word no.” He was sorry the minute he looked at her. Her wounded eyes and the lack of a smile told him he’d offended her without even trying, and he felt the smaller for it.
“My father listened to my opinions and welcomed my insights,” she went on, with more stiffness in her voice. “He knew how to ask questions and he listened to the answers. That is a talent few men possess.”
If he had a woman’s sensibilities he could have taken that as an affront. “Your father sounds like an interesting man.”
“He was wonderful.” She walked briskly, putting some distance between them. David suspected her eyes were wet. A minute later she slowed, so he made the effort to catch up to her.
“When I saw the river from my bedroom window I knew it would have fish in it. Yesterday I found a superbly outfitted room for anglers. But there weren’t any boots small enough for my feet, and it is too warm to wear the covering that would have protected my dress.”
As they drew closer to the house, she moved away from the most direct route and into the shade of the trees. Stopping, she turned to look back down toward the water, now mostly hidden by the trees that grew along the bank, though he could hear as it cascaded over the boulders farther upstream.
“This is the English version of Eden, my lord. When you told me about stopping here, I wondered why the duke held onto a place not quite a day’s ride from Pennford.” She raised her head, admiring the canopy the trees made. “Now I know.” Resting her fishing rod against the tree, she sat on one of the oak benches, pulled off her shoes, stood up again, and walked into the grass. “I love this, the feel of grass on my bare feet. If we are waiting to sicken and die,” she continued, “this is the perfect place, beautiful and serene, but there are a hundred things I want to do before that happens.”
“I will make a list for you and put ‘walk in the grass’ at number one.”
She turned her head, looked at him over her shoulder, and grinned. “Yes, I have lists for everything. Several of them have you at the top.”
“I will not ask what the lists are, nor do I want to know, Miss Castellano.” He could guess easily enough.
“Lord David, would you please call me by my given name? Miss Castellano is such a mouthful, and if we only have a few days to live, why waste any of the time we do have on five syllables when you can manage to have my attention with two?”
“There is a certain wisdom in being formal.” David knew he sounded pompous, but alienating her was just what he should be doing, given the way his mind went to other things they could do if they “only had a few days to live.”
“Nonsense. We might die.” The drama in her voice was more exasperation than fear. She flopped down onto the grass and spread her arms out, still looking more like a creature of nature than an untried girl, both begging for ravishment. “Wisdom is the least important virtue right now.”
“Not if we survive, as I have no doubt we will.” He went to her and held out his hand. “Now stop trying to tempt me. Let us go back to the house. Do you know Walton’s The Compleat Angler?”
Though she accepted his hand she barely used it as she rose to her feet, winding up next to him. She put her arms around his neck, leaning back a little. Her mouth was not very close but her body was pressed against his.
“Yes, I have my father’s copy.” She looked him in the eye and dared him to keep talking.
“My father insists that his father hosted Walton here.” He raised his hands to pull hers from around his neck. She took them and held tight as she leaned fully away from him and then closer again as in a dance. “The story is that he slept in the room that is your dressing room.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. I will look for a copy on the bookshelves and read it aloud.”
“Or use it as lyrics to ‘God Save the King.’”
“Have you heard me?”
“Twice. Your words to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ and ‘Barbara Allen.’ Why do you do that?”
“Another question, Lord David. That now makes three in one encounter. I do believe you deserve a reward.” She pressed her lips to his without warning. That is if he did not consider her antics the last three minutes a warning.
The touch lasted the barest second. She would have let him go and resumed walking if he had not pulled her back into his arms. “Miss Castellano, if that was a kiss, you definitely need a tutor.”
Her kiss on the corner of his mouth was chaste. His kiss was not. It would show her from the first that kissing was about more than reward. At the beginning it was like a testing of the waters before a deeper plunge into the surf. If that first touch felt right, and this did, he would plunge in, risking everything for the thrill of riding the wave of want and pleasure, taking her with him. His mouth wed hers, taking every bit of feeling she offered and gave, both at the same time.
This kiss opened them to a place where nothing existed but the other, what they were and what they could be. Complete. Complete in a way that words only hinted at, in a way touch proved inadequate. David Pennistan lost himself in that kiss, forgot everything and everyone else.
Her soft lips pulled him into this most intimate of worlds where everything was a jumble of clarity and confusion, heaven and hell, magic and mayhem, pleasure and anguish. His body longed for this union, so perfect, so much a completion that it was worth the risk of disaster. To forget the future, the past, all the fears and even all the hopes was the greatest gift he had ever been given. And just beyond that was the urging to give up control completely and take what the moment offered.
When he fell back into the world they’d left behind, he was speechless. So was she, but her eyes sparkled and her lush lips showed an “O” of amazement that he understood completely.
If he had hoped to overwhelm her, he had made a grave error. He was the one overwhelmed. What was William Bendasbrook thinking to give this woman up?
Chapter Seventeen
STAY CALM, MIA ORDERED HERSELF. Sit down on the bench, gracefully, so that he does not see your legs shaking. Smile, just a little. Or at least try to look as though you’ve been kissed like that before.
Lord David cleared his throat. “Why do you wind the clocks at midnight?”
He’d asked her another question. He must be as nonplussed as she was. Now she could smile. “A fourth question, my lord? They are in danger of becoming commonplace, hardly worthy of a reward.”
Mia stood up, pleased with her clever reply. Her legs were no longer unsteady, her heart had settled to a comfortable rhythm, proving to herself, at least, that she was in control of the situation.
Testing herself further, Mia tried walking. When her feet obeyed her still-stupefied brain, she left the path and went back onto the lawn, a far less private spot.
Lord David followed her and then went back to pick up the fishing rod and bag she had left on the bench. He handed them to her, his expression guarded, which made her feel even better.
It was the best sort of kiss, she thought, filled with invitation and promise and very possibly more than Lord David intended to give. A thrill ran through her. “I wind the clocks at midnight because my bedchamber clock stopped ticking late the first night we were here, since Mrs. Cantwell had not had the time to wind it and I never thought of it. When I went to check the time on the great case clock in the front hall, I realized that non
e of the clocks were being wound.”
Mia drew a breath and slowed the rush of words to a more conversational pace. “So I decided that winding the clocks was something I could do to help.” She brushed at a bee that came too close and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Mrs. Cantwell told me that I must wind the clocks at the same hour lest they become over-wound. Mr. Cantwell is a stickler for the correct time.”
They went up the last rise and the back of the house came into view.
“So I do that small task close to midnight, just before I climb into my bed.” In case you want to know where to find me.
The scent of roses greeted her as they moved through the small gardens. They were close to the terrace that ran the length of the rear of the house.
Full-blown roses were her favorite flower in the world. They were so generous with their scent and color. She did not know which she liked better, the spicy sweet aroma or the deep burgundy color. What would one be without the other? she wondered.
Despite the distraction of the roses, Mia knew the silence between them was strained. Lord David was not going to say anything unless she prompted him. Well, she excelled at making conversation in difficult circumstances.
“And you, Lord David, how have you been spending your hours?” This was more than difficult, Mia thought. Would she ever ask or hear another question without thinking of that kiss?
It was not so much that she wanted to still be kissing him. Well, yes, it was. Then, at least, the first kiss would be put in its proper place instead of lurking next to every thought she had.
“I have, most likely, lost half of my financial backing for the mill I hope to build. So I have been making a list of likely prospects and composing letters in hopes of forming another partnership with someone who is willing to provide half the funding. And I’ve been trying to make sense of the plans for the mill and the housing for the workers.”
“Housing for the workers? That’s unusual.”
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