“Treeston?” she pleaded again, and as if by magic the word “no” disappeared from his vocabulary.
A feather-soft breeze caressed Maddy’s cheeks as she sat atop the mound of grain sacks, her back to the stone wall of the ancient mill. For the first time in days, she had eaten her fill. The fricassée de poulet served by the inn had been creditable, though lacking that particular zest the proclaimed it the creation of a master chef. She had taken the innkeeper’s wife aside and suggested that in the future she use a white veal stock base and add a touch of thyme and a few juniper berries.
Later, she had bathed in the mill pond with the bar of soap Father Bertrand’s housekeeper had slipped into the knapsack. Two such luxuries had made all life seem a great deal more pleasant.
Now, the sky above her was a black velvet cloak on which some celestial hand had sewn a thousand brilliant diamonds, and the full moon perched at its apex bathed the landscape in a bright, silvery light. Stretching out her legs, she wriggled her bare toes and breathed in the elusive scent of the honeysuckle climbing the wall beside her. She could hear the creaking of the waterwheel far below her and a splashing sound she knew to be Tristan bathing in the mill pond.
Eyes closed, she imagined the clear, crystal water flowing over his strong limbs—limbs whose masculine beauty she felt certain must rival the statue of a young Spartan warrior she had once admired in a Lyon museum. It was a deliciously wicked thought that had her blushing hotly when a few minutes later he climbed the stairs to the platform.
“That was probably the coldest bath I’ve ever taken,” he grumbled, dropping onto the grain sack beside Maddy. Bracing his arms on his updrawn knees, he stared morosely at the dazzling moon. For some reason she couldn’t fathom, he had been against sleeping outdoors. He still was, from the scowl that darkened his face.
“You’ll soon warm up, as I did,” Maddy promised. “Isn’t it worth a few moments of discomfort to feel clean again?”
His answer was a noncommittal grunt.
Maddy tried again. “The breeze is so mild, my hair is already dry.” Her gaze strayed to his hair. Jet black and glistening, it curled damply against his strong neck, making him look more than ever the brigand she had likened him to when first she’d glimpsed him.
She smiled to herself, imagining how shocked her despised former chaperone would be to find her alone with this enigmatic Englishman in such a romantic setting—indeed, with any man in any setting. But the old virago would never again make her life a misery.
All at once, she felt like a bird that had escaped its cage to savor its first taste of freedom. Something deep inside her stirred to life and she found herself longing to try her wings in the great, intriguing world that had heretofore been denied her. A night sleeping under the stars was a beginning. It probably didn’t seem very exciting to a worldly fellow like Tristan; to her it was the most breathtaking of adventures.
Tristan watched the myriad emotions play across Maddy’s lovely face and found himself wondering what thoughts were making her mouth tilt in an entrancing smile, her eyes dance with mischief. “What are you thinking?” he asked, though he wasn’t certain he really wanted to know.
Bracing her hands at her sides, she tilted her head back to stare at the star-studded sky directly above her. “I am thinking there has never before been a night as glorious as this one. Nor will there ever be another. Everything about it is magical.”
She turned to face him, and the glow in her amber eyes put the moonlight to shame. “Stop it,” he ordered hoarsely. “Stop looking like that.”
Her eyes widened. “Like what?”
“Like a woman yearning to be kissed.”
Too late, he realized what an improper charge he’d made. He expected her to dress him down, at the very least deny it, as any woman with a proper sense of decorum would do. Instead, she merely studied him solemnly, as if pondering his statement. “I hadn’t thought of it, for I’ve no experience in such things,” she said gravely. “But now that you mention it…what could be more perfect than to experience my first kiss on this most perfect of nights.”
She leaned toward him and expectant look on her face which heated Tristan’s blood far more effectively than the warm evening breeze. He drew back, cursing himself for every kind of fool known to man for making the provocative statement that had whetted Maddy’s curiosity.
“The night may be perfect; the man is anything but,” he stated flatly. “I am the last man on earth with whom you should share your first kiss, Maddy.”
“Why?”
“Because I have done every despicable thing you’ve accused me of—and more. Hell and damnation, I have done things in the past six years that an innocent like you would not even be capable of imagining.”
“Including kissing, I presume.” The mischief was undeniable now, vying with the moonlight in her eyes. “I suspect you’ve become quite adept at that, which to my way of thinking would make you the ideal man to give a person her first kiss. Rather like establishing a standard of excellence one could use to judge all future kisses, n’est-ce pas?”
She slid closer to him until they were sitting side by side. The clean scent of her hair filled his nostrils and the touch of her hand on his arm made him feel as if he’d drunk a flagon of wine instead of the two paltry glasses with which he’d washed down his supper.
“You are playing with fire, lady,” he managed hoarsely, drawing away until his back pressed against the cool stone of the wall behind him.
Ignoring his warning, she eyed him curiously. “Am I supposed to close my eyes or leave them open when we kiss?”
“There are no hard and fast rules,” Tristan murmured, staring at her soft, full mouth as if mesmerized. How had he, until this minute, failed to notice the tantalizing fact that her lower lip was slightly fuller than the upper, a phenomenon which somehow made her mouth appear indescribably kissable?
He moistened his own lips with a swipe of his tongue. This was madness, he reminded himself. Maddy was slated to be his brother’s wife. If he so much as touched her, he would be betraying Garth—in truth, betraying everything he himself held sacred.
“The eyes are a matter of personal preference, then,” she said solemnly. “I think I shall close mine.” She did so and leaned toward him. Instinctively, Tristan caught her before she tumbled forward. A mistake. The instant he touched her he knew he was lost to all reason.
“Are you going to kiss me good night, Tristan?” she asked in a throaty voice, her eyes still tightly closed.
Tristan swallowed hard. “Yes, devil take it, I am. Though I suspect we may both live to regret it bitterly.” Still, he no longer had a choice. The woman was driving him mad. It was either kiss her or strangle her, and how would he explain her murder to Caleb Harcourt—much less Garth, who depended on him to deliver the bride who would save Winterhaven for him?
With a groan, he lowered his head and covered her lips with his.
The kiss was everything Maddy had imagined it would be…and more. Hungry. Demanding. More angry than tender, but with an underlying loneliness so acute, it shattered her own solitary heart into a million jagged fragments.
It was as if she had been waiting for this man and this moment all her life, and recognizing him, she responded with every fiber of her being. Coiling her arms around the strong column of his neck, she abandoned herself to the sheer joy of the moment and to the magic of this most wondrous night of her life.
Then suddenly it was over. With a harsh, indistinguishable sound deep in his throat, Tristan thrust her from him. Bereft of the security of his arms, she fell backward until she was lying flat on her back across the grin sack on which she’d been sitting. “Nom de Dieu,” she exclaimed staring up at him. “I had no idea a kiss would be so…so astonishing.”
He stared back, a stunned, almost haunted, look in his pale eyes. “Do not feel alone,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear his mind of some puzzling confusion. “The astonishment is as much mine as yours
.”
Like a man in a trance, he rose to his feet and grasping the massive sack of grain next to the one on which Maddy lay, he stood it on its side, then positioned another beside it, creating a barricade around her. Maddy raised herself on one elbow and peeked over the top. “What in heaven’s name are you doing?”
“Making certain necessary adjustments to our sleeping arrangements.” Groaning from the effort, Tristan braced the two sacks with a third. “As I recall, the practice is called bundling, a term the early American colonists gave to the method they devised to keep inquisitive young innocents like you from getting into the kind of trouble you are courting with those flirtatious ways of yours.”
“You think I have flirtatious ways?” Maddy asked, intrigued by the idea that he considered her a femme fatale.
His answer was merely another of his noncommittal grunts. He unrolled the carriage blanket and spread it over her. Then, pulling off his boots, he stretched on the opposite side of the barricade and disappeared from Maddy’s view.
“I have always felt a contempt for the Americans,” he muttered, she suspected as much to himself as her. “The few I’ve met appeared to be rather crude and unmannerly. I see now I have not given our former colonists the credit due them. While their backwoods customs may lack a certain refinement, they do give a fighting chance to some poor sod who’s being tempted beyond his limits by an impossible female.
Chapter Seven
Long after the moon had deserted the sky, Maddy lay awake lost in the wonder of the kiss she had shared with Tristan. Over and over, she relived the moment when his firm, warm lips had claimed hers with such hunger and passion she had found herself responding without thought or inhibition.
She tried to tell herself the experience had been so earthshattering simply because it was her first kiss. But she had never been good at lying, especially to herself. The plain truth was, the earth had trembled beneath her because the lips that had claimed hers had been Tristan’s.
He was obviously a worldly sophisticate who knew a great deal about kissing—and whatever else went on between a man and a woman. But his expertise was only a small part of the allure of this man; there was an inexplicable bond between them that transcended the physical. When he’d deepened the kiss with such unexpected intimacy, she’d felt as if their very souls had somehow touched each other.
He had warned her that they would both live to regret succumbing to the attraction they felt for each other. What a fool she’d been to ignore that warning. What a silly, childish fool to prattle on about “establishing a standard of excellence” for kissing. No wonder he had accused her of playing with fire.
Well, she’d live to pay the price for that bit of folly. For with that one brief, passionate caress, her eyes had been opened to the truth she had been trying so hard to ignore. She had been falling in love with this stubborn, bad-tempered Englishman from the very first moment she’d seen him.
And she couldn’t even say why—except that he was the only man whose every glance made her heart beat faster, whose every touch made her feel wondrously, gloriously alive.
She sighed. But of all the men in the world to whom she could give her heart, he was probably the one most likely to break it.
Unless…he had appeared almost as startled as she when he’d thrust her from him after that heart-stopping kiss; he had even felt honor-bound to erect a barricade between them for the balance of the night because she “tempted him beyond his limits.”
Maybe…just maybe he was not as jaded as he appeared. Maybe his heart was as vulnerable as hers.
She sighed again. And maybe indulging in that amazing flight of fancy was the most foolish thing of all.
The small heartfelt sighs emanating from the other side of the barricade told Tristan that Maddy was having as much difficulty falling asleep as he. Probably for the same reason.
That blasted kiss.
What had possessed him to do such a thing? And why should kissing Maddy make him feel as wonder-struck as the greenest bantling who’d just discovered girls were different from boys? He’d chalk it up to “forbidden fruit,” but that simply wouldn’t fadge. He’d plundered that orchard too often in the past and walked away unperturbed by the experience.
He could deny it no longer. He wanted the woman who would soon be his brother’s wife—wanted her passionately with every fiber of his being. And the wanting went much deeper than the mere physical attraction he’d felt for far more voluptuous women in the past.
It had something to do with her guileless honesty and her courage and the fact that she constantly surprised him by doing the very thing he least expected her to do. In truth, if he believed in such a thing, he might almost think he was falling in love with her. And from her passionate response to his kiss, he could only surmise she felt the same about him. He would wager his last groat that someone as honest as Maddy would be incapable of responding with such ardor unless her affections were seriously engaged.
Which was why he must never again make the mistake of kissing her, or indeed touching her in any way. There must be no more sleeping beneath the stars or in haylofts, no more sharing of attics or secrets. He would push the horses to their absolute limits from dawn to dusk until they reached Calais, and if he had to sell both the pistol that had been a gift from Lord Castlereagh and the old earl’s watch to do so, he would secure proper sleeping accommodations from now on.
Honor dictated that he keep his promises to Father Bertrand and to Garth, and return Maddy to her father as chaste as the day he’d found her.
With a sigh of relief that he had finally come to grips with the problem at hand, he silently slipped from his bed on the grain sacks, climbed down the ladder to the mill pond, and took his second icy bath of the evening.
Maddy woke at dawn, determined that moment forward she would show Tristan a mature and sober demeanor that would erase once and for all the image of foolish naïveté she had heretofore created. Long before the sun had slipped above the horizon, she lay shivering in the chill dawn, rehearsing what she would say to smooth over the embarrassment of facing him after their passionate embrace.
She could have saved herself the trouble. He gave her no opportunity to say anything whatsoever to him. In fact, he made such an obvious effort to keep her at a distance for the next three days, she could draw only one conclusion. He had taken her in complete disgust after—she blushed to even think if it—she had practically demanded he kiss her.
It was not enough that he remained unfailingly polite, but distant, during their daytime travels; he also made a point of securing them separate chambers at opposite ends of ramshackle coaching inns each night, despite his claim he had barely enough money to pay for their meals. It wasn’t until she innocently inquired the time of him that she learned he’d gone so far as to sell his ornate jeweled watch to pay for those accommodations.
She wanted to cry with vexation. Was the conceited lout so puffed up with his opinion of his own male charms he expected her to try to ravish him if he came close enough for her to get her hands on him? She couldn’t remember when she’d been so angry or humiliated.
By the morning of the fourth day she was so weary of his boring politeness she abandoned her vow of decorum and racked her brain to think of something she could do that would irritate him enough to make him resort to his usual surly ways.
“Like it or not, you will have to help me into the saddle,” she declared after they’d stopped to water the horses at a small, bubbling brook. “I am too stiff of joint from riding astride to mount by myself.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” he grumbled, turning his back on her. But she stood her ground, and grim of face, he finally relented. Cupping his hands to give her a toehold, he literally catapulted her upward—a move for which Maddy was totally unprepared. She missed the saddle and, clutching at it wildly, fell back into his arms.
“I told you I felt stiff and clumsy,” she said, laughing up at him.
Tristan wasn’
t laughing. For a long moment, he simply clasped her to his chest while his eyes darkened with some indefinable emotion. Maddy’s heart leapt in her breast. “Tristan?” she asked in a voice soft with wonder.
His brows, black as crows’ wings, drew together in a scowl. “Devil take it, Maddy, how many times must I warn you? Don’t make the mistake of pushing me too far. I am doing my best to act the gentleman where you’re concerned, but it doesn’t come naturally—and believe me, you’d not like the beast you’re so foolishly tempting.” With those amazing words, he set her on her feet and strode to his horse, leaving her to mount her own as best she could.
For the next hour or two, Maddy followed him in a daze, her senses reeling. She hadn’t misread his reaction to their kiss after all. He did feel the same magnetic attraction for her that she felt for him, but he was too honorable to declare himself while they were traveling alone and in such compromising circumstances.
Was he planning to court her once they reached London and he could do so properly? She shivered in anticipation. The thought of being courted by Tristan literally took her breath away.
With the bright spring sun beating down on their heads, they rode northward toward Paris through the lush vineyards of Bourgogne. Maddy scarcely noted the breathtaking beauty of the scenery around her. She was much too engrossed in her daydream of the moment when Tristan would, on bended knee, declare he had her father’s permission to ask for her hand in marriage.
She frowned. But how could a man recently retired from the profession of spying hope to support a wife? She studied the proud set of his head, the strong line of his back and shoulders as he sat his horse. She doubted a man like Tristan would allow his father-in-law to support him regardless of how wealthy that father-in-law might be.
Would his brother the earl, deed him one of the family estates once he declared his intention to wed? Of course. That was the solution. They appeared to share a deep affection despite the fact that Tristan was born on the wrong side of the blanket. A noble family such as his must own any number of small holdings in the English countryside where one could raise sheep—and Tristan had a penchant for sheep. She’d seen the gleam in his eyes whenever they’d passed a flock grazing in a meadow.
The Misguided Matchmaker Page 10