All this had raced through his mind as she let her arms fall away from his neck to take a step back only to find she had nowhere to go, with the oak behind her and him standing so close. He glimpsed the confusion and hurt in her blue eyes as she lowered her lashes and her chin, to say in a small voice, as her throat and cheeks stained with an embarrassing blush,
“The-the picnic… They must be wondering where I—”
“Lisa, your—”
“There is no need for you to-to say anything. I was the one who presumed—”
“—your kiss was perfectly lovely.”
Her gaze flashed up to find him smiling down at her. It was a gentle smile which softened his whole face and made her heart give the oddest leap. Her brow cleared, and so did the hurt. She smiled hesitantly. “Oh? It-it was?”
He nodded. “I’m the clumsy clod; I hesitated.”
“Why?”
He huffed and grinned and then shook his head.
Her smile faded. “Should I not have asked? Is it impolite to do so? Forgive me for not knowing the rules, or how precisely I should act, because I only arrived yesterday, and still have much to learn about—”
“Never second guess yourself. Like your kiss, you are perfectly lovely. I do not want you to be anything but yourself.” He caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Miss Crisp, presently of Gerrard Street, previously of the Blacklands School for young ladies, where I presume you became friends with Teddy…?”
When she gave a start and stated the obvious, he grinned.
“Yes. We are best friends.”
“Naturally.”
“But how did you—”
“—know? It did not take a mind the size of the moon to put the pieces together once you told me you went to a boarding school for young ladies in Chelsea. Only one boarding school—Blacklands—is appropriate. And only one girl who went to Blacklands who is about your age—which I have now calculated to be eighteen or nineteen—is marrying in the country this week—Theodora Cavendish, the irrepressible Teddy.”
“I am so relieved you know all about Blacklands, and my friendship with Teddy, because although my mind is not even the size of a-a balloon, least of all the moon, I did wonder if the Jack Teddy was marrying was the same Jack who is your best friend. You see, I do believe in fate, even if you think me a-a witch.”
“You’ve bewitched me!”
“Have I?”
Again he laughed, this time at the wonderment in her voice. He chucked her under the chin. “How could you think otherwise? Perhaps now you will tell me your age?”
She wrinkled her little nose. “Surely I do not need to, because as a sorcerer with a mind not quite the size of the moon, you already possess that information.”
He inclined his head at her reasoning. “Very well then. Indulge my curiosity and set my mind at rest that you are nineteen, or closer to that age than you are eighteen.”
“I do look younger than my years—
“What?!” He gave a theatrical start, hand to his chest, and pretended to be stricken. “Don’t tell me! You’re five and thirty!?”
Lisa gave an unladylike chortle and hung her head.
“This is not a laughing matter, Miss Crisp! You are a witch and have put me under your spell if you are in truth a middle-aged woman—”
“—with warty hands and a warty nose!” She became serious. “Teddy is nineteen and Jack must be your age—”
“I am eight-and-thirty. I just look younger than my years, too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If you were a sorcerer and you’d told me you were a hundred and thirty-eight, I would’ve believed you. Eight-and-thirty? I’m not convinced. Jack is five-and-twenty, so you must be too.”
“Would it have bothered you had I been eight-and-thirty?” he asked with a frown, and then he shook his head and put up his hand. “You do not have to answer. I am being ridiculous.”
“Because that was the age your father was when he fell in love and married your mother?”
He did not ask how she knew this, presuming Teddy had told her, but he did nod, and for some reason even this simple acknowledgment made his throat constrict with emotion. “He—he died too early, and she—she was too young…”
She saw him hard swallow, and sensed speaking about his parents, his father in particular, was not easy for him.
“What does age—what does any impediment—matter, when two people fall in love? All that matters is that they are together.”
He stared at her hard and she was taken aback by the fierceness in his expression.
“A selfish expectation without thought to the consequences.”
“They could not have predicted the future when they fell in love. All they had was the expectation—selfish or otherwise, though I do not think it selfish to surrender to fate—that their future happiness was dependant on each other.”
He lost his harshness and pinched her chin. “There is that word again,” he said with a sigh. “Fate.” He peered at her. “So you are nineteen?”
When she rolled her eyes at his persistence he laughed out loud. She gave a practiced sigh of her own.
“If it will stop you pressing me further on the matter, then I will tell you I am indeed nineteen, but I am older than my years. Dr. Warner says I am an old head on young shoulders.”
“Dear me,” he drawled, taking a step back and allowing his gaze to sweep over her from boots to coiled braids. “If that is what an old head looks like, I am giddy with anticipation as to what awaits me below your lovely shoulders—Mon Dieu. I said that out loud,” he muttered in French, when she clapped a hand to her mouth in astonishment to hear him vocalize his yearning. He bit his lip as his face fired red. For the first time in his life he felt as gauche as a drunken sailor. “Forgive me—I should not have—”
“—said the truth?”
“—been an uncouth fiend.”
“Is it uncouth to express your desire for me, to me? For surely I may also do so, to you?” She smiled, adding shyly, “I think you are perfectly lovely—in every way.”
“You do have an old head on those shoulders,” he quipped, appeased that he had not shocked her. “I’ve never been called lovely before, and I accept your compliment because it is said with sincerity and without artifice.”
“You did tell me to be myself,” she teased. “So you will have to accept my compliments, too.” She tilted her head and asked thoughtfully, “You will be yourself with me—always—won’t you?”
He met her gaze openly. He knew her qualifier referred to his bouts of falling sickness. He also knew that as soon as he had taken her by the hand and led her behind the oak there was no going back, so he did not hesitate in his reply.
“I will do my best. It will take time, for I am by nature aloof. And I do my utmost to keep my seizures from my family, and have done so for years. To not do so—with you, will require adjustment. Curiously, I find I have no desire to hide anything from you.”
She took a step closer again, and rested her palms lightly to the front of his linen waistcoat. She was certain there were tears behind her eyes.
“Thank you. Thank you for your honesty, and for trusting me. That makes me very happy…”
He lifted her chin with the crook of one finger and stared into her blue eyes rimmed with tears. “You, Lisa Crisp, make me happy. Are those happy tears…?”
She nodded and smiled tremulously. “So why—why did you hesitate to kiss me?”
He leaned in and his breath tingled on her lips as he murmured, “Because I wanted my kiss to be perfect.”
“Perfect?” she echoed softly. “With such a kissable mouth, how could it not be?”
“Kissable? Is it?” he muttered, taking her face gently between his hands and lowering his mouth to hers. “Then let us see if I can live up to your expectation…”
IF THEY WERE aware, it was not of time or place, but only of each other. They remained sheltered and unseen by the ancient oak’s wide trunk
, bodies pressed together, Lisa gathered up in Henri-Antoine’s embrace, she with her arms once more about his neck. And having enjoyed their first tentative kiss, tenderness and hesitancy gave way to satisfying desire. The couple yielded to a fervent longing that had simmered since his first visit to Gerrard Street, and nothing and no one was going to stop them savoring the moment. And when he gently opened his mouth on hers and she followed his lead, an unfamiliar spike of pleasure shot through to her core that was so strong she could only equate it with pain. She had never experienced anything like it, and thought she might faint.
He felt her shudder against him and had she not still been in the moment, and enjoying this wonderfully exploratory kiss as much as he, he would have broken off at once, thinking he may have taken this their first kiss one step too far. Or perhaps she had become aware that they were now not alone, that his fine fellow let him know that while he understood there would be no relief for him here, under this oak, he still lived, proud and strong, and this despite a woeful performance at Burke’s, where he had failed to show the slightest interest in the exotic beauties offered him. And Henri-Antoine had seriously questioned if there were something wrong with him.
It was no one’s fault but his own. Sheer obstinacy had made him go to Burke’s after the unscheduled visit to purchase the rosewood writing box. How he thought he could indulge in satisfying his carnal appetite when his thoughts had been conquered by a girl in a plain linen gown with ink-stained fingers, he put down to intransigent pride. He made it through the door of the bath house, was offered the pick of the evening’s beauties and was halfway through undressing when his thoughts wandered to the engraving of her initials to the silver stoppers of the inkwells; he couldn’t wait to give her his gift, hoping she would be delighted with it. That was that. He lost interest in Burke’s, in satisfying or being satisfied by a bevy of beautiful whores, however skilled. He threw on his clothes and strode out of the establishment, startling his shadows, who were settling in for what they thought was a long night, and scrambling after him as he walked off down the street to clear his head. To add insult to injured pride, he woke the very next morning, having had his dreams invaded by Miss Lisa Crisp, with his fine fellow in all his sizeable glory letting him know the problem did not lie with him.
Kissing this most delectable creature in his arms was the first step of many until she was his, body and soul. He had never met anyone like her, and was certain he never would again. For in the space of a few weeks she had managed to annoy, madden, bother, delight, charm, fascinate, and finally invade his every waking thought. It was time for him to wrest control, or he would go mad, and he had the perfect solution, one that would suit them both.
“IF IT WERE my choice, I would stay with you under this oak until the stars appeared,” he told her, leaning his forehead against hers and smiling into her eyes. “But for a little while longer, until Jack and Teddy are wed, we must bow to the dictates of others. After that, our time will be our own.”
“Will it?” she asked sluggishly, forcing herself out of the daze of the most wonderful feeling she had ever experienced. She was sure her lips were swollen. They certainly tingled. All of her tingled.
“It will,” he assured her. “I’ve given your situation—”
“Situation?”
“—living in that house with those people, a great deal of thought. You won’t mind giving that up will you?”
“Giving it up? What?” she asked, finally fully coming out of a delicious haze. She leaned against the tree, hands in the middle of her back and took a deep breath. She mentally shook her brain to try and make sense of what he was telling her. “I—I don’t understand.”
“Helping in the dispensary. Being an amanuensis for the poor. You won’t mind not doing that anymore.”
“Why would I give it up? Yes, I would mind.”
“I see…”
“I don’t think you do. Helping in the dispensary gives me purpose. Without it I have none. My education at Blacklands, if I am honest, was excellent for a girl who hoped to become the wife and helpmate of a merchant, or a banker, or a-a diplomat. Or if my cousins had permitted me to do so, take up a post as governess. But fluency in the French and Italian languages is good for nothing when I am nothing—”
“Never say that,” he cut in coldly. “If you want to continue on with such projects then I will arrange it, but you will have to do so in a supervisory capacity, not in the day-to-day activities of a dispensary.”
“Oh? Could I do that?”
“Certainly. Dispensaries with patients who need the services of a scribe are yet to be identified. After my—our visit to Warner’s dispensary, the benefits of the sick poor having access to an amanuensis became evident. Warner sets great store on the power of the mind to aid in patient recovery. If the ill feel better within themselves, they are more likely to respond to treatment and heal that much the quicker.”
“I agree. The sick poor can barely afford to eat, and they certainly can’t pay for medical care, so how can they engage a scribe? But a letter home to a loved one, to family, and in their own words, does make them feel better. I have seen it time and again. It is a small service, but it means so much to them.”
“Warner would not have thought it possible, or made his observations about the benefits of the power of the mind to help in the healing process, if not for you. And he readily admitted it at dinner.”
“He did?”
“He did. How could he not? He is dedicated to his vocation, and an excellent observationist.”
“You give the sick poor a good deal of your thought, too.”
“That surprises you. Because I am a nobleman?”
“I am not prejudiced. A selfish disregard for others is not the preserve of your class,” she said with a cheeky smile, which cleared his brow in an instant. “My cousins are entirely self-absorbed. Minette married Dr. Warner, who has dedicated his life to the sick poor and their diseases, in spite of his chosen profession. He is wealthy and much respected, and she wanted a comfortable life.”
“I do not condemn her for that. But I do for her spiteful behavior towards you.”
“She is the nicer of my two cousins. She does try to temper her jealous spite. Henriette does not.” She shook her thoughts free of her cousins, not wanting them to spoil her time in this magical place, and so said, “You can arrange for these scribes to be paid—”
“Through my—through the Fournier Foundation.”
“And I could assist you—the foundation—with this endeavor?”
“Yes. There is much to be done and a great number of projects I—the trustees have under consideration which they wish to fund. I thought you might like to become involved…?”
“And if I am to no longer assist in Dr. Warner’s dispensary, how and where would I become involved in your—in the foundation’s charitable works?”
“From Bath.”
Lisa stood tall, stunned. “Bath? Why Bath?”
“I have a small estate on the outskirts of the town. A quaint Queen Anne house set in parkland. There is a stream at the bottom of the garden, and it is surrounded by woodland, and has several hectares of farming land attached to it, which is tenanted.”
“It sounds delightful, but why would I need to go to Bath?”
He met her gaze openly and said flatly, “You could not remain in London. I won’t have you subjected to gossip. That’s not how I want you to live—”
“—to live?”
“—as my mistress.”
And there it was, out in the open between them. Honesty showed her a future. What else had she expected from him? Marriage? Perhaps, for a fleeting second, she had hoped he might ask her to marry him. But she was level-headed enough to know that outcome was impossible. Still, to hear him say it. To have him ask her to be his wife would have proven the depth of his feelings for her. Then again, in good conscience, she would have had to refuse him, and that would not have come easy, for her or for him.
Paramount, she wanted to be with him, and if that meant being his mistress and living in a quaint Queen Anne House on the outskirts of Bath, then so be it. Her only worry was how to break the news to Teddy, and if, after Teddy was given this news, would she speak to her ever again? She did not doubt that Jack and Henri-Antoine would remain best friends, but could Lady Cavendish, niece of a duke, be friends with the mistress of her husband’s best friend? The thought of losing Teddy when she had just found her again brought the tears back to her eyes. She quickly sniffed them away and tried to smile. This was not the time to think of Teddy, that dilemma could wait for another day, possibly after Teddy had married. She would not spoil the wedding celebrations or Teddy and Jack’s big day with news of her imminent fall from grace. No doubt Henri-Antoine was expecting an answer to his offer, so she put a halt to her ruminations and looked up at him, and was startled.
The blood had gone from his face. He was chalk white. She wondered if he was experiencing the onset of a convulsion. But he seemed to be in control, too in control. His jaw was clamped shut and his dark eyes regarded her with an unblinking stare. It was as if he was forcing himself to remain calm when he was anything but. In fact, he looked terrified. A flash of insight provided her with the answer. He was petrified of what her answer would be, that she might refuse his offer… He did genuinely care for her, and deeply. It was writ large in his features. She impetuously kissed his cheek.
Satyr’s Son: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Family Saga Book 5) Page 24