“Not particularly, given that goats don’t carry fleas.”
Well, that was an exciting exchange. Bea was just standing there, thinking about how hairy the goat’s ears were, when the beast suddenly turned its head and clamped its yellowing teeth on the sleeve of her spencer. Luckily it was belled, in the Russian style, and he didn’t manage to chomp her arm, although that was undoubtedly his intention.
“Help!” she shrieked, tugging at her spencer. The goat rolled its eyes at her and bared its teeth but didn’t let go of her sleeve.
Instead, he began to back up, and a second later Bea found herself plastered against an extremely wet fence, desperately trying to pull her sleeve away from the monster’s mouth as it tried to back into the field.
“Do something!” she bellowed at Fairfax-Lacy. She was shocked to see that he was trying to conceal the fact that he was laughing. Quite overcome by laughter, in fact.
“You bloody beast!”
“Me or the animal?”
“Either! Get—this—animal—now!”
“At your service!” He hopped over the fence and approached the billy goat. But for all the fact that Fairfax-Lacy had been on the very best of terms with the animal a moment before, it wasn’t very loyal. As soon as Fairfax-Lacy got close, the goat’s rear leg shot out, caught him on the hip, and tossed him into a mud puddle.
Bea was trying to get her left arm out of her spencer. It was difficult trying to squirm out of the garment while hanging onto a fencepost. But even with such pressing business at hand, she stopped to have a laugh at Fairfax-Lacy’s expense.
He shot her a level look and got up. He was plastered with mud from his shoulders to his knees. Even his hair was flecked with brown.
Bea was laughing so hard that her stomach hurt. “What sort of mud is it?” she called out, breaking into a fresh storm of giggles.
“The kind women slap on their faces to improve their complexions,” he growled over his shoulder. “May I bring you a handful?” This time he managed to avoid the goat’s kick, but he couldn’t get close enough to grab her spencer. Every time he approached the animal, it bared its ugly yellow teeth and kicked at him again.
Finally Fairfax-Lacy turned back to her. “Take it off.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Bea cried, all laughter disappearing from her voice.
“He’s eaten the sleeve already.”
“Bloody hell!”
“You swear far too much,” the Puritan said.
“I swear just as much as I wish to,” Bea retorted, starting to unbutton. The goat hadn’t given an inch; it just stood there chewing on her sleeve as if he was making a supper of it.
“You’re going to have to help me,” she finally said sourly. “I can’t unbutton the rest without letting go of the fencepost. And if I do that he’ll undoubtedly drag me straight over the fence.” She eyed Fairfax-Lacy. “Not that I want you anywhere near me. Does that mud smell as potent as it looks?”
“Yes,” he said, sauntering over to her.
He was the most infuriating man. This was literally—literally!—the first look he’d given her that acknowledged her as a woman. In fact, it was as if he were seeing her for the first time. He didn’t look Elizabethan at all. He looked…
Bea’s stomach took a funny little hop, and she felt a wave of unaccountable shyness. So she kept her eyes down as he unbuttoned the rest of her spencer. It was all very romantic, what with the odoriferousness of his person and the grinding sound of a goat munching her extravagantly expensive garment.
Once it was unbuttoned, she managed to squirm the rest of the way out of her left sleeve, and then quickly shed the right. One could have sworn that the goat had been waiting for that moment. The very second her body was free of the spencer he took a bigger bite and then bared his teeth in a smile.
Bea felt a wave of anger. “Go get him!” she ordered the Puritan.
He laughed. He was still looking at her as if she were a person, rather than an annoying insect, but Bea didn’t let that distract her.
“Then I shall do so myself,” she said, unlatching the gate and pushing it open. There was a ghastly squishing noise as her boot sank into brown muck. Bea ignored it.
He closed the gate behind her and leaned on it with a huge grin on his face. She thought about sticking her tongue out at him and rethought it. She was twenty-three, after all.
“Goat,” she said, in the low, threatening tone she had perfected on her four smaller sisters. “Goat, give me that garment.”
The goat stopped chewing for a second and looked at her, and Bea knew she had him.
She walked over, ignoring the Puritan’s shouts. Apparently Fairfax-Lacy had realized she was serious and seemed perturbed that she might get injured.
“Don’t even think about kicking me,” she told the goat. “I’ll tie your ears in a bow and you’ll look so stupid that no lady goat will ever look at you again.”
He stopped chewing. Bea took another step and then held out her hand. “Drop that coat!” she said sharply.
The goat just stared at her, so she used the meanest tone she had, the one she reserved for little sisters who were caught painting their cheeks with her Liquid Bloom of Roses. “Drop it!”
He did, naturally.
Bea cast a triumphant look over her shoulder and bent to pick up her coat. Fairfax-Lacy was tramping across the field after her, no doubt impressed by her magnetic effect on animals.
Time has a way of softening memories. Yes, her meanest tone had been successful. But how could she have forgotten that her wicked little sisters often found retribution?
The kick landed squarely on her bottom and actually picked her off her feet. She landed with a tremendous splash, just at the feet of Mr. Stephen Fairfax-Lacy.
“Ow!”
At least he didn’t laugh at her. He squatted next to her, and his blue eyes were so compassionate that they made her feel a little teary. Or perhaps that was due to the throbbing in her bottom.
“You’ve still got your spencer,” he said reassuringly.
Bea looked down at her hand, and sure enough, she was clutching a muddy, chewed-up garment. The goat may have got his revenge, but she’d kept his supper. She started to giggle.
A smile was biting at the corners of the Puritan’s mouth too. A splatter of warm rain fell on Bea’s cheeks, the kind that falls through sunshine. Water slid behind her ears and pattered on the leaves of a little birch. Bea licked her lips. Then, as suddenly as it started, the shower stopped.
“I didn’t realize how much you treasure your clothing,” he said, touching her cheek. For a moment Bea didn’t know what he was doing, and then she realized he was wiping mud from her face.
Without even thinking, she leaned against the Puritan and just let laughter pour out of her. She howled with laughter, the way she used to, back when she and her sisters would lark around in the nursery. The way she did when the world was bright and fresh and new.
She laughed so hard that she almost cried, so she stopped.
He wasn’t laughing with her. Damned if the Puritan didn’t have the sweetest eyes in the whole world. He scooped her off the ground and then strode over to the birch and sat down, back against its spindly trunk. Bea found it very interesting that when he sat down he didn’t put her on the grass, but on his lap.
“You have triumphed,” he told her. Sunlight filtered through the birch leaves in a curiously pale, watery sort of way. It made his eyes look dark blue, an azure bottom-of-the-sea type of blue.
She raised an eyebrow. Actually, now that she thought of it, all the color she’d put into her eyebrows and lashes had probably made its way down her cheek. Oh well, he likely thought it was just mud.
“A goat conqueror.”
“One of my many skills,” she said, feeling a little uncomfortable.
“I just want to suggest that you rest on your laurels,” he said, and his eyes had a touch of amusement that made Bea feel almost…almost weak. She
never felt weak. So she leaned against him and thought about how good that felt. Except she wasn’t quite following the conversation.
“What do you mean?” she finally asked.
There was a definite current of laughter in his voice. “Your bonnet.”
Bea shrieked and clapped a hand to her head, only just realizing that she had felt rain falling on her head as well.
“There.” He pointed to the right. The damned goat was chewing up her very best hat. The green plume hung drunkenly from his mouth, and he seemed to be grinning at her.
Bea started up with a shriek of rage.
“I think not!” The Puritan had arms like steel. He didn’t pay a bit of attention to her wiggling, just picked her up and turned her around. When she looked up at his face, she suddenly stopped protesting.
He didn’t kiss like a Puritan. Or an old man either.
He kissed like a hungry man. Bea’s first sensation was triumph. So the Puritan had pretended that he didn’t notice her charms. Ha! That was all an act. He was just…he was just like…but then somehow, insidiously, she lost her train of thought.
He was kissing her so sweetly, as if she were the merest babe in arms. He didn’t even seem to wish to push his tongue into her mouth. Instead he rubbed his lips against hers, danced on her mouth, his hands cupping her head so tenderly that she almost shivered. She quite liked this.
Oh, she felt his tongue. It sung on her lips, patient and tasting like raspberries. Without thinking, her own tongue tangled with his for a second. Then she realized what she was doing and clamped her mouth shut. There was nothing she hated more than a man pushing his great tongue where it didn’t belong.
But he didn’t. His lips drifted across her face and pressed her eyes shut, and then closed back on her lips with a ravenous hunger that made her soften, ache deep inside.
He probably thinks I’m a virgin, Bea thought in a foggy sort of way.
His mouth was leaving little trails of fire. He was nibbling her ear, and she was tingling all over. In fact, she wanted—she wanted him to try again. Come back, she coaxed silently, turning her face toward his lips. Try to kiss me, really kiss me. But he didn’t. Instead, his tongue curled around the delicate whorls of her ear, and Bea made a hoarse sound in her throat. He answered it by nipping her earlobe, which sent another twinge deep between her legs.
He tugged her hair and she obediently tipped her face back, eyes closed, and allowed him to taste her throat, all the time begging silently that he return, return, kiss her again…But he seemed to be feasting on her throat. She opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment he apparently decided he had tormented her enough, and his mouth closed over hers.
She could no more fight that masculine strength than she could rise to her feet. He didn’t coax this time; he took, and she gave. And it wasn’t like all the other times, when she’d tolerated a moment or two of this kind of kissing. The Puritan’s kiss was dark and sweet and savage all at once. It sent quivers through her legs and made her strain to be closer. His hands moved down her back, assured, possessive. In a moment he would bring them around to her front, and her breasts were aching for…
That was the thought that woke Bea. She hadn’t been thinking of grappling in the field when she’d dressed in the morning. These particular breasts weren’t meant to withstand a man’s hand. There was more cotton than flesh. She tore her mouth away, gasping, and stared at him. She didn’t even think about giving him a seductive glance. She was too stunned.
“I like you when you’re like this,” he said, and there was that sweetness to his eyes again. He reached out and rubbed a splatter of mud from her cheek. “You look rain-washed and very young. Also rather startled. It seemed to me that you’ve been inviting kisses. Was I wrong?”
“No,” she said, trying hard to think what to say next. All her practiced seductive lines seemed to have fled from her head.
“Alas,” he said, even more gently, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I can hardly offer marriage to a woman half my age. So I’m afraid that I shall have to leave your kisses, sweet though they are, to some younger man.”
Bea’s mouth almost fell open. Marriage? Didn’t he know who she was? “I don’t want—” she began, but her voice was hoarse. She stopped. “As it happens, I am not interested in marriage either,” she said quite sedately. “I find that I am, however, very interested in you.” She twisted forward and kissed his lips, a promise of pleasure. And she was absolutely honest about that. With him, there would be no boundaries.
But it was he who pulled back. She had been so sure he would lunge at her that she’d smiled—but the smile faded.
He was a Puritan. His eyes had gone cold, dark, condemning. “I thought you played the lusty trollop for fun.”
She raised her chin. “Actually, no,” she said, and she was very pleased to find her tone utterly calm and with just a hint of sarcasm. “I play myself.”
“Yourself? Do you even know who you are, under all that face paint?”
“I assure you that I do.”
“You play a part you needn’t,” he said, eyes fixed on hers. “You are young and beautiful, Beatrix. You should marry and have children.”
“I think not.”
“Why?”
“You simply want to make me like everyone else,” she said sharply. “I like wearing macquillage. I would rather not look like myself, as you put it. And I find it incalculably difficult to imagine myself sitting by the fire wearing a lace cap and chattering about my brood of children.”
“I think yourself is beautiful. All your paints have washed away at the moment. You never needed them.”
“I didn’t say I needed them. I enjoy them,” she retorted, and then added, deliberately, “just as I occasionally enjoy the company of a man in my bedchamber.”
For a moment they just looked at each other, Puritan to trollop. “Am I to understand that you are not interested in taking a mistress?” she asked, meeting his eyes. She was no child to be whipped by his condemnation.
“Actually, I am,” he said. “But I have little interest in one so…practiced.”
Bea got to her feet, shaking out her skirts. Then she bent over and picked up her mangled spencer, shaking it out and folding it over her arm, taking a moment to make absolutely certain that her face wouldn’t reveal even for a second what she felt.
“I have often noticed that men of your years seem to overprize naiveté,” she replied calmly.
He showed no reaction, but her quip was so untrue that she gained no joy from saying it. He wasn’t old. Suddenly, she decided to be honest. Looking him in the eye, she said, “That was cruel, and quite shabby, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy. I would not have expected it of you.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded and began to turn toward the gate. After all, she’d had much worse things said to her, mostly by women, but then there was her dear father. So when he caught her arm, she turned toward him with a little smile that was almost genuine.
“Don’t you think we should take our bedraggled selves home?”
There was real anguish in his eyes. “I feel like the worst sort of bastard. Kissing you in a field and then insulting you.”
At that, she grinned. “I gather you wish I were an innocent, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy. But I am not. I truly enjoyed that kiss.” The smile she gave him was as wicked and lazy as any she’d ever bestowed on a man. “And I would very much have enjoyed your company in my bedchamber as well. But I have never forced myself on a man. I fully understand that you are looking for a far more respectable mistress.” Helene was an altogether perfect alternative.
At that moment, Bea made up her mind. Helene would never be able to lure the Puritan on her own. She, Beatrix, would have to help, if only to prove that she didn’t hold grudges, even when rejected. She would give him to Helene as a present.
She turned and made her way across the field, and when the goat rolled his wicked eyes and snapped his lips over a Pomona green satin rib
bon, all that remained of her bonnet, she just smiled at him.
Which startled the animal so much that he galloped off to the other end of the field, leaving her hat behind.
8
The Sewing Circle
To Esme’s great relief, Mrs. Cable swept into her morning parlor on the very strike of ten o’clock. Esme had been putting crooked stitches into a sheet for at least five, perhaps even ten, minutes and hadn’t got further than two hands’ lengths. She hastily bundled the sheet to the side to greet her guest.
“My goodness, Lady Rawlings!” Mrs. Cable said. “How very becoming that cap looks on you! You are verily an illustration of the good book of Timothy, which says that women should adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety rather than gold and pearls.”
Esme touched her head self-consciously. It was the very first time that she had ever worn a cap, and she felt like a fool. Like one of those Renaissance fools, with bells hanging off their caps. It felt like rank hypocrisy, as if wearing a trifling bit of lace on top of one’s head would make up for the fact that two days ago she’d reveled in indecencies with her gardener. One could only imagine what would happen if her guest knew the truth!
Esme pushed away that thought and offered Mrs. Cable some tea.
“I would be grateful,” Mrs. Cable said, plumping herself onto the settee next to Esme, and showing no inclination whatsoever to pick up an unhemmed piece of cotton. “For a body must have sustenance, and that’s a fact!”
“I quite agree,” Esme said, pouring tea into a cup and ruthlessly repressing visions of other kinds of bodily sustenance, types of which she doubted Mrs. Cable would approve quite so heartily.
Mrs. Cable sipped and raised her eyebrows. “She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.”
Esme was not someone with a facility in biblical verses. Oddly enough, contact with Mrs. Cable seemed to be increasing her irritation rather than her piety. “Indeed?”
“Proverbs,” Mrs. Cable said briskly. “This is India tea, is it not? An expense, a dear expense, but quite delicious. I have brought with me six sheets, which I managed to hem in my spare time this week.”