“I do believe that I am considered elusive by London matrons,” Rafe agreed amiably. “And I can’t say that I have the faintest wish to change that circumstance.”
The coach rumbled to a halt. “Here we are,” he said, tucking his flagon into his inside coat pocket. “Let us arise and be cultivated.” The irony in his voice was as pointed as the north wind.
“For that,” Annabel said with a giggle, “I shall demand that Miss Pythian-Adams tell us everything she knows of the Roman Empire!”
The ruins were located in the midst of a pasture that had been cut for hay. Mr. Jessop, the farmer who owned the land, ushered them through the gate himself, pointing into the distance at a grassy mound.
“The ruins lie off that direction,” he said. He cast a dubious look at Lady Clarice and Miss Pythian-Adams, both of whom were wearing exquisite little slippers. “The hay is drying nicely, so it won’t run to mud. But I don’t know as what it will do to your shoes, misses.”
Tess’s kid boots were old and far from ladylike, made as they were to last, but even so, the hay was terribly prickly on one’s ankles. Mr. Jessop strode ahead with Rafe, waving his hands as he talked about his old father who had the land before him and “them holes in the ground” and “them Romans” and “them Londoners.” A breeze kept stealing his voice and blowing it across the pasture, so Tess only heard snatches of his diatribe against “them Londoners,” which seemed to encompass a historical society that wished to dig his field. “’Tis my field,” Mr. Jessop said over and over again, with perfect logic.
Somewhat to Tess’s annoyance, Miss Pythian-Adams was steering clear of her fiancé and her future mother-in-law, and had chosen instead to walk at Tess’s side. Tess would have liked to have a consolatory talk with Imogen—she had noticed that Miss Pythian-Adams had ankles that weren’t as neat as they might have been, and she was anxious to point out that salient fact—but she had no chance. The woman stuck to her like glue.
Finally, they reached the edge of the blanket of drying hay. From here the grass grew an emerald, deep green dotted with Queen Anne’s lace. A willow grew at the very edge, its trunk bent sideways in such a way that it threw deep shadows on the grass.
Lady Clarice immediately ordered the footmen to place out the blankets and the nuncheon baskets under the willow. “I shall have to rest,” she announced. “In fact, this may be as much of the ruins as I am able to see, given the tenuous nature of my strength. I am simply not used to walking about in the extreme heat. I can have no doubt that the Scots are different from English ladies in this; I am quite certain that you all will be able to tramp about the field to your heart’s content. After all, there are so many more fields in Scotland, are there not?”
“I believe that England has the larger population of farmers,” the Earl of Mayne observed, filling the rather chilly silence that followed Lady Clarice’s announcement.
“Ah, but you are no farmer!” she cried gaily. “Lord Mayne, I insist, I positively insist that you stay with me while the others plod about the fields to their hearts’ content.”
Mayne had just taken Tess’s arm, and he let it go with a very flattering show of reluctance.
“What a shame,” Miss Pythian-Adams said sympathetically to her future mother-in-law. “But you must, of course, rest.” And before Tess quite knew what had happened, Miss Pythian-Adams had grabbed Tess’s arm and was dragging her off toward the ruins like a fish on an angler’s line.
The rest of the party began straggling after them, but since Miss Pythian-Adams sped through the grass at top speed, she and Tess soon found themselves in the middle of a series of irregular little walls and sunken chambers. Miss Pythian-Adams peered at the tumbling stone walls with appreciative noises. She even took out a small sketchbook from her reticule and noted down something or other. Tess stared into the sky instead. Two starlings were circling through the sunlight, weaving and dancing—
“They’re mating,” Miss Pythian-Adams said, following her gaze.
Tess blinked. Of course, she knew what mating meant, but—
“I do apologize if that disconcerted you,” Miss Pythian-Adams says, “but I thought as you were from Scotland, I shouldn’t have to obfuscate. I greatly prefer clarity in conversation to social niceties.”
“No, indeed,” Tess said weakly. There was something in Miss Pythian-Adams’s direct gaze that made it clear that she quite liked the idea of being shocking. The starlings wheeled their way off across the pasture, looking half-drunk with the pleasure of flying. Or something.
The heart of the ruins appeared to be nothing more than a few sunken places and what looked like an ancient set of stone steps leading down a little hill. Miss Pythian-Adams’s eyes shone with enthusiasm as they clambered over bits of collapsed walls.
Finally, they stumbled on a little pit, all lined with mossy green and rather pretty-looking, to Tess’s mind. She and Annabel would have loved to play house there when they were younger.
“An intact chamber,” Miss Pythian-Adams gasped, staring down into the little room.
“Could it be a dining room?” Tess said, rather hoping that Miss Pythian-Adams hadn’t noticed the fact that Imogen had claimed Maitland’s arm in order to clamber over the walls surrounding the ruin.
“I think it is more likely to be a bath,” Miss Pythian-Adams replied, beginning to climb down a little rockslide in one corner of the chamber.
“Oh, please,” Tess said, “must we?”
But it seemed that they must, so Tess followed her down the bit of tumbled rock. Miss Pythian-Adams’s beautiful pale blue gloves were quite dingy from holding on to rocks; Tess’s black ones were holding up admirably.
“Yes, it is a bath!” Miss Pythian-Adams said triumphantly, a moment later. “You do know that the Romans piped hot water into their baths, don’t you? That must be an aqueduct, to the side.”
“Aqueduct?” Tess repeated.
“From Latin, aquaeductus,” Miss Pythian-Adams said. “Meaning a conduit through which the Romans brought water. A pipe, to us.”
“Where did the water come from?” Tess asked, walking over the flagstones that lined the bottom of the chamber to peer into the little hole.
“They heated the pipes in the kitchens, I believe.”
“How odd it is to be standing in someone’s bathroom,” Tess said, looking up. The walls of the chamber were only some five or six feet high, and yet all that could be seen was a patch of deep blue sky, and a few great chestnut leaves drifting down, sailing over the ruins and swooping down into the bathroom. They looked a bit like starlings, mating leaves, one could call them.
“It would be far odder if the Romans were still here,” Miss Pythian-Adams said. “After all, given its size, it may well have been a steam room. They used to sit about naked and enjoy each other’s company.”
Tess looked over at her companion. Miss Pythian-Adams was wearing five or six layers of clothing, including a bonnet to keep the slightest bit of sun from her face, gloves, kid boots…She was the picture of a proper English lady, and yet here she was, talking of mating sparrows and naked Romans.
“Are all English ladies like you?” Tess asked.
“Have I shocked you? I do apologize.”
“Not at all,” Tess said. She felt like sighing. Lord Maitland’s betrothed was so very appealing, with her copper-colored curls and intense curiosity. Poor Imogen.
“So is your sister quite desperately in love with Lord Maitland?” Miss Pythian-Adams said, out of the blue.
“I beg your pardon?” Tess was so shocked that she positively gaped at her companion.
“I was merely wondering if Miss Imogen is quite desperately in love with Draven,” she repeated.
“That is most improbable,” Tess said, with as much dignity as she could gather.
“I am in agreement,” Miss Pythian-Adams said, nodding. “And yet it would be premature to judge merely from the nature of Draven’s character that no one could ever fall in love with him. They
do say that there is someone for everyone.”
Tess’s mouth fell open once more, and she shut it quickly.
“Haven’t you heard the same, Miss Essex?”
“I agree that one cannot disregard the possibility,” Tess said cautiously. It was shocking to discover that she would quite like Miss Pythian-Adams in normal circumstances although naturally she couldn’t do so.
Miss Pythian-Adams glanced up at the oiled blue sky, then walked closer to Tess. “If you will forgive my inquisitiveness, would it be overly optimistic on my part to nurture the hope that your sister might relieve me of my future spouse?”
Tess bit her lip. “Am I to suppose that you…”
“I would find it a consummation devoutly to be wished,” Miss Pythian-Adams said briskly. “Hamlet, Act Four.”
“Oh dear,” Tess said.
Up close, Miss Pythian-Adams was even more beautiful than Tess had thought. But her eyes were verging on desperate. “You see, Miss Essex, I have done my best to repel my fiancé. I have learned reams of Shakespeare by heart and recited it to Lord Maitland ad infinitum: I insisted that he listen to me recite the whole of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII—”
“Really?” Tess asked.
“Indeed. And I can only gather that you haven’t read that particular play, Miss Essex, or you would express a stronger astonishment. Believe me, I was near to tears with the tedium of it, but yon fiancé of mine simply yawned a few times.”
Miss Pythian-Adams looked the very picture of the sweet romantic heroine of any number of gothic novels. Except she didn’t speak like one. “Am I to be married to that illiterate and quick-tempered oaf, or is there any chance that your sister would prefer the duty herself?”
“But if you don’t wish to marry Lord Maitland,” Tess said, carefully sidestepping the issue of Imogen’s passionate desire to tie herself to that same illiterate oaf, “why on earth don’t you simply break off your engagement? My understanding is that a young lady can end an engagement without reproof.”
Miss Pythian-Adams had a crooked little smile. “Not when the future groom’s mother holds the mortgage on one’s father’s estate.”
“But I thought you were an heiress!” Tess cried.
“I am. I stand to inherit a bequest from my grandmother upon my marriage, but since the world is designed as it is, that inheritance will benefit my husband, not my father. Unfortunately, Lady Clarice has the upper hand.”
“Goodness.”
“I thought that if I rained culture down on Lord Maitland, he would break off the engagement. My family could claim the mortgage back as a settlement in lieu of a breach-of-marriage contract, and all would be well. But unfortunately even the most ignoble and conceited expressions of culture that I drum up to bore the son appear to enthrall his mother.”
“Hello!” a voice called down to them. Mr. Felton was standing at the edge of the room, flanked by their guardian and Lady Clarice herself.
Miss Pythian-Adams gave Tess a meaningful glance. “Watch,” she said, hardly moving her lips. Then she threw open her arms. “Welcome, Friends, Romans, Countrymen!”
“Ah,” Mr. Felton said dryly. “Julius Caesar.”
Lady Clarice turned faintly pink with excitement. “You always know precisely the right thing to say, Miss Pythian-Adams!” she cried down at them. “I feel more intelligent just listening to you. Shall we come down? Is there anything of interest, of cultural interest, down there in that little pit? A vase, perhaps?”
“I’m afraid not,” Miss Pythian-Adams replied, beginning to clamber up the tumbled rock. Mr. Felton immediately descended to help her to a higher elevation. As soon as he deposited Miss Pythian-Adams on the grass, he returned to the room, presumably to give Tess the same help.
Tess suddenly felt as if the little chamber had shrunk. Felton seemed to fill the space entirely, his broad shoulders almost brushing hers as he bent to examine the hole for piped water that Miss Pythian-Adams had discovered.
“I would surmise this is a bath,” he remarked.
“We reached the same conclusion,” Tess said, wondering if she should clamber back up the rocks. The others had moved away, and she could hear their voices echoing around the ruins. But…she stayed.
He was prowling around the small room, poking at protruding rocks with his polished mahogany cane. Tess felt, quite irrationally, as if there wasn’t quite enough air to breathe in that small chamber. How in the world had a group of Romans sat around without their clothing, in such a confined space?
Why, if he were unclothed…
“Miss Pythian-Adams thinks that this may have been a steam room,” she said, as much to push away the foolish images leaping to her mind as anything.
“Indeed,” he said noncommittally. “I suppose she may well be right. One might imagine that this stone piece here was designed for a person to lie upon.”
They both stared for a moment at a stone ledge along the side of the room, quite covered with mossy green.
Color leaped into Tess’s cheeks at the thought. “We must join the others,” she said, picking up her skirts, preparatory to scrambling up the rockslide.
Mr. Felton had a faint smile on his face. “I didn’t mean to alarm you, Miss Essex.”
How she disliked men who always faced the world with a noncommittal expression! One might even prefer Lord Maitland’s sulky little pouts to Felton’s lack of expression. “I am not alarmed,” Tess said, nevertheless backing up. He was such a large man. He was walking toward her, and there was something about that smile…
“Because I can only imagine,” he said, stopping just before her, “that Scottish lasses react precisely the same as English young ladies to a mere suggestion of the bedchamber.”
He clearly intended to fluster her. So apparently behind that sardonic face was the wish to unnerve young women. How charming.
“Oh, not in the least,” she snapped. “I adore historical sites. One can just imagine the Romans reclining and—”
“Eating grapes?” he suggested. He was very close to her now. His hair had been blown by the breeze: it didn’t lie so strictly along his head but was almost standing up, glowing wheat-colored strands curling in all directions.
“Of course. Eating grapes and writing poetry. All—all those things Romans did.” Given their lack of schooling, the only things she knew about Romans was that when they weren’t marching around in armor, they ate grapes naked, presumably while listening to all that poetry Annabel loved so much. She certainly wasn’t going to mention specific poems. Or naked grape eating. Or—
And the glint in Mr. Felton’s eye suggested that he knew just what she was thinking. Tess could feel herself growing a bit pink, but she didn’t move.
“Poetry?” he asked. “What Roman poets do you particularly enjoy?”
Was he mocking her? Tess raised her chin. “Catullus is an esteemed poet of the ancient world.”
“What a remarkable governess you must have had,” Mr. Felton remarked, looking genuinely surprised.
Tess was silent. They’d had, of course, no governess. But at some point she and Annabel had decided that they must read the books in their papa’s library before he sold every one. Otherwise, they would be as ignorant as savages if they ever did get to England to have the season Papa was always promising them.
“I would be surprised to find that an educated young woman had read Virgil,” Mr. Felton said, “but Catullus!”
In the face of his astonishment, Tess felt compelled to explain. “His name begins with ‘C.’Annabel and I formed the idea of reading my father’s library; I’m afraid that we did not reach as far as the ‘V’s.”
Mr. Felton seemed mightily amused by this. “So how far did you and Miss Annabel reach in the alphabet?”
Tess frowned at him. “It wasn’t only Annabel and me; all four of us read the works together. And we reached H.”
“No Shakespeare?” Felton asked.
Tess nodded. “He fell under ‘C’ for Collected Wor
ks.”
Felton laughed. He really was standing uncomfortably close to her. “My favorite poem by Catullus begins like this, although I doubt very much that a proper young lady like yourself has read this particular verse. You inquire how many kisses of yours would be enough.”
Tess felt herself growing rosy. His head was bending toward hers with all the brazen shamelessness of a naked Roman. She ought to push him away. To scream, to—
His lips came to hers with a certain stillness, as if he merely wished to taste her, to brush their mouths together. The gesture was almost a chaste one, except he was so close to her, bending near, and Tess could smell a clean smell of the fields and drying hay from his coat and his hair.
Before she knew it, the fingers of her right hand curled into the thick hair at his neck and in a second, something changed in his kiss, something patient became less patient. The lips just brushing over hers slanted to the side; she gasped.
“I doubt that any governess would have let you read that particular poem by Catullus, Miss Essex.” There was something amused in his tone. Tess stilled her hand on his hair. He clearly thought that she would be dazzled by the mere touch of his lip. Perhaps knowing that they had never had a governess made him bold. He thought she was naive, because unschooled.
She pulled back, but not abruptly. His eyes were the darkest indigo blue that she had ever seen. She let a faint smile curl on her lips. “You inquire how many kisses of yours would be enough, and more to satisfy me,” she said, and was startled to hear a husky catch in her voice. “As many as the grains of Libyan sand that lie between hot Jupiter’s oracle…as many…” She paused. The look in his eye had made her forget what she was saying. What came after hot oracle?
He didn’t look sardonic now, but truly surprised. She had to leave. This was all entirely too intimate and uncomfortable.
“Alas,” she said, gathering up her skirts again and turning toward the rockslide. “I have quite forgotten the next line, so we shall have to delay this learned discussion.” He was at her shoulder in a moment, helping her over the stones.