“I’d hate to put it that way,” Willa said, but she couldn’t keep back a smile. “She might be less inclined to think your nose is a perfect specimen.”
He rubbed that nose thoughtfully, keeping his eyes on her. As Willa was discovering, Alaric’s attention was like brandy: burning hot, enticing … habit-forming. He didn’t give a damn what women thought of his nose, or any other part of him.
“I should rescue Lavinia,” she said.
“Your friend doesn’t need rescuing; if anything, mine does.”
As they watched, Lavinia delivered a final retort and turned on her heel, the tip of her nose pointed straight at the ceiling.
Mr. Sterling strode toward them, unabashed and furious.
“That woman is a plague and a—” He bit off the word, his eyes cutting to Willa.
“Congratulations,” she said, smiling at him. “You are the first gentleman on the marriage market this year to see the true Lavinia.”
“Who would want to?” he snarled. “I pity the man who marries that termagant. He’ll find out on the wedding night, no doubt. Poor sod.”
Eliza Kennet had entered the room and was trotting toward them, her face alight with excitement. Having no wish to see her gush over Alaric, Willa decided to surrender the field. “Please excuse me, gentlemen,” she said. “I’ll follow my favorite termagant.”
“I don’t want to discuss him,” Lavinia snapped, as Willa joined her. “The man is outrageous … offensive. I can’t imagine why anyone thinks it appropriate to have him in the house. He’s not domesticated.”
“Worse than Sweetpea?”
“Far worse. Sweetpea is learning. That man is a cur, one who’s been given his own way far too many times.”
“It’s probably that air of command he has,” Willa said. “Like an admiral.”
“Like a spoiled boy who has been coddled,” Lavinia retorted.
“Somehow I don’t think Mr. Sterling has been coddled,” Willa said. “But let’s join Diana, shall we? I want to know what she bought from Mr. Calico this afternoon.”
The answer was unexpected.
Diana drew them down on a sofa to sit on either side of her. “I saw nothing I wanted for myself, but I bought presents for both of you. I’m so grateful to you for coming to my betrothal party.”
Opening her knotting bag, Diana gave them each a gold locket, oval in shape and embellished with seed pearls and scrolled designs.
“This is exquisite,” Willa said, opening it and inspecting the compartment, which could handily carry a needle and thread.
“You shouldn’t have,” Lavinia cried, “but I absolutely love it, Diana. Thank you!”
“My mother prefers French jewelry,” she answered uncertainly.
“Your mother has excellent taste,” Lavinia said.
Diana nodded. “I would have chosen them for you, because I like you so, so much. But …” In truth, the pieces were too costly for a gift between friends, and Diana knew it.
She stopped helplessly.
“I adore this locket,” Willa said. “It’s useful as well as beautiful, and in my estimation, that’s high praise for a person or a locket.”
“I shall pass my Wilde locket to another admirer, and wear this instead!” Lavinia cried.
“Everyone is talking about you and Lord Alaric,” Diana said to Willa, lowering her voice. “He’s never shown such marked attention to a lady.” She turned to Lavinia. “They’re also talking about you and Mr. Sterling.”
Lavinia snorted. “I would ignore him, but it’s like ignoring an enormous, surly dog that snarls at you from the corner.”
“Is Lord Alaric a snarling dog as well?” Diana inquired.
“No,” Willa said. “He’s decided I’m a challenge.”
“Why does it matter if he thinks of you as a challenge?” Lavinia asked.
“He’s a man who would climb a mountain simply because it’s there,” Willa explained. “He doesn’t see me as a person.”
“He’s monstrously wealthy, well-born, and handsome,” Diana said, dismissing the question of identity.
“His face is stuck on bedchamber walls all over England,” Willa said flatly.
“That is a drawback,” Lavinia conceded. “I spent an entire year kissing the print in which he’s wrestling a polar bear every time I left for French class. And I had French five days a week.”
Diana’s brows drew together.
“For good luck,” Lavinia explained.
“I don’t want to be ‘conquered’ by someone who thinks of me as a polar bear he’s wrestling to the ground,” Willa said. “Nor do I want my husband to be a good-luck token for schoolgirls.”
“Kissing a print is not the same as kissing the actual man,” Diana pointed out. But she sounded uncertain.
“I’m curious about what will happen to the prints Mr. Sterling bought,” Lavinia said. “If he wasn’t so rude, I’d give him mine to add to the pile.”
The duke and duchess were slowly making their way toward the drawing room door, which signaled it was time to go upstairs to dine.
Willa didn’t have to glance around to know that North was headed toward Diana, and Alaric toward her. She stood up, overwhelmed all of a sudden. “I believe I will take dinner in my chamber. I have a headache.”
“Are you ill?” a deep voice asked, as a hand settled on the middle of her back.
Lavinia and Diana rose. “Good evening, Lord Alaric,” Diana said.
Lavinia echoed the greeting, adding, “Did you learn to walk so silently in the jungle?”
“Please don’t tell me you own the print depicting me swinging from a vine?” Alaric groaned.
“I do indeed!” Lavinia said, grinning.
Having outgrown her infatuation, Lavinia seemed to have decided that she liked Alaric. That wasn’t her polite smile; it was the one she reserved for friends.
“Please excuse me,” Willa murmured, feeling an even stronger desire to get out of Alaric’s presence. He was pursuing her with every weapon in his arsenal. But to what end? He was an adventurer, a man who would wander away. Right now, she was the challenge—the mountain that simply happened to be there—but if she gave in, he might turn his attention elsewhere.
At that idea she felt a surge of emotion stronger than she’d felt in years. It made her lightheaded.
Without another word, she bobbed a curtsy and headed for the door.
Chapter Fourteen
Alaric watched Willa leave with a rising sense of disbelief.
She didn’t have a headache. She was avoiding him.
He poked at the idea the way one’s tongue pokes at a sore tooth. He was surrounded by women longing to spend time with him, so it shouldn’t matter that one young lady didn’t feel the same.
Willa was extraordinarily beautiful, but the world was full of lovely women.
His brooding was interrupted a second later as Eliza Kennet attached herself to his arm. Trying politely to shake her free, he realized again that his retinue—as it were—was a genuine problem. He could hardly carry Sweetpea around in a basket to ward them off.
The only thing he wanted to do was follow Willa. Scoop up that tantalizingly curved bottom and throw it over his shoulder.
Go to bed.
Go to bed and never climb out. Not for at least a week, until he had memorized the contours of her body. And the colors. He was fascinated by the darkness of her eyebrows against her pearly skin. Thick, dark-tipped eyelashes. Not a freckle to be seen.
Perhaps she had hair like a raven’s wing, hair that would swirl over a man’s chest when she sat on top of him, taking her pleasure, riding to her heart’s content.
Or perhaps it was a deep mahogany, the color of tree trunks at twilight.
Bloody hell.
He really was losing his mind.
THERE WAS NO sign of Willa the following morning at breakfast. Nor did she appear at luncheon.
Aunt Knowe caught him after the second meal and informed him that
his presence was required at archery, to even the numbers. Teams of two would advance to the archery range and take their turns with bows and arrows.
“It’s Diana’s favorite sport,” she explained. “North has had a set of arrows with brass filigree made for her.”
They silently acknowledged between them that lavish gifts would not win North his fiancée’s heart. In fact, it crossed Alaric’s mind that Diana might accidentally shoot his brother, but he pushed it away.
There were better ways to avoid marriage than manslaughter.
Willa’s arms were slim but taut. Perhaps she was an archeress as well. She couldn’t hide in her room forever. “I’d be happy to,” he told his aunt.
She snorted, shrewd eyes on his face, but said nothing, for which he was grateful.
The duke had erected a tent on the lawn, where guests could take refreshment and seek shelter from both wayward arrows and the midsummer sun. The moment he appeared, Lady Biddle curled her fingers around his arm and claimed him as her partner. Willa was still to be seen, so he followed Helena from the tent to the archery field.
She took the first turn, squealing as her arrow missed the target. After the third such failed attempt, she demanded he stand behind her and show her how to hold the bow. When he complied, she promptly nestled her arse against him.
“What’s that I feel?” she giggled, rubbing against him like a cat in heat.
“Nothing,” he stated, which was the truth. He glanced at the tent, where everyone was enjoying lemonade. Some were watching, but they were out of earshot.
He turned her around and caught her eyes. “I’m going to be very blunt, Helena. I am not interested in having an affaire with you.”
Her face reddened. “It’s that girl, isn’t it? Willa Ffynche. You think to marry her. The marriage won’t succeed.”
“Oh?” He picked up his bow, took careful aim, and released the string. The arrow whipped forward with the sound of slashed wind, and slammed into the center of the target. He lowered his bow. “I cede this match.”
“You’ll have to cede your hope of that particular marriage,” Lady Biddle said, her voice sharp. “May I point out that your image is spread all over England—precisely so that ladies can drool over it in the privacy of their bedchambers?”
The words lacerated his gut.
“Willa Ffynche is a lady. She will go nowhere near a life that’s played out in the open marketplace. You think there wouldn’t be prints sold of your wedding? Of your first child?”
The thought had never occurred to him.
“You couldn’t have chosen worse,” she swept on, her words fueling a bottomless pit of dark emotion. “Willa Ffynche is a private woman. Very private. In fact, she—”
Alaric turned on his heel and left her in mid-sentence. If that provoked gossip, it couldn’t be helped.
Damn … Damn.
Willa was private. That was part of her allure. She was all hidden depths and secret thoughts. She didn’t display herself for everyone to see.
For a man who loved the idea of an undiscovered country, she was the ultimate temptation. At the mere thought of her, his body fired with heat.
North’s words came back to him: “I saw Diana, and I had to have her.” Alaric didn’t want a betrothal—or, God forbid, a wedding—like his brother’s, characterized by longing on one side and reluctance, if not dislike, on the other.
He had braved pirate waters in Wilde Latitudes. Sailed into sheltered coves in a boat so small that it could hold only one person. He’d won over pirates with games of chance, with spicy tales, with a true lack of desire to steal their treasure.
He had to win her as a friend. That’s where North had gone wrong, in his opinion. His brother had courted Diana, had gone so far as to don a towering wig to please her. But last night, Alaric had overheard North’s lecture on how a duchess should behave when greeting the queen. Diana had been listening without expression.
North was only trying to ease his future wife into the role of duchess-to-be. But it wasn’t a good idea, to Alaric’s mind. They should discuss anything other than the responsibilities of a duchess.
To this day North didn’t know what his fiancée’s favorite ballad was, or which book she most disliked.
Alaric dropped the arrows he held, and stretched. Helena Biddle strode past him, her shoulders rigid, furious.
North strolled over to him. He looked more splendid than Fitzy, a befringed and beruffled jewel in the midst of the green lawn.
“Frankly,” Alaric said, unable to resist, “if I had to dress like that in order to win Willa’s hand, I’d probably be heading for Africa right now.”
“An unlucky destination,” his brother pointed out. “You do know that in the play, your beloved—the innocent, dewy missionary’s daughter, the lovely Angelica—ends up in the stew pot?”
“Angelica?” It was less a question than a groan.
The one good thing about that detail was that its sheer preposterousness confirmed lack of information about Prudence, the real missionary’s daughter. Angelica’s background must have been a lucky guess on the part of the playwright.
“It’s a heart-rending scene, particularly enjoyed by the apprentices in the pit. They pelt the stew pot with apple cores, but the playwright cannily had the pot appear and disappear without showing actual cannibals, saving his actors from assault.” His brother threw an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll have to stock up on apples to defend your future wife.”
“I would never take my wife to Africa. Perhaps Paris.”
“Not to defend her from cannibals,” North said, just as several women turned about and smiled lavishly. “From English ladies.”
Alaric groaned.
Chapter Fifteen
Willa spent a lovely afternoon playing with Sweetpea. Like a small child, the little skunk seemed to require a daily bath. Luckily she loved water, and paddled around in a large basin, joyfully diving for dried peas.
At one point, Willa caught a glimpse of Alaric out on the lawn, playing at bows and arrows with Lady Biddle. She told herself that she didn’t care.
Late in the day, after the archers had disappeared, she decided it was a good time to introduce Sweetpea to her leash. Lavinia had fashioned a little harness out of a gold ribbon sewn with spangles, so it glittered against Sweetpea’s dark fur.
“There,” Lavinia said, once they managed to fasten it comfortably around the baby’s round stomach. “She looks like a princess, ready to survey her realm.”
Sweetpea swung up her tail, tipped, and fell on her nose.
“Oh, no!” Lavinia cried, dropping to her knees.
“She does that without the leash as well,” Willa said with a gurgle of laughter. “I don’t think she’s learned how to balance her tail.”
“It is longer than she is,” Lavinia said, measuring it with her hands.
“Every time she flips it up, over she goes.” Willa picked up Sweetpea and tucked her into her basket. “Would you like to join us? I thought we’d go to the rose garden.”
“No, thank you,” Lavinia said, yawning. “It’s time for a nap. Archery was exhausting; as many feelings as arrows whizzed through the air.”
“Diana’s?”
“No, far more diverting! Alaric said something to Lady Biddle that made her despise him. She marched away from the archery field in high dudgeon, and by all reports she’s ordered her trunks packed.”
Willa drew in a silent breath.
“Isn’t that fascinating?” Lavinia demanded. “She’s given up the idea of bedding him, and spent the last hour telling anyone who will listen that men only set out for foreign lands if they are incapable of satisfying women at home.”
“Characteristically vulgar,” Willa said, leaving it there.
The rose garden was set in the shade of a high stone wall, so that the flowers received morning sun, but were sheltered from the worst of the storms that raged across Lindow Moss, the bog that stretched into the distance on
the other side of the wall. An intriguing smoky odor in the air competed with the roses, presumably coming from peat.
Willa sniffed the air. She was deeply curious about what uncut peat looked like, but that would require disobeying the edict keeping all guests out of the bog. It was just her confounded curiosity that made her wish she could see over the wall.
She set Sweetpea on the path, but the baby skunk headed straight into a flowerbed. She meandered here and there, winding around rosebushes, waiting politely while Willa disentangled her skirts when they caught on thorns.
“You are allowing that animal to drag you around as if she were a puppy. Or a young child of two or three.”
Willa spun about.
“I saw you from the tower.” Alaric jerked his head backward. “My bedchamber is up there.”
“Ah.”
“But that’s a secret,” he added.
Willa wouldn’t dream of inquiring into people’s sleeping arrangements, so she merely nodded. She could guess the unsavory reason his bedchamber’s location had to remain undisclosed.
“I assure you that your secret is safe with me,” she said, trying and not quite succeeding in keeping distaste out of her voice.
“I did not choose to be the object of people’s …”
He couldn’t seem to find the word, so she supplied one. “Adoration?”
“That’s not quite it.” Sweetpea batted at his boot, her claws leaving tiny scratches. “ ‘Adoration’ implies devotion, even worship. Playgoers and readers of my books seem to feel something like ownership of me, which is far from devotion.”
“How unpleasant for you,” Willa said, meaning it. She could imagine few things worse than a stranger believing that he—or she—had a claim on her time or person. She decided to change the subject. “Sweetpea has eaten an earthworm, three leaves, and a small mushroom. She tried to eat a fly, but it flew away. She also contemplated a bee, but I picked her up in time.”
“In short, she’ll eat anything,” Alaric said.
“Yes. This morning she enjoyed a bit of egg, and last night she ate fourteen berries.”