How was she different from Helena Biddle?
She jumped back at the thought. All those women staring at Lord Wilde with lust in their eyes … wasn’t that precisely what she was doing?
“Willa is back,” he said, with something that sounded perilously like a male version of a sigh.
“I temporarily lost my mind,” Willa acknowledged, her voice husky. She stepped back, tightening the tie on her dressing gown. He hadn’t even loosened it, which distinguished him from the boys she’d kissed previously. They always sneaked a hand toward her bodice.
“As did I,” he said.
They looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then he shook his head. “Saucy Evie … where does she go?”
There was no point in lying. He was no fool, and she’d exposed her true self in the last hour.
“She is private. You must leave.”
“If you insist.” He went to the door before turning.
Willa kept her chin up, absolutely certain that not a trace of emotion was revealed in her eyes. Those dark blue eyes focused on her, and something tightened and twisted deep in her belly.
“You are fearless, unafraid of me,” Alaric stated.
“I see nothing to fear. You would never hurt me. Or any other woman.”
He ignored her. “You respect my father, but you don’t want to be a duchess. You respect Parth, but you aren’t interested in him, despite the fact he’s the richest man in England.”
Willa shrugged. Everything he said was true.
He wasn’t finished. “Your mouth damn near kills me every time I see it because I want to kiss it until it’s dark red, the color it is now. It’s a mouth I want to kiss me, wrap around me, bark at me … love me.”
Willa couldn’t find any words.
She thought he was going to kiss her again, but he slipped through the door, closed it behind him, and was gone.
For a moment she stood motionless, hand pressed to her lips. Then she walked to the large glass on the wall.
She was still Willa, wasn’t she? Willa, who was extraordinarily competent, organized, curious?
Her hair had fallen from its braid in a way that suggested it had been rumpled by a lover.
And her mouth?
He was right. It was ruby red. Swollen by kisses.
He hadn’t touched her, but her body felt like the map of a foreign country, an undiscovered country that he had explored without touching.
Willa didn’t have absurd thoughts like that.
Evie did.
Chapter Twenty-one
Willa was rudely awakened by the force of a body landing on the bed beside her. “What?” she mumbled. She knew who it was. The scent of Lavinia’s pear soap announced her presence wherever she went.
“You must wake up,” Lavinia replied. “You’ve missed breakfast. Everyone is riding to a ruined abbey in an hour or so. Lady Knowe says that King Arthur is buried there, but I don’t believe her.”
“What time is it?”
“After ten o’clock. You’ve missed breakfast.”
Snippets of thick paper were falling over Willa’s face and hair. “What on earth are you doing?” she asked foggily, blowing a scrap from her lips. She sat up, sending a shower of scraps across the coverlet, and saw that Lavinia was wielding a pair of scissors, busy attacking prints. The same prints that she had until recently collected with the zeal of a true devotee.
“I have three of the new Lord Wilde prints, and I’m sacrificing the one I brought with me as well,” Lavinia explained, cutting busily.
“Why are you destroying them?” Willa swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Where’s Sweetpea?”
“Alaric took her for a walk.”
Willa spun around. “He came to my room?” She did that indignant tone fairly well, considering that she had never been any good at lying.
More bits of paper flew over the bed. “You were soundly sleeping, so your maid gave him Sweetpea.”
“Why are you cutting up prints?” Willa asked again, ringing the bell for tea.
“I’m turning them into decoration.”
“That’s Alaric’s head!” Willa exclaimed, picking up one of the cuttings. “And his feet. Is that the cannibal pot?” At Lavinia’s nod: “I can’t believe you’re cutting up your favorite print.”
Lavinia’s hands stilled, and she looked directly at Willa. “My mother has a terrible toothache and stayed abed herself, so no one remarked on your layabout ways—except Lord Alaric, who knew you would be tired this morning, and told me at breakfast that he would walk Sweetpea.”
Willa bit her lip. “We kissed.”
“Most of the night?” Lavinia demanded.
At Willa’s silence, Lavinia went on. “In other exciting news, it seems my best friend has accepted an offer of marriage and forgot to tell me!” She slid off the bed and waved her scissors in the air. “Wilhelmina Everett, unless you have an excellent excuse—such as you kept kissing until dawn—you have some explaining to do!”
“He told you?” Willa gasped.
“He told everyone,” Lavinia said. “Willa, did you let that man spend the night in your chamber?”
“Absolutely not! It’s not a real betrothal,” Willa admitted. “You know that I would have woken you up and told you myself if I had accepted a proposal, no matter what the time of night.”
“Not a real betrothal?” Lavinia said, gaping at her. “What other sort of betrothal is there? Lord Alaric informed the entire breakfast table of your not-so-real future together. Although he neglected to mention that he had asked you for your hand at extremely close quarters—in this very room!”
“That is not what happened,” Willa protested. “We are not engaged to marry.”
Lavinia sank back on the bed. “Why not? I no longer want him for myself—thus my demolishment of his image—but I quite like him, which is far better than worshiping him.”
“We are pretending a betrothal in order to dissuade a deranged woman. Your newfound affection for Alaric is not a sufficient reason for me to marry him!”
“As your closest friend, I naturally—” Lavinia stopped short, her mouth forming a perfect O. “Prudence Larkin! I met her at breakfast, where she shared her feelings far and wide. I have to say that it made me ashamed of my former adoration.”
“Did she tell you that she wrote the play?”
Lavinia nodded. “You’re truly not betrothed?”
Willa shook her head.
“I’m disappointed,” Lavinia said, picking up her scissors and assaulting another print. “I do like him. Much more than I did when I adored him,” she added with a faint look of surprise. Then she turned back to trimming the scrap of paper. More snippets fell onto the coverlet. “Because there isn’t enough thrilling gossip to go around, Diana told me this morning that she is pretty certain she’s going to jilt Lord Roland.”
“Oh no,” Willa groaned.
“Her precise words were, ‘I can’t bear my life, and I hate my fiancé.’ ”
“Mrs. Belgrave will be furious,” Willa said, picturing the lady’s gasping face. “It’s lucky for Diana that her mother stayed in London. She has her heart set on the match.”
“Diana does not. Oh, I almost forgot,” Lavinia said, putting down her scissors and reaching into her pocket. She dropped a gaudy locket into Willa’s hand. “You are engaged to Lord Wilde—at least outwardly—so obviously, this should be yours.”
It was large, with an ornate W enclosed by a heart engraved on the front.
Willa flicked the catch. Inside was Alaric’s face, cut from an engraving. “You need to practice your scissor work,” she said. “You didn’t make it a proper oval and he almost lost an ear.”
“Would you prefer one in which he’s wearing an admiral’s hat? I have one of those, never mind Lord Alaric has had nothing to do with His Majesty’s Navy.”
“This will do,” Willa said. She clicked the locket closed.
“You must wear it outside your go
wn today, so Prudence Larkin can see it,” Lavinia said. “She told everyone at breakfast that she wrote the play because she was fated by God to be Lord Alaric’s wife. Diana inquired if she was referring to a Greek or some other heathen deity—because the Anglican God isn’t usually seen as a matchmaker—and Miss Larkin was not amused.”
Willa groaned.
“But she wasn’t truly overset until Lady Knowe pointed out that Prudence was acting as if Alaric were the god of her idolatry. At that point the lady became entirely incoherent. I thought she was going to fling her toast across the table.”
“I shall never wear that locket,” Willa said. She hated the play, and everything it had done to Alaric without his permission. She hated the locket, too, though she might put Alaric’s picture in the exquisite locket that Diana had given her.
“The party is entertained by the news of your betrothal, except the ladies who had hoped to talk him into their beds,” Lavinia said, picking up the last print and cutting a circle around Alaric’s face. “I doubt Eliza Kennet will ever speak to you again, although that’s not much of a loss, seeing as her conversation is limited to discussion of your fiancé.”
General knowledge of the sham betrothal was such a terrifying notion that Willa felt unable to respond. Last night, she had stepped in to help without a second thought. But now …
“What are you doing with those cuttings?” she asked, pushing panic away.
“I’m going to paste the heads onto a sheet and paint gold halos on them, so that Alaric will never forget the heyday of his popularity.”
Willa groaned. “He’ll hate that.”
“I know!” Lavinia grinned. “I might give you my artwork. For when you marry that dusty, boring scholar, the one with skinny thighs and a perfectly kempt wig.”
“I never said I wanted to marry a scholar.” But Willa had imagined just that. Scholars were so precise with their language. Comfortingly knowledgeable.
Lavinia patted her leg and went on snipping.
Willa opened the locket again and looked at Alaric’s face.
“You’d better ring for a bath because Lady Knowe might come fetch you herself.” Lavinia scrambled off the bed, leaving scraps of paper strewn over the counterpane. “She is determined to impress Prudence with your closeness to Alaric.”
Willa was still thinking about Prudence an hour later, after her bath, as she put on her favorite riding habit. The skirt was crimson, worn with a white waistcoat under a tight crimson riding coat that opened in a dramatic fashion over her bosom. The matching straw hat was worn at an angle, and adorned with black plumes.
It was masculine, almost military, at the same time emphasizing her every curve. A neckcloth edged in white lace provided a feminine finishing touch.
A missionary’s daughter would never wear anything so provocative.
Looking in the glass as she put on riding gloves, Willa felt better. It wasn’t going to be easy to look Alaric straight in the eyes. Not after last night.
After those kisses.
But the riding habit helped. She felt braver in it. More in control. Not a woman joining a horde of admirers.
For some reason, it felt essential that he recognize that. She was edging toward a decision. Did she want to be Willa for the rest of her life? Or was she brave enough to marry a man who saw her as Evie?
Yet what if Alaric grew tired of England and English society? Or Willa? Or Evie?
Chapter Twenty-two
Willa arrived in the entry of the castle to discover that the party had already set out for the stables.
“It’s a walk of a few minutes only,” Prism told her. “Roberts will escort you.”
“No, thank you,” Willa said, straightening her hat to make certain that the sun would not touch her face. “I shall enjoy the walk.”
“You cannot miss the stables if you keep to the path,” Prism said, looking very disapproving at the idea that a young lady would venture to walk in the open air without escort.
She strolled out the great front doors of the castle, and followed a footpath that wound down a sweep of emerald-green lawn toward a riot of violet, burgundy, and pale pink rhododendrons at the bottom. The path curved alongside the flowering bushes, first skirting a beech wood and then ducking into it.
The woods were pleasantly cool, and Willa walked slowly as a heady smell of horse and straw began to eclipse the honey-nutmeg scent of the rhododendrons. The path turned again and opened on the stables.
If Prism had a sense of humor—which Willa thought unlikely—she would have judged his comment that she couldn’t miss the stables a dry jest. The duke’s stables were larger than most mansions, composed of a sprawling series of low barns surrounded by paddocks, any number of gallops, and training yards. One lush field held five foals madly racing each other about, and beyond that were snug cottages, presumably for the grooms and their families.
The largest paddock was crowded with people and horses, dotted with the duke’s grooms wearing their dark ruby livery with almond-colored trim. Willa caught sight of Lavinia’s guinea-bright hair amidst a crowd of gentlemen, her riding hat bedecked with a green feather.
She walked through the gate into the yard, and was looking about, wondering if there was a horse for her, when a large, warm nose nudged her neck, bringing with it the smell of fresh straw and clean horse.
“Your mount,” said a deep voice.
Her heart leapt to her throat.
Alaric held the reins of a raw-boned black steed and a sweet-faced mare with a patch over her right eye. “I wasn’t certain of your prowess in the saddle,” he said. “This is Buttercup. She’s not as young as she was, but she has a lovely seat.”
He transferred the reins to a groom and put his hands on Willa’s waist. She felt a surge of gratitude for her French corset.
“Do you have a whip?” Alaric asked, not yet lifting her onto her horse. He was standing entirely too close. And smiling down at her.
“Yes,” she said with a little gasp. “I mean, no, I don’t use a whip.”
“Right.” He effortlessly swung her into the air, placing her on the saddle. He turned away to help another lady onto her mount.
As Willa adjusted her leg over the pommel, Lavinia pranced over, riding a lovely sorrel mare.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” she called. She gestured behind her. “These gentlemen simply won’t accept that I have no need for an escort. They can escort the both of us.”
Willa greeted two young lords and a future earl with a smile, and the five of them joined the rest as they all moved onto the road at an easy amble.
It was a perfectly splendid early-July day, and at least twenty-five gentlemen and ladies, laughing and talking, made up the riding party. Alaric was somewhere behind Willa’s and Lavinia’s small group. They set out at a walk, on a road bounded by hedges entangled with wild roses. The ditches were starred with great wheels of cow parsley.
After a few minutes, Mr. Sterling caught up, and his horse paced alongside Willa’s. Lavinia kept flitting past and making inane remarks to him that made a pulse beat in his jaw.
“You must stop that,” Willa said later, when their two horses were walking side by side. “You’re teasing Mr. Sterling unnecessarily.”
Lavinia bestowed a smile on her nearest swain. “What on earth do you mean?”
“You know he hates empty-headed society chitchat, and you’re willfully inundating him with it.”
Lavinia laughed. The merry peal made all the men around them turn to look at her—except Mr. Sterling, whose eyes remained fixed straight ahead.
“Like that,” Willa said. “I don’t know why you bother.”
“He’s such an ass,” Lavinia said, sotto voce. “By the way, Prudence doesn’t know how to ride, so she’s in one of those carriages that went ahead. Oh, and look! Fiendish Sterling is getting in another argument.”
Sure enough, Mr. Sterling—who did seem to be a trifle irritable—had started trading insults with Lor
d Roland.
“Where is Diana?”
Lavinia wrinkled her nose. “At the last minute, she told my mother that she was indisposed.”
They were silent. There was no need to voice their shared opinion that Diana was doing herself no favors by fibbing.
“We’re stopping for luncheon at that inn,” Lavinia said, nodding toward a large building a short distance ahead. Men in the Duke of Lindow’s livery were spilling out, waiting to take their mounts.
Behind the inn, a grassy bank shaded by huge willow trees led down to a river that ran flat and wide before winding out of sight. Snowy cloths and soft pillows had been set on the ground, and a picnic lunch was being laid out.
“I’m positively famished,” Lavinia said. “Do you know what Despicable Sterling said to me at breakfast?”
“If you would stop taunting him, he’d probably let you be,” Willa said.
“He said I was double-chinned!”
“I doubt that,” Willa said. “For one thing, he wouldn’t insult you, and for another, you aren’t.”
“In as many words,” Lavinia retorted. “He said I ate like a horse and that I’d have a double chin by next week.”
“What did you say to him to provoke it?”
Lavinia turned her mare at the gate of the inn. “I merely noted that if he ate all the bacon he had on his plate he’d end up looking like a poke pudding. I said ‘if.’ Whereas he as much as called me a lumpish hag.”
Before Willa could answer, Alaric drew up beside her. In one smooth movement, he dismounted, tossed his reins to a waiting groom, and raised his arms to help her down.
He had removed his coat at some point and slung it over his saddle’s pommel. Gentlemen never did that … but here he was, his white shirt tight against the planes of his chest.
“If you think I’m going to allow one of those fribbles to put his hands on you, you’re wrong,” he said, in a conversational tone. The three men didn’t even try to compete; they turned to cluster about Lavinia instead.
Willa felt her cheeks growing hot. “You’re making a show of me.”
“The better to thwart Prudence,” he said, grinning as he scratched Buttercup’s nose. “How did you do with this darling?”