A Kiss to Remember (9 page)

“Loik a stray sheep,” Dower provided.

“Or a lost pig,” Lottie added spitefully.

“What if you marry this fellow,” George asked, “and then someone from London comes to Arden and recognizes him for who he truly is? What then?”

“And when’s the last time our humble village received a visitor from London?” Laura’s question silenced even George. In truth, none of them could remember.

But her brother seemed determined to prove he could be as ruthless as she could. “What if he signs the marriage register under a false name? Will you truly be married in the eyes of the Crown?”

Laura paused in her pacing, having not considered that fact. Swallowing back a lifetime of spiritual instruction, she faced her brother, head held high. “We’ll be married in the eyes of God, and as far as I’m concerned, His are the only eyes that matter.”

Without a word, Cookie rose from the bale of hay and started toward the door.

Laura had managed to hold on to her composure through Dower’s grumbling and George’s skepticism, but if good-hearted Cookie denounced her again, she feared she might just burst into tears. “Where are you going?”

Cookie turned, her broad face wreathed in a tender smile. “If I’m to stitch you up a weddin’ dress before your birthday, I can’t be dawdlin’ in the barn all day with the cows and the chicks. I do believe Lady Eleanor left some white crepe stashed away in the attic for just this day.” The maidservant dabbed at her damp eyes with the hem of her apron. “I wish our dear lady was goin’ to be here to see you stand up at the altar with that handsome young buck. It was one of her fondest dreams, you know.”

Laura blinked back her own tears. There was only one dream Lady Eleanor would have held more dear— the dream that someday her son would come striding down the lane and into her arms.

Laura linked her arm in Cookie’s. “Do you think she would mind if we filched a bit of Brussels lace off the curtains in the drawing room to trim the sleeves?”

As she and Cookie drifted out of the barn, chattering about posies and bride cakes, Dower trailed after them, shaking his head in disgust. “They should a’ stayed in the barn where they belonged. There’s nothin’ loik a weddin’ to make a perfectly sensible gel go all calf eyed.”

A long, silent moment passed after the others had left. Then George exploded into motion, springing to his feet and lashing out to kick a tin feed bucket. Grain
sprayed through the air in a golden arc. The bucket landed with a metallic clang that echoed like a lightning strike in the taut stillness of the barn.

“She says she’s doing it for herself, but she’s not!” he shouted. “She’s doing it for us. She’s doing it because I’m too damn young to provide for my own family.” He collapsed against a post, his hands clenched into impotent fists. “God in heaven, if I were only half a man …”

Above him, Lottie sat cross-legged in the hay with no sign of the histrionics he had expected. Her little round face was pale and still, her voice oddly calm. “We simply can’t allow her to do it. We can’t allow her to sacrifice her virtue on our behalf. She deserves better than to endure a fate worse than death at some scoundrel’s hands.”

“You didn’t notice the way she was looking at him,” George said darkly. “It was almost as if she might welcome the sort of death those hands could bring.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not a woman.”

“Neither are you,” he reminded her.

Lottie rested her chin on one hand. “If Laura marries before her twenty-first birthday, she inherits the manor.”

“That does seem to be the point of all this lunacy,” George agreed, wary of his sister’s calculating expression.

“But there was nothing in Lady Eleanor’s will that said she has to
stay
married.”

“You know as well as I do that Laura would never survive the disgrace of a divorce.”

“Who said anything about a divorce?” Lottie stroked the puff of gray fur in her lap. “In Miss Radcliffe’s novels, the villain who seeks to compromise
the heroine’s virtue always meets with an untimely demise before he can succeed.”

Planting his hands on his hips, George glared up at her. “Why, Carlotta Anne Fairleigh, you’re not thinking of murdering that poor wretch, are you? Regardless of what you read in those silly books of yours, you can’t just go around killing people because they don’t fancy cats. Or you.”

“And why not?” Lottie retorted. “Just consider the advantages. As a widow, Laura would reap all the benefits of marriage, but suffer none of the constraints. And if her groom should happen to meet with just such an untimely accident
after
the wedding, but
before
the wedding night, then she would never even have to endure the shame of having him put his rotten, stinking hands all over her.”

George could not help but be swayed by the last. He moved to the barn door, hoping the breeze would sweep the haze of anger from his brain. The burned-out rubble of the rectory they’d once shared with their parents was tucked in a distant corner of the property, but on warm, windy days such as this one, he would have sworn he could still smell the acrid scent of smoke, still taste the bitter tang of ashes on his tongue.

“If Papa and Mama were here, they’d know what was best for Laura,” he said, turning his face to the morning sunshine. “They’d know what was best for all of us.”

“But they’re not here. We are.”

He sighed. “The three of us have gotten along so well for so long. I suppose I thought we could just go on that way forever.”

“We can,” Lottie said softly. “If you’ll agree to help me.”

George closed his eyes, but could not blot out the sight of his sister in a stranger’s arms. For a timeless moment, even the wind seemed to be holding its breath, awaiting his answer.

When he finally turned back to the shadows of the barn, his lips were twisted in a grim smile. “Black has always been very becoming on Laura.”

Lottie’s teeth gleamed down at him from the loft. “Precisely my point.”

Nicholas Radcliffe
had a temper.

He learned that about himself around teatime of the following afternoon when the bedchamber door creaked open for what seemed like the hundredth time in that endless day only to reveal someone else who wasn’t his fiancée.

It seemed that the elusive Miss Fairleigh had decided he was best left to the ministrations of whoever happened to wander past his room at any given hour. Dower had even paid him a brief visit that morning, smelling of sheep and glowering like a death mask. The man had informed Nicholas that he was on his way to London to visit the livestock market. H e had crumpled his broad-brimmed hat in his hands and bitten off a curt apology for nearly impaling Nicholas with his pitchfork, all the while assessing him with beady black eyes that made Nicholas feel as if he were being measured for a coffin.

Laura’s brother had appeared next, bearing a tray of
kippers and eggs and wearing a sullen scowl. When Nicholas had inquired as to the whereabouts of the lad’s sister, George had mumbled something noncommittal and fled the room.

When the door had swung open a short while later, Nicholas had sat up eagerly in the bed, ignoring his lingering dizziness. He had a thousand questions, most of which only Laura could answer. But to his keen disappointment, the white mobcap sitting askew on grizzled curls had belonged to Cookie. He had wrested the basin, soap, rags, and razor from the maidservant’s chapped hands and insisted upon bathing and shaving himself, having no desire to repeat yesterday’s performance.

As she was taking her leave, he had not been able to resist blinking innocently, and saying, “You needn’t hurry away, Cookie. I doubt I’ve anything under here that a woman like you hasn’t seen a hundred times before.” Arching a mocking eyebrow, he had peeked beneath the blanket. “Or at least once.”

Cookie had flushed scarlet, then buried a girlish giggle in her apron. “Go on with you, sir. You’re a right naughty gent, you are.”

“That’s not what your mistress tells me,” he had murmured after she was gone, his grin fading to a pensive frown. The yellow kitten nestled in the crook of his knee had given him a quizzical look. Despite his repeated efforts to shoo the bothersome creature away, the little cat refused to leave his side for more than a few minutes at a time.

As the hours lengthened and his temper shortened, he began to feel less like a patient and more like a prisoner.
If he had his trousers, he could at least get up and pace the room. The throbbing in his head had subsided to a dull ache that was annoying, but not unbearable.

Shortly before teatime, just when he was settling into a fitful nap, the door began to inch open again. When Laura failed to materialize, his first instinct was to hurl something breakable at it. All he could see from his reclining position was a mass of golden curls bound by a lopsided pink ribbon. It seemed his latest visitor was crawling on hands and knees.

A small hand with plump fingers and blunt fingernails crept over the side of the bed and began to grope about in the bedclothes dangerously near to his hips. When it failed to locate what it sought, the curls began to rise like a gilded fountain. As Lottie Fairleigh peeped over the side of the bed, Nicholas narrowed his eyes to mere slits, watching her through his lashes.

“There you are, you naughty beast,” she hissed, reaching for the cat that was napping at his side.

“That’s not a very nice way to address the man your sister is about to marry,” Nicholas drawled, propping himself up on one elbow.

Lottie tumbled to her backside on the faded carpet, her mouth a pink O of surprise.

“I should warn you that if you start screaming again, so will I, and then we’ll be right back where we started.”

She snapped her mouth shut.

“There, now. That’s better,” he said. “You’re almost tolerable when you’re not shrieking like a banshee.”

“I wish I could say the same for you,” she retorted, making him smile in spite of himself. Rising, she dusted
off the rumpled white dimity of her pinafore, striking just the right note of offended dignity. “Forgive me for disturbing your rest, sir, but I came to fetch my kitten.”

“And to think I’d unfairly assumed you’d come to smother me with a pillow.”

Lottie’s head flew up, curls bouncing. Her blue eyes looked so guilt-stricken that he almost felt ashamed of himself for teasing her. But she recovered quickly, smiling sweetly at him. “A rather crude, if effective, method of dispatching an unwanted guest perhaps, but I much prefer poison. There are so many different varieties from which to choose. Why, in the old oak wood alone, I’ve catalogued seventeen different varieties of deadly toadstools.”

Nicholas sat up in the bed, eyeing the remnants of his lunch tray askance.

“Now, if you’ll excuse us.” She reached for the kitten.

The animal lashed out at her with its sharp little claws, drawing blood.

“Ow! What have you done to her?” Lottie sucked her wounded knuckle as the kitten butted its head against Nicholas’s bare chest, purring with rapture.

Running a hand over the cat’s silky fur, Nicholas shrugged. “Despite what you seem so eager to believe, I’m not without my charms.”

“Neither is Napoleon. Or so I’ve read.” She waved a haughty hand as if it had been her idea to banish the animal from her company. “You may keep the little traitor if you’d like. There’s plenty more where she came from.” Tilting her nose in the air, Lottie sailed toward the door, obviously hoping to leave with more aplomb than she’d entered.

“Carlotta?” When she turned without hesitation, Nicholas knew he’d guessed correctly at her Christian name. He studied her guarded little face, hoping for some glimmer of recognition. But she remained as alien to him as his own reflection. “Despite the fact that we’re obviously both strong-willed individuals, your sister assured me that we were quite fond of each other.”

The child met his gaze without blinking. “Then it would seem we are.”

She dismissed him with a regal curtsy, leaving an exasperated Nicholas to throw himself back on the pillows.

By the time the copper glow of the rising moon began to seep into the chamber, Nicholas was beginning to long for Lottie’s querulous company. He didn’t think he could bear another minute of being confined to bed like some feeble invalid. Even the kitten had deserted him, scampering out the open window to hunt crickets on the starlit roof.

He threw himself to his stomach, pummeling his pillow into submission. Perhaps being confined to bed wouldn’t be so wearying if he had someone to share it. It was no great stretch of his imagination to envision the rich spill of Laura Fairleigh’s hair across his pillow, to see himself kissing each freckle that dusted her cheeks as he pressed her into the softness of the feather mattress with his weight.

He took pleasure in the wicked thought, even though it ill befit the staunch moral character his fiancée had assured him he possessed.

The old house finally settled itself into the creaking rhythms of sleep, magnifying his restlessness. He sat up, tossing the blankets away, and flung his legs over the side of the bed. To his surprise, the room held steady, not tilting or swaying as he’d feared.