April Moon (21 page)

“No,” she said softly, letting herself sway back against him. “How could I?”

How could she, indeed, standing here in the circle of his arms with her head resting against Harry’s shoulder? Even if she could have forced herself to remove such pleasurable thoughts from her memory, her body would always remember the passion she’d discovered with this man, and her heart—her heart would safekeep the rest for eternity.

Oh, she knew it was wrong to be so familiar with him here in such a public place, wrong to be so openly affectionate, and if any of her employers could have seen her like this, she would have been dismissed outright, without references. But the happiness of the wedding party and the young bride and groom made her forget such hard realities, and instead made her think back to when her world had
been this full of love and promise, when the giddy measure of life’s joy could be contained in a single stolen kiss.

“Do you remember watching the parish weddings with me?” she asked. “I had to be there, because of Father, but you always came, too, to keep me company.”

“And for the sweet biscuits that were served afterward,” he said, tightening his arms to draw her closer against his chest. “The shortcake ones shaped like shamrocks were the best, and I’d always be sure to take some home in my pockets for George. You know, Sophie, that when I watched those weddings with you, I always believed you’d be my wife.”

“You did?” She twisted about, wanting to see if he was teasing, but to her surprise, he wasn’t. “Boys aren’t supposed to think of weddings, especially not boys who will become earls.”

“Oh, but I did,” he confessed, his smile lopsided and his blue eyes full of fond recollection. “I thought it had all been arranged, and deuced practical it seemed, too. I’d figured that was why you were so often at the manor with us, that you were practicing to be part of my family. Then, once we were old enough, your father would marry us in that same parish church, just as he did all the other couples who came to him. What ripe foolishness
that
was!”

She smiled in return, even as his confession stung her heart. He was right, of course. Such a fantasy
was
ripe foolishness, yet she could hardly find fault for him for wishing the same wish she’d secretly had herself.

“Your father would never have permitted such a match,” she said swiftly, wanting to protect herself once again with the armor of facts and reason. “As much as he liked playing chess with my father, I would still have been too low-born for his elder son. He never let pass any chance to remind me of that. I was
common.
”

“You were my
Sophie,
” he said firmly, slipping his hand inside the brim of her bonnet to cup her cheek against his palm, and gently turn her face up toward his. “That was more than enough for me.”

“Beg pardon, m’ lord,” said a pockmarked young man from the stables, “but Mr. Connor said t’ tell you your horses an’ your supper both be ready in th’ yard.”

“Oh, hell,” muttered Harry, his hand still cradling Sophie’s face. “My horse and my damned supper, ready exactly as I asked.”

“Yes, exactly so,” said Sophie, her cheeks burning as she drew back from his hand. She swallowed hard, composing herself as best she could before she looked at the stable boy. “Thank you, and please thank Mr. Connor, too, for being so prompt.”

“The devil take Mr. Connor,” said Harry darkly,
fishing in his pocket. “Wait, boy, here. Give this to the bride and groom with my best wishes for their future.”

Three golden guineas glittered in Harry’s hand before he pressed them into the grubby palm of the stunned boy.

“Go on, lad, take it to them,” he said. “And pray don’t be tempted to keep any out for yourself, else you find yourself turned into a croaking toad as a reward for your greed.”

“That was very generous of you, Harry,” said Sophie as she followed him through the open door and into the stable yard. “At least your gift was. What you said to the boy wasn’t charitable in the least.”

“Boys don’t deserve charitable thoughts,” said Harry. “I know. I was one myself, and for a good long time, too. That must be your mare, there next to Thunder. Will she do for you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sophie, rubbing her hands together to warm them. After the overheated inn, the night air seemed even chillier than before. “She’s a good deal better than most hired horses, I should say.”

“Likely that’s because she’s not a nag for hire, but instead belongs to one of the ladies inside.” Harry stroked the white blaze on the mare’s nose. She was a neat little chestnut with white feet to match her blaze, tossing her head and eager to be
gone. “But we’ll leave that to Connor to sort out, won’t we? Come, lass, let me help you up.”

But Sophie paused beside the horse, patting her hand on the mare’s rounded side. “Tell me, Harry. Inside there. You would have kissed me, wouldn’t you?”

He looked at her evenly. “Yes,” he said, “and you wouldn’t have minded if I had.”

“No,” she said, troubled by her own answer. “No, I do not believe I would have minded in the least.”

“Ah, Miss Potts,” he said, his laugh warm with indulgent affection. “Miss Potts, you are the most wickedly honest woman I ever have known.”

“I cannot help it, Harry,” she said forlornly as she climbed the two stone steps of the block while he held the horse steady for her. His profile seemed all angles in the moonlight, dark shadows and stark pales. The innkeeper had warned her about rascals on the road, but by agreeing to travel with Harry, she’d likely thrown in her lot with the most rascally one of the pack. If she were wickedly honest, as Harry had declared, then he was honestly wicked, his black hair tossing across his forehead and his cape blowing out behind him in the breeze. “I’m sorry, but I cannot help the way I am, not at all.”

“Don’t try, sweetheart,” he said, waiting for her to gather her reins and settle into her sidesaddle before he swung himself up onto the big black gelding. “Especially when I mean to try kissing you again, I wouldn’t wish you any other way.”

“Y
OU’RE TIRED
, said Harry, slowing his horse so that Sophie would slow, too. They must have been riding at least an hour by now, though at night it was hard for him to know for sure. “There’s another inn not far from here where we can stop.”

“Not on my account,” said Sophie quickly, visibly straightening her back. “We’ve scarce begun.”

But she
was
tired. She could deny it all she wished, yet he could see her weariness in every drooping inch of her posture. She was entitled to her weariness, of course. He’d guess that her day had begun far earlier than his, no doubt at some uncivilized cock’s crow rather than his genteel noon, and that as good a rider as he knew her to be, she must still be finding the lopsided seat of a lady’s sidesaddle growing more and more uncomfortable as time passed, even though he’d kept their pace purposefully slow along the empty road to spare her as well as the horses.

But what had struck Harry the most was how quiet Sophie had become. Not the prickly, don’t-
touch-me-or-die quiet that she’d made him endure as they’d walked to the Peacock, but the kind that came from being so tired that each word became a trial to speak. She’d had to concentrate so hard on not falling asleep in the saddle that she’d precious little wit left to spare on conversation, even with him.

He smiled at her fondly. She was being either very steadfast and brave, or very pigheaded and stubborn, or more likely, given that it was Sophie, an equal measure of both.

“There’s no sin to admitting you’re tired, Sophie,” he said. “You’re not being a weakling if you do.”

“I am perfectly fine,” she said, raising her chin. “We squandered Heaven knows how much time at the Peacock. The last thing we need now is to stop at another inn, not if we wish to make any progress at all.”

“But I’ll wager most nights at this hour you’re already abed, aren’t you?”

She glanced at him suspiciously. “Most nights I am
asleep,
yes,” she said. “But on most nights I do not have to reach Winchester by the next day. We’ve been graced with a full moon that makes everything bright as day, and it would be shameful not to make use of it.”

Harry sighed impatiently. Here while he’d been pleasantly considering the romantic possibilities of
the moonlight, she’d been regarding it as little more than a glorified lantern to light her dogged way.

“But if you don’t ease your journey, then—”

“I’m not going to another inn with you, Harry Burton,” she said firmly. “I don’t regret stopping at the Peacock, because we found a horse for me, and listening to the music and watching the wedding party was enjoyable. But what if anyone had seen us together? A governess like me, alone in the company of a nobleman of your reputation? For you do have a certain reputation with—with ladies, Harry. You cannot deny it.”

“Of course I won’t,” he said righteously. “Damnation, you should be more concerned if I did, for it would mean I spent my days like an old woman, reading sermons and eating shirred eggs with a tortoise-shell teaspoon. A gentleman
requires
such a reputation.”

But she didn’t laugh the way he’d intended, instead looking away from him to stare down at the reins in her hands. Hell, how had he misstepped
now?

“I am very sorry to hear that, Harry,” she said, her disappointment palpable. “Though it does prove what I—”

“All it proves is that the wretches who write the scandal sheets are far better at fiction than fact,” he said firmly. “Sophie. Sophie, look at me. If I squired even a quarter of the ladies attributed to me,
then I’d scarce be able to hobble about, I’d be that taxed and riddled with pox.”

She looked at him sadly, her face shaded by that wretched bonnet. “I cannot believe you are a saint, Harry.”

“Damnation, Sophie, I’m not saying I am,” he said. He couldn’t begin to guess what answer she sought, any more than he could deny that there’d been other women in his life. Sophie wasn’t a fool, and for that matter, neither was he. The best he could offer her now was what she deserved, and that was the truth. He could only hope that was enough.

“When I returned from France,” he began again, “and you were gone, and—and another time as well, I was—well, then I was no saint. There, that’s the truth. But women like that don’t help beyond a night or two. I know that now. And it’s what I
was,
lass, not what I
am.
”

“Thank you, Harry. Thank you for telling me that, but I’m still not going to another inn with you.” She sighed mightily, twisting the reins more tightly around her fingers. “If I did, I might as well scatter my references to the winds for all the good they’d do me then.”

“No inn, then. But what of that bridge ahead?” he asked, pointed toward an old, low stone bridge over a stream not far in the distance. The banks sloped gently, with ancient willow trees dipping
their long branches into the stream on either side. “We could stop there and water the horses, and leave your governess’s reputation as unbesmirched as ever.”

Her mouth twisted, considering. “We could pause there, yes,” she said slowly. “For the sake of the horses, not for me.”

“Oh, entirely.” He guided his horse ahead, leading Sophie to the bridge and down the sloping bank. The grass had just begun to come back with the spring, the sprouts soft and new near the water, and the reeds were starting to grow again beneath the mossy stone arch of the bridge. The water rushed and gurgled, echoing back like elfin laughter from beneath the curving stones, while the moon’s reflection became a fragmented disc glittering on the dappled surface.

He climbed down and turned to help her from her horse, but she’d already slipped down on her own and was leading her mare to the stream to drink. She’d never needed much coddling when she’d been a girl, and clearly she still didn’t, he thought wryly: in this as in so much else about her, Sophie had remained a woman of her word.

“Should we see what Connor put up for us to eat?” he asked, patting the bulging saddlebag. “A late supper?”

She shook her head. “Thank you, no, I’m not hungry,” she said absently as she crouched down
in the grass beside the water. “Look, Harry, lilies of the valley, the first I’ve seen this spring.”

Carefully she picked a stem of the delicate flowers and held it up for him to see, the tiny white bells quivering from their arched stalks as she sniffed their fragrance.

“Ah, Harry, is there anything sweeter?” she marveled. “Each year, every year, they come with the spring. Some things never do change, do they?”

“Some things never do,” he agreed softly, coming forward to take her hand with the flower. She held the lilies up to his nose, but it wasn’t the lilies that interested him. “Some things remain exactly the same, no matter how many years pass.”

“Others don’t,” she said wryly. “Look at you. You left for France a boy with a sunburned nose and a shy smile, and now—now you’ve become a black-clad highwayman, full of menace.”

“That’s only on the outside, and in a few of my darker corners,” he said, even though he knew it wasn’t true. He
had
changed—he’d only to think of George to realize how much—which was one of the reasons he wanted so desperately to recover a measure of those happier days with her.

He raised her up, and awkwardly she began to collapse back down, making him catch her around the waist to keep her from falling.

“My legs are jelly,” she confessed sheepishly,
trying to push back and steady herself. “It must be from the riding, and that foolish lady-saddle.”

“I’d rather think it was my effect upon you,” he said, keeping his arm around her waist, enjoying how she’d let herself depend upon him, if only in this slight way. “And no one will see you here, lass, I promise.”

Her mouth twitched up at the corners, seemingly against her will, yet just enough to make her dimples show.

“It’s the lilies, Harry,” she said, using the flowers to trace lightly along his jaw, “not you.”

“Oh, it’s never me.” He looped the end of one bonnet ribbon around his finger and slowly pulled, drawing the strand outward until the bow beneath her chin gave way. Another tug of the ribbon, and the hat slipped from the back of her head and tumbled to the grass behind her, exactly as Harry had intended.

Too late she gasped, her hands clutching at her hair as she looked over her shoulder to where the bonnet now lay in the damp grass. “Harry Burton, that bonnet was new last week! I paid my own good money for it, to make a favorable impression upon Sir William!”

“I would buy you a score of new ones in its stead,” he said, gently plucking the hairpins from her tightly coiled hair, “except that any hat that’s as ugly as that one should not be replaced.”

“That bonnet is eminently respectable,” she declared, though she was making no move whatsoever to salvage the hairpins. “Not that you would understand such a notion.”

“It was so eminently ugly, Sophie, that it frightened the horses.” He worked the last pin free, and the thick coil of her hair pinwheeled free, slipping and sliding down her back with the old unbridled luxuriance. She’d always been too impatient as a girl to fuss with her hair, and the few times someone else had pinned it into a more ladylike knot for her instead of her usual haphazard plait, it was usually flopping undone within the hour, exactly as it was now.

She shook her hair over her shoulders and turned back to face him, tucking the lilies behind her ear with a jaunty defiance. All her primness seemed to have vanished, her eyes now full of the old challenge he remembered, and he felt his blood quicken and his body harden in response.

“So, tell me, Harry,” she said, her voice husky and low. “Does mussing my hair like this make you happy, then? Now that I must look like some tumbled, tawdry hussy after haying, shall I no longer scare the horses?”

But before he could answer she reached up and grabbed his own broad-brimmed hat, sailing it away across the grass like a black, beaver-felt bat.

She didn’t bother to keep the triumph from her voice. “Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.”

He tightened his arm around her waist, drawing her closer. He could feel the warmth of her body through the rough wool of her clothes, the soft curve between her waist and hips. “The goose shall find herself cooked if she isn’t more careful about taunting the gander.”

“Oh, butter and beans,” she scoffed, her expression becoming oddly solemn as she leaned back into the crook of his arm, her hands resting on his chest with her fingers fanned apart. “I suppose now you shall try to kiss me again, as you promised.”

“I could,” he said, lowering his mouth over hers, the familiar fragrance of her skin mingling with the scent of the flowers in her hair. “I can.”

“No,” she said, ducking her head away as she pushed harder against his chest. “No, Harry, please.”

Disappointment and frustration welled up within him. “Hell, Sophie, if you’re going to bring up all that damned nonsense again about you being a governess who can’t—”

“No nonsense,” she whispered, slipping her hands around his shoulders to draw his face down to hers. “I just wanted to kiss you before you kissed me.”

Instinctively her mouth found his, turning the exact distance for their lips to meet and meld, and for
Harry to forget any idea whatsoever of protesting how, once again, she’d foxed him. He forgot, and remembered everything else he’d so loved about kissing her: how eagerly she’d sigh as her lips parted for him, how warm her mouth could be, how she seemed to melt against him, as if making her body touch his in as many ways as she could, how she tasted and smelled and felt and
loved
—yes, loved—him in return. They kissed, and it was as if his letters had never been returned unread. They kissed, and everything in life seemed once again possible, as long as she was there to share it with him.

He deepened the kiss, his hands sliding along her sides to pull her hips closer to his own and to let her feel the hard proof of how much he wanted her, how much he needed her. He’d sensed he’d somehow blundered when earlier she’d asked him about the other women in his life, and he didn’t want to blunder again.

“Ah, Sophie, Sophie,” he murmured, threading his fingers into her hair to hold her face before him. Lightly he feathered kisses over her cheeks, along the curve of her jaw and throat that he knew was most sensitive. “My own lass.”

With a shuddering sigh, she gently twisted her face away from his lips, drawing far enough away from him to study his face. Her lips were wet and parted, her breathing rapid, leaving no doubt in his
mind that she’d relished their kiss as much as he. Yet in the moonlight her eyes were enormous with uncertainty, their confusion punctuated by the spiky shadows of her lashes falling across her cheeks.

“I told you we weren’t done, Sophie,” he whispered, running his hand up and down her back, hoping the caress would comfort and reassure her, as well as remind her of the pleasure in what they
had
been doing before she’d pulled away. “I told you the moonlight would make—”

“No, no, no!” she cried plaintively as she pressed her fingers over his mouth to silence him. “That’s not what I intended, Harry, not at all! I thought I could kiss you this once, for the last time—the farewell kiss we never had. I thought I was strong enough to do that, but instead I’m—”

But the crack of a gunshot at close range cut her off, the sound echoing sharply against the stone bridge as the acrid scent of the gunpowder filled the air. Automatically Harry pulled Sophie down, pushing her beneath the arch of the bridge and shielding her with his own body for extra measure. Now he heard horses on the road overhead, the jingle of harnesses and the scrape of the iron-bound wheels of a carriage or wagon, men’s voices turned harsh and grim.

Damnation, why had he grown so blasted careless? Why had he dropped his guard so low that it might as well be lying across the toes of his boots?

“Who is it, Harry?” asked Sophie beside him, breathless now with excitement rather than desire. “Who would fire upon
us?
”

“Thieves, vagabonds, deserters,” he said, pulling one of this pistols from his belt to check the powder. “There’s a thousand possibilities. Damnation, Sophie, keep back in the shadows, where they can’t see you!”