Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) (9 page)

His money was on “pointedly ignoring him.”

Miss Lawton, though, had no such compunctions. She tapped him boldly on the forearm to bring his attention back to her, gazed straight at him with her robin’s-egg-blue eyes, and twittered, “What do you think, Lord Parkhurst? Tomorrow for the May Pole dance, shall I choose a blue ribbon to hold or a pink one? Or perhaps yellow? My dress shall be blue, but I do love the freshness of pink, and the brightness of yellow. They put one in mind of azaleas and daisies, don’t you think? Most appropriate for the season. And one wishes to celebrate the coming of spring with the proper enthusiasm.”

“Indeed,” he said, having nothing else sensible to reply.

“And shall you join us around the May Pole, my lord?” Her lashes fluttered again. “To dance with the other young people?”

“I…I had not thought about it either way.” Oh, but if Mary Wilkins were going to dance, how could he resist? As they had from time immemorial, the unmarried men would face one way, the unmarried women the other, winding their long ribbons around the tall pole, drawing tighter and tighter until the dancers had no choice but to press up close to one another, sweated and laughing, their blood high and coloring their cheeks. The symbolic meaning was unmistakable, almost obscene.

Desire. Pleasure. Sex.

Heat washed upwards from his knees through his thighs, and all the way up to fume his brain. It made his loins feel heavy, and his head light.

Ah, but if he and Mary did join the dancers, she would probably slip by him each time without looking at him, avoiding the brush of his arms and shoulders. She would freeze him out.

The heat in his body chilled considerably.

“Oh, but you
must
dance,” chirped Annabel, startling him from his thoughts. “The lord of the manor should join his people in their festivities. It is an absolute
duty
.”

He managed to smile at her, but chanced another glance at Mary. She had three ribbons strung through the ring, and was reaching down for yet another. Most efficient.

A memory came to him suddenly, of Mary at perhaps seven or eight years old, daring him to race up the trunk of an enormous oak tree. They’d both scraped themselves mightily on the bark as they fought to gain the highest branches. And when they’d reached the top and looked out over all of Birchford and the surrounding countryside, they’d both gasped at the sight—all that rolling green stretched out beneath them, and the clouds looming huge and white, closer than ever. And there was Parkhurst Hall, its usual majesty reduced to dollhouse proportions.

Mary had sighed and said, “This is how giants must see the world.” They’d both been quite earnest about giants at the time.

And, eyeing his suddenly fragile ancestral home, he’d answered her: “A giant this tall could destroy all of Birchford with just a few stomps of his boots.”

“Oh, no!” she’d said. “It could be a kind giant, who’d give us rides, and plow all our fields with his hair comb, and build new stone cottages for the farmers using just his fingertips.”

He smiled to remember it now. That had been childhood Mary in a nutshell—daring and imaginative and immensely kind, all at once. Which, now that he thought about it, was still an apt description of Mary as an adult, though she hid all but the kindness from most people who knew her.

He couldn’t see her face now as she stood on the ladder, only the side of her head with its tight-coiled hair, and the length of her very serviceable brown frock. Funny how dull she could appear if you didn’t look beyond that illusion, if you never really looked into her eyes.

Miss Lawton, in contrast, was all vivid color and glow. The blonde curls, the blue eyes, the radiant rosy skin, the prettily sprigged muslin of her dress with its thousands of tiny pink and green flowers, and a glossy bright green ribbon in a bow just under her very full breasts.

By rights, Miss Lawton should be the object of his sexual fantasies. He should be thinking about lifting
her
skirts, looking his fill at her round tits, burying his mouth and nose between her soft thighs. She was the sort of plump, silken, scented, pliant creature most men wished to spend their lusts upon.

But his thoughts were much more powerfully drawn to the drab-looking young lady on the ladder. That pale little mouth and those small firm breasts and that spine stiffened by a rather prickly, stubborn sense of pride provoked him so much more intensely than Annabel Lawton ever could.

He’d let himself forget what Mary was over the years he was away from home; he’d let himself be fooled by his old friend’s surface plainness. But once they’d gone up that hill and gotten tangled in the blackberries, he’d caught sight once more of the bright flame that burned just beneath the surface.

Lord, his cock twitched just thinking of her.

Just watching her lean into that tall tree trunk.

If he moved just a bit closer to her, got just below her on the ladder, he could probably see up her skirts, at least to her ankles, perhaps a bit of her calves. She might ignore him now, but if he climbed up the ladder behind her, slid his hand up behind her knee, stroked his way up towards her thigh, he felt quite sure he could get her full attention.

His blood started beating hot again as he thought about it. If no one else were here, if no one could see them, what might he be able to do with her on that ladder? The possibilities were intriguing—if she faced the other direction, sat down on one of the steps, he could hoist her skirts and get his mouth on her in a way that would have her shouting with pleasure within a minute. And then he might turn her the other way again, climb a few steps higher, hold on the sides of the ladder to steady himself, and bury himself inside her from behind and….

He startled. Miss Lawton had tapped him on the forearm again.

“When you dance about the May Pole, my lord,” said Miss Lawton, “you must hold a blue ribbon, and you must wear that waistcoat of yours with the blue stripe through the white cloth. The two blues are very like, are they not? You shall look quite sprightly. I daresay no man in the county shall look more like a proper celebrant of the spring!”

“I daresay,” he replied dryly. “Of course, you are quite wise in such matters, Miss Lawton.” He tried to smile, though his head was beginning to hurt. If he did as Mary insisted and married Annabel Lawton, conversations this inane would be his doom every remaining day of his life.

Surely he’d spent enough time mollifying the ego of Miss Lawton. He stepped up beside the ladder, his heart pounding as though he were the most callow of swains. “Are you quite all right up there, Miss Wilkins?” he asked, lifting his armful of ribbons in a helpful sort of gesture. “Perhaps I could assist you?”

Mary speared another ribbon through the ring. “Thank you, no, Lord Parkhurst. I am managing quite nicely.”

Of course she was. Mary managed quite nicely at everything. He was the one who was of no use to her.

His heart sank.

Damn it all, he wanted her to look at him. He wanted her to talk to him, not soldier on with her task as though he were an annoyance, a pestering mayfly.

Did she truly no longer see in him what she had seen in him when they were younger? Back then they’d been partners in all their adventures, and she’d trusted him implicitly to be as wild and brave and strong as she was.

Well, the years had passed for her, too. Perhaps she only saw the surface of him now—the civilized, privileged surface of a viscount who no longer climbed oak trees or wished to be a pirate. A
gentleman
, with all the qualities that term implied. And perhaps she had no respect for that, no reason to take him seriously.

A sudden wish to be back in the army swept over him. Back where the world was under his command. Where everyone knew his strength and skill and courage, and where he was unquestionably
useful
.

Where he knew from one minute to the next precisely what he wanted.

Where no little spinsters in plain brown frocks could turn his world upside-down with an erotic encounter in the woods, then ignore him completely.

Miss Lawton tapped at him yet again, like a damned woodpecker. “My lord,” she said, “I hope you are also planning to join the dancing in the evening. We have so few noblemen who attend our assemblies here, and I very much want to dance. Since I have not been to London yet, I’ve had few opportunities.”

Ah, that was a well-aimed volley. No, Miss Lawton had not been to London yet. Lord Lawton had not let her have her Season, precisely because he fully expected her to become a viscountess right here at home.

Damn this whole situation.

If no marriage proposal was forthcoming, John would be committing a grievous offense against her family. And he would bring shame to his own father’s memory.

Damn and damn and damn again.

Warring impulses pulled his insides in contrary directions, aching like a bruise. He wanted Mary, but Mary didn’t want him—she was making that clearer every day. And duty demanded that he do what everyone else was waiting for, and take Miss Lawton as his bride.

Maybe it would just be easier to let Mary have her way, forgot anything that happened between them, go forward with his father’s plan for him, and marry Miss Lawton and be done with it. That strategy would certainly be easier on his pride than following Mary about like a spaniel.

After all, Mary had told him repeatedly that she wanted him to keep his promise to his father. And Miss Lawton could not be giving him clearer signals she was ready to say yes to his proposal.

Maybe he should just stiffen his spine and go through with the plan.

It would be the wise and sensible thing to do.

The honorable thing.

The best salve for his wounded pride.

But the thought made him more heavy-hearted than he’d ever felt in his life.

Chapter Seven

Mary was not given to superstitions. But May Day morning dawned so bright and clear, the nighttime mists vanishing from the field and woods almost the moment the first rays peered over the horizon, it was hard to resist the lure of the old stories.

Long ago, the pagan Britons believed spirits inhabited the trees and meadows here, and that on this loveliest day of spring a maiden would spy her true love if she went out in the morning to gather flowers.

Certainly, this morning felt a thousand times better than yesterday, when she’d felt so stiff and wooden and utterly unlovable as she perched up on that ladder like some scrawny old workman while John flirted right under her nose with the gloriously beautiful Annabel Lawton.

She’d seen their hands brush together when he offered to carry Annabel’s ribbons for her. She’d seen the startled look on his face, the hint of a blush that stole over his cheeks, the alert awareness in his eyes. Of
course
he reacted to Annabel like that. Any man would have.

The world was settling back into its right dimensions again, after that morning with the blackberries knocked it all temporarily out of whack. Lust made John do what he’d done up on that hill, and a misguided sense of duty prompted him to offer marriage to the wrong woman. But Mary held firm to what she knew was right, and disaster had been averted.

And it
would
have been a disaster if she’d tried to marry John. No matter what he said, he’d have regretted it before the wedding day was even through.

If she’d needed any clearer proof that a clergyman’s plain daughter was the wrong match for a handsome, wealthy viscount, the contrast between her dutiful, dull little self and radiant, lush-bosomed Annabel settled the question once and for all.

Yesterday, she’d thought she would die inside.

But she didn’t die. She was made of stronger stuff than that. She’d been raised to do the right thing, after all, no matter the cost to herself.

It didn’t matter how John made her feel. She couldn’t let it matter. She’d make what she could of her life, and not indulge in self-pity.

Right now, the morning was beautiful, as beautiful and magical as anything the pagans could have desired. The leaves shone brilliant green and rustled in hushed, welcoming whispers. The warm breeze caressed her skin, and tiny insects with transparent wings turned golden in the sunlight, flickering through the air like friendly sprites. The smell of earth rose warm and fertile—the world was full of the possibility of transformation.

While her brother still slept soundly in his room, Mary had dressed herself quickly in a frock of thin green muslin, the lightest she had. The other young ladies would follow local tradition and set out with unbound hair and bare feet to gather May Day flowers, but they would stick to the relatively civilized meadows at the other end of the village, where they might stay on the well-packed earthen path and not dirty their toes too much. They’d come home with tame yellow daisies and daffodils. But Mary headed deep into the woods where the loveliest wildflowers grew—the scented wood anemones and bluebells, the sweet bramble roses and jewel-toned irises that required a good deal more exertion and exposure to thorns and mud.

She’d always gone into the woods on May Day, celebrating the coming of spring much as her long-ago ancestors had done, and that one day only she’d left her hair free of its usual coil, as a pagan maiden would. But this year she took an extra risk, gave herself an additional small taste of freedom: she left off not just her shoes, but her chemise and petticoat and stays as well.