Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London (19 page)

He grinned. “Which time?”

She laughed. “You were in danger of expulsion more than once? For what? More pranks?”

“Well, yes, among other things.”

“Gambling?” she guessed.

“No, I couldn’t afford to gamble, for I hadn’t the blunt. No, I spent what little money I had on other things.”

“Drink?”

“Of course. Drink, women . . . but I could be heading into dangerous territory with this topic, so enough about me. What about you? Did you have a nickname as a child?”

She wanted to know more about the women, but she didn’t want to display any curiosity on the subject, so she was forced to let it drop. “I did have a nickname, but I shan’t tell it to you.”

“Why not?” He eyed her with sympathy. “Was it very horrid?”

Linnet’s mind flashed back to the merciless teasing of her childhood. “Very,” she said, and gave a shrug as if it didn’t matter. Gesturing to the plates and baskets all around them, she went on, “Are we going to eat this food, or are we going to let the ants have it all?”

“I say we eat it. The ants can starve. But do you not want to eat your muffin first?”

She smiled at the reminder. Returning her attention to the treat on her plate, she broke it apart and took a bite.

“Well,” he asked. “Does it pass muster?”

“Umm-hmm,” she murmured around a mouthful of muffin, savoring the taste of her favorite treat as she chewed and swallowed. “It’s delicious. Almost as good as the ones back home.”

“Almost?” he echoed as if in disbelief, but she wasn’t fooled. She could tell her pronouncement pleased him, for an unmistakable smile curved the corners of his mouth and creased the edges of his eyes. “Almost?”

“Well, something like this is never quite the same when some other cook makes it,” she explained. “It’s always a little different. But these are very close. And so much better than the ones the Savoy tried to make for me.”

“Perhaps, but still . . .” He paused, and his smile took on a devilish curve that had no doubt been just as responsible for his nickname as his pranks had been. “If it’s not as good as the ones back home, perhaps you shouldn’t have any more.”

He reached for her plate, but she snatched it back. “No, no,” she protested, laughing as she turned away to keep her treat out of his reach. “Don’t take my muffin.”

He rose on his knees behind her, leaning closer. “But Linnet, I’d hate for your discerning palate to be compromised with inferior muffins. If it isn’t good enough—”

“I never said that.” She twisted, still laughing, shifting her plate from one hand to the other as his arms came up on either side of her to reach for it. “It’s wonderful. Perfect. Every bit as good as our cook’s, I swear.”

“That’s a relief. I should hate to think my peace offering tasted like sawdust.” His arms fell to his sides, but he didn’t move away. Instead, he bent down, leaning closer. “I’d be in dire straits then,” he murmured, his breath stirring the loose tendril of hair at her cheek. “You might take back our truce.”

She froze, paralyzed by a sudden jolt of nervousness, and she didn’t know why. It was just a muffin, and he wasn’t even touching her. “I won’t take it back,” she blurted out, her hands clenching tight around her plate.

“No?”

She shook her head, and much to her relief, he returned to his side of the blanket, enabling her to turn around.

“Good,” he said, tilting his head as he looked at her. “Because if you did, it would grieve me enormously, Linnet.”

His smile was gone, his expression grave as he looked at her, and she felt again that tight pinch in her chest, a pang of pain and pleasure mixed with a hefty dollop of insecurity. It wasn’t something she was often inclined to feel, and she was impelled to look away, seeking a distraction.

“What have we here?” she asked, pulling the napkin back from one of the plates beside her. “Ham. How lovely.”

Her voice sounded so arch and artificial, it made her wince, but if he noticed, he didn’t tease her about it. “I suppose that’s another hint that it’s time to eat,” he said and opened the picnic basket closest to him. “There’s chicken and salad by you as well,” he told her, nodding to the other plates on the grass by her hip as he began pulling bread, cheese, and little pots of butter and mustard out of the basket.

But if she thought he was done teasing her, she was mistaken. “I hope you realize,” he said as he began tearing bread into pieces, “that these diversionary tactics of yours aren’t going to work.”

“Diversionary tactics?” She reached for a piece of the bread and a knife. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said as she spread some of the soft cheese onto her hunk of bread.

“There is a concept called
quid pro quo,
” he explained. “And since I learned Latin at school, among many other useless things, I can tell you that it translates roughly as, ‘something for something.’ ”

Maybe all his teasing was muddling her brain, for she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Her bafflement must have shown on her face, for he went on, “I told you my nickname. So that means you have to tell me yours.”

“I don’t have to do anything just because you expect it,” she reminded, but though he grinned at that, he continued to look at her, waiting.

She tried to ignore him. She pulled some ham and chicken onto her plate, reached for a fork, and went on eating, but his gaze remained fixed on her, and she gave up. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she cried, setting down her plate, “what does it matter what my nickname was?”

His grin widened. “Because it’s so obvious you don’t want to tell me. You’ve piqued my curiosity, and I shall pursue this topic with relentless zeal.”

“Even so, your curiosity shall remain unsatisfied,” she said primly, and gestured to the champagne. “Are you going to open that or let it grow warm?”

“I’m happy to open it, but you can’t have any.”

“Why not?” She straightened on the blanket, indignant. “Because I won’t tell you my nickname?”

“I would never use champagne as leverage of that kind. No, no. It’s just that I was told you prefer ginger ale, so I brought that for you instead.”

“Told? By whom?” The moment the question was out of her mouth, she groaned. “My mother, I suppose?”

He nodded, pulling the bottle from the ice bucket. “After I learned tea was not a favorite beverage of yours, I decided to change our outing to a picnic,” he explained as he opened the champagne. “When I inquired of your mother what wine you would prefer, she told me ginger ale would do for you quite nicely. A young lady, she informed me, does not drink wine until after six o’clock.”

Linnet rolled her eyes and took a bite of ham. “As if the time of day has anything to do with it. My mother thinks it is inappropriate for an unmarried woman to drink anything at any time. She glares daggers at me whenever I defy her and do it anyway.”

“Ah.” The cork popped, and he reached for one of the flutes that sat on the rock behind him. “That’s why she scowled at you with such ferocity when you were drinking sherry in Newport.”

“Well, that was your fault,” Linnet told him, taking the filled glass he held out to her. “She was pushing you at me, pointing out I still had a chance to marry a lord, going on and on about you to such a nauseating degree that I felt in desperate need of a drink. But,” she added, struck by a sudden thought, “how did you know sherry was what I was drinking that night? There were trays of port going around the ballroom, too, as I recall.”

He smiled a little as he filled a champagne flute for himself. “You weren’t drinking port.”

He spoke with such positive assurance she felt impelled to debate the point. “Tawny port and cream sherry look alike. You cannot know for certain which of the two I was drinking.”

“But I can.” He set the bottle back in the ice and returned his attention to her. “I know you were drinking sherry because I tasted it on your mouth.”

“Oh.” Heat flooded through her, so sudden and overpowering that she couldn’t move, or even breathe. Her heart began to pound with painful force. This was the same sensation she’d felt when he’d stared at her so openly at Mrs. Dewey’s ball, and how he’d looked at her that afternoon in Lady Trubridge’s drawing room, and she supposed she ought to be used to it by now, but she wasn’t. In fact, here alone with him in the middle of nowhere, it seemed more potent than ever. It was almost like . . . pleasure.

His lashes lowered as he looked at her lips, and she could only watch, immobile, fixed by his gaze like a butterfly on a pin, knowing he was remembering the sherry-laced taste of her kiss. The pleasure was unmistakable now, unfurling inside her like flowers opening in the sun.

His gaze moved lower, to where her heart was thudding in her chest, and the heat and tension inside her deepened and spread, radiating outward until she was tingling from head to toe, and she was sure she must be blushing all over. It became unbearable, and she tore her gaze away.

“Rabbit,” she choked, desperate enough that confessing one of her worst childhood memories seemed an easy choice. Better that than to sit here silent with his intense, heated gaze on her and his mind imagining any number of naughty things. “My nickname as a girl was Rabbit.”

“What?” He made a sound of derision, and she was relieved that he seemed distracted from her lips at last. “That’s the most ill-fitting nickname I’ve heard in my life, for I can’t imagine any woman less like a rabbit than you.”

“Yes, well, timidity wasn’t the reason.” She took a gulp from her glass, and the sparkling wine burned her throat as she swallowed. “My teeth stuck out,” she explained, striving to seem nonchalant about something that was, after all, a long time ago. “And my skin has always been quite pale, and my hair was very light when I was a little girl, almost white. So the other girls teased me and called me Rabbit. Luckily, my hair got darker as I got older, and my mother found a dentist to put a plate on my teeth and straighten them. But when I was ten, I fear I did look rather like a rabbit.”

“Still, that is not a nickname,” he said, sounding appalled. “It’s a taunt, and that’s a different thing altogether. And looks aside, I’d wager that even as a little girl, you had the soul of a lioness. That could be your new nickname.” His smile returned, wry this time. “It suits, for you’ve certainly scratched me a time or two.”

“Only when you’ve deserved it.”

“Lioness it is, then. But I’m curious, why such reluctance to tell me the story?”

It was her turn for a wry smile. “Yes, well, now you know another one of my flaws. Vanity. I don’t like being reminded of how plain I was as a child.”

“Or you don’t like the fact that it still hurts how much you were teased.”

“It’s silly, I know,” she said with a shrug, trying to sound as if it didn’t matter. “One should be over that sort of thing by the time one has grown up.”

“Perhaps, but it’s not an easy thing to do, especially for someone like you.”

“Thank you for underscoring my point about my vanity,” she said, making a face at him.

“You’re not vain, Linnet. You’re proud, and that’s a whole different thing.”

“I’m not sure that’s better,” she said jokingly, and took a swallow of champagne. “You know what they say about pride. It goes before a fall, doesn’t it?”

She watched his lips press together, and she regretted her words at once. “I didn’t mean to bring that up. It’s bad enough that you think me a shrew. You mustn’t think I’m some sort of . . . of nagging fishwife, too. What?” she demanded as his mouth began curving upward. “Why are you smiling?”

“Because I’m making headway.”

She looked away with a toss of her head. “That’s your vivid imagination at work.”

“No, it’s not.” Setting aside his champagne, he moved closer, his hip brushing her knee as he stretched out his long legs beside her. “You are starting to care what I think, so I must be making headway.”

She felt impelled to retreat to safer ground. “I only meant that I’m stuck with you all week, and I can’t very well keep throwing what happened in your face and blaming you. At some point, for the sake of civility, if nothing else, I am forced to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Though I always favor being given the benefit of the doubt, I have to object to your phrasing. These accusations that I make you do things,” he added with mock severity, “are quite unfair, Linnet, really.”

“Says the man who picked me up and carted me off against my will.”

“But you’re not sorry I did it. Not now.” He sat back, resting his weight on his elbows, looking far too pleased with himself. “I gave you blueberry muffins.”

She tried to seem unimpressed, but she feared it was too late for that sort of pretense. “You bribed me.”

“First force, then bribery. And now, I’ve even wheedled your childhood nickname out of you. I’m such an unscrupulous chap. But I’ve given you a new one, and Rabbit can be laid to rest forever.”

“I’m not sure about Lioness, though.” She considered. “Don’t the female lions do all the hunting, while the males laze about in the sun all day?”

He laughed. “That does sound most unfair, doesn’t it? Still, that’s not how it is in England. Men do the hunting though ladies are allowed to join us on occasion if they ride well. And you might like hunting if you did it. Do you ride?”

“I do. And I did hunt, in Italy, last autumn.”

“And did you like it?”

She smiled. “I did. It was boar hunting. Very exciting.”

“Well, there you are, then. Lioness suits you down to the ground—even your hair’s the right color, all tawny and golden.”

Linnet gave him a wide-eyed stare as if he’d just said something amazing. “Why, Jack Featherstone, is that a compliment you’ve just given me?”

“Fishing for compliments, are you, Lioness? I don’t see why.” He sat up and began making himself a sandwich. “I daresay you’ve received quite a few of those in your life already. You don’t need them from me.”

“Yes, but from you, they would make such a nice change from the usual.”

He shook his head. “No, I won’t play. Far be it from me to feed that vanity you’re so ashamed of. Besides, I’ve never been much good at flattery. You’d think I would be,” he added with a laugh, “since I had the finest possible examples to emulate, but I’m not.”