Discovery of Desire (13 page)

“Emma, this dress does not seem daring to you?”

“You look beautiful, Mina. Lavender becomes you so well.”

“I should have worn my shawl.” A ridiculous statement. No one would pay her décolletage any mind. The ballroom of the Government House was massive, and scores of women filled the space—with nary a shawl in sight.

Emma lowered her voice so as not to be overhead. “You are not used to the neckline, that's all. You disguise your figure too well. You always have.”

Mina ignored the urge to tug her dress high over her bosom. Life in Chesterfield did not include formal balls—and never a gown as revealing as the one she wore now. But perhaps a lady
did
appear to full advantage in such a dress. And she needed every advantage.

Emma noticed someone and stiffened. “Mr. Block is behind you. His waistcoat is a houndstooth pattern in navy and green.”

Mina turned, discreetly studying the man swirling his whiskey. “He does not look recently widowed.”

“He looks aware that he is most eligible.”

Mr. Block caught their study and flashed an enormous smile to them.

But his smile didn't crinkle his eyes.

Emma was caught by Genevieve and pulled into a circle of their friends. Mina started to follow but a hand touched her arm.

“Minnie?”

She turned, and there stood the man she was unfortunately always thinking of, with his deep voice and tilted smile and large hands that were always fussing with something. Tonight it appeared to be a long seedpod.

“Mr. Mayhew?” He was so handsome in his suit, and with his golden hair combed into a sleek queue, her heart whimpered before she could steel it. “Good evening. I did not expect to see you here.”

“Neither did anyone else. I wasn't invited.”

She checked if anyone had overheard. “How did you—”

“In all my days, Minnie, I've never seen anything as beautiful as you tonight.”

A terrible flirt…and yet she still blushed down to her bosom. She really should have brought her shawl. “Thank you, Mr. Mayhew. And you”—
my goodness, the man's shoulders
—“you look very handsome this evening.”

His grin broke into a smile. And that was adorable.

“Thank you.” He wiped a big hand over his smile but didn't manage to erase it. “It's not so easy finding a good coat, my height being unnatural. You wouldn't understand, being normal-shaped.” His eyes swept her from tip to toe, stopping on her bosom before leaping back up to her face. But they dipped down again before darting up toward the ceiling.

Her corset was suddenly suffocating, and she surreptitiously checked her décolletage—oh.

Oh
. From his high vantage point, he might be seeing even more of her than others.

She held her chin up, trying for an air of nonchalance in the matter of all her exposed parts. “What is that in your hand, Mr. Mayhew?”

He didn't seem to hear her for a moment, and then raised his brow in question. “Ay?”

The word was a tug on her heart. Pure Midlands in that. She pointed to his hand, and he presented the pod he was holding in his massive hand.

“Don't know,” he said. “Wanted to ask Tom. Saw it on my way here.”

“It isn't familiar to you?”

“I'm not all that skilled in identifying trees.”

Confused, she searched his face but he only smiled down at her with the usual kind, appreciative light in his eyes. “Are trees not your specialty, then?”

“I'm no botanist, Minnie.” He dropped his gaze. “I studied for a certificate in horticulture, but East India mainly needed a man to journey into the jungles and collect anything that looked useful. And who wouldn't die. That was probably the more important skill—the not dying. But I had a talent for finding the useful, too. I probably overlooked a bit that was valuable, but not much.”

She shook her head. “No, you wouldn't have.”

He looked into her eyes as if gauging the truth in them, which confused her until his eyes crinkled with something like pride.

He caught her hand and gave her the seedpod. “What they don't tell you in the Company is to talk to the native peoples. I don't know why they don't—it's the best way to find the medicinals.

“Once, I was in a village off the Rio Cupijó—that's in Brazil—and I saw the tribal women shaving the bark of a tree and steeping it in hot water. They used that for their digestive troubles, so I sketched the tree and leaves, took myself cuttings and seeds, and sent it back to the company with that note. The tribal women had no fear of me and seemed to want to share all their skills.” He winked at her. “I think they thought me some sort of novelty. Like a talking ape.”

“I doubt that very much.” She studied him, bemused that Mr. Mayhew, a plant collector, wasn't a botanist and yet… “I think you must have been very good at your work.”

He shrugged, but his smile grew. “The Company never complained.” Something sobering flickered across his face. “They said they couldn't pay me what a real botanist might earn, one that read science and botany at university. But they said any new ornamentals I found, I could keep.”

“Like your slipper orchid?”

His grin returned. “My
Wilhelmina
orchid.”

“That flower bought you a home.”

“Bought me the land, anyway, didn't it? The best beauty I ever found. Spent the last farthing on the land, which I found wasn't the best thinking.”

“No?”

“I should've kept a bit aside, for all the repairs and setting up that's needed.”

“I see,” she said. Land would be terribly expensive to maintain, and it seemed Mr. Mayhew had not set aside a reserve of funds to do so.

His face was flushed, his gaze aimed over her head. “But I told you of those other orchids and ornamentals. They arrived in London just when I was to sail. I don't know if those plants survived the crossing, but my mates, the Skinner boys, will do all they can. I won't know for months if those seeds were viable.”

The prospect was full of risk. As kind as he was, she could never marry a man like him. It was not in her nature to bear uncertainty. Though an explorer would always risk, and do so with ease. Except…looking at Mr. Mayhew now as he spoke so quietly, she somehow doubted he was easy with such a chance future himself.

She handed him back his seedpod and smiled. “You'll sell all your other flowers, too. And set up your land and cottage, and marry and have your children.”

“You think so?”

He looked at her so long she had to drop her eyes. And yet, she answered truthfully when she said, “I do.”

He chuckled. “Do you want to know how I found most of the flowers?”

“How?”

“Climbing. The treetops and cliffs. I wasn't ever afraid of any height, and climbing's how you find all the treasures. That's where you find the plants that don't mind the variability of English weather. Hardy little flowers. Clinging in places you don't think a plant would dream of taking root. A flash of scarlet in a meadow is already known to the world. Only one simple as me would crawl up the ledge of a cliff so narrow he'd have to do it on all fours. Stopping every foot or so, praying that vertigo you only get when you're staring down four hundred feet of granite will pass.”

Her heart pounded at the thought. She clutched his arm. “You mustn't ever do such a thing. Not ever again.”

He looked at her hand on his sleeve. The last time she'd touched him, he'd kissed her. She slipped her hand away.

“I've been talking about myself all this time, Minnie. And I know that's not a topic of any lasting interest.”

“I like your stories. Most men don't talk to me as you do. They don't know what to say to me, or I to them.”

“Why not?” His eyes followed the arc of her headdress. The silk flowers and vines dangled from her temples and ended in glass beads, which, to her alarm, he captured between his fingers.

“I…I don't know,” she breathed. “I think I'm too serious.”

He moved closer, his eyes sweeping her face. “You're not
too
anything. You're just right,” he murmured. His finger played with her hair ornament. “What's this little sprig of ribbons called, Minnie?”

That crooked smile…it might have been a harpoon in her heart. Trying to ignore the radiating warmth of his hand, she shrugged. “It's just a bit of decoration. To match my dress.”

His eyes locked on hers. “You're all the beauty a man can take and you go and add a frame like this.” His voice deepened, the words thrumming beneath her skin. “Not even Shakespeare could describe how you look tonight.”

Oh dear… She should move. She should
breathe
.

His finger touched her cheek for a moment, and he released her gaze to watch where he touched her. Instantly, his gaze sharpened and his hand dropped from her. He straightened from her and only then did she realize how close he'd been standing.

Had anyone seen? Emma was in conversation, and no one seemed to pay the least bit of attention. She cleared her throat. What had they been talking about? “You are always full of compliments, Mr. Mayhew—”

“Why don't you call me Seth?”

She had to smile at that. “Why don't you call me Mina?”

“Everyone calls you Mina.”

He was incorrigible. “You
are
a terrible flirt.”

“I never flirted with you, Minnie.”

She covered her lips, but a laugh escaped. “A flirt
would
say that.”

His eyes narrowed, studying her. “I don't flirt with you, Minnie. I never have. I can't say you ever flirted with me, either.”

Her smile vanished and she tore free of his intense gaze to check her ear baubles, smooth her skirt—
anything
to derail his attention. “I'm told I must engage the men with conversation, but I don't know how. Do you have any suggestions?”

He shrugged, looking irritated by the question. “With these gents?” He propped his hands on his hips to survey the room. “Men like to feel useful. Just ask them for advice you don't need.”

“That's not what I was told.”

“See—that's wrong, what you just did.” He grinned. “What did the venture girls tell you to do, to lure a man?”

Lure a man… How had she come to this? She breathed deep. “They said I ought to touch the gentleman on his arm—which I did not mean to do to you, though I realize I just did. Truly it was not meant to…”

“Seduce me?”

“Yes. I mean, no. Not meant to.”

He frowned. “I know it,” he grumbled. “What else?”

“They said I should walk to display my”—
figure
—“my dress.”

His eyes crinkled with mirth. “Your dress, is it?” He dipped his head to speak close. “Shall I tell you what draws a man's eye, Minnie?”

His deep voice sent tremors down the back of her neck, so she nodded quickly.

“Happiness. You're already easy to look on, but a happy woman is easy to be with. Makes the man think you'll forgive him for all the mistakes he's sure to make.”

She bit her lip against a smile. Which made Mr. Mayhew's gaze drop to her mouth and go still.

“Do you care to know what holds my eye in particular?” he murmured.

“Not happiness?”

Odd how Mr. Mayhew could somehow seem so shy. He looked at her as if deciding whether or not to tell her. “I don't know what to call it, but I know it when I see it. My mum had it. She'd been left with two babies and nothing else—but Lucifer himself couldn't have led her on any path but the one that saw us warm and fed.

“Some might say that was just a woman being practical, but it was more. It was defending who you love, no matter what was testing you. A woman like that…” He smiled sheepishly. Shy again, but proud, too. “Who wouldn't love a woman like that?”

“She was formidable,” she said.

“Damn me,” he said quietly, as if realizing something. “She
was
. She was mighty.” His eyes roamed her face. “She was like you.”

Her lips parted to scoff, but she caught herself at the look on his face. To imagine her brave or
mighty
was astonishingly mistaken. “I'm not at all.”

She feigned interest in the ballroom, but when she turned back around, Mr. Mayhew's eyes still watched her. She clasped her hands, rather than crossing her arms and shrinking into herself. Men did not look at her like that, and when Mr. Mayhew did…she actually didn't mind at all.

But she rather felt like she might need to drop to all fours to keep her balance.

His warm hand came to rest on the small of her back. “Why don't you go on now?” he said gently. “I wager that Captain Ravenshaw and Mr. Block are counting the seconds till they can know your name.”

The strangest pain shot through her heart. This was impossible.
He
was impossible.

With a final look at his sea-green eyes, she turned for the deep waters of Bombay Society.

* * *

There was nothing worse than seeing a woman you wanted for yourself walk toward another man.

A long spiral of hair had slipped from her pins and bounced behind her ear. He wanted to catch it, comb his fingers into all that brown silk, and hold her just so. Just at that perfect angle to kiss those warm, full lips again and watch those brown eyes melt and close. Then she'd go soft in his arms so he could kiss her in earnest. Kiss her the best way he knew how.

He rubbed the seedpod in his hand, needing something other than her to look at. It didn't help that his roger had been stiffening in his pants all the while he was near her. Damn if she didn't have a body to match that gorgeous face of hers. But there'd be no more kissing or touching her.

She was meant for a Company man.