Elisabeth Fairchild (10 page)

His words stirred Aurora in a way that words never had before. There was something suggestive in their flow--in the use of such imagery--far more subtly suggestive than the crude connection most men made between cock feathers and notching arrows, but suggestive nonetheless. How did one respond to such subtleties? She had no experience with word play. Flustered, she ducked his gaze, focusing on the topic of how to arm one’s bow.

He watched keenly, his expression openly appreciative of all she had to teach him about determining one’s dominant eye, the importance of a loose grip on the bow, a squared stance in facing the target and a smooth draw. The lesson proceeded with no more talk of men and women to unnerve her. Miles Fletcher’s first shots found their way to the target.

“Excellent,” she said. “Once the target is met, the rest is no more than finessing.”

He carefully positioned another arrow and took aim.

She reached out to adjust the positioning of his arm. He started violently, unnerved by her touch.

Inadvertently his fingers slipped from the bowstring. Ill-launched, his arrow arced right over the top of the target and disappeared from view.

“I am sorry,” she said, trying very hard not to smile, for if she smiled she must laugh, and to laugh now would surely be hard on Fletcher’s ego.

He had no such qualms about amusement. “I do hope my sister was not endangered by that preposterous misfire,” he said with a droll expression. He looked pleased when a chuckle exploded from her lips, and said, “Tell me, Miss Ramsay. Did you mean to test me in the art of grace under pressure?”

“I do apologize--” she began.

He stopped her. “Never, Miss Ramsay, never must you apologize for catching a gentleman off guard with no more than a touch. ‘Tis a gift my dear, a genuine gift.”

“I meant only to tell you that if you flex your arm too much in this manner” --she demonstrated the position by paralleling her arm with his on the same bow--“the string will strike you. Here.”  She touched his arm again, but he was ready for her this time. There would be no second instance of a loss of control.

“Let the string slide off of your fingers. Like so,” she said. Her fingers plucked at the string just above his. In flexing, her arm slid against his. In following her direction, his shoulder grazed against her breast.

It was Aurora’s turn to flinch. She could not be sure Miles Fletcher realized in what manner the fabric of his jacket had touched upon her, but every cell in her body hummed with awareness and there was something disturbingly pleasant about the feeling.

She had only to turn, to brush her lips against the flat plane of his smoothly shaven cheek, had only to dip her chin to nestle it in the hollow of his neck, so that she might more fully inhale the enticing lemony spice of his cologne. With but a slight shift in her stance, her breast would graze against his back again. She wondered why she should have such an inclination. There was no denying it. She wantto repeat the sensation.

Frightened that this man aroused such yearnings, Aurora stepped back from such thoughts and away from Mr. Fletcher.

“You must keep your eyes locked on the center of your target,” she said briskly. “Your arrow should be slightly below center on the bow and the bowstring pulled to the corner of your eye in a smooth, controlled movement. Where you look is where the arrow will go.”

“Eyes locked on the target,” he echoed, his gaze shifting to look, not at the targets, but at her. She could feel the change, could see the shift in the periphery of her vision. Warmth rose uncomfortably along her neck. Did Miles Fletcher mean to infer by the lingering intensity of his gaze that she was in some way his target? Could it be he had begun a lesson of his own--a lesson in the art of flirtation? Was he testing her? She turned to look at him, to search for the answer in his eyes, but simultaneously he returned his attention to the cloth target, frustrating her intent. Smoothly drawing back the bowstring he let the string roll off his fingers as she had suggested.
Thwap
! His arrow quivered in the center ring of the target.

“You are a fast study, Mr. Fletcher.”

He turned to look at her. His eyes gave away nothing. He hid true thoughts, true feelings, she realized, behind the polished veneer of an urbane smile. “I receive excellent instruction.”

Aurora was growing accustomed to flattery from Miles Fletcher. There was something as smooth and slick, as polished as his smile, in the delivery of such praise. She dared assume he was as generous in pandering to everyone. It was probably no more than commonplace to receive his compliments. Commonplace or not, it was pleasant to be praised. In this manner too, he was wholly opposite to her brothers. She wondered briefly whether she might expect such flattery from Walsh.

“Try to hit the center again, Mr. Fletcher,” she said. “One arrow in the center may be no more than luck. Two arrows, shows promise. Put all of your arrows consistently in the gold ring and I will call you master.”

“Master?” He smiled elusively, his manner vaguely suggestive. “Will you indeed? I aspire to the gold with renewed vigor. I should like you to call me master.” Again he played with her words and won. Again, she found the pleasant, polished veneer of his expression difficult to read. The thought crossed Aurora’s mind that Fletcher was a marksman after all. He hit dead center every time when it came to targeting her with his pointed remarks.

“Very good concentration, Mr. Fletcher. You admirably bracketed and clustered your shots.”

“Shall we call halt?”

“Yes. I vow I have become most anxious to see just what viands you have packed into so many baskets for our enjoyment. Perhaps you will be so kind as to lay out your feast while I collect arrows and dismantle the bows?”

Miles seemed only too pleased to oblige, digging into the baskets full of provisions in a lively fashion.

“Where shall we consume our feast?” he enquired of Aurora, when she joined him. “Indoors or out?”

There was, Aurora decided, an unusual stillness about Mr. Fletcher as he asked the question.

Sensing his question more important than at first it appeared, she prevaricated. “Will your sister be joining us?” Without waiting for an answer, she wandered through the shaded doorway to the temple.

Quiet inside, but for a faintly alarming buzzing noie, Aurora’s footsteps echoed hollowly. The buzzing came from a colony of bees that built a nest in the heights of the domed central chamber. Honey, dripping from their hive left a sticky, golden pool on the floor. The incessant buzzing noise added to Aurora’s uneasiness as she studied four nude statues that graced the temple alcoves. The nudes were suggestive of too much passion in such a confined space.

Aurora peeped into two smaller rooms that enwrapped the domed chamber. Long windows let in sunshine and allowed an excellent view, yet there was stillness here, privacy. Within the temple one seemed cut off from the crowded bustle of people who had overrun Coke’s estate for the shearing. Aurora’s pulse quickened. She knew now why Fletcher’s question was more important than at first it sounded. This lovely temple was the perfect setting for an illicit tryst! She returned to the main room.

Miles Fletcher had followed her! He leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe, a deep, dark, compelling look in possession of his features. Such a look reminded Aurora of shady places where she might sit and trail her fingers in fast waters--a look that made her lips dry. The bees hummed dangerously above them, dripping honey while the look on his features hummed just as dangerously, questioning her conviction that Miles Fletcher was no more than a source of amusement. Gill flower eyes questioned her resolve to capture Walsh, her purpose in coming here--questioning her feelings for this elegant gentleman, whose desires it would seem were no more elegant, no more gentle than any other man’s. Blue eyes burned with troubling questions.

She shivered with something other than chill.

He filled the doorframe, swinging the basket, very handsome in his tight-fitted blue coat and carefully tied cravat, looking, despite his polish, quite capable of seducing her. The thought of seduction from his quarter surprised Aurora. Her mind had been so firmly fixed on Lord Walsh as potential suitor, that it had never occurred to her she might find herself drawn to another man, certainly not Fletcher, with whom she had so little in common!

She shook her head, rearranging her thoughts. The sound of the bees rubbed raw her nerves. She was not drawn to him. She must not be drawn to him. He was drawn to her. That was what this was all about. Nothing more.

His deep blue gaze pulled her. She found herself unable to look at anything else and the intensity of such staring left her uncertain and unsettled. She had to get out--escape the bees. She had to clear her head. She had to pass him, to regain the outdoors. He did not move, just watched her, basket no longer moving. For a heart-stopping moment she wondered if he meant to block her escape.

“Indoors or out?” he asked, voice husky, a raw sound that intruded on the space in which she stood trapped. The room seemed smaller than before.

“Out,” she said thinly, the word sticking in her throat.

The sun’s warm balm and the normality inherent in spreading their picnic eased the strange tension, the edgy awareness that accompanied intimate thoughts, speculation, and possibilities. It was as palpable as the food they consumed with an almost fierce relish, as heady as the wine they sipped from telescoping horn cups. Miles had been convinced for the briefest of moments that his fair Diana contemplated the idea of a private
tete e`tete
, perhaps a moment of unbridled passion within the walls of the temple. He had anticipated such a scenario with high hopes.

The look he had seen in her cool green eyes as she studied his face, fired that hope. Perhaps it was no more than wishful thinking, no more than the power of desire. God knew he desired her, but there had been an elusive momen, a flicker of interest, that Miles could not ignore.

He thought about it now as they leaned on the rounded pillars, munched companionably on pork pasties, a wedge of cheese and fresh berries, all the while chatting inanely about nothing of substance; the beauty of the view, the perfection of the weather, the charm of the setting and the delectability of the cheese.

“Your sister is not hungry?” she observed.

“She forgets food when she is caught in a passionate frenzy of artistic expression.”

With that, there came a lull in the conversation.

Aurora Ramsay shifted her position against the column as much as she shifted the tone of her voice as she enquired carefully, “What is it you mean to teach me today?”

There was an uncertainty to the question, an unsettled air to her demeanor that made Miles think immediately of all that he longed to teach this fair young woman if only she agreed to it. She had only to rise and walk through the shaded door of the temple. He had only to follow and take her into his arms. . .

But, she would not rise. She would offer him no encouragement. The very carefulness of her questions about Grace convinced him of that. Miles erased the image of an afternoon of unbridled passion from his thoughts and smiled. There were more subtle methods of seduction. He reached over her for one of the baskets. She drew back with a look of alarm.
Slow down
, he thought.
No good rushing things.
Beautiful things should not be hurried, and surely the winning of a woman’s trust was a beautiful thing.

“Can you handle a fan?” he asked, therefore, in the most mundane of tones as he pulled a narrow, sharkskin box from the basket and held it out to her.

She took the box. “Of course I can handle a fan,” She slid the lid off and unfurled the fan. “This is a pretty thing. It looks old. Is it yours?”

“No. It is only temporarily in my possession, one of a set of fans I have gathered together for an old roué who is willing to pay me handsomely for troubling to find this particular type of breeze stirrer. He means to come for the sheep shearing this weekend for no other reason than to fetch them.”

“There is something unusual in this fan then?” She turned it over in her hand and studied the painted silk and the pierced tortoiseshell sticks, which were not so terribly unusual in and of themselves.

“It is an old fan, as you suggest, but while this one dates from at least a hundred years ago that is not why it is unusual. It is a French
double-entente
fan. In its duplicity lies its appeal.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Here, let me demonstrate.” He held out his hand. She returned the fan to him. For a brief instant their fingers brushed. Their eyes met just as briefly. She looked away, blushing. Smiling, he unfurled the fan, as she had, to reveal a pattern of painted flowers on one side, the painted image of shepherd and shepherdess on the other. The characters faced opposite directions as they looked out over their flocks, one of white sheep, one of black. Their view of one another was obstructed across the middle of the pleated silk by a copse of trees in which a fat cupid lurked with bow and arrows.