Gentlemen Prefer Mischief (19 page)

“Shh!” Eloise said, giggling. “French letters. They are meant for the marriage act.”

Lily blinked. “I… don’t know what you mean.”

Delia smiled, looking very pleased with herself, as if she’d ever heard of these French letters before now. “They are like tubes that go over the man’s…”

“That will do,” Lily said with her cheeks burning. “I believe I understand.”

“They’re to prevent disease and conception,” Eloise whispered. “Men use them with their mistresses.”

“How on earth do you know about them?”

Eloise grinned. “I listened at the door when the men were having their port.”

“Heavens,” Lily said. “I don’t know that you two should even know about such things. For goodness’ sake, don’t speak of them to anyone else.”

Which only made them giggle more.

And yet, Lily thought as they walked, what if more women—not just mistresses—knew about these French letters? Her mind began to entertain shocking, rebellious thoughts that would never have occurred to her two weeks ago.

Dr. Fforde and Ian, who’d been at the front of the party, dropped back so that Lily caught up to them. She was glad—quite happy—to see good, kind, serene Dr. Fforde.

“Lily,” Ian said, “did you know that Fforde is going to start a fever hospital in the north?”

“Yes. Highcross’s doctor is a man of grand aspirations,” she said warmly.

As she listened to the doctor explain the details of his planned work, she wished fervently that she had something good and serious to occupy her right then—not in the future as the school was, if it ever came to be, because surely then there would be no space left for her to be vulnerable to thoughts and dreams of Hal. She hated that nothing could make her entirely forget he was behind her.

“This is all most admirable, Fforde,” Ian said. “But you are not leaving Highcross very soon, I hope?”

“Not for some months yet.”

“Good, good,” Ian said, casting a significant glance Lily’s way. “You must allow our family to contribute in some way. Perhaps your work would benefit from additional funds?”

Fforde smiled. “That would be most appreciated. In fact, I had thought that perhaps Miss Teagarden—”

He was interrupted by Hal drawing even with them, having apparently shed Mrs. Whyte, who was now in company with Eloise and Delia. The widow looked somewhat sour about the mouth at the change in her companions, though not for long as she called out to Ian to join them. Mrs. Whyte was not so charming a person if you weren’t a handsome, wealthy man, Lily thought, and she faulted Hal for associating with her.

“I say, Fforde,” Hal said, “what will happen to you if you catch one of the fevers at this hospital of yours?”

Dr. Fforde inclined his head. “That would be unfortunate, though not so different from the usual risks of the medical profession.”

Lily could feel Hal’s eyes on her. “It’s very brave of Dr. Fforde to want to help people,” she said, “and to further the course of science. He
could
sit home and be comfortable, but he chooses to act.”

Hal looked irritated.

Dr. Fforde chuckled. “There’s much to be said for the comforts of home, Miss Teagarden. Lord Roxham surely must have appreciated them after the time he spent in the army fighting the Corsican.”

“Fighting is hardly the same as curing,” she said. “Indeed, it is more like making the troubles of humanity worse.”

A heavy silence greeted her words.

“So you would have preferred that Napoleon take over the Continent?” Hal said.

“No,” she said with a rush of shame at how bad-tempered and ungenerous her comment had been. Both men were looking at her strangely. What on earth had made her say such an appalling thing? “Of course not. I have the highest respect for the men who’ve sacrificed for our country. It’s just that I should have preferred that war not be necessary at all.”

“So should I have,” Hal said. “I lost many good men. But though peace and perfection in human relations are a worthy goal, there are times when one must go to war.”

She bit her lower lip unhappily. Bother it all but she was so jumbled up she didn’t know what she was saying. “I—yes, of course. I agree that’s true. But… we were talking about comfort and the pleasures of home and, well,” she looked almost pleadingly at Dr. Fforde, “you would not put pleasure first, sir, would you? I think we ought not to seek our own comfort and happiness, but instead to spend our lives in living for others.”

“A worthy sentiment, Miss Teagarden,” the doctor said. “I believe we ought to welcome hardship if it means that we will do some true good.”

Hal gnashed his teeth as he listened to Fforde. He supposed that any moment Lily’s eyes would simply change into little glimmering stars as she dreamed of the moral beauty of a life of hardship and deprivation.

“It’s no crime to fully enjoy all that we’ve been given,” he said. “Indeed, one might even say we are wrong to refuse to do so.”

“Spoken by someone who’s been given everything,” Lily said.

Fforde’s eyebrows rose at her sharpness, though Hal suspected the doctor only liked her better for it. She was trying to push him away. And why was he even having this conversation with her? Why, when he knew exactly what she would say? Though her heedless quest for virtue made him want to grab her and kiss her until she could no longer deny what she needed. He should have forced some kind of understanding with her last night before she left the closet, but she’d slipped away so quickly.

Delia swept by them and insisted Fforde come and settle a dispute about the best way to cure a headache. Which left Hal and Lily at the end of the snake of people wending their way toward the lake perhaps a third of a mile distant, where the servants could be seen arranging the picnic blankets and provisions.

They walked along without speaking for several minutes. Hal knew he should abandon the argument they’d been having, but he couldn’t let it go.

“It’s not just the poor who need help in life. Even wealthy people are sometimes terribly unhappy and in need of compassion, Lily.”

“Wealthy people can find ways to relieve themselves.”

“Can they? Can money cure a soul-deep sorrow?”

“I don’t care about the wealthy!” she burst out. “They can help themselves.”

“Ah,” he said. “So we are not all equal.”

Her pale eyebrows drew together, and her pretty lips pressed into a hard line. “Of course there are people with troubles everywhere,” she said without much conviction. “But what Dr. Fforde proposes to do is extraordinary.”

“And what would happen to the school for girls you were going to establish if you left Highcross?”

She didn’t reply at first. “If I were ever to leave here,” she said finally, “I would hope to have something in place for the girls first.”

“I can give you the money for the school. I’d like to, actually, regardless of what happens. But I suppose you want to struggle to earn it all yourself.”

She absorbed his words. “No, that would be selfish of me. If you will pay for a school for the girls of Highcross, then I thank you. Truly, that would be wonderful.”

“But you might not be here to run it.”

“Anything is possible.”

She looked away from him. Her ivory frock was striped with thin red lines, and the regular straightness of the design seemed a perfect complement for a woman who probably disliked softly flowered gowns.

Another silence fell between them. Ahead of them the others were all deep in convivial conversation—there were delightedly scandalized shouts of
He
didn’t!
and
Yes, he did!
, and Hal’s nephews ran hither and yon, requiring much herding from the adults, so that Lily and Hal had been for the moment forgotten.

He kicked the shining tip of his top boot at a chunky stone in his path, sending it ahead of him.

“So,” he said, apparently unable to stop himself, “Fforde is the kind of man you wish to marry.
Will
you marry him?”

“Usually gentlemen ask for themselves,” she said tartly. Their pace began to accelerate—it was Lily driving it, face forward, marching faster. He refused to increase his speed, though, thereby keeping her somewhat in check through the rein of inbred good manners.

“You know what I mean. He likes you. He’s
like
you. With him you could have your tidy, calm life and save the world at the same time.”

Her brown half-boots crushed the dirt faster.

He felt he should be able to read her eyes, to see if she was hiding something behind her restraint, but he couldn’t. He knew women, knew their desires, their attachments, their hopes, their secret wishes. He’d always
understood
women, and he’d had any number of them declare they were in love with him. But he’d never once said the same thing back, because it had never once before been true.

“Fforde isn’t right for you,” he said. “You would be as exciting together as a plate of cheeses.”

“I like cheese! And Dr. Fforde is a kind and decent man.”

“Well, he seems to have a keen interest in plants—I heard him discussing them at length with Diana. So you’d have
that
to talk about. And medicine. Warm topics all, to be sure.”

He wanted to punch the good doctor, except the man was too blasted decent.

Ahead of them the rest of the party stopped in front of Mayfield’s original folly, which was a small version of a Roman temple. Delia could be heard expressing a desire to go in, and the party began moving inside, Freddy and Louie leading the way. Hal and Lily, both with their arms crossed, stopped where they were, beside a profusion of peach trees with a few stray, overripe fruits still hanging. He counted it as a small victory that at least she would stay and fight with him.

“It’s normal and human to want a companion who would also be a friend,” she said. “Someone you can trust and care for.”

“You make a husband sound like a faithful hound.”

“And you will keep misunderstanding and refusing to see.” Her slim, blond eyebrows slanted in hard angles. “Or perhaps,” she continued, “it’s that you’re incapable of seeing.”

“Because I am unmarried at my advanced age, I therefore am unable to be a good husband?”

She threw up her hands. “A wife would never be enough for you.”

He gave her a hard look. “I hope you’re not suggesting I would be unfaithful to any woman I married.”

That brought her up short.

“Ah,” he said, unable to keep the anger out his voice. “You are.”

“You need distraction and amusement.”

Heat crackled along his neck. “And you like your own company too much. It’s as though you think people will take something from you if you let yourself be close to them.”

“That’s ridiculous. What would I be afraid of people taking from me? I haven’t got anything but sheep.”

“Your time. You have all those goals, and you don’t want anyone interfering with them. But what about the people you help? Do you even allow yourself to care for them, or are they just an opportunity to do good?”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Of course I care about them. Why else would I be helping them?”

“Maybe you need their weakness to feel good about yourself.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Is it? I think it says more about how you’ve closed yourself off to your own needs. You’re so used to being in charge, to doing the responsible thing and looking out for others, that you’ve hardened yourself against wanting anything for yourself.”

A flash of anger darkened her eyes to violet. “I already have everything I want.”

Hal had no chance to reply, because just then Rob shouted for them to hurry up. Apparently the others had finished exploring the temple folly.

He couldn’t help but notice the look of relief that came over Lily’s face as she rushed toward the others without another word to him. He let her go ahead of him, watching her trim figure move forward in that purposeful way she had, and thought how much he needed her.

Because it was so hot, people inevitably wandered into the cooling water of the lake. Hal’s nephews went first, three-year-old Louie rushing in while his mother was looking the other way. His squeals of delight as he splashed in his clothes made it impossible for Freddy to be kept from joining him. And then because someone had to keep an eye on them—or at least, that was what he said—Hal took off his boots and waded in.

With the viscount as example, Ian, John, Rob, Donwell, and Ivorwood were soon splashing about in the water as playfully as dogs, and far more than their feet got wet. The little boys thought it hilarious. Diana stood on the shore shaking her head but smiling, Mrs. Whyte appeared unable to take her eyes from the view of the men’s well-splashed shirts while announcing that country manners were certainly different, and Eloise and Delia seemed unable to stop giggling as they watched Ivorwood try to drown first Hal and then Ian. Lily noticed that Eloise and Donwell seemed adept at avoiding each other.

Lily arranged herself on a blanket and was joined by Dr. Fforde. In answer to her questions, he began telling her about his studies at university. His voice was softly deep and pleasant, and it soothed some of the anger her conversation with Hal had stirred up.

“You are not, I think, as interested in fractures of the tibia as you had suggested,” the doctor was saying, a smile playing about his lips.

“Oh,” she said, “well.” She pulled her mind away from Hal’s words and smiled back at Dr. Fforde. “I think I might be, another time. I do find medical things interesting. I’m afraid it was only that my mind was wandering.”

“And would you care, my dear Miss Teagarden, to share the subject on which your mind was dwelling?” The friendly light in his eyes told her that almost anything she said would interest him, a flattering sensation to be sure.

“Oh, nothing of consequence, truly.”

His hand was near hers on the blanket, and he looked down at both their hands, his gaze telling her that he would like to take hold of her hand, but he did not.
He
was not domineering.

He looked up at her again. “Miss Teagarden, I should be very honored if you would call me Matthew. And… may I call you Lily?”

“Certainly. Why, you’ve been to Thistlethwaite countless times, and goodness knows you are very good friends with Rob.”

“But I should very much like to be far more to you than a friend of your brother’s.”

She could not mistake his meaning. He was talking about courting her.

A shadow fell over them, and she looked up to see Hal, in his shirtsleeves and with bare ankles and feet and much splashed with water, standing and dripping at the edge of their blanket.

“Fforde, I’ve come to invite you for a partial swim. It’s the very thing on this hot day. And you, too, Lily, if you’d like to get your feet wet.”

“No thank you,” she said without looking up.

Matthew Fforde frowned slightly and took out his watch. “Most vexing,” he muttered. He cleared his throat. “An interesting offer, Roxham, which I shall have to decline just now as I see that the afternoon has advanced further than I’d realized while in the extremely pleasant company of Miss Teagarden. But I had promised Mrs. Eldwin that I would look in on her today. She is suffering from a bad sprain.”

He stood up and took his leave. She watched as his well-proportioned form disappeared down the path to the manor and hoped Hal would leave if she ignored him.

He sat down next to her on the blanket.

She twitched her skirts closer, away from the soaked cuffs of his pants and his wet feet. There were golden hairs on the middles of his toes, and the skin of his feet was very fair and shining with lake water.

“Shouldn’t you be in search of a towel? And shoes?”

He stretched out his long legs, the light fabric of his breeches darkened with water and clinging to his legs in places, and propped himself up on his bent elbows. He’d turned back the wet cuffs of his sleeves, and the white fabric of his shirt stuck to him in odd places where large splashes had hit, offering glimpses of the muscular curve of his upper arm and the flat firmness of his abdomen.

He ignored her question and gazed up at the sky as if he were entirely peaceful, as if their fighting had been nothing out of the ordinary. She begrudgingly admitted to herself that she liked him better for seeing that she was his equal in battle, even if he’d accused her of needing people to need her, and closing herself off to caring as deeply for them as she could. Maybe it stung because there was some truth in it.

Several minutes passed, during which she refused to perform the gracious role assigned to women and engage him in conversation. But finally she couldn’t stand his contented silence anymore and said, “What, exactly, are you doing?”

“Sitting down. I was tired of standing.”

“That’s not what I mean, obviously.” Ian was watching them as he talked with Mrs. Whyte, and he smirked at her. “People will notice that you’re paying special attention to me. You’ll start gossip about yourself, sitting next to a lady in your wet clothes. Your feet are
bare
.”

He let his head drop back between his shoulders and closed his eyes. “I
am
rather in disarray, though I’m hardly the only gentleman here who is, so any gossips will have to complain about Ivorwood and the others as well.”

“You do realize that with all your promises not to marry until you’re fifty-one, you’ve only made people want to catch you out.”

“I never promised anyone I wouldn’t marry until I was fifty-one. It was merely a prediction. Anyway, I don’t care if people think I’m paying special attention to you.”

He turned his shining golden head to her, turned that stunningly handsome face on her, and for once she saw it as simply a face, just an accident of nature that he’d been born with, an arrangement of features that might just as well have not been harmonious. It wasn’t as if people could order up their looks before they were born, or earn them by work or virtue.

She knew this, and yet she’d blamed him for being so beautiful. Well, blamed him for profiting from his beauty. She thought now that perhaps his appearance had been a sort of tool that he’d used in his life to help him win the kind of affection and attention that had been missing from a childhood with a brother who was always held up as superior.

She was better off not feeling compassionate toward him.

Hal watched Lily as she sat next to him on the blanket, her arms wrapped around her bent legs, everything about her saying she would be closed off to him.

She sighed. “You’re doing it again. Trying to charm me.”

He’d never known a woman to be so against charm. How did you get on with a woman if you weren’t charming her in some way?

Charm was circuitous; Lily prized directness.

Perhaps that was his answer.

“Come to me tonight.”

She blinked, absorbing his words. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. Come to me tonight. Come see what it is you’ll be giving up if you marry a dry stick like Fforde.”

“He’s not a dry stick!”

“Well,
I’m
not. I’m someone who has your contentment very much in mind. We’ve—as you say—dabbled a bit. But I want to make love to you. Properly, slowly, privately.”

She looked surprised by his words. But not horrified. Her eyes flicked beyond him, probably to see if anyone nearby could hear them, but everyone else was still by the water.

“Why should you want to do such a thing with a hard woman like me?”

“Because I want to uncover the fragile flower of your softness and encourage it to bloom.”

“The fragile flower of my softness? What nonsense,” she said, still not looking at him, but a husky note in her voice gave him hope. He let the silence stretch out.

“How can you just ask me this?” she said.

“Because you make your own decisions. So I should think you would do so about something like this. That you would choose to see what might be between us.”

He
knew
what she wanted, but whether she would allow herself to have it was another thing.

She finally looked at him. “I shall choose to pretend we never had this conversation.”

He hoped she was braver than that. He
believed
she was. He stood up. “I’ll be in my chamber at one o’clock tonight, awake and waiting.”

***

Eloise was standing next to Diana and ostensibly enjoying her nephews’ antics while secretly watching Donwell out of the corner of her eye. He was standing in the lake at some distance from the other men, his breeches rolled up to his knees, and bent over looking at something in the water. Probably following the path of some minnows, or maybe an exotic water snake no one had ever seen before—creatures seemed to find him.

They hadn’t spoken to each other since she’d fled down the stairs after kissing Ivorwood. She’d felt so horribly jumbled up and sick with emotion that night, but talking to Hal had helped. She’d never before thought of talking to her brother about men, but now she thought he might be good at advising her, and it made her feel better equipped.

She saw now that dreaming about Ivorwood had made him into a sort of doll in her mind, one that would behave in her thoughts the way she wanted. She’d never really even talked to him very much, and without the patina her imagination had lent him, he was only real, and that made him like everyone else. Which meant he surely did unattractive things, like belching sometimes even if she didn’t see it, and maybe he was so quiet not because he was a deep thinker but because he didn’t have anything to say. Kissing him had not turned her into a fountain of bliss.

So when she’d seen him at breakfast and he’d been as reserved but polite as ever to her, she’d given him a rueful smile and asked for the butter, and that had been the end of it.

Being around Donwell was different and felt awkward now. And she didn’t like being near him and not being able to find out what fascinating thing he was up to. Besides, she owed him something.

She moved away from Diana and, walking along the shore, came closer to where Donwell stood in the water. So engrossed as he was, he didn’t look up when she came within a few feet of him. The top of his auburn head entranced her, not because of the interesting way it was mussed, but because it was familiar.

“Donwell,” she said quietly.

He started and looked up. “Miss Waverly,” he said in a neutral voice.

“I want to thank you for what you did the other night. You saved both me and Ivorwood from being forced into a choice neither of us wanted.”

He looked at her steadily. He had such good eyes—his intelligence shone through from their steady brown depths. “You’re welcome.”

She wished he would say something that might give her a glimpse into his thoughts.

“I’m not disappointed, you know, that…” Her voice was getting wispy, but she needed to say this to him. “That Ivorwood didn’t want to kiss me. I realize now that there never really was anything of substance there.”

“I see,” he said, but he had no other reaction. She’d thought he’d be happy and sweep her into his arms, but she reminded herself that believing she knew what other people wanted would only get her into trouble.

Several moments passed. She didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t seem inclined to fill the silence. Perhaps he didn’t care for her anymore, after she’d received his admiration so ungraciously and then made such a fool of herself. But she had so enjoyed his friendship—surely if nothing else, they could still be friends? Though she felt such a strong urge to touch him.

“What is it you’re looking at?” she finally asked.

“A trout, gone into hiding. It’s changing colors to blend in better.”

She grabbed the trunk of a sapling and leaned out over the water a bit. “That sounds interesting.”

“It is, but, Miss Waverly—”

As she was leaning out a bit farther, the sapling suddenly drooped forward, and she lost her balance and lurched toward the water. He caught her about the waist and steadied her, so that she landed in the water up to her knees with his hands around her waist. He was looking down at her with those intelligent brown eyes that must be hiding any number of fascinating thoughts and plans she wanted to know about. His breathing seemed to have changed.

“Are you quite all right, Miss Waverly?”

“Yes. Only, won’t you please call me Eloise?”

“I…” His eyes looked less focused. “Eloise.”

From the shore, Diana called to them. “Eloise, what are you doing?”

“Fell in,” she called back. They only had a moment before propriety must push them apart.

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t ready to hear what you said to me on the roof,” she said quickly. “But I hope we’ll have another chance to see the stars together without a proper chaperone.”

His arms tightened around her. “Are you really saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Warmth deepened his chocolate eyes. “I have to let go of you and I don’t want to.”

“I don’t want you to,” she said.

His arms loosened, and she put a proper distance between them even as they held each other’s gaze.

“I can only think we’ve scared away your trout.”

“Then stay and help me find something else to fascinate me.”

And she did.

***

It was late that night, and alone in her darkened guest room in Hal’s grand home, Lily sat by the window in her nightgown, worrying about Nate and watching to see if a light would show in the woods. With all the guests at Mayfield, she didn’t dare go out, but she could keep watch.

The evening had been spent doing needlepoint with the women while the men disappeared for rather a long time over their port. Lily found she could have done without the conversation of Hyacinth, who’d asked slyly at one point if there wasn’t some kind of understanding between Lily and the viscount.

Lily had said there wasn’t, and what an idea. Hyacinth had said she’d thought it odd, too, but he’d spent so much time talking with Lily today. Lily had forced a laugh and said that he was only being a polite host. All the ladies had agreed he was the best host in the
ton
, and giggled. It had made Lily feel very low.