In the Wake of the Wind (4 page)

He crossed over to her chair and took her hand, dropping an affectionate kiss on her hair. “And I realize I’m being a selfish bastard in behaving as if I’m the only one who’s going to suffer because of this marriage,” he said, giving her fingers a squeeze. “But never fear. If Miss Segrave thinks she’s going to take over Townsend lock, stock, and barrel, she has another think coming, and I’ll be the first to set her straight. I won’t let her put you aside, Lottie, I promise. It’s your family home, after all, and you’ve had the running of it all these years.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. ‘You have no idea how much it means to me to hear you say it.”

He looked down at her, guilt wracking him, knowing he was responsible for her being in that damned chair to begin with. Miss Serafina Segrave would interfere with Charlotte over his dead body.

“Life will go on as it always has,” he said, forcing a smile to his lips. “Everything will stay just as you like it, so please don’t trouble yourself.”

He turned quickly and left, thereby missing the answering smile of triumph on his sister’s face.

Aiden saddled his horse himself, since the one groom left to them was busy with other duties. He was glad that at least his father hadn’t sold off Aladdin along with everything else. God, he found it depressing to see what had become of Townsend in the three years he’d been away, evidence of neglect everywhere.

But he supposed that now some of that would change, once he finished successfully rebuilding the shipping company. If there was any money left. It was going to take hundreds of thousands of pounds to undo the damage his father had done, but at least he could start immediately, thanks to bloody Miss Segrave’s bloody inheritance.

The thought didn’t do anything to lift his troubled spirits, nor did it erase any of his anger. But on his last night of freedom he refused to dwell too heavily on his miserable future with Miss Serafina Segrave for fear that such black thoughts would drive him straight to the river to drown himself.

He turned toward the west and kicked Aladdin into a fast canter, choosing to head cross-country rather than take the road, mainly because he didn’t want to risk being spotted by Miss Segrave and her approaching entourage.

The sunlight had softened into gold as late afternoon approached, and Aiden cut across Townsend’s meadows, slowing Aladdin’s gait to a walk as they approached Rockingham Forest.

Here the sunlight dimmed and diffused into patches, lending a sense of timelessness, and he breathed deeply, drinking in the familiar tang of new leaf and brush, the rich loam of earth, his ear attuned to the gentle call of birds hidden in the trees, the babble of the stream that ran as a tributary from the river.

He steadily followed the bank, the surest guide through the forest to the path leading to the village. It was easy enough to become lost in the vast sprawl of wood where not too many ventured, other than the occasional poacher. And yet this was a place Aiden had always loved, where as a child he had often come to escape the stifled atmosphere of Townsend, to claim a piece of magic, to live his fantasies before the exigencies of adulthood had stripped him of even those.

In these woods he had dreamt of places long ago and far away, of the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Roundtable, had imagined himself to be Lancelot, or Gawain, or even, in his more inflated moments, Arthur himself.

He smiled and shook his head, remembering how he’d once talked to the fairies, believing they could actually hear him, had confided his most private hopes and dreams to them, had even dreamed of one day finding true love. What a joke. Even poor, cuckolded King Arthur had finally been dispossessed of that delusion, he thought wryly.

He’d never forget the day at the age of ten that he’d realized exactly what it was that Guinevere and Lancelot had done together. He’d been curled up under the great oak tree at Townsend reading Malory’s
Morte D’Arthur
for at least the twentieth time when the terrible truth had struck that Arthur had been ignobly betrayed by both his wife and his best friend.

Aiden had cried for hours, heartsick, utterly disillusioned. And had sworn that day he would never marry, never leave himself open to that kind of betrayal.

In that afternoon the idealistic boy who thought dreams really could come true disappeared forever, and just as well. Life was hard enough without viewing it through rose-colored glasses. Life, when it came down to it, was a damned travesty.

He gazed up at the lacing of branches forming a canopy over his head that now resembled more of a jail cell to his eyes than a protective bower. The irony of it all was that in the end he had been betrayed in the name of marriage, although the betrayal had been dealt by his father’s hand.

Aladdin suddenly snorted and shied and Aiden came back to reality with a jerk, bringing the gelding back under control with his legs and a gentle restraining pull on the bit. He looked around to see what had startled Aladdin and nearly unseated himself.

Just off to the left of the stream lay a body. A woman’s body, curled onto its side, the face down, a mass of dark hair tangled around one arm, a bedraggled wreath of flowers on her head. Her feet were bare, her skirt hitched up about her knees. She made no movement.

“Sweet Christ,” he whispered in real alarm and brought Aladdin to an abrupt halt, quickly dismounting. He approached the body with trepidation, hoping against hope that he hadn’t stumbled across the scene of a murder.

He didn’t really feel like getting tied up in a police investigation—with his luck, he’d instantly be accused and find himself hanging from the gallows—the real ones. Not that it wouldn’t be a backhanded blessing.

He knelt and reached out one tentative hand, gingerly touching a shoulder, expecting it to be stiff and cold. The next thing he knew the body heaved itself up to a sitting position with a very lifelike squeak and he found himself looking into a pair of wide, startled eyes the most extraordinary shade of light green, surrounded by a thick fringe of dark lashes.

He stared, for once in his life speechless.

She stared back, her rosy mouth slightly open, her small high breasts rising and falling in a rapid rhythm, but other than her initial squeak she made no sound, just gazed at him with those arresting eyes. Aiden vaguely registered the impression that she was one of the most enchanting creatures he’d ever seen.

It’s
Titania,
Queen of the Fairies,
he thought irrationally, sitting back on his heels, thoroughly discomposed.

“I—I beg your pardon for disturbing you,” he stammered. “I thought you were dead, you see.”
Oh God, I really am losing my mind,
he decided as he tried to gather his scattered thoughts.

She blinked, looking exactly like an owl startled out of its sleep. “You thought I was dead?” she said, cocking her head to one side. “What an extraordinary idea.”

“Yes, I know,” he said, thinking that her voice sounded like liquid music. “I see that now, but one doesn’t usually trip across sleeping maidens in the middle of the woods.” He glanced around. “Especially sleeping maidens with no visible chaperones.”

“What do I need a chaperone for?” she asked, as if he had just posed the silliest question on earth.

“To protect you from men like myself,” he said, unable to resist a wolfish grin. “I’m precisely the sort of rogue they’re designed to guard you against.”

She regarded him with open curiosity. “Ah,” she said after a moment of examining him as if he were an interesting scientific specimen. “I’ve always wondered what a rogue looked like.”

“I hope I don’t come as a disappointment,” he said with amusement, still half convinced she was a fairy, even though the worn, muddied state of her dress indicated she was simply a girl from the village. Still, she was utterly captivating and refreshingly unsophisticated. He didn’t think—no, he was certain—that he’d never met anyone like her in his life.

“Well … I haven’t anyone to compare you to, but I don’t find you disappointing at all,” she said, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. “You’re very handsome. Am I supposed to be afraid of you?”

“Probably,” he said, thoroughly gratified and entertaining the most roguishly impure thoughts. “Are you?”

“I’m terribly sorry, but I’m not,” she said apologetically. “I know that rogues are supposed to ravish young women, but I don’t think you’d be interested in ravishing me.”

“Why not?” he asked, thinking she was way off-target with that notion. He knew exactly where he’d start. A deep kiss on those sweet, rosebud lips, followed by a trail of kisses down her long, white neck…

“Because you don’t love me,” she said perfectly calmly. “Surely you don’t ravish people you don’t love?”

Aiden smothered a laugh. ‘You really are an innocent, my dear. What makes you think love has anything to do with it?” he asked, unable to resist pursuing this extraordinary line of conversation.

“But of course it has,” she said in astonishment. “I can’t imagine it would be very interesting any other way, and why else would it be called lovemaking? To be truthful, though,” she said with a little sigh, “nobody’s ever told me much of anything when it comes to the subject, and I confess I long to know.”

“Do you feel your education has been neglected?” he said, not entirely believing his ears.

She regarded him gravely. “I’m not sure. After all, it seems as if it must be such a natural process that one ought to be able to work it out without instruction. It’s just the details that trouble me, you see, and I haven’t anyone to ask.” She looked at him with a little gleam of curiosity. “I don’t suppose … no. That probably wouldn’t be proper.”

“Decidedly not proper, but I wouldn’t let that trouble you.” Aiden ran his hand over his chin, desperately trying to keep a straight face.

“Well, I suppose we’ll never see each other again, so it doesn’t really matter,” she said with a decisive nod.

“Exactly.” Aiden sat down and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles, and leaned his weight back on his hands. “Er, are you planning on being ravished at some point in the future? Perhaps you have a rendezvous in mind that leads you to this line of inquiry?”

“Oh, yes!” she said brightly. “How did you know?”

“Just a lucky guess,” he replied. “In that case, maybe I could give you one or two helpful pointers.”

“I’m very fortunate to have run into you,” she said, beaming at him. “I’m not usually allowed to talk to strangers, and I can’t think of anyone else to ask. The only person I know well who could tell me is Tinkerby, but he’d be shocked if I brought the subject up. He’s very conventional.”

“Oh, no, you mustn’t shock Tinkerby,” Aiden said, enthralled. “Ask away. I’ll tell you whatever I can.”

“Well … I would like to know if lovemaking is a pleasant experience.” She regarded him expectantly.

“Hmm. I would have to say very pleasant,” Aiden said, his eyes dancing with suppressed hilarity.

“As nice as kissing?” she asked earnestly, looking as if she found kissing the most marvelous thing in the world.

“Decidedly better than kissing.” His gaze dropped to her rosy lips again and lingered there, mentally tracing their outline, wondering what it would be like to feel them beneath his own. Extremely nice, he decided. No—better than nice. Like a little piece of heaven.

“Oh, how wonderful,” she said with satisfaction. “That is exactly what I was hoping for. Umm—can you tell me what actually happens? When one seals a vow in the flesh, I mean?”

Aiden bit the tip of his thumb, stifling a surge of laughter. “I—I suppose the best way to put it is that a man and a woman become very close, as close as it’s physically possible to be.”

“But
how
?” she asked, her face a delicious riot of confusion.

“Well … they go into each other’s arms,” he said, trying to find words that wouldn’t shock her. “And they kiss and caress, and then, when both are feeling completely delighted with each other, the man joins his body with the woman’s.”

“How does he do that?” she demanded insistently.

“Hmm,” Aiden said, sure that he ought to be prevaricating wildly at this point, but too interested in seeing her reaction to let his conscience interfere. “Let’s see. You know, of course, that men are built in a different fashion to women?”

“Yes, of course,” she said impatiently.

“Good. Because the man takes that part of himself that makes him male and he places it in that part of herself that makes her female. Do you understand?”

He watched in fascination as she digested this vital piece of information, her eyes focused in concentration at a point somewhere in the middle of his chest. God in heaven, he knew he was being wicked, talking to an innocent girl like this, but he’d never enjoyed being a reprobate more in his life.

She raised her eyes to his after a minute. “I think so. Do they take their clothes off?” she asked, her brow puckered. “I can’t see how else they might do this thing.”

Aiden wasn’t sure he could take much more of her questioning without losing his self-possession. “Generally speaking they do, unless they’re in a terrible hurry. But it’s the sort of thing you want to take your clothes off for.”

“Oh. Like bathing,” she said, her face lighting up.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s much more fun than bathing,” he replied, his lips quivering. “But you’ll have to decide for yourself. The only thing I must caution you about is the possibility of conceiving a child,” he added, feeling he did need to inject a note of practicality into the discussion before she decided to go and thoroughly ruin herself. “You do understand this is often the result of lovemaking?”

“Of course I do,” she said indignantly. “Isn’t that the whole point?”

Aiden stared at her, nonplussed. “My dear girl, with that attitude I think you might seriously consider the option of marrying this gentleman. Unless, of course, he is already married.”

She stared back at him, her mouth half open, and then she suddenly burst into peals of laughter. “Oh! You are funning with me. I’m sorry—I don’t go out much in the world, so it is not always easy for me to tell.”