Lily (8 page)

“Anybody can float.”

“Not me.” Nevertheless, she lay back and kicked her legs, enjoying the startling chill on her scalp when her head touched the water, and tried to imitate Lowdy’s restful-looking posture on the pool’s surface. She sank.

“Pull air in your chest and keep still,” Lowdy instructed once Lily had resurfaced and stopped coughing. “Stay calm-like, that’s the knack.”

After a few more tries, Lily mastered the art of floating on her back. She stared up at the lustrous pearl of the full moon, her arms and legs spread, breathing shallowly, and savored the acquisition of this newest skill, musing that at times like these it was
almost
possible to categorize her present circumstances as an adventure. If she could see an end to this interlude, this interruption of what she still regarded hopefully as her real life, she might even be able to enjoy it, once in a while. But in truth, she could see no end. Still, she clung to her natural optimism: instead of dwelling on the hopelessness of things, she started a water fight with Lowdy.

“What was that?”

Devon paused in the act of drying off his legs with his shirt and listened. “What? I don’t hear anything.” He dragged on his breeches—then stopped again, fingers going still over the buttons. “I hear it now. It sounded like a scream.” He threw his shirt in the sand and strode off in the direction of the sound—a high-pitched, woman’s cry. It came again, and he quickened his pace. Clay stumbled after him, fastening his breeches and shrugging into his wet shirt as he went. The light of the full moon brightened the sandy track edging the pool on the inland side. When he was a dozen feet from a humpbacked line of boulders trailing from the woods to the water and blocking the track, Devon halted. Clay nearly collided into his back

Lily and Lowdy waded out of the water through the thick sand, heading for their clothes, still laughing. At the very moment they realized they’d come out on the wrong side of the boulders, they saw the men. Lowdy let out a screech and darted forward. Lily followed, unthinking—and went weak when she discovered there was nowhere to run: the high rocks ran straight into the woods, and in front of them was an impenetrable tangle of marram grass and wild rhododendron. They should have fled back into the water!

Too late now. To retreat would be to expose their naked bodies all over again. Clutching her arms across her chest, Lily stood beside Lowdy in front of the tallest boulder, her back turned toward the two Messrs. Darkwell, and waited for them to go away.

They didn’t.

“God’s my life,” breathed Clay, “’tis a pair of mermaids.” He shot Devon a hopeful glance. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in speaking to them, would you? It’s a couple of the housemaids, you know; I recognize the tall one, she’s—”

“I know who she is.”

“Oh.” That surprised him. “Well, I’m only thinking, this being such an auspicious meeting, two of them and two of us, almost like fate if you—” he broke off, startled when, without a word, Devon left him and began to walk toward the two women huddling in front of the black rock “—believe in that sort of thing,” Clay trailed off to himself, and strode out after him.

Impossible, thought Lily, hearing them come; they cannot mean to speak to us! She made a futile physical effort to become smaller. The nearer they drew, the more potent was her desire to crawl into the face of the granite boulder and vanish. Lowdy began to giggle in the most annoying way; she wanted to box her ears. Now the two men were standing directly behind them; she knew it because the very air seemed to have changed. She imagined she could hear them breathing. Even so, she jumped when a voice drawled, almost in her ear, “Good evening, ladies.” She recognized that amused, good-natured cockiness and knew it was the young master who had spoken. But it was his brother whose presence she sensed most keenly, whose cold, blue-green gaze she though she could feel like an icy brand on the bare skin of her back.

“Good evenin’ t’ you,” Lowdy threw back over her shoulder with another silly, coquettish giggle.

“What an unexpected pleasure, meeting you lovely ladies like this. My brother and I were wondering if you would care to join us for a short stroll around the lake. We might even take another … dip together, if you’re of a mind. Hmm? Does that interest you the least little bit?”

Lowdy said yes. Lily’s eyes went wide with shock and incredulity. But Lowdy had said yes and Lily hadn’t misheard, for now she was bobbing her head and laughing that same idiotic, infuriating giggle that made Lily want to take her by the shoulders and shake her until her crooked teeth rattled.

“Well, now, that’s fine,” said Clay, laughing too. “What about you?” he inquired, again in Lily’s ear.

“No! Please, just go away.”

Every muscle in her body jerked when Devon Darkwell said in a low, compelling tone, one she somehow apprehended more in her body than her ears, “Yes, I think that would be best.” His brother glanced at him uncertainly. Devon made himself clear. “Leave us, Clay. You and your friend have a pleasant walk.”

Clay finally closed his mouth. His astonishment was greater than his disappointment. Lowdy turned around and faced him without a blush; he took her hand automatically, hardly looking at her. “I can’t remember,” he marveled over his shoulder as he led her away, stark naked and giggling, “the last time you pulled rank on me, Dev.”

Then he was gone, and Lily was alone with Viscount Sandown.

Devon roughly shoved to the back of his mind the question of what the hell he thought he was doing; if he considered that for half a minute, he would walk away from this girl without a backward look. He didn’t want to walk away. Or stop looking.

What he wanted was to touch her. The dress she’d worn that day in his room hadn’t even hinted at the loveliness of the woman underneath the faded blue cotton. He watched his hand go out, then pause in the air an inch or two from her shoulder. His arm cast a shadow across her pale back, darkening the thick stream of hair that hung down past her shoulders. The moonlight silvered her skin and made it look indescribably soft. He saw her white-fingered grip on her upper arms, and wondered fleetingly if she was frightened. He wanted to hear her voice again. “Will you turn around?” he said quietly.

She shook her head.

“No?” he prompted.

“No.”

“But you must. Have you never heard of the
droit du seigneur?”
he murmured with uncharacteristic whimsy, mostly to himself.

Without a thought, Lily snapped out, “That was a Norman, not a Cornish custom, and anyway, it died out six hundred years ago.”

Devon’s hovering hand jerked away. “How do you know that?” he asked in amazement.

She bit her tongue. “Please, please, I cannot talk to you like this!”

“Why? Are you embarrassed?” She looked like a warm marble goddess to him, tall and straight and slender, and he had an urge to touch each fragile vertebra with his fingertips, moving down so slowly, past her narrow waist to her sleek, saucy buttocks. “You’re much too beautiful to be embarrassed.” On an impulse he said, “Meet me tonight, later. Come to my room.” Instantly he regretted his words.

Lily was so overwrought she wanted to weep. “No, I can’t, I can’t. You’ve mistaken me, my lord, I’m not—like Lowdy.”

“Your friend?”

She nodded.

“No indeed,” he agreed in a murmur, “you’re not at all like Lowdy.” Regret drifted away. And now it was impossible not to touch her; his earlier scruples vanished—she was only a maid, after all. But when he pushed her wet hair aside and slid his fingers along the delicate ridge of her backbone, she gave a soft gasp and dropped her head; he could feel light tremors quaking through her, from her shoulders to her long, white thighs.

“You must let me go,” Lily pleaded in a strained whisper.

“I’m not detaining you.”

“Please. You don’t understand.”

What he understood was that she needed subtler handling. With deep reluctance, he let his hand fall away; when it grazed her hip, she shuddered again and went poker-stiff. “Meet me tomorrow, then,” he suggested in a whisper. “In the afternoon. We’ll go for a walk.”

She said the first thing that came into her head. “I have to scrub the stillroom floor tomorrow afternoon.”

He ventured a smile. “I commend your industry. But I think you might manage to postpone that particular chore, don’t you? Four o’clock, inside the park gates.”

Lily took a deep breath. “A walk?”

He nodded solemnly. “A walk.”

“And if I come, will you go away now?”

“Are you bargaining with me?” When she made no answer, he conceded gravely, “Yes, I will go away.”

“Very well, then. I—I will meet you.”

“I’m much relieved.” Did she think he would have accepted a refusal?

There was a lengthy pause.

“Well?” Lily said finally. She couldn’t stand this much longer.

“Ah, I’d forgotten. The bargain.” He took a step back, sweeping her with one last glance. With what he considered saintly restraint, he walked away and left her alone.

B
UT WHEN FOUR O’CLOCK
came the next afternoon, Lily was kneeling in a half-inch of caustic suds and scouring the tile floor of the stillroom with a bristle brush. Devon found her there at four-twenty. His irritation was extreme, and derived from two sources: an inability to understand, in the harsh light of day, what could possibly have seemed so urgent last night; and bafflement over the fact that he’d actually gone to meet the chit anyway, had been waiting at the appointed time and place like some lovestruck footboy come a-courting—and she’d had the gall not to show up! Clay was right, he thought sourly; he ought to get out more. The next time his brother went whoring in Truro, he would go with him. Then maybe he wouldn’t be so eager to make a fool of himself at home.

Scrubbing away, Lily saw his long black shadow fall across the floor. She jerked up, the brush sliding from her slick fingers. She sat back on her heels and plucked nervously at her skirts. Her petticoat was soaked, but she’d tied the hem of her gown up with ribbons to keep it off the wet tiles. She felt dowdy and disheveled and unattractive. “I couldn’t come,” she blurted out before he could say anything. “Mrs. Howe says I must finish this and then help the parlor maid with the polishing. I’m sorry. I meant to come but I—couldn’t.”

“Stand up.”

She searched his face. It was more than stern and remote now; it was angry. She hadn’t expected that. She scrambled to her feet, wiping her hands on her coarse hessian apron.

“You seem to be laboring under a misconception. You don’t work for Mrs. Howe, you work for me. If you intend to continue, you’ll learn to follow my orders, not hers—at least not when they contradict mine. Is that clear?”

Her chin went up, her shoulders back. “Yes, my lord, that is perfectly clear.”

Watching her try to control her temper, Devon felt some of his own begin to fade. “Good. Then let’s begin again. Meet me at the park gates in ten minutes.” He raised one eyebrow and waited.

“Yes, my lord.” She dropped a sarcastic curtsey.

The brow went higher. But he said no more, only turned on his heel and stalked out.

Lily thought of all the mild, ineffectual curses she knew. They helped to soothe her temper, but did nothing for her nerves. When Mrs. Howe had refused her request for an hour off this afternoon—to post a letter in the village, she’d fabricated—her first reaction had been heartfelt relief: now she wouldn’t have to meet the master, it wasn’t her fault, and it couldn’t even be called cowardice. She’d never imagined that he would actually come here and fetch her. What did he want with her, anyway? A “walk,” he said. Ha! Did he take her for an infant? A walk had been the last thing on his mind last night; she had no reason to think things had changed because the sun was shining.

Well, she would soon find out. And regardless of what he expected, a walk was all he was going to get. She would not be defenseless, naked, and vulnerable today, and acute embarrassment would not be a weapon he could use against her. She went outside, untying the strings that held her skirts up as she went, trying to shake out the wrinkles. Useless, of course. And silly, too; if she wanted to attract him—which she didn’t—it would take considerably more than an unwrinkled gown. Or considerably less, she amended wryly, knowing it had been her
lack
of clothing that had stirred his interest in her to begin with. No matter—let the master see her in full daylight in her one and only gown, every patch and wrinkle in place; let him see her work-red hands and freckled nose, her bedraggled hair tucked up into Lowdy’s ancient gray cap. That should cool his interest quickly enough, and then her life could go back to what she was forced these days to call normal. She straightened her cap with a combative jerk and strode off toward the deer park.

Devon saw her coming from a good distance away. She was taller than average, and she had an unusual long-legged stride, graceful and purposeful at the same time. He knew the exact moment she saw him because she shortened her steps, self-conscious, and looked away as if something fascinating had caught her attention at the side of the path. Her profile was lovely, and his ill humor dissipated a little more as he considered that perhaps he hadn’t lost his mind after all, or not completely, when he’d insisted on this assignation. When she reached him, she stopped a good six feet away and bobbed another curtsey—this one perfunctory, not sarcastic—murmuring, “My lord,” in an undertone.

“Stop my-lording me,” he snapped. “No one calls me that except my valet and my housekeeper.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes them feel important.”

Nervous, Lily fought a strong impulse to laugh. “I meant, why does no one call you ‘my lord?’”

“Because I don’t wish them to.”

He looked so very lordlike, his voice matching the frostiness of his turquoise eyes glaring down the length of his bony, arrogant nose, that this time she did laugh. But she instantly sobered when he scowled at her, unamused.

“Why is it you’re not the least bit Irish today, I wonder? Nor last night either, as I recall.”

Stupid, stupid,
she berated herself, ruing for at least the hundredth time the foolish scheme that had caused her nothing but trouble. Even though she’d half expected something like this from him, the suddenness of the question addled her. Stalling, she started to walk, and he went along the path beside her, hands clasped behind his back. Hawthorn and wild nut trees bordered the track. A thrush twittered somewhere close by; overhead a lark sang. “Well, you see, sir, I was desperate for a job,” she began—truthfully. “When I first saw Mrs. Howe in the inn at Chard, I—I thought she was Irish.”