Only Enchanting (7 page)

She set down her easel and bag and just stood and looked for a long time: breathing in the smells of nature, hearing birds singing among the branches of the cedars close by, feeling the cool March air overlaid by the fresh warmth of the sun.

After a few minutes, however, she knew that she was seeing only half the picture and maybe not even that much. For the trumpets of the daffodils were lifted to the sky. The petals about them faced upward. If the flowers could see, as in a sense she supposed they could, then it was the sky, rather than the grass beneath them, upon which they gazed. She, on the other hand, was looking down upon the flowers and the grass. She turned her face upward to see that the sky was pure blue, with not a cloud in sight. But now, of course, she could no longer see the daffodils.

Well, there was a solution to that.

She kneeled down on the grass and then stretched out along it on her back, careful not to crush any of the flowers. The grass sprang up between her spread arms and her body and between her ungloved fingers when she spread them wide. Daffodils bloomed all about her. She could smell them and see the undersides of the petals and trumpets of those closest to her—and the sky beyond them. And now there was a vast blue to add to the yellow and the green.

And she was a part of it all, not a separate being looking upon creation, but creation looking upon itself. Oh, how she loved moments like this, rare as they were, and how she ached with the longing to capture in paint something of the inner experience as well as the outer beauty.
Perhaps this was how truly great painters felt all the time.

Perhaps truly great artists
felt
all the time.

But suddenly there was a sense, sharply intrusive, that she was not alone. And here she was, stretched out in the meadow among the daffodils, defenseless and foolish and trespassing even if she
had
been told by Lord Darleigh as well as by Sophia that she might come whenever she wished.

Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there was no one else here after all. She lifted her head cautiously from the ground and looked around.

She was
not
wrong.

He was standing quite still a short distance away, his face in shadow beneath the brim of his tall hat so that she could see neither the direction of his gaze nor the expression on his face. But he could not possibly have missed seeing her. A
blind
man could not have missed her. Even Viscount Darleigh would have sensed her presence. But he was not Viscount Darleigh.

Of all the people he might have been—and there were ten of them at the house—he was the very one she had most wanted
not
to see. Again. What were the chances?

She was the first to speak.

“I do have permission to be here,” she said and then wished she had not. She had immediately put herself on the defensive.

“Beauty among the d-daffodils,” he said. “How v-very charming.”

He sounded utterly bored. If one could speak and sigh at the same time, he did it. He was wearing his drab riding coat. It had six capes—she counted this time. It was long enough to half cover his highly polished boots. It was pure nonsense to feel that he was more male than
any other man she had ever encountered—but she
did
feel it.

Instead of leaping to her feet, as she probably ought to have done, she laid her head back down on the grass and closed her eyes. Perhaps he would go away. Was it possible to feel more embarrassed, more humiliated than she did?

He did not go away. A cloud suddenly came between her closed eyes and the sun—except that there were no clouds. She opened her eyes to find him standing beside her and looking down. And now she could see his face, shadowed though it still was. His eyes were green and heavy lidded, as she remembered them from the night of the ball. His left eyebrow was partly elevated. His mouth was curled up at the corners, though whether with amusement or scorn or both, she could not tell. One lock of blond hair lay across his forehead.

“I could offer a h-helping hand,” he told her. “I c-could even play the gallant and carry you to the h-house, though I daresay I should expire at your feet of some h-heart condition after arriving there.
Are
you hurt or indisposed?”

“I am not,” she assured him. “I am merely viewing the world as the daffodils view it.”

She winced—quite visibly, she feared. Was it possible to feel more mortified than mortified? What a ridiculously stupid thing to say! Oh, please let him just go away, and she would gladly agree to forget him for all eternity.

His right hand, clad in the finest, most costly kid, disappeared beneath his coat and came out with a quizzing glass. He raised it to his eye and unhurriedly surveyed the meadow and then, briefly, her. It was a horrible affectation. If there was something wrong with his sight, he ought to wear eyeglasses.

And through it all she lay where she was, just as though she were incapable of rising—or as though she believed she could hide more effectively down here.

“Ah,” he said at last. “I g-guessed there must be a perfectly sensible explanation, and now I see there is. I r-remember you as being sensible, Mrs. Keeping.”

He had remembered her name, then—or he had asked Sophia. She wished he had not.

“No,” he said, removing his hat and tossing it carelessly in the direction of her easel and bag, “that is not strictly c-correct, is it? I expected you to be s-sensible, but you were enchanting instead.”

The sun turned his blond hair to a rich gold as he sat down beside her and draped his arms over his raised knees. He was wearing tight buckskin breeches beneath his coat. They hugged powerful-looking thighs. Agnes looked away.

Enchanting.

Oh, dear, he had remembered that waltz.

“And your being here among the d-daffodils now makes full sense,” he said.

Why? Because she was not sensible but . . . enchanting? Oh, she wished he spoke as other people did, so that one might understand his meaning without having to wonder and guess.

She was
still
lying full-length in the grass. She ought at least to sit up, but that would bring her closer to him.

“I came here to paint,” she told him. “But I will go away. I have no wish to intrude upon your privacy. I did not expect any of the guests to come this far. Not so early in the day, at least.”

Finally she would have sat up
and
got to her feet. But as soon as she moved, he set a hand on her shoulder, and she stayed where she was. His hand stayed where it was
too, and it scorched through her body right down to her toes—even though he was wearing gloves.

Why, oh, why had she risked coming here? And what unhappy chance had brought him here too?

“You
have
intruded upon my p-privacy,” he said, “as I have upon yours. Shall we both turn h-homeward disgruntled as a r-result, or shall we s-stay and be private together for a while?”

Suddenly the daffodil meadow seemed far lonelier and more remote than when she had had it to herself.

“How
do
the daffodils view the world?” he asked, removing his hand and grasping the handle of his quizzing glass again.

“Upward,” she said. “Always upward.”

One of his eyebrows rose, and he looked mockingly down at her.

“There is a l-life lesson here for all of us, is there, M-Mrs. Keeping?” he asked her. “We should all and always look upward, and all our t-troubles will be at an end?”

She smiled. “If only life were that simple.”

“But for daffodils it is,” he said.

“We are not daffodils.”

“For which f-fact I shall be eternally thankful,” he said. “They never see August or D-December or even June. You should s-smile more often.”

She stopped smiling.

“Why did you come out here alone,” she asked him, “when you are with a group of friends?”

He had the strangest eyes. At a cursory glance, they always looked a bit sleepy. But they were not. And now they gazed at her and into her with apparent mockery—and yet there was something intense behind the mockery. As if there were a wholly unknown person hiding inside.

The thought left her a little breathless.

“And why did you c-come here alone,” he asked, “when you have a s-sister and neighbors and f-friends in the village?”

“I asked first.”

“So you did.” She pressed her head and her hands more firmly into the grass when he smiled. It was a devastating expression. “I c-came here to commune with my soul, Mrs. Keeping, and I found enchantment among the daffodils. I shall go back to the house presently and write a p-poem about the experience. A s-sonnet, perhaps. Undoubtedly a sonnet, in fact. No other verse form would do the incident j-justice.”

She smiled slowly and then laughed. “I deserved that. I had no business asking.”

“But how are we to discover anything about each other,” he said, “if we do not ask? Who was Mr. K-Keeping?”

“My husband,” she said and smiled again when his left eyebrow mocked her. “He was our neighbor where I grew up. He offered for me when I was eighteen and he was thirty, and I was married to him for five years before he died almost three years ago.”

“He was a gentleman f-farmer, was he?” he asked. “And you were wildly in love with him, I suppose? An older, experienced man?”

“I was
fond
of him, Lord Ponsonby,” she said, “and he of me.”

“He sounds like a d-dull dog,” he said.

She was torn between indignation and amusement.

“You know
nothing
about him,” she said. “He was a worthy man.”

“If I were m-married to you,” he said, “and you described me as w-worthy, I would shoot myself and thus put myself out of my m-misery.”

“What utter nonsense!” But she laughed again.

“There was no p-passion, was there?” he asked, sounding bored again.

“You are being offensive.”

“That means there was no p-passion,” he said. “A p-pity. You look as if you were made for it.”

“Oh.”

“And most d-definitely enchanting,” he said, and he shifted his position, leaned over her, and kissed her.

She was shocked into immobility, even after he had raised his head a few inches to look down at her face. From close up, his green eyes glinted into hers, and his mouth looked slightly cruel as well as mocking. And she felt such a stabbing of lust in her breasts and between her thighs and up into her womb that she was quite incapable of either remonstrating with him or pushing him away.

She wanted him to do it again.

“You ought to have stayed safely locked away inside your v-village this morning, Mrs. K-Keeping,” he said. “I came here alone b-because I was feeling somewhat s-savage.”

“Savage?” She swallowed and raised her hand to set her fingertips lightly against his cheek. It was warm and smooth. He must have shaved shortly before coming out. And yet she knew that this time he was speaking the truth. She could almost feel leashed danger pulsing outward from the person hidden away inside him.

She had
touched
him. She looked at her hand rather as if it belonged to someone else, and withdrew it.

“I spent three years learning to c-control it,” he told her. “My savagery, that is. But it still l-lurks and waits to p-pounce upon some unwary victim. It would have been better if you had not been here.”

She was curiously, and perhaps foolishly, unafraid. She could feel his breath warm against her face.

“What brought it so nearly out of lurkdom this morning?” she asked him.

But he merely smiled at her and lowered his head to brush his lips over hers again, and then to taste them with his tongue before reaching inside to the soft flesh behind them and so right on into her mouth.

She lay very still, as though moving might break the spell.

If this was a kiss, it was unlike anything she had ever experienced with William.
Totally
unlike. It was carnal and sinful and lustful and, for the moment at least, quite beyond her power to resist. She could smell the daffodils. And him. And temptation.

And danger.

The hand that had been against his cheek went to the back of his head, her fingers threading their way into his thick, warm hair, while the other hand went to his waist, beneath his riding coat. Even through the remaining layers of his clothing she could feel the hard maleness of his muscles and the heat of the blood pulsing through him.

He was all raw masculinity—something quite outside her experience.

He was dangerous. Terribly dangerous.

But her mind simply refused to answer the call to defend her, and she became all physical sensation—shock and wonder and pleasure and pure lust. And a feeling of fright that enticed her more than it repelled.

His tongue explored her mouth. The tip of it touched the roof and drew a line along the ridge of bone there and sent such a rush of pure desire shivering through her that she reacted at last. She set both hands against his shoulders and pressed him away.

Far more reluctantly than she ought.

He did not fight her or show any other sign of savagery. He lifted his head, smiled slowly, and then sat up
before pushing himself to his feet. When she sat up too, he reached out a hand to help her up. It was still gloved.

“One ought to be a perfect g-gentleman even when one encounters enchantment in the grass,” he said. “But at the same t-time, one feels the need to p-pay homage to it with a kiss. Life is full of such thorny c-contradictions and conflicts, alas. G-Good day to you, Mrs. Keeping. I have probably frightened away your artistic m-muse for today, have I? Perhaps you will find it here again tomorrow. Or perhaps I will f-find you here before it does. Will I?”

She gazed steadily into his keen, mocking green eyes, over which his eyelids remained half-lowered. What was he saying? Or asking? Was he making an assignation with her?

What type of woman did he think she was? And was he justified, considering the fact that she had not screeched with outrage or smacked his face as soon as it came within one foot of her?

She could still taste him. She could still feel him on her lips. Her mind was still almost numb. That secret, feminine place inside her still throbbed. And she knew that his kiss had been one of the most memorably glorious experiences of her life.