Simply Unforgettable (6 page)

Miss Frances Allard was certainly not the bad-tempered, prunish woman he had taken her for yesterday. And he must admit that if their positions had been reversed, he would have been in an even more cantankerous mood than he had been anyway and would have been entertaining gruesome dreams of boiling someone in oil too. Not that either he or Peters would tolerate someone's overtaking them on any road under any circumstances, of course.

“Teachers are not ineligible for this morning's prizes,” he said.

“Oh?” She looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Out beside the inn,” he said, pointing in the direction of the side facing away from the village. “As soon as I have helped you do the dishes. One problem, though. Do you have proper boots?”

“Yes, of course I do,” she said. “Would I have longed for snow for Christmas if I did not? Am I being challenged to a snowman-building contest? You will lose.”

“We will see,” he said. “What did you put in these potatoes to make them so delicious?”

“My own secret combination of herbs,” she said.

He finished his meal and gathered the dishes together to wash while she set about mixing a fresh batch of bread—it could rise while she was outside winning the competition, she told him.

Fresh bread! His mouth watered even though his stomach was full.

He even—horror of horrors!—
dried
the dishes.

If it had not snowed, he would now be on the final leg of his journey. He could have been home by this afternoon—to the quiet, familiar peace of Cleve Abbey and the prospect of an early return to London and its myriad pleasures—though only until the Season began, by Jove. But here he was instead, planning to alleviate the boredom of a useless day by building a snowman.

Except that he was no longer bored—had not been since he rose from his bed actually.

He tried to remember the last time he had built a snowman or otherwise frolicked in the snow, and failed.

4

He was making the mistake, Frances noticed with a furtive
glance in his direction, of building his snowman too tall and thin—an error often made by novices. It looked much larger than hers, but he was going to have problems with the head. Even if he could lift a suitable one that high, it would not remain in place but would roll off and ruin all his efforts. She would be the undisputed winner.

Her snowman, on the other hand, was solid and squat. He was broader than he was tall. He was—

“Too fat to pass through any door,” Mr. Marshall commented, diverted from his own efforts for a moment, “even if he were to turn sideways. Too fat to find a bed wide enough or sturdy enough to sleep on. Too fat to be allowed any bread or potatoes with his meals for the next year. He is disgustingly obese.”

“He is cuddly,” she said, tipping her head to one side to survey her unfinished creation, “and good-natured. He is not cadaverous like some snowmen I have seen. He does not look as if he will blow over in the first puff of wind. He is—”

“Headless,” he said, “as is mine. Let us get back to work and resume the name-calling afterward.”

Her poor snowman looked even more obese after she had fixed a nice round head on his shoulders. The head was too small. She tried to pack more snow about it, but it fell off in clumps about his shoulders, and she had to be content with picking out the two largest coals they had brought from the kitchen with them so that she could at least give him large, soulful eyes. She added a somewhat smaller coal nose and a fat carrot to act as his pipe and a few more small coals for coat buttons. With one forefinger she sculpted a wide and smiling mouth about the carrot.

“At least,” she said, stepping back, “he has a sense of humor. And at least he
has
a head.”

She looked down with a smirk at the massive one he had sculpted on the ground, complete with jug-handle ears and sausage curls.

“The contest is not over yet,” he said. “There was no time limit, was there? It would be somewhat premature to start jeering yet. You might feel foolish afterward.”

She saw then that he was not as ignorant of the laws of gravity as she had assumed. He spent some time on the shoulders of his snowman, scooping out a hollow to hold the head so that it would not roll off. Of course, he still had to get the head up there.

She watched smugly as he stooped to pick it up.

But she had reckoned without his superior height and the strength of those arm muscles. What would have been an impossibility for her looked like child's play for him. He even had the strength to hold the head suspended over the torso for a few moments so that he could get it at just the right angle before lowering it into place. He selected the coals and carrot he wanted and pressed them into place—though he used his carrot for a nose. And then he reached into one of the pockets of his greatcoat and drew out a long, narrow knitted scarf in a hideous combination of pink and orange stripes and wrapped it about the neck of his snowman.

“The vicar's wife in my grandfather's parish presented it to me for Christmas,” he said. “General opinion in the village has it that she is color-blind. I think general opinion must have the right of it. It is kinder than saying she has no taste at all, anyway.”

He stepped back and stood beside Frances. Together they contemplated their creations.

“The scarf and the curls and the lopsided mouth save yours from looking mean and humorless,” she said generously. “Not to mention those ears. Oh, and those pockmarks are meant to be
freckles
. That is a nice touch, I must confess. I like him after all.”

“And I must admit to a fondness for Friar Tuck with his black coat buttons,” he said. “He looks like a jolly old soul, though I do not know what holds his pipe in his mouth if he is smiling so broadly.”

“His teeth.”

“Ah,” he said. “Good point. We forgot to appoint a judge.”

“And to have a trophy awaiting the winner,” she said.

It was only then, when he turned his head to grin at her, that she realized he had one arm draped about her shoulders in a relaxed, comradely gesture. She guessed that he had only just realized it himself. The smiles froze on their faces, and Frances's knees felt suddenly weak.

He slipped his arm free, cleared his throat, and wandered closer to the snowmen.

“I suppose,” he said, “we might as well declare the competition a draw. Agreed? If we do not, we will get into a scrap again and you will be devising some other hair-raising scheme for putting a period to my existence. Or are you going to insist upon declaring me the winner?”

“By no means,” she said. “Mine is definitely sturdier than yours. It will withstand the forces of nature for much longer.”

“Now that is a provocative statement when I have been magnanimous enough to suggest a draw,” he said, and he stooped and turned and without warning hurled a snowball at her. It caught her in the chest and spattered up into her face.

“Oh!” she cried, outraged. “Unfair!”

And she scooped up a gloveful of snow and tossed it back at him. It hit the side of his hat, knocking it askew.

The battle was on.

It raged for several minutes until to a casual observer it might have looked as if four snowmen had been erected beside the inn. Except that two of them were moving and were helpless with laughter. And except that one of them, the taller and broader of the two, suddenly lunged for the other and bore her backward until she was lying on her back in a soft snowdrift with his weight pressing her deeper and his hands clamped to her wrists and holding them imprisoned on either side of her head.

“Enough!” he declared, still laughing. “That last one caught me in the eye.”

He blinked flakes of snow off his eyelashes.

“You admit defeat, then?” She laughed up at him.

“Admit defeat?” His eyebrows rose. “Pardon me, but who is holding whom vanquished in the snow?”

“But who just declared that he had had enough?” She waggled her eyebrows at him.

“The same one who then ended the battle with a decisive annihilation of the enemy.” He laughed back at her.

She suddenly became aware that he was actually on top of her. She could feel his weight bearing her down. She could feel his breath warm on her face. She looked into his hazel eyes, only inches away, and found them smoldering back into her own. She looked down at his mouth and was aware at the same moment that his eyes dropped to hers.

Her strange adventure moved perilously close to danger—and perhaps to something rather splendid.

His lips brushed across hers and she felt as if she were lying beneath a hot August sun rather than December snow clouds.

She had never known a man so very male—a thought that did not bear either pursuing or interpreting.

“I have just remembered the bread,” she said in a voice that sounded shockingly normal to her ears. “I will be fortunate indeed if it has not risen to fill the kitchen to the ceiling. I will be fortunate if I can get through the door to rescue it.”

His eyes smoldered into hers for perhaps a second longer, and then one corner of his mouth lifted in what might have been a smile or perhaps was simple mockery. He pushed himself to his feet, brushed himself off, and reached down a hand to help her up. She banged her gloved hands together and then shook her cloak, but there was as much snow down inside the collar of it as there was on the outside, she was sure.

“Oh, this was
such
fun,” she said, not looking at him.

“It was indeed,” he agreed. “But if I ever meet fortune face-to- face, I will demand to know why I had to be stranded here with a prudish schoolteacher. Go, Miss Allard.
Run.
If I can have no fresh bread with my soup after all, I shall be quite out of humor.”

For the merest moment Frances thought of staying in order to protest his use of the word
prudish
. But if she were foolish enough to do that, she might find herself having to prove that it did not apply to her.

She fled, though for very pride's sake she did not run.

Part of her was feeling decidedly annoyed with herself. Why had she broken the tension of that moment? What harm would one full kiss have done? It was so long since she had been kissed, and the chance might never come again—she was all of twenty-three.

By the same token, she was
only
twenty-three.

What harm would a kiss have done?

But she was no green girl. She knew very well what harm it would have done. Neither of them, she suspected, would be content with just one kiss. And there was nothing in their circumstances to inhibit them from taking more.

And more . . .

Heavens above, even just the brush of his lips had half scrambled her brains and every bone and organ in her body.

She hurried into the kitchen after removing her outer garments and threw herself busily into baking the bread and making the soup.

 

The conversation at luncheon was rather strained and far too bright and superficial—on her part anyway. Lucius retreated into taciturnity. But though the bread was light and among the best he had ever tasted and the soup more than worthy of a second bowl, he found himself unable to concentrate upon the enjoyment of either quite as much as he might have liked.

He was distracted by unconsummated lust.

And he cursed his luck that while circumstances were ideal for a little sexual fling, the woman with whom he was stranded was not. If only she had been an actress or a merry widow or . . . Well, anyone but a schoolteacher, who might be gorgeous but who was also prim and virtuous—except when she was building snowmen and hurling snowballs and forgot herself for a while.

While she talked brightly on a variety of inane topics, he tried to think about Portia Hunt. He tried to bring her face into focus in his mind and succeeded all too well. She had that look in her eye that told him she despised all men and their animal appetites but would tolerate them in him provided she never had to know about them.

He was probably doing her an injustice. She was a perfect lady, it was true. It was also possible, he supposed, that there was an appealing woman beneath all the perfection. He was going to discover the answer soon.

And this adventure, as Frances Allard had called it, would soon be over. Already the sun had broken through the clouds, and water was dripping off the eaves outside the taproom window. There was only the rest of today to live through.

And tonight . . .

Tonight he would sleep in the taproom. He would not set even one toe beyond it in the direction of the stairs and the chambers above. When he died, his virtue would take him straight into heaven, where he could bore himself silly by playing on a harp for all eternity.

Damnation! Why could she not have continued to be the prunish shrew he had taken her for yesterday—less than twenty-four hours ago? Or else the laughing, eager woman she had been outside until his lips had touched hers? Why did she have to be such a frustrating mix?

He ordered Wally and Thomas to do the dishes—Peters was still busy with the carriage, though that fact did not stop Thomas from muttering something about favoritism as Peters disappeared through the back door. Lucius pulled his boots and his greatcoat back on and spent most of the afternoon outside, first in the carriage house feeling useless, and then chopping wood, since the pile that was already chopped looked seriously diminished. He could have hauled Wally outside to do the job, of course, and would have done so under normal circumstances. But he was glad of the excuse to remain outside. He was doubly glad of the chance to use up more energy. He chopped far more than would be needed tonight and tomorrow morning. This wood would be warming the toes of the Parkers for the next week or more.

She had tea ready when he went back inside—fresh bread with more of the cheese and pickles, and some currant cakes that were still warm from the oven. Who was it who had said that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach? Not that it was exactly his heart that was the affected organ, but she was certainly a good cook.

“I have decided,” he said when they had finished eating, “not to offer you employment as my cook. I am large enough as I am—or as I was yesterday.”

She smiled but did not say anything. And when he got to his feet to help her into the kitchen with the tray, she told him to stay where he was, that he had been busy enough all afternoon.

She had been reading, he could see. Her book was resting open and facedown on the settle beside the hearth. It was Voltaire's
Candide,
of all things. She was reading it in French, he saw when he picked it up. She had said that she taught French, had she not? French and music and writing.

She was a prim, staid schoolteacher. No doubt she was a dashed intelligent one too. If he repeated those facts to himself often enough, perhaps he would eventually accept them as hard reality and the knowledge would cool his blood.