OLIVER WAS RATHER annoyed when Lizzie didn’t appear for breakfast and lunch. She didn’t eat enough, and avoiding meals wasn’t a good idea. He’d had enough trays brought to his bedchamber to know that the cook would have sent up a finicky plate with barely enough food for an invalid.
He was falling short as a knight errant. He only had one more day to get her on a horse, not to mention in a fit of hilarity. Thinking about that, he walked into the drawing room and found it empty but for Sarah and his niece.
Hattie bounded to her feet, dragging Sarah with her. “Here’s my best-of-uncles,” she cried. “Please, may we go fishing again tomorrow?”
“Perhaps,” Oliver said vaguely. If Lizzie didn’t come to dinner, he might have to take matters into his own hands and root her out of her bedchamber. He had a shrewd idea he’d moved too quickly the night before.
No woman wants a man she’s just met to drop to his knees. She wants to be wooed.
“I enjoyed fishing very much, Mr. Berwick,” Sarah said, dropping a shy curtsy. She’d probably do very well in her debut; she was sweet, quite pretty, and exquisitely dressed, which hinted at a substantial dowry.
Then he frowned. His niece was equally well dressed.
Hattie caught his eye and looked down at her evening dress. “Isn’t this beautiful? Sarah let me wear it.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Sarah said somewhat anxiously. “I have far more clothes than I can use and that color makes me quite sallow.”
A footman handed Oliver a glass of wine. “Why on earth did you acquire a gown in an unacceptable color?” he inquired.
“My stepmother liked this figured silk,” Sarah said with a little smile, “and I wanted to make her happy.”
Hattie slung her arm around Sarah’s neck and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek. “You are the nicest girl in the world.” Then she turned back to Oliver, her eyes shining. “Isn’t this the most wonderful party you’ve ever been to?”
Oliver rather agreed with her, so he nodded.
“Did you hear that we’re going to play croquet after the meal?” she cried.
“It’s already dark outside,” Oliver pointed out.
“We play in the drawing room,” Sarah explained.
Bartleby opened the door. Oliver glanced over and froze, his wine glass halfway to his mouth.
Lizzie was wearing a gown that made her look like a streak of sunshine or a lemon tart, something so dainty and delectable that a man licked his lips just to see her. He could have spanned her waist with his hands, but then he realized that her hips swelled to a lovely curve, and he wanted his hands there instead, sliding around her, pulling her body against his.
Bloody hell.
“Lady Troutt,” he said, heading straight toward her like a ship navigating by the North Star. Even if he couldn’t pull her into his arms, he could kiss her hand. “Good evening. I trust you had a restful day?”
Hattie and Sarah were trotting along behind him. “You missed fishing,” Hattie said, bobbing a curtsy.
“It was absolutely fizzing!” Sarah cried.
“Good evening, Mr. Berwick,” Lizzie murmured, not meeting his eyes. “Girls, how are you both?”
“We are fine, Aunt Lizzie,” Sarah chirped. “Are you ready for to play croquet?”
“Absolutely,” she said. The footman offered her a glass of wine, but she shook her head and turned to the girls, shifting so that Oliver was excluded from the conversation.
Not only did she avoid him in the drawing room by using the girls as deftly as a brick wall, but she managed to seat herself at the other end of the table.
Over dinner, Oliver watched as she took a small nibble of ham, refused to consider blood sausage, and pushed a piece of game pie around her plate.
Who could laugh when she had nothing to eat?
He called over the butler and had a brief talk with him. Then he watched as Bartleby offered Lizzie something that looked a fricassee of wild greens, likely meant to be a side dish. She carefully removed the bacon sprinkled on top and ate the rest.
So she didn’t like meat.
When they moved on to a course of roast goose, Bartleby offered Lizzie what seemed to be an orange-colored soup. Carrot bisque, perhaps?
To Oliver’s satisfaction, a while later she ate every bite of an artichoke tart.
She gave him a slightly suspicious look. He’d never seen anything as beautiful as the particular hazel color of her eyes.
“Good evening,” he said softly, ignoring the rule that dictated he speak only to Sarah, on his left, or Cat, on his right.
Lizzie gave him a dismissive smile and turned back to Hattie.
She probably rarely felt hungry because she stayed in her room too much. That would also explain why her skin was such an exquisite pale cream color.
She had turned her shoulder to him, so he felt free to stare at her while he ate. She had high cheekbones, and a little shell of an ear. She kept smiling faintly at things Hattie and Sarah came up with. They were listing all the socially unacceptable things they intended to do after they were married, such as travel in the mail coach, and ride a velocipede.
There was something about her tight smile that didn’t feel right. Lizzie had the same generous bottom lip that Cat had. A man took one look at that mouth and wanted to do—
Well.
All those things.
Her mouth was made for laughing.
What an idiot Adrian Troutt had been, living with someone named Shady Sadie when he could have been going home to his wife.
Lizzie smiled once again, and Oliver decided she might have dimples, if she laughed. It was a possibility.
By the end of the meal, he had come up with a plan. When Cat began herding everyone toward the drawing room, Lizzie looked anywhere but at him, so he didn’t bound forward and take her arm, as he wished to.
He had to handle this carefully, so he silently followed her, appreciating the view. She had so much hair that it looked like a yellow puff pastry, hovering in the air above her slender neck. Her waist was nipped in and her skirt swelled out, the way skirts did these days. He liked the way it emphasized her curves.
He liked curves. Not overly lush curves, but ones like Lizzie’s.
In fact, he liked everything about Lizzie Troutt except her last name.
Cat bounded up and took his arm, forcing him to stop ogling her sister. “Where did your husband go?” he inquired. Joshua had disappeared before Bartleby served tea.
“He’s setting up the croquet game.”
“I’ve never actually played, though I have a general understanding of the game. I wouldn’t have thought it could be played indoors; what do we do for hoops?”
“You’ll see,” Cat said.
Sure enough, when they walked into the drawing room, it had been transformed. The rugs were up, and hoops had been driven straight into the wide wood flooring.
Joshua was directing footmen in the art of placing chairs where they would cause the greatest impediment to putting a ball through the hoops. Cat instantly deserted him, flying toward her husband.
“No, no!” she cried. “That chair has to be at right angles to the hoop.” A footman obediently shifted an ancient chair with magnificent lion paws for legs, probably dating back to the reign of King Henry VIII.
Sarah trotted up and handed Oliver a crimson mallet, and her father a green one. Joshua swished it through the air so Oliver swung his as well.
“I gather you’ve never played croquet,” Joshua said.
Oliver shook his head.
“You’ll want to turn it about and hit the ball with the other end.”
Oliver flipped the mallet over. “It’s just a matter of hitting balls through hoops, right?”
“Pretty much. Want to place a bet on the outcome?”
 
; “Have I told you that I’m a champion billiards player?”
Joshua snorted. “Billiards is old-fashioned. Croquet is the new billiards.”
“Gentlemen!” Cat shouted. “If you could please stop nattering, we are ready to begin the game.”
Oliver positioned himself beside Lizzie. She moved away, and he followed. “I’ve never played,” he said apologetically, “so I need to watch your stroke.”
“My stroke?”
She had delicate brows, but they took on quite a fierce look when she drew them together.
“How you handle your mallet,” he explained.
The girls were having an argument over who got the prettiest croquet mallet—which turned out to be the purple one.
“Didn’t I understand that you’re such a good billiards player that croquet will be child’s play for you?” she asked.
Apparently she had been eavesdropping.
He grinned. “You have no faith in my skills?”
“Croquet is a child’s game,” Lizzie said, slumping back into cool disdain again. “I’m sure you can win if you feel that passionately about it, Mr. Berwick.”
“Oliver,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “We are not alone.”
“No one is paying the slightest attention. I don’t suppose you’d like to place a wager on which of us ends up with the better score?”
He saw a flicker deep in her eyes. Cat was right; Lizzie was competitive as hell.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d display such ill breeding as to play for money in front of your niece,” she said loftily.
Oliver would love to kiss that look right off her face. He’d love to plunge into her plush lips and kiss her until there was nothing bored or disdainful in her face. Until she had red cheeks and glazed eyes, and was gasping his name.
He had lost track of the conversation, and she was staring at him.
“I didn’t mean a bet for money,” he said hastily. “Merely a wager. The prize to be something you want.”
For a moment he had her, and then a veil slipped back over her eyes. “There’s nothing I want,” she said politely. “But I do wish you the best of luck. I’m quite certain you will win. I haven’t played croquet in years.”
Not since she married, then.
“In that case, we are evenly matched,” he said coaxingly.
“A wager would be most inappropriate.”
“If I win, you’ll go for a ride with me tomorrow morning,” he stated.
Her face turned a little pink. “You are so persistent!”
“Yes, it’s one of my best characteristics,” he acknowledged, holding her gaze. “When I see something I want, I go after it.”
She bit her lip during the silence that followed this statement.
“I want to go for a ride tomorrow morning,” Oliver said, finally.
Her eyes shifted to the girls, who were still squabbling over the purple mallet.
“I can’t get Hattie out of bed before late morning,” he said, “and what’s more, I am deaf from high-pitched squealing that came from threading worms onto fishing hooks earlier today. I’m desperate for adult company.”
“Why don’t you go for a ride alone?” she asked.
“I don’t know the area,” he said promptly.
“Neither do I!”
“The truth is that I don’t want to be lonely. I don’t like riding by myself. I’m a sociable creature.”
It was a shameless lie, and he held his breath, waiting for her to answer.
“If you win, I shall accompany you,” she said finally. “But there will be no badgering me if you lose.”
“I shan’t lose,” he said carelessly.
Sure enough, something kindled in her eyes at his statement. He grinned at her. “Will you tell me the rules?”
“I can’t believe you think you’ll win the game without ever having played before!”
“I have an excellent reason to win,” he said, pitching his voice low and for her ears only.
“We need to form teams, because we have more than four players,” Joshua called. “Everybody come down to this end.”
The girls quickly formed a team, which saved the purple mallet from being cracked in two. They huddled together with a ferocious look in their eyes that suggested—from Oliver’s knowledge of his niece—that they fully intended to win by hook or by crook. Or, in layman’s terms, by cheating.
“I’ll partner my wife,” Joshua said. “We’ll go in order of oldest to youngest.”
“No, no, youngest to oldest,” Hattie shouted, dancing on one leg.
Oliver thought about whether he should tell her to calm down, but he wasn’t her parent, nor her governess. Not that she had a governess. His sister had kept Hattie at school until the day before she dropped her daughter at his house.
That meant he was in loco parentis.
“Hattie, settle down,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and said, somewhat more quietly, “I’m the youngest and my uncle is the oldest, so I claim the right to go first.”
It took Oliver a few minutes to figure out the game. There were hoops—he’d known that—and colored mallets and balls painted to match. But there were also chairs strewn around the room, which made things more difficult.
Everything progressed more or less civilly, until he began to win. At that point Joshua started gripping his mallet harder than necessary—which threw off his aim, as Oliver took some pleasure in pointing out.
Lizzie got a squinty-eyed look that he discovered he liked far better than placidity, and began hitting the ball harder. Faster.
More erratically.
Clearly, she needed some tutoring.
After her ball went awry once again and slammed into the wall, knocking out a chunk of plaster, he stepped up behind her and before she could say a word, put his arms around her waist and his hands over hers. “Look down.”
“Mr. Berwick!” she hissed. “Stand back.”
“I’m doing you a service. You’ve got no aim whatsoever.” She smelled delectable and mysterious.
“I do! This is most improper.”
“Nonsense,” he said, deliberately making his tone impatient. “Look at your sister.”
Joshua had Cat wrapped in his arms, supposedly so he could direct her croquet mallet, but Oliver didn’t think they were concentrating on the game very much. For one thing, they were at least five strokes behind.
“This is the only way to tutor a player in the correct posture,” Oliver said. “Look down and put the ball directly in front of you. Then swing the mallet.”
He heard Lizzie’s breath catch as he moved his body into full contact with hers, though likely she wasn’t experiencing the monstrous wave of lust that he felt. He hadn’t held a woman in his arms in months, not since before Hattie became part of his household.
He had already had a cockstand, but now he had become painfully stiff.
Lizzie was worrying her lush lower lip with small white teeth, which just made things worse.
“That’s better,” he said, as she positioned herself directly above the ball. “Do you see the leg of that chair? If you aim at the right front chair leg, the ball will rebound from the chair and go through the hoop. The leg is at just the right angle.”
She leaned over peering at the hoop, which meant she pushed back against his body. Oliver stifled a groan because he was fairly sure she didn’t mean to press her delectable rear end against him.
Lizzie seemed oblivious to what was happening to his body—though she had to feel his tool against her rear. He still had his arms around her, and his hands loosely positioned over hers.
“Right,” she said, swinging the mallet and hitting the ball with a solid thunk.
It rolled forward, struck
the leg, and rebounded straight through the hoop. For a moment they both stared silently.
Then Lizzie gave a yelp, broke from his arms, and screamed, “I did it!”
Oliver fell back a step. The pale widow was gone. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were shining.
“Hurrah!” her sister cried, hurrying over. “Oh, I set up that hoop. Wasn’t it clever? You have to bounce it off a chair leg or it’s impossible.”
“Yes, and just look what’s happened to the chair,” her husband said, joining them. “I think that belonged to my great-grandfather.”
“It will survive the game,” Cat said, obviously unperturbed. She flashed a look of deep approval at Oliver and then turned back to her sister. “I saw Mr. Berwick coaching you. That’s not fair.”
“You have a coach, and I can hardly help it if you and Joshua are far behind,” Lizzie retorted, a distinct note of glee in her voice.
“We were only one stroke behind you,” Cat said. “That was a lucky shot. I’ve always been better than you at outdoor games.”
“No, you’re haven’t,” Lizzie protested. “Only at badminton.”
Cat laughed. “I love the way my baby sister always tries to keep up with me.”
Lizzie drew in a sharp breath. Oliver had fully intended to win the bet, but all of a sudden he changed his mind.
Fire had flared in Lizzie’s eyes at her elder sister’s challenge. Cat was deliberately needling her, trying to bring out her competitive side.
Oliver had the feeling it had worked. And he wanted Lizzie to win.
Cat had turned away and was lining up her next shot. With a wicked grin, Joshua wrapped himself around his wife again. Oliver understood precisely why Joshua didn’t mind sacrificing the drawing room furniture to play croquet with his family.
He turned back to Lizzie. She was chewing her lip again and eyeing the next hoop, which was hammered in at a diagonal. “If I can make it so that you beat your sister, will you go riding with me?” he asked.
Her eyes sparkled. “Yes!”
“Right.” He raised his voice. “I’m going to drop out and devote myself to coaching Lady Troutt.”
“Coaching!” Cat scoffed, turning her head. “I thought you didn’t know how to play, Oliver.”