She was bored, horribly bored.
It drove her to consider that, while winning fourteen proposals of marriage had been a flattering and agreeable game, the idea of spending the rest of her life listening to a man lecture her was intolerable.
As they’d begun their Season, she and Lavinia had confidently assumed that suitors would appear who were compelling in their own right. Those men would fall into their beguiling trap but somehow be different. Their lectures would be engaging.
Only one man had seen through Willa’s trap.
But … “Willa Wilde”? She wrinkled her nose.
An awful name. Her name?
She practiced saying it to herself, wishing Lavinia were there. How does one accept a proposal that has yet to be formally made? All the same, joy prickled down her back.
Her parents would have scorned a lecture about partridge shooting. They wouldn’t have been bored by a conversation with Alaric.
ALARIC HAD SPENT the morning in his father’s library, so thoroughly buried in the account books that he didn’t hear the gong announcing luncheon. He emerged at length with a firmer sense of the work to be done with the estate.
No wonder North was so morose. This work didn’t come naturally to either of them, as it had to Horatius. Their older brother would have relished the labor of managing the estate. He had been protective to the core, a worthy descendant of the medieval ancestor who had ridden out the siege. Horatius would have gathered his people and fought to the last stand before he gave up a blade of grass.
For the first time in years, Alaric smiled at the thought of his brother. This time, the pain of loss didn’t constrict his heart as if it were in a vise.
As soon as he could get his father alone, he meant to suggest that the duke hire two more estate managers. North wouldn’t inherit the estate for years; he couldn’t see any reason why his brother shouldn’t spend the next decade designing houses and building them. It would make him a happier duke in the end.
The archery range was across a long lawn. The smell of scythed grass and hedge roses drifted in the air. In the cloudless sky a swift flitted across his vision with a flash of wings.
England was so damn beautiful. So much a part of his bones and blood. The bird was joined by another, the two swifts darting around each other in a giddy, swooping dance. On the far side of the lawn, Fitzy paraded under a nectarine tree, its ripening amber fruit complementing his turquoise blue feathers. From this distance, tree and bird made a tapestry woven from rich-colored silks.
At the archery range, the ladies stood in clusters, their summer plumage threatening to out-dazzle Fitzy’s. As he approached, he realized with an odd thump of his heart that his eyes had gone directly to Willa, just as his brother’s had gone directly to Diana when they first walked into the drawing room and interrupted the ladies’ tea.
Now, those ladies were sipping champagne and looking on as the duke sent one arrow after another sailing toward the target and hitting the center, more often than not. Alaric headed directly to his lady’s side.
Willa caught sight of Alaric prowling across the lawn and felt a thrill of pure joy—but the surge of exultation she felt when he came straight to her, as if the duke, duchess, brothers, guests, didn’t exist?
It rolled through her like an earthquake.
“Good afternoon, Miss Ffynche,” Alaric said, throwing her an ironic glance that said just how much he disliked addressing her in such formal language.
“Lord Alaric,” she said with a smile that she knew wasn’t a Willa smile. It was an Evie smile. It was the smile she had as a young girl.
“I suggest a contest.” Alaric picked up a bow and tested the string. “Whoever wins will be granted a favor by the other.” His eyes had a hot, lazy message of their own.
All the same, he was overconfident with respect to his archery skills. From what she’d seen on previous days, they were evenly matched. He shouldn’t assume that he would win this favor, even though it felt as if the air had turned to sherry, a honeyed potent wine, making her fingers tremble.
“What favor do you have in mind?” she asked, picking up her favorite bow. It was light and springy, painted green with daisies. Lavinia had given it to her solely due to its embellishments, but the fact was that, if she had to, Willa could bring down a deer with it. Not that she would ever shoot anything more lively than a target.
Not even those women whose eyes followed Alaric with longing. Who tittered behind their fans and ogled the muscles in his arse.
Prudence was the worst of the lot, by far. Even now she was edging around the marquee, her eyes on Alaric. Willa glanced at her, and the girl flinched.
Alaric looked over his shoulder at Prudence. “A walk,” he suggested. “Prudence has taken to poking bits of paper into my pockets. I think she knows we sent messages by your locket.”
“What do her notes say?”
“They quote Bible verses. I dislike being reminded that I am in need of salvation. Miss Ffynche, please accompany me on a walk. Escape awaits.”
“Perhaps, if you win the bout.” Willa felt as if she were hugging a wonderful secret to her heart. She had made up her mind to become Lady Alaric Wilde, and the man in question didn’t know.
His eyes crinkled as he smiled at her. Heat rushed up her spine.
He knew.
In the distance, the duchess waddled over to her husband and said something Willa couldn’t make out. As they watched, His Grace wrapped his arms around her from behind and she leaned into his weight while drawing back her bow.
“Romantic, aren’t they?” Alaric asked in a low voice. “I fully intend to be hugging you when I’m fifty. I’d hug you now if you’d allow me.”
When it was their turn, Alaric sent his five arrows into the target, one after the other, as casually as if he weren’t looking. Four hit the center.
Willa took her time, standing perfectly straight, drawing back her arm. Ignoring Alaric’s groan when her stance made her bosom rise in the air.
Four had struck the bull’s-eye when Alaric said, “Willa.”
She glanced at him. “Yes?”
“Please don’t make me return to that tent.”
“We needn’t,” she answered. She was waiting to be certain that the boy tasked with removing arrows was well out of the way before she put her final arrow to the string.
“If you hit the center of the target,” he said, running his fingers up her arm from the elbow to the wrist, “we have to stage another match before I can ask for my favor. Ten more arrows.”
Willa shivered as his caress singed her skin. Desire shot through her with a sharp stab, as if she’d been struck by one of his arrows. His touch reverberated through her, making her throat tight.
“I want to ask you to accompany me for a walk,” Alaric coaxed, his voice husky and low. “I’d like to show you my favorite boyhood hiding place. What’s more, Prudence keeps staring at me behind your back.”
She put her bow down so as to not yield to the temptation to wave it in Prudence’s direction. “What if our absence is noted?”
“It won’t be,” he said. “I believe something is happening that will take everyone’s attention.”
She glanced over at the marquee. All the ladies were clustered around the duchess and even Prudence had been swept into the group. “Goodness! Is Her Grace about to bear her child?” she asked, alarmed. “Here?”
“My father will carry her upstairs, if need be,” Alaric said. “The last babe was nearly born in a carriage.”
Childbirth was not an ordeal Willa was eager to experience. Or witness.
She handed her bow to a groom. “If Lady Knowe should inquire, I have taken a stroll with Lord Alaric.”
Once out of sight of the archery field, Alaric dropped Willa’s elbow and pulled her snugly against his side. “Horatius, North, Parth, and I spent our days roaming around these fields, when we weren’t in the bog,” he said, guiding her toward a small apple orchard that clung to the s
lope of a gentle hill leading away from the castle.
“That sounds like so much fun,” Willa said, a bit wistfully.
Alaric kissed her cheek. His Willa would never be lonely again; he would see to it. They entered the shade of the first apple trees and a narrow leafy lane opened before them. On either side, neat rows of carefully spaced trees stretched away.
“They are alphabetized,” Alaric explained. “Four Costard trees, followed by four Cox, and so on, ending with St. Edmund’s Pippins. The first apples will ripen in September.”
The other side of the orchard opened onto a lane bounded by a tall hedgerow. Swallows were swooping around the hedge, diving as if planning to land, and changing their minds at the last moment.
“This way,” Alaric said, drawing Willa to the left. They followed the hedge around the curve until a pristine ornamental lake lay before them. His favorite willow tree slanted more steeply over the bank than when he had seen it last. Its branches used to dangle above the surface, but now they trailed in the water with the lethargy of a drunk after his fifth whiskey of the morning.
After they reached the lake, he guided her under the willow’s curtain of arrowed leaves and pointed to a platform far above them. “I spent a great deal of time up there. When you’re on top of this willow, you have a bird’s-eye view of the duchy. It feels as if you’re looking at a different country, which was irresistible for a boy always dreaming of traveling to foreign lands.”
“I’ve never climbed a tree,” Willa remarked. “Girls are not allowed to.”
“Ours will be.” He watched with pleasure as rosy spots appeared in her cheeks.
“Surely this isn’t a natural lake,” she said, ignoring his provocation.
It was round as a mirror, as was the circular island in its precise center. It looked like the pad of a water lily that had overgrown and turned to stone.
“It’s like a nursery rhyme,” she added. “In the middle of a round lake was a round island. And in the middle of the round island was a round … What is that, exactly? A folly?”
“It’s a classical rotunda built by the duke for my mother, his first duchess,” Alaric said. He was following a length of rope tied to the willow’s trunk; brushing aside the rushes at the water’s edge, he found the punt still attached to the other end.
Better yet, the punt was dry and reasonably clean. Probably his younger siblings had colonized the island. “Would you care for an excursion in my pleasure boat, my lady?”
A minute later Willa was perched in the bow, her voluminous skirts bunched around her. She looked so fresh, happy, and sensual that Alaric had to wrestle with himself. No, he could not topple her into the bottom of a punt and have his way with her.
“Take care; your gown is billowing over the gunwale,” he observed, for the sake of saying something, while avoiding the uncomfortable emotions crowding his chest.
She laughed. “I’ll have you know this is a remarkably fashionable garment, which means the rear”—she threw him a naughty glance—“is enhanced by a contrivance called a rump.”
He gave a bark of laughter.
“This particular rump,” she continued, her eyes sparkling, “came from Paris and is made of cork. I’m truly surprised that there is enough room in this little boat for myself and my rump.”
“For your two rumps,” he ventured. “May I say that I think your own is in no need of enhancement?”
Her smiling mouth was a strawberry-stained pink that called to him as surely as the plumage of a peacock dazzled its mate. Her hair shone in the sunlight.
“This lake looks as if it ought to be inhabited by swans,” she said, changing the subject.
“There used to be a very disagreeable pair when we were growing up. Horatius had a scar on one foot given to him by the cob.”
Willa cocked an eyebrow.
“Horatius was not one to avoid danger,” Alaric went on. “He was a true Englishman, in the best meaning of the word.” A few more strokes and he drew the punt up to the foot of the marble steps on the island, where he moored it to a ring sunk into the stone.
The rotunda, only a few years older than he, had scarcely altered, save for encroachments of lichen and moss. Like the silver hair he didn’t have yet, he thought, imagining it in another thirty years.
He held out his hand and helped Willa from the punt. Her dress—with its Parisian rump—looked exquisitely ladylike, and yet the expression in her eyes was wanton.
Marriage to her promised to be fascinating. A merger of sorts, likely with a period of adjustment. All he had to do was persuade her.
Though he had the feeling she had made up her mind. Willa would not have joined him in the punt had she not decided to take his hand and his name.
“Did His Grace allow the rotunda to fall into disuse after the death of your mother?” she asked, as they climbed the low steps.
“Yes, although not owing to grief. The second duchess spent all her time in London, and Ophelia is uninterested in nature.”
“Someone has been using it,” Willa remarked when they were under the dome. Against one of the spindly, elegant columns was a pile of canvas pillows, a few candle stubs, and a large tin box with a hinged lid.
Alaric crouched down and lifted the lid. “Clever boy,” he murmured. The box contained a folded blanket, on top of which lay a couple of bottles, a small knife, a lump of what might once have been cheese wrapped in canvas, and—secreted beneath the blanket—a book in Italian notorious for its bawdy illustrations.
He picked up one of the bottles and inspected it. “Ginger beer. May I offer you one?”
“Please,” Willa said. She was standing between two columns, looking back toward the castle, beyond the orchard to the east. “I can’t believe you grew up in a fairy tale.”
Alaric walked over to stand beside her. To his eyes, Lindow Castle bore no resemblance to those in fairy tales. It was low and wide, with a stolid look about it, as if it were challenging all onlookers to a siege. It had battlements and turrets, but little other resemblance to the whimsical stacks of golden stone he’d seen in France.
“From this distance, one can hardly call it a castle,” he said. “My great-grandfather added bits and pieces, and my grandfather built a new tower. We used to spend rainy days exploring little passageways and secret corridors—there are actually three priest holes.”
Willa nodded. Dusky eyelashes exactly matched her hair, so she must have darkened them from brown to black. Knowing that cosmetic secret felt like proof of their intimacy. No other man knew, just as no man knew of the creamy skin of her rounded breast and the satin texture of her thighs.
In fact, he had to swallow hard and look away from her because a primitive roar was rising in his soul, and he couldn’t listen to it.
He had to let Willa accept him in her own time. He cut the string from around the bottle’s neck, and with a grunt, managed to draw out the cork. “Ginger beer has a bite,” he warned, offering it to her. “You can’t find a drink like this anywhere else in the world.”
Willa reached out a hand and he put the bottle into it, wondering how he’d got so lucky as to find a lady willing to take a drink from a bottle without fussing.
He took one more look at Lindow Castle, sitting on the hill like a fat brown hen drowsing on her nest, and turned back to the box. He plucked out the blanket and threw it over the pillows. Held up the book.
“May I show you my engravings?” It wasn’t hard to produce a leer.
Willa strolled over, swinging the bottle from two fingers. “I recognize that book,” she observed, smiling at his surprised look.
“Aunt Knowe is right. Young ladies are not what they used to be.”
“Lavinia and I spent a year in mourning for her father,” Willa said. “There were libidinous Grays among her ancestors, and we made a study of all the naughty books we could find in the family library.”
“As one does,” Alaric said, deeply amused.
“Don’t tell me you wou
ldn’t have done the same! One of your siblings is enjoying similar literary pursuits.”
“Leonidas, I would guess,” Alaric said. “Though from the look of the cheese he left, he hasn’t been here since he left for Eton.”
Willa’s decision had taken root in her chest and it was only a matter of telling him. She’d had fourteen proposals. That was a respectable number to tell her children about. She’d weighed more than enough evidence before making her choice.
But she didn’t want to blurt out, “I’ll be your wife,” or something equally simple.
In this moment, more than any, she had to be Evie, not Willa. Brave in emotions as much as, if not more than, in words. With that thought, she unpinned her hat and dropped it to the side. Next, she slipped off her shoes and bent over, reaching up under her skirts to untie her garter.
“What are you doing?” Alaric asked in a strangled voice.
She looked up and smiled. “I’ve decided to accept your proposal.” She allowed her smile to turn into something truly naughty. The suggestive smile she’d occasionally seen on other women’s faces. It seemed to curve on her lips quite naturally. “I think I might take to being a trollop.”
Her first garter fell away. Her stocking was made of gossamer-weight silk; it fell to her ankle and she toed it off.
Alaric appeared to have been struck dumb.
She looked up, saw just a flash of blue eyes before she bent her head again and untied her second garter.
“How am I to have a rational life if I walk around in a permanent state of arousal?” he demanded, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I look at you, any part of you, from the nape of your neck to your ankle, and I’m ready for service. Your service, I mean.”
“I have grasped that,” Willa said, voice wry. Her remaining stocking slipped down her leg.
“You shouldn’t do that.” His voice made the blood pound through her body even faster. She was having trouble keeping a semblance of calmness, which was unusual for her. Very unusual.
She tossed her second stocking on top of the first.
“Have you removed your stockings because they are uncomfortable?”