“But I’m not this way in London,” she said. “Perhaps you wouldn’t recognize me there.”
He wondered if the new soberness in her regard was only an effect of the flame-light around them. “What are you like in London?”
A reveler called out her name, and she returned the greeting with a nod and an absent smile. “Not . . . happy,” she said. “Not recently, at least. You guessed rightly, you know—that day outside the post office. I was looking for a marriage announcement. Or a betrothal, rather.” Her mouth turned down at the corners, a rueful little grimace. “And I found it.”
“Ah.” Suddenly he wasn’t sure he wanted to know any of this. The thought of her pining after another man made him feel . . . restless. He frowned toward the bonfire—then winced as yet another young idiot took the plunge.
Yet curiosity was an emetic. It brought words out of his mouth that he more wisely would have swallowed. “Whose announcement was it?”
She pulled a face. “A man not worthy of the ink spent on him—much less the year I wasted, imagining he might turn out to be honorable.”
If her breezy delivery was intended to reassure him, it worked the opposite effect. “He did wrong by you.”
“Nothing so Gothic.” She shrugged. “My own fault, really.”
He thought again of his brother. “Don’t blame yourself. Love makes a poor judge of character. Best avoided, all around.”
She laughed softly. “Indeed. Champagne is so much quicker, and its aftermath only lasts for a day or so.”
He took her arm. There was no forethought in it: he simply wanted to touch her. “Shall we walk?”
They began to stroll through the crowd, past the fires. “Is that your policy, then?” she asked. “To avoid love? I suppose that explains how an upstanding doctor remains so long a bachelor.”
Au contraire, my dear. Marriage makes the quickest cure for love.
He pressed his lips together, oddly irritated. He’d spoken that line to any number of women, sweetening the warning with a wink and a smile. But it did not seem like something a country doctor would say. In fact, it seemed far too close to what a cur like her former lover might have preached.
“Perhaps it’s a matter of laziness,” he said. “Cynicism, unlike love, rarely disappoints.”
“I will confess, love drove me to some terrible moments,” she said slowly. “Public moments, I should say. Moments that . . . rather shaped my reputation.” She bit her lip. “Which is not, if you must know, particularly genteel.”
Why, that was bashfulness on her face. The professional beauty was shifting her weight for fear of what he might think.
A strange feeling stirred in him—protective and tender and angered, all at once. He could not imagine the bastard who would willingly disappoint this woman, but he certainly could imagine several fitting punishments for such idiocy. “People say a great deal of nonsense. A wise man rarely listens.”
“Oh, don’t mistake me, Mr. Grey—I don’t give a fig for what people say. That is my policy.”
She gave him a cheerful smile. He might have believed it once. But what he had originally taken for brazen sophistication now seemed to him more like bravura. It felt familiar to him, for he’d once employed it himself, the better to endure the sly taunts of fellow schoolboys who had kept apprised, via the newspapers, of his parents’ particular foibles.
The slope steepened beneath their feet. A misshapen pile loomed up against the night sky, an ancient cairn whose huddled stones were a monument to someone long since forgotten.
“A beautiful night,” she said as they reached the cairn. She slipped free of his hold to set her tankard on the ground, then turned back to face him. Her features, in the darkness, blurred into an indistinct paleness, impossible to decipher. “A beautiful night, on which Mrs. Broward will live.” She spread her arms and tipped back her head. “I feel like screaming it to the stars: A very nice try, but we foiled you! These specks of dust had their victory, after all!”
He laughed. “Go on, then. Scream! I’ll never tell.”
He heard her take a great breath. But after a pause, she exhaled gustily, and her arms dropped. “No. Mustn’t tempt fate. I should hate for Mary to have my punishment.”
He reached for her cheek. So smooth. “I can’t imagine you would deserve one.”
Her hand covered his, a warm, soft pressure. “Oh, but you have no idea if what they say is true. For all you know . . .” He ran his thumb over her cheekbone, and heard her breath catch. “For all you know, I’m a very wicked woman,” she said.
His fingers slid easily into her hair. He could pull her toward him now . . . or tilt up her head to expose the line of her throat to his mouth. “I had been hoping so,” he murmured. “Since the time Mr. Pershall chided you for failing to attend church, my expectations have grown quite wild.”
Their breaths mingled. “I begin to think you’re not a northerner at all,” she whispered. “You’re far too charming.”
The words echoed his brother’s. The coincidence felt eerie. A strange foreboding tapped at him, like a finger on his spine.
The urge to kiss her still gripped him. But would that not make him as a great a cad as the man who had jilted her? For the intimacy born of recent days had led her to divulge intimacies he did not deserve. Had led her to trust him when she did not even know his true name. Mr. Grey, she called him.
He slowly loosened his fingers from her hair. God, what a tangle. Had they met in London, openly, he would have had her in bed by now. To both their satisfaction. “My name is Michael,” he said. That was one piece of truth he could give her. The rest . . . he must think on. Wisdom told him that one did not share secrets until one was willing to hear them broadcasted. “If I’m to call you Elizabeth, you must return the informality.”
She cleared her throat. “I would be honored,” she said. “But only . . . only if I may also call you a friend.” She caught his hand and his attention divided, half of it fixing on her words, the other riveted to her touch. “I know I’ve not always been kind to you.” Her fingers were warm, as light as the brush of a butterfly. “Can you forgive me for that?”
The uncertainty in her voice fascinated him. Perhaps the true cause for his continued masquerade had nothing to do with discretion. He simply wanted to discover how far this odd affinity between them could extend. A society beauty and a country doctor . . . He had a way with women, but he was a realist: he knew that his family connections aided his seductions. Yet she, knowing nothing of them, still stood here in the darkness, touching him . . .
“Come,” he said. “There’s nothing to forgive.” When insulted, she took her own pound of flesh: he liked that about her. “You have spirit; there’s no sin in that.”
Her fingers tightened. Much like her stature, their strength was deceptive. He’d meant what he’d said; in spirit, in strength, she was outsized. And he was a doctor, after all. He’d never found frailty appealing.
He laid his free hand over hers, wanting with an almost animal intensity to move her hand to his hip, to feel her grip tighten as he pulled her against him. Hell, that was not where he wanted her hand. He wanted it gripping his cock as he leaned over her in bed, his tongue deep in her mouth. God, the things he would do to her.
Friend was a pale, pale word.
He caught her hand and lifted it to his lips, a gesture chaste enough to be performed in public. But between them, it could not remain chaste. He had ideas . . . and as he breathed into the web of her fingers, he gauged her pulse with his thumb, and felt how it began to thrum faster.
Doctorly skills: good for multiple endeavors.
He opened his mouth and bit her, very lightly, on the web between thumb and finger.
He heard the breath shudder out of her. “Perhaps . . .” But she did not finish the thought; her voice trailed away, turning the word into an invitation.
“Perhaps,” he murmured against her skin, and tasted her again—slowly, tracing the ridges of her knu
ckle with his tongue, then settling his teeth very gently around her fingertip before closing his lips on her.
Salt and skin. The flavor of her. “Oh,” she whispered. “I don’t think—”
Thinking was the problem. They’d both done too much of it. He lifted her hand and placed it on his nape, then took her by the waist and pulled her into him. From down the hill came another explosion; overhead, bright lights glimmered briefly among the stars.
He saw her face by that brief flash—her wide eyes, her trembling mouth. He lowered his mouth to hers . . .
And she averted her face.
“Friends,” she said breathlessly, “do not . . . kiss.”
He tongued her earlobe. “Then perhaps we shouldn’t be friends.”
The line of her jaw tightened, telegraphing stubbornness. “What else can we be, sir?”
The question seemed disingenuous. He should not have to explain the alternatives to a widow, much less this one.
A very disagreeable idea struck him. “Do you still love this fellow, then?”
Her hesitation seemed to last minutes. “No,” she said finally. But she did not sound convinced of it.
He let go of her. She took a single step back.
God help him, but he wanted to hunt down the bastard and throttle him. “What’s his name?” he asked.
She blinked. “What difference? You wouldn’t know him.”
“No matter,” he said. “It’s the sort of thing friends tell each other.”
“Oh, excellent. We are to be friends, then?” Her arm slipped through his again; she pulled him back down the hill toward the fires. “I should warn you, though, I’m a terribly interfering kind of friend.”
What in hell had just happened here? He could feel her nerves in the way her fingers danced nervously on his arm. For that reason alone, he let her tug him along as she continued to babble.
“I’ll always be hanging about,” she said, “forever badgering, wishing to know every detail of your business. You’ll have to grow accustomed to that.”
“My business, I promise you, is beyond tedious.” Unless it involved her. Her pulse or her skin. Her mouth. Friendly. “I will spare you those details.”
“Yet I will insist on knowing them.” As they stepped back into the range of the firelight, he saw that she was giving him the brightest of her smiles—the one, he was coming to understand, that she used to smooth over those moments in which she felt uncertain. She felt as much out of her depth here as he did. This current between them . . . neither of them knew how to manage it.
And that, more than her words, made him take a breath and control himself. For her comfort, he discovered, was important to him—and the sight of her so rattled stirred an instinct that felt strangely protective of her. Shh, he wanted to say. You needn’t smile.
He set his hand over hers, forbidding himself to stroke the soft skin over her knuckles, and made himself say only: “Very well. If that is what friends do.”
• • •
Friends, Michael learned, finished their ale and then walked decorously, arm in arm, back to their vehicle. Friends made comfortable conversation on the drive home, and shook hands before parting. Friends traded notes over the next few days, solicitously inquiring after each other’s health, exchanging tidbits of news: Mrs. Broward’s health continued to improve. Havilland Hall’s strawberries were proving particularly sweet this summer. The weather continued very fine. Should they meet for tea on Friday at five o’clock?
Friends paid calls. They waited in the foyer as the butler went to confirm that the mistress was at home. They then concealed their surprise when shown upstairs, away from the drawing rooms, to a boudoir done up in pink silk, where three ladies sat in their morning gowns, folding paper roses, embroidering, and laughing so loudly that their voices carried all the way into the hall.
“Mr. Grey!” cried Elizabeth as he paused in the doorway of the small, sunlit room. “How good of you to call. Now catch!”
He reacted just in time, plucking a paper rose from the air.
“That is for your damaged rosebushes,” she said. “Take as many as you like. There is glue, somewhere, if you wish to attach them.”
He stuck the rose into his lapel as giggles rose from the other two women—the secretary and Mrs. Hull. Their presence should not disappoint him. Friends did not require tête-à-têtes. Although . . . surely even country doctors’ calls were not usually received so informally.
Elizabeth swept out a hand to direct him to an overstuffed armchair, then nodded inquiringly toward the tea tray beside her. He shook his head as he sat.
“I hope you don’t mind my receiving you here,” she said. “As you can see”—she gestured toward the mass of paper roses clustering at her feet—“I’m rather boxed in.”
“It requires pruning shears,” said Miss Mather. She wielded a needle and appeared to be waging a battle against her embroidery hoop. Her needlepoint was . . . aggressive.
“I say.” This from Mrs. Hull, who tapped pen against paper as she looked him over. There was a sly cast to her smile—or perhaps that was only a trick of her face, which was narrow and distinctly foxlike. He braced for another comment on how they might know each other. Instead she said, “Perhaps Mr. Grey might help us with our rules.”
“Ah, yes—a gentleman’s perspective,” said Elizabeth.
“Might not be of much use,” muttered Miss Mather. “I thought we specifically excluded all gentlemen from the guest list.”
“Guest list?” He sounded stilted, and no bloody wonder. His chair was covered in pink damask. The carpet was lavender. Somebody wore too much perfume. Two china cabinets flanked him, each filled with small figurines of animals and peasants. If he moved too quickly, he was going to break something. Or sneeze. “Are you planning a party?”
Elizabeth laid down the sheet of paper she’d been folding. “Goodness, had I not told you? Yes, a house party in the old-fashioned style, a full week of fun.”
To which he apparently was not invited.
He bit his cheek. Of course he was not invited. One did not ask the nobility to hobnob with an ordinary doctor. “How pleasant for you.”
“Pleasant is not our aim,” Mrs. Hull said eagerly. “Liza has planned the most cunning entertainments. Oh, and the guests! You would recognize their names, I vow it. Lord Weston, Lord Hollister, the Viscount Sanburne—some of the most famous families in the country!”
Brilliant. He’d known Sanburne at Eton, and Weston was an old friend. Hollister he hadn’t met, but the man had done business favors for his brother, who in turn had supported Hollister’s quiet—and ultimately successful—campaign to be ennobled. “A week, you say?” That was a long time to slink about in the shadows, hiding his face.
“Perhaps longer,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps we’ll all sail off to Paris together! One never knows with my friends. They make very good company—or,” she added with a mirthful look at Mrs. Hull, “shall I say the very worst!”
All three women exploded into laughter. Either they’d been tippling at luncheon or there was some very good joke to which Michael was not privy.
He put on a game smile. “So, a party. With rules, no less.”
“Oh, yes, the rules!” Mrs. Hull leaned forward, eyes bright. “Shall I read you what we have so far? And you may suggest amendments or additions, as the spirit moves you.”
“Oh, the poor man,” said Miss Mather. “Will you really subject him to this?”
The poor man? He was not quite sure he liked that title.
“He won’t mind,” Elizabeth said casually. “He’s a very good sport.”
Now he wanted to frown. No bevy of women had ever treated a duke’s brother with such merry informality—rather as though he were not a man at all, but an oversized toy.
“Rule the first, then,” said Mrs. Hull. “Charm is required.”
“Our good doctor would pass that rule,” said Elizabeth with a smile for him.
“Yes, that
’s a fine one to start—the bar must stay very low at first,” Mather said as she once again skewered the cloth.
That was not the only thing she’d just skewered. How good to know he passed the very lowest bar. Michael cleared his throat. “To what do these rules pertain?”
But nobody seemed to hear him. “Rule the second,” Mrs. Hull continued. “Words must be matched at all times to actions.”
Elizabeth nodded. “That’s the most important one. I rather think that should be the tenth rule, in fact—the final hurdle to be leapt.”
“I disagree. I think it a dangerously general principle, myself.” Miss Mather bit off her thread as though beheading a very small enemy. “What if the gentleman threatens to shake you like a rag doll? Or tells you that he will always love his dog better than any lady? Should you really demand that his words match his actions? The poor dog!”
Mrs. Hull made a violent choking sound and slammed down her teacup.
“Good lord, Mather,” said Elizabeth. “I think you’ve killed her.”
Mrs. Hull frantically waved her hand. “Only you—” She held up a finger, coughing, her face quite red. “Only you would worry over such a thing! His dog, really!”
“But she does have a point,” Elizabeth said. “Add a colon, then, with this notation to follow: we speak of romantic propositions, specifically. If he pledges his heart, he must also pledge his name and his bank accounts. Do you follow?”
Good God. “These are rules for suitors?” he asked.
All three women turned to stare at him.
“Did you imagine they were rules for livestock?” Miss Mather inquired.
“Suitors,” said Mrs. Hull. “What a delightfully quaint word!”
“He’s northern,” said Elizabeth—as though that explained anything.
“What would you rather call them?” he asked, aware, and not caring, that his tone had grown less genial. Probably he was living out a good many men’s dreams, being invited into a boudoir to eavesdrop on feminine stratagems. But had they looped a bow around his neck and patted him on the head, he could not have felt more like a lap dog.