A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (8 page)

Megan blithely allowed the adjustment of her shoulder. Reed frowned. “Lead on,” he suggested, acquiescent to the guiding pressure on his arm

They did not go far. The view, no matter where one stood at the top of Helm Crag, was beautiful. Grasmere Lake stretched before them, light dancing on its waters and on the leaves of the silver birches and oaks that lined its banks. Drawing forth his Claude glass, Reed examined the prospect with all due attention and respect. There was a calming effect to be found in a landscape interrupted by hills and mountains so little touched by the hand of man. Pulse slowing, breath gentled, Reed’s fingers itched to record the view in soft washes of watercolor. Neither charcoal nor ink could do justice to this view, though he whipped out his sketchbook and set down the line of the horizon with a few quick dashes.

He forgot his financial problems, his concerns for Megan fending off the attentions of an Italian, even the lovely Miss Frost, until a high-pitched squeak startled him. Reluctantly he pulled his gaze from the Claude glass. The honorable Miss Frost was nowhere to be seen.

“Miss Frost?” He called uncertainly and then with increasing vigor, “Miss Frost, where are you?”

“I have fallen.”

He determined her direction and scrambled over the rocks that divided them. Poor Miss Frost would appear to have taken quite a tumble indeed. She lay prone in a crevice, shadowed by two great boulders, skirt flung up about her waist in a froth of eyelet petticoat, hair fallen down from its pins, a button on her bodice popped open to reveal far more than might be deemed decent.

“Dear God!” He felt close to panic. “Shall I give your brother a shout?”

“Help me, my lord.” She called, voice weak, hand beckoning.

Down the incline he went after her, an incline so gentle he puzzled a bit as to how traversing it could have so artfully thrown her among the rocks. Slipping off his jacket, as he approached he asked, “Are you injured? Does it feel as if any of your limbs are broken?”

Weakly, she lifted her head. “Oh my!” she quavered. “I am not at all sure in what state you find me.”

“Don’t move!” he directed sternly, covering her exposed bodice, draping his jacket over her. With a quick twitch of petticoat he managed to make decent the delectable prospect of her exposed nether regions.

She sat up with far more energy than he might have anticipated, expression dismayed. “Do you not care, then, for the view, Mr. Talcott? I was sure you would find it enticing.”

 “Dear lady,” he soothed. “Do not stir. You have gone all about in the head. Let me check first to see you have not broken anything vital before you attempt to rise.”

She sank back. “Assess the damages then.” She flung her skirt up, presenting shapely legs in beautifully clocked white stockings for his inspection. “I entrust myself completely to your probing examination.”

Nervously, he eyed her limbs. He had never been given leave to stare so freely at a young woman’s beribboned knees much less to lay hands on them. “Very nice,” he said. “I mean, you look just fine to me. Nothing obviously broken or cut. Your stockings are not even torn.”

Bruises, sir? Do you see any bruising? I am troubled by a prodigious heat in my flesh just here.”

She took his hand in hers and guided it to a spot beneath the mound of her upflung petticoats, just above the tapes of her stockings. The skin of her thigh did seem warm. The heat was, in fact, quite contagious. He jerked his hand from her leg as if he were burned.

“You should probably expect some bruising,” he suggested. “Do you have normal range of motion? Does anything pain you?”

She sat up and primly smoothed her skirts into place. “You are kind to ask. I am pained,” she admitted. “Right here.” Taking up his hand again, she drew it under cover of the jacket he had flung across her chest and placed it with unmistakable purpose against the bared flesh of her breast.

“Miss Frost!” Shocked, he would have drawn away, had she not held his hand beneath her own with such pressing firmness he could feel the beat of her heart in his palm.

“Laura. You must call me Laura if you mean to touch upon the pain of my loneliness, Reed. May I call you Reed though we barely know one another?”

He nodded, unable to speak. Her behavior, while undeniably stimulating, was unexpected in a lady. He had been approached by whores with more subtlety in Paris. He had not been at liberty to take advantage of their offers with Moffit as chaperone. What was he to do now, with a young lady of quality offering herself up to him no sooner than they met? Was this the way his mother behaved with her tutors? The idea sickened him. He made a move away from her.

“I should like to know you better.” She clasped his hand firmly to her breast. “Much better. I should like for us to. . .” Her eyes, no longer bored, searched his as she gently guided his hand, that he might cup the soft swell of her breast. “Oh, yes!” She cried when he touched upon her nipple, which hardened beneath his fingertips. “Will you chase away my pain, Reed? I feel so very empty inside. Empty and lonely. Do you know what it is like to be lonely, Reed, desperately lonely? Do you ache with it, as I do?”

He groaned, unable to deny the ache she had roused in him. That she should so swiftly recognize his need, that she should freely offer herself out of a need to assuage a loneliness that would seem to equal his own, drew him to her as much as the undisguised hunger in her eyes and the soft heat of her skin.

“Come. Kiss me, dearest Reed. Together we will fill the emptiness within and relieve our every ache.”

It took every ounce of strength within him to refuse her. “My dear Miss Frost.” He extricated his hand from its happy nest. “As tempted as I am to conduct myself otherwise, I cannot take advantage of your loneliness when you have just tumbled down a hill and may not be in complete control of all your faculties.”

It was rather lucky he stood back from her in that moment, for none other than the lady’s brother called down to them in that very instant. “Halloo! So this is where the two of you have gotten off to.”

Heat rose in Reed’s neck and face as he waved Frost down to them. “Yes. Your sister has taken a tumble.”

“With you, dear boy, or without you?”

“She has come to no injury you will be pleased to hear.”

“Has he the right of it, pet? Anything broken I should know about?”

“Just my pride,” she said petulantly. “Reed could find nothing wrong with me.” There was a trace of disappointment in the pronouncement.

“Nothing?” he laughed. “We are all flawed, Reed, even my dearest sister. Perhaps you require a closer look.”

“A closer look could not be had,” she snapped.

Reed coughed, surprised she touched so close to the truth of the matter.

She went on. “He is, Richard, too much of a gentleman to point out the unwelcome truth if he has recognized any weakness in me.”

“A gentleman indeed, to see that no harm should come to you under such provoking conditions.” Frost slapped Reed companionably on the shoulder. “Your button requires attention, my pet,” he gestured at Laura’s gaping bodice.

“So it does.” She glanced at Reed with a flash of the interest she had shown in him earlier as she languidly attended to the button.

Megan looked into the beautifully soulful brown eyes of Giovanni Giamarco as he knelt beside her and understood why most women succumbed to his charm without hesitation. He looked at one as if he could remove every stitch of one’s clothing through strength of sight alone. And in looking, he seemed completely pleased by what he saw. The intensity and familiarity of such a regard proved undeniably exhilarating.

“Alone at last,
carra mia
,” he said sweetly in his deeply resonant voice. “Long have I longed for just such a private moment with you.”

The man was undeniably handsome. He spoke with a practiced earnestness that was almost, if not quite, believable. Why could she not be like other women and fall under Giovanni’s spell? Her thoughts, to the contrary, were on Reed, who had no sooner met Laura Frost than he disappeared with her. That he should do so left her feeling hurt and angry though she had no real claim to either pain or fury.

She smiled at Giovanni. He took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips. “Do not, I beg of you,” she said, “tell me that you are in love with me, or some such nonsense. You will find yourself much lowered in my estimation if you do.”

The smallest frown troubled his noble brow. “
Carra
, why should you not believe that I care for you?”

She could not help but smile. His was a pleasant, even an exquisite face despite the hint of petulance about the corners of his full-lipped mouth. He had the look of a beautiful child, too long coddled.

“We have not known one another long enough for any declarations of that nature, surely.”

His gaze passed slowly over the planes of her face, as intimate as a touch, in an examination so comprehensive Megan blushed. “So like,” he said. “So very like. Your features. . .” He ran the tip of his finger along the curve of one burning cheek. “The promise of your sweetness, have long haunted my dreams.”

“Pretty words, Giovanni, but forgive me if I do not believe you.”

“You do not believe me? I begin to believe you do not like me.” He pouted.

“To the contrary. I do like you, but love is not so trivial an emotion that I will admit its presence where it has not had time to grow, much less flourish.”

His expression changed. For an instant his true feelings evidenced themselves. She puzzled him, she saw. Perhaps it was curiosity drew him to her. She had wondered all along why he would abandon the attractions of Miss Frost’s cool beauty to evidence interest in her. His attentions had been undeniably keen from the moment he had set eyes on her.

“You do not know love.” His words were a challenge. He softened them with the intimacy of a gesture, in which he reached up to smooth a stray curl away from her eyes.

“You are wrong about that,” she said softly, gaze drawn to the party of three that staggered toward them--Miss Frost supported between her brother and Reed.

“Ah! You are in love with him, no?” There was a hint of contempt in his voice.

“Yes,” Megan admitted, looking away from the trio.

“And yet, he does not return your affections. He would not allow Miss Frost to lean on him so heavily if it were so.”

She laughed, the sound harsh. “He does love me. As a brother loves a sister.” She had never admitted as much to herself, much less confided the truth in someone else. How odd that she should pour out her feelings to Giovanni Giamarco, of all people. “It is all the love he has to offer, I think.”

“The man is a
buffone
,” Giovanni whispered. “Has he no idea as to the depths of your feelings?

“No.” Tears welling in her eyes as she stared into the surprisingly sympathetic depths of Giovanni’s. “He is completely blind to it. Has been for years.”

“Ah,
carra! Non piangere
.” He wiped away the tear that spilled to her cheek very gently with the ball of his thumb. “Unrequited love. A tragedy of feeling, my dear. I do understand. Shall we make him
geloso
, how do you say, jealous? If there are feelings buried within him for you, there is no greater, surer prod than jealousy.”

She blinked away the threat of another tear, straightened her shoulders and forced a smile. “No. You are very kind to offer, but I will not stoop to lies and fabrication in order to win him, if he is not to be won. I have come on this trip, in fact, with every intention of severing myself from this tragedy of feeling.”

“Bravo!”
Giovanni’s smile was contagious. She did not even bother to contradict him when he crowed happily, “There is hope for the rest of us in such a severing.”

Chapter Nine

V
ery chummy they were, Megan and the too perfect Italian, Giovanni. Reed wondered just how fast and how far the man had managed to progress his suite in a few day’s access to Megan’s unschooled ear. A rogue, by the looks of him. Up to no good. Megan was naive enough to fall prey to such a character. It was a good thing he had decided to come to the Lakes.

“Tell me more of your friends,” he suggested that evening when they walked together to the lakeside in the gathering larch-scented dusk. Gussie and Tom strolled a few paces behind them, an uneasy reminder that Megan had reached an age when the two of them would find few opportunities to walk or talk alone and unescorted.

“What would you like to know?”

When he turned to regard her profile he was annoyed to find her features completely obscured by the dreadful Leghorn bonnet her aunt had foisted upon her. It was black, lined with white satin and edged in blond quilling and black ostrich feathers. Reed thought it looked like nothing so much as a decorated coal-scuttle upended on Megan’s head. He would have liked to buy her a more attractive bonnet. It was alarming to think he had not even enough money for such a simple frippery.

“How did you meet them?” he asked.

The coal-scuttle nodded. “On a walk, such as this. Gussie had heard of a beauty spot in Ambleside called Stock Ghyll Force, a waterfall reputed to be quite spectacular after a good rain. It is a very unprepossessing trickle otherwise.”

“Had there been rain?”

“No. It was very disappointing.

“Oh?” As disappointing as this conversation proved with so little of her face to be seen?

“Yes,” she went on. “In fact, the entire excursion would have been rather flat had it not been for Giovanni.”

An unnamed anger rose within him, an anger he directed at the hat that so completely guarded her expressive features. “And what did he do that proved so very noteworthy?” He could not hide his sarcasm.

She peered at him around the stiff brim. “He walked right up to me, a complete stranger, with the kind of smile that one offers only to those with whom one is acquainted, and told me how thrilled he was to see a familiar face.”

“Familiar? Well, you were certainly not wearing this bonnet that day.”