Elisabeth Fairchild (11 page)

“When opened from one direction, one picture is seen.” He closed the fan, snapped it open again from the opposite direction, and revealed a different picture. The shepherd and shepherdess  now came together in a passionate embrace in the trees, while their flocks mingled. Cupid hung laughing above the scene.

“Oh my!” Aurora gasped.

“A trifle tary, I will admit, but please do not tell me you are offended. I took care to bring the least suggestive of the lot. Most
double-entente
fans are far more lewd in nature.

“You did not bring this with you to inure me to the lascivious nature of mankind then?”

He sat staring at her a moment, surprised that she should be so innocent of worldliness, endowed as she was with so many world-wise brothers. “Not at all.” He frowned.

Perhaps it had been wrong in him to bring the silly fan. “Why did you bring it?” she asked, as if she read his mind.

He flicked the fan open. “That I might teach you the language of romance.”

She sat up a little straighter against the column on which she leaned. Had she been a hedgehog she would have bristled.

“The language of the fan,” he said.

“This romantic language, is it as scandalous as the behavior of your silly shepherd and shepherdess?”

He stilled the fan and considered her expression carefully. “If you are offended by the language of love, then you may deem it so. But you are attempting to capture the love of a man who is virtually a stranger to you, are you not?”

The indelicate question hung between them like an insult. Her chin went up.

He flicked the fan from one graceful position to another. The imagery on the fan flicked back and forth from tasteful to tasteless with the changing position. “Flirtation is a skill,” he said evenly. “I thought you would appreciate the practice.”

Warily she watched him.

Miles hid behind the fan, as if shy, and peeped only his eyes up over the edge. Time to take it slow again. Her back went up whenever the subject of their conversations turned to love and Lord Walsh. Their relationship, he thought, was rather like the fan. Turn it one way and one picture was seen. Turn it another and the picture changed.

“The secret language I would teach you began in Spain, where duennas carefully guard young ladies against lovers’ exchanges. So lovely was the mystery of this graceful language, that all of Europe began to follow the fashion.”

“What do you say now with this rare and provoking fan?” She could not disguise her curiosity.

He slowed his movements, placing the fan near his heart. “You have won my love,” he said, and wondered if she had any idea how appropriate he found the words. Some level of his earnestness must have been conveyed. She blushed, the hue of her freckled cheek assuming a particularly rare shade he had never witnessed before. She darted uncertain looks in his direction.

He was pleased. The fan offered him the opportunity to voice his feelings. He lifted the shut fan to his right eye. “When may I be allowed to see you?” He then unfolded a corner of the fan, showing three sticks. “Three?” Seven sticks. “Seven?” He opened the fan wide. “Wait for me.” He covered his left ear with the open fan. “Do not betray our secret.” He waved the fan, touched it. “I long to be near you.” He touched the tip of the fan. “I wish to speak to you.” He drew the fan across his cheek. “I love you.” He closed the fan and presented it to her with formal grace, as if they were dancers in a hand ballet. “Do you love me?”

She took the fan, face glowing with heightened color, eyes avoiding his. “One can say all of that?” She turned the painted silk and tortoiseshell as though seeing it for the first time and fanned heat from blushing cheeks.

“That, and more,” he nodded. If you touch the handle of the fan to your lips. . .” She followed his direction even as he spoke and he smiled, voice dropping, “Yes, just so.” Leaning forward, he raised her chin with two fingertips and kissed her. Her lips tasted of berries. “You have just asked me to kiss you,” he said lightly, pulling back to see how she would react.

She snapped shut the fan and waved it menacingly. “That was impudent and uncalled for! You take unfair advantage, sir.”

He did not respond, merely sat in the dappled sunlight in the lonely clearing studying her. A dove cooed, asking with muted persistence,
What? Who? Who? Who?
Yes, he took unfair advantage--in more ways than she realized. He had set out with the intention of righting an unfairness, at Uncle Lester’s request. Stolen kisses were not part of the plan. He meant to help her capture Walsh, didn’t he? He had promised as much. And yet, in the golden, sun-kissed, dove interrupted stillness beneath the trees he was moved by a desire to do anything to the contrary, anything that might serve to make her forget Walsh and look on him with favor instead.

“You wish to seduce Lord Walsh, do you not? Seduction is an art like any other. Surely you must allow yourself to be seduced a little if you are to fully comprehend that art.”  The negotiator within him sprang to the fore, finagling the truth in a way that made him wince and yet in a strange way served both of his intentions, fine and base.

She gave the matter due thought. “There is a perverted sort of sense to your suggestion. Seeds are not as likely to grow in unbroken ground as in that which is cultivated.” She tilted her face toward his, eyes observant, and serious. “Kiss me, then. If I should know how it is done,” she instructed. “I will not resist.”

He blinked, unable to believe his good fortune.

What? Who? Who? Who?
sounded the dove.

Should he take advantage of opportunity now that it was his? Miles leaned forward, eyelids drooping. Aurora, on the other hand, kept her eyes open, disconcerting in her wide-eyed attention to his advance. He drew back again, their lips untouched. “Do you mean to keep your eyes open?”

She looked confused. “How can I see what you are about if I do not?”

He shrugged. There was sense to what she said, but only sense, no emotion other than that. “As you will,” he sighed. Unnerved by her owl-like observation of every move, he placed a hand on each of her shoulders and drew her toward him, his mood for kissing spoiled by such an absence of sensibilities.

It was an anticlimactic endeavor. When he touched his lips to hers and pulled away she was still watching him with wide-eyed curiosity.

“That’s it?” Her tone was mildly derisive.

He gazed at her in disbelief, his prowess never before questioned.

“No,” he said huskily, pulling her into his arms again. “Now shut your eyes.
This
is it.” His lips closed on hers differently this time, hungry for response. This was no polite peck that she might question with mild derision. This kiss welled from deep within him and poured over the two of them like honey.

Still she resisted the power of that kiss, lips pressed together in unresponsive resistance.

Miles was not about to admit defeat to a novice who clamped her lips together like a trap while her eyes remained wide open to examine him with unbiased objectivity. She held herself as rigid in his arms as a block of wood.

“Part your lips,” he whispered thickly into her hair, his fingers trailing seductively along her jaw line. “And, pretend I am Walsh.”

Ias demeaning to say such a thing, yet it triggered the desired response. She gasped at his suggestion. He took advantage of her surprise, kissing her half-opened mouth with increasing warmth and fervor, determined to keep her mind and senses occupied with anything but Walsh. She gasped again, this time with pleasure. He pushed the kissing lesson a step further. “You should know that the French have some interesting variations on this theme,” he whispered in her ear before demonstrating in the French fashion how adroit a tongue might be in involving itself in the art they explored.

She succumbed to his expertise, succumbed to the power of a mercurial energy that coursed between them. Her limbs seemed suddenly to melt into his. Her lips became as active in the search for what it was that lay between them as his.

Miles was shaken by her passionate response. This lesson he meant to teach her had turned face about. He was the one who learned the most in her sensual abandon, for in that moment it became very clear to Miles Fletcher that contrary to his plan and all orderliness in his universe, Miss Aurora Ramsay completely infatuated him. He wanted these lips, wanted to explore them minutely. He wanted to make love with this young woman with complete abandon right here, beneath whispering leaves and cooing dove. He wanted to strip away her Bowman’s colors and let down the fiery waterfall of hair, despite the fact that Grace might walk onto the scene at any moment. He wanted Miss Aurora Ramsay as he had never wanted anything before. Need shook him. It made his knees weak.

What? Who? Who? Who?
asked the dove. What was he doing here? Whose needs did he meet with passionate kisses? Alarmed, Miles pulled his lips from Aurora’s.

She swayed, fiery lashes brushing her cheeks, lips damp, parted and ripe with color.

He resisted temptation. He restored control. He dropped his hands from her shoulders.

Her eyes flew open, a hungry light firing them, but before she could say a word to threaten his newly regained equilibrium, he clasped his hands over hers beneath the fan. “One can also beg forgiveness.” He slid the fan from her grasp and drew it across his eyes. “I do beg your forgiveness Miss Ramsay, for having taken unfair advantage not once but several times.” He opened and shut the fan several times. “You can tell me I have been cruel.”

She looked, for the moment, more confused than ready to

accuse him of anything. He drew the fan theatrically across his forehead. “Tell me that I have changed,” he instructed.

What? Who? Who?
asked the dove. He was changed. The yearning for her mouth would not leave him. He twirled the fan in his right hand and thought of Walsh. “Tell me that you love another.”

She bit down on her lip.

He held the fan out to her, but she was too distracted to realize he meant her to take hold of it. It dropped into the grass between them.

“Oh dear!” she exclaimed.

“Oh dear, indeed.” He bent to pick it up and stood to find her eyes wide, tongue passing uneasily over her lips, as if they were in some way foreign to her. He wondered if she could still taste him there.

“Is the fan broken?” she asked uneasily.

“No,” he shook his head, “but a dropped fan means we shall be friends.” The seriousness of his tone brought a pucker to her forehead.

“I would think, after what has passed between us this afternoon that we were fast becoming just that, Mr. Fletcher.”

He allowed the hint of a smile to tilt lips still warmed by their contact with h. “I had hoped for more, Miss Ramsay. Far more.”

Aurora spread the naughty fan before her face and wafted a cooling breeze across flaming cheeks. She did not know what to make of Miles Fletcher or his remarks. The popinjay was become a swooping falcon. He hoped for
far more
! And yet, it was he who had stopped the soft wonder--the tender heaven of their kisses! Dear God, what did he mean? He hoped for more lovemaking perhaps? Such a thought made her very ears burn.
More, far more
, he had said.

She brushed a curl away from her eyes with the end of the fan.

“Have I changed?” he asked. His voice, cool, calm and collected in the asking of such a question, startled her.

“What?”

He pointed to the fan. “The language of the fan,” he said. “Did you mean to tell me I have changed?”

Oh my! The mere touch of the fan to her forehead carried a message. How provoking! And yet, this moment of misunderstanding offered unexpected opportunity to return their conversation to more comfortable footing.

“Have I remembered it rightly?” She touched the fan to her forehead again.

He nodded, studying her expression. “I do apologize . . .” The movements of her hands with the fan mimicked his words.

He stopped in the middle of his apology, studying her. “Do not betray our secret,” he hazarded.

She held the fan out to him. “I do not remember that one. Will you show me?”

You have won my love; I long to be near you; kiss me; do not betray our secret;
over and over the words and movements were uttered between the two of them, strangers, who would never have voiced such thoughts under different circumstances. These were expressions of such intimacy she had never imagined voicing them to a man, much less voicing them over and over, with both fan and voice until she had them down by rote. How odd, to be comfortable with such words, to have said them so often they became commonplace.

“Kiss me,” she repeated the gesture and watched him warily, in case he should take her literally, as he had once before. She could not say the words, or repeat the gesture of the fan, its handle pointing the way, without reliving the unexpected silky warmth that had so insistently descended on her lips. How nice it would be to experience such a sensation again. How nice if life were simple enough that she might say, kiss me and suffer no consequence other than a lovely feeling. But, life was not simple.