Elisabeth Fairchild (27 page)

Assuming you are not already on the road to Gretna, and as we are son to be sister and brother-in-law, we should, I think, meet and make our peace with one another.

The note was finished and her hand upon the door when a great pounding on its panel gave her a dreadful start. What now? She opened the door to find Miles Fletcher, caped and gloved, waiting with the impatient air of a man in a hurry to be elsewhere. He looked surprised she opened the door to him so quickly. The air between them seemed charged with tension and things unsaid.

“Mr. Fletcher!”

“Did I startle you?” His eyes searched her expression with an urgency that only served to increase the tension between them.

“I was on my way to give you this.” She handed him her note.

Quickly he scanned the lines. His jaw tightened when he came to the end. Tucking the note into his breast pocket, he said gruffly, “I'm after them.” He swallowed hard. “Do you care to come with me?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Are you asking me to run away with you?” Hope leapt high in Aurora’s breast.

“I am.”

She smiled wistfully. “Thank you, but I cannot,” She bowed her head. “Lord Walsh has this evening proposed to me.”

He sighed, and though he made no movement, it was as if he stepped away from her. He blinked, arranged his face neatly and said very politely. “I see.”

She caught his arm. “I do not think you do.”

“No?” He looked down at the hand on his arm. She felt compelled to remove it, so cold was that look.

“It would be too cruel if both of the women this man has proposed to, ran away to Gretna on the same evening,” she said.

“Cruel? Yes, I suppose it would be.” His jaw seemed very tight. “Am I to wish you happy, Aurora? I dare call you Aurora, you must understand, because you are, as you have pointed out to me, soon to be my sister. I hope you find nothing to object to in such boldness.”

She shook her head, no. His tone was biting. Not at all polite.

“Your goal is met. Is it all that you had hoped for?” He clipped off every word as if with scissors.

She could be as biting as he. “Do you ask because you care, Miles,” she placed subtle verbal emphasis on the use of his first name, “or because of some stupid promise you made to your uncle before he died in connection with the land he won off my brother?”

He met her accusation with silence, jaw working. “Is that why you never asked me to buy your sheep?”

She frowned. He meant to talk of sheep?

He frowned as well and drew forth his gold pocket watch to stand stroking the heavy chasing on the case. “This is not the time to explain, or to beg pardon.” He slid the watch back into its pocket. “I was wrong not to tell you,” he said simply. “I was, quite selfishly, afraid the knowledge would interfere significantly with our getting to know one another.”

“It would surely have done that,” she admitted, still peeved. The tension between them increased.

“I wanted very much to get to know you better,” he said so softly she almost did not hear him.

“Do you mean to put a stop to the union of my brother and your sister?” she asked bluntly, wary of this softness to his tone.

He chuckled humorlessly and squeezed the fisted head of his cane, so that the leather of his glove made a strained noise. “Never that. No, I mean to put my stamp of approval on their joining, if I can get to Gretna before the wedding ceremo is ended. There should be some semblance of order, of familial approval to the proceedings.”

“You surprise me?”

“Do I?” He regarded her with an intensity that surprised her again. “I would sooner chase after my own happiness than that of my sister’s divination.” His voice and manner left Aurora with the unsettling impression he referred to her.

“Oh,” she said softly. Tension hummed between them like the plucked string of a violin.

“I must be off.” He distanced himself from her with the words as much as his former remark had brought him near.

She was disappointed. “Until you return then,” she said. She could think of nothing better.

He nodded, shot her one last searching look and set off down the corridor. Aurora was troubled by a feeling of finality to this separation.

He did not look back, though she stood waiting, hoping he would. She closed the door on the empty corridor with a feeling of such loss, such emptiness, her heart ached. She stood pressed against the door, trying not to cry, biting down on her lip and beating helplessly, the palms of her hands on the sides of her skirts.

Bang, bang, bang!
Someone pounded on the door at her back. Recognizing the rhythm of that tattoo, she flung open the door.

“Miles!”

“Aurora,” his voice was throaty. He pushed into the room. Sweeping her into his arms to kiss her, he tilted the combined weight of the two of them, clasped, against the door, shutting it on the world behind them.

For a supremely satisfying moment they lost themselves in the sensation of mouth upon mouth, body pressed warmly to body. The tension between them seemed a sort of all-consuming energy that wrapped them up in a fire of blind desire. It singed the edges of Miles Fletcher’s polite and polished veneer. He seemed possessed of an uncontrollable, almost violent, certainly animal passion--a passion that must consume them both. His beautiful swimming hands were everywhere, his mouth, hot and demanding melted into hers and then moved on, to brand temples, throat and breast with the searing power of his desire.

His control was not completely and irrevocably departed. With a groan, he wrenched himself away from her. “I really must be off.”

“Must you?” she whispered, lips tingling, body throbbing with such desire she wanted more than anything to stay his leaving her ever again.

“I must,” he said firmly, control returning. One more kiss, lightly, upon the tip of her nose, and he was gone.

Aurora was impatien
t in her wait for Miles to return. Of Coke, every day, she asked, “Has Mr. Fletcher returned?”

And every day came the same answer. “I am sorry to say, my dear Miss Ramsay. He has not.”

Aurora felt the absence of Miles, like the absence of a tooth. She could not stop worrying over it. As much as she noticed Fletcher’s absence, the other guests at Holkham Hall, noticed the absence of her brother. With Rue gone, Aurora was placed in the very awkward position of being single, female and without proper chaperone. Her position became an awkward one. Even with the Cokes and their daughters to champion her singular state, she became the object of unwanted attentions from any number of the male guests.

Aurora wrote to her brothers. While she waited for their response, Walsh became her stalwart defender, assuming the role as if he had a right to it. He, among all of her swains, showed no inclination at all to take advantage of her brother’s absence.

“Will you kiss me, my lord?” She asked him outright on one of their morning rides.

He seemed surprised at her request, but obligingly pulled his horse beside hers, that they might lean toward one another.

Aurora shut her eyes and presented her lips to him. She had imagined this moment many times, not the part where she asked him to kiss her of course, but ever since Miles Fletcher had blessed her lips with the wonder of his mouth she had wondered what it would be like to share just such an exchange with Lord Walsh. Her imagination was far more exciting than reality. Lord Walsh’s salute to her lips was no more moving today than it had been on the evening of his proposal. She had suspected that might be the case, but had needed verification.

The sound of riders approaching drew them apart. Walsh sat back in his saddle, leather creaking. His expression was as troubled as the kiss he had given her. “Why did you want to kiss me, Miss Ramsay?”

She studied the horizon. Three gentlemen, horseback, headed in their direction. “I was looking, my lord, for something I cannot describe--” 

He seemed suddenly interested in the stitching on his glove. “Something you have found elsewhere?”

“Yes,” she could not lie to him. “I wish it were not so, but I have fallen in love with another. . .”

He looked up with a sigh. “I am not entirely surprised,” he said evenly.

“No?”

“No.” He smiled at her. “And I like you too much Miss Ramsay not to wish you more luck with Fletchers than I have enjoyed.”

There was no time for Aurora to respond. The riders drew near, the horses breathing hard.

“Making an offer to our sister, are you?”

Aurora recognized the decisive voice even before she turned in the saddle to find her brother Roger astride the big black gelding that took him everywhere. Beside him, also astride and glaring at her rather more fiercely than she was accustomed, sat two more of her brothers.

“When is the wedding?” Jack asked pointedly.

“Wedding?” Aurora was confused.

“There is going to be a wedding after a display like that in broad daylight.” Gordon sounded as if there would be no arguing the matter.

A strong breeze kicked the trees along the roadside into uneasy motion as Miles returned from his mad dash to Gretna Green, coach mud splattered, horses bone weary. Another spring shower threatened. Miles’s watch had become part of his hand. He glanced at it now, before leaning out of the coach window to glare at the darkening sky.

“Faster,” he banged his fisted cane on the roof of the carriage. “The rain will catch us.”

The roads to Gretna and back had been dreadful, the weather uncooperative. Delayed by rain, he had arrived too late to witness his sister’s hasty wedding. All he could think about now, all he had thought about then as he had been flung about the coach, was Aurora.

He had gained but one thing from this trip. He possessed now a better understanding of the strength and courage with which Aurora Ramsay met the recent upsets of her life. Her brothers had regularly played havoc with her emotions, her future, her sense of security and control. His sister had, just this once, with his and he was wrecked by it.

Yet, Miss Ramsay managed to meet supheaval with aplomb. She held her head high. She even managed to improve herself. There was something remarkable in such fortitude, he decided, something noteworthy in her grace under pressure.

Miles had not weathered well his pursuit of Grace and Rupert. He was, in fact, a sad sight to behold. He had not slept or eaten with any regularity. He had not taken enough clean clothing with him to withstand the rigors of rain and muddy roads. He had not had a shave this morning. He felt shaken, a state with which he was not at all comfortable.

His sister seemed to have disappeared into Scotland without a trace once her name was writ in the parish register. Strangely, he did not particularly care. Grace had made her choice. Surely she would not find it an unbearable one. She and Rupert knew they might come to him and receive his blessing once the deed was done.

Matthew was going to be livid--but what did it matter? What did any of it matter? All that mattered to Miles now was returning to Aurora. He had so much to explain to her, so many preparations to make.

His coach sped onto Coke’s property only to find delayed again, not once, but many times as steady stream of carriages rumbled down the long drive away from Holkham Hall with the same skudding speed that the clouds rolled across the sky. The sheering was done. The sheep that gamboled across the green of the fields, were a whiter, lighter, less fleeced bunch than those he had seen upon his arrival.

Miles ran a hand along the stubble that roughened his jaw. He could do with a fleecing himself.

As his coach approached the channel, looking dark and mysterious under the lowering sky, he felt tempted to jump in. He needed a bath, a shave and fresh clothes, but more than any of these, he needed and wanted Aurora.

There were, unbeknownst to him, come a number of obstacles to stand in the way of his getting what he wanted. His coach, when it pulled into the drive, was descended upon first by a horde of servants, come to do their jobs, and then by a horde of red-headed gentlemen, come to do their best to make his arrival a memorable one.

Ramsays, several of them, had arrived in his absence. “Are you Miles Fletcher?” One of the three men inquired aggressively, his breath far too fetid with brandy for such an early hour. His ruddy cheeks and nose would seem to indicate he was in the habit of drinking far more than was good for him.

Miles stuck his hand toward the gentleman and his nose somewhat out of the direct line of his breathing. “Are you one of Miss Ramsay’s brothers?”

The fellow seemed surprised he was so easily identified. He declined to shake Miles’s hand, thrusting his own in his pockets as he said gruffly, “We’ve come to hash things out with you, sir.” His manner was defensive, his stance decidedly rude. He blocked Miles’s approach to the hall.

Rakehell, whom he recognized, made a point of agreeing, though he could not look Miles in the eye when he spoke. “We hear you have been cozying up to our sister during your stay here. Not content with stealing our home from us, would you have our sister too?”

A spattering of raindrops whipped at them from the wind.