Elisabeth Fairchild (7 page)

Her anger convinced him he was not mistaken. She was interested in furthering Walsh’s acquaintance. In the earl lay the fulfillment of his promise to Uncle Lester, a quick, neat resolution to the dilemma of seeing to it that Miss Ramsay’s future was not ruined completely by her brother’s bad luck. Miles was not altogether happy. His goddess sublime was taken with Walsh before ever he had a chance to convince her he was much the better man. But there was a negotiable gain to be had here, a bargain in the making. Mentally shrugging aside his disappointment, Miles proceeded cautiously, keenly observing her every reaction.

“You hope, perhaps, to illicit an offer of marriage from him?”    

She flinched. He read the movement without surprise. She answered him, not with words, but with the turn of her head, the tilt of her mouth, the set of her chin. Deep within the green eyes that glared so fiercely, the truth spoke as clearly as any voice.

For a moment Miles felt the same tugging regret he had felt the day before when this fiery young woman had rebuffed his efforts to dance with her. He was baffled then. He was baffled now. What did she see in Lord Walsh that should have this marvelous creature chasing after him? He did not press the matter. There was yet a bargain to be struck. She was seeking a proposal of Walsh. He wondered if Gracie would be pleased or peeved by such a turn of events.

“What business is any of this to you?” She was alarmed, perhaps fearful that he might use such knowledge against her, and indeed it was sensitive information he now held. She is like tinder, he thought, dry and brittle and ready to ignite. Perhaps she needed Walsh’s money. If so, she might be amenable to his proposal.

Fingering the precisely braided straw of the love knot he still turned in his hands, he chose his words carefully.

“Just as you have--perhaps--come to find a husband, I am here with a number of specific goals in mind. One is that I wish to learn how to go about managing my eventual windfall of acreage.”

“What has either to do with the other?” She crossed her arms over her breasts, wholly resistant to his idea before it was even voiced.

He smiled ruefully. “I think we might be in a way to assist one another in reaching those goals You see, we would each of us appear to have mastered knowledge in which the other needs schooling.”

That got her attention! She relinquished her closed posture and reached back to stroke the nose of the roan. “Go on,” she said warily.

Miles could not refuse the question in those willow green eyes any more than he could resist the idea that the paths of their lives had been destined to cross. There was an orderliness after all, in their arrangement, and Miles believed in an orderly universe. Though he found something inherently self-defeating in the arrangement he was about to make, he stepped a little closer to the goddess whose affections he had meant to win for his own sake--with every intention of instructing her in the ways of winning the affections of another.

“My proposal,” he went on, “is that I shall teach you the social graces by which you might attract any man of your choosing: the proper walk, talk, gestures, how to dance and flatter and flutter a fan, even how to dress . . . if you will only school me in the arts of which you are clearly my master: riding, agriculture, animal husbandry, and archery.”

A gleam flickered in her eyes, as if a wind turned a leaf in the sun. “You are in earnest?”

“Absolutely.” How could she think him otherwise?

“Then I agree,” Aurora Ramsay surprised him by holding out her hand to him, as if to seal their bargain with a clasping of palms. “Shall we proceed?”

Aurora was surprised. The arrangement Miles Fletcher suggested was not at all what she had expected. His proposal meant more than he could possibly know and she had no more expected it of him than she had expected he might harness the sun and ride away with her. He held out a lifeline to her as easily as she held out her hand to him.

He took that hand, and in taking it Aurora was struck by the odd sensation that their fingers met with the same intimate compatibility she experienced in sliding into the contours of a saddle. There was something insinuating in the manner of Miles Fletcher’s hand on hers when he bent to kiss her knuckles, something absorbing in the touch of his lips to her glove. There was a sense of comfort, of rightness, a feeling that with this man the ride would be interesting but not fraught with insurmountable difficulties. Quite irrationally, she did not want him to let go of her. She felt disappointed, one might almost say abandoned, when he relinquished his hold on her.

Odd. She had been sure she saw some flicker of interest in the sparkling gaze of this polished, prattling popinjay the night he asked her to dance, that had nothing whatsoever to do with what she might teach him about archery or animal husbandry. His proposal to help her win Walsh was so diametrically opposed to her initial interpretation of his intentions that she watched him carefully, troubled by the notion that she misread the depth of his interest.

“How shall we begin?” he asked, smoothly businesslike. Despite all reservations, she found, strangely, that it did not really matter to her how they began, only that they should.

They began straight away, on familiar territory, with talk of horses and cattle, sheep and pigs, before moving on to a discussion of crop rotation that lasted all the way back to the Hall and engrossed them until dinner was announced. Aurora changed clothes and joined Miles Fletcher in the dining room. He made a polite point of sitting next to her, that he might drop a discreet word or two in her ear about table manners and topics of light conversation that had nothing at all to do with agriculture or animals.

Normally, Aurora would have been lost amid such highbrow chatter of art, music, poetry and politics, but with Fletcher at her elbow, she felt quite comfortable. The conversation always returned to matters of land and animal management in the end, and in these things she spoke with confidence and aplomb.

How pleasant to be introduced to a number of those seated around them whose names and titles were familiar, but whose company she had been denied because they numbered not among her brother’s acquaintances. Miles Fletcher appeared to be known to everybody.

“He brought me the most remarkable set of Roman bronzes from Italy,” a dapper old gent whispered in her ear.

“No one has a better eye for the value of an oil painting,” hinted another.

If she should ever need a rare bit of fabric, or perfume, tapestries or rugs, if she meant to collect snuffboxes or Oriental vases, bronzes or marble, she was assured that Fletcher was the man to consult. He had transported many a delight from other countries. Women especially regarded him with favor, and on Aurora they looked with eyebrows raised, as if her right to sit beside their favorite were a matter for question and speculation.

In the light of so much favorable opinion, Aurora’s respect for Miles Fletcher grew by leap and bounds. So agreeable did she eventually find his company, that she happily settled on plans to meet with him on the following morning, that she might teach him archery. She had, in short, begun to think Miles Fletcher the complete gentleman and just the fellow to teach her what she needed to know in order to charm Lord Walsh, when it became painfully obvious that Fletcher was distracted by yet another female who meant to catch his eye. He did in fact exchange what she could only describe as speaking glances with the dark, swanlike creature he had danced with the night before.

Aurora knew she had no legitimate complaint against such flirtation. She was herself distracted by Lord Walsh. But it was lowering to be abandoned when the fragile, pale-complected beauty at the far end of the table crooked her finger at Miles with an endearing smile.

“Please excuse me. There is someone I must speak to,” Fletcher was all politeness. “It will only take a minute.” 

Even such a mannerly parting deflated her confidence. The dark beauty was well-placed at the table. With Lord Walsh on the one hand and an older gent with stars in his eyes on the other, why must she lure away Miles Fletcher as well?

The swan raised her porcelain perfect cheek for a kiss when Fletcher reached her side. In so doing, she turned her head in Aurora’s direction. An enigmatic smile touched her bow-shaped mouth. Aurora could see by the surreptitious glances in her direction, that she was the topic of conversation when the young woman whispered in Fletcher’s ready ear.

His gaze strayed her way as well.

To remain the subject of gossip was too insulting to bear! Rather than sit meekly wondering what was said about her, Aurora deserted the table.

“How goes it with your Amazon, little brother?” Grace whispered when Miles bent to salute her cheek. “I expect an introduction before the evening’s out. She is a taking thing, though something must be done about her clothes, surely! Your goddess sublime is quite disguised in such an outfit. Gracious, Miles, wherever is she running off to?”

Aurora’s place at table was now vacant. Her back retreated briskly through the door that led into the hallway.

“I’ve no idea,” he said.

Aurora turned her back on a table still laden with half-emptied plates, turning her nose up at the cloying odor of an overabundance of rich food and the mélange of overpowering perfumes. Through the doors that led outside she plunged, that she might drink in the cool, damply fresh smell of the grass-lined channel. She walked in the moonlight wondering why it should matter to her in the least that Miles Fletcher left her side at the slightest beckoning of another woman.

He was not bound to her in any way. Her object was Lord Walsh, not Miles Fletcher. Miles knew she pursued Walsh. It should not matter to her in the least whether or not the weasel, or popinjay, or whatever beast he was, cared for the dark-haired tabby at the other end of the table. In fact, if the tabby’s attentions were diverted from Walsh, she might have more opportunity to win his affections. Yet, if a fellow who fawned over her was so easily distracted from her charms, how could she hope to attach the lasting affections of a gentleman such as Walsh?

The lonely complaint of a grebe carried eerily from the far side of the channel. The acrid tang of tobacco smoke drifted in the breeze.

Aurora shivered and turned from the water toward the sound of footsteps. The dark silhouette of a gentleman descended the steps from the hall. A cigar glowed between his lips. Lord Walsh! He had spotted her. She would have had to turn in her tracks to avoid facing him. Aurora had never been one to shrink from confrontation. Walsh did not look particularly pleased to see her, but she approached him nonetheless, back straight, chin high.

“Lord Walsh.”

He blew a pungent cloud of tobacco smoke and said coolly, “Ah! The very dangerous Miss Ramsay, is it not? I suppose you mean to encourage me not to befoul the air in a lady’s presence by tossing me bodily into the channel? No, need. I willingly put the thing out.”

He was on the verge of flicking his cigar into the moonlit water when she stopped him with an undemonstrative, “Nothing of the kind. I do not mean to discommode you, nor will I bend your ear with mindless commonplaces. I am sure you came here to enjoy your smoke in solitude. I wish only to call a truce between the two of us, and to assure you I regret each of our past encounters. I regret crashing to the floor in the ballroom and I deeply regret having struck your hand this morning.”

He was silent a moment, his expression hard to read behind a cloud of his own making. “A truce it is then,” he studied the line of ash on the end of his cigar. “I would not have any young lady regret her encounters with me and I daresay it would be a mistake to continue sparring with
L' Amazon
.”

She shrugged and would have moved past him and up the steps to the hall had he not stopped her, saying stiffly, “I am sorry I grabbed for your horse. I was unaware, this morning, of your reputation--”

She turned abruptly to face him, ready to do battle. Reputation indeed!

He exhaled smoke, directing it at the moon. “For riding,” he went on coolly. “I have since been informed by more than one credible source that you and your horses are not to be trifled with.”

She was amazed. He had been asking about her!

He went on distantly, his voice, his look, the cloud of smoke between them, keeping her at arm’s length, “I am wholly unaccustomed to independent females who ride neck or nothing.” His voice held grudging respect.

She chuckled, for the first time at ease in his presence. “That’s quite all right,” she maintained their distant posture. “I am equally unaccustomed to any rider catching up to me. Good night, my lord.”

A startled bark of laughter, half choked on cigar smoke, followed her up the steps. For the first time since she had literally run into Walsh on the dance floor, Aurora thought with some satisfaction that she might have a chance with him yet.

Miles stood at the window watching with consternation his goddess sublime talking to Walsh in the darkness at the bottom of the steps that led into Coke’s pleasure garden. It was quite unnatural in him, unmannerly in fact, to stare at people from behind cover of window draperies, but he wondered what these two might be saying to one another. He hoped Aurora did not meant to disappear into the garden with Walsh. That would not do at this stage. Walsh must not consider Miss Ramsay too forward a female. How strange that he should feel a pang of regret when Walsh managed to make her laugh, and she him.