Kathryn Caskie (28 page)

As the carriage slowly edged the park on its way down Rotten Row, Grace stared back at Eliza with what could only be described as astonishment. Eliza was taken aback. Was her compliment really so unexpected?

Hawksmoor retrieved his watch from the dirt, while muttering something unintelligible, then mounted his horse once again.

Suddenly, Grace stood up in the slow-moving landau with a great smile on her lips as she pointed her index finger down the length of Rotten Row. “Look! ‘Tis Lord Somerton.”

Eliza shot to her feet as well, sending the carriage swaying like one of the small rowboats floating in the Serpentine ahead.
Oh, perdition.
It was Magnus, charging forward on a gleaming black mount like some fabled knight of old. Her heart thudded riotously in her chest as she watched his approach. Why wouldn’t he just stay away?

Irritated, Eliza plopped back into her seat. It was then that she noticed the expression on Grace’s face. Her sister appeared much too gleeful at Magnus’s surprise appearance. Why, a grimace would have been a more natural expression.

Eliza levied a suspicious gaze at her aunts who sat snickering on the bench seat facing her. Then she turned aside to look at her sister. “What a lovely surprise. I wonder how Lord Somerton knew to find us here?”

Grace smiled smugly but said nothing.

Eliza reached out and gave her sister a short shake. “You might as well confess, Grace. Your guilt is scrawled all over your face.”

Grace bit her lower lip, obviously considering her response. “Why, I
might
have mentioned we were coming to Hyde Park this afternoon.”

Eliza raised her brows. “Why on earth would you—”

Grace batted her long lashes innocently. “Have I done something wrong?”

Eliza leaned close to her sister and whispered to her. “You are not making this any easier for me.”

“Why, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Sister.” Grace feigned innocence and stole a glance at their grinning aunts.

“Ho, there!” Magnus called out, halting his massive steed aside the carriage. “What a pleasure, and a surprise, to cross paths with ye ladies this glorious afternoon.” He looked down his nose at Hawksmoor. “Ye as well, good man.”

Aunt Viola clapped her hands excitedly. “What brings you to Hyde Park this fine day, Lord Somerton?”

Magnus drew his horse against the carriage and reached down for Aunt Viola’s hand. “The lovely scenery, of course.”

Both aunts chuckled merrily as Magnus circled around to the other side of the carriage and Aunt Letitia extended her hand up to him.

“The scenery is the very reason we are here,” her aunt admitted, swatting Lord Somerton’s strong thigh with her furled fan with a hoot.

“Oh, Auntie,” Eliza murmured to herself. Aunt Letitia seemed to have a knack for finding just the perfect way to reduce her to a fray of stripped nerves.

Magnus squeezed his well-formed thighs around his gleaming black charger, nudging it forward alongside Eliza. Catching her gaze, he favored her with a bright smile, sending a rush of heat into her cheeks.

Stop, just stop reacting to him.
Oh, how she longed to cover her cheeks. She could feel them getting redder by the second.

“Miss Merriweather. You look as lovely as a rose. Damned near the same color too,” he whispered as he took her hand.

So this is how it was to be? Magnus would goad her until she broke down and admitted her ruse, that she was not interested in Hawksmoor. Well, it wasn’t going to work. She raised her eyes and glared at him.

“And where is Miss Peacock this day?”

“I am sure I have no idea, Miss Merriweather,” Magnus replied tightly. “She is none of my concern.”

Eliza’s spirits fell, but his reply seemed to amplify her aunts’ excitement at his arrival.

“Of course she isn’t,” Aunt Letitia crooned. “And why should she be?”

Grace leaned across Eliza and offered Magnus her hand. “Lord Somerton, I had
hoped
we would see you at the house earlier,” she said rather pointedly.

Hawksmoor’s brow flicked up at the exchange. And indeed, Eliza caught the secret look that passed between Grace and Hawksmoor as well.

Hawksmoor pulled his right rein and turned his bay to flank Magnus’s horse. “Nice bit of horseflesh, Somerton.” As he surveyed the black steed, Eliza could not help but notice the hint of a sneer on his lips.

Oh dear. A battle brews.

Magnus gave but a cursory glance at Hawksmoor’s bay. “Likewise.”

Then Eliza saw the edge of Magnus’s lip give a telltale quiver. Oh, men were so tediously predictable.

“Fast, is he?” He eyed Hawksmoor.

Oh no.
Magnus had raised the gauntlet.

“Very.” Hawksmoor rose up in his saddle, then settled his gaze on Eliza for a moment. He nodded, as if answering a question he himself had asked, then turned to face Magnus again. “Care to have a go? To the Serpentine?”

“Ye’re no match. I was born to the saddle.” Magnus’s right brow flicked upward.

Eliza winced. The gauntlet was thrown down.

"No match? For you, Scotsman? Well, my lord, we shall see if that is true!” Hawksmoor spouted, accepting the challenge.

Both aunts enthusiastically applauded at the prospect of a match. And, to Eliza’s surprise, Grace clapped her hands as well, encouraging the race.

“Please
do not do this. Both are fine beasts,” Eliza pleaded with both gentlemen.

Hawksmoor guided his mount to the curve in the road and waited for Lord Somerton.

Magnus raised her chin with his index finger. “No need to fash,
lass.
’Tis only sport.”

Thump, thump.
Her heart thrummed double-time and she felt herself warming to him, as she swore she would not do.

Then, his fingers slipped over her collarbone. He whisked her fichu from her shoulders and tucked it inside his waistcoat. “For luck, my fair maiden.” With that, he grinned and galloped his ebony mount to join Hawksmoor at the start.

“Miss Grace,” Hawksmoor called out. “Would you do us the honor of calling the start?”

Grace, loving the attention, gave a thrilled giggle and came to her feet. She untied her straw bonnet and raised it in the air.

Both men bent to a crouch, their horses dancing with readiness beneath them.

The bonnet swooshed down through the air. Both men slapped their crops to their horses’ flanks and charged down the road in billowing clouds of clotted earth.

“Go, go!” Aunt Letitia cried out to the coachman. “Follow them. Don’t want to miss the finish!”

The landau jerked forward, tossing Eliza to the floor.
The deuce!
She climbed back into her seat and clung for her life to the door rim, as her sister and aunts were doing, as the landau flew at breakneck speed down the earthen road.

“Faster, faster,” Aunt Letitia cried between whoops of laughter. “To the Serpentine!”

“S-spell!” Aunt Viola cried out just as her eyelids began to flutter and she slumped in her seat.

Aunt Letitia wrapped her arms around her sleeping sister. Eliza closed her eyes tightly and clutched the door, white knuckled, until the carriage slowed and halted. From the smell and the sound of gently lapping waves, Eliza realized they were at last at the water’s edge.

“Oh, dear,” she heard Aunt Letitia exclaim.

Eliza opened her eyes just as Grace leapt from the landau, forgoing any assistance from the coachman.

“Reginald, heavens! Are you injured?” Grace called out as she ran, skirts hoisted high, toward Hawksmoor, who was splashing his way out of the water.

Eliza stepped down from the carriage. Magnus had dismounted and held the reins of his black in his right hand and those of Hawksmoor’s bay in his left.

By now, Hawksmoor lay on the bank, thoroughly exhausted, drenched and muddy. Grace knelt beside him and was busy fussing over him and comforting him.

Fists clenched, Eliza stomped her way to Magnus. She was fuming. And by the time she stood before him, panting from her charge, she was seething mad. Why was he making this so difficult—for everyone?

“Why?” she demanded. “Why did you do it?” In a burst of fury, she shoved both hands against his chest. “Answer me, if you will. If you can. Why?”

“It was just sport, Eliza.” Magnus offered a boyish grin.

Eliza raised her brows in disbelief. “Sport? You call what happened here
sport?”
She slapped her palms to his chest and pushed at him again. The feel of his muscles beneath her hands sent a thrill through her middle.

Magnus’s ire was piqued and he dropped the reins and grabbed her wrists firmly. “Aye, ‘twas a fair match between gentlemen.”

“Fair match?” she laughed bitterly at that. “How can you say that in good conscience? He was no match for you. Why, only moments before you arrived he’d fallen from his mount from a halt.”

Magnus laughed. “Well, if the riders wurna, the horses certainly were. And, if ye recall, I did warn him of my skill.”

“This had nothing to do with sport. This had to do with jealousy.
Yours.
You didn’t have to make a fool of him, humiliate him. There is nothing between you and me—any longer. Do what you must, marry Miss Peacock and put me out of your mind!”

Magnus stared dangerously down at her, his chest still heaving from the race. He said nothing.

“We will
never
be together.” Her voice fell to a mere whisper. “When will you believe me?”

He looked down at her hands, splayed against his chest like two stars, then turned his gaze to her eyes and spoke a single word.

“Never.”

He opened his fingers and released her wrists. Then, his hand slid behind her neck and he drew her mouth to his.

Eliza didn’t pull away. Instead, she reveled in the pressure, the heat of his lips upon hers. And when he urged her lips apart, she opened her mouth willing, eager for the feel of his tongue thrusting inside of her.

“I’ll just… take my horse then,” Hawksmoor said meekly, but the hint of a smile touched his lips.

Eliza spun around and stared in disbelief at Hawksmoor as he slinked around them, his boots squishing water with each step, to catch up the reins. Was it possible he was in league with her aunts?
No, couldn’t be.

A short distance behind him, Aunt Viola snored away in the carriage, as Grace and Aunt Letitia moved forward toward her. But they were not shocked or angry, as Eliza might have expected. They were smiling mischievously. In fact, they actually appeared to be congratulating each other.

“Well done, Grace,” Aunt Letitia was saying in a hushed tone.

“Why, thank you, Auntie,” Grace mouthed, smiling proudly as she brushed a stray golden lock from her eyes.

Eliza couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. Grace, who had promised to support her in her plans to avoid Somerton had instead partnered with her matchmaking aunts.

She stared at them until they quieted and looked guiltily back at her.

“Don’t you see? For so many reasons, this can never be.
Never”
she told them, her voice sounding disconcertingly watery and thin. “Please, I beg you all,
stop.”

Catching her skirts in her hand, Eliza turned and stalked up the slope to the landau.

Rule Seventeen

Determine your opponent’s plans, then turn them upon him.

The next morning, Eliza sat in the courtyard before a fresh canvas, staring with frustration at its stark, empty surface.

What was she to do? She had planned to paint a landscape, the lush expanse of the moors as seen from Dunley Parish. But today her mind’s eye had fallen quite blind.

She could no longer see that familiar, comforting stretch of green grasses and crisp bracken. Though she’d studied that sweep of land, sketched it even, at least a dozen times in the past year, it didn’t seem to matter now.

One lone image pushed every other aside:
Magnus.
Even now, it was as if he stood before her, as he had before the Serpentine, his silver eyes filled with an unnerving blend of jealousy, anger, and confusion.

Turning away from the canvas, she laid her charcoal stub on the table and pushed her oils aside.
Damnation. Put him out of your mind.

But how could she, when he kept coming back—his heart bared and vulnerable, asking only for her love? How much longer could she bear it?

Time was fast running out for Magnus. He had to marry Caroline Peacock to retain Somerton. Eliza knew she could no longer afford to be gentle. She had to make Magnus believe, with all his soul, that she didn’t love him.

But how could she do that? Whatever scheme she attempted had to be bold—but not so daring as to end in disaster or injury—as it nearly had with poor, soggy Hawksmoor at the Serpentine.

Just then, the door from the house flew open. Aunt Viola burst through the opening. “Oh goodness. So unexpected!” She hurried forward on the tips of her toes, maniacally waving her cane in the air. “Just wait ‘til I tell you! Just you wait!”

Aunt Letitia bounded into the courtyard behind Viola. Jockeying elbow to elbow, cane to cane, to overtake her sister, she plowed through a hedgerow of spiked rose branches, sending scores of buds and petals fluttering to the pavers. “My heavens, Eliza, you cannot believe what has happened! Never, never,
never.”

Eliza was on her feet in an instant. “What is wrong?”

As Aunt Letitia barreled forward, Eliza caught hold of her aunt’s shoulders, stilling her before she could slam into the table of paints.

Aunt Viola slapped her hand to her chest as she sucked air into her lungs. “Not. .. wrong,” she panted.
“G-good
news.”

Grace strolled into the rose-petaled courtyard then, her thoughts aloft in the clouds as she hummed merrily. By the time she reached Eliza, Grace was positively beaming.

“Do you not wish to congratulate me, Sister?” Grace asked.

Eliza released her aunt’s shoulders then shook her hands with exasperation in the air. “Congratulate you for
what,
pray tell? Will someone please explain to me what has happened?”

“Oh, let me,” Aunt Letitia said to Grace. “It is such wonderful news. And, I am the matriarch after all.”