A Lady's Wish (5 page)

“They are my sons.”

“I see.” He went to the mantel, studying the painting hanging above it. “I imagined them perhaps your sister’s suitors, but that was foolish of me. She would not speak of them so casually if it were so.”

“She is familiar enough in her usual address that one might conclude such a thing.”

“She is merely spirited. It suits her beauty.” He spoke as though to the painting. “Yet she is not as lovely as her sister was at that same age.”

Her heart beat so hard she feared he could hear it across the chamber. “I thought you meant to pretend we had not met before.”

He turned to her, one corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile.

“Why would I pretend that?” He spoke with perfect calm. Unregretful.

“Then,” she managed beneath his untroubled regard, “perhaps you did not wish to expose me to my family’s curiosity. I appreciate your discretion.”

He walked to her until he stood very close. Too close for a lady and a gentleman who did not know one another.

“No particular discretion intended upon that account, my lady,” he said in a low voice. “Only lack of opportunity to renew our acquaintance suitably. But I think it high time we finally introduced ourselves, don’t you? And now you have no maidenly modesty to justify denying me the pleasure of your name.”

His hand stole around hers, warm and strong and holding her with perfect confidence.

“Allow me to begin.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “I am Nikolas Acton.” He placed the softest kiss upon her knuckles, his gaze fixed not on her hand or eyes, but her mouth. “And I am, as ever, enchanted.”

Chapter Five

P
atricia feared her hand trembled.
All
of her. He was large and broad-shouldered and warmth seemed to reach from his body to hers. And he smelled incredibly good—of wine and sandalwood and faint remnants of leather that made her want to close her eyes and simply breathe him in.

But her sister might return at any moment.

She tugged on her hand. “Captain, I must—”

“You must tell me your name,” he murmured above her brow. “I have been waiting nine years for the honor, sweet Isolde, and have, I shall admit, grown somewhat impatient.”

She melted. If the door had not opened she might have melted right into him.

He released her and moved away without hurry. Calanthia came across the room and took up her wineglass.

“Auntie informs me that if the mud inhibits our travels tomorrow, we shall find entertainment from a troupe of nearby players.”

He chuckled. “Your aunt is charming.”

“And I think
you
are charming, Captain. Oh! I hope I may say that.” She flicked a questioning glance at Patricia. “Ladies enjoy flattery, but I do not know if gentlemen do.”

“I should think that a gentleman who did not like pretty words from a pretty girl would be a great fool.”

Calanthia glowed. Patricia looked between their pleased faces and a sick sensation lodged in her chest, tinged with panic.

“Ladies, I must bid you good night,” he said.

“So soon?” Calanthia’s lashes actually fluttered.

“Alas, yes.” He bowed. “Miss Ramsay.” He turned to Patricia and, with his back to her sister, lifted another languid half-smile, a glimmer in his rich eyes. “My lady, I look forward to renewing our acquaintance further tomorrow.” He went out.

Calanthia threw herself into a chair.

“Oh, Tricky, isn’t he marvelous? Why, we have known him less than a day and already it seems we have known him an age!” She played with the ribbons at her waist. “Do you think some individuals simply seem familiar to everyone due to a unique quality of character, or is it rather a special sympathy between one person and another that facilitates such pleasure in one another’s company?”

Nine years ago she would have insisted the latter.

“What I think is that you have had too much wine tonight.”

Her sister cast her an exasperated look. “I know Oliver made you believe that all men are cold fish, and I am sorry for it. But have you entirely lost the ability to appreciate a pleasing gentleman? I daresay, if Captain Acton does not meet us at breakfast tomorrow a thoroughly changed character, I may find myself with a raging tendre for him before the morning is out. He is positively
ideal
.”

Ideal with Calanthia. And once, for an entire day, ideal with her. And quite possibly ideal with every other lady who fluttered her lashes at him. Maidens and matrons alike. Matrons like
her
.

“Callie.” Her throat felt inordinately tight. “Did you or Aunt Elsbeth mention to him or Mr. Rum that I am a widow?”

“I don’t believe so. Auntie was mostly concerned with proving Mr. Rum wrong regarding the number of albatrosses aboard the Ark, and I never speak of your business, of course.” She wrinkled up her nose. “According to the dowager, ladies do not gossip.”

“Well, it would have hardly been gossip. It is not a state secret.” But her palms were damp. She had not mentioned it to him either. “I am not certain that all sailors are quite as honorable as you imagine. I hope you will take care in becoming overly familiar with gentlemen we do not know.”

“By that you mean Captain Acton, of course.” Calanthia stood. “Well, all right, if you insist. But he helped us today when he needn’t have, and I think he is perfectly amiable and you are unfair to him.” With a sigh and a sleepy smile, she kissed Patricia upon the cheek, said “Good night,” and went from the chamber.

Patricia stared through the open door, the noises of men drinking in the taproom quieter now. He had flirted with Callie, openly though mildly. He had flirted with herself as well, but with a clear suggestion in his eyes and words. Yet, apparently, he thought her married.

It hurt. She was surprised, and she felt like a fool for being surprised. She had, after all, long suspected he was not what he seemed.

She had noticed him first noticing her. Rather, staring at her.

Seventeen years old, at the dull house party of distant cousins, she had welcomed the excitement of the May Day festival in a nearby village. Her male cousins were all enamored of sport and could not be counted on for diverting conversation. Her mother and the other ladies did nothing but sigh over the entertainments they were missing in London, which Patricia thought perfectly disingenuous.

“You do not even like London, Mama.”

“Yes, but one needn’t admit that publicly. Now button your pelisse and have a stroll about the garden if you have the fidgets.”

But Patricia did not have the fidgets. Not the sort that could be thrown off with a stroll. It was much more than that, a humming in her blood that pressed at her to wake up and finally experience
life
. Perhaps London might answer that humming, but she was not to have her season until the following year.

A country May Day festival must suffice for the present.

So she donned her prettiest gown, tied her hair with pale pink ribbons, and danced about the May pole in the sunshine with her cousins and the farmers’ and tradesmen’s maiden daughters. She laughed and sang, and afterward, during a performance by a group of traveling players of the medieval love story of Tristan and Isolde, she saw him watching her from the other side of the crowd.

She ignored him. A lady, even one bursting from the seams of her life, did not encourage strange young men with stolen glances. Not even handsome young men.

Then she dropped her reticule—entirely by accident—and bent to retrieve it, and he was there, kneeling in the dirt, a smile on his lips and in his dark eyes.

“I believe this is yours, fair queen.” He proffered her the reticule.

“You mean Queen of the Fair, I imagine.” She knew her cheek dimpled by the way his gaze lingered upon it. “But if so, you have mistaken it, sir. It was not I who was crowned queen today.”

“Then the judges were bribed to favor another. For you outshine any here.” He unbent and she was obliged to look up. He was quite tall, dressed with casual ease and little fashion. His neckcloth was tied only in a knot, the buttons on his dark coat were tarnished, and his boots were decidedly scuffed as well as his trousers from kneeling. But Patricia barely noticed these insignificant details beneath the brilliant richness of his green eyes. Shadowed by a lock of nearly black hair, they reflected the laughter on his mouth. Whiskers dusted his chin and taut jaw, enough of a shadow to suggest a roguish carelessness about propriety. To her eyes so thoroughly weary of her family’s variety of clean-shaven, stalwart manhood, he looked like heaven.

A smile tugged at her lips. “Thank you for retrieving my reticule.” Fighting every instinct in her famished soul, she stepped away.

“But I have reconsidered,” he said just over her shoulder.

She tilted her head aside as she continued through the crowd. Tables were laden with the produce of early summer, wildflowers, cheeses, berries, and baskets of raw wool. The music of pipe and fiddle wended its way through brays of donkeys, bleats of goats, and cheers over a fire swallower’s daring.

“You have reconsidered?” She lifted a brow. “The judges were honest after all?”

“Absolutely not,” he replied right behind her. “Charlatans, the lot of them.”

She could not resist the lure of his playful tone. She paused at a stand of candied breads and tartlets crusted with berry jams that had bubbled through. She traced her fingertip along the edge of the table, delaying the inevitable. She should not speak with him. She should leave. She was the daughter of a peer. Peers’ daughters did not consort with ramshackle young men at public festivals, no matter how charming they seemed. Her mother would have a fit.

“Then what have you reconsidered, sir?”

“That you are best served not having won the crown.”

“Whyever not?” She flickered her gaze up. He stood close and her breath caught at the intensity of his rich eyes.

“The queen of the fair each year takes her victory march riding in the back of a wagon.” His brow drew down in mock seriousness. “A wagon is not a suitable conveyance for a lady.”

“What might be suitable?”

“Clouds,” he said without hesitation. “Lined with silver, as when the sun shines through from behind.” He scooped two tarts into his palm. He wore no gloves and his hands looked strong, sinewed and capable.

“Them’s two pennies,” the woman behind the counter grumbled.

“I haven’t got it,” he replied with a winning grin. “But I shall regret nothing greater, for I suspect, madam, that this tart could transform my humdrum existence into a sheer symphony of pleasure.”

Twin spots of red popped out on the baker’s round cheeks. She rolled her eyes and waved his hand away along with the pastries.

He bowed. “My humble thanks.” He passed one tart to Patricia and the other to a tiny, hollow-cheeked boy poking his nose above the edge of the table, eyes wide. The lad grabbed up the treat and ran away.

He turned back to her. “Or the wings of a swan.”

She smiled and nibbled the pastry, bemused, giddy, confused. Was this how gentlemen flirted, so cavalierly? She must go. She must not encourage him.

“What about swan’s wings?” she heard herself say.

“An alternate suitable conveyance for a queen such as you.” He reached for another tart. The baker smacked at his hand. He laughed and moved off, gesturing for Patricia to go before him. His fingertips grazed her elbow, holding for a moment then releasing her, and she had never felt such a slight touch so thoroughly. All the way to her toes.

“You are being ridiculous, sir.” She feared she sounded breathless. She could not cease staring at him, his strong cheeks and jaw, and . . . She knew she ought not to have even noticed his firm, masculine lips. It was the epitome of ill breeding. She must leave.

“Am I being ridiculous?” They had come to the edge of a crowd. He paused and his eyes changed. Laughter still colored them, but something else as well. Something that made her insides trembly. “Rather—I fear—I am being smitten.”

She wished to laugh but managed only a wavering smile. “You
fear
being smitten?”

He placed his hand across his heart. “Smiting is done with a weapon, madam. It is a foolish fellow who does not quake at sight of a blade, however lovely it appears.”

A wild fluttering beset her breast. “You are likening me to a sword?”

“Possibly.” His brow lowered. “Are you capable of wounding a man?”

“I should hope not!”

His expression lightened. “Excellent. Then I have nothing to fear, it seems.”

She laughed. He bent his head, a lock of thick hair falling across his brow, and cast her the most perfect smile she had ever seen, at once conspiratorial and gentle. Her belly felt strangely warm. Everything in her felt warm.
Alive
.

She dragged her gaze away. They walked along the edge of the fair grounds where the animals to be judged were held between competitions.

“Aha. Here is the way life should be lived.” He gestured to a pen of sheep.

“Whatever can you mean?”

“That these fellows know precisely where their next meal is coming from, and they spend their days simply enjoying the satisfaction of it.”

She chuckled. “You are absurd.”

“And you are smiling, which suggests that you are either as absurd as I, or too gracious to allow me to believe otherwise.”

She could not hide her grin.

“Now,” he said, stepping closer, “if you will favor me with the name of the lovely lady from whom I have nothing to fear, I shall account this quite the best day of my life and be as happy as these sheep. More so, I suspect.”

“Oh, no, sir.” She backed away, schooling her mouth into a line with difficulty. “We have not been properly introduced. And indeed there is no one here who could perform the task.” She nodded toward the contented sheep.

His brow furrowed as though he were pained. “But I must call you by some name.” Abruptly, he brightened. “Choose a name—any name—and whatever it is—Helga, Broomhilde, Vladimir—it shall be all the more resplendent because it is bestowed upon you.”

“
Any
name? I hardly know where to begin.”

“Aha. But I do.” He moved to her and this time she did not retreat. That something in his eyes that made her warm inside trapped her feet in one spot as he touched a single fingertip beneath her chin to lift her face. “I shall call you Isolde, and I shall be your Tristan. Theirs was a happy story, after all.”

“Not the ending. And not at all for the king to whom she was wed,” she said with a wry twist of her lips. Her heartbeat hammered.

He released her and seemed to consider this seriously. He glanced up, his emerald eyes sparking.

“Then, are you wed?”

She laughed. “No!”

“Betrothed?” And here his look seemed to suggest that he was not merely jesting.

She shook her head. “Not remotely. I have not yet enjoyed my first season in society.”

He swept his hand before him. “Then we shall forget the royal husband entirely.”

“But what of the tragic ending?”

“I propose we simply cut it off before it reaches the end.”

“That sounds splendid.” She nodded, laughter bubbling up. “Economical and optimistic.”

“Indeed, propitious.”

“Although perhaps a bit arrogant. I am not certain the medieval author of the story would like us altering it so blithely.”

He waved that away as well. “Arrogance in the service of a happy ending must be tolerated. And, of course, Tristan was a knight. Arrogance was in his blood.”

She cast him a glance as they walked along the fence. Her cousins would look for her. Or perhaps not. They were a large party and the festival extended a great distance from the village. Her absence might not even be noted until the end of the day when they gathered at the carriages to drive back to the house.