A Reckless Desire (14 page)

But of course the single greatest challenge had nothing to do with her acting, and simply everything to do with her. Ever since they'd agreed—and wisely, too—that what had happened that night in his room must never happen again, he had perversely thought of doing exactly that, and much more besides.

It didn't matter that she had behaved in a manner that was completely without fault, a model of propriety. The smallest things about her enticed him: a tiny wisp of hair, escaped from her cap and dancing free against the nape of her neck, the huskiness of her laugh over some canine foolishness by Spot, the way she'd tip back her head to watch the swallows wheel in the sky above the stable, or how her eyes would brighten whenever she smiled at him. She might not have been born with a dancer's rhythm, but the grace was effortlessly there in every beguiling twist and turn of her neatly curving figure. If her hand or arm grazed his by accident, he felt as if he'd touched a burning coal.

He knew she felt the tension, too. He'd seen the unabashed longing in her eyes when she looked at him, and heard the little catch in her breathing whenever they touched, and the small bursts of temper that she'd show during a difficult session he guessed were due more to the frustration of their situation than to any mere words—even words by Shakespeare.

It all combined to make working closely with her day and night the greatest delight and the greatest torment. And then, on the Tuesday morning of the third week, came the lesson that changed everything.

They were in the green parlor as usual. Most of the breakfast things had been cleared away, but both his coffee and her tea remained in case of necessary fortification. Likely they would need it, too, for once again her vowels were presenting their mutual torment.

“Cake, not ‘cyke,' ” he corrected for what seemed like the millionth time. “Can you truly not hear the difference?”

“Ca-a-a-yke,” she said, beginning well but sliding backward into the murkiness, her face screwed up with the effort.

His expression darkened. He would not see this entire project destroyed by a piece of cake.

“Cake, Lucia,” he said. “C-a-a-ake.”

“Ca-a-a-yke,” she said.

He sighed. “C-A-A-AKE.”

“Oh, blast your infernal cake!” she cried, sweeping dramatically from her chair to stalk across the room. She stopped at the window, arms flailing dramatically toward the flowers, while Spot rose and left Rivers's side to go stand by her in sympathy. “Not one person in all the playhouses in London will be as picky as you are, my lord, nor so provoking, either.”

At least she had her grand gestures correct this morning. “Lucia, please. Histrionics such as these accomplish nothing.”

“Vowels be th' very trial, don't they, Spot?” she said to Spot and pointedly not to Rivers, crouching down beside the dog. “We don't care nawt for them, an' t'the very divil they may go.”

“What was that, Lucia?” Rivers said, startled. It wasn't
what
she'd said that surprised him, but the way she'd said it. She'd spoken exactly as the Yorkshire stable boy who was responsible for washing Spot did, imitating his accent flawlessly and without a hint of her own.

“Did y'hear something, Spot?” she said to the dog, whose tail whipped happily at the attention, and perhaps the accent as well. “I dinna, did you?”

“Lucia, look at me,” Rivers said. “Why is it you can copy Ned's accent so perfectly, and yet cannot grasp the proper voice for Ophelia?”

She rose, and slowly turned as he'd bidden.

“Why, my lord?” she said, still cross. “Perhaps it's because I can hear Ned every day, which isn't the way with noble Danish ladies, least not that I've seen.”

“That is not the point,” he said, refusing to let her distract him. “If you spoke like a lady from the Danish royal court, no one in London would understand you, either.”

“Now
there's
the problem, isn't it, my lord.” She grandly flung her arms open. “And isn't it what I've said all along? If they don't know, how can they care?”

“Because they'll want you to sound like a lady,” he insisted. “And you do so have an example to copy. Forget the vowels and everything else. Just imitate me.”

“You, my lord?” That surprised her, and her eyes widened. “Oh, my lord, I couldn't do that. It would be wicked rude of me.”

“No, it wouldn't.” He joined her at the window, determined to discover if the key to correcting her speech could really be this simple. “I've spent my entire life around the royal court and amongst the people there. Copy me, and you'll have Ophelia's accent exactly right.”

She gazed up at him, doubtful. “You are certain of this, my lord? You will not be angry, or take insult?”

“I give you my word that I shall not,” he said. “Go on. Prove to me you can do it.”

“Very well, my lord.” She took a deep breath and turned her back to him, the way she always did when composing herself to perform.

While she did, he realized he was holding his breath, and pointedly let it out. He really didn't know what to expect, given that it was Lucia.

He hadn't long to wait. When she turned around, she'd squared her shoulders and made her chin jut up. She'd puffed out her chest, which was made all the more noticeable by how she clasped her hands behind her waist, and somehow she looked down her nose at him, a rare feat considering how much taller he was than she.

“Do it,” she said, pitching her voice gruff and low. “I expect nothing less from you. Come along, come along, don't tarry.”

He stared at her. The effect was uncanny, and also disturbing. What was he to make of this miniature female version of himself?

She raked one hand back through her hair, ignoring how the gesture pulled her hair half-free and scattered hairpins, and scowled darkly.

“Don't make me wait any further,” she said. “What do you wish of me in return? Damnation, I've already given you my word as a gentleman.”

“I can't possibly sound as pompous as that,” he exclaimed. “Am I really so vastly righteous?”

“
Vastly
righteous,” she repeated with the exact same inflections.

He grunted. “You're grumbling and growling like a wild beast.”

“That's how you sound, my lord,” she protested, reverting to her own voice and accent. “You promised you wouldn't—”

He could see the uncertainty flash across her face, for deep down she understood the importance of this. It was one thing to make a jest of him, but quite another to do this seriously.

“I shall try, my lord,” she said slowly and carefully. “Is this better? Do I sound as you wish me to be?”

“More,” he said, barely containing his excitement.
“ ‘O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!' ”

“ ‘O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!' ”
she said, and grinned. “That's it, my lord, isn't it? I can tell by how you're looking at me. That's what you wanted?”

“I believe it is, Lucia.” Gone were the flattened vowels of Whitechapel, and in their place were the fulsome, rounded ones of St. James's Square. It wasn't quite perfect, but close, very close, and with another week's worth of practice, she'd be able to fool any playhouse audience. “It is.”

She yelped with joy and impulsively threw her arms around his shoulders to hug him. Automatically he pulled her close, unable to resist holding her the way he'd been so desperately longing to. Her breasts crushed against his chest, exactly as he'd remembered, and her waist was small and her hips rounded and her mouth was only inches away from his and
damnation he must not do this.

Reluctantly he disentangled himself from her and set her down, and apart from himself.

“You are, ah, to be congratulated, Mrs. Willow,” he said deliberately. “You have succeeded beyond my highest expectations.”

“I'm sorry, my lord, I didn't mean to do that,” she said in a breathless fluster as she smoothed her hair. “Our arrangement and all.”

“The arrangement.” He cleared his throat momentously, and felt like a fool for doing so. “Of course.”

“Oh, of course, my lord,” she said, making no more sense than he had. “I was—I was
overcome.
”

Overcome
: well, that summed it up, didn't it? Knowing she felt the same as he did wasn't helping his composure one bit. Her cheeks were flushed and her kerchief had slipped just enough that he could see how rapidly her breasts were rising and falling above the stiffened edge of her bodice, and
he must not think of this.

“Let us take the lessons out-of-doors,” he said abruptly. “A brisk walk through the garden will do us both a world of good.”

“Yes, my lord,” she murmured. She was well aware of how much her eyes betrayed her emotions, and she bowed her head to hide them from him now as they stepped through the door and into the garden.

The morning was perfect for June, with brilliant blue skies overhead and a soft breeze in the air. Spot bounded ahead, equally glad to be outside, and clumsily flushed several indignant birds from the hedges. In weighty silence, they walked around the perimeter of the rose garden twice before at last he spoke.

“We shall be traveling to Newbury this afternoon,” he said. They were walking side by side, with him purposefully keeping his hands clasped behind him to keep them from the temptation she represented. “You and I shall have business there.”

She glanced at him sharply. “Business, my lord?”

“Yes.” What with all the overcoming, he'd nearly forgotten the surprise he'd planned for her for this day. “It's high time that Mrs. Willow had some clothes more befitting her station. Mrs. Currie is an accomplished mantua-maker whom even my stepmother has employed on occasion. She will be expecting us.”

She stopped walking, her expression wary. “A mantua-maker is to make new clothes for me, my lord?”

He stopped, too. “Yes, she is,” he said. “Consider it a small celebration in honor of your achievement this morning.”

“That is most kind of you, my lord,” she said slowly, “but I do not believe I should go.”

“Why shouldn't you go?” he asked, surprised and disappointed that she wasn't as pleased as he'd expected. “What woman doesn't enjoy such a shop? I will, of course, take care of the reckoning. You will not be accountable for whatever fripperies you choose, if that is your concern.”

“It is, my lord, but not how you think,” she said darkly, folding her arms over her chest. “It's one thing for me to be here at the Lodge as your guest, but another altogether if I were to accept costly clothes made by a mantua-maker that you have paid for. I'd be no better than every other doxie you've had here, wouldn't I?”

“No, you would not,” he said testily. He knew her well enough to understand that when she folded her arms like that, she meant it as a kind of self-protection, a way of reassuring herself when she was upset. Usually he found the gesture poignant, and it reminded him of how difficult her life had been until now.

But today his obstreperous male brain could only focus on how those folded arms were pressing her breasts upward, in a fashion that he couldn't avoid noticing.

He cleared his throat again, as if that would help. “I should hope that you would realize by now that there has never been the veritable parade of doxies through the Lodge—or through my bed—that you believe. Not even your cousin came here.”

She frowned, unconvinced. “Forgive me, my lord, but the way Mrs. Barber and Sally treat me says I'm not the first woman to have been brought here.”

“There have been one or two,” he admitted. “Most recently there was a most unfortunate mistake with a young woman who behaved more like a ninny than a doxie. Most likely that's what Mrs. Barber recalls. But that does not constitute the raging flock of doxies that you imply.”

She didn't say anything, which was far worse than if she'd raged at him the way Magdalena would have. Why the devil didn't she realize that she was as far removed from that ninny of an apprentice as the moon was from the sun? Behaving honorably in the face of constant temptation to do otherwise had not been easy, and he would have appreciated a bit of acknowledgment for it, especially this morning. Her suspicion had stung his pride, and he was sorry, very sorry that she still didn't trust him despite his best, manful efforts.

“I am purchasing clothes for Mrs. Willow as part of the wager,” he continued, “and not because I expect you—or her—to behave in a doxie-like fashion. Why must you think otherwise?”

She ignored his question. “No obligations at all?” she asked warily. “I know you paid my cousin's mantua-maker's bills for a time, and the lace-maker's, and the stay-maker's, and even her plume-maker's, and I know what you received in return.”

He kicked his boot at the graveled path in frustration, and Spot skittered ahead, ready to chase the flying small rocks.

“What I expect to receive in return for buying you clothes, and stays, and laces, and even plumes, if you desire them, is the sum of the winning wager, payable by Everett,” he said with excruciating patience. “I consider the purchases part and parcel of creating the actress known as Mrs. Willow. She requires the proper costuming for her role. You can't very well present yourself to a stage manager dressed as you are.”

He had wanted to sound patient; instead he realized he was sounding merely disgruntled and a little petulant, neither of which were agreeable qualities, and he kicked the gravel again.

He heard her sigh beside him, doubtless at how pathetically unmanly he was being.

“Forgive me, my lord,” she said at last, her voice small and contrite. “You are right, and I am wrong. If you had merely wished to seduce me, then you would have done it by now. You would have done it just now, in the parlor. You could have ravished me then and there, yet you didn't. If that was all you wanted from me, you wouldn't have bothered with correcting my vowels.”