Amanda McCabe (19 page)

He picked up the top paper, the closest he had come to a final version. It was still far from perfect, but he
did
like the title—“A Kiss by Moonlight.” Perhaps, one day, when it was polished properly, he would give it as a gift to Rosalind. Then she would know his feelings for her in a way that no spoken words could express.

Michael laughed, and tossed the poem back down onto the desk. Maybe by then he would know what those feelings were himself.

Right now, he only knew that that one kiss had affected him in ways he had never known before. No other woman, no matter how beautiful, how passionate, could compare to his tall, redheaded schoolmistress.

And he could not wait until he saw her again.

He caught up his hat and walking stick, and ran down the stairs to where his manservant waited with the phaeton.

“Lord Morley is calling for Mrs. Chase, Your Grace,” the Waylands’s butler announced.

“Thank you,” Georgina said, and calmly turned the page of her book.

Rosalind, though, felt no such serenity. She dropped the embroidery she had not really been working on and leaped to her feet. Surely he was early! This could not yet be time for their drive.

She glanced wildly to the clock on the fireplace mantel. It was indeed the scheduled time for their outing, and she had no opportunity to go upstairs and change her gown again.

Her hands flew to her hair, which Georgina’s lady’s maid had arranged in a stylish tumble of curls. “Perhaps I should…” she began.

“No, Rosie!” Georgina interrupted sternly. “Your hair looks lovely. You mustn’t change it.” She put aside her book, and came to draw Rosalind’s hands down before she could ruin the coiffure. “You look lovely, and you are going to have a splendid time this afternoon.”

Rosalind left off with her hair, and plucked at the lace trim on the sleeves of her mulberry-colored carriage dress. “Will I?”

“Yes,” Georgina said firmly. “You will drive in the park, and forget all about your book and your silly brother. What is wrong with you, Rosie? I have never seen you so—so
fidgety
before.”

Rosalind did not know what was wrong with her.

There was no time to figure it out, though, for the butler was ushering Lord Morley—Michael—into the drawing room.

The park was not yet crowded, it being too early to be truly fashionable. The green spaces were mostly peopled by children with their watchful nannies, footmen walking pampered dogs, and couples who wanted a modicum of privacy.

Just like Lord Morley and herself, Rosalind realized
with a start of surprise. She had never thought to find herself seeking a quiet corner with a handsome young man, just as she had never imagined driving through a London park in a dashing phaeton, wearing a fashionable bonnet. The unlikelihood of this whole scenario happening to
her
made her laugh aloud.

Michael turned to her, one brow raised inquiringly. “Something amusing, Mrs. Chase?”

“Oh, yes,” Rosalind answered. She felt oddly giddy, despite what she had to tell him today. These few moments in the springtime sunlight were unlike any she had ever known before or was likely to know again. All too soon, it would be vanished, like a sweetly remembered dream, and she would be back in her office at the Seminary wearing her caps and planning the new term. There was precious little romance there, amid all her cherished safety.

She should enjoy these moments while she had them, and come away knowing she had been honest with him. Honest about
some
things—she would tell him about
A Lady’s Rules
and perhaps even her troubles over Allen and his loans. After all, he had truly proven to be a help with her brother, and seemed to have given up his utter hostility to the rules. But she would never,
could
never, tell him of her new feelings for him. Her desire to look foolish only went so far.

“This whole afternoon, no, this whole time in Town, has been amusing,” she said. “It has all been so very unexpected. I will have something to remember when I return to the Seminary.”

“Must you return there very soon?” he asked. He drew up the phaeton at the edge of a small pond, where they could watch ducks paddling by and children playing with their toy boats.

Rosalind sighed, both at the loveliness of the scene and knowledge of how quickly she would have to leave it. “Yes, quite soon. The new term will be starting, and I have to make sure all will be in preparation when the girls return.”

“Violet will miss you very much,” he said, his voice hoarse.

She dared not look at him, not directly. She feared all her emotions could be seen in her eyes. So she watched his gloved hand as he wrapped the reins about it. “But I will see her very soon, surely. Unless your father decides to end her enrollment. I do think…” She broke off, unable to say more.

Michael’s free hand reached out suddenly to touch her arm. His clasp was warm through the muslin of her sleeve. Rosalind stared up at him, startled.

“You care about my sister, do you not, Mrs. Chase?” he said.

“Of course I do. Lady Violet has such a sweetness about her, I do not see how anyone could
not
care about her,” Rosalind said. She did
not
tell him of the baby she had once lost, early in her marriage, and how she sometimes fancied that, had the child been a girl, she would have been a bit like Violet. Kind-hearted, sunny, pretty. That would sound too silly and sentimental, if said aloud. It was a secret of her own heart—one of many.

His hand slid away from her arm, and she found she missed his reassuring warmth. “Then Violet will be fine. She admires you so very much. I hope you will always stand as her friend, once she has left your school.”

That seemed to be a sign that she had to tell him now—tell him some of those secrets she held.
You must begin as you mean to go on
, she told herself. And she meant to go forward in honesty now. She turned to face him, and blurted out, “
We
are friends, are we not?”

He seemed startled, but also very pleased. He gave her a slow smile, and said, “I hope we are. I would like so much to be your friend, Mrs. Chase, though I fear we started on the wrong foot. I behaved like a lout on that first day I came to see Violet at your school, and I fear I have not always been the greatest
of gentlemen toward you since. I hope we can begin again?”

“Exactly!” Rosalind cried in relief that he understood her—understood her thus far, anyway. She feared that anyone as liberal-minded as he was might not understand her authorship of the
Rules.
“And friends—true friends—are honest with one another, correct?”

His smile dimmed a bit, but he nodded. “Yes.”

“Then, as your friend, I must tell you something about myself.”

Michael laughed. There seemed a strange mixture of disbelief and relief in the sound, with a tincture of light mockery that made her frown. This was a
serious
business! He rubbed his gloved hand along his jaw, and said, “You have dark secrets, Mrs. Chase? I can scarcely wait to hear them.”

Rosalind turned away from him, blindly watching the people strolling along the edge of the pond. “I never said they were dark. I am not ashamed of them. They are simply the sort of matters that true friends share.”

“Very well, then, Mrs. Chase. What are these—matters? I do truly want to hear them.”

She took a deep, steadying breath, and folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking—and to hold herself down, so she would not leap from the phaeton and run away. “I had a very specific reason for coming to London, you see. And it was not just to visit my friend. It—well, it had to do with you, in a way.”

“With me?”

“Yes. You see, Lord Morley, I wrote
A Lady’s Rules for Proper Behavior
, and I had heard that you were breaking them all over the place. I had to find out for myself, because…” Rosalind broke off before she told him all about Allen’s debts and her financial woes. One confession at a time seemed quite sufficient. She closed her eyes, and waited for his reaction.

His reaction was—silence. The other noises around
them, of children laughing, water splashing, wheels grinding on the pathway, were amplified in the strange quiet.

Slowly, uncertainly, Rosalind opened her eyes and glanced over at Michael.

His handsome face was utterly expressionless as he stared straight ahead. Then, as she watched, he began to laugh. At first it was a strange, startled chuckle, but it quickly became a deep, rollicking guffaw. He bent over, clutching at his sides as if they ached with so much laughter. The horses shifted restlessly, and children turned to stare at them.

Well!
Rosalind thought with a huff. She turned away from him again. Here she had told the man one of her deepest secrets, and what did he do? He laughed.
Laughed!

She was not sure what to do now. She was not much accustomed to being laughed at.

“It is not so funny as all that,” she murmured. “Many people think I have important advice to impart.”

She felt his touch on her arm, gentle yet insistent, and she stared down to see his dark glove against the lace of her sleeve. She did not yet dare peer up at his face, for fear of what she might see there. She did not think she could face ridicule right now. Not from him. Not when she had dared to let herself begin to feel close to him.

“My dear Mrs. Chase—Rosalind,” he said. His voice was thick with his laughter, but there was no hint of mockery. He sounded beseeching. “Please forgive my laughter. That was unspeakably rude of me. No doubt against several rules.”

So he
was
making fun of her! Rosalind tried to shrug off his hand, but his clasp was too strong. “Really, Lord Morley…”

“No, no, I am sorry. It is just that I feel so foolish for not guessing this before. It all makes such perfect sense.”

Rosalind relented just a bit, ceasing her struggle to pull away. “What does?”

“How very proper you are, how insistent on following the rules. How you make certain every girl at your school has a copy of the book and learns to follow them, as well.”

“I do
not
make the girls read the book simply because I wrote it. It is very important that they follow rules for proper behavior in Society, so that nothing ill befalls them because of their youth and inexperience. There are many unscrupulous young men who would take advantage of that.”

“I know that you believe all that, Rosalind, and I admire you for it. Even a pagan like myself should behave properly, eh?” His hand slid down her arm to her fingers, which he lifted to his lips for a lingering kiss.

Rosalind shivered at the warm-cold sensations of that kiss, at the prickles of delight that went down to her very toes. He was indeed a pagan, a veritable Dionysus who tempted her to fall to his depths, to take off her shoes and run through the warm grass. To lie back in the golden glow of the sun and bask in kisses…

No!
She could not think such things. Not right now. She removed her hand from his clasp, and placed it back on her lap. “Even pagans must behave with civility now and then, Lord Morley. Perhaps I will convert you yet.”

“Before
I
can convert
you
?” He leaned closer, and whispered warmly in her ear, “Neither of us were thinking of the rules last night on that terrace, were we?”

Rosalind felt a flood of red heat spread from her cheeks, down her neck into her very soul. That was verily the truth. The rules had been the very last thing she was thinking of last night. All she had been thinking of was
him
, his taste, his feel.

“A gentleman would not bring up such a thing,” she whispered back. She felt like such a ninny saying a prissy thing like that, but it was all she could think
of. Her mind could not recall such mundane things as words and string them together in ways that made sense.

“Ah, well. I think we have established that I am not a true gentleman.” He sat back lazily in the phaeton seat, one arm casually stretched along behind her shoulders. “But I hope I do not have an evil heart. I would never wish harm to you, Rosalind, and I apologize if my actions have hurt you in any way. Both last night, and in my dealings with your book.”

Rosalind studied him closely. His dark eyes, usually alight with some mischief or delight, were uncharacteristically somber, his sensual lips downturned at the corners. He seemed truly sincere in his apology. “Thank you, Lord Morley.”

“And, since you have been so very honest with me, I have a confession of my own to make.”

A confession of his own? Rosalind felt the sudden chill of apprehension. Surely any confession of his would be far more scandalous than any of hers could be! “What is it you wish to tell me, Lord Morley?”

“First, that you should cease to call me Lord Morley. It seems ridiculous, when we are to know each other’s deepest secrets. My name, as you well know, is Michael.”

She nodded slowly, but in her mind she resolved to wait until
after
she heard his confession to decide what she would call him.

“It is really rather funny when you think about it,” he said, with an attempt at his usual careless grin.

“And it makes me feel quite foolish, like some bored schoolboy.”

A schoolboy? That was one thing Rosalind would
never
think to compare him to. But now she fairly itched to know what his secret could be. She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging nod.

“One evening, at my club, I saw your brother and two of his friends, Lord Carteret and Mr. Gilmore. I believe you know them?”

Those two loobies.
“Oh, yes. I know them.”

“We were talking, and the conversation came around to
A Lady’s Rules.
Your rules.”

“What about them?”

“Oh, just how they are everywhere, and everyone is so very eager to follow them. You see, I fear the young men had been tossed out of a rout because of some small infraction of the rules. I stated that that did not seem like fair dealing, and someone—I believe it was Carteret—proposed a small wager. Since I had imbibed rather freely of some excellent port that evening, and was feeling rather out of sorts, I agreed.”