Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) (3 page)

Of course, he and Mary were children no longer.

Mary was nearly as slender as she’d been back then, though taller, and with a subtle curve to her backside that hadn’t been there before. It was harder to discern if her bosom was still flat—her unflattering dress was too shapeless in the bodice to reveal much, but he supposed there must be some change since girlhood. And he, of course, was a man now, not a boy—a man with quite a lot of experience doing interesting things with women’s bodies, plump-chested or otherwise, that he’d never have dreamed of in those trout-fishing, newt-hunting days.

He knew Mary still spent time in the woods. She’d become the local schoolmistress, but didn’t confine her young charges to the schoolroom. He’d happened upon the little group outdoors several times since he’d returned home, sitting in a circle under a spreading oak while she read to them, or rambling in the woods looking for prints left by foxes or deer.

There was still something of the wild creature in Mary, even with her fiercely bound hair and her straight spine and her very sensible shoes.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if perhaps it wasn’t entirely appropriate for the two of them to be spending so much time alone together, especially out here in the woods, where the strict rules of civilized life felt rather less binding.

Even if their association now was all in the name of Serious Good Works.

Even if Mary had not a single flirtatious bone in her body.

Just now, she was using the walking stick she’d borrowed from him to clear a path through the underbrush before them, smacking aside the greenery with wonderful vigor.

“Will you not let me take the lead, Miss Wilkins?” he offered, the use of her formal name still awkward on his tongue. “I could clear those branches for you.”

“No thank you, my lord,” she answered without turning. “I must keep my eyes out for the head of the stream I found up here last spring. Your steward refuses to believe me when I say it runs underground here and down the hill towards the Clarkston Road, but I’ve seen where it disappears into the rocks, and heard it gurgling all along the hillside here when I’ve pressed my ears to the ground.”

John had to suppress a chuckle. “Have you, indeed?” He could imagine Mary laying flat in the leaves and mosses doing just that.

She was almost a different species from the four well-coifed daughters of Lord Lawton, who seemed to flutter about him at every possible opportunity now that he’d returned to Birchford. He couldn’t imagine any of
them
risking their fine muslins in a search for an underground spring. And if any of them had the strength to swing a stick like Mary Wilkins did, they’d rather die than let him know it.

How many hours of each day did the Misses Lawton spend arranging all their skirts and ribbons and artfully spun blonde curls? Did they have causes they cherished beyond the quest to finish yet another bonnet with bows and silk flowers and those horrid little stuffed finches of which they all seemed so gruesomely fond?

As for conversation, they had little that didn’t involve dissolving in fits of trilling giggles at the slightest joke he made. In truth, they giggled even when he said something serious. He wasn’t entirely certain they could tell the difference.

The worst part was, he had to marry one of them.

His mother, the dowager viscountess, reminded him almost daily of the promise he’d made to his late father—a promise half the county seemed aware of—that he’d settle on one of the four pretty daughters of his father’s dearest old friend.

Everyone also was aware of the fine, fat, unentailed swath of land marching alongside the Parkhurst estate that was meant to sweeten the deal, as an addition to the dowry of whichever Lawton daughter became the next viscountess. His mother, his late father, his uncles, and his steward had drummed into his head for years that it was his responsibility to the estate to get hold of that property, to enhance the fortunes of Parkhursts for generations to come.

Besides which, they all told him, the Lawton girls were famously lovely, and any man would be glad to take one as his bride.

John felt a distinct need to have his walking stick back so he could smack a few bits of greenery himself.

The Lawton girls were lovely, yes, but about as interesting as plates of bone china.

He’d much rather spend his time tromping about with Mary Wilkins, who at the moment was handily whacking down a thick old gnarl of blackberry vine that dared to block her path.

“Up here just a little way more,” she said. “Old Mr. Dockett the diviner tells me he thinks I’m quite right about the stream, and wishes his legs would still carry him up here to look for it. Imagine the well we could dig if we follow its path back down the hill.”

“I’m sure it will be the most excellent well in the county.”

“It shall be!”

“And who needs Mr. Dockett when we have a sylvan nymph like you to lead the way?”

Mary whirled around then, a tense expression on her face. “Are you making fun of me, my lord?”

He stopped short. He wasn’t quite sure what had possessed him to say something so whimsical. Once upon a time, of course, they’d spoken playfully to each other all the day long, but that was years ago, when they could scarcely imagine she’d ever actually address him as
my lord
.

“No, Miss Wilkins,” he said hastily. “Not at all. Never. I quite admire your spirit.”

To his surprise, she blushed then. The pink was quite startlingly vivid on her normally pale cheeks, and made her grey eyes brighten.

He was very grateful, just at that moment, for the drab sack of a dress she wore, and for the meagerness of her bosom, because something about that unexpected wash of color caused an equally unexpected pang of interest in the region of his loins.

Dear Lord
.

Now
that
was an impulse he could not consider giving way to. Mary Wilkins was the daughter of a clergyman, for pity’s sake. The current vicar’s sister. A virtuous woman. A woman given to Acts of Charity, not Acts of Carnal Sin.

And he was a man soon to become engaged to a lady of fashion.

“Forgive me,” he said, hoping that would put an end to the tension—in all its forms. “I’m sure we shall find your stream very soon if we just press on.”

Her mouth pursed. For a moment he thought she might say something more, but instead she said, “Yes,” in a very brusque tone, and turned back on her way.

Everything might have gone just fine between them after that had Miss Wilkins not, for just one fateful moment, overestimated her ability to bully the blackberry vines.

Spring was coming on fast, and the fierce, thick green shoots were thrusting everywhere, forcing their way heedlessly through shrubs and trees and between the clefts of rocks. Miss Wilkins passed a bit too close to a particularly dense stand of their thorny growth.

She’d been moving forward at a fast clip, and all at once she jerked to a stop.

“Blast!” she said. “I’ve been snagged!”

She began tugging at the region of her skirts that was caught in the twisting thorns, but managed in the process to get her sleeve snared by yet another vine.

“Hold still, Miss Wilkins,” he urged her. “I’ll get you loose.”

“No!” she cried. “No need! Stand back, Lord Parkhurst!” And she pulled harder at her restraints, which only seemed to shake loose other vines from the vast green tangle, so more long tentacles full of thorns whipped around her, catching her clothing in several places, and even the side of her hair.

“Blast!” she said again, and her cheeks colored once more. The vines now held her in a slightly contorted posture, one that bent her forward, bringing that subtle curve to her backside into more prominent sight.

Damn
.

John’s loins were definitely reacting, and the fact that Mary let loose with one or two more choice exclamations a clergyman’s daughter probably should not have uttered in a gentleman’s presence was not particularly helping.

A gentleman. He was a
gentleman
, and he couldn’t afford to forget it.

He was not going to think about her backside, and he was certainly not going to pay attention to the fact that her breathing had become more rapid or that the pinkish color in her cheeks now spread to her long, bare throat.

“Please, Miss Wilkins,” he said. “Hold very still, and I’ll have you free in just a moment.” And if any fanciful thoughts came into his head that she was rather like an imperiled princess in a fairy tale, and he was the noble prince come to her rescue, he was going to crush those thoughts immediately.

Unfortunately, the vines had her pinned all along one side, and he didn’t dare get closer to the general mass of them, lest he be snagged himself, so he had to contort himself to try to free her. Which required his forearms to press against the backs of her legs as he reached around her, and even brought his face into proximity with that intriguing backside he was working so hard not to think about.

And damned if she didn’t smell rather delicious—clean, natural, without a trace of perfume, only the slight tang of exertion from their long climb, and a scent of womanly flesh that made him want to breathe her in more fully.

He needed to get away from her, and soon, before he started actively sniffing at her, like a mongrel after a bitch.

But freeing her wasn’t a quick job: every move set the whole network swaying, so half the time, when he got a bit of her loose, the vines shifted and caught her somewhere else. If women wore breeches, his job would have been easier, but there were folds of fabric everywhere around her, especially in that loose sack of a dress.

At one point, a particularly springy shoot he freed bounced upwards and speared a new bit of fabric on the way, lifting the hem of her skirt, baring her ankle and several inches of long, white, surprisingly shapely leg.

His cock pulsed and stiffened almost instantly.

Which was going to make standing upright again quite a bit more awkward.

Mary gasped as the breeze hit her skin, surely embarrassed by being exposed to his gaze, so in desperation he gripped the vine to tear it free, stabbing his fingers and tearing a small rent in her hem.

At least he got that one bit of fabric loose, and her leg was properly covered again.

But Mary had jumped rather violently in her own panicked effort to free her skirts, and now she cried, “Ouch! My hair!”

He looked up to find a thick vine arching above her, pulling long strands out of the tight coil on her scalp as it strained upwards, doubtless causing her quite a bit of pain.

To stop the pressure, he grasped her hair as near to her scalp as he could, then used the fingers of the other hand to tease the captured strands loose.

They were lovely strands, he discovered.

The color looked dull wrapped at the base of her skull, but the loose strands in the sunlight were warm, reddish-brown, rather like the color of good brandy. And surprisingly silky to the touch.

What would her hair look like if it were all loose, curling down around her hips?

No. He
definitely
wasn’t going to think about that.

He eased the loose curls down against her cheek, careful to keep them away from the blackberry branches. Her face looked far softer with waves of brandy-colored hair resting against it.

Softer, and…warmer.

With her grey eyes suddenly looking very bright indeed.

His gaze fell quite unbidden to her mouth, which was also a good deal rosier than he remembered.

“John,” she said again, more softly. She was looking at him too, her gaze vague and unfocused. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and her lips were parting. “John.”

He was breathing faster too.

John. She was calling him
John
. For the first time in years.

No one had called him by that name since his father died, not even his own mother, to whom he was always Parkhurst now. The sound of his name on Mary’s lips moved something in his chest. He felt as if he were….loosening inside.

Not to mention that he was still staring at her lips, and his blood was heating quite precipitously, and his cock was stirring to full attention against the fall of his trousers.

“Mary,” he said, though he had no conscious intention at all of saying her name.

Oh, this was bad—this was very, very bad.

This was
Mary Wilkins
he was having lustful inclinations towards.

Mary Wilkins, the old vicar’s daughter, the current vicar’s sister. Not a woman to toy with, but also not a woman a viscount had any business paying serious court to—especially not a viscount all-but-affianced to one of the daughters of his late father’s best friend.

Mary seemed to realize just as he did that they were on the verge of something they would both regret, because she jerked her head away from where his hand—he realized just now—was cupping her cheek, and the gauzy look cleared from her eyes.

With a wrench, she tried to pull her sleeve loose from the vine that held it fast, but that only resulted in setting the whole mass swinging again.