Dair Devil (24 page)

Rory cocked her head and said pensively, “Perhaps that bothers you more than it does them…”

This forced from him a reluctant laugh. “Yes, perhaps it does…” He glanced over at the two older Banks women. “Lil’s mother was the family wet nurse, then nursery maid; her father was a gardener on the estate… That is, until the unthinkable happened—”

“You fell in love with Lily Banks.”

Dair put down his fork, pushed his plate away and took up his tumbler. He drained the cup. She sensed he was about to confide something in her, but the sudden commotion at his back forestalled him and the moment was lost. He scraped back his chair, Lily Banks scooped up her baby, and a tall thin boy ran up to be crushed in his father’s embrace.

There wasn’t a dry eye on the terrace at this loving reunion between father and son; even Rory was quick to dab tears away before anyone noticed.

The hubbub brought the older Banks women scrambling off the wall and bustling to the table. They embraced Jamie’s father. Mother Banks took Dair’s handsome face between her hands and heartily kissed his forehead before enveloping him in a crushing embrace. Dair laughed when she scolded him for not alerting them to his presence, nodded obediently when she enquired if he had enough to eat, and grinned when she said it was just as well because she did not want him dying of hunger after surviving all those years as a soldier. She had a vested interest in his welfare. After all, she had been his principal source of nourishment from birth until two years. Whereupon Lily Banks told her mother to hush, and that she made the same observation every time Al (for that was what Lily called the Major) came to visit after one of his long spells away. And this last spell had been all of five weeks.

Dair took the attention in his stride, laughing and grinning and shaking his head at the women, before drawing his son to sit on his knee to tell him all about his birthday.

“I do always say it, too,” Mother Banks confided to Rory as she eased herself onto a chair as a pinch-faced maid put a fresh cup of tea before her. “But I ask you, Miss Talbot, why shouldn’t I say it? I’m proud his lordship has grown into a mountain of a man. What wet nurse wouldn’t be? He was not a big baby. There was a time, just after he was born, when his father worried he wouldn’t survive. But I told the Earl I’d get his heir through his first year, and I did. Truth told,” she added in a confidential undertone, pulling her shawl closer about her round shoulders and leaning in to Rory’s chair, “I’m not surprised he was such a scrawny baby. Starved, of nourishment and affection. The Countess was a cold woman
in every sense
. Loathed the begetting, the birthing,
and
the feeding of children. That’s God’s honest truth!”

“
Mother
! Miss Talbot is unused to such conversation. She is a
lady
,” Lily Banks whispered fiercely, an eye to the Major, who was holding his son’s hands and attentively listening to the boy’s wide-eyed recounting of his visit with the Duchess of Kinross in the opulent interior of her carriage. “I dare say she is not only embarrassed, but offended, too. Poor Miss Talbot came here to speak to Mr. Humphrey about pineapples, not hear your stories about Al as a baby. Forgive my mother, Miss Talbot. Mr. Humphrey should be here directly. I don’t know what is still keeping him…”

Rory smiled and swallowed and hoped her face was not the color of beetroot; Mother Banks’s eye-opening revelations would have knocked her brother off his seat with shocked mortification. He certainly would have used them as a prime example of why he had not wished his sister exposed to the crude sensibilities of the Banks family. But watching the Major and his son interact, the obvious love they had for each other, indeed the entire Banks clan’s great affection for Lord Fitzstuart, and his affection of them, was a balm to her finer feelings. For how could she truly be offended by Mother Banks’s truthfulness when couched with the warmth of feeling she had for the Major? Besides, her own behavior was wanting, for if she had stared at Lily Banks’s beauty when she first saw her, she stared twice as hard now at the beautiful boy with the mop of dark red curls who had his father’s dark eyes. Oh, Jamie Banks would break hearts just like his father when he was old enough…

“Miss Talbot…?”

It was the Major. He brought her out of her abstraction, an arm about his son’s shoulders. “Jamie, this is Grasby’s sister, Miss Talbot. You remember Lord Grasby—he accompanied us to Mr. Pleasant’s shooting box…”

“Grasby? Yes, I remember Grasby.” The boy made Rory a quaint little bow and said solemnly, “How do you do, Miss Talbot?”

“I am very well, Jamie. May I call you Jamie?”

The boy smiled. “Everyone does.”

“I should like to see your microscope one day, if you will allow me.”

The boy’s eyes lit up. “Would you? Mr. George Adams of Fleet Street made it,” he said with awe. “He makes the best microscopes. It’s brass and has
three
Lieberkuhn objectives, so I have both a compound body and a simple magnifier. And it all comes apart and fits into this big wooden case…” He looked up at his father. “May I show her, Papa? May I?”

“Of course. But not today. Miss Talbot must leave us now, and you need to eat the rest of what you left on your plate. But before you finish off your nuncheon,” he added, picking up Grasby’s frock coat, “please take this to Lord Grasby and tell him not to wait. I’ll bring Miss Talbot to him.”

Rory was about to enquire why his lordship was terminating not only her visit but her brother’s involvement in the game of cricket, when the Major turned away to speak with a rotund gentleman in bagwig and spectacles who had just stepped onto the terrace from the house. Their conversation was brief and then the gentleman followed Jamie down the terrace steps to the lawn. Rory watched his progress and sat up when three figures on the edge of the lawn came into view. Jamie was still holding her brother’s frock coat; Grasby had his back to the cricket game, hands on his hips, while the third figure was slightly bent forward with his hands clasped, as if in supplication, yet he was the one doing all the talking. It was one of the footmen from the shallop, and by his stance, and her brother’s arms akimbo, she was certain the servant was giving Grasby an earful of complaints, courtesy of Lady Grasby.

F
IFTEEN

D 
AIR
PUT
OUT
his hand to Rory. “Come. Let me help you up.”

She removed her feet from the footstool and he kicked it out of the way with the toe of his boot. Helping her to her feet, he held her hand until she was steady and leaning on her stick.

“Did you come by carriage?”

“No. My grandfather’s shallop.”

“By river? How pleasant for you. The return journey should give you ample time to have a full and frank discussion with Mr. Humphrey about your pineapple flower—your first, I believe?”

“You remembered the flower?”

“You dropped a treatise on gardening at my feet, and you were so excited. If it is possible for blue eyes to shine, they were shining then. I gather the plant does not flower often?”

“Crawford and I have waited two years to see one. A flower means a pineapple fruit is not far away.”

“Then it is rare and something to be animated about. I hope Mr. Humphrey’s advice is useful. Now please give your stick to Mrs. Banks.” When she hesitated, he smiled. “You’ll get it back.” Done as requested, he took a step away, still holding her hand, and looked her up and down, gaze pausing at the point of her beribboned bodice that highlighted her small waist. “If I’m not mistaken, under those fetching flowered petticoats are a set of light-weight panniers?”

“Yes. But—”

“No buts, Miss Talbot. I am now going to pick you up. As I do so, please bunch up your petticoats to collapse the panniers. It will make my task that much easier. Mrs. Banks will then return your stick, which you will hold without accosting me, and I shall then carry you to your barge. Understood?”

“Yes. But—”

He didn’t wait to hear her excuses. He effortlessly lifted her and she quickly did as he asked, Lily Banks coming to her aid to brush down the layers of light cotton over Rory’s stockinged shins. She was then handed her stick. Hurried farewells and thank-yous exchanged, Dair strode off across the terrace towards the trees that provided privacy between the south wall and the Physic Garden. But he had not gone more than fifty paces when he stopped under the shade of a spreading oak.

“Miss Talbot, if I am to deliver you to your barge without incident, you need to be supple in my arms. Not a plank of wood, for that is what I am carrying at the moment.”

“I can walk!”

“You can. But not in your present state. Mrs. Banks mentioned you have blistered your feet. I’d wager you’re stubborn enough to still walk, just to spite me. But don’t think of yourself, think of your brother. In the time it would take you to walk back to the barge, I fear Grasby may have jumped overboard and be lost to the tangle of Thames reeds. I gather her ladyship is aboard your vessel?”

“Yes. And most reluctantly, too. Harvel and I left her and Mr. Watkins alone for quite some time…”

“Thank you.”

Rory tilted her head to look at him. His face was so close she could see the individual hairs of the beard covering his cheeks and jaw. It was black, like the hair that fell across his brow… Like the hairs on his chest… With the light browning to his skin he did indeed look the pirate.

“Thank me? For what, pray?”

“For not bringing her ladyship and Weasel up to Banks House.”

“Oh, they’d not have come within a hundred feet of the place! Oh! That was—”

“—the truth. I’m surprised Grasby gave you permission to do so.”

“He didn’t. But he could not stop me.”

He chuckled.

She smiled, liking the sound.

“Of that I have no doubt. You’re a determined little thing, aren’t you?”

“I was invited—invited to Banks House…”

He did not hesitate in his response, and sounded surprised.

“Were you?”

“Yes. But… But I won’t tell you who invited me because you would be more than surprised. You would be shocked.”

“Would I? I am not a man easily shocked, Miss Talbot.”

“That I believe. You must have had some horrifying experiences while in the army.”

“Yes.”

He set off again and had only gone a few yards when she said quietly,

“I hope I’m not too much of a burden.”

“None at all. I’ve carried wounded soldiers from a battlefield. Believe me, when men are dead or dying, they are twice their weight. You, Miss Talbot, are as light as a fairy’s gossamer wings.”

“I apologize.”

“Apologize…?”

He tried to see her face but she looked away, a quantity of hair having escaped from an enameled hair clasp falling across her brow. He had no way of knowing her mood. What he did know was that he liked having her in his arms again, very much. Yet, the sensation was also oddly disconcerting, as if he had no right and no reason to hold her. There seemed to be nothing of her. She was delicately-boned, small-breasted, and he wondered if under the yards of glazed cotton she had any curves at all. Why did she befuddle him so? Why, when he had stepped onto the terrace, and discovered her sitting there in her pretty flowered petticoats, was he overwhelmed with the desire to scoop her up and kiss her?

Why did she feel she had to apologize? God he hoped she wasn’t going to mention the night at Romney’s studio. If she did, he would have to lie to her again and plead complete drunken ignorance, as he had promised her grandfather he would. And that was another thing that bewildered him. He was uncomfortable with the thought of lying to her, of keeping up the subterfuge of indifferent dolt. For the first time in many years he had no wish to play-act. He just wanted to be himself; to be himself
with
her.

When she shifted slightly in his arms, interrupting his thoughts, he caught the faint perfume of lavender in her hair mingled with the scent of vanilla from her warm skin. It was such an evocative scent it shot a quiver of need straight from his nostrils to his loins, and nothing had stirred there since the last time he had held her. Alarmingly, his bewildered brain was not the only organ gone soft!

With just over a month abroad, and a bevy of curvaceous talent offering themselves to him each night, he had had ample opportunity to forget Aurora Talbot, to reassure himself he was still a fully-functioning male capable of satisfying any woman. So why had he elected to sleep cold and alone while in Lisbon? How had it come to pass that he had returned to English soil in the same emasculated condition he had left it, a non-functioning male; for all intents and purposes, a eunuch?

This shameful state of affairs could not be allowed to continue or he would go mad. And he reasoned there was only one cure. If he kissed Aurora Talbot again, he would be able to satisfy himself that the kiss shared at Romney’s studio had been a whim and nothing special. He did not want it to be special; it could not be anything but ordinary. There was no room in his life for sentiment, particularly with a gently-bred female from within his own social circle. Sentiment carried with it the expectation of marriage, an institution he reviled. After witnessing years of his parents’ hate-filled union, he had sworn never to succumb to the oxymoron that was “wedded bliss.” It might do for his brother Charlie, but Charlie was younger. Charlie had not seen the violence and vitriol of two people trapped in a marriage neither could escape. Charlie was not the heir; not the one their mother had confided in, to whom she had pinned all her hopes and expectations; not the one their father played as if he were a marionette, using marriage as a lure and a penance for his own sins.

One kiss shared with Aurora Talbot and he would be satisfied that he was no more or no less attracted to her than he was to any pretty female who caught his wandering eye. One kiss, and his life would return to its previous untroubled state before the incident at Romney’s studio, where he was able to fall into bed with a certain sort of female, make love with mutual abandon and satisfaction, then move on to the next beautiful nymph who gave him a come-hither smile—no questions asked, and no expectations of anything other than what it was, for either party.