Elisabeth Fairchild (3 page)

Unnecessary heroics. She had the pony well in hand by the time he reached her. His hasty approach only set the smaller animal sidling and buck-hopping again.

Alexander reined in the gray, and watched as Miss Touch-me-not soothed the beast with gentle words and firm hands.

“Again, I see you’ve no need of my assistance,” he said, low-voiced, wondering if he was ever to know her name.

She nodded, the bonnet brim hiding her face, those eyes.

Behind him, the crowd fell still. Surprised, he turned to meet a hushed strangeness: a closed quality in the faces of the women, a keen watchfulness in the men.

“Miss Foster!” The vicar cried out, voice uneven. “Shall we add your name to the hat?”

Nervousness flickered in the amethyst eyes. A strangely wordless creature, this Miss Foster. Fragile, he thought. Easily broken. He found his gaze drawn to her again and again as he doffed his hat and turned the gray, returning to Oscar’s side, sliding looks following him from those assembled, whispers passing furtively behind raised hands.

“Penny Foster,” the vicar repeated as the lad added another slip of paper to the hat. “In she goes,” he said. “Now stir it up well, Thomas.”

The urchin plunged in his hand and made enthusiastic revolutions.

“And the first pair of Valentine’s is . . . ” The vicar plucked from the hat, paused to unfold, to squint through his spectacles, paper fluttering. “Why. It is Penny Foster, and none other than . . . what does that say, lad?”

“Cupid!” the lad piped.

Over a sea of heads, their gazes met, as they had on the road, hers wary. Her cheeks flushed and she raised her chin, as if to block an oncoming blow.

“Cheap  cherubim, to be had for a penny,” Val called sarcastically.

Laughter rippled.

“You’ve not stirred them enough, vicar,” a woman’s complaint drew mumbled agreement from the crowd.

“What in the world has Val gotten us into?” Alexander asked.

Oscar chuckled. “Your line of work, Cupid, not mine.”

“Shall I try again, then?” the vicar asked uncertainly.

Was it disappointment, or relief, flickered across Miss Foster’s features? The vicar returned the slips to the hat, made a great show of tossing its contents most thoroughly, holding it out, in the end, to the lad, who dug his hand deep, and emerged clutching two fresh bits of paper.

“Go on, Tom. Read them out.”

Tom opened the slips and laughed.

“Don’t be silly, lad.” The vicar said. “Give us the names.”

Tom laughed again.

“Oh, give them over, boy. We’ve a hatful yet to draw.” The vicar snatched them from his grasp. “Miss Pe . . .Why, it’s Penny again.”

The crowd murmured disbelief, and more than once the phrase “bad ha’penny” might be heard.

The lad stopped his laughing long enough to say. “It’s both of ‘em again.”

The vicar studied the second slip, and winked at Alexander. “It would seem this match is preordained, lad.”

Murmurs and jests sounded.

Miss Foster looked his way, head cocked, then at the crowd, her mouth an unhappy line.

“Now what?” Alexander muttered.

Oscar plucked at his mustache and shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

A young man called out, “And what would you be wanting for Valentine’s Day?”

Alexander shrugged and called back. “Must I want something?”

Everyone laughed--except Miss Foster.

“Ask her, you dolt.” Val whispered from behind him.

Ah! Now he understood. He cleared his throat. “What would you be wanting for Valentine’s Day, Miss Foster?”

All talk in the square ceased that they might hear.

“What does every woman want on Valentine’s Day?” she replied.

Her response stirred more ribald remarks and snide laughter.

The vicar raised his hands in a placating manner. “Now, now. Enough of that.

“How am I to answer that?” Alexander asked under his breath.

“She is to give three clues,” Val explained dryly. “That was the first. Ask her again.”

“And why do I ask?” Alexander wanted to know.

“Because you must in order to discover what she would have . . . as Valentine.”

“I’m to give her a gift?”

“But of course.” Val’s response was unduly impatient.

“I have never played this game before, Val.”

He blinked, shrugged. “Oh! I am sorry you were not better prepared--or paired. She runs hot and cold. That one.”

Oscar elbowed Alexander. “I’ve no idea her temperature, but she is running.”

She walked away briskly, the pony at her heels, every man present watching the sway of her purple cloak.

Alexander had no time to wonder what Val meant. “Wait, Miss Foster,” he called. “You have yet to tell me what you want this Valentine’s Day.”

She stopped, and without turning, said. “But you are Cupid, sir, reputed to know every heart’s desire.”

“That’s a clue?” Oscar muttered on the one side of him.

“It’s supposed to be,” Val’s contempt was clear.

Alexander ignored them, and tried again. “I wish to know your heart’s desire, not every woman’s.”

His response drew an appreciative noise from the gathered women.

Miss Foster paused. She would not look at him. “Simple, really,” she said. “You have only to open eyes.”

She led Archer toward the blacksmith’s, convinced he wished only to toy with her, convinced he was just like Val. He had not understood, any more than the others.

A breeze blew in off of the Eden smelling of wet stone, and damp leaves--the smell of endings. Her life had been full of them. She drew her cloak closer. Hooves clopped against the cobbles behind her. The hairs at the base of her neck prickled.
Lady Anne, Lady Anne protect me
, she thought.

She knew it was him before he spoke.

His voice echoed in the empty street. “What would you have them see?”

She turned to find Cupid astride the big gray. Doomsgate had never seemed so narow, and they two alone in it.

Persistent. She must give him that.

She took courage in his ignorae of her, and faced him as Lady Anne would have, determined he should see her as she wanted to be seen, not as everyone assumed she must be.

“What
does
every woman want on Valentine’s Day?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

He slid from the saddle, and leading the gray, fell into step beside her. “‘Eyes,’ you said.”

His were green, dark and probing--the color of junipers. She found herself drawn despite her best intentions.

“Whose eyes must be opened, Miss Foster?” There was a hard edge to the question, to the set of his jaw.

“Does Cupid not know every woman’s desire?” She asked rather than answer, breath hitching in her throat. He was smarter than she had bargained for.

He nodded, his expression serious, as if he took this Valentine wish of hers very much to heart. “Every woman’s desire? Why, what but love, Miss Foster, in a harsh and loveless world?”

“Loveless?” She asked, her features fresh, youthful, flower like. Untouched by war.

He frowned, thinking of the men he had killed, of the unloving acts, of the grim aftermath of battle.

She backed away a step. Her mouth took on a troubled look. “You would declare yourself a failure, Sir Cupid?”

“In so many ways,” he admitted, gaze drawn to her mouth. His frown was contagious. Her lips took a downward turn. Pretty lips, full lips--he wondered if they had ever tasted love.

Her cheeks flushed. Lashes, thick and pale, cloaked the brightness of her eyes, as if she knew his thoughts.

“What does Cupid desire, on Valentine’s Day?” she asked.

He pursed his lips on a grin, and yet his eyes must have given away the thoughts that flooded his mind as he stroked the gray’s nose, vastly inappropriate thoughts, all connected to her.

She flushed.

He asked her. “Would you grant me a Valentine’s wish?”

That valiant chin of hers rose.

“And me a stranger to you?” His voice went throaty, seductive.

The pony tossed its head, and whickered.

She was not easily seduced. Wariness dominated her gaze as she replied, “Am I not a stranger to you? And yet, you would grant
my
wishes.”

He loosed an amused and bitter sigh. “Yes, but I am Cupid.”

“Is that so?” Brittle, her voice, chilly as the morning.

“Indeed.”

“And Cupid has no Valentine wishes?”

“They aren’t within your power,” he said brusquely.

“Whose then?”

“God alone can give me what I desire, Miss Foster.” He swung into the gray’s saddle, and rode away without another word.

Chapter Three

She did not anticipate seeing him again that day, indeed, she resigned herself to the notion that once again the year would slip by without her Valentine wishes being given consideration, much less fulfillment, despite Val’s return.

Jack, the blacksmith, a friend of her father’s, who never failed in his kindness to her, followed her from the smithee, telling her the pony would be reshod within the hour should she care to return. “My name has been paired with widow Brumley’s,” he complained. “I haven’t the slightest notion what to get the old lady.”

“Mrs. Brumley has a sweet tooth,” she said. “Something from the confectioners is bound to please.”

His voice fell in asking, “And what sweet does yon sharpshooter bring you, then?”

“Sharpshooter?”

A man stood propped against the wall in the lane opposite, darkly handsome, something sharp and slightly dangerous in the way he waited, watching them. Cupid!

“Aye. That green cockade means the lad’s a master marksman.” Jack sounded impressed.

“Oh?”

He nudged her shoulder playfully. “Careful, lass, a canny one, that.”

She wondered if he sensed it, too. The largeness of this marksman Cupid, the agile turn of his mind, the undercurrent of danger. What would Lady Anne have thought of such a fellow?

“Miss Foster.”

The muscles in this Cupid’s thighs, his calves, flexed provocatively as he pushed away from the wall. “I must apologize.”

With a wink, Jack returned to his anvil.

“Must you?” she asked, feeling abandoned, and unexpectedly edgy in this stranger’s company.

Thick lashes, dark as soot, long as a girl’s, veiled his keen gaze. His voice fell. “I am not good company. Too long overseas, fighting. Too long in the company of men.”

“Ah, but have you not heard? I am not considered good company either.”

His head lifted. The breeze fingered his hair--not black, as she had supposed on first seeing him, but deepest brown. He studied her a moment, in green eyed surprise. Could it be Val had told him nothing?

A smile touched his lips, spreading slowly. “Is it true?” he asked.

She set off up the street, regretting the slip of her tongue. “I suppose I have been too long on the fells, in the company of none but my father, a taciturn man.”

He fell into languid step beside her, the muscles of his legs  and the shine of his boots fixing her attention.

His voice claimed her ears, low and gentle. “You asked earlier if you might fulfill my Valentine’s wish, and I ungraciously refused you.”

She slid a glance in his direction, wary, always wary.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” he said.

She cocked her head. What game was this?

The deep green eyes studied her with every word, gauging her reaction. “I wish, while I am here, to walk the solitude of the lake--the fells--with someone familiar with them.” He allowed the suggestion to hang between them.

She was no naive girl, as Lady Anne had once been, to be led astray by a rogue like the Earl of Dorset. “Val knows the area,” she said firmly. “None better.”

He laughed, a pleasant sound that rumbled deep within his chest, and yet she knew better than to trust a man’s amusement. All too often they laughed at one, rather than with one.

“Valentine is . . .” he frowned, choosing his words carefully. “. . . not a man given to silence.”

“No.” She agreed bitterly.

“Do you think . . .”

She knew what he hinted at, what he meant to propose.

“No,” she stopped him.

All too serious, the loo his eyes. “I wanted you . . .”

“I know what you wanted,” she cut him off. “You want a young woman largely unknown to you, to risk her reputation leading you onto the lonely fells.”

He frowned. “No. I had heard . . .”

“That I’ve no longer a reputation to risk?” Bitter her words, bitter the sound of them.

He eyed her most keenly, frown deepening. “No. That you’ve a man-eating dog to protect you.”

Chapter Four