Last Night's Scandal (11 page)

when the coach stopped.

The carriage bounced slightly as the footmen jumped down from their perch at the back.

She saw one hurry ahead to hold the horses.

“What is it?” said Lady Cooper.

“Lisle noticed something wrong with one of the wheels, I daresay,” said Lady Withcote.

The door opened and a footman put down the step. Lisle waited behind him. “No need to disturb yourselves, ladies,” Lisle said. “I only want Olivia.” The ladies smiled at her.

“He only wants you,” said Lady Cooper.

“He said he’d leave me by the side of the road,” Olivia said.

“Don’t be silly,” said Lady Withcote. “He’ll do nothing of the kind.” He’d do worse, Olivia thought. He’d had time to brood over the grievous injury she’d done his pride. By now he’d probably composed a very boring and irritating lecture.

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“We’re not scheduled to stop,” she told him. “Not until—” She glanced down at her
Paterson’s.
“Not until Buntingford.”

“I want to show you something,” he said.

She leaned forward and looked out of the door to her right, then to her left. “There’s nothing to see,” she said.

Except an excessively handsome man sitting as easily upon a hired horse as if it had been part of him.

“Don’t be tiresome,” he said.

“Lud, don’t be tiresome, child,” said Lady Cooper. “Let the boy show you his what’s-it.”

“I could do with a pause,” said Lady Withcote. “I should like a moment to close my eyes, without being jounced and jostled. Such a head I have. Must have been something I ate.” Olivia turned away from the door to look at them.

“Don’t you want to see what it is he wants to show you?” Lady Cooper said.

Olivia disembarked.

The ladies leaned forward to watch the proceedings through the open door.

Olivia walked up to him. She stroked his horse’s muzzle, while aware, out of the corner of her eye, of the muscled leg nearby.

“You said you never get to see the sights,” he said. “There’s one down that turning on the left.”

A little surprised, she looked at the signpost he indicated. Then she looked up at him.

“I’m not going to take you to a desolate place and murder you,” he said. “Not here and now, at any rate. Were I to take you away and return without you, the ladies might notice.

Bailey would, certainly. We’re going only a short distance. We could easily walk, but these country lanes will be knee deep in mud. You can ride Nichols’s horse.” She held up her hand before Nichols could dismount. “No, stay as you are. I can ride behind his lordship.”

“No, you can’t,” Lisle said.

“We’re going a short distance, you said,” she said. “It makes no sense to spend time making a dozen adjustments, to get me properly seated on Nichols’s horse—adjustments he’ll have to go to all the bother of readjusting later. I can be up behind you in a minute.” He looked at her. He looked at Nichols.

Despite having been caught in a downpour, the valet remained elegant and unflappable.

Though he wouldn’t show it, he’d die a thousand deaths on the inside, rearranging his saddle for her. She saw no reason to torture him.
He
hadn’t insulted and hurt her.

“What worries you?” she said to Lisle. “Are you afraid I’ll knock you off your horse?”

“I’m a little afraid you’ll stick a knife in my back,” he said. “Swear to me that you’re not armed.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “I would never stab you in the back. That would be dishonorable. I would stab you in the neck or in the heart.”

“Very well, then.” He kicked his left foot free of the stirrup. Olivia put her left foot into the stirrup, took hold of his arm, gave a hop, and sprang up behind him.

“Deuce take the girl!” Lady Withcote cried. “I never could do that!”
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“You were agile in other ways, Millicent,” said her friend.

Meanwhile, Olivia realized she’d made a grave error of judgment.

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Chapter 6

S
he’d acted unthinkingly, and why not?

Olivia was as much at ease on a horse as any gypsy.

She’d ridden behind her father time without number.

But that was her father, and that was when she was a little girl.

Lisle wasn’t her father. She’d ridden behind him once or twice, but that was ages ago, before he’d become so excessively masculine.

It hadn’t dawned on her to cling to his coat. She’d simply wrapped her arms about his waist, because that was the natural thing to do.

Now she was hotly aware of the taut waist under her arms and the straight back against her breasts. She was aware of thigh touching thigh and leg touching leg and the rhythmic movement of their bodies as the horse walked along the muddy, rutted road.

She could actually feel her moral fiber—such as it was—disintegrating.

Ah, well, it was only a short ride, and she could expect a long, boring lecture at the end of it. That would stifle inconvenient and pointless urges.

She let her cheek rest against Lisle’s neck and inhaled the earthy scent of male and horse and country air and recent rain, and somewhere in this mix, tantalizingly faint, a hint of shaving soap.

After a moment he said, “In what ways was Millicent agile, I wonder?”

“Nothing nearly as exotic as you imagine,” she said. “Nothing like your harem dancers, I daresay. Not nearly so acrobatic.”

“In the first place, I don’t
imagine,
” he said. “In the second, if you’re referring to the dancing girls, they’re not, technically, harem dancers.” Oh, good, a language lecture. That would take her mind off the rampant virility and the male scent, which ought to be bottled and marked with a skull and crossbones.

“The word
harem,
you see, commonly refers to the women of a household,” he said,

“though this is not the precise meaning of the word, which denotes a sacred or forbidden place. The dancing girls, on the other hand—”

“I thought we were to take the left turning,” she said.

“Oh. Yes.” He turned back to the lane.

Not a moment too soon. It might have been the way he smelled or the heat of his body or all that virility or, more likely, the devastating combination, but she’d found herself growing genuinely interested in the correct meaning of
harem.

Moments later they entered a meadow and proceeded to a small railed area guarding what appeared to be a block of stone.

“There it is,” he said.

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As they neared, she saw the metal plaque set into the stone.

“A rock,” she said. “You’ve stopped the carriage and taken me to see a rock.”

“It’s the Balloon Stone,” he said. “The first balloon ascent in England landed here.”

“Did it, really?”

“There’s a prior claim, but—”

“Oh, I must see.”

Eager to get down and away from him and get her head clear again, she didn’t hesitate.

She set one hand on the back of the saddle and one on his thigh, preparatory to dismount.

She felt it instantly, the shock of that intimate touch, but it was too late to stop—and absurd to do so. This was the quickest and easiest way to get down.

She swung her leg over the horse’s rump, aware of the pressure of Lisle’s hand over hers

. . . on his thigh . . . holding her steady. Heart racing, she slid down to the ground.

She didn’t wait for him to dismount but moved quickly to the railing, hiked up her skirts, and climbed over it into the small enclosure.

She knew she’d given him a prime view of her petticoats and stockings. She knew what such a sight did to a man. But he’d got her agitated in that way. Turnabout was fair play.

“ ‘L
et Posterity Know,’ ” she read aloud in the declamatory tone usually employed on state occasions, “ ‘And Knowing be Astonished That On the 15 Day of September 1784 Vincent Lunardi of Lucca in Tuscany The first Aerial Traveller in Britain Mounting from the Artillery Ground in London and Traversing the Regions of the Air For Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes, In this Spot Revisited the Earth.’ ”

Lisle remained at the railing. He still hadn’t recovered from the ride: Olivia’s arms wrapped about his waist, her satanic breasts pressed against his back, and her legs tucked up behind his. Physical awareness still vibrated the length of his body, particularly where it had met the front of the saddle.

She’d got him so befuddled that he’d ridden straight past the turning.

He hadn’t had time to fully collect his wits before she climbed over the fence, offering him an excellent view of her petticoats and stockings.

It was her typical hoydenish behavior, the same she’d exhibited when they’d been together in the past. She thought of him as a brother. That was why she didn’t mind her skirts and that was why she hadn’t hesitated to climb up on his horse behind him.

But he wasn’t her brother and he wasn’t the boy he’d used to be, deaf, dumb, and blind to a flurry of feminine undergarments. Not to mention that in girlhood she wouldn’t have worn stockings like those, with their alluring blue embroidery, or petticoats trimmed in excessively feminine lace. And in those days, she hadn’t owned shapely legs and splendidly turned ankles—or if she had, he hadn’t noticed.

After he’d got these matters sorted out and his reproductive organs calmed down and his mind functioning again, he stepped over the fence to stand beside her as she finished reading the ornate tribute to the first balloon ascension in England.

At the end she looked at him and said, “Isn’t it amazing? This quiet meadow saw such a momentous event. How wonderful that they’ve marked the spot.”
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“You said you never got to see the sights,” he said. And as vexed as he’d been—and still was—he’d felt sorry for her. When he was a boy, her stepfather had often taken him along on journeys. Lord Rathbourne had always taken the time to point out the sights and tell stories about them, especially the bloodcurdling stories boys liked, about grisly murders and ghosts and such.

It seemed odd and unfair that a girl with such a vivid imagination, who craved change and excitement, had had so little opportunity of sightseeing.

“I knew nothing about it,” she said. “Only imagine. Nearly fifty years ago. What must the people living here have thought when they saw it?”

“They were frightened,” he said. “Suppose you’d been a villager of that time.” He gazed up at the leaden sky. “You look up and suddenly appears a gigantic thing where only birds and clouds are supposed to appear.”

“I don’t know if I’d be frightened.”

“Not you specifically,” he said. “But if you’d been a villager, an ordinary person.” Which was inconceivable. The very last thing Olivia was was ordinary.

“I’ve always wanted to go up in a hot-air balloon,” she said.

No surprise there.

“How thrilling it must be,” she said, “to look down on all the world from a great height.”

“Going up to the great height is all very well,” he said. “Coming down is another story.

Lunardi had no notion how to steer the thing. He brought along oars, thinking he could row through the air.”

“But he tried,” she said. “He had a vision, and he pursued it. A Noble Quest. And here’s a stone marking the occasion, for all posterity, as it says.”

“Do you not find the prose inflated?” he said. It was a dreadful pun, but he couldn’t resist.

“
Inflated
. Oh, Lisle. That is—” She gave a snort of laughter, which she quickly stifled.

“Abominable.”

“He took with him a cat, a dog, a pigeon, and a hamper of provisions,” he said. “The provisions I understand. The animals I do not. In any event, the pigeon soon escaped, and air travel disagreed with the cat, who was let off a short distance from London.” She laughed then, truly and fully, a velvety cascade of sound that startled him. It was nothing like the silvery laughter so many women affected. It was low and throaty, a smoky sound that slid down his spine.

It stirred dangerous images—of bed curtains moving in a breeze, and tumbled bedclothes—and it disarmed him at the same time. He smiled stupidly at her.

“A good thing, too,” she said. “Can’t you picture it? The basket of a hot air balloon—the small space crammed with provisions and oars and instruments and such, and the cat, the dog, and the pigeon. And there’s the cat, being sick on the floor. I can see the look on Lunardi’s face. How he must have wanted to pitch the dratted cat over the side! I wonder if he touched ground when he let it off.”

“Really, Olivia, you know I have no imagi—” Then he snorted, too, and in a moment he was laughing as well, helplessly, at the pictures she made in his head.

For a moment, all his grievances and frustrations vanished, and he was a carefree boy
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again. He leaned back against the railing and laughed as he’d not done in an age.

Then he told her the tale of fourteen-stone Mrs. Letitia Sage, the first “British female air traveler,” who went up in another balloon with Lunardi’s friend Biggins.

Naturally, Olivia sketched out a scene: the basket rolling in the wind, and the large woman slipping downward across the floor, inexorably toward the terrified Biggins. In the nick of time, though, the winds shifted again, and Biggins escaped being flattened.