Season For Desire (17 page)

Her mouth quirked. “You are doing an excellent job. I know it. Thank you.”

“And now your turn for some praise. Thank you for doing the baking. It’s kind of you.”

The thought of the garter hidden in her chamber—a frail scandal in the making—weighed so heavily that she could only shake her head. She counted out fistfuls of flour, then set them to rise in a bowl with warm water and a lump of the leaven-dough.

His knife went still in apple number six. “What, you can thank me but I can’t thank you?”

“It’s not worth thanking me,” she mumbled. “I needed something to do. I am not making bread out of kindness.”

“Just the apple tart, then?”

She ignored him, covering the bowl with a cloth and setting it at the corner of the wooden table nearest the fireplace. There the air was pleasantly warm, and the leaven would rise until tomorrow morning. Then she could finish mixing the dough, and they would have fresh loaves for Christmas. For dinner today they would have to make do with the remainder of yesterday’s bread.

She picked up the larger knife, along with the first in Giles’s line of peeled apples.

He took the stem of an unpeeled apple between thumb and forefinger, rolling it in a gentle arc before him. “I wonder if you know anything about gratitude, princess.”

Chock
. She split the apple in half with a determined blow of the knife. “No more or less than any woman in my position, I suppose.”

“And how much is that?”

Her head snapped up. “Don’t you have apples to peel?”

“I can peel and talk at the same time.” Something in the blandness of his smile reminded her of his unflappable father. “So. How much is that?”

Chock.
She quartered the apple. “I don’t know. Not as much as I should, probably. My parents never bothered to hide that they wanted a son, and I did not think I had much to be grateful for as the youngest of five daughters.”

He began to peel the next apple. “Nor I as the oldest in a large family. The weight of expectations is pretty heavy.”

“Is it better to be burdened with heavy expectations, or none?” When she met his blue eyes across the table, something within her quailed.

“I don’t know.” He slipped free one cuff link, then the other. After tucking them in his waistcoat pocket, he rolled his sleeves up his forearms. “With the former, someone’s sure to be disappointed. With the latter, maybe they already are.”

Cold sunlight picked out the golden hairs on his forearms, corded and firm with muscle. His strong fingers handled the knife with dexterity. Such hands were made to create beauty in gold or bricks—or out of nothing but an apple peeling.

A shudder shook her at the memory of those fingers caressing her breasts, cradling her face as though she was worth more than she had ever imagined.
The sort of person you are, you need never change.

How had he described her worth? Worth
different.
Not more or less. Just . . . different.

She was different from the docile daughter her parents had wanted her to be; she was certainly different from the son they would have preferred. She was different from the grateful whore Llewellyn seemed to think her.

But what was she instead? And what place was there for her in the world, if she was not what her parents or suitors wanted?

She shook off the question. “There is no
maybe
about the disappointment inevitably involved in expectations.”
Chock
. The knife made a satisfyingly determined sound on the wooden table.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s inevitable. I expect these apple tarts to be delicious.”

She pressed at her temple with the back of her wrist, then cut another apple. “That is hardly a credit to me. If someone shows me what to do, I can repeat the process. I’m not unobservant. Nor unintelligent.”

“So you tell me what you’re not.” He leaned forward across the table. “Can you say it the other way ’round? ‘Giles, I am observant. Giles, I am intelligent.’”

Chock
. “Giles, I have apple tarts to make.” She pressed her lips together so they would say no more; she fixed her gaze on the table so he would not see her eyes grow damp.

“That’s all you have to say? Really?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “All right, have it your way.” One last apple, peeled with perfect neatness, rolled across the table into her field of vision.

“I didn’t have to peel the apples, princess. But I wanted to. I wanted to help you and spend a few minutes in your illustrious presence.” She heard his footsteps cross the flagged floor, the shush of cloth as he pulled his coat from the hook. “Why do you do the things that you do?”

She waited, still and poised until he left. As soon as she was alone, she wiped her eyes on the apron, then went back to slicing the apples.

With Giles gone, there was no satisfaction in the sound.

“Christmas Eve,” said Estella, Lady Irving, “should be spent sitting before a fire large enough to melt one’s eyebrows, drinking brandied chocolate strong enough to melt everything else.” She extended her hands to the fire in the private parlor.

“What is the present state of your eyebrows?” Richard poured out a cup of something hot from a service the inn’s maid had just brought in. Estella did not see a flask anywhere; this was unlikely to be spirituous. Damn.

“Unmelted. Sadly.” She drew her chair closer to the fire; any more and she would be sitting on the coals. Midday light filtered gray-blue through the pebbled-ice surface over the window. They seemed glassed away from the world, and in a prison of glass there was no warmth. No escape. “Aren’t you anxious about being trapped in this inn?”

“Should I be? Will that help melt the snow so we can set out sooner?”

She glared at him. He smiled. “Thinking on it won’t make a difference, Estella. You said you knew how we should go on once weather permitted. We shall put the code into the hands of your clever niece Louisa. Until then, let us try to enjoy ourselves.” He handed her a teacup full of something suspiciously brown and syrupy-looking.

“What is this?”

“Coffee.” Hitching his trouser legs up at the knee, he seated himself across from her. “I made it very sweet for you.”

“Because I’m so bitter?”

He took a sip from his own cup. “No. Because that’s how I like it best, and you told me you didn’t care how you took your coffee.”

“When?”

“A few days ago, at Castle Parr. When that footman, Jory, brought us refreshments while we were wreathing all those statue heads.”

“Oh.” The cup warmed her fingers. “I didn’t realize you’d remembered that.” One tentative sip won her over. The smell was almost acrid, but the taste of it was liquid heat, liquid sugar. “That’s not half-bad.”

“High praise.” He reached up to set his cup on the mantel, then settled back into the chair with drowsy eyes. Such calm and peace; he made the simple wooden chair look like the softest-cushioned fauteuil.

How dare he be so calm when she was worried? How could he feel so peaceful, so unaffected by her, when her fingers tingled every time she caught sight of him?

She ran her fingers over the paste gems on the front of her aquamarine turban. Brightness. She must remember that. “So. When you get to London, you think you’ll find some jewels and set up a shop of your own.”

“Half-right. I have no idea where, or whether, I will find my late wife’s jewels. But I
will
set up a shop of my own. I’ve already found the perfect spot in Ludgate Hill, not far from Rundell and Bridge.”

Was it the American accent that made him sound so certain? Where the London accent tripped and twirled, his speech rolled over consonants like a gentle boulder. As though to speak something was to make it happen.

Oh, it wasn’t just the sight of him that drew her. It was the sound of him, too.

But her contrary habits had been formed long ago. “London society is devoted to Rundell and Bridge—not just for jewelry, but for silver and gold plate. An American competitor is sure to fail.”

He opened his eyes: deep blue about a ring of brown. “But that is not what I am at all. I’ve no thought of competing with them on their terms.”

Estella snorted. “That can hardly be called business. All right, what sort of gewgaws will the fashionable young ladies of London be wearing next season?”

“Oh, you probably have a better idea of that than I do. More influence, certainly.”

“Where is your pride? You’ll never take the
ton
by storm unless you are far haughtier.”

He chuckled, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Haughtiness works for some, but I don’t think I could manage it. I’ll do business in my own way. A different way.”

“And what way is that?”

Rubbing a hand along his angular jaw, he considered. “If I love a piece, it will show. And that enthusiasm will make it sell.”

“All right.” She took a sip of her bittersweet coffee. “Sell something to me so I can see whether you’ve the skill to back up your claim. Try to sell me . . . oh, how about my turban?”

His dark brows knit. After a pause, he said, “If you’ll forgive me, I do not love your turban. I don’t think I could sell it.”

She flailed for a place to smash down her coffee cup. With no table at hand, she had to settle for draining the cup and slamming it back into its saucer.

Cursed man. He looked not the slightest bit abashed. “Why do you wear such—things?” Left out was the adjective
dreadful
, but Estella heard the space of it, unuttered but unmistakably there.

“Because I can. I can do and be and wear whatever is offensive, and people have to accept it because of my rank and age and fortune.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I have horrified you.” Disappointment mingled with bitter triumph; she had known he would falter eventually.

“No, not in the slightest.” He folded one leg up, resting the foot on the opposite thigh. “But it sounds as though you don’t like the things you do. Or be or wear, if that’s the way you put it. And that’s what I’m sorry to hear.”

Estella occupied the next moments with the careful drawing of breath. Air seemed thick, too thick to enter her lungs without great ragged pulls.

“Where it peeks from the edge of your turban, your hair is quite a pretty color,” added Richard, calm as ever. “A true auburn. My late wife called hers auburn, but it was red like Giles’s.”

He spoke this as he would any fond memory, with a light matter-of-fact smile teasing his lips. When he mentioned his wife, his grief seemed neatly folded away like a favorite old silk.

Estella had never grieved for her husband. No, after her marriage, she had grieved only for herself. The late earl had made her wealthy, but he had been careless and lecherous, his young wife a pretty toy with which he played whenever, however he wished. There had been no purpose to seeking harmony with him; no reason to strive to better herself. A hard shell grew over her heart, so quickly that it was brittle.

She like the idea of a softer strength, like Richard’s folded-away memory.

“Did you not like your wife’s hair?” She shaped the words carefully. Naked feeling was far more unseemly than a naked body.

“Of course I liked it. It was part of her.” His surprise was no more than a ruffle on the surface of an untroubled pond. “But maybe she didn’t, since she called it by another color. Do you not like your hair? Is that why you cover it with turbans all the time?”

“No, I wear turbans because I’m too vain to wear a lace cap. You call my hair auburn, but it’s mostly gray. I’m old, Richard.”

“Do you feel old?”

“I
am
old.” She was a great-aunt. Her sixtieth birthday loomed less than two years away. Fifty-eight; it seemed impossible that she should be fifty-eight and trundling about northern England. Fifty-eight and sitting beside a handsome man, wondering why he asked her so many questions. Not liking the questions, exactly, but not wanting them to stop.

“But how do you feel?” Richard was looking at her, really looking, as no one had for decades. That warm brown ring about his pupils pulled at Estella; though she had drunk all her coffee, her throat had gone dry.

“I feel . . . different.”

He smiled, all warm eyes. “I like different.”

She smiled back. It was an uncertain expression that had to crack its way through the shell about her. When it reached her lips, it wobbled—but it was there.

Unfolding his legs, he slapped his hands onto the flat of his thighs. “As long as we are at our leisure, how about a game of cards or chess? You may name the stakes.”

Her heart beat a little more quickly. At some point, she had stopped feeling cold. “Cards, then.”

“Cards you shall have. Wait here, please; I’ll go find a deck.”

As soon as the parlor door closed behind him, she removed her aquamarine turban. Scrubbing her fingers through her short-cropped hair, she woke and eased her tense scalp, then replaced the turban.

After all, she liked it. And Richard liked her. Or he liked her being different, or feeling different, or—well, maybe it came to the same thing.

The turban was not heavy to wear, no more than a few ounces of cloth and paste jewels. But she felt as though a much greater weight had been lifted.

Giles could not resist. He brought the poor wizened vegetable marrow into the public room after dinner. “Here’s our Christmas decoration. It’s green, at least.”

It was worth the horrified looks on Mrs. Booth’s and Lady Irving’s faces to see Kitty and Audrina laugh.

Mrs. Booth had concocted a simple but tasty dinner. Every person in the inn, from countess to stableboy, tucked into meats and pickle and potatoes, washed down with ale and a mulled wine that Giles strongly suspected Lady Irving had fortified with distilled spirits.

With the main dishes set aside on empty tables, the motley group handed around bowls of nuts, dried fruits, and the apple tartlets: perfect palm-sized pies of sour-sweet apples and a buttery crust, with a snow of sugar atop.

“And for tomorrow,” said Mrs. Booth, “we’ll all enjoy a nice Yorkshire Christmas pie.”

“If it’s as good as this apple pie, I look forward to trying it,” said Richard.

“It might be as good, but it won’t be anything like,” said Mrs. Booth. “Lor’ bless you, I forget you’re not from aroun’ here. Though how I should forget with your odd accent, I can’ imagine.”

“It must be our charming personalities,” Giles said. “People get so distracted by our delightfulness that they forget everything else.”

Someone kicked him under the table, and he smothered a curse.

“A Yorkshire Christmas pie,” said Mr. Booth, hitching at his suspenders with an expression of pride, “has five kinds of bird stuffed wi’in each other, all inside the tastiest crust you can imagine. Oh, and there’s a rabbit in there, too, isn’t there, Mrs. Booth?” At her affirmation, he added, “Mrs. Booth made it two days ago so it could age properly in the larder.”

“Age . . . properly?” Richard made a valiant effort at enthusiasm. “Well, that will be a pleasure to try. I’m not sure I could even think of five kinds of bird.”

“Oh, go on.” Mrs. Booth laughed. “Who’s for chestnuts?”

Somehow, this question marked the dismissal of the servants. The lady’s maid melted off, and the overworked live-in, Jeanette, began to clear the dishes. “Jory will help,” said Audrina, and the footman moved forward at once.

Giles felt as though he ought to stand and help, too—but then Mrs. Booth shoved a bed warmer into his hands and tasked him with roasting chestnuts. He surrendered himself to the distraction of scoring the smooth wedge-shaped shells, steadying the long-handled pan over the flames, and shaking them around every few minutes.

But as he crouched before the fire, a twist at his heart caught him by surprise. Audrina, laughing as she passed the plate of tarts, her tip-tilted eyes the shade of . . . of . . . damnation, he had no idea. Trees or leaves or something like that. It was a dark-green color like something richly alive.

Not that he could see the color from this distance. But he knew their color, all the same.

This was indeed an adventure, though Giles had hardly wanted to admit it to himself. At some point, after being wet and cold and puzzled, after teasing and embracing and staring at the stars, they had become friends. More than friends. Their whole party was knit, and there was nothing to do right now but be together.

The joy of it was almost enough to gild the ashen awareness of departure. Soon, it would come. All pleasures must end. They would leave the inn, they would leave York. He would leave England.

Time was the villain, even more than the threats of David Llewellyn or Lord Alleyneham. Where it had once dragged for weeks across the Atlantic, then northward across England, now each hour slipped by too quickly and each day raced. Every night, when Giles folded himself into yet another too-short bed, he thought of dark hair and a voice that turned every sentence into blank verse, and he wondered how he had ever found the strength to stop kissing her.

He shook the pan, roughly this time, and one of the chestnuts gave a pop. How long had he been holding this pan? Drifting through thought? Minutes on end, for the chestnuts had begun to roast. The smell of them was scorched and sweet and savory all at once, a smell that worked its way through Giles’s body with a comfort like heat itself.

“Who’s for chestnuts?” With an echo of Mrs. Booth’s words, he stood and shook the pan in the direction of the diners.

Kitty dumped the walnuts from a bowl. “Pour them right in here!”

Giles tipped the bed warmer, scattering out the hot chestnuts as a maid would usually dump out the coals. Kitty set upon them right away, hissing as she pulled free the hot shells and the fuzzy inner skin. She handed the first one to Giles. “To our roaster, with thanks.”