Tempted by a Lady’s Smile (11 page)

From the corner of his eye, a flash of yellow fabric caught his notice. Richard froze and looked to the opposite end of the copse where…

He furrowed his brow.

Where…

Gemma stood surveying the guests assembled. She shifted something in her arm, revealing a flat bow. He slowly pocketed his flask and continued to study her furtive movements. What in blazes was the lady doing on the fringe of the morning amusements? Then, even with the distance between them, Richard noted the precise moment she locked her gaze on Westfield. Richard gritted his teeth. Westfield, the bloody paragon. Westfield…

Richard widened his eyes as she settled her bow on her shoulder.

Westfield the man she intended to shoot?

With a silent curse, Richard sprinted through the copse. The lady glanced wide-eyed in his direction.

“Rich—”

He knocked into her slender frame and the abrupt movement sent her arrow flying through the air. As he took Gemma down, the bow tumbled to the ground beside them. “What are you doing?” he bit out against her ear. He opened his mouth to deliver a stinging diatribe upon her foolish ears when his body registered her soft, pliant form pressed to his. A surge of desire ran through him, blotting out words, obliterating rational thought, so all he felt and knew—was her.

Gemma stared wide-eyed up at him. Her chest moved quickly in a rhythm to match his own rapidly beating heart. “Richard,” she whispered.

He really should be fixed on the madness in her letting loose an arrow at the man he’d called friend for over twenty years, except, his body responded to her nearness in form as he appreciated her in ways he’d not at their initial meeting; the gentle rise of her small breasts, the trimness of her waist, the delicate flare of her hips.

Gemma wiggled, shifting her hips.

His shaft leapt in response even as a pained groan lodged in his throat. In the distance, muffled cheers went up and that revelry had the same effect as a bucket full of frozen Thames water. He rolled off Gemma and jumped to his feet. “What in blazes are you doing?” he hissed. For it was far safer to focus on the lady’s impulsive actions from moments earlier than his body’s unwieldy response to hers.

“Beg pardon?” She shoved up onto her elbows and her loose chignon gave way under those efforts. The endless tresses cascaded about her back like a satiny waterfall. The sight of her sprawled on her back conjured all manner of wicked images, all involving those strands draped over his pillow and—

Richard closed his eyes and counted to five. He forced them open and found her eying him with her head tipped at that perplexed angle. “What did you think you were doing, aiming at Westfield?” With a quiet curse, Richard bent and scooped Gemma up. He set her on her feet and alternated his stare between the damning arch bow on the ground and the mad arrow-wielding lady.

Gemma rushed over and rescued the expertly crafted elm bow. Looking at the bow, she furrowed her brow. Then her eyes formed round moons. She jabbed an accusatory finger at him. “Never tell me you believed I was going to
shoot
the marquess?”

At the incredulity coating the inquiry, he yanked at the collar of his jacket. “I did not believe you intentionally sought to maim or wound,” Or kill. “Westfield.”

Gemma folded her arms at her chest, her possible weapon awkwardly jutted toward him, as she peered at him through suspicious eyes. “You think me incapable of shooting a bow,” she said with a dawning understanding.

Another cry went up in the distance and Richard looked hopefully toward the far-off chatter. “If you are so eager to shoot a bow, I expect you are also eager to return to the activity planned by the duke.”

Gemma remained with her booted feet planted to the ground and fixed an I-am-not-going-anywhere-until-you-reply-something-to-that-statement look.

Picking through his words carefully, Richard said, “I did not think…” She gave him a prodding, knowing look.

And he knew that look was intended to be more than faintly chiding and all he could note was the glimmer that set her eyes aglow in the summer sunlight. That gleam stole his thoughts, held him transfixed, until he no longer knew…

“I knew it,” she muttered, cutting across the momentary blanket of madness she’d pulled over him. Then, in one fluid movement she grabbed up her arrow, positioned it within her bow, and with more than three hundred paces between the copse and the duke’s party of guests, she took aim. Gemma let the arrow fly and it sailed unfailingly straight past the collective crowd of guests, gliding a hairsbreadth from Westfield’s ear, and then finding its mark upon the center of the target.

“Bloody hell,” Richard muttered. And as shocked gasps went up amongst the duke’s guests, Richard launched himself at Gemma and took her down, once more. He brought their bodies in line with a towering oak.

She gasped. “What are you—?”

He glowered her into silence. “Unless you care to be discovered alone in my company,” with nothing but ruin facing them, “by every last lord and lady gathered who are now trying to determine the whereabouts of the person who launched that goddamn arrow, then I suggest you remain quiet, madam,” he said tightly against her ear.

The color leeched from her cream white cheeks. He clenched his jaw. He should hardly be offended that the lady was so loath to the possibility of being discovered with him. They were, after all, almost strangers, with her having marital aspirations trained on Westfield. So why did annoyance tighten his belly?

Thrusting aside the befuddled musings, he leaned his head around slightly. Ladies and gentlemen surveyed the area for the shooter of that mystery arrow.

“Was I seen?” she whispered and her warm breath fanned his cheek.

Once again, his body responded to her slender form flush against his. His mouth went dry…and he made the mistake of looking at her.

Healthy color now restored to her face, Gemma stared boldly at his mouth. Surely she was thinking of Westfield and the potential risk to her name. Should they be discovered, there would be no recourse for either of them, except marriage. The thought should bloody well terrify him. He’d long ago lost his heart to another; a young woman he’d called friend, whom he’d eventually come to crave more from.

But in all his imaginings of Eloise, his body had never felt—
this
.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Gemma’s whisper danced in the air between them.

Richard swallowed reflexively. “And how am I looking at you?”
As though I want to touch my lips to your flushed, heated skin and explore your body in every way, unlocking the secrets within.

“As though I’m a plate of those kippers you so enjoy.”

Or like that.

There should be humor at the likening. There should be amusement and, at the very least, a reminder of their innocent exchange in the breakfast room when they’d sparred and battled as almost enemies. “Ah, those kippers you so despise.”

Gemma ran her gaze over his face “Do you know, Richard? I do believe you are correct.” She wetted her lips and he followed that innocent, and yet wholly erotic, movement with his gaze. “I unfairly judged those kippers. I do not believe they are quite so horrible, after all.”

He froze, as her meaning shifted into focus.

She reached between them and brushed a strand of hair behind his ear. “And I think those kippers will make someone a fine meal
.” Just not me…

Of course, it wouldn’t be Richard. Wordlessly, he looked off to the paragon in the distance. Eloise had chosen Lucien. Just as Gemma had chosen Westfield. As the second son of a viscount, Richard had never been, nor would he ever be, the man women chose to give their hearts to.

He stilled, suspended by the suffocating fear of his ponderings. He did not want Gemma Reed’s love. She was nothing more than a woman he’d had but five exchanges with. Granted there had been two kisses there, as well. But still, five exchanges all the same.

Richard rolled onto his back, putting much needed space between them. Fishing around the front of his jacket he pulled out his flask and took a long swallow. A gentle breeze stirred the branches overhead and he stared at the dancing green leaves. “So why, Westfield?”

For a long moment, she said nothing, and he angled his head slightly, thinking she’d either failed to hear that inquiry, or ignored him.

Gemma lay on her back beside him, staring at the same canopy overhead. She chewed at her lower lip contemplatively.

“Beyond the terrier-like attributes,” he said, infusing as much humor into that prodding as he could call forth.

She looked at him with a twinkle lighting her fathomless eyes. “I thought it was a hound?”

They shared a smile, but then his grin fell. “A dog is a dog.” Just as certain men were rewarded with the love of a good lady. The Westfields and Luciens of the world. Both men, deserving of those very emotions and, as such, love found them.

Gemma shifted onto her side so she lay looking at him. “But that isn’t true,” she corrected. She propped her head on her hand. “Not even every terrier is the same. Redesdale terriers are vermin hunters and even-tempered. The Fox terrier,” she waggled her eyebrows, “
also
, a terrier, mind you, but bred with a tempered aggressiveness to flesh out foxes.”

He stared at her, bemused. “You know quite a lot about a lot of different topics, don’t you, Gemma Reed?”

With a sound of frustration, she flopped onto her back beside him. “Much to my mother’s chagrin,” she muttered. “The
ton
hardly sees the benefit in a lady knowing anything about horses and dogs.” And yet, even as Society favored a lady adept at the sport of archery, Gemma remained on the fringe, secretly participating in a way that wouldn’t garner her notice.

Laughter filtered again in the distance, followed by the smattering of applause. Richard ignored it. For years, he’d admired but one woman, and that admiration had been built on a lifetime of friendship. He’d believed himself incapable of looking upon any woman, particularly one of noble origins, as different than the ladies in the distance vying for Westfield’s hand.

Again, Richard looked at her. The walls he’d carefully built about a heart he’d thought forever numbed by Eloise’s marriage to his brother, cracked.

As though feeling his gaze, Gemma turned and their gazes locked. “What is it?”

“You are a remarkable young woman,” he said quietly.

And how had he failed to realize the lady’s beauty at their first meeting? Except, he’d noted, and lying beside her, with her wide, brown eyes trained on his face, he had a staggering fear that now that he had noticed, he’d never stop.

M
any words had been uttered about Gemma in the course of her life. Most of them beginning with the prefix “un”: Unattractive. Untalented. Unimpressive.

Never, in all the words whispered about by the
ton
, or captured on the pages of the scandal sheets, had a single person penned remarkable beside her name. Not even the mother who’d given her life or the brother who loved her had seen her in that special light. Rather, she’d been recognized more as something of an oddity who would find love by sheer devotion.

Emotion swelled in Gemma’s throat and she stared as the leaves danced overhead and revealed soft, white clouds as they rolled by. She turned her head. “No one has ever called me remarkable,” she said softly to him.

A wry grin formed on his lips, but he didn’t bother to take his eyes from the same clouds she’d previously studied. “Well, that is a near impossible feat. It would require a lot of unremarkable people to see something wholly absent inside themselves inside another.” He spoke with a matter-of-factness that sent heat spiraling to her heart. Then he shoved himself onto his elbows and took another swill from his flask. Putting the top on, he stuffed it into the front of his jacket, and lay down on his back, once more.

Disappointment gripped her. Of course gentlemen drank spirits and, yet, his casual sipping from his flask, in that roguish manner, rankled. Rankled her, when it really wasn’t her affair whether Lord Westfield’s friend sipped spirits on Sunday with the devil himself. But she’d been so caught up in the beauty of Richard’s words and now he’d dull that treasured moment…with liquor.

“So you never did tell me, Miss Reed,” he said with that slightly mocking edge he’d used at their first meeting, bringing a frown to her lips. And
when
had she become Miss Reed, again? “What are the reasons you find yourself hopelessly in love with Lord Westfield?”

“Do you not believe him worthy of those sentiments?” she shot back.

“Quite the contrary. Though a rogue, Westfield is, as you said, loyal and kind. A better man than most of all Society.”

She frowned. “Well, for one, he’s not surly.”

With their shoulders flush, her body trembled at the slight tensing of his bicep muscles. “Are you calling me surly, Miss Reed?”

“Are you calling me Miss Reed because you’re being surly?”

He snorted. “Touché, Gemma. I wasn’t always surly, you know.” No, she didn’t know. For she didn’t truly know anything about Richard Jonas. Yet, at the same time, he knew more of her than any other. Even Lord Westfield… Unsettled by that truth, she fixed on the sound of his husky baritone. “In fact, I’ve been touted as one of those charming sorts.”

She giggled. “Have you?”

In one smooth movement, Richard flipped on his side. “Not charming enough if that is any indication.”

Her heart tripped a beat. Too charming if her pounding pulse was any indication.

She forced a smile. “And he smiles a good deal.” At his silence, she asked, “Shall I continue?”

He inclined his head. “By all means.” He dipped his lips close to her ear and slight shivers radiated at his nearness. “If you can, my lady.”

If she could what? The muscles of her throat worked. “Er…” and she blinked several times, feeling as though he’d turned her in a hundred dizzying circles. “Of course I can.” Of course she could what?
Think, Gemma Reed. Think.
Lord Westfield! Of course, they were speaking of Lord Westfield. Her future husband. Only, where her desire to capture that gentleman’s notice had sustained her through three lonely Seasons, now, she struggled to draw forth his image.