The Wagered Miss Winslow (13 page)

She picked her way through the soft earth, a few standing puddles making it difficult for her to walk gracefully, and stood on the board she knelt on when she worked, leaning forward to survey the square. “Yes—a good six inches. See—the dirt is looser here, and not packed down with the weight of the centuries. It took me two weeks to sift through those six inches.”

Beau joined her on the board, slipping an arm around her waist when he believed that, in her agitation, she might just topple forward into the dirt. The roped-off area she was staring at so fiercely was about six or seven feet square, situated in the middle of many six- or seven-foot squares that, to him, looked pretty much alike, except for the level of their excavation.

“You’re making precious little sense, m’ darlin’,” he pointed out reasonably, inhaling the scent of violets as he leaned down and allowed the tip of his nose to touch the soft curls near her ear. She did smell good; better than any woman he had ever met. And cleaner, as if she washed from head to toe every hour on the hour. “Why would anyone go to such trouble? Unless you’ve raised the ire of some Roman ghostie?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Rosalind countered, really angry, and blissfully oblivious to his ruminations on her personal grooming habits.

Weeks of work, destroyed! And for what possible reason? To what end? She felt close to tears. How could anyone have done such mischief? And what a fool she had been, digging and re-digging through the same dirt, believing herself to be a student of history, a researcher of ancient times—when she would have been better occupied making mud patties!

She pulled herself out of Beau’s loose embrace and left the board, to seat herself on one of the low stone walls that were all that was left of this end of St. Leonard’s, heedless of the damage the still-damp, mossy rock might cause her riding habit.

Beau perched beside her atop the low wall, a slight twitch working at one corner of his mouth as he saw the ridiculousness of the situation. All the day long, his Rosalind (he was beginning to think of her as “his” Rosalind) scrabbled in the rich earth, looking for clues to the past, and all the night long somebody carefully replaced the dirt she had removed.

If this were Ireland, and not the south coast of England, he would believe one of Bridget Reilly’s little leprechauns had been up to his usual sort of devilish mischief.

“My poor darlin’ Rosie,” he said at last, commiseratingly, slipping an arm around her shoulders. “Someone’s been playing a rare May game with you, haven’t they?”

“Oh, shut up,” Rosalind shot back meanly, blinking away tears. She felt as if she was ten years old again and Niall had just deposited a frog in her bed. How she hated to be teased!

She cudgeled her brain for another explanation. “There has to be a better reason besides a silly prank. Perhaps there is something buried here that someone doesn’t want discovered.”

Beau almost didn’t point out the obvious, but he felt he had to do something before Rosalind started thinking of corpses and dastardly deeds. “If someone had buried something—or someone—here at St. Leonard’s, wouldn’t it just be easier to dig it—or him—up again and move it to another resting place than to spend every night undoing the work you had done that day?”

The logic of this question infuriated Rosalind no end, as it suggested that someone had indeed been playing a trick on her. “Not if it was a grisly body, done in by murder,” she countered, not willing to give up her theory. “I know I wouldn’t wish to dig up a body if I didn’t have to—imagine how horrible it might look.”

Beau gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. “You and Bridget are going to adore each other, m’darlin’. She’s a great one for a story herself.”

“Then you think I’m being ridiculous?” Rosalind asked, already
feeling
ridiculous.

“I think you’re smarting because one of your neighbors has been making himself merry chuckling up his sleeve at your expense,” Beau answered truthfully. “But if you wish, I will arm myself to the teeth and sleep here after you’ve played in the dirt, and see if I can catch myself a grave-hiding monster.”

“Now you’re the one who is being ridiculous!” Rosalind pushed at his hand, at last realizing that they were sitting very close together, nearly touching from shoulder to hip, and his hand was not so much on her shoulder as resting against the top of her chest. His hand lifted for a moment, then he replaced it, perhaps an inch lower than it had been before she’d tried to remove it. “Mr. Remington—Beau. Please,” she said, looking up at him.

That was her second mistake—looking at him. Her first had been in riding out to search for him in the first place, trying to tell herself she wasn’t being as brazen as Mollie when she knew, at heart, that she was being every inch the same as her maid, only better-dressed. She knew it the moment he smiled at her, the tanned skin at the outside corners of his beautiful blue eyes crinkling in amusement.

“Please, Miss Winslow—
Rosalind
?
Please
, what? Please stop teasing you? Please remove my wandering hand? Or
please
, kiss you so that we might both then have the answer to the question we’ve each been asking ourselves since last night?”

“Please release me,” Rosalind answered in a rush, wondering if she might momentarily be struck down by a lightning bolt for telling such an obvious fib.

“Such a pretty little liar,” Beau said, pulling her against him so that her small hands were pressed against his shoulders. “As I would be lying if I were to say that stealing a drop of honey from your sweet lips has not become the most important thing in the world to me.”

So saying, and when Rosalind (dear child!) made no further protest, Beau lowered his mouth to hers and, closing his eyes, experienced a surprising jolt of pure pleasure that shot straight through him, lighting up the darkness behind his eyelids. His arms went around her back, drawing her even closer, as his tongue encouraged her lips to part, deepening this, their first kiss, their first embrace, their first move toward what, he could only hope, would be a shared lifetime of happiness.

He did not love her, but he liked her, admired her, respected her. And now, thank the saints, he desired her. His pocket Venus. His small, prickly sprite of a pocket Venus—his Rosie.

He had been alone for so long—forever. Cassandra, his former ward, now a countess, had found her happiness in the arms of a man she had vowed to loathe. Could it be so difficult to find his own corner of paradise with the daughter of his sworn enemy?

Rosalind’s hands, which had been drawn into tight little fists against his chest, crept upward, one clasping his nape, the other lightly touching his cheek, and Beau knew himself to be well and truly lost. He’d had precious little contact with women, and those associations had depended more upon the exchange of gold than any mutual fondness, so that he could not now remember ever having been touched with any real affection.

They would be married. Not simply because it was a workable solution to their problems; and not because it would serve to discommode Niall Winslow. They would be married because they both loved Remington Manor and they both needed someone to love.

“Rosie—” he said, releasing her at last, before he was tempted to do what Woodrow had warned him most adamantly that a gentleman never did with a woman of his own class unless she was his lawful wife—and then only under the cover of darkness and with as much restraint as possible.

“Rosie,” he continued, swallowing down hard on his passion, “I believe we had better go see the local vicar, or whatever Winchelsea has that passes for a minister, for I don’t think I can stay under the same roof with you for much longer and still make Woodrow proud of me.”

“Woodrow?” Rosalind questioned blankly, still amazed at the way her heart was pounding so quickly, seemingly skipping every third beat. She had been kissed a total of three times in her life, and only the once on her lips—and then it had been Reggie Roundtree, who had been three parts drunk at her cousin Cynthia’s wedding. No wonder she had been content to remain a spinster—she hadn’t had the faintest idea of what kissing was really all about. Not the faintest notion!

“Never mind,” Beau said, seeing her confusion and longing to kiss her again, just for being so innocent. “Come on—we’d best be riding back to the house. Well, hello there,” he said as he stood, helping Rosalind regain her own feet, for she seemed unable to rise on her own. “I do believe we have company.”

R
osalind frowned, looking to where Beau was pointing. “Oh, dear, how unfortunate. It’s Samuel Hackett, out for his noon stroll. Do you think he saw—um—
anything
?”

Sure that Hackett had indeed seen something, and knowing that he might have seen decidedly more than “something” if he, Beau Remington, had allowed himself the luxury of behaving as he wished rather than how he ought, Beau looked straight into Rosalind’s anxious green eyes and lied. “I doubt it highly, m’ darlin’. I rode with the man the other day, if you’ll remember, and he nearly drove us into a tree. Blind as a bat, Hackett is, and that’s a fact.”

Rosalind breathed a sigh of relief, whether because she believed Beau’s fib or because she so very much needed to, only she knew. “Well, that’s good,” she said with artless candor. “I shouldn’t wish to compromise you into marriage on top of all the other unlovely reasons that have thus far served to induce you to offer for my hand.”

Beau turned to her as they both waited for Samuel Hackett to approach. “And which of those unlovely reasons do you think carried the most weight with me, Miss Winslow?” he asked, grinning. “That sticky business with our separate deeds, the thought of getting a little of our own back on your dastardly brother, or the simple fact that I have found kissing you to be one of my main pleasures in life?”

Referring to their recent embrace served to send a fresh rush of becoming color into Rosalind’s cheeks. “There is no need to be so gallant, Mr. Remington,” she told him, lowering her lids to cover the smugly pleased expression in her eyes, knowing she had just indulged in a very feminine ploy, turning away his compliment in the hope he would offer another.

Beau threw back his head and laughed out loud, the booming sound of his mirth scattering a few birds from an overhanging branch of a nearby tree. “I can see this gentlemanly business of flattery will get me further down the road than any other vehicle I might have tried, won’t it, Rosie, m’ love?”

Rosalind smiled weakly. So it
was
only flattery. He hadn’t really meant any of it. Well, that should teach her not to set her hopes any higher than that of a mutually convenient, platonic marriage. And she would give Beau full marks for bravery, forcing himself to kiss his old-maid fiancée and then tease her as if she had tempted him nearly beyond his endurance with her charms, as if he had truly enjoyed the exercise.

She sought for and found refuge in a horrid inanity. “Don’t lay it on too thick and rare, Mr. Remington, I beg you, or else I shall begin to think you are insincere.”

“Insincere? Me?” Beau frowned in quick confusion, a niggling feeling that he had somehow insulted Rosalind prickling at the back of his head. Or perhaps not. Perhaps his reaction to their kiss had clouded his judgment, and she had not felt the same tingle of passion as he. Hadn’t
she
felt what
he
had felt when their lips had met? Now, wouldn’t that be just his sort of luck! But wait! Perchance, he soothed himself, the dear, innocent woman was simply so unused to passion, so unfamiliar with the sweet stirrings of the body and the soul, that she didn’t clearly recognize it when it came up and nipped at her—

“Good day ta yer,” Samuel Hackett said, laboriously picking his way through the roped-off areas of ground as he doffed his hat in Rosalind’s direction. “‘Tis a fine day we’re havin’, after the rain. Out for a ride, are yer?” He nodded as he drew closer, as if giving his consent to their activity. “Better than scrabblin’ in the dirt, I say, Miss Winslow. And ye, sir? Yer lookin’ fit as a fiddle. The shoulder’s better then?”

“Nearly as good as new,” Beau answered, unwilling to admit that it pained him more than a little, for that would mean he’d have to strap on the sling once more, and he had enough impediments to his courting of Rosalind Winslow without adding the hardship of doing his wooing with only one good arm. “Allow me to offer my thanks once again for your kind assistance the other day.”

Sam chuckled, winking at Rosalind. “No need ta thank me, sir,” he said. “Learned m’self a whole new passel of words, listenin’ ta yer whilst Dr. Beales was tuggin’ at yer wing.”