Eleanor had found a small pool. Scandalously, deliciously, she had taken off her slippers and her stockings. Her ankles were delicate, not white, but the color of sweet cream. Her toes wiggled like small fish in the Clearwater.
She looked up at him and smiled. Her bad mood seemed to have evaporated. "My brother and I used to spend hours here when we were children visiting the estate."
He sat down and pulled off his boots. He didn't like cold water. He didn't like undressing in the outdoors. But he had ceased to pay much attention to his own likes and dislikes, not while his body was driven by this hunger. "Did Lisette like putting her toes in the water?"
Eleanor's face stilled and he cursed himself silently for bringing up his fiancee's name. "Oh, no," she said after a second. "Lisette... no. But those are her favorite roses." She jerked her head over her shoulder.
He glanced up and saw that an apricot rosebush had scrambled partway up the bramble hedge on the far side of the stream. The blossoms hung in heavy clusters, their petals the color of orange liqueur in the sunlight.
"If you want to make her happy, you'll fetch her some," Eleanor said, pulling her skirts up a little higher so she could reach the bottom of the stream with her toes.
"You must be joking," he said, dragging his eyes away from her legs. They were elegant and slim.
"They're over my head, not to mention the fact that I'd fall into the water. It looks much deeper on that side."
It is."
You can't be thinking of sending children here on the treasure hunt," he said. Why not?"
It's not safe," he said. "They could easily fall and break a limb."
You're not going to be one of those wildly protective papas, are you? We spent all our time here when we were children."
"Climbing for roses?" He squinted at the rocks. The water on this side ran in tiny rivulets and pooled in small hollows. But on the opposite side, there was a three-or four-foot climb straight up the rocks before one could cut a rose.
"The footmen used to fetch those roses for Lisette all the time," Eleanor said. She pulled her skirts a little higher. "This water feels so good." She swirled her hand beneath the surface and then let drops fly from her fingers. "Where's Oyster?"
"He found a patch of sunshine and went to sleep."
"Do you think all dogs are as lazy as Oyster?"
"I don't like dogs," he observed.
"Well, he likes you," she said, grinning at him. "Aren't you going to put your feet in the water?"
"I suppose," he said dubiously.
"Didn't you play in a river when you were a child?"
"Of course, my brother—" He said it without thinking and shut the sentence off halfway through.
She was dipping her fingers in the water and then drawing patterns on the rock. They were ridiculously slender fingers. Beautiful. They gave him a strange aching sensation.
"I didn't know you had a brother," she said. "Look, Villiers, I'm drawing a horse. Could you tell?"
He looked at the blobby wet spot on the rock. "No."
She shrugged and started over. "Tell me about your brother." Then her fingers stilled on the rock and she turned her head. "Now that I think of it, I've never heard about your brother."
"He died."
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Was he very young?" "Eleven." He cleared his throat. "He was just eleven."
"What happened?"
"He caught diphtheria," Villiers said. He heard the lack of expression in his own voice but was powerless to stop it.
"That's awful," Eleanor said. "Did many people get it?" "No. My mother acted quickly. She isolated him." "What do you mean, she isolated him?"
"She put him in a wing of our house and wouldn't allow anyone in or out." Eleanor had forgotten about the new horse she was painting. Her fingers curled on the rock. He watched them because he couldn't bear to meet her eyes. "Not—by himself?"
He cleared his throat. "No, his manservant was with him, of course. Though the man got diphtheria as well."
"Then who took care of them?"
"One of the footmen, a man named Ashmole. He was a cantankerous bastard even back then, when he was only a second footman. He slammed his way into that part of the house and brought them food and cared for them, and my mother didn't say a word."
Eleanor reached over and put her hand on his cheek. He could feel the chill of her wet fingers to the back of his teeth. "That's horrible."
He jerked and her fingers fell away. "I wasn't there. I was off at school."
"Or you would have gone to your brother, and probably died of the illness as well," she said, nodding.