Andrew Lord of Despair(27)

For the fierce, pretty Lady Amery waited at Willowdale, there to be comforted in her grief. Gwen did not envy the lady her swain’s devotion. That Andrew would ride off without a backward, assessing glance at the property that had claimed Gwen’s heart and soul was too great a relief.

***

“Pardon my dust,” Andrew said, gesturing to the bench. “May I join you?”

Astrid scooted over and whisked her skirts aside, the gesture coming off as either indignant or insecure, she wasn’t sure which.

“I didn’t know you embroidered,” Andrew said, stretching out long legs and crossing his booted feet at the ankles. He smelled of horse, pleasantly so, which was fortunate when a lady’s digestion was given to queer starts.

“Every lady embroiders.” Astrid’s hoop sported a scene of rabbits peeking out from beds of pansies, which was fitting, given present company. Andrew had been least in sight for much of the day.

“You weren’t so shy with me last night, dear heart, or yesterday afternoon,” he pointed out, casually resting his arm along the back of the bench.

Their good-night kiss in the library had become positively incendiary, and yet, since breakfast, Andrew had been distant. Polite, smiling, charming, and in some regard, not at home to callers.

“How was Cousin Gwen?” Felicity had kindly let slip that Andrew had ridden off to call at Enfield.

“Difficult,” Andrew said, tipping his face up to the sun. “She disdains the frivolous company of others, says she has farms to manage, livestock to see to. I have a fondness for difficult women, though. I will yet earn her trust.”

Perhaps he was flirting; perhaps he was scolding. Two years of marriage to Herbert did not prepare a lady to distinguish between the two.

“And how is little Rose?”

“Rose thinks her big cousins are capital fellows. Clearly, I’ve made a conquest.”

Astrid jabbed her needle into the vicinity of a rabbit’s tail. “Very young women are so easily impressed.”

“I rather think my horse made more of an impression on wee Rose than I did.” Andrew smoothed a finger over the rabbit’s abused fundament, and Astrid felt something like a shiver, though she sat in strong sunlight. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough.” Considering she’d gotten up several times in the night to heed nature’s call. “And yourself?”

“I tossed and turned all night in anticipation of further intimacies with you,” he said, giving her the impression this was nothing less than the truth—a miserable truth, too.

The same rabbit got the brunt of Astrid’s bewilderment. “So why didn’t you come to my room?” She probably wasn’t supposed to ask that, but she and Andrew had moved past supposed to and should rather decisively.

“I wasn’t sure you’d appreciate it, to be honest. You need your rest, Astrid, and I was demanding of you yesterday.”

She pondered that for a moment, smoothing her finger over the bunny fundament she’d just abused. “I think, Andrew, I would sleep better in your arms.”

He sat beside her, close but not touching, a quiet sigh confirming that again she’d expressed sentiments one wasn’t to express, even in the midst of a dalliance. “You trust me too much, Astrid. When you confide such things, you make me want to vault off this bench and sprint into the next shire.”

He stayed exactly where he was, though, while Astrid reflected on how beautiful his eyelashes were. Debutantes longed for lashes like that, abundant, sensual, the perfect counterpoint to aristocratic features and glacial blue eyes.

“What else?” she asked, because he had stayed right beside her.

“You make me want to hold you and never let you go.”

He spoke quietly, not a scintilla of flirtation in his sentiments. Her lover was matching her for foolishness, also for bravery and sincerity.

She ran her thumb over the bunny’s satiny ears. “Is that all?”

Andrew’s smile was slow and devastatingly sweet. “You make me want to swive you mindless, out here in the sunshine, up in your big, soft bed, in the hayloft, in the butler’s pantry, and everywhere in between.”

They had one week. Astrid set aside her pansies and rabbits and stood, taking a moment to make sure she had her balance. “It’s a pleasant day. We should have some privacy in the haymow, though the butler’s pantry strikes me as cozy, and the foot of the garden has some wonderful hedges of honeysuckle.”

Andrew spared a glance at the discarded embroidery hoop, then rose and winged his arm at her. “Hay can be itchy, and the butler’s pantry is dark. I have ever been partial to the scent of honeysuckle.”