Forever My Love(13)
"I do not prefer your company," she said huskily. "Will you leave or shall I?"
Alec turned Sovereign before she had even finished the sentence.
"I'll be looking forward to a continuation of our conversation," he said, and rode off gracefully, his powerful thighs gripping the sides of the horse.
Mira went to a different part of the forest the next day, but somehow she was not surprised when she heard the prancing horse's feet and a lazy masculine voice interrupted her labors.
"Do they feed you so poorly that you are compelled to go picking roots and weeds to supplement your diet?"
Mira turned around with a reluctant smile, an oddly shaped root in her hand and a smudge of dirt on her delicate cheek. She looked like an impish child who had been playing in the mud, and Alec could not resist smiling at the sight she made. Her maturity, however, was well attested to by the firm curves of her breasts under the sagging, faded gown and the shapely legs revealed by the cropped hem of the garment. Rich, dark curls escaped from her thick braid and edged her face softly, curls that tempted a man to wind his fingers in them and tilt her face upward for a kiss.
"I am beginning to suspect that you are following me."
"Small forest," Alec replied, swinging lightly off the horse and ignoring the strong impulse to go over and wipe the smudge off her face. "It's impossible to avoid you."
Mira turned hurriedly and focused her attention on
a nearby plant as Alec came nearer. He became more attractive each time she saw him, and even though she disliked him, she could not ignore the peculiar effect he seemed to have on her. She was strangely drawn to him. Perhaps it was because he reminded her in some ways of the Englishman she had known five years ago, big, healthy, and excessively male—though Alec was not in any part as gentle or kind as Rand Berkeley had been. "What's that?" he asked, stopping a few feet away from her.
"Something for Lord Sackville," she said, then could have bitten her tongue off for the slip she had made Her fingers tightened around the root.
"Oh?" Alec's voice sharpened. "What is it?"
"Nothing."
"I think I've seen something like that before. It's a mandrake root, isn't it?"
"Do you come here merely to torment me?" Mira exploded, trying to sidetrack him with an irritated spate of words. "It's… it's merely for good health. I'm the only one around here who dares to dig it up because everyone else is so superstitious."
"Why? Is it bad luck to dig it up?"
"Yes. It's supposed to be dragged out by a black dog, so unless you can change into one. you're not needed here!"
Alec's next words were threaded with laughtsr.
"The mandrake. If I'm not mistaken, he Gypsies call it the 'two-legged man plant.' If you insist on ripping those out of the ground, it will not bode well for your reputation."
"If there is one thing that is useless to worry over, it's my reputation," Mira said. "It's well shredded by now—"
" 'Pulverized' would be a more accurate term."
"Yours is hardly puncture-free," she pointed out.
"Bad reputations are a family characteristic," Alec replied, leaning against a sturdy slanting tree trunk
and crossing his long legs idly. "I would hardly be a Falkner without one. Everyone has a blighted character, even my mother." Especially his mother, Juliana Penrhyn Falkner, who had informed him pertly before he had left Hamiltonshire that she hoped to be hearing his name soon in connection with a scandal or two. "You're been quiet for far too long since your cousin's passing," she had said to him sternly. "I've always encouraged my boys to be rowdy and troublesome… healthier that way. I didn't raise you to brood, and I won't begin to tolerate it now." Sharp-tongued, wise, and aggressive, his mother, with a heart that he suspected was soft, but had never been quite certain of it.
"You have a large family?" Mira asked, fingering a pink-flowered sprig of coriander and glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Very large. Very eccentric." Mira laughed, the sound free and natural, so unlike the well-practiced and self-conscious giggles that Alec was accustomed to hearing from women. "Eccentric in what way?" "I suppose we span the usual variety of faults." "And what is your fault?" she asked, her coffee-colored eyes daring him to answer honestly.
Alec smiled slightly and pushed himself away from the tree, walking back toward Sovereign. Mira waited in silence, wondering if he was going to reply or not. In a lithe movement Alec swung himself lightly into the saddle, the sunlight playing lovingly over his raven hair as he inclined his dark head to look at her. "I never ask for permission." "Oh. I suppose… that would tend to earn trouble for you, wouldn't it?"