Miss Isabella Thaws a Frosty Lord(6)
You have a curl in your eye.
Blast and damn, that wasn’t what he’d meant to say either. She muddled his tongue, this obstinate, enchanting miss.
An uncommon beauty, at least to him, Frost thought now, recalling her wistful expression as she held up one side of the ballroom. A lone, confident figure who invited and intrigued…
I only ask because you stare so longingly at the dance floor…with just a hint of sorrow. I thought perhaps you were reliving an earlier time and we might banish our memories together, if only for a song.
But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to utter such romantic drivel.
The lack of courage had cost him. Cost the acquaintance of the most promising miss present and there certainly wasn’t a lack, Ed and Lady Redford having invited half the shire from what he could tell. “Little gathering for the holidays” indeed. Had to be close to ninety revelers in his estimation. Might as well have been five hundred for all the maggoty “cheer” such a crush harkened upon his person.
Hell, he’d only promised himself a single dance as a singular act of charity, little expecting to be captivated and then outright rebuffed, but that’s exactly what happened. Perhaps the saucy baggage did it on purpose, to snare his interest.
Intentionally or not, she’d succeeded, for though her head was topped with sable brown ringlets instead of ones reminiscent of corn silk, with that primly spoken refusal—not to mention the dreadfully alluring curl—the impudent wench who dared defy him tonight not only tripped up his tongue, she put him in mind of the last female he’d dared to love, harking him back nearly two decades to the oft-heard complaint of another…
“Nicky, you cannot order me about like one of your soldiers,” his sister Althea had insisted in a familiar refrain. “I will not stand for it!”
“There’s—” He’d broken off, coughing over his shoulder, that niggling tickle that’d scratched his throat for weeks coming to the fore. When it subsided, he tweaked one of the gold ringlets that was forever falling over her eye. “There’s a fierce puss!”
She tossed her head, slinging ringlets straight into his face.
He’d laughed at her eight-year-old antics—so much younger than his own mature eleven—and pointed to the battalion on the floor between them. An entire regiment of new toy soldiers given to him by Papa for Christmas. “Now set up the right flank for the next offensive lest I tell Mama how you tore your dress.”
Following him out to the stables that morning was how. But he never had an opportunity to snitch, for in the night, Althea came down with his cough. And breathed her last less than a fortnight later…
Staggered by the unexpected memory—though during the recollection of it, his disobedient lips had curved upward—Frost firmed his frown.
Without conscious thought, his right hand coiled into a fist…the same hand that had gripped her yet had been unable to prevent her escape. The same hand that warmed oddly for such an innocent, brief touch.
Damn and blast all over again! He’d not expected to react to a female here of all places and at this time of year! What else he hadn’t expected was having his overture rebuffed. Shot down like an unwitting bird in the sky. First his excuses, now his invitation. “Good thing I didn’t have this kind of luck in front of the French artillery.”
“What kind of luck?” Ed wanted to know, coming up beside him with a fancy kissing bough hanging from his truncated arm.
“Nothing,” Frost dismissed then nodded to the berry-filled bough. “Be so good as to inform me where you intend to hang that thing so I may avoid its reach.”
Ed grinned. “’Tis one of many, my friend, so it will do you no good to cast this one into the fire as that scowl tells me you’re wont to do the moment my back is turned. Anne has ordered them strewn about the place. Says I’m to make full use of ’em but only when she’s in reach. She’s had me hanging them the past half hour. Down to my last one.”
“Have you not servants for that sort of task?”
“And miss the enjoyment of surprising her when she learns just how creative my hanging places can be?”
Frost stifled a yawn that was only partially faked. The trip from London had been a tiring one, and of course he’d waited until the last minute to make it, arriving only minutes before dinner. Then imbibing rather too freely during…
“I’m sure tomorrow will come early and be full of merriment,” he somehow managed to say without choking on the last word, his eyes drawn to the door she’d flown through. “Think I’ll make a night of it.”