The words lacerated his gut.
“Willa Ffynche is a lady. She will go nowhere near a life that’s played out in the open marketplace. You think there wouldn’t be prints sold of your wedding? Of your first child?”
The thought had never occurred to him.
“You couldn’t have chosen worse,” she swept on, her words fueling a bottomless pit of dark emotion. “Willa Ffynche is a private woman. Very private. In fact, she—”
Alaric turned on his heel and left her in mid-sentence. If that provoked gossip, it couldn’t be helped.
Damn … Damn.
Willa was private. That was part of her allure. She was all hidden depths and secret thoughts. She didn’t display herself for everyone to see.
For a man who loved the idea of an undiscovered country, she was the ultimate temptation. At the mere thought of her, his body fired with heat.
North’s words came back to him: “I saw Diana, and I had to have her.” Alaric didn’t want a betrothal—or, God forbid, a wedding—like his brother’s, characterized by longing on one side and reluctance, if not dislike, on the other.
He had braved pirate waters in Wilde Latitudes. Sailed into sheltered coves in a boat so small that it could hold only one person. He’d won over pirates with games of chance, with spicy tales, with a true lack of desire to steal their treasure.
He had to win her as a friend. That’s where North had gone wrong, in his opinion. His brother had courted Diana, had gone so far as to don a towering wig to please her. But last night, Alaric had overheard North’s lecture on how a duchess should behave when greeting the queen. Diana had been listening without expression.
North was only trying to ease his future wife into the role of duchess-to-be. But it wasn’t a good idea, to Alaric’s mind. They should discuss anything other than the responsibilities of a duchess.
To this day North didn’t know what his fiancée’s favorite ballad was, or which book she most disliked.
Alaric dropped the arrows he held, and stretched. Helena Biddle strode past him, her shoulders rigid, furious.
North strolled over to him. He looked more splendid than Fitzy, a befringed and beruffled jewel in the midst of the green lawn.
“Frankly,” Alaric said, unable to resist, “if I had to dress like that in order to win Willa’s hand, I’d probably be heading for Africa right now.”
“An unlucky destination,” his brother pointed out. “You do know that in the play, your beloved—the innocent, dewy missionary’s daughter, the lovely Angelica—ends up in the stew pot?”
“Angelica?” It was less a question than a groan.
The one good thing about that detail was that its sheer preposterousness confirmed lack of information about Prudence, the real missionary’s daughter. Angelica’s background must have been a lucky guess on the part of the playwright.
“It’s a heart-rending scene, particularly enjoyed by the apprentices in the pit. They pelt the stew pot with apple cores, but the playwright cannily had the pot appear and disappear without showing actual cannibals, saving his actors from assault.” His brother threw an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll have to stock up on apples to defend your future wife.”
“I would never take my wife to Africa. Perhaps Paris.”
“Not to defend her from cannibals,” North said, just as several women turned about and smiled lavishly. “From English ladies.”
Alaric groaned.
Chapter Fifteen
Willa spent a lovely afternoon playing with Sweetpea. Like a small child, the little skunk seemed to require a daily bath. Luckily she loved water, and paddled around in a large basin, joyfully diving for dried peas.
At one point, Willa caught a glimpse of Alaric out on the lawn, playing at bows and arrows with Lady Biddle. She told herself that she didn’t care.
Late in the day, after the archers had disappeared, she decided it was a good time to introduce Sweetpea to her leash. Lavinia had fashioned a little harness out of a gold ribbon sewn with spangles, so it glittered against Sweetpea’s dark fur.
“There,” Lavinia said, once they managed to fasten it comfortably around the baby’s round stomach. “She looks like a princess, ready to survey her realm.”
Sweetpea swung up her tail, tipped, and fell on her nose.
“Oh, no!” Lavinia cried, dropping to her knees.
“She does that without the leash as well,” Willa said with a gurgle of laughter. “I don’t think she’s learned how to balance her tail.”
“It is longer than she is,” Lavinia said, measuring it with her hands.
“Every time she flips it up, over she goes.” Willa picked up Sweetpea and tucked her into her basket. “Would you like to join us? I thought we’d go to the rose garden.”
“No, thank you,” Lavinia said, yawning. “It’s time for a nap. Archery was exhausting; as many feelings as arrows whizzed through the air.”
“Diana’s?”
“No, far more diverting! Alaric said something to Lady Biddle that made her despise him. She marched away from the archery field in high dudgeon, and by all reports she’s ordered her trunks packed.”
Willa drew in a silent breath.
“Isn’t that fascinating?” Lavinia demanded. “She’s given up the idea of bedding him, and spent the last hour telling anyone who will listen that men only set out for foreign lands if they are incapable of satisfying women at home.”
“Characteristically vulgar,” Willa said, leaving it there.
The rose garden was set in the shade of a high stone wall, so that the flowers received morning sun, but were sheltered from the worst of the storms that raged across Lindow Moss, the bog that stretched into the distance on the other side of the wall. An intriguing smoky odor in the air competed with the roses, presumably coming from peat.
Willa sniffed the air. She was deeply curious about what uncut peat looked like, but that would require disobeying the edict keeping all guests out of the bog. It was just her confounded curiosity that made her wish she could see over the wall.
She set Sweetpea on the path, but the baby skunk headed straight into a flowerbed. She meandered here and there, winding around rosebushes, waiting politely while Willa disentangled her skirts when they caught on thorns.
“You are allowing that animal to drag you around as if she were a puppy. Or a young child of two or three.”
Willa spun about.
“I saw you from the tower.” Alaric jerked his head backward. “My bedchamber is up there.”
“Ah.”
“But that’s a secret,” he added.
Willa wouldn’t dream of inquiring into people’s sleeping arrangements, so she merely nodded. She could guess the unsavory reason his bedchamber’s location had to remain undisclosed.
“I assure you that your secret is safe with me,” she said, trying and not quite succeeding in keeping distaste out of her voice.
“I did not choose to be the object of people’s …”
He couldn’t seem to find the word, so she supplied one. “Adoration?”
“That’s not quite it.” Sweetpea batted at his boot, her claws leaving tiny scratches. “ ‘Adoration’ implies devotion, even worship. Playgoers and readers of my books seem to feel something like ownership of me, which is far from devotion.”
“How unpleasant for you,” Willa said, meaning it. She could imagine few things worse than a stranger believing that he—or she—had a claim on her time or person. She decided to change the subject. “Sweetpea has eaten an earthworm, three leaves, and a small mushroom. She tried to eat a fly, but it flew away. She also contemplated a bee, but I picked her up in time.”
“In short, she’ll eat anything,” Alaric said.
“Yes. This morning she enjoyed a bit of egg, and last night she ate fourteen berries.”
“No wonder she’s so plump.” He squatted down and caressed the skunk’s ears. Sweetpea swung up her tail, lost her balance, and went nose down into the dirt.
Alaric scooped her up. She looked even smaller in his large hand. “You are not a good walker.” His deep voice was coaxing and affectionate.
Sweetpea touched her nose to his.
“She’s kissing you,” Willa said, smiling.
“Let’s try again,” Alaric said, setting Sweetpea back on the path. Willa’s throat grew tight at the sight of the huge man, a warrior if there ever was one, bending over her pet.
Once again, Alaric hadn’t bothered to put on a wig or powder his hair. Dark locks fell over his forehead and around his neck as he gently traced the pretty white stripe that began at Sweetpea’s nose and ended in her plumy tail. “She’s a beauty,” he said, straightening.
“More importantly, she is remarkably polite, as well as curious,” Willa said. “This morning she dragged my slippers from under the bed and brought them to me.”
“A man of the Meskwaki tribe once told me that skunks are wiser than cats and more loyal than dogs.”
“Does an American sable even exist?”
“No. Sweetpea is a skunk. No one there would make a skunk into a fur stole, since they are famous for their odor. Thus the fancy name.”
“Sweetpea doesn’t smell,” Willa protested. Then she laughed along with Alaric. “Or not very much. After a bath, she smells woodsy, like an autumn forest. I haven’t had a chance to say thank you,” she said, feeling a surge of gratitude. “I adore her. I always wanted a cat, but I agree with your wise man. Sweetpea is better than a cat.”