He sat up as well, winding his arms around her waist from behind. “Look at Sweetpea’s basket.”
Willa turned her head—and gasped. The baby skunk was splayed on her back, eyes happily closed, while Hannibal placidly washed her belly.
“Oh my,” Willa breathed.
Alaric pushed her curls aside and kissed her neck. The brush of his lips made Willa feel raw and new. Vulnerable. She pulled free and got off the bed. “Please go.”
A flash of disappointment crossed Alaric’s eyes that made Willa’s stomach roil.
“I would like to marry you,” he stated, standing up.
She silently registered those words. He’d said them with about as much passion as one might mention a partiality for pears over apples. If there was one thing she was very good at, after her first Season, it was refusing offers of marriage.
“I am sorry to decline,” she said, making up her mind. “I couldn’t—I cannot marry someone whose life is shared by so many.”
A nerve jerked in his jaw. “My life is not shared.”
“Your many admirers would disagree.”
“You have many admirers of your own. According to my aunt, half of London proposed marriage to you in the last few months.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Those proposals reflect my penchant for following society’s rules, along with the fortune my parents left me.”
“In case you are wondering, I didn’t know you have a fortune and I have no need of it. I’d note that your beauty is a factor as well.”
She shrugged before she remembered that she never shrugged. “That too.”
“Your personality.”
“Lavinia and I present ourselves as ideal young ladies. Our personalities are unknown to our suitors.”
Alaric crossed his arms over his chest. “I have no wish to marry the shiny version of you.”
“I have no wish to marry you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “If anyone knew we spent this time together, you’d be ruined.”
“Are you threatening to tell anyone?” Willa smiled, because she knew to the core of her being that Alaric would never betray her. For any reason.
“I could.” He shifted his weight, just the tiniest motion.
Her smile widened. “No, you couldn’t. Now you must go. Did you give Sweetpea her rolypolies?”
He made a sound like a low growl. “Yes, I did. I’ll go—for now.” He walked over to the basket, and Hannibal hissed a warning. Alaric went down on his haunches beside the basket. Hannibal’s front leg whipped out, as fast as the wind, and his claws dug into Alaric’s sleeve.
“I’m not stealing your kitten,” Alaric said, his voice deep and low.
Hannibal unhooked his claws, as if tacitly admitting the possibility of an error.
Alaric stood and crossed the room. When he reached the door, he turned around. “What if I were to write a poem and bring you more roses? All the roses in the garden? My father likes you; he would sanction their sacrifice.”
“Are you in love with me, Alaric? Because in my experience, which, as you note, has been pleasingly full, such poems declare love.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you make fun of all your suitors this way?”
Willa grinned. “I do not.”
“We get along uncommonly well,” he tried.
“I’m sorry,” Willa said, with genuine regret, because something about the way his voice had grown stiff was twisting her heart. “I want more from marriage.”
“Did I tell you that I’ve made up my mind to stop writing?”
She opened the door. “Your readers love your work so much.”
He left without another word. Her remark wasn’t meant as an insult, but it seemed he had taken it as such. Willa closed the door behind him and sank into a chair.
Sweetpea tumbled from the basket onto her nose. Hannibal grumbled. He reminded Willa of a fussy nanny, the kind who has raised numerous children.
She’d done the right thing; she knew it.
In that instant the door was flung open with such force that it struck the wall. Willa jumped to her feet. Alaric strode over to her, wrapped his arms around her, and took her mouth.
He devoured her, forcing a moan from deep in her chest. Kissing, by definition, involved lips. But Alaric’s kisses were a bodily experience. His tongue plundered her mouth; his hands went down her back, shaped her bottom and pulled her against his thighs.
Even had she been wearing four or five layers, instead of a thin chemise, she would have felt exactly what he had to offer.
“It’s a good thing we’re not on that damn bed any longer,” he said, pulling away.
Willa gasped for air.
“Perhaps you could kiss me next time,” he said. With that, he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-five
The following afternoon
Given the rain shower this morning,” Lady Knowe announced after luncheon, “I suggest a few rounds of cards, which will allow the grass on the archery field to dry.”
To Alaric’s disgust, a thicket of gentlemen surrounded Willa during the first game; every unmarried man in the house party seemed to be hovering about her. He stayed on the opposite side of the room, resenting the ache he felt every time he saw her. He couldn’t help noticing as Willa lost the game, beaming at her circle of admirers as she implied that she couldn’t count cards.
She is lying, Alaric thought savagely. Probably she could empty their pocketbooks if she wanted to, but she preferred to gaze at them with limpid blue eyes and collect betrothal rings instead.
She didn’t accept the rings. But only so that she could keep looking for the perfect consort. The man with a private life.
To add insult to injury, Prudence persisted in fluttering around him like a demented moth, putting off discussion of her return to Africa by claiming exhaustion. Alaric was on the verge of tossing her forcefully into a carriage. Instead, he excused himself with the plea of work, and took himself off to the library.
His father’s desk was piled high with ledgers. North had declined his offer to help with the estate, but Alaric thought he’d take a look at the ledgers, if only to get a sense of the scope of work North had inherited on Horatius’s death.
An hour later, he had made considerable progress with the books when his Aunt Knowe burst into the room. “Prudence Larkin just told me that the two of you were matched in heaven by the Angel Gabriel himself,” she said. “I asked her to describe him and she took offense.”
“Thank you for rescuing me at breakfast. Again,” he said wearily.
“I wouldn’t have to rescue you so often if you would just stay where you belong.”
“What do you mean?”
She scowled at him so ferociously that her slashing eyebrows touched in the middle. It was a Wildean feature, less unfortunate in the men of the family.
“I found this on the drawing room floor,” she said, handing him a locket. It wasn’t one of those cheap souvenirs engraved with a W; this one was gold, beautifully made, and opened easily.
A cutout of his own face looked back at him. One of his eyes was higher than the other. He closed it, turned the locket over, examined it more closely. The soft metal was dented by tiny teeth marks.
Sweetpea.
Willa owned this locket, and she was carrying his picture.
Lady Knowe’s face was transformed by a broad smile. “It must be Willa’s. If the castle has rats—which I doubt—they’ve never gnawed on my jewelry.”
Alaric tore off a small strip from a sheet of foolscap. “Would you be so kind as to return Willa’s locket?”
His aunt circled around behind him and watched over his shoulder as he wrote.
My dear Evie,
This note replaces a likeness of my face. Perhaps I should stop by your chamber to reassure you that my eyes are level with each other, unlike the image you were carrying in this locket.
He pried his face from the locket, folded up the note, and tucked it inside. His aunt left, laughing under her breath.
Sometime later, as Alaric was steadily working his way through yet another of the ledgers associated with the castle’s upkeep, a footman appeared bearing a silver tray. On it was the locket.
Alaric nodded. “Return in two minutes, if you please.”
If I had a true betrothed, I would wish to reassure myself about many aspects of his physique.
He stared at this for some minutes before a slow smile spread over his face. Willa was wickedly sensual underneath that placid exterior of hers. A wild woman hiding in plain sight.
How will you judge his worth, if you have nothing with which to compare those “aspects”? You should conduct a thorough examination. I offer myself as a standard for comparison.
He dispatched the footman and returned to the task at hand. The ledgers before him, bound in leather and made up of line after line of entries written in the crabbed, cramped hand of his father’s chief steward, began to resemble Mr. Roberts’s hieroglyphs.
He already had over two dozen questions to ask North. Why did they maintain the mew when no one had gone hawking since Horatius’s death? Why did they send two deer to Lord Pewter, in the next county, every November? Who was drinking all this small beer? Why were twelve or more rolls of silk wall covering acquired every year?
Glancing around at the walls of the library, he thought he had the answer to that. Probably the dampness of the stone rotted silk within a few seasons. Wouldn’t it be better to put a sturdier fabric on the walls?