Chapter 6
A fter swinging the child easily from his shoulders to the ground, Lord St. Vincent opened the carriage door on Pandora’s side. The full blaze of midday gilded his perfect features and struck brilliant lights in his bronze-gold hair.
T he man had too much of everything. Looks, wealth, intelligence, breeding, and virile good health.
“W elcome to Heron’s Point,” Lord St. Vincent said, his gaze encompassing the entire group. “My apologies—we went to the shore to test my younger brother’s new kite design, and it took longer than we expected. I intended to be back in time for your arrival.”
“That’s quite all right,” Kathleen assured him cheerfully.
“The important question is,” Devon said, “how did the kite fly?”
The red-headed boy came to the doorway of the carriage. Ruefully he held up a bundle of slender dowels held together by scraps of red fabric and string, so Devon could see it. “Broke apart in mid-flight, sir. I’ll have to make modifications to my design.”
“This is my brother, Lord Michael,” St. Vincent said. “We call him by his middle name, Ivo.”
Ivo was a handsome lad of perhaps ten or eleven, with deep auburn hair, sky-blue eyes, and a winning smile. He executed an awkward bow, in the way of someone who’d just had a growth spurt and was trying to manage the new length of his arms and legs.
“What about me?” the barefoot boy on Lord St. Vincent’s other side demanded. He was a sturdy, dark-haired, pink-cheeked child, no more than four years old. Like Ivo, he was dressed in a bathing tunic attached at the waist to a pair of short trousers.
Lord St. Vincent’s lips twitched as he looked down at the impatient boy. “You’re my nephew,” he said gravely.
“I know that!” the child said in exasperation. “You’re supposed to tell them. ”
Perfectly straight-faced, Lord St. Vincent said to the Ravenels, “Allow me to introduce my nephew Justin, Lord Clare.”
A chorus of greetings came from the interior of the carriage. The door on the other side opened, and the Ravenels began to exit the vehicle as a pair of footmen attended them.
Pandora jumped slightly as Lord St. Vincent’s inscrutable gaze connected with hers, his eyes as bright and piercing as starlight.
Wordlessly he reached in a hand for her.
Breathless and scattered, Pandora fumbled to find her gloves, but they seemed to have disappeared along with her valise.
A footman was assisting Kathleen and Cassandra as they descended from the carriage on the other side.
Turning back to Lord St. Vincent, she reluctantly took his hand and stepped down from the carriage.
He was even taller than she remembered, bigger, his shoulders broader.
When she’d seen him before, he’d been constrained in formal black-and-white evening clothes, every inch of him polished and perfect.
Now he was in a rather shocking state of undress, coatless and hatless, his shirt open at the throat.
His hair was in disarray, the cropped layers sweat-darkened where they tapered at his neck.
A pleasant fragrance drifted to her nostrils, the sunny, foresty smell she remembered from before, now infused with a sea-breeze saltiness.
There was a great deal of activity on the drive as servants left the other carriages and footmen unloaded the luggage. Out of the periphery of her vision, Pandora saw her family proceeding into the house. Lord St. Vincent, however, seemed in no hurry to usher her inside.
“Forgive me,” he said quietly, looking down at her. “I had intended to be waiting here, appropriately attired, when you arrived. I don’t want you to think your visit isn’t important to me.”
“Oh, but it’s not,” Pandora said awkwardly.
“That is, I didn’t expect fanfare when I arrived.
You didn’t have to be waiting here, or attired at all.
I mean, attired well.” Nothing that came out of her mouth sounded right.
“I expected clothing, of course.” Turning crimson, she dropped her head. “ Blast ,” she muttered.
She heard his soft laugh, the sound raising gooseflesh on her sweaty arms .
Ivo broke in, looking contrite. “It’s my fault we were late. I had to find all the pieces of my kite.”
“Why did it break?” Pandora asked.
“The glue didn’t hold.”
Having learned a great deal about various glue formulations while constructing a prototype for her board game, Pandora was about to ask what kind he had used.
However, Justin interrupted before she could say a word. “It’s my fault too. I lost my shoes and we had to look for them.”
Charmed, Pandora sank to her haunches to bring her face level with his, heedless of her skirts draping over the dusty graveled drive. “Didn’t you find them?” she asked sympathetically, regarding his bare feet.
Justin shook his head and heaved a sigh, a miniature adult plagued by worldly concerns. “Mama won’t be happy about this at all .”
“What do you think happened?”
“I set them on the sand, and they disappeared.”
“Perhaps an octopus stole them.” Immediately Pandora regretted the remark—it was just the sort of eccentric comment Lady Berwick would have deplored.
But Lord St. Vincent replied with a considering frown, as if the matter were quite serious. “If it’s an octopus, he won’t stop until he has eight.”
Pandora smiled hesitantly up at him.
“I don’t have that many shoes,” Justin protested. “What can we do to stop him?”
“We could invent some octopus repellent,” Pandora suggested.
“How?” The child’s eyes sparked with interest.
“Well,” Pandora began, “I’m sure we would need some— oof!
” She was never to finish the thought, as she was startled by a creature that came bounding swiftly around the side of the carriage.
A glimpse of floppy ears and jolly brown eyes filled her vision before the enthusiastic canine pounced so eagerly that she toppled backward from her squatting position.
She landed on her rump, the impact knocking her hat to the ground.
A swath of hair came loose and slid over her face, while a young tan-and-black retriever leapt around her as if he were on springs.
She felt a huff of dog breath at her ear and the swipe of a tongue on her cheek.
“Ajax, no ,” she heard Ivo exclaim.
Realizing what a mess she’d become, all in a matter of seconds, Pandora experienced a moment of despair, followed by resignation.
Of course this would happen. Of course she would have to meet the duke and duchess after tumbling on the drive like a half-witted carnival performer.
It was so dreadful that she began to giggle, while the dog nudged his head against hers.
In the next moment, Pandora was lifted to her feet and caught firmly against a hard surface. The momentum threw her off balance, and she clung to St. Vincent dizzily. He kept her anchored securely against him with an arm around her back.
“ Down , idiot,” St. Vincent commanded. The dog subsided, panting happily.
“He must have slipped past the front door,” Ivo said.
St. Vincent smoothed Pandora’s hair back from her face. “Are you hurt?” His gaze ran over her swiftly.
“No... no.” Helpless giggles kept bubbling up as her nervous tension released. She tried to smother the giddy sounds against his shoulder. “I was... trying so hard to be ladylike...”
A brief chuckle escaped him, and his hand moved over her upper back in a calming circle. “I would imagine it’s not easy to be ladylike in the midst of a dog mauling.”
“Milord,” came the voice of a concerned footman from nearby, “has the young lady been injured?”
Pandora couldn’t quite hear Lord St. Vincent’s reply over the pounding of her heart.
His nearness, the protective arm around her, that gently roaming hand.
.. all of it seemed to be awakening parts of her, deep inside, that had never been awake before.
A strange new pleasure spread through her and lit every nerve ending like a succession of tiny birthday candles.
Her gaze dropped to his shirtfront, the fine layer of handkerchief-weight linen doing little to conceal the hard curves and planes of muscle beneath.
Seeing a hint of tawny curling hair where the placket of the shirt fell open, she flushed and recoiled in confusion.
Raising an exploring hand to her hair, she said vaguely, “My hat...” She turned to look for it, only to discover that Ajax had found the little velvet hat with its tempting cluster of feathers. Clamping it in his mouth, the dog shook it playfully.
“Ajax, come,” Lord St. Vincent said immediately, but the unruly retriever cavorted and jumped, keeping it out of reach.
Ivo approached the dog slowly. “Ajax, let me have it,” he said in a coaxing tone. “Come on, boy...” The dog turned and took off at a run. “I’ll fetch it,” Ivo promised, sprinting after the dog.
“Me too!” Justin followed, his short legs a blur. “But it’s going to be soggy!” came a dire warning from over his shoulder.
Shaking his head, Lord St. Vincent watched the retriever scamper across the lawn. “I owe you a new hat,” he told Pandora. “That one will return in shreds.”
“I don’t mind. Ajax is still a pup.”
“The dog is inbred,” he said flatly. “He doesn’t retrieve or obey commands, he tries to dig holes in carpets, and as far as I can tell, he’s incapable of walking in a straight line.”
Pandora grinned. “I rarely walk in a straight line,” she confessed. “I’m too distractible to keep to one direction—I keep veering this way and that, to make certain I’m not missing something. So whenever I set out for a new place, I always end up back where I started.”
Lord St. Vincent turned to face her fully, the beautiful cool blue of his eyes intent and searching. “Where do you want to go?”
The question caused Pandora to blink in surprise. She’d just been making a few silly comments, the kind no one ever paid attention to. “It doesn’t matter,” she said prosaically. “Since I walk in circles, I’ll never reach my destination.”