Chapter 12
She was sobbing in front of Lord Hawke. Not just a few pretty, crystalline tears that glittered like dewdrops in her eyes, or even a restrained, dainty weeping, but sobbing, with all the ugliness such a state entailed.
Red face. Running nose. Puffy eyes. Mouth wide open, and great hoarse, sniveling sobs wrenched from her heaving chest and spewing from her contorted lips.
Sniveling. She was sniveling in front of Lord Hawke. Dear God, if she could have ducked under the table without his seeing it, she would have done so in an instant.
Or…was there any chance he hadn’t noticed she was sobbing? Gentlemen weren’t usually observant of such things, were they? Perhaps he didn’t realize—
“Miss Templeton? I’m afraid you’re, er…distressed.”
Dash it, he had noticed.
“What’s happened?” He gave her shoulder a gentle shake. “Why are you crying?”
Why? It was a perfectly reasonable question. What she would have given in that moment to have uttered a perfectly reasonable answer in response! It was a great pity, then, that she hadn’t the vaguest idea.
She was crying over nothing. And everything.
Lady Codswaddle had shouted at her. The fete was only four days away, and there was so much to do between now and then her head felt dizzy just thinking about it. She was exhausted, and…and…
And Lord Hawke—Adrian—had hardly spared her a glance all afternoon, because he’d been taken up with escorting Lady Anne into every room in the entire castle.
Even she hadn’t seen every room in this castle!
They looked well together, he and Lady Anne. His dark hair and height complimented Lady Anne’s fair daintiness, and then they were so easy with each other, laughing and chatting together as if no one else was in the room with them, as if no one else mattered, and…and…
She was being made to leave Hawke’s Run, to abandon her sweet boys, and…
and other people! The end of the year was creeping closer with every sunrise, and Ryan and Etienne were sure to forget her as soon as she’d gone, and she’d never get to see Hecate’s kittens, and Abby would become a dreadful gossip, and poor Mrs. Norris would be run ragged trying to keep up with the boys, and Lord Hawke would fall madly in love Lady Anne, and everything was wretched—
“Please stop crying, Helena, and tell me what’s wrong.”
Helena? Had he just called her by her given name? That and the gentle hand he laid on her shoulder so startled her she swallowed her sobs and raised her head.
She blinked up at him, squinted, then blinked again.
His brows were pulled together, his lips turned down at the corners, and his hair was standing on end. He looked handsome and disheveled and perfectly miserable.
Even more miserable than she felt.
“I’m very sorry I shouted at you, and laughed at your…” He retrieved the pathetic little bundle of sticks and ribbons she’d tied together. “Your, ah…your kissing ball. It’s a very nice one, indeed, and—”
“No, it isn’t. It’s awful.” She took it from his hand with a sigh and tossed it onto the table. “And you didn’t shout at me.”
“I daresay it sounded like a shout to you, with the stillroom so quiet. I do beg your pardon for startling you.” He gazed down at her in the dim light, his eyes soft and darker than usual, his pupils having swallowed all but the narrowest ring of forest green.
“I own you did startle me a bit.” So much so her heart was thrashing like a wild thing against her rib cage. From the startling, that is. No other reason. “I thought everyone would have gone off to their beds by now.”
“The boys are asleep, but Mrs. Norris was worried about you. She said she hadn’t seen you in hours, and asked me to come look for you.” He nodded at the mess spread out on the work table. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
“No, I’m afraid not.” She let out a weary sigh. “Lady Codswaddle was a bit, er, dismayed to find I’d only made two dozen kissing balls.” Dismayed, indeed. That was a polite word for what had, in fact, been an ill-tempered rant on Lady Codswaddle’s part.
He frowned. “You mean to say you’ve been down here making kissing balls this entire time?”
“I’m afraid so. Hawke’s Run’s ballroom is much larger than Goodall Abbey’s, you see, and so it’s going to take far more kissing balls than we originally planned.”
His lips had pulled into a thin, grim line. “How many more?”
She glanced at the enormous pile of greenery on the table and the overflowing basket of white silk ribbon, and allowed herself a despairing little sniffle. “Another six dozen.”
“Six dozen! You mean to say Lady Codswallop is demanding you—”
“Codswaddle.” She brushed a stray lock of hair from her damp face. Dash it, she was all drippy—
“My God, what happened to your hands?” He seized one of her wrists and brought her hand closer to the lantern light. “You’re bleeding!”
“Only a little. It’s nothing, I assure you.”
She tugged gently to free her hand from his grasp, but he held on, turning it this way and that. Dozens of tiny cuts and pricks marred her skin, some of them oozing droplets of blood. “It’s not nothing.”
“The holly leaves are a bit pointy, that’s all.”
“Pointy? Your hands are torn to bits, Helena. It looks as if you’ve been mauled by all six of Circe’s kittens.”
Her jaw dropped. “Circe’s kittens! You mean to say you know about them?”
“Do I know about Hestia, Poseidon, Artemis, Apollo, Demeter and Hephaestus? Of course, I do. Even the wily Miss Templeton can’t keep six kittens hidden.
I kept seeing furry little tails darting around corners, so I asked the boys.
They told me all about Circe, and gave me the kittens’ names.
Demeter and Artemis have been sleeping on a settee in my bedchamber for days. ”
She gaped up at him, her mouth wide open. Again. “But you despise cats!”
“I do. They’re arrogant, hissing, self-satisfied little beasts.
” He turned her hand over to inspect her palms. They weren’t quite as bad as the backs, but they were covered with scratches and punctures as well, and her fingers were a mess of slivers and smeared blood.
“For God’s sake, Lady Codswaddle expects you to make another sixty kissing balls?
There will be nothing left of your hands but bloody stumps! ”
“Thank you for that colorful description, my lord.”
“That woman is an outrageous tyrant, and she’s set you an impossible task. Tell her she can make do with the kissing balls she has, and be done with it.”
“Oh, no. I can’t do that, my lord.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I can’t think of a single reason why not.”
“Because I’m on the decorations committee, and Lady Codswaddle is the head of it, and because I said I’d do the kissing balls.”
“Twenty-four of them, yes. Not ninety-six. Lady Codswaddle has changed the rules.”
“Yes, but I said I’d do it. I can’t go back on my word now.” No matter if she did end up with bloody stumps where her hands used to be.
“Even if your fingers fall off in the process?”
“I daresay it won’t come to loss of limb, my lord. It’s not as bad as that.”
“Bad enough.” He sighed and released her hand—which he’d been somehow inexplicably still holding—and turned to rummage through the cabinets behind him. “Mrs. Norris makes a peppermint salve for cuts. It’s here somewhere, and the bandages—”
“There in the next cabinet to the right, on the top shelf.”
“Here it is.” He set the salve and bandages down on the table and reached for her. “Give me your hand.”
She did as he bid her, the light stroke of his fingertips against her palm sending a shiver up her spine. He doused a bit of cotton cloth with the salve and began dabbing it on her cuts, his touch gentle, talking as he worked. “Can the boys be trusted to help you with the kissing balls?”
“Certainly, for short periods at a time, until they lose interest. Little boys aren’t enraptured with kissing balls, Lord Hawke.”
“No. Not until they become big boys.”
She laughed, and he looked up quickly, a return grin rising to his lips. “What of Abby and Mrs. Norris? Can they help?”
“I don’t like to ask. They’ll be overwhelmed with their own tasks for the fete.”
He bandaged the worst of the cuts on her fingers, then reached for her other hand. “I daresay we can find a few girls in the village who’d like to earn some extra guineas making kissing balls.”
She glanced up at him, surprised. “That’s kind of you, my lord.”
“Yes, well, I wouldn’t get used to it, Miss Templeton. I’m certain to be back to snarling soon enough.”
“I’ll consider myself properly forewarned.” She flexed her hands, admiring his handiwork. “Your bandages are very tidy. You’re quite good at treating wounds.”
“Ryan and Etienne are forever scraping themselves bloody. Over time I became handy with the salve, although…” he paused, his smile dimming. “I’m a bit out of practice now.”
There was no mistaking the hint of guilt in his voice, and goodness, she was weepy today, because before she knew it, tears threatened again. Impulsively, she reached out and took his hand. “Not so out of practice, my lord.”
Perhaps he heard the hitch in her voice, because he looked up, and his gaze caught hers.
It roamed over her face, and the expression in those dark green depths…
well, she couldn’t quite read it, but it made heat flood her cheeks, and all at once she was trembling, and she didn’t know why, except that he was closer than he had been a moment before, much closer, his eyes flicking back and forth between her eyes and her lips, and she was meant to do something, wasn’t she? Something…but she didn’t know what.
Confused, she dropped her gaze, but he wouldn’t allow that. He touched two long fingers to her chin and turned her face back up to his. “No, perhaps not so out of practice, after all,” he murmured, his voice husky.
She swallowed, her breath suddenly coming more quickly, her skin tingling as every inch of her strained toward him. “My lord?”
He was going to kiss Helena Templeton.