Prologue #2
“Yes.” He frowned. “Ye did not appear tae be listening as Lord Easton explained the rules. It seemed prudent tae ask.”
“If I misunderstand anything I am certain you will correct me.” Why did he have to be so observant? “and I am certain you will be insufferable about it.”
“I am certain,” he said, “that ye will refuse instruction on principle.”
He seemed to know her better than most already. She smiled slowly. “Now we understand one another.”
“God help us all,” Amberwood muttered somewhere behind them.
Melisande stepped toward the starting place and rested both hands atop the handle of her mallet. “Since you are so devastatingly experienced, my lord, perhaps you ought to go first.”
“I thought ladies were given precedence,” he drawled.
“Oh, I should hate to begin by disappointing you. Please. Demonstrate your discipline.” She motioned toward the field. “Impress me, my lord.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. Only a fraction. But she saw it, and delight curled low in her chest. He took his position without another word and sent his ball cleanly over the grass with a shot so precise it stopped just shy of the first ring.
The onlookers murmured their approval. Melisande did not.
She studied the placement, then studied him.
Competent and controlled. He was also annoyingly elegant with a mallet in his hand.
There was, she admitted reluctantly, something compelling in such exactitude.
Not because she admired obedience in any pure sense, but because it tempted her to interfere with it.
To see what happened when a man so governed was forced into disarray.
She stepped forward when her turn came. “Try not tae injure anyone,” he said quietly.
She lifted her head up at once and glared at him.
The words had been delivered evenly enough that no one else would hear accusation in them.
But she did. A flash of temper lit through her.
They had met less than ten minutes ago, and already he presumed himself capable of rebuke.
Melisande smiled without warmth. “If I do,” she said sweetly, “I will be sure you’re the first victim of my ineptitude. ”
Before he could answer, she swung. Her ball skimmed over the lawn—not striking his, not yet, but stopping close enough to make her intention plain.
It had not an error, but a warning. One that her words did not give him.
That warning had been a direct hit, this one was far more subtle.
She could play his game, and far better than he could ever imagine.
His gaze met hers. There, at last, was something beyond cool restraint. Interest and irritation colliding into an undeniable challenge.
Excellent. Perhaps this afternoon would not be wasted after all.
Georgina and Mr. Foxmoore took their turn next, then Jaclyn and the duke, but Melisande scarcely followed any of it.
Her attention returned again and again to Viscount Kendal.
To the way he watched the field, to the preciseness of his movements, to the maddening sense that he expected sense from the world.
When Georgina made a timid shot and flushed with embarrassment, Melisande crossed to throw an arm about her shoulders. “Wonderful strike,” she declared.
Georgina blinked. “It was not.”
“It was,” Melisande said. “Because you struck it at all. Courage deserves encouragement.”
When she turned back, she caught Kendal watching her once more. Not with approval. Not exactly... But with a look far less fixed in judgment than before. Well he would learn in time. She was not simple to sort, and she had no wish to become so.
Charlotte and Lord Easton took their turns after that, and soon the game dissolved into delightfully bad behavior, competitive shots, muttered protests, and more than one ball sent wildly off course. At last Viscount Kendal lined up for another turn, his black ball poised near hers on the grass.
He glanced at her. “Shall I expect mercy?”
“From me?” Melisande asked. “Never.”
“So I suspected.” He sighed.
“Good,” she said. “I should hate to disappoint you so early in our acquaintance.”
Something in his expression shifted again. A spark that was brief, reluctant, and undeniable.
“Lady Melisande,” he said, low enough that only she could hear, “I do not think you could disappoint me. Alarm me, perhaps. Exasperate me almost certainly. But disappoint me? No.”
The answer should have annoyed her. Instead, to her everlasting irritation, it sent the faintest thrill down her spine. Melisande tightened her grip on the mallet and smiled like a sinner at prayer.
At last. Someone worth playing against. A man that could hold her attention and alleviate this insufferable boredom she’d been plagued with.
Not that she wanted a man in her life… Viscount Kendal was just a nice diversion.
Someone she could trade barbs with and sharpen her wit on. Nothing more, nothing less.
And perhaps if she said that to herself enough she might come to believe it to…